News – What future for travel in space?

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Wednesday, October 3, 2018, 5:15 pm – In many sectors, a decade is barely enough to bring about radical change except in the case of disruption: new technology, new business model or service design. The space industry has recently benefited from the three.

But 10 years ago, none of these innovations was guaranteed. In fact, on September 28, 2008, a company was watching and hoping that its flagship product would attempt a final launch after three failures. With liquidity down, it was the last shot. More than 21,000 kilograms of kerosene and liquid oxygen lit and powered two stages of dashboard reminder.

This first official photo of the Soviet Sputnik I satellite was published in Moscow on October 9, 1957. The satellite measured 1 foot 11 inches and weighed 184 pounds. The space age began when the Soviet Union launched on 4 October 1957 Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in orbit. AP Photo / TASS

When this Falcon 1 rocket reached orbit and the company signed a contract with NASA, SpaceX survived its "splash start". This milestone – the first liquid-propelled rocket to be developed by the private sector – has launched a new space industry that is changing our world, on this planet and beyond. What has happened in the meantime and what does it mean for the future?

Scientists are busy developing new technologies that address the myriad technical problems of space, but another segment of researchers, including myself, is studying the business and operational issues facing this new industry. In a recent article, my colleague Christopher Tang and I examine the questions that companies must answer in order to create a sustainable space industry and allow human beings to establish extraterrestrial bases, exploit asteroids and extend travel. in space, while governments play an increasingly important role. less important role in the financing of space companies. We believe these commercial solutions may be the least glamorous key to unlocking the galaxy.

THE NEW GLOBAL INDUSTRY OF SPACE

When the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik program by putting a satellite into orbit in 1957, it launched a space race fueled by international competition and the fears of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the United States played the leading role in creating a series of "firsts" for the record book. The first chapter of the Space Race culminated with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's historic Apollo 11 ground landing, which required a massive public investment of $ 25.4 billion. that's almost $ 200 billion today.

The competition characterized this first part of the history of space. This eventually led to a collaboration with the International Space Station, a remarkable example, as governments worked toward common goals. We have now entered a new phase – openness – with private and commercial companies in the lead.

The satellite and spacecraft launches industry is becoming increasingly commercialized, in part because of reduced government budgets. According to a report by investment company Space Angels, a record 120 venture capital companies have invested more than $ 3.9 billion in private space companies last year. The space industry is also globalizing and no longer dominated by the rivals of the Cold War, the US and the USSR.

In 2018, to date, 72 orbital launches, an average of two per week, have been carried out in China, Russia, India, Japan, French Guinea, New Zealand and the United States.

The rise in orbital launches of real rockets and spacecraft launches, which include satellites and spacecraft launched from space, coincides with this opening of the last decade.

More and more governments, businesses and even amateurs are launching more diverse spaceship launches than ever before. With more entities involved, innovation has blossomed. As Roberson notes in Digital Trends, "Private Space and Commercial Spaceflight. Even exploration, lunar mining and colonization: all of this is suddenly on the table, making the race to space today more vital than it is. 39, has been for years. "

Global launches in space. Orbital launches include manned and unmanned spaceships launched in orbital flight from the Earth. Spacecraft launches include all vehicles such as spacecraft, satellites and probes launched from Earth or space. Wooten, J. and C. Tang (2018) Operations in Space, Decision Sciences; Space Launch Report (Kyle 2017); Encyclopedia of spaceships (Lafleur 2017), CC BY-ND

This vitality can be clearly seen in the news. On September 21, Japan announced that two of its unmanned vehicles, dubbed Minerva-II-1, had landed on a small, remote asteroid. For perspective, the scale of this landing is similar to that of hitting a 6-centimeter target at 20,000 kilometers away. And earlier this year, audiences around the world marveled at the successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket and – even more impressively – the return of its two propellers on a landing strip in a synchronized ballet. epic proportions.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

In the face of capital, business and knowledge growth, researchers and practitioners need to determine how entities should manage their day-to-day operations, organize their supply chain and develop sustainable operations in the space. This is complicated by the obstacles that space poses: distance, gravity, inhospitable environments and scarcity of information.

One of the biggest challenges is to bring things that people want in space, in space. Making everything on Earth and launching it with rockets is expensive and restrictive. A company called Made In Space takes a different approach by maintaining an additive manufacturing facility on the International Space Station and by printing 3D directly into space. Tools, spare parts and medical devices for the crew can all be created on demand. The benefits include more flexibility and better inventory management on the space station. In addition, some products may be better produced in space than on Earth, such as pure optical fiber.

How should companies determine the value of manufacturing in the space? Where should the capacity be developed and how should it be increased? The figure below breaks down the origin and destination of goods between the Earth and space and ranks them in quadrants. Humans have mastered the left lower quadrant, created on Earth – for use on Earth. Starting from there, each quadrant introduces new challenges for which we have fewer and fewer skills.

A framework of Earth-space operations. Wooten, J. and C. Tang (2018) Space Operations, Decision Sciences, CC BY-ND

I first became interested in this particular problem by listening to a group of robotics experts discussing building a colony on Mars (in our third quadrant). You can not build the structures on Earth and send them easily to Mars, so you have to build them there. But placing human builders in this extreme environment is also problematic. For the most part, an entirely new production mode using robots and automation in a pre-sent may be necessary.

RESOURCES IN SPACE

One may wonder where to find the materials needed for manufacturing in space, but there is actually an abundance of resources: metals for manufacturing can be found in asteroids, water for rocket fuel is frozen in the form of ice on the planets and moons, and rare elements like helium – 3 for energy are embedded in the crust of the moon. If we brought this isotope back to Earth, we could eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels.

As demonstrated by the recent landing of the Minerva-II-1 asteroid, people are gaining technical know-how to locate and navigate to these materials. But extraction and transport are open questions.

How do these cases change the economy of the space industry? Already, companies like Planetary Resources, Moon Express, Deep Space Industries and Asterank are organizing to seize these opportunities. And experts are beginning to explain how to deal with issues of property rights, exploitation and partnerships.

THREATS OF JUNK SPACE

A computer generated image of the objects in Earth orbit that are currently being tracked. About 95% of the objects in this illustration are orbital debris, not functional satellites. The dots represent the current location of each element. Orbital debris points are resized based on the size of the chart image to maximize their visibility and are not resized to Earth. NASA

The film "Gravity" opens on a Russian satellite exploding, triggering a chain reaction of destruction caused by debris hitting a space shuttle, the Hubble telescope and a part of the Space Station international. The sequence, although not perfectly plausible as it is written, is a very real phenomenon. In fact, in 2013, a Russian satellite disintegrated after being hit by fragments of a Chinese satellite that exploded in 2007. This effect known as the Kessler effect, the danger that represent the some 500,000 space debris has already caught the attention of public policies circles. How to prevent, reduce or mitigate this risk? Quantifying the environmental impact of the space industry and attacking sustainable operations remains to come.

AND AFTER?

It is true that space is becoming another workplace. Some companies will take care of the logistics needed to ship your module intended for space aboard a rocket; there are companies that will send these rockets to the International Space Station; and there are others who can make a spare part once there.

What happens next? In a sense, there is no doubt, but all indications are that this new sector is moving forward. A new advance could change the speed, but the course seems set: explore further away from home, be it the moon, the asteroids or Mars. It's hard to believe that 10 years ago SpaceX launches had not been successful yet. Today, a dynamic private sector is made up of many companies, ranging from commercial spacecraft to rocket propulsion, mining and food production. The next step is to consolidate business practices and change the industry.

Standing in a great room at the University of Pittsburgh as part of the White House Border Conference, I see the future. State-of-the-art virtual goggles are wrapped around my head. I'm looking at the surface of Mars. Every detail is immediate and clear. It's not just a video game or a goal-free exercise. The scientific community has devoted resources to these efforts as exploration is preceded by information. And who knows, in 10 years maybe, someone will be standing on the actual surface of Mars.

Joel Wooten, Assistant Professor of Management Science, University of South Carolina

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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