Space Colonization?

 Once the 1960's dream!

Now soon to be a fact with several Moon bases, a new space station and going to to Mars, if not further afield?

Elon Musk is the man with the vision and the re-usable rocket is making way for this to happen, but what is the reality of living on a dust swept bowl and how will scientists cope with possible mental breakdowns as currently is occurring on the International Space Station (ISS)?

This will not be the first time, the Russians under the Soviet Union faced a prolonged flight, which is the longest for anyone to be in space alone!

There are so many questions related to space travel and the effects of it on the human body, China has done well with their station by introducing gravity and it is hoped that other things like converting water ice to hydrogen will power what is needed with solar and recycling urine?

But this can only go to a point, growing food and a change to metabolism and body strength will be new issues that are not yet known about fully, the money and the prestige will make people famous but it may be another seventy years before we see real population growth?

Iran has entered the Space race!

 Three satellites on one ICBM?

The United States was the first nation to condemn Iran for their achievement of possibly putting up their own spy satellite with two others and what this will mean for the years ahead in mapping and communications having not to rely on others, but there is much more to this success and that will include a manned mission a robot, if not a manned landing on the Moon and much more!

Space is now more complicated than it was fifty years ago with the Moon landings, real or not since there is some doubt how the U.S. got there when we are struggling with our modern tech to do the same?

China and India are leading the way, while Japan has gone its own way and all have proved to be doing and discovering new things that Russia and the U.S. don't want to do, but in the years to come much will be achieved as we exhaust the discoveries within our solar system, even the distant worlds still to be observed beyond Pluto/

Private ventures by Elon Musk will be amazing in going to the outer gas giants, while Boeing has developed and new Space shuttle and Space tourism is some venture for the near future as the ISS is coming to the end of its thirty-year life and the possibility of more than one Moon base becomes a reality?

Will NASA ever restart the Space Shuttle Again?

 Problems with Elon Musk!

His personal life and X is causing him many problems world wide and it could see him loose serious military contracts, if not even his Space programme over antisemitism, if he does not get himself in order?

If Space-X was to fail in the current order books for NASA and the International Space station, and both re-usable rockets to the Moon and Mars, the old Space shuttle might be a better choice to revive in a more modern form?

It all comes down to money, investment and the sins of the human heart, that no matter with we are a trillionair or a beggar we are all in the same boat

Space anomalies?

 Outer solar system Hunting.

NASA and other space agencies believe that there maybe one or two pineapple sized black holes near to the orbit of Pluto, while there is also the probability that another cold ice giant lurks in the ort cloud, since it is becoming hard to measure some of these very distant objects.

Planet 9 or X does now not seem anymore to be a priority and more focus is being spent on a Moon base over the International Space station, while the people's republic of China may want to share a Moon base with Russia, but not its new military space station!

In the past year many other nations around the world have joined the space race, with the Gulf states, New Zealand and Africa, they have a plethora of ideas that may change our outlook to be of more interest in the known solar system?

Space tourism is now up and running with the Galaxy flier and Musk has achieved his return rockets, that will prove invaluable on Mars and other places?

Artemis 1 Failed Again?

 ''To the Moon or not!

One has to wonder if the United States in all their pride will ever make it to the Moon again, the President just does no have the ump that John F. Kennedy had and NASA spends millions on avoiding finding life, but using the missions to boost the U.S. arms industry?

It looks at this time, following hurricane Ian that China and Russia might get there first and leave the U.S. to focus on the building of the new Gateway space station that will orbit the Moon, following the demise of the ISS (International Space Station) from 2023 to 2030!

Many nations have now sent a plethora of robotic craft to the Moon and made many new and strange discoveries and one expects that over the next one hundred years much more will be gathered as we live up there!

The U.S. a new path in Space?

Russia maybe Excluded?

NASA is being guided by the Trump administration into a new path of Space research and travel that breaks the long established cooperation! Currently the U.S still needs the Russians passage and re-supply to the International Space Station, but the new Gateway programme will see them be cut back to just one module in the whole project?

Artemis is the new project to return to the Moon to establish a south pole base that will lead eventually to getting humans on Mars by 2030? The sad thing is that many other nations such as China and Indi might pull it off with the Russians in a direct flight and return?

Off to the Moon! Part-Two.

Stepping Stones?

It is still not known if the U.S. government will keep the International Space station going in favour of commitments to a New Moon base, but what is clear this will be part of the next step to go on to establishing something more permanent  on Mars?

Claims of six to thirty years are still the various estimated times for such missions, commercially it might be six years to pull off a stunt, but to be serious thirty is more practicable since many things still require testing and approval?

With the recent discovery of water on the poles of the Moon, this will encourage the base plans to go ahead perhaps within the next six years, but keeping ISS has a half-way point would be wise in the initial stages of this vast project!

Off to the Moon! Part-One.

The Trump Mission?

For humanity to return to the Moon will cost billions if not trillions and something will have to give way, so it has been decided that the International Space station will have to go within the next few years? 

The United States of America is determined to beat China getting to the Moon in this next fifteen year period and the U.S. wants to do what JF Kennedy pressured NASA to do forty years ago, but with a base rather than just landing and coming home!

The problems with this are enormous, if their is no Space station as a stepping stone on these proposed missions! The ISS has at least another twenty good years of operational service and Russia will perhaps have to foot the bill for its replacement?

A Moon base may never really become that stepping stone to Mars as is being promised, to maintain it will be very difficult even with 6% gravity over that of none? Trump wants to undermine the Kennedy legacy as much as he is doing politically to Obamas!

Elon Musk!

In trouble over a failed Launch?

Space is still a tricky business we may be able to launch rockets weekly up the International Space Station as well military spying, but from time to time there will be failures since humans are not perfect and make mistakes?

Musk has promised much in relation to taking men back to the Moon after forty years and reaching to Mars, with his new re-usable rockets? But this is still new and untested systems that need to be fine-lined, even the Space Shuttle still had teething problems that NASA failed to address at the cost of precious scientific lives for the prestige!

We are only sixty-one years into the Space race exploration, man has reached Pluto and now beyond! Gone to the Moon and built several Space stations culminating in the ISS! Soviet Russia/Russia and the United States were the first to dominate this race from 1957!

But now other nations have now joined this Space club, China, Japan, Europe, India, Israel and more are coming along such as Brazil, Nigeria and Iran!

U.S.A. Space Expansion.

Trump Promises.

Space exploration will perhaps make the United States of America great again, much has been promised and one thinks Mr. Trump will try! The Space-X testing and return missions are improved and now working, but they are a chance thing, which remain to dangerous to put humans into space?

Co-operation with Russia may lead to the combination of Shuttle technology to develop newer systems to have that very good re-usable platform again? Plans to build a Moon base and to have a half point station to Mars will lead within the next thirty years to getting people living on the red planet.

Space also offers much research into the use of tougher materials for building, that will be cheaper than relying on metals? There are many new needs of investigations to get underway in relation to sending robotic ships to land on Pluto, investigate Uranus and Neptune and a few more interesting places too?

48 to 8 Hours.

Getting up to the Space Station.

Twenty years ago it took just over two days to get up to the Russian MIR Space station, this week we saw the three way Russian, ESA, U.S. mission do it in less than eight hours even with a technical fault. What amazing achievements with the tried and tested second generation MM Soyuz-Progress vehicles over that of the flamboyant yet very dangerous U.S. Space shuttle.

Timings into space are speeding up, while duration flights of just over one year at the moment cuts a possible manned trip to Mars in the next 30 years. The joint Moon base, will perhaps prepare us for that giant return trip to Mars, in say 50 years from now. 

There remains so many dangers in space travel, after nearly 58 years from Sputnik, that the next 50 will give us enough time to develop better space ships perhaps between the ISS and the Moon base. Familiarity with living their will be the key to any future Mars mission and then further out?

The Sci-Fi, Reality. Part-One.

How much?

Humanity has progressed at a very fast pace in the last 150 years, what was written as pulp fiction eighty years ago has now become a reality. Man has gone into space, to the Moon, has built a Space station and is sending robotic probes to more than just the planets in our solar system.

We have massive ships and fast trains, Levitation railways, and automobiles that are both fast and comfortable. The Cell or Mobile phone now dominates our lives, we cannot live without them. Microwave cooking, Solar panels, computers, inter-active TV.

What we have developed now is amazing, but what will we have achieved in the next 150 years?

From ISS to Moon Base?

Living on another world.

Many people have envisaged that in the space race humanity would eventually build a moon base to something akin to the British 1999 sci-fi take.

But it looks like that it will be Mars who gets the credit for the first other world base. This will probably happen for reality in the next fifty years. Maybe the first Martians will be human colonists, this will of course start an interesting ethical debate.

Any base that is eventually built will be modeled on those that are being constructed in Antarctica now. They will have to be small and easy to transport there in one piece, solar panels or a small nuclear reactor will probably be used as already on the International Space Station.

The last question is who will be the first to do such an venture, traditionally we would assume it to be the U.S. and Russia, with the ESA in support. But it may be China and a host of smaller developing nations such as Brazil, India and Iran that achieve this dream goal?

'Virgin Space Vehicle'

Richard Branson is a man who is making his mark on history and why not. It is his dream to see space flight in near earth orbit as a reality for everyone. Branson has also been the man who wants to re-vitalize the Concorde and supersonic travel. 

The continued development of the inner orbit vehicle will be the first of a generation, this century anyway of more designs and perhaps one day even the defunct Space shuttle too will allow commercial travel into space. Current space stations such as the ISS could be developed into a type pleasure station, or perhaps flights to a moon base or something further afield.

These are the first steps to the future of space travel. What will be the answers to all this in one hundred years from now?

ISS.

(International Space Station).

Today the world has the ISS a space station with many space partners. Predominately the U.S., Europe (ESA), Russia, Japan. We can observe this object very easily from earth and millions of people look at it each night as it flies over some part of our planet.

The craft is the largest object yet put into space by humanity, but its roots came out of the cold war period space race between the former Soviet Union and the United states of America. Leaving aside that race we just want to concentrate on the history of space stations and it was the Russians who first launched a series of Soyuz ships. They were small and cramped, but the Russians started to build up manned flight hours from them. Even after they did not achieve the moon landings, they continued on with this plan.

The U.S. launched their Space Lab, but the U.S. did not seem to move on from there for some time. Eventually they had a link up between a Soyuz and the Skylab. The Russians moved on to develop a much bigger Soyuz, known as the Mir. This was technically the end for the Russians in space station building.

The ISS now replaces both previous systems, which were probably used for spying on each other. This new platform has improved on both countries technologies and has become a laboratory for various scientific experimentation and discovery.