4 Amazing Space Technologies That Could Soon Be Real

1. Space Elevator spaceelevator

We’ll spare you the suspense here, a space elevator is exactly what it sounds like. The notion was initially dreamt up in 1895, but not much progress has been made on such an ambitious (and, let’s be honest, a little ludicrous) undertaking. Then, in 2012, a Japanese construction business named the Obayashi Corporation said that they would have a space elevator developed and in service by 2050.

The space elevator would include a space station on the top and reach a height of 59,652 miles into orbit. For some perspective, the elevator would reach higher than the International Space Station, which is around 205 miles above the Earth. If you’re curious: no, it wouldn’t get close to the moon, which is roughly 238,855 miles distant.

The Space Elevator would employ vehicles that use maglev, which are magnetic linear motors used in high-speed railways. The main advantage to building the elevator would be the money saved in carrying things into space. Currently it costs $22,000 per kilogram by shuttle, however with the elevator that cost would reduce closer to $200

2. Synthetic Biology

syntheticbio

It goes without saying that food, water, and oxygen are not simple to come by in space. That begins to be a problem when planning a lengthy voyage into deep space, particularly because for every one pound of goods, they require 99 pounds of fuel to convey it.

A solution to this challenge comes from Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division. Using synthetic biological processes, astronauts might take minerals and gases from the alien environment, coupled with alien dirt and human waste, and produce their own food, medicine, fuel, and other elements required to exist. This has almost unlimited potential. For example, food might be made using a bacteria called spirulina (yummy!) and a microorganism called Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum can be utilised to make methane and oxygen. These synthetic processes would cut down on fuel, making long term space flight and colonization much more practical.

3. Deflector Shields deflector

One of the risks of space flight is the tremendous quantity of radiation. A flight to Mars would expose an astronaut to 100 times more radiation than on Earth over the duration of a year. The difficulty is that in order to build appropriate shields for the radiation, they need to be several meters thick, making them much too heavy to deploy on a spaceship.

A method to blocking radiation while keeping the spacecraft light enough comes from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom, which is working on what they term a tiny magnetosphere. Or, in words you’d understand from science fiction movies, a deflector shield. The small magnetosphere would produce an environment that resembles the Earth’s magnetic field surrounding the spacecraft, shielding humans from radiation.

The goal is to build a magnetic field around the spaceship in flowing plasma, with the electrons following the new magnetic field and producing a steady electric field that would refract or deflect enough of the radiation to safeguard the astronauts onboard the spacecraft.

4. CleanSpace One cleanspaceone

There are 55,000 items floating about in space, including thousands of manufactured objects and trash like satellites, which might make for a perilous scenario for humans on Earth and in orbit. For example, some of the space debris might fall onto Earth, devastating property or perhaps inflicting human deaths. In orbit, these particles may reach speeds of 17,500 miles per hour, meaning that just a little item might tear through something like the International orbit Station. Of course, if you seen the movie Gravity you probably already knew that.

In an attempt to clean up space, the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology created the CleanSpace One, which will be a custodian in outer space. It’s been used twice to knock down two Swiss satellites, and in the future they’d want to have a full fleet to keep the atmosphere clean. The CleanSpace One is compact box with a claw designed to catch the item, and then pull it down to Earth in a controlled fall. The key problem is that capturing the item at the precise proper trajectory is challenging. If that’s not done correctly, the item might shatter into even more pieces, or perhaps damage the CleanSpace One itself, converting the janitor into the rubbish.