Where does the best technology come from, is it from the government or is it from private companies and individuals? I see where NASA has a big problem. The problem has to do with spacesuits. The spacesuits the astronauts wear are antiques. They are the same as the Apollo astronauts wore. They are big, they are bulky and they are restrictive. New spacesuits were designed several years ago and NASA spent over two hundred million dollars developing them and yet not one of these suits has made it into NASA’s closet. The old spacesuits are falling apart and many of them are totally useless and unless we get spacesuits soon there will be no spacesuits to wear on future space missions such as the one NASA is planning, which is a manned flight to Mars. Does this problem exist, because the wheels of a government agency rotates so slowly or would the problem have been the same if NASA was a private company?

The private companies seem to be doing pretty good in the area of space travel, but all of their rockets and such are based on what NASA developed. They are merely refinements. Take the case of SpaceX as an example. SpaceX has been experimenting with reusable rockets. They are still rockets and the idea of being reusable was first applied to the space shuttle and its boosters. The shuttle had two large rockets attached to it that were its primary engines when it took off and as the shuttle got higher into space and the fuel in the rockets was expended they would drop off into the ocean, be recovered, then be examined to make sure they could be reused. Sound familiar? So far no private company I know of has figured out the next step in propulsion. What we need is a way to boost the payload off of the earth using something other than a rocket, which is extremely wasteful with fuel. One of the big problems with using rockets is the weight of the fuel, because a rocket requires so much of it. Another problem is rockets are really too slow for space travel.

I am not going to go into all the different ideas which have been put forth for space travel, because I have done it too many times. What we need is obvious. We need a way to be able to boost a payload into space and also a way to be able to travel a lot faster and rockets are just no good for this. We know there has been much talk about developing an antigravity engine and some saying we already have several different types. We know this project has been worked on since nineteen eighty-five or earlier by some of the big aerospace companies. There is a good chance we could have these engines, but even if we don’t, why couldn’t a powerful set of magnets be used to repel an object into orbit? Yea they are probably far too heavy. It has even been said the idea Jules Vern put forth in his novel “From the Earth to the Moon” might be able to be used in some way. In his novel a powerful cannon was used to fire a projectile towards the moon. Some have said it might be possible to build a rail gun powerful enough to do this from the earth.

One of the most important things we can do concerning space travel is to figure out how to launch things into orbit without using fuel and rockets. Once we solve this problem all types of construction can take place in space. I am surprised to see this is not being worked on by any of the private companies, or perhaps it is in secret. This would make launches a heck of a lot cheaper. What you would have would be the initial cost of building a device to launch objects and after that all you would have would be the maintenance of the launcher. If we built ships in space and used electronic engines, such as the ion engine we could get around the solar system a lot faster. You couldn’t use an ion engine to launch anything from earth because its thrust is minuscule, but in space it is enough to power a ship to Mars in thirty days. While this is really not sufficient, it is better than taking several months with a chemical rocket. An ion engine keeps accelerating to a point. The longer the distance the more useful it is. One innovation which has to do again with SpaceX is being able to land a rocket standing up. If it can be perfected it is certainly better than dumping people inside a capsule into the ocean or even parachuting them back onto land. There are so many areas involving space travel which can be improved. The period of time we are in now sort of reflects the same period of time right after the invention of the airplane. All the planes that came out in the beginning was similar in construction with slight variations. The same is true with the rockets being developed today.

There is a system being developed to save fuel on launches and it is the development of large aircraft capable of high altitude flight and great lifting capacities. The idea is to lift a rocket to about 12 or 13 miles and then launch it from there.
There has been talk about different developments using nuclear power for spaceships. A couple of years ago one of the big aerospace companies claimed to have developed a fusion reactor and also claimed it was small enough to fit into a fighter plane. Personally I’m not too happy about the idea of using nuclear energy to power any type of spacecraft, only because it seems to me we may be polluting virgin planets or even space. Years ago there was a story about a woman, her sister and a young girl. They had been out on the road when some sort of ship overhead accompanied by helicopters from the U.S. Army passed over their vehicle and paused. The women and her sister had gotten out to look at it, but the child stayed inside the car. It may have been a test of a nuclear powered ship, because the two women were stricken with cancer and the paint had peeled off parts of their car.

I can’t help but feel that one day we will hear an announcement about a tremendous breakthrough in space travel. It may be something which was kept from us for decades, but finally released or it could be a new discovery. Maybe devices like the Large Hadron Collider will discover something which will allow us to move a lot faster through space or maybe some teenage child in his garage will invent a warp engine. Stranger things have happened in the past and could certainly happen again. There could also be several Einsteins out there just waiting to create some sort of formula which will make space travel a lot more useful.