Space Exploration: The Next 100 Years
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High hopes meet high frustration in this panel, whose participants collectively yearn for a new vision to guide our space program. Andrew Chaikin recommends a three-step self-help regimen to move the program forward: lowering the cost of access to space (the going rate is 10 thousand dollars per pound!); embracing “outside-the-box” ideas; and engaging in a national conversation about space. Supriya Chakrabarti predicts that in around 30 years, NASA will be deploying robotic terrestrial planet finders and using the moon for both tourism and commercial development like mining. This will be possible if in the short term space scientists look for low-cost launch options, which might include exploiting existing missile technology. Richard Binzel puts the odds of a civilization-threatening asteroid impact in the next 100 years at one in a million, but believes the odds are a whole lot better that human beings will be exploring asteroids in space. We’ve got a leg up since we’ve already sent robot reconnaissance to the moons of Jupiter. If we’re worried about catastrophic asteroid strikes, Binzel says, we should start taking incremental steps, such as putting nuclear reactors in space to power vehicles for long inter-planetary journeys.
 Write a Review of Space Exploration: The Next 100 Years
 
What's the Future of Space?, August 10, 2006
Reviewer: LOLDavid
from Los Angeles, California
In this streaming audio and video panel discussion from MIT, three space experts make their predictions about what the next 100 years will bring when it comes to exploring space.
They talk about potential ways to make space travel cheaper and more accessible along with power point presentations of images to help us visualize some of these developments. The talk is quite informal, and the lecturers have fun with it. There's a lot of interesting topics addressed such as the state of the U.S. space program, the possibilities of asteroids hitting the earth, and much more.
- Published:
2002
- LearnOutLoud.com Product ID:
S015547
History
The Future
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Astronomy
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