Tuesday, February 23, 2016

The future of space exploration

3D printers can make complex objects. In the future this technology will definitely improve, now let us imagine this, we have robot of the future which is capable of 3D printing and this robot which is way more intelligent than current robots, is able to 3D print its own replica. This robot is more intelligent than the robots we have today, the robots of the future are going to be self learning systems, they would learn from their own experience, just like us. 

So we launch a robotic spacecraft and the robot goes to a distant planet. With the materials available there it creates its replica. It designs and creates machines along with other newly made robots. This machines are able to extract resources from the planet like fuel, iron ore etc. The machines are used to build factories and more machines are made by the robots to build better processors and increase memory to upgrade themselves and build spacecraft to come back to earth. 

In the future it would be possible to have powerful robots like these that can bring an asteroid near the earth's orbit and set its orbit. They can build a factory in space that would produce different material sourced from asteroids and other planets. The will send us whatever products we need by producing them in those space factories. The source of energy for them would be solar power that they would harness from the sun. 

Robots are going to be our future exploration devices. Currently scientists in NASA are working on a technology that would use lasers to accelerate a spacecraft to very high speeds. The energy that is produced from solar energy is used to create the laser beams that would the be focused on a sail of the spacecraft. 

Each photon that bounces off the sail would impart some momentum to spacecraft. When a very huge number of them bounce off the the sail a significant amount of acceleration is generated. When the spacecraft is accelerated over great lengths of time very high speeds can be generated. 

According to NASA scientist Philip Lubin the spacecraft can go as fast as 30% of the speed of light.  He says that with this technology a 100 kilo spacecraft will reach Mars in 3 days. This technology will also cut the propellant requirement. Currently a space launch vehicle's mass at launch time is 70% propellant. Propellant not only comprises of fuel but it also has oxidiser since there is no oxygen in space. 

So it is clear that in the future better propulsion technology along with robotonics, artificial intelligence, faster data transfer and 3D printing will determine our future of space exploration.

With these technologies it would be possible for us to build planets that would have the same rotational path of earth, the raw materials for the planets will be sourced by these robots from astreiods and other distant planets, these planets will be new homes for humans in the future. The only thing we need to make sure is that we should not let robots take over us. 

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