Thanks to SpaceX, a new era of human spaceflight has begun.
On May 30th we launched Astronauts from American soil for the first time since the final liftoff of the space shuttle program July 8, 2011. The Falcon 9 rocket carried the Crew Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station.
I remember watching the old Sci-Fi films and even the Flash Gordon serials where they always had spaceships that could take off and land but now it feels like that technology is closer than ever with the SpaceX reusable launch system development program.
Science fiction authors have always set the goals for science and technology. After all, if you can’t image something how can you create it? There are the people who dream and there are the people who make those dreams reality.
Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku is an interesting book that explores the “science of the impossible”. Things now that we take for granted over 100 years ago would have been dismissed as fantasy. Kaku gives examples of and discusses different technologies and the science behind them. He uses Science Fiction to explore the future of technological advances and the possibilities of how they may come about.
Yes, the Dragon is still a capsule that floats to Earth on parachutes, but the interior finally looks like something from Star Trek. Touch screens take the place of switches, gauges, knobs and dials. And the Space suits are sleek and modern looking whereas older suits were reminiscent of deep sea divers.
