The Apollo program was the peak of the Space race, with over 400,000 engineers and scientists working for 11 years to make 12 astronauts land on the Moon. But the program ended in 1972 and many things have changed since then.

Now, our smartphones have 1 million more times the memory and speed than the computers NASA used to land those 12 astronauts on the Moon. Those old computers not only cost $3.5 million each but were also the size of a car. Back in 1972, there were only 187 satellites in orbit, now there are more than 4,000. This connectivity has enabled the development of mobile applications. Thousands of the most popular apps contain location-sharing codes like Facebook, Whatsapp, Uber, Google Maps, Weather apps, and Tripadvisor just to mention a few.

But the most significant change is that Space is now open for business. It’s hard to know exactly when the transition from scientific to commercial activities in Space started, but there are two important events that I believe are significant in the history of modern Space.

The first event was the creation of the American company MirCorp in 2000 by a group of Space enthusiasts disappointed with the cancellation of the Apollo program by Richard Nixon. The company’s mission was to rent the Russian MIR Space Station to send private astronauts using the Russian rockets called Soyuz.

At that time the MIR Space Station was inhabited for many months so MirCorp paid two Russian cosmonauts to do repair work on the station and leave it ready for its first customer, entrepreneur Dennis Tito. Unfortunately, according to MirCorp “additional financing was not forthcoming from the original investors. The political pressure against the project from NASA was both private and public, and the decision was made to end the project”. So in 2001 the MIR Space Station was de-orbited and crashed in the Pacific Ocean. MirCorp’s journey is well captured in the documentary “Orphans of Apollo”.

Although MirCorp was not able to fulfill its mission, it opened a new window of commercial and marketing possibilities using Space infrastructure. This became a precedent for projects undertaken today. For example, the company Space Entertainment Enterprise is currently working with Tom Cruise to build a film studio in space by 2024.

The second event that significantly opened Space for business, was the creation of the Falcon rockets by SpaceX, with the support of NASA’s Commercial Program, which aimed to reduce costs by contracting private companies to access Space, instead of NASA building and operating their rockets

But SpaceX’s success was preceded by “the sheer force of blood and sweat” as some employees remember. In early August of 2008, Elon Musk had three consecutive failed launches, a $100 million personal investment running out, and a company that was the target of public undermining by the most powerful AeroSpace contractors who were protecting their multi-billion dollar interests.

But just 7 weeks after the third failed launch, SpaceX manufactured, integrated, and successfully launched the Falcon1, which was not only the cheapest rocket but also the most sustainable and reliable. To make a comparison, the cost per kilo using the Space Shuttle in 1990 was $65,000, nowadays it is as low as $1,500 per kilo using the Falcon Heavy.

The Space industry today is a collaborative and interdisciplinary field full of business and professional opportunities. Although engineers are still doing most of the heavy lifting, the Industry needs entrepreneurs, farmers, lawyers, doctors, architects, chefs, artists, communicators, and more, to take Space to the next level.

If we want to permanently establish a human presence outside of our planet, we need to replicate at least some of our basic activities. This means we would need architects to design sustainable habitats on the Moon or Mars, and to extend our presence in Space we would need doctors and biologists to study the effects of reproduction in microgravity.

To establish the rules for harmonious coexistence in Space, we would need lawyers who help us establish those rules, not only for social interaction but also for business exchanges. We would need food scientists and chefs to grow and prepare food in Space, nutritionists to come up with the optimal diet for our survival with limited resources. And of course, we would also need art and entertainment, among many other things.

The future is getting closer. Space is now open for business and it needs your skills to decide where we want to go next.

L'articolo A Gold Race in the XXI century? Space is open for business proviene da InsideOver.

Space is booming. In the next 10 years, we will witness the construction and launching of several private space stations that will host private astronauts and allow space tourism. We will also establish a permanent human presence on the moon where we’ll be able to extract subterranean iced water and turn it into oxygen and hydrogen. And just before 2030, we will greatly increase our connectivity, guidance, and observation capabilities, thanks to the 17,000 new satellites to be launched.

But this flourishment in Space is not new. Almost 60 years ago, the Russians achieved extraordinary accomplishments in only 8 years, from launching the first satellite in 1957 to the first “spacewalk” performed by cosmonaut Alexi Leonov in 1965, including sending the first man and woman into space (Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova).

Parallel to that, the Americans launched the Apollo program, which allowed Neil Armstrong to become in 1969 the first person to step on the surface of the moon, inspiring a whole generation and unleashing new technological developments that benefited life here on earth. Some of those space inventions are so well integrated into our daily routine that we might not even know they came from the space race.

Cordless vacuums, memory foam mattresses, invincible braces, infrared ear thermometers, treadmills, scratch-resistant glasses, water filters, and insulation materials are just some of those examples. However, the most memorable and impactful invention that came out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was created by Eric Fossum and Sabrina Kemeny when they were looking for efficient image sensors that can capture images during space missions and invented the miniature digital camera, an invention that influenced the XXI Century, allowing the creation of the cellphone camera and social media as we know it today, and it also revolutionized the automotive, surveillance and medical fields.

Speaking of the medical field, CATScan and MIR machines also use components, originally intended for Space missions, even enriched baby formula was discovered when NASA-funded researchers were working on developing life support for Mars missions and found the Omega-3 protein, which is a key ingredient that has been added since to more than 90 percent of baby formula on the market today.

Besides those tangible inventions, Space provides us with communication and data services thanks to the over 3,000 satellites in orbit, that help us to get accurate weather predictions for navigation and agriculture, stay connected, use our credit card and banking apps anywhere in the world, coordinate search and rescue missions in zones of disasters and track climate change, among many other applications.

One of the less known uses of spatial data is helping engineers prevent accidents by performing structural analysis of large objects from Space. By overlapping images of bridges, buildings, roads, and other large constructions, engineers can measure displacements or damages and intervene on time.

Even governments are using satellite information in new ways. In France for example, the region of Alpes-Maritimes partnered up with Google Maps to locate undeclared swimming pools from space, and collect the appropriate tax. In California, the government also uses images from satellites to identify and close illegal marijuana grow sites.

We live in a very exciting time where the moon and mars exploration will create a new wave of discoveries, being the most promising in the field of health-tech, with anti-aging serums that protect and regenerate our skin from the harsh space environment, telemedicine machines that can perform complex surgery in outer space, and bioengineering products that keep us alive for a longer time with minimum resources.

But with all this progress, we need to be very conscious of preserving our space environment and the risk of polluting our orbits with space debris and mega-constellations. Thankfully there are already some initiatives that aim to reutilize satellites to extend their life and find environmentally friendly propellants and materials.

One of those initiatives was led by the American company Northrop Grumman when last year they became the first institution in the world to successfully dock two satellites in orbit, providing a 5-year life extension to a communications satellite that was at the end of its operational life.

Another example of sustainability in the space sector comes from the Kyoto University in Japan, as they announced that in 2023 they will be launching the first satellite made partially of wood, which will become the most environmentally friendly satellite that will burn upon re-entry into earth’s atmosphere after the end of its life, leaving little to no environmental trace.

Exploration is in our DNA, it has not only been our survival skill but also the way we acquire knowledge. Our ancestors started exploring the earth 100,000 years ago and we should look forward to the benefits of exploring outer space in the upcoming years.

L'articolo The importance of Space in our daily life proviene da InsideOver.