What do you think is the greatest challenge in space exploration?
5. Human Lifespan
-Overcoming human lifespan is a huge problem. Specially for deep space exploration to other habitable planets. We might need to create a hibernation or cryosleep technology for our bodies to get to different light distances without dying in our lifetime.
Sending Drone at or near 50% lightspeed, downloading consciousness or using artificial bodies in future could be a plausibility but not as of right now. (Just to get to Mars takes nearly 2 years and its the closest planet to Earth) The light we are seeing in the sky has travelled continuously for millions to billions of years to get to us. (Scientists say that first space travelers to Mars will have shorter lifespans even if they get back to Earth due to radiation)
-Human Lifespan is a major problem with our current technology that constraints our ability to acquire proper knowledge of space exploration and achieve space travel since distances are soo vast with harmful rays and deficiencies that occur in our bodies from deep space travel. The nearest star is 4 light years away from Earth. So we really have to think about a way to travel at or near speed of light to reach those distances. So far technology is improving but achieving Near 40% lightspeed is a daunting task since we do not know how matter reacts to lightspeed travels.
4. Lack of Proper Knowledge to Build Technology
-We need motivated individuals with proper education, understanding, and knowledge to build the required technology for explorations/expeditions at faster rate.
-It is important to build man-made structures in space for infrastructure to increase space travel and even space tourism. In order to mine asteroids for abundant material of resources to create man-made objects in outer space, we have to create asteroid mining blueprint first to develop the correct technology; or learn about the universe through powerful telescopes, or traveling to mars efficiently, and even mapping out the universe with quantum computers takes a great amount of knowledge to build such technology with immense amounts of money and even greater time to establish the technology baselines for effective use for many testing purposes.
-It can take many months and years of testing/experimenting space technology. Time is another challenge to overcome for space exploration.
3. Need to increase Funding Research
-We need an increase of proper research funding of public and private sectors relating to space technologies and exploration. This is huge because without funding money, it becomes impossible to speed up process of space exploration across different nations. NASA’s budget is only $23 billion in 2021. Most of it goes to military weapons and defense system; If we could even earn 30% of the budget, we could have explored more parts of our universe and even develop better space technology at a much faster rate yearly. Increase in private sector of funding is important to increase the field of space exploration exponentially.
2. Human Perception/Mindset/Behavior
-We would need to define our short-term and long-term goal for the future to build a proper goal/vision of space exploration. It is important for younger generations to care and become a hardworking and dedicated visionary like Elon Musk and have an optimistic thinking of space exploration that will create curiosity and interest to make it into a reality.
-Proper mindset for changing human nature and adopting correct measures is key to being determined for space projects/travel/explorations. (ex: The space race of 1960’s due to competition changed habits of human mindset to achieve a goal that was thought to be impossible by going to the moon.)
-We need to prioritize space exploration as a future for our descendants in order to become a multi-planetary species from any emerging threats that can cause destruction of Earth.
-It is important to understand how the rules of our universe works and better understanding of our knowledge of the universe (to understand the bigger picture) (such as physics, astronomy, cosmology etc.)
- Overcoming Vast distances
-Overcoming solutions of vast distance in space just to a nearest star is a huge problem. Given that only our observable universe is 46 billion light years across in radius with 700 quintillion planets, containing 125 billion galaxies, each galaxy contains 10 million — 1 trillion stars.
-We would have to create a starship that is capable of achieving at least 40% lightspeed travel just to explore nearest stars in our lifetime.
-Voyager 1 and 2 are approximately 120–150 AU away from Earth. It would still take 300 years just to reach the Oort cloud and would take about 30,000 years to pass through it and additional 10,000 years to reach another star (If this does not make you depressed I don’t know what will).
Due to dark energy expansion, space is always expanding and in a couple of centuries to millennia’s, we might not see some of the stars we see today because it will be out of our horizon. Universe is moving away in insane speeds, galaxies are only moving through space at ~2% the speed of light or less continuously, which is why it is impossible for us to catch up to it and explore the stars just within our own galaxy.
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