The Way into Space - From Planet Earth to Infinity | SPACETIME - SCIENCE SHOW

since time immemorial humankind has looked to the stars the universe has always been a source of fascination and of mystery how was the cosmos born what else might the universe contain and where do we come from [Music] humankind is driven by curiosity we want to advance deeper and deeper into space fly to the end of our solar system and even beyond but the space rocket is at the end of its development rockets might still take us to Mars but if the universe is to be explored totally new technologies are needed and scientists are already working on them [Music] welcome to space time featuring astronaut and scientist Ulrich Volta and an expert on surprises the universe has in store for us the launch of a delta 4 heavy the most modern rocket operated by American Space Agency NASA with a thrust equivalent to around 50 million horsepower it can take a payload of over 20 tons into orbit around the Earth on this occasion a new spacecraft the Orion was successfully launched into Earth orbit NASA also plans to fly to Mars with this system even today a rocket is still the only suitable means of transporting loads and people into orbit and beyond only with the help of a rocket can astronauts and supplies reach the International Space Station today satellites determine our lives but it is only with the power of rockets that they can be launched all probes advanced into space to explore asteroids and the planets in our solar system humankind's curiosity drives him on and on we want to penetrate even deeper into the universe to the boundaries of our solar system and beyond but this calls for totally new propulsion systems new technologies engineers and scientists are already working on [Music] vent all space endless expanses immense humans have always wanted to know what these worlds look like what dangers lurk there understand the means of transportation of choice it has always been the rocket but we don't want space travel to take years or even decades oh no we want to reach every point of the universe within days or weeks perhaps that has always been humankind's dream with present-day technology even the mission to our planetary neighbors Mars and Venus would take months the spaceship would have to travel for 40 years just to leave our solar system [Music] humankind wants to explore we want to visit alien planets and travel to the edge of our galaxy we want to fly through the universe and explore strange worlds like our ancestors once dared as they sailed the oceans but that means covering distances that exceed all imagination so a quantum leap in propulsion technology is needed vend immense if we want to fly people into space first and foremost we need efficient propulsion systems that can accelerate spaceships up to speeds of thirty to forty thousand kilometers an hour thus we can just about achieve that with current systems but if we want to penetrate deep into the universe to reach Jupiter or even leave our solar system then we need speeds of 50 to 60,000 kilometers an hour those are the propulsion systems of the future ever since the beginning of the Space Age Rockets have been the most important indeed the only means of transportation that is how Yuri Gagarin the first man in space left the earth in 1961 it is also how astronauts were taken to the moon and brought back [Music] Saturn five the moon rocket from the 60s is still the world's most powerful launch vehicle the principle behind a rocket is a hundred years old and has never changed a cylinder is crammed with explosive material and the bottom end ignited [Music] those on the ground hope that everything will go according to plan but the principle of the classic rocket has reached its limit it is just about suitable for none too distant flights within our solar system the endless expanses of the universe remained the realm of science fiction with today's rocket propulsion systems they remain out of reach the month at the moment interstellar flights are the stuff of science fiction in development terms based on the current state of Technology we're talking about at least a hundred years before any such project could seriously be embarked on overcoming gravity reaching earth orbit flying to the moon and back is no problem for our Rockets but they are too slow for exploring faraway galaxies damn humans are also interested in flying to asteroids or other goals there are simply no bounds to our curiosity and it takes about three days to fly from the earth to the moon it will take an estimated six months to reach Mars and six months to get back that is the best our classic propulsion systems could manage you think about us these since the next goal I think will be to put people on Mars and just see what happens once they are there first to Mars then to Venus and after that to Jupiter there is no shortage of destinations even in our solar system a gawain irrespective of where we fly to in space the first phase of a flight is always the same we have to lift off from Earth and that always involves going straight upwards why straight upwards well the atmosphere is about a hundred kilometers thick and if I'm traveling at a great speed I don't want to experience any air resistance so straight upwards and then into an orbit around Earth then I'm traveling at eight kilometers per second and for 28,000 kilometers an hour at that speed the centrifugal force is just as great as the force of gravity pulling me in Words length by the way this speed is also known as the first cosmic velocity this is how I'm moving around the earth at eight kilometers per second in this time I perform what is known as a checkout I check the systems to make sure everything is the way it should be and only if everything is in order at this point do I perform a translunar injection burn injection burn if I want to go to the moon here's the burn I need greater speed in the form of a second cosmic velocity I leave the Earth's field of gravity and head for the moon and by the region up to the moon is known as cislunar space I could also fly to Jupiter as then I would be in trance lunar space or I might even want to leave the solar system entirely but then I would need an even greater velocity the current Soyuz carrier rocket looks little different from the rocket that once took Yuri Gagarin into Earth orbit and even today every launch of a space rocket still involves enormous technological effort and above all financial cost the flight to the space station costs up to one hundred and fifty million euros and even today every flight with a rocket is a major and also risky adventure when club sigh ignition you don't really believe it until the rocket actually lifts off I'm sniped with about three and a half hours before the launch you board this bus which takes you to the launch pads there start on the pinked on Verdun there you say goodbye to a small group of people and mention my case my father was also there then you're standing in front of this monster which is hissing and snarling as if it were alive the tanks are full of kerosene and liquid oxygen and on the outside clouds of vapor roll down as the moisture condenses in the cold air voice disguised in aloof Conan zeod unlike in the u.s. in Russia there's no countdown you know in advance the precise minute and second when the rocket will lift off a quito payload then then the turbo pumps are activated begins when the main engines are ignited you feel a slight vibration then rocket takes off [Music] Dauntless at that moment you know that it's really true you're now on a journey into space when this ends you're protected by a pressure suit the suits visors are closed you actually hear the suits ventilation more than anything else Savannah to us untwisting some fake but obviously you have radio contact with ground control they give you regular information on how the flight is progressing you keep a watch on the data from the life-support system if there were a leak somewhere you would have to react immediately otherwise you don't actually hear anything of the infernal noise in the capsule in 1995 Tomas it--is first flight into space was to the Russian space station Mir the journey took the three-man crew two days docking the soyuz spaceship on to the mir was precision work space station and capsule were hurtling around the earth at 28,000 kilometres an hour at a height of around 400 kilometers Soyuz has control thrusters and its own small rocket engine developed in the 1960s it has hardly changed only the computers have become more modern robust Russian technology under the lead were talking about different philosophies most Russian rockets have liquid propulsion seek us on to these Soyuz for example flies on kerosene and oxygen seen on solid stove in fact life this is comparatively old technology which goes back to what was developed in peenemuende during World War two [Music] Giavanna home nekoma the Japanese use a combination of liquid hydrogen and oxygen as their core propulsion and solid fuel boosters as Muslim festival the same system in urine and solid fuel boosters for the central thrust and in liquid propulsion for the main stage in the upper stage is simply because the performance is better the combination of liquid fuel engines and solid fuel boosters was also used for the space shuttle the space transporters were in service for 30 years then the program was shut down the shuttles last flight into space was in 2011 giving villain since I present we travel through space with totally standard rocket technology based in the final analysis but as much mass as possible being expelled downwards with as high as speed as possible and the rocket heading upwards into space demands they are forced to invert this is the kind of propulsion you think of when you build a rocket as a child on design by and large this form of propulsion has been maxed out the chemical limit has already been reached Michigan said you have not shown arrived NASA's new spaceship is also based on old concept the Orion is designed to replace the space shuttle and transport astronauts and freight into orbit more than that it is the space vehicle with which the Americans first want to return to the moon later fly to Mars the spaceship is being built in cooperation with a European Space Agency ISA Orion can be equipped for different mission profiles and fitted with its own propulsion and supply modules there is room onboard for up to six astronauts for missions to the Moon or Mars the aim is for further modules to dock onto the capsule in Earth orbit a spacecraft designed along modular construction lines interface the moment of truth for Orion for the next nine minutes 45 seconds in 2014 Orion took off on its first trial flight re-entry into the atmosphere was the acid test for the capsules heat shield these pictures remind us of the return of lunar capsules in the 60s and 70s just like capsules in those days after hurtling through the atmosphere the Orion was first slowed down by parachutes and then splashed into the Pacific [Music] the unmanned maiden flight was a success an initial step in the direction of Mars as with the Apollo capsules in the past the task of recovering a Ryan and the ocean was handled by the US Navy the launch vehicle for Ryan is the Delta for heavy after their moon rocket it is the biggest launch vehicle ever built by the Americans we won't be able to reduce rocket size by very much to get anywhere in space we need big rockets we will never fly into space with a mini rocket the engines can be optimized but the principle always remains the same I'm an inventor flying to space you need a lot of thrust the more the better but what is thrust and how does it work it does a lot of people think thrust just isn't possible in space because thrust means pushing off against something but in space there is nothing to push off against like a wall for instance so how does thrust work in space let's start with a simple example imagine I'm sitting in a small rowing boat each time I row I push myself off against the water with my oars this gives me thrust in the opposite direction but what I push off against it doesn't have to be solid or liquid I can achieve the same effect by throwing something if for instance I stand up and throw a stone over the back of the boat I'm actually pushing off against the stone as I throw it in snap how great is the thrust in that case that depends on the weight of the stone the heavier the stone the more powerful the thrust one of the speed of the throw also matters so speed and mass determined the backward force and energy is not involved I didn't get plays no role whatsoever people think that thrust is energy no it's mass as much mass as possible as fast as possible in this respect thrust can come in totally different forms take a look at this here a man is expelling a lot of water backwards at great speed this generates counter thrust thrust upwards that too is a principle behind a rocket and we can go even further let's actually take a rocket with a rocket gasses hurled downwards that is a lot of mass you just don't see it because it's gaseous but the rocket pushes off against this gas and is thrust upwards so it's quite clear that this can also function in space I shoot gas out and can move in this direction and if I want to travel in this direction I again shoot it out backwards that's the first principle in space the thrust principle can be applied not only for taking off and flying but also for landing several private companies in America are working on this technology [Music] the Falcon nine built by the US company SpaceX has already landed successfully after flights into space and with the Falcon Heavy SpaceX is already working on a bigger version three propulsion stages will lift a payload of 53 tons into space they could also transport 14 tons to Mars because SpaceX is also thinking about the journey to our neighbor planet when the payload has been deposited in space or the spacecraft released the Rockets return to Earth independently and can be reused that is the plan with this principle SpaceX plans to dramatically lower the cost of transporting men and materiel into space and thus develop a lucrative business if you look at say the cost of a falcon 9 rocket which is quite a big rocket it's about a million pounds of thrust and and it is the lowest cost rocket in the world but and even so it's it's about fifty to sixty million dollars but the cost of the fuel and oxygen and so forth is is only about two hundred thousand dollars so it's obviously if we can reuse the rocket say a thousand times then that that would make the capital cost of the rocket for launch only about fifty thousand volts [Music] with its reusable rockets SpaceX plans to offer transport flights into space for less than ten million dollars no other operator of satellite launches could compete ground controllers here in Houston estimate a rival to the capture point in just over in 2012 a SpaceX capsule docked onto the ISS SpaceX operates its own Aerospace Center and now has 5,000 employees and for the first time a private enterprise flew Freight to the space station NASA supports SpaceX's plans this is part of NASA's new orientation which is for private aerospace companies to serve near-earth space while NASA works on new projects like a journey to Mars the SpaceX has signed lucrative contracts with NASA right from the start both the carrier rocket and the capsule were designed for transporting people in future the Dragon spacecraft will also take astronauts to the ISS and bring them back to earth present this is only possible with the Russian Soyuz capsule the dragon is also designed to implement the company's philosophy of reusability dragon will not plummet into the ocean or land in the Russian steppe on parachutes with the crew on board the spacecraft will land independently at a spaceport and be able to fly back into space again this is not wishful thinking the reusable spacecraft is already in the test phase dystrophin testing technically they will manage it and manage it very well that's as Outsiders however we cannot really say whether it will prove economically viable my view is that the ability of the Americans to develop commercial systems and to do business should not be underestimated in an emergency the capsule could also land with the help of parachutes the reusability of the capsule and its rockets means an enormous investment in technology do you want us to whom is the aid then has to be examined to see if anything has happened to us I have to find out if it can be relaunched loses more whether I need to build a new spacecraft good and that would mean having the infrastructure for a new construction and possibly a repair infrastructure as well Lloyd Adidas I need people who can do that in comas even then I have to consider whether it's actually sensible things on them have built a production line my neighbor said why not use that indeed if you look at it the Europeans do not reuse their boosters and the Americans didn't do that with the shuttle either so we would say it's not worth it is an infinitive what is certain however is the developments from private aerospace companies are giving the entire sector fresh impetus like it where Rockets are concerned I think we need a new development I'm not sure whether reusability is the ultimate solution I really don't know in fact I would say it isn't the concept of reusability is not new it is precisely why the American space shuttle program was conceived a vehicle that would return to Earth independently after its flight into space a repeatedly reusable transporter into the Earth's orbit the shuttle program was a success despite the huge costs involved and the loss of human life a total of 14 astronauts were killed when NASA lost two of its shuttles through technical defects along with a space-shuttle the solid-fuel rockets needed for the launch were also reused after burnout the two boosters separated from the space shuttle and drifted down on parachutes into the ocean where a recovery vessel was waiting [Music] Desilu the thirst principle is eminently suitable for navigation in space because it enables you to pilot in all directions I mean but chemical propulsion systems have one major disadvantage if it sinned they're extremely inefficient isn't there anything better yes there is electric propulsion let's take a look you need a heavy gas and inert gas like xenon at the end that really goes whoosh from the outside the gas is forced into a chamber come on nine so here at the entrance to this chamber the xenon atoms are ionized that is what I'm drawing here this plus sign in the middle of each atom indicates that they are positively ionized the electrons the negative electrical charge are then drawn away laterally and for the time being are waiting here so to speak so now we have these ions here what we still need is acceleration this is obtained with an electric voltage across the two plates you see here you introduce a very high voltage usually ten or twenty thousand volts and when some of these ions reach these plates they are accelerated to an extremely high speed that's what I'm drawing here and at first they are still positively charged but they mustn't be of course when they are at the back they have to be neutral again yeah and how do we achieve this the electrons that were drawn off here have to be reintroduced via what is called a neutralizer it neutralizes the ions again resulting in neutral xenon atoms nor this neutralization by the way can be seen really well afterwards everything glows beautifully in a bluish green color and that's how it all works in efficient means that the electrical output highest which is pushed in here is turned with great efficiency into a stream of gas in other words into thrust however the overall thrust is extremely small it's the drawback then is that despite the high efficiency since only gas atoms are involved the thrust is not particularly great if the second drawback is that you need a vacuum chamber other words the system would never function on earth only in space but that's okay up there astronauts would have enough time to operate it for months on end if need be the titan ii probes equipped with small ion engines have been flying through space for years but nasa is also carrying out research into an engine that will make manned missions to remote destinations possible in this respect aerospace engineers and scientists are of course thinking of the journey to Mars the propulsion system with its characteristic bluish light will it is planned also be used in satellites enabling them to fly to the edge of our solar system to Saturn or to Uranus it's the perfect form of propulsion for an unmanned probe wing perhaps no more than a few hundred grams or maybe two kilos [Music] but the force of gravity of the planets could also be utilized to fly through space slingshot the slingshot method is a totally different way of traveling through space and let's take a look at how it works via but first we need a planet like this one so I mean our spacecraft we flied very close to it and isn't planning to provide us in other words we shoot in here at a certain speed naturally we are deflected from our course by the planets field of gravity and come out in a different direction so the flyby changes the direction in which we are traveling but we can use this to put ourselves on another course behind flyby - that the other point is this you'd think that I would leave the planet's field of gravity with the same speed at which I entered it yeah however in the meantime the planet has moved on I'm pulled along with it on my flyby and as a result my gained speed that's why this method has the name slingshot I'm dragged along and I'm traveling at a higher speed when I shoot out with my flyby for a slingshot I gain speed but I can also change my direction that's the trick that's like there's more find out when I fly on to the next planet and execute another slingshot maneuver even I gain even more speed then I fly on to the next planet and so on and so forth basically I could slingshot my way from planet to planet and keep getting faster and faster evidence but there are limitations only once every 187 years are the outer planets in an alignment that would enable me to move from one to the other the last time by the way was in the 1970s the Voyager probe used the situation to be hurled into the depths of the universe I mean when the drawback is obvious once every 187 years is too seldom we need a method which enables us to decide for ourselves where we're flying to the best system the best method is nuclear propulsion NASA was already experimenting with nuclear propulsion in the 1950s promising prototypes were developed in secret laboratory tests with the help of nuclear fission the systems heated up hydrogen gas to a temperature of several thousand degrees Celsius with a rapid exit velocity of 90 kilometers a second they were clearly more efficient than chemical propulsion systems but the development work was stopped [Music] tacoman room and it would simply be impossible order to avoid releasing nuclear waste gases flowers Stockman's this agreement was reached to stop nuclear weapons testing and I cannot imagine an exception being made it was just for the spaceflight sector Darfurians knows no MIMO some satellites have nuclear batteries on board but research into nuclear propulsion for spacecraft has also recommenced Lagaan Kiba have the advantage of nuclear propulsion systems is that they have a very long service life if you want to send a probe to Pluto you need an engine that will function for ten years another concept is fusion propulsion are literally inexhaustible source of energy it would be ideal but the concept is still in its infancy we don't know a lot about the materials we need monk on this tool knowledge can't be done then but first of all I would say that if we are going to use fusion reactors we should first operate them on earth to gain background experience this would give us a solid knowledge base business positive in madhab and with 50 or 80 years of solid experience behind us we could then consider whether it's possible to condense everything to have a fusion reactor in the reduced size we would need for space propulsion or deform photons we put all the principle of packing the Sun in a spacecraft and flying through the universe with it his mere wishful thinking as Fusion propulsion simply hasn't been developed yet and that's we would first need to master nuclear fusion on earth and that has not been done anywhere the idea is not totally inconceivable it's just that from a current viewpoint we are a long way from realizing I've ever been found but what is unimaginable today could tomorrow already be standard the future also brings technology with it why not why should we suddenly have better technology available humankind has always come up with faster and better technologies I'm hoping that will be the case here too but we're talking about time leaps of many decades so for the present we are left with our tried and trusted rocket technology it has taken humankind into Earth orbit and flown us to the moon perhaps it will also take us to Mars chemical propulsion is too weak for the really big step into he says so what exactly is the situation with nuclear propulsion systems from a physics point of view they're perfect an extremely efficient and generate gigantic thrust more than we could achieve today with any other propulsion system and as we know however they're ostracized what fusion engines are not that bad at all and they do not generate that much radioactivity and besides we could take off from Earth with chemical engines and only switch to nuclear propulsion in space that would be the perfect combination and I'd like to bet that that is exactly the way things will go but in order to discover strange new world we would have to fly vast distances the nearest galaxies to us Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away 40 billion kilometres to get there at all we need to travel that perhaps one tenth of the speed of light but even then the journey would take 40 years so it would be possible within the lifespan of a human being but one tenth of the speed of light is still enormous ly fast of course that's 30,000 kilometers a second present-day spaceships if everything's going well it's late 30 kilometers a second so they are a thousand times slower we can look deep into the universe we can observe and explore our galaxy and discover new galaxies solar systems and also planets but the distances between us and them defy all imagination he founded the demons on such dimensions to make us realize how isolated we are here we will need to make a massive effort if we are ever to leave our solar system to visit other worlds which we're discovering now more often man has been relegated to the role of observer he can send probes to remote regions of the solar system and beyond but for man himself interstellar travelers inconceivable in Tustin what exactly is interstellar space we're not suppose to understand we first need to determine what interplanetary space is it's the region between the planets in this case between the inner planets and there are the outer planets Jupiter Saturn and so on and on the very outside where Neptune is the last planet is where interstellar space begins as it down in other words the region between the stars but the nearest star Alpha Centauri is a long way off 4.3 light years away I've had sent 4.3 sounds like a small figure but we are in fact talking about thousands of billions of kilometers in kilometer if we want it to cover such distances with present-day engines we'd be traveling for one or two hundred thousand years weeks now I've been designed what about electric propulsion you might say but we couldn't use that because electric propulsion systems need solar energy and that's not available out there so all that remains is nuclear power fusion propulsion but even that would give us no more than one or two percent of the speed of light so it would still take a few hundred years to reach Alpha Centauri that's a long time but I believe that when the Sun or the earth no longer exists humans will take this step despite the many hundreds of years involved and so the journey to the boundaries of our solar system and Beyond will remain a pipe dream that only the authors of science-fiction books will be able to realize in their imagination they make use of totally different possibilities like the famous concept of warp drive doesn't mean unclip telescope this is a former propulsion which does not power the spacecraft itself right Mouse cogs like shortens the space between my starting point and my destination it bends space though so you could say that the spacecraft changes space put another way the spacecraft itself doesn't move at all like a surfer on an ocean wave that's carried on a spacetime wave failure theoretically this is possible the spacecraft is taken along by space so to speak but although this is theoretically possible in practice it will remain unattainable for us that is because enormous amounts of energy would be needed and not just a small atomic power station or small fusion power plants the etherion we can calculate that it would take 20 times the energy of our Sun the Sun itself could also provide thrust the power of its eruptions and the solar wind they create could be used for sailing through the universe the way explorers of the past sailed the oceans and that is not just a dream scientists are working on the concept of the radiation pressure of sunlight being used for traveling in space models based on this system are already undergoing laboratory tests the sale consists of wafer thin foils that are extremely light one problem is getting them to unfold in space without tearing [Music] okay yeah generally speaking I'd be highly skeptical muslin if it to be in any way efficiency they would have to be extremely large and they would have to weigh virtually nothing they would need to be packed comparatively tightly on liftoff and then spread apart later on this calls for an extensive mechanism than those phone and if the sale somehow started oscillating on things there would be nothing with an attenuating effect like air a sail would go on oscillating so the problem you would have is that the initial oscillation which we never stop we would ultimately destroy it for the sail to be really efficient it would need to be the size of a football pitch or even larger you would also need a foil which for weight reasons amongst other things would have to be no more than a few micrometers thick Dargis and propulsion would of course only function near the Sun just keep trying to help do news today there are wafer thin mylar foils can be spread out to create areas of square kilometer size in space of course there is no gravity so the foils would remain stable the only problem is that this concept has never been tried out so we don't know how well it would work these are other problems that sunlight of course it diminishes the more you move away from the Sun so even if a solar sail were to function well here close to Earth the situation would look different next to Mars Jupiter or Saturn and I don't even want to mention interstellar travel interstellar so the idea isn't so good Rison dies that is shown blurred but perhaps the light for propulsion would not have to come from the Sun at all a further development of the solar sail one would NASA is already researching is photon propulsion a spacecraft the solar sail is fired into Earth orbit from the earth powerful lasers then focus their light on the spacecraft inconceivable since it's basically a good aim would be needed and what's more this is the weather is often highly unstable as imakandi there would be temperature differences in the atmosphere and in its gaseous composition in temperate or in the cost for some and some malignant sometimes they would be rain and sometimes not and sometimes there would be fog all of which would be capable of deflecting the laser beam more or less substantially by adage the further out in space I was the greater the problems I would have with the laser power reaching me that's because along the atmosphere there is absorption scatter and beam expansion destroy the energy arriving at some time or other would be too little DW in front of my own coin but according to NASA a spacecraft with photon propulsion could fly from the Earth to Mars in 30 minutes what's the deal with all these solar sails and laser sails the solar sail needs a lot of sunlight in order to be accelerated this is only available within the range of the Sun outside this range a solar sail would be of no use at all so a focused ray of light would be needed a laser hence a laser sail but that would require a really big laser to be constantly focused on my sail from the earth but I would not like to be on board but just imagine you're sitting in there and someone on earth suddenly switches off the laser then you're stuck up there in space alone but not exactly a happy thought in the 1950s a certain mr. Buzzard came up with a great idea and why take fuel along he asked himself when there's plenty in space in the form of ionized hydrogen all I need he said is a grid system at the front of my spacecraft which I can then charge with electricity this will generate a magnetic field and this magnetic field will suck ionized hydrogen atoms into a fusion chamber where they will fuse and provide me with fantastic fusion propulsion on tava and turn fuzzy ones on tape it sounds wonderful but there's one huge problem in the fusion chamber why because pure hydrogen is extremely hard to fuse I don't think we'll manage it in the next few thousand years but it's at least possible and that gives me confidence anyone who travels through space must also be able to blow down their spacecraft as they approach their destination this manoeuvre - consumes fuel which has to be taken along just for that purpose consequently engineers and astrophysicists are seeking new possibilities for braking maneuvers and it is hoped that the natural magnetic fields of planets will help a spacecraft with its own magnetic field could not only be slowed down in this way but could also be propelled but is a propulsion system absolutely necessary is there no alternative sometimes yes there is much has been written and talked about a space elevator what's involved let's assume that this is the earth all we need is a long cable that is anchored in the ground somewhere and extends far out to a counterweight when the cable turns with the earth centrifugal force acting on the counterweight pulls the cable tight team verdict under the cable or tether would then be climbed but how long would such a cable have to be about 150 thousand kilometers something that size would take some manufacturing it would be enormous desmos Jana teased the pink sign-ins fortunately there's a totally new form of technology available carbon nanotubes are very special materials that are extremely light and above all have great tensile strength and we can't make something like it yet but if we could such a cable would be no thicker than my little finger and that over a length of more than a hundred thousand kilometers cable that thick and a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers in length would of course first need to be taken into space we can't yet do that but maybe we will in the future from space the cable would have to be lowered to the ground and anchored and that would give us our space elevator lift the question is would it also function in the long term and here some major problems arise because there's plenty of space debris out there and kinds within a month a piece of scrap wood cut through the cable and besides it would be a real hindrance to satellites there are 1500 active satellites up there at some point or other one of them would hurtle into the cable not only would the cable be wrecked so would the satellite so in that respect the system wouldn't work but I still think the idea is good a hundred years ago no one would have believed that humans would fly into space set foot on the moon and operate a space station let alone send probes to far-off planets there are many ideas and concepts for totally new propulsion systems which will allow us to advance further into the universe in future perhaps humankind will even leave the solar system there are no limits to the imagination and it is in this light that the space elevator project also has to be seen it is one idea for treading new paths from principle a nice idea it's a hard to implement this someone would have to manufacture it yes it is human imagination and ideas that have enabled us to fly into space how universe is still full of mysteries there could be some new effect that helps us but at the moment there isn't one insight our generation won't travel to strange stars but future generations will that's something I think that we won't experience any but such technologies will perhaps be available in a hundred years time even though it is hard to imagine today a hundred years of developments will mean some fantastic discoveries to sum up with present-day chemical propulsion systems we could easily fly to Mars or Jupiter beyond that we would have to hop from planet to planet with the help of the slingshot effect that means we would not be independent to travel totally independently we need extremely efficient and above all high thrust propulsion systems but all we have in this respect and with regard to the future is nuclear propulsion and that unfortunately is ostracized and even if we just wanted to leave our solar system I don't believe there's any way around fusion propulsion weather warp drive will come is an open question but even with fusion propulsion we would still need hundreds of years to get to the next star whether humankind will manage that I don't know but it's possible about nucleuses humans will develop old technologies further and find new ones and we will advance deep into the universe in search of knowledge and also in search of ourselves [Music]

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Keywords: full documentary, hd documentary, free documentary, full length documentaries, documentary film, top documentaries, spacetime, supernova, galaxy, universe, space station, astronaut, Documentaries, documentary (tv genre), space documentary, space science, science documentary, facts about the Universe, living in space, space discoveries, ISS documentary, space travel, exoplanet, exoplanet documentary, planets documentary, new worlds, how the universe works, documentary, space

Id: iIc6x5Klzms

Length: 47min 55sec (2875 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 06 2019