A Few Points About Space Travel

Currently the technology we use to get to space is a rocket. It uses chemical propulsion to accelerate, that is, it burns a fuel to produce large amounts of pressure in the opposite direction, allowing the reaction force to push it upwards. The rocket needs to go fast enough to escape earth’s gravity, some 1100 metres per second, but chemical rockets currently in use can travel at about 8000 metres per second, easily enough to reach escape velocity. While enough to get to somewhere like the moon, which would take around 3 days, if we wanted to get to mars it could take around 9 months, and if we wanted to get to the next closest star it would take hundreds of thousands of years.

The contributions of what are called the space pioneers, are what makes space travel possible with today’s technology. The most best contributions to

Isaac newton’s three laws of motion are some of the most essential to modern space travel, and have led to major developments in how objects interact on Earth and in space. He established the basic laws of force motion and gravitation, which even resulted in the invention of calculus. His invention of the relflection telescope was also a major breakthrough for astronomical observation, and is still used today.

Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, describing the elliptical obits of planets around the sun, are still used widely today to calculate orbits for satellites and planets. His works also provided some of the foundations for Newtons law of universal gravitation.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is often referred to as the father of space travel. He designed many highly technological elements of modern space travel such as space stations, airlocks and multi stage boosters, even before the first jet engine plane was built. His ideas lead to the inception of several currently employed technologies.

Hermann Oberth’s research into g forces, fuel to weight ratio, and multi stage boosters contributed significantly to the success of...