CAJ #12: Houston, we have a problem

Hey everyone,

I found this sophisticated TED talk the other day and I think that it perfectly underlines the issues of space exploration I talked about in my previous posts.

https://www.ted.com/talks/burt_rutan_sees_the_future_of_space

Listening to Burt Rutan’s speech about the future of space, I became acquainted with the perspective of an expert who has years of experience in this field. In his speech the spacecraft designer, talks about entering the second generation and the fact that little to no progress has been done in terms of human flight in space. He underlines the importance of inspiring the youth to continue what has been done until now. The children from today are the future from tomorrow. According to Rutan, that is why we need to inspire them in order to be able to benefit from the future exploration. He addresses the problem that even though we have a great deal of efficient companies, they are unable to make considerable progress towards their goals. It has been tried over the time period of four years to develop a safe way to fly an aeroplane, but that has not happend at all in space flying.

Great contributors to the beginnings of space exploration, for instance Werner von Braun, Kelly Johnson and Charles Lindbergh, who inspire us today, were children in 1908-1912. Every one of them lived in a time where they were encouraged by the renaissance of aviation. Also the explorer from today were inspired by big progress in the past like the Jet Age, the Missile Age the first flights to Mars etc. Some of them are: Paul Allen, Elan Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, the Ansari family and Bob Bigelow. He thinks that these people are currently researching different areas that will lead us into the future of space exploration and eventually allow us to colonize and keep us from getting extinct.

He mentions the budget of 1.5 billion to 1.7 billion dollars that is currently “available” worldwide for further space exploration. That all is investment in private space flight that is not governmental. I knew that a great amount of money is being invested in space exploration, but I did not imagine the sum being that high.