Some Things We Need For Meaningful Human Space Travel Before we can do meaningful human space travel there are a lot of things we need to do. As I have said before, we need more speed. Until we can figure out how to travel much faster than light, which Einstein said was impossible, we are limited to gruelingly long trips just through our solar system. It is truly impractical to expect humans to exist on a ship for years. This is not good in so many ways. The first thing is their mental health. Voyager 2 took 12 years to reach Neptune. I believe the crew would be at each other’s throats way before that. There is no denying the fact anymore UFOs are here and they probably come from outside the solar system. Indeed, some have been traced entering from beyond Neptune. This proves faster travel is possible to me, but some say this may not prove anything because the life span of an alien might be so long or even eternal, making long trips possible. This still would not eliminate the tension with a crew for so long a time. Others say how do we not know they were not in suspended animation for most of the voyage? That part is true, but their technology seems so advanced, they would not need that. There is also a theory which suggests there are worm holes connecting all different areas of space which are short cuts. If there are enough of them, or even vortexes which connect, perhaps we would not need to be traveling many times the speed of light. Our ship would need protection from all the radiation in space. Just going to the space station subjects a human to radiation and out further in space it could be deadly. Gamma rays are known to be in space and one of these could fry us like an egg. The basic types of radiation which could be harmful in space are Gamma rays, X-rays, Ultraviolet waves, and others. There are dangers from the sun’s solar flares. Space is a very dangerous place and the dangers should not be underrated. There is also some sort of technology which is needed to protect our ship from any collisions, including some which might only be the size of a grain of sand. Even those have tremendous kinetic energy. Presently they are restrained on the space station by many layers of material, but that is impractical for a space ship which might be going very fast one way and encounter one of these grains going the other which increases the kinetic energy even more. We also need to avoid much larger bodies which might get into our way. We need an electronic or plasma shield of some kind which could vaporize the small stuff, and possibly a powerful laser which could take care of some of the bigger objects. Next, we need provisions of food and water and it has to be enough for a round trip to and from our destination. Obviously, the longer the trip takes, the more we need, unless somehow, we can resupply at our destination. A couple of years ago, the Russians were able to print a piece of beef on a 3D tissue printer. If we could print our own food, it might save a lot of room on our ship. The water supply is another issue. Water is heavy. One gallon weighs 8.6 pounds. You can see the weight could turn out to be massive if the crew was relatively big, and the journey long. Next, we would have to think about how we would get down to the planet we were going to. Would we have a small shuttle, or have to land the entire ship on the planet? I think it makes more sense to use a shuttle than to chance something going wrong with our main vessel trying to land it. Should we carry two shuttles in case there is a problem with one and we have to launch a rescue mission? Shuttles add weight which means we might need a bigger rocket and more fuel just to get into orbit before starting our trip. We might be able to avoid this extra fuel by building our primary vehicle in space. We might be able to do this and then using a smaller rocket to get the crew to it, or even better a space elevator. For years scientists have been talking about building an elevator which would be anchored to the earth and then to an object in orbit which would rotate in such a way as to keep it over the same spot all the time. We have to think of communications. Using radio waves are far too slow. There has been some talk lately about using quantum entanglement for communication. Quantum entanglement would allow for instant communication if perfected. Otherwise, communication could take years to reach us since the radio waves are limited to the speed of light. Our ship has to have artificial gravity. One has only to look at the shape of an astronaut who has been on the space station for any period of time. They suffer bone mass loss and their muscles get weak. We can’t have this on our ship. A new aerospace company has announced it is going to work on a method to produce artificial gravity. If they are successful, this would eliminate a big problem in human space travel. Another thing we have to keep in mind is we would need a doctor in the crew and an computers equipped with a powerful artificial intelligence, with all sorts of useful software. The doctor could not know everything and an artificial medical program could be of great help to him in an emergency. We don’t want to carry a lot of parts for our ship because they not only would take up a lot of room, we might have too many of one and not enough of another. Instead, we should carry at least two 3D printers so we could print any part we might need. The printers might also be able to be used for printing other things in an emergency. Will our ship have a galley, or will everything be microwaved? To help with the mental health of the crew on a long voyage, we really need a way to prepare tasty food. Perhaps a couple of big air fryers could be used since some are capable of preparing food using 15 different methods. Last, if possible, we need some way to get around on planets with different strength gravities. Our suits need some type of technology of this type or we will be limited to only doing human exploration on some planets and not others.
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