Home » Commercial space flight to realize the future of summer travel check-in is outer space?_Microgravity

Commercial space flight to realize the future of summer travel check-in is outer space?_Microgravity

by admin

Original title: Commercial space flight realizes the future summer travel check-in location is outer space?

Mankind achieves its first real commercial space flight

Future summer travel check-in place-outer space

◎Wu Ji

The purpose of space tourism is not to experience microgravity, but as far as possible to make travelers avoid being in a microgravity environment for a long time. The microgravity environment will definitely appear after the manned spacecraft enters orbit and before and after docking with the space hotel. But once travelers enter the space hotel, they should get rid of the microgravity environment and enjoy the scenery of the earth and the deep universe.

July 20, 2021, must be a memorable day in the history of human exploration of space. On this day, the American Blue Origin Space Exploration Company (hereinafter referred to as Blue Origin) successfully carried out its first manned flight since its establishment. Although the flight altitude is only 107 kilometers, its take-off and landing methods are comparable to a small-scale manned space mission. The most memorable thing is that among the passengers on this flight, in addition to the founder of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos and his brother, and an American female pilot he invited, there is also a paying passenger. Therefore, this time The flight can be regarded as the first full commercial space flight in the history of mankind. July 20, 1969, was the day when the American Apollo 11 astronauts on behalf of mankind landed on the moon for the first time. On this day 52 years ago, mankind wrote history and opened a new chapter out of the earth. 52 years later, what kind of history does Bezos hope to open up?

Establish a sustainable business ecosystem

Beginning in the 1970s, the US government first opened the field of satellite communications to commerce. In the mid-1980s, the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom began to manufacture satellites with commercial devices, lowering the barriers to entry for the satellite manufacturing industry for the first time, and commercial satellites began to enter people’s vision. After 2000, three companies in the United States-Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and the more famous SpaceX, entered the space tourism field. But many people are not optimistic about their future. Some people believe that manned spaceflight is extremely risky, and only the government can ensure that it is foolproof. Even for government manned space missions, such as NASA’s space shuttle mission, two accidents occurred, resulting in the sacrifice of 14 astronauts. How can commercial companies ensure that they are foolproof?

See also  National Development and Reform Commission: Market expectations and development confidence of private enterprises have further improved

Some people believe that leaving the earth’s gravitational bondage requires a great increase in speed. Therefore, the cost of space flight is extremely high, and it is not affordable for individuals. This is why after the International Space Station has received 7 tourists, there is no Follow-up tourists too.

In a sense, these concerns are not unreasonable.

First of all, regarding the safety of personnel, commercial manned flights are completely different from government manned space programs. The government’s manned space program spends taxpayers’ money, and the astronauts go to the sky to perform a national mission, so they must be foolproof. But commercial aerospace is different. Tourists buy tickets at their own expense and are psychologically prepared to take risks. With reference to the standards of commercial aviation, tourists, pilots and flight attendants share the life and deaths, and share the risk of accidents, and insurance companies have set up insurance. Therefore, commercial space tourism projects have a higher risk tolerance than government manned space missions. The entire market will not be devastated because of the failure of individual tasks.

The second is about cost, which is indeed a very important issue. For government manned space missions, in order to ensure foolproof, the most comprehensive considerations have been made during the development process from design, testing to production, including a large number of homogeneous and heterogeneous redundant designs, and various tightened ground Experiments and various risk-avoidance measures, all of which are often at no cost, are one of the reasons why the government’s manned space missions are very costly. At present, the International Space Station is still open to tourists, but the price of a flight is around 57 million U.S. dollars, which is still high. Such a high cost neither meets market demand, nor can it be adjusted according to market demand. Therefore, it cannot be sustained, and it is impossible to establish a self-developing business ecosystem. At present, the main technological breakthroughs and innovations of Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX are all aimed at reducing costs. They adopted different technical solutions such as horizontal take-off and horizontal landing, single-stage single-engine rocket launch and land recovery, low-cost multi-engine parallel connection and sea recovery, etc., to achieve maximum reuse of rockets and manned cabins. In addition, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin have adopted the first space travel plan to fly to the nearby space of 100 kilometers as the first step, with the goal of minimizing the cost and the threshold of entering space. Business ecology. Promote the development of manned space tourism from simple to complex, step by step.

See also  Europe's new crown epidemic slows down, but violence against women surges | Epidemic|Europe|New crown pneumonia_sina news

Open a space hotel in low earth orbit

Sending people to the space boundary at an altitude of about 100 kilometers and getting a few minutes of microgravity environment experience is not the ultimate goal of the founders of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin. But the realization of this goal can establish a basis for their follow-up development. So, what is their follow-up goal?

The next goal is a low-Earth orbit space hotel. In an orbit several hundred kilometers high and running at a speed of 7.6 kilometers per second, the aircraft will not fall due to the gravity of the earth. This is also known as the first cosmic speed. In August 2020, the United States published a blue book “A New Era of Space Exploration”, which clearly opened low Earth orbit to commercial space tourism. In other words, U.S. commercial companies can build low-Earth orbit space hotels on their own and develop space tourism businesses there.

What kind of hotel will this be? First of all, it will not be a huge scientific research facility like the International Space Station. Secondly, the space hotel may use spin to create artificial gravity (actually the centrifugal force caused by the spin) to avoid the physiological impact of the microgravity environment on humans. What must be explained here is that the purpose of space tourism is not to experience microgravity. As far as possible, passengers should avoid being in a microgravity environment for a long time. This may be one of the factors that must be considered in space tourism.

The microgravity environment will definitely appear after the manned spacecraft enters orbit and before and after docking with the space hotel. However, once passengers enter the space hotel, they should get rid of the microgravity environment and enjoy the scenery of the earth and the deep universe, so as not to cause dizziness, vomiting and other physiological reactions due to the microgravity environment, which will affect the limited days of vacation in space. Time.

The further goal is to develop commercial lunar tourism

On the basis of low-Earth orbit space tourism, lunar tourism will develop quickly. It should be said that if only travel around the moon, the current human technology can do it. SpaceX flew a starship to the moon for $170 million

See also  NASA "phones" the Vulcans: so Star Trek becomes a little more real

The ship (Starship) was sold to the wealthy Japanese businessman Maezawa Yusaku, and the mission is expected to be implemented in a few years. But that was taking off directly from the earth, flying around the moon a few times, and then flying back to the earth. The easier way is to use a shuttle spacecraft between the Earth’s low-Earth orbit hotel and the moon’s orbit to transport passengers to the moon for a round-the-moon tour.

The spacecraft can be filled with fuel produced on the lunar surface near the orbit of the moon. This is much cheaper than bringing fuel from the surface of the earth, and can greatly reduce costs. But the prerequisite is to complete the breakthrough in the technology of extracting fuel from the lunar soil and the key technology of on-orbit refueling. Fortunately, these two technologies are exactly what many new aerospace companies in the world are working on.

The farther goal is to build a lunar hotel on the moon to develop commercial lunar tourism.

Through long-term low-Earth orbit travel and round-the-moon travel to the moon, mankind has gained a greater vision. On the International Space Station, there is a 360-degree panoramic observation window. This time, a large viewing window with a height of 1 meter was arranged for each passenger on the manned spacecraft of Blue Origin. All astronauts who have entered space have an unforgettable experience of admiring the beauty of the earth from space. Especially the 27 Apollo astronauts, they have a lot of talk about admiring the earth from such a long distance: at that distance, you can no longer see the borders of any country, nor can you hear any noise and quarrels, the earth is A beautiful blue planet is spinning there alone, it is our homeland of humanity. We humans may be the only intelligent species in the solar system. We have the responsibility to protect our homes on the earth so that the splendid civilization created by humans can continue to develop.

On July 20, 2021, the first page of all these beautiful chapters has been opened.

(The author is the chairman of the Chinese Society for Space Science and a researcher at the National Space Science Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)Return to Sohu to see more

Editor:

Disclaimer: The opinions of this article only represent the author himself. Sohu is an information publishing platform. Sohu only provides information storage space services.

.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Accept Read More

Privacy & Cookies Policy