Space Travel is No Sunday Picnic🚀

✍AstroMuon Kuki🚀

As the old Chinese proverb says,the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.The journey to the space starts with the very first rocket🚀
History reveals that scientific revolutions come in waves,often stimulated by advances in physics. In the nineteenth century,the first wave of science and technology was made possible by physicists who created the theory of mechanics and thermodynamics.This enabled engineers to produce the steam engine,leading to the locomotive and the industrial revolution.
In the twentieth century,the second wave was spearheaded by physicists who mastered the laws of electricity and magnetism,which in turn ushered in the electric age.

This made possible the electrification of our cities with the advent of dynamos,generators,TV, radio,and radar.The second wave gave birth to the modern space program,which took us to the moon.
In the twenty-first century,the third wave of science has been expressed in high tech,spearheaded by the quantum physicists who invented the transistor and the laser.This made possible the supercomputer,the internet,modern telecommunications and GPS.
In future,we will have to exploit the fourth wave of science,which consists of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology,and biotechnology.The goal of terraform Mars exceeds our capability today,but the technologies of the twenty-second century will allow us to turn this bleak,frozen desert into a habitable world.


TSIOLKOVSKY-A LONELY VISIONARY

On his own,he calculated the escape velocity of  the Earth-to be twenty five thousand miles per hour.
In 1903,he published his famous rocket equation,which allows one to determine the maximum velocity of a rocket,given its weight and fuel supply.The equation revealed that the relationship between speed and fuel is exponential.
Normally,one might assume that if you want to double the velocity of a rocket,you simply need to double the amount of fuel.
Instead,the amount of fuel you need rises exponentially with the change in velocity,so that enormous amounts  of fuel are needed to give extra boost in speed.

This exponential made it clear that you would need huge amounts of fuel to leave the Earth.With his formula,Tsiolkovsky-was for the first time able to estimate how much fuel was necessary to go to the moon,long before his vision became reality.
Although Tsiolkovsky was too poor to convert his mathematical equations into actual models,the next step was taken by Robert Goddard,who actually built the prototype that would one day form the basis of space travel.
Tsiolkovsky’s guiding philosphy was,”The Earth is our cradle,but we cannot be in the cradle forever,” and he believed in a philosophy called cismism,which holds that the future of humanity is to explore outer space.


ROBERT GODDARD-FATHER OF ROCKETRY

Robert Goddard first became interested in science as a child witnessing the electrification of his hometown.Goddard systematically turned this curiosity into a usable scientific tool by introducing three innovations.
First,Goddard experimented with different types of fuels and realized that powered fuel is inefficient.The Chinese had invented gunpowered centuries earlier and used it for rockets,but gunpowder burns unevenly and hence rockets remained mainly toys.
Second,to replace powered fuel with liquid fuel,which could be precisely controlled so that it burned cleanly and steadily.He built a rocket with two tanks,one containing a fuel,such as alcohol,and the other tank containing an oxidizer,such as liquid oxygen.He realized that as the rocket rose into the sky,it’s fuel tanks were gradually depleted.His next innovation was to introducemulti-stage rockets that discarded spent fuel tanks and therefore could shed some dead weight along the way,vastly increasing their range and efficiency.


And third,he introduced gyroscopes.Once a gyroscope is sent spinning,its axis always points in the same direction,even if you rotate it.For example,if the axis points toward the North Star,it will continue to point in that direction if you turn it upside down.This means that a spaceship,if it were to wander in its trajectory,can alter it’s rocket to compensate for this motion and return to its course.Goddard realized he could use gyroscopes to help keep his rockets on target.
In 1926,he made history with the first very succesfully launch of  a liquid fueled rocket.It rose 41 feet into the air,flew for 2.5 seconds,and  landed 184 feet in a cabbage patch.

WERNHER VON BRAUN

Under Von Braun’s leadership,the scribblings and sketched of Tsiolkovsky’s and the prototypes of Goddard became the Vengeance Weapon 2 rocket,an advanced weapon of war that terrorised London and Antwerp,blowing up entire city blocks.
The V-2 was unbelievably powerful.It dwarfed Goddard’s rockets,making them look like toys.The V-2 stood 46th feet tall and weighed 27,600 pounds.It could travel at a blazing speed of 3,580 miles per hour and it achieved a maximum altitude of about sixty miles.It hits it’s targets at three times the speed of sound,it broke the sound barrier.And it had an operational range of two hundred miles.

The V-2 set a number of world records,shattering all past achievements in terms of speed and range for a rocket.Itvwas the first long range guided ballistic missile.It was the first rocket to break the sound barrier.And most impressively,it was the first rocket ever to leave the boundary atmosphere and enter outer space.


SPUTNIK AGE

After the first  Vanguard missile rise four feet into the air,then drop back down four feet,tip over,and destroy its own launchpad in huge,blinding expansion.The second Vanguard launch few months later also failed.Inorder to regain Russia reputation or sealed its government in Space race,Von Braun was ordered to quickly launch a satellite,Explorer 1,using the Juno 1 Missile.
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957.
1957:Sputnik 2 carried the first animal,a dog named Laika,into orbit.
1957:Lunik 1 was the first rocket to fly past the moon
1959:Lunik 2 was the first to hit the moon.
  1959:Lunik  3was the first rocket to photograph the backside of the moon.
1960:Sputnik 5 had the first animals returned safely from space.
1961:Venera 1 was the first probe to fly past Venus.
The Russian Space Program reached its crowning achievement when Yuri Gagarin safely orbited the Earth in 1961.
Note:Since space is premium,astronauts have historically been small people.Yuri Gagrin,for example,was only five feet two inches tall.He was the first person to go in Space.


APOLLO MISSION

Firsts,there was  the one manned craft called Mercury,and then the two manned Gemini,and finally the three- manned Apollo.
Two types of Apollo Mission:Manned Mission and Unmanned Mission.
Manned Mission:Apollo 7 to Apollo 17(only Apollo 13 failed the mission)
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969.
Unmanned Mission:Apollo 18 to Apollo 20.



NASA MISSION TO MARS


Deep Space Gateway should be started construction from 2023.This will be used for fuel supplying station orbiting Moon.
It will be operated in 2026.Astronauts aboard on Orion Space Capsule should halt at Deep Space Gateway.
From this station,Rocket Propulsion system should be changed into Solar Electric propulsion.Unlike chemical engines,which can only for few minutes,ion engines can slowly accelerate for months or even years.
The vehicle name will be “DeepSpaceTransport”



MISCELLANEOUS MISSION

Meanwhile,SpaceX's aspirational goal is to land the first humans on Mars by 2024.
On September 14, 2018, SpaceX announced that a contracted passenger would be launched  the BFR to flyby the Moon in 2023. The passenger is the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.
The Big Falcon Rocket is a privately funded, fully reusable launch vehicle and spacecraft system in development by SpaceX. In November 2018 the second stage and ship was renamed by Elon Musk to Starship, while the first stage was given the moniker "Super Heavy“
The Chinese have announced that they will put their astronauts on the moon by 2025.
Jeff Bezos,founder of Amazon and Blue Orgin(Aerospace Company) and owner of the Washington Post, also planned for tourist in space.
Blue Origin has produced its own rocket system,called New Shepherd.

Ref:Physics of the Impossible book by Michio Kaku,
The future of Humanity book by Michio Kaku,
Wikipedia,
Space X webiste and NASA website