The Future of Human Spaceflight

[Music] So how long before all this becomes reality? How long before interplanetary travel is an everyday affair? Well, as you can imagine, that's a complicated question. It is rocket science, after all.

On May 30th, 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed mission to the International Space Station. It was the first crewed mission with American crew from American soil in an American spacecraft in a very, very long time. And while the contents of the mission weren't anything new—hauling cargo and crew to the ISS—what made this launch so special was that it was the first commercial flight to have done so. All this took place in one of the most trying times humanity has faced in recent history, with protests all across America and a health crisis that has crippled the entire world like never before seen. The launch still went through, and that means something.

The launch, well, it didn't just go on. It was the most widely watched online NASA event in history. And while its total viewership still pales in comparison to that of the Apollo 11 launch, nearly one-sixth of the entire world tuned in. Something tells me that we're about to break that record sooner rather than later.

As I just mentioned, SpaceX was the first to commercially do all of this, but what does this mean and why is that important? Well, it means that NASA is essentially outsourcing the job of innovating and building the rocket to other companies—companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Boeing, and so on. They all bid for an opportunity to build, and NASA pays whoever has the best ideas through a contract. In doing so, NASA is taking a lot of the weight off of its underfunded shoulders and is using the powers of the free market to its benefit. Companies competing to see who can innovate better, who can create rockets that are faster, more efficient, and cheaper.

It's a very important first step to create and maintain a significant presence in low Earth orbit, and that's where the logistics of space travel change significantly. Low Earth orbit—a popular saying goes that getting to Earth's orbit is halfway to anywhere in the universe. You see, gravity can sometimes be benign. After all, we spend our lives getting used to its effects and sometimes just forget it's there.

But when you're dealing with potentially millions of pounds of stuff that needs to be propelled upwards, we have a problem. As soon as we escape gravity, however, things change drastically. There is quite literally nothing, nothing to drag you down or up or anywhere for that matter. Just the slightest of pushes can propel you endlessly through the vastness of space. To give you a sense of the impact gravity has on space travel, during the Apollo 11 mission, reaching Earth's orbit took nearly 27 times the propellant compared to the rest of the journey, including re-entry. Earth's gravity is an endearing force, and in this case, a costly one.

The simplest way to get around this problem is to have an outpost in low Earth orbit or somewhere else—an interplanetary pit stop, if you will—where scientists will work and stock up on supplies and refuel before they embark on their deep space adventures. The International Space Station, humanity's most prominent low Earth orbit presence at the moment, may help us stock up on food and similar supplies. But when it comes to fuel, things get complicated.

We'll have to look a bit further—380,000 kilometers to be exact. It's a journey we've already made. You see, the moon potentially has everything we need to make propellant—oxygen and hydrogen. And I say potentially because scientists are still not sure about the availability and accessibility of water on the moon. But they do know that lunar dust contains oxygen, which accounts for most of the weight of the propellant anyway.

All this means that the moon could become the perfect fuel depot for humans before they head out to further planets such as Mars. Given that launches from the moon only have to fight 1/6 of the Earth's gravity, this crucial step has seen promising progress in the last few years, with numerous companies already looking into technologies that could help astronauts mine the lunar surface.

Also on the cards is a lunar space station intended to get scientists more used to deeper space travel before they head off to further planets, known as the Lunar Gateway. This project is part of NASA's Artemis program. The missions are said to have a man and a woman back on the surface of the Moon by 2024. Understandably, it's an optimistic deadline—NASA is used to that. Who knows? Maybe with the push of commercialization, we may get there sooner than we think.

Fuel has also seen a few breakthroughs in recent decades, the most notable of which is ion propulsion. Instead of using chemical propellants, these systems propel ions—charged particles using electromagnets. Add to that the lack of drag in space and utilize Newton's third law to push you into the vastness.

There's a catch, though. This ion propulsion is significantly more efficient than traditional propulsion but provides only minute levels of thrust. The force it'll be pushing the spacecraft with is equivalent to the force a piece of paper exerts on your hand. It's an extremely small force. If we keep that up for days, weeks, or months, it adds up so much that it can possibly reach speeds of up to 200,000 miles per hour—nearly six times what is traditionally possible. But the gentleness of the force means ion propulsion is not suited for reaching low Earth orbits against the forces of gravity. Rather, it's only useful in zero or microgravity situations.

I personally think future propulsion systems will be a hybrid of both liquid propulsion and ion propulsion. But what about time? You see, the Earth is about 200 times further from Mars than it is from the moon—that's two orders of magnitude. Using currently existing technology, and even with some significant advances such as ion propulsion, a journey like this will take a few months at least.

It's really hard to internalize just how large the distances we're dealing with are. For example, in the time that you've watched this video so far, Voyager 1—the furthest man-made object—has traveled over 4,000 miles. It's currently traveling at an incredible speed of nearly 38,000 miles per hour, but even at that speed, it took nearly 35 years to travel through the solar system.

The resupply outpost could potentially solve some of the problems, allowing missions to carry larger payloads to move forth. But even then, the duration can have mental implications. Long periods of isolation, as all of us have probably experienced by now, can lead to a loss of motivation and affect our ability to work—which is a problem when you spend millions of dollars training astronauts. Coupled with the idea that food is running out and homesickness unlike any man has ever experienced before, you have mental walls crushing you from both sides.

One way to solve this issue might be to not have the astronauts be awake for most of the flight in the first place. Yes, the key to solving this problem might be hibernation. This field has seen increased attention in the past few years, mainly due to spaceflight. You see, most of the food we eat is used up just to maintain our body temperature. By lowering this temperature, we can potentially cut down on caloric intake by 50% if not more, essentially doubling the food supplies.

There could also be a way to prevent muscle atrophy in space that astronauts have always suffered from. For longer flights—such as those being planned to Mars—this becomes an even bigger issue, and hibernation may be the only way to counteract it. Hibernation research is still in its infancy, and the most remarkable results are still in animals like squirrels and bears. But scientists believe there aren't any biological bottlenecks as to why we shouldn't be able to accomplish hibernation in the future.

The state of hibernation we're interested in is currently prevented by our bodies through shivering. If we're able to safely turn that reaction off, scientists believe hibernation can be used in short chunks to preserve supplies and maintain the mental well-being of the crew in mankind's greatest adventures.

We're still in the dark about a lot of the effects that long-term space travel has on the human body. Missions such as Artemis can help answer them, but we can go a step further. Neuralink could be another part of the space puzzle—albeit one of the less obvious ones. In its primary stages, Neuralink tends to help patients with diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, but the goal is also to augment humans using the power of AI.

Within a few decades and some exponential growth, we could have the ability to upload our consciousness to a computer. We could then essentially explore other planets with the dynamic intelligence of the human being but without the physical presence of one. Of course, spaceflight with AI may not be manned in the traditional sense, but it gives the opportunity to test the waters.

There are other reasons why artificial intelligence is important in the next generation of manned spaceflight as well. There are two factors that are very new—modern spaceflight commercialization, which we've already talked about, is one of them. But the other one is AI. We've never had it before. Apollo 11 famously had a guidance computer with capabilities that would pale even against the oldest iPhone. To have the power of AI in such situations could radically change what we're able to achieve in the future.

In addition, beyond a distance of about 300,000 kilometers, even at light speed, information is going to take more than a second to reach. And for larger distances, this is only going to increase. Given that flight functions, such as fuel burning, have to be precisely timed and flawlessly executed to reach destinations in deeper space, even a momentary lag can be catastrophic.

The presence of AI can really help astronauts when there is no Houston to call on. AI can also play a crucial role in asteroid mining as well. But unlike the planets or the moon, we know very little about specific asteroids. Landing on their uneven surfaces becomes a task no astronaut has any prior experience in. AI can help learn the landing surface in real-time and allow for a safe landing.

But it's one thing to do things safely; it's another to convince the public about it. You are, after all, much more likely to die by choking on your own food while eating rather than in a plane. But I'll let you guess which activity makes people more anxious. That skewed incorrect perception of how unsafe something is could be our greatest defense mechanism.

It might as well be the fear of consequence that has made planes the safest mode of transportation. It's also this fear that has allowed a nuclear power generation to lead to fewer casualties than solar power. Spaceflight will likely follow a similar path to safety. But then again, how safe does it need to be? After all, if the extinction of the human race is what should drive our space endeavors, it only needs to be safer than the likelihood of extinction, right?

Spaceflight fatalities currently have a likelihood of around 3%. In 2018, the likelihood of total human obliteration was 1%, which is kind of an incredibly high number. If the number doesn't go down orders of magnitude, then spaceflight is going to become a safer risk than the alternative of complete destruction. Public perception plays a crucial role in this aspect of spaceflight. At the end of the day, that is what determines how well-funded the efforts are and how quickly and safely these goals are achieved.

Accidents slow down the progress of spaceflight remarkably and destroy public support. But the fact that the recent launches took place against a backdrop of global anxiety perhaps goes to show that spaceflight still retains excitement to unite us all. It has a unique ability to captivate anyone and everyone by satisfying the carnal desires of flight and exploration. Even if it isn't us inside the cockpit, it's quite literally an escape from our worldly problems.

During the course of my research for this video, I was just surprised how sporadic the progress of spaceflight has been, just based on the content of certain articles and their predictions. It's really quite hard to tell whether they were written ten days ago in response to the SpaceX hype or 10 years ago. However, if you read an article about wireless charging, bezel-less displays—you can immediately tell which generation of cell phones the article is talking about.

Such indistinguishable progress just goes to show how stagnated space exploration has been lately and how the public hasn't really cared enough to stay in the loop. The Saturn V, the rocket that took man to the moon, is at the time of writing still the most powerful operational rocket in the world. And it's been almost 50 years since its final flight.

You could look at this in two ways: one, progress in spaceflight has been disappointingly slow; or two, the Saturn V was so good and ahead of its time that nothing else has come close since. I think it's a little bit of both. And I know I always do this. The fact that the Saturn V still sits on that throne is a testament to what humanity can achieve when it's truly inspired.

And while that lack of achievement in recent times can be really demoralizing, it also makes for a future worth looking forward to—one to be excited about. And I think that's what Elon Musk has in mind when he talks about colonizing Mars. The reality is we know very little about Mars. Then at the end of the day, it may not be able to sustain life, after all.

But the drive to get there, the pursuit of such lofty goals, its technological indulgence of the highest order, and the prospect of seeing another rocket streaking through the sky—well, it has the ability to inspire generations once again, to give us a reason to be excited about tomorrow, excited about the future, or excited to simply be alive.

But even if we end up doing none of this—even if we achieve none of the things we set out to achieve—even if we fail launch after launch and make error after error—of course, I still love you.

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