It’s finally here. This past Tuesday, a contract from NASA was signed that would lead Boeing and SpaceX to develop and engage in manned space flights – coined “space taxis” by some – to and from Earth and the International Space Station (ISS). This merger marks the beginning of a new era for NASA, for the government-operated space agency is now landing its feet into privatized territory. What does this mean for the future? Less government cutbacks and interplay. Politics now play a lesser role in the whole ordeal, and this opens up an indefinite range of opportunities for NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX. One opportunity I would like to see investigated is the concept of interstellar travel.There are several forms of interstellar travel, and some of them do sound like science fiction. You have generation ships – which is like something out of “Wall-E” – where you would send a family to space and have their ninth or tenth generation reach the destination. Then there is the more realistic but equally impossible (as of now) way of having a spaceship travel at large relativistic speeds to reach the destination. Here’s something to think about: 80 years traveling near the speed of light is approximately the same as spending four billion years on Earth (according to Kip Thorne).
You might be thinking, as of right now we only have a vague idea of how to get manned vehicles to Mars by 2030. Is it too soon to think about something as far-fetched as interstellar travel? It’s a feasible point, but as a nation that is based on imagineering and invention, it’s wrong to think that we won’t be able to see some form of interstellar travel implemented in our lifetime. To use the age-old example, if we told people 70 years ago that we would be able to land on the moon or that they’d be able to communicate with anyone around the world in less than a second through a machine that can fit in the palm of their hand, they wouldn’t believe us.
In fact, we already have examples of interstellar travel today. Consider the Voyager 1, which, launched in the late ’70s, became the first spacecraft to enter the interstellar medium almost two years ago. There’s also the New Horizon mission, launched when I was in the fifth grade and which by next year will reach its flyby position to Pluto and will later join Voyagers 1 and 2 in the interstellar medium.
Yes, these are unmanned spacecraft, but it’s no small feat when a spacecraft made in the ’70s is at present approximately 128 AU away from the sun (1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, or approximately 150,000,000 kilometers.) We’re entering a new age for NASA in which we can start talking about these things again. It’s a stage where science fiction can start becoming reality, and this is only possible due to the benefits of having more privatization in NASA and the government having less creative control. It’s a sign of progress, and for NASA we’ll need everything to make interstellar travel a reality – and 70 years from now when they ask me if I knew that we would have manned interstellar travel, I’ll firmly say “yes”.
Usmani is a member of
the class of 2017.
