Big dipper and milky way.

How Can we Overcome The Prison of Earth- The biggest Obstacle of Space Exploration #1

The earth is a prison and we are its prisoners! This is because we owe earth a 4 billion-year-old debt, not just any debt, a debt of energy! When the earth was made many different particles joined together to form the earth, that used energy and created a “gravity well”. Since that time we always owed the energy used by those particles and must give it back to be able to go out of the prison.

Gravity wells

1. 1.attract other objects to fall into the well.
2. Trap objects inside the well and stop them from escaping.
3. Create planets, stars, black holes, galaxies (not the phone), and even the very structure of the universe.

How do we get out of Earths gravity well?

Currently Humans are straight out terrible at escaping earths gravity. We use big controlled chemical reactions (aka. explosions) using mainly 3 methods/fuels:

#1: Heating up NH4CIO4

#2: Mixing hydrogen H2 and oxygen O2 (Note: This does NOT create water, don’t do this at home)

#3: Pouring N2O (nitrous oxide) onto CnH2n 2 (a hydrocarbons)

A lot of this energy (like I mean A LOT) is lost because of heat, exhaust, and drag. This is not the only problem. In fact it is insignificant compare to the biggest problem with rockets… their mass.

The Never Ending (well almost never ending) Fuel Cycle.

Going to space is expensive. Just one kg of mass is about $22 000 to get into space! This is only partially because of the material of the rocket and the last gen technology in spaceships. In fact the main part of the rocket which holds the payload only accounts to 10% of the cost and 5% of the total mass of the rocket.

Why does rocket fuel weigh so much

1. There is the what you want to put in space and nose cone which holds and protects the payload (what your putting in space) we will call this the base mass.
2. Lots of fuel is needed to make an big enough explosion to blast the base mass into space, this large amount of fuel adds a big amount of mass to the rocket.
3. Since there is now more mass in the rocket you also need more fuel
4. That new fuel it self adds a new mass to the rocket and so on.
5. At the end of this frenzy of balancing the mass with the energy released The total weight of the gas and gas containers are 75 times more than the base mass!!!
6. A large amount of heavy material is needed to control the explosion created to thrust the rocket forward.

A good example of this is the Ariane 6 a European rocket weighing 800 tons, but it only takes 10 tons to geostationary orbit! Another fallback is that there is a cap for the amount of stuff we can transport because there is a limit to the amount of thrust a rocket can make and there is a maximum amount of weight we can blast into space! If we exceed that weight we just can’t take-off with current chemical reactions.

Some ways we can Escape the Earths Orbit Without going bankrupt.

We can all agree that the current path to space is very inefficient it uses huge amounts of resources, funding and time to make and we can only send a limited amount of stuff to space. Many companies are working to reduce the cost in many ways like reusing rocket parts (Space X), and NASA has aimed to reduce the price of sending 1 pound of material from 10 000 to a few 100 in 25 year (it said this in 2008) but no changes have been made. In fact there has been little revolutionary changes in the method of space travel since the start of the space race between USSR and NATO (History lessons paying off). Though there has been no recent revolutionary innovations in the space industry there are a few promising paths that can exponentially advance the space frontier:

1: Space Elevators:

That’s right Space elevators. Not the everyday elevator in your apartment. Space Elevators are much more complex. A space elevator would be the single biggest structure ever made by man! The concept is simple though. Instead of exploding stuff upwards why don’t we make an elevator. Now you must think I’m way crazy but I beg to differ, the person to build this would be the real crazy one. Building a space elevator is a huge risk, needs lots of investment (at least 20 billion) and lots and lots of resources but if they work boy are they rewarding.

The benefits space elevator:

1. A space elevator can can reduce the current cost by 95%. That is $500 per pound from $10,000 per pound!

2. It can save lots of energy as it will eliminate all of the fuels and reactions created in normal rockets.

3. It will make current rockets able to travel more distance with less trouble. It will also allow easy access to earths orbit.

Space elevators are epic. They can completely change the world we live in. If you would like to learn more about space elevators take a look at an deep article(more like an high… get it space elevators are tall… That ones a knee slapper!!!) on medium: Space elevator… when you realize it is definitely not a moon.

2: Asteroid Mining why transport stuff out of Earth when we can build stuff outside of it:

Asteroids are small chunks of rock that failed to become a planet (mainly because of Jupiter immense gravity). They hold many resources like water, carbon, stones and minerals. Because of the asteroids small gravity almost no energy is needed for hopping on and out of one. Combine these all and we can conclude that asteroids provide easy access to resources outside of earth. This is awesome and has many benifits like:

1. Saving fuel, not directly…. if there is material outside of earth we can stop launching objects out toand waste a whole bunch of energy but we can just build them in space.
2. Colonization of other planets.The 2 biggest obstacles for mars colonization is, fuel and material to build structures. Asteroids can be fueling stations and be used as material.
3. Profit. companies like DSI and Planetary resources have already started investing in asteroid mining.

You want to ditch panning gold and start planning for how to get the gold (hey I tried to make it catchy, it just didn’t work :() now my brackets look weird just great. Okay trash that. If you like asteroids then check out my medium article: Asteroid mining… whats next space pirates?

3: Use of Exotic Energy (Fusion, Fission, and Antimatter):

Exotic energy is awesome, and also probably the most reveloutionary technology if applied to the real world. fusion and fission are both real cool and can allow easy interplanetary travel. Then there is antimatter… It is like comparing a Benz to a Lambo (Ya I’m a car guy). Sure a Benz but Lambo… That would require whole other analogy. Anyways point is that antimatter is in another class. It will enable traveling at 10% of light speed… That’s over 9000! (sorry I had to do that for Dragon ball z fans). For that reason I will divide there benefits into 2 groups:

Fusion and Fission:

1. Creation of faster, lighter and stronger rockets. This is because we don’t need to carry gallons upon gallons of fuel and only the system needed to create the nuclear blast
2. easy access to other planets. With superior rockets we can get to the outer solar system in a reasonable time not 30+ years
3. A lot of fuel is saved (Because there is no more fuel cycle) and getting stuff to space will be much cheaper.

Antimatter:

1. Creates rockets exponentially faster and stronger than fission and fusion (and can’t even be compared to current rockets)
2. Such rockets will allow interstellar travel. It won’t take 30,000 years to get to the nearest star but only 40 years.
3. Colonization of planets would be so easy that its a joke. The solar system would only take a few months to cross!

Antimatter is a huge hope for the astronomical community. Positron Dynamics is one of the lead companies in this field, if you feel that this matter (haha… get it matter, antimatter) is important to you check out my in depth article on it on medium: Fission, Fusion, and Antimatter. Don’t judge them by their size.

Take away or for here… well I’m giving a take away anyway.

Weather you are new to astronomy or a Space wiz it is worth thinking on what the future will be like, Space exploration is the future and soon Humanity will be going places.

1. The earth has trapped us in a prison of gravity. To escape it we must give lots of energy.
2. We currently give that energy by blasting rockets into space with lots of fuel. Meaning that current rockets are very inefficient.
3. Space travel can be optimized with space elevators, asteroid mining, and exotic energy sources (antimatter, fusion, fission)

Though each of these opportunities are great and can be used by themselves they will probably be used together. sure asteroid mining is great but an asteroid mining rocket powered by antimatter and launched from a space elevator is awesome. If you are feeling confused, overloaded or both check out YouTube channels like Kurzgesagt which is or scishow space (2 great channels that compress hard topics into easy to learn 5 minute videos). Take a look at this article on LinkedIn.

And remember Think Big. Think Ahead. Think Like a Boss. and DO STUFF.