Magazine - Space Exploration by Gabriele Armani

SPACE EXPLORATION

Space Race - USA vs URSS

Timeline

Moon landing

Economics of launches

ISS

Multiplanetary life

Space imaginary

INDEX

SPACE RACE

USA

The Space Race was an informal 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (US), to achieve firsts in spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the two nations following World War II. The technological advantage required to rapidly achieve spaceflight milestones was seen as necessary for national security, and mixed with the symbolism and ideology of the time. The Space Race led to pioneering efforts to launch artificial satellites, uncrewed space probes to the Moon, Venus, and Mars, and human spaceflight in low Earth orbit and to the Moon.

URSS

The competition began in earnest on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite “in the near future”. The Soviet Union achieved the first successful launch with the October 4, 1957, orbiting of Sputnik 1, and sent the first human to space with the orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961. According to US sources, the “race” peaked with the July 20, 1969, US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. Most US sources will point to the Apollo 11 lunar landing as a singular achievement far outweighing any

LAIKA

First animal in space 3 novembre 1957

EARTH PHOTO

First photo of earth from space 7 agosto 1959

SPUTNIK 1

First artificial satellite in space 4 ottobre 1957

JURIJ GAGARIN First human in space

12 aprile 1961

MARS PROBE

First probe to land on Mars

First human on the moon 20 luglio 1969

ISS

Creation of the International Space Station 7 agosto 1959

HUMAN ON THE MOON

TIMELINE

2 dicembre 1971

MOON On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he took his first step, Armstrong famously said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in an appeal President Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” At the time, the United States was still trailing the Soviet Union in space developments, and Cold War-era America welcomed Kennedy’s bold proposal. In 1966, after five years of work by an international team of scientists and engineers, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) conducted the first unmanned Apollo mission, testing the structural integrity of the proposed launch vehicle and spacecraft combination.

“One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” NEIL ARMSTRONG

According to Armstrong biographer James R. Hansen — author of First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, which inspired the 2018 film First Man — some think Neil Armstrong’s famous quote is a riff on a line from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, in which the author describes protagonist Bilbo Baggins becoming invisible and jumping over the villain Gollum, “not a great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark.” And there is, in fact, an Armstrong-Tolkien connection. After leaving NASA, Armstrong and his family moved to a farm in Lebanon, Ohio, that he dubbed Rivendell, which is also the name of a valley and the home of the half-elf, half-human Elrond, in Lord of the Rings. Armstrong also had Tolkien-themed email address in the ’90s. However, when Hansen asked Armstrong to set the record straight on that theory, the Apollo 11 astronaut said he didn’t read Tolkien’s books until after the Apollo 11 mission.

APOLLO 13, 13/09/73

ECONOMICS OF LAUNCHES

The last-ever space shuttle launch — that of Atlantis, scheduled for July 8, 2011— came just over three decades after the first one, which took place April 12, 1981.

But that’s not to say NASA’s iconic shuttle program just turned 30 years old. It’s actually pushing 40, since President Richard Nixon officially announced its existence in January 1972. And the shuttle’s roots go much deeper than that, stretching all the way back to a 1930s concept vehicle the Nazis hoped could drop bombs on New York City. The story of the shuttle’s birth is one of big dreams and slashed budgets, of shifting visions, of NASA and the nation’s attempt to find their way in space after beating the Soviets to the moon in 1969. Here is a synopsis of that long, involved tale.

During the 21st century, there has been growing commercial interest in reusable launch systems. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has a reusable first stage and a non-reusable second stage, and is currently in use for NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services programme and commercial satellite launches. In addition, SpaceX is developing the fully reusable BFR for manned interplanetary missions. Scaled Composites has launched two prototype suborbital spaceplanes for Virgin Galactic, while Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has a recoverable first and second stage, but is only capable of suborbital flight.

In the photos we can see the landing phase of the first stage

The first rudimentary station was created in 1969 by the linking of two Russian Soyuz vehicles in space, followed by other stations and developments in space technology until construction began on the ISS in 1998, aided by the first reusable spacecraft ever developed: the American shuttles.

ISS

The International Space Station (ISS) took 10 years and more than 30 missions to assemble. It is the result of unprecedented scientific and engineering collaboration among five space agencies representing 15 countries. The space station is approximately the size of a football field: a 460-ton, permanently crewed platform orbiting 250 miles above Earth. It is about four times as large as the Russian space station Mir and five times as large as the U.S. Skylab.

Houston, we have a problem! HOUSTON, Texas -- It was April 13, 1970 that the now famous words were spoken from Apollo 13, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Apollo 13 had just experienced an explosion and astronaut Jim Lovell called mission control in Houston to report the problem.

Welcome to the 21st-century space race, one that could potentially lead to 10-minute space vacations, orbiting space hotels, and humans on Mars. Now, instead of warring superpowers battling for dominance in orbit, private companies are competing to make space travel easier and more affordable. This year, SpaceX achieved a major milestone—launching humans to the International Space Station (ISS) from the United States—but additional goalposts are on the star-studded horizon.

Private spaceflight is not a new concept. In the United States, commercial companies played a role in the aerospace industry right from the start: Since the 1960s, NASA has relied on private contractors to build spacecraft for every major human spaceflight program, starting with Project Mercury and continuing until the present.

MULTI PLANETARY LIFE

One person who would like to see humans living outside the Earth in our lifetime is former astronaut Jeff Hoffman. The technology to reach nearby planets is possible, at least to make the first steps there. Hoffman is one of around 500 people who have had a unique view of the Earth – he’s orbited the planet. Imagine this: while in space he could put his hand out and block the planet, so everything we know, all of humanity, every person who has ever lived was blocked by his hand. It shows how vulnerable we are. Hoffman thinks that for the long-term survival of our species, we have to become a multi-planet being. The idea of seeding Mars with life is almost an ethical imperative.

Space isn’t far away. If you are in London, you can literally say that space is closer than Paris. Of course you need to expend much more energy to get there. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that expensive, and we are seeing things happening now, particularly in the private sector developing space transportation that could be the leading edge of a revolution. Say you wanted to set up a long-term base on the Moon or Mars, what would you need? If it’s going to be sustainable we have to learn to live off the land. But what would that mean? If you take the carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere and water which we know exists, and you combine that with a little bit of 19th Century chemical engineering, you have water to drink, oxygen to breathe, with the methane and oxygen you actually have made rocket fuel.

A lot of the forces that shape our society here on Earth would be fundamentally altered by living on another planet. You would set up new types of social situations, new types of philosophy, politics who knows what would evolve. Doing something like taking life from the earth and bringing it to other places would be an enormously revolutionary step, not just in human evolution but also in evolution in life.

SPACE IMAGINARY

Space: It’s the final frontier, the place where no one can hear you scream, and a boundless backdrop that squashes any man’s ego. Or so we’ve been told by three of the best space movies ever, as determined by the semi-rigorous ranking process we’re presenting today.

Whether a story unfolds in the past, the present, or the future — in our own galaxy or one far, far away — space makes a great setting for film. For one thing, it’s always trying to kill characters, which raises the storytelling stakes. Its scale, and the speed required to traverse it, make space a natural special-effects showcase. And most importantly, the inhuman emptiness of space forces characters to confront their private fears and self-doubts even as it inspires existential and epistemological questions that fascinate us all. It’s no wonder that Hollywood never stops making space movies.

CREDITS spacex.com nasa.gov