• Question: How do you believe that space travel and exploration of space will develop over the years to come, and what developments will be made to rockets and the space center?

    Asked by isabelkwilkinson to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 12 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Shawn Domagal-Goldman

      Shawn Domagal-Goldman answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      One thing I think we’ll see a lot more of in the future is countries working together to explore space. The International Space Station has made us better at this. The next step is to go to new places and send humans back to the Moon, and then on to Mars! (Maybe you?!?) Meanwhile, we’ll keep sending robots all over the solar system and will build huge telescopes in space that can look for life on faraway planets.

    • Photo: Martin Archer

      Martin Archer answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Shawn’s given a great answer. I just want to add we’re coming into an exciting for space travel with it no longer being just NASA and the Russians that can do stuff. Companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are developing some pretty cool vehicles and hopefully will inspire more too.

      We need to develop a lot more technology before we can send people to Mars and we have to work out what we want to do on the Moon if we go back. In terms of unmanned missions, we’ve got lots of exciting and challenging stuff coming up: going closer to the Sun than ever before with Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe, Rosetta being the first to land on a comet, and JUICE to explore whether life is possible in the icy moons of Jupiter. These are just a few examples of the ways we’re reaching out to the solar system from on this little rock we call Earth.

    • Photo: Usman Kayani

      Usman Kayani answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      I personally think space will get very crowded, especially locally near the moon and earth. We’ve sent so much stuff up there that even the junk that left over has confined the space around the earth. It went from absolutely nothing up there about 30 years ago to looking like this: . Which is a lot of space debris! It is also a challenge for scientists now to find a way to simply get rid of this junk; either by sending it off to space or bringing it down to earth.

      Getting past it, it is hopeful that we will send colonies to the moon to populate it and perhaps one day even mars! Rockets are always getting more efficient, the problem is always efficiency! We are quite wasteful with our energies; for example out of the petrol in a car, only about 30% gets used to actually drive the car the rest is waste. It is the same with rockets, but as we build sleeker more efficient rockets we will be able to go further and build much more in space.

    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      I agree with what these guys already said, it’s going to get busy up there!

      Something that will happen during your lifetime is that it will become more commercial, so you’ll be able to buy a ticket to space and go on a trip. It won’t be a trip to the Moon or Mars for a long time and will just start out being more like a really high trip in a plane. Maybe your kids or grandkids will be able to buy a proper trip into space, maybe out far enough out so that the Earth looks like another planet.
      g

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