❱❱ Launching a car into space might be a novel attention-grabber, but it’s what can be achieved on Earth thanks to the cost-savings and payload increases that is really exciting in the short term, including the first of a series of Arch Libraries set in this case to orbit the Sun and, later, other planetary bodies
Mars
sending something to Mars – fun though that is – is what this means for enabling a whole host of benefits to the human race just by being able to put things into space more cheaply.” According to Baker, the introduction of a rocket that can
carry heavy payloads into space at a fraction of the previous cost – through being able to recover and reuse the three lower stages – has wide-ranging implications for improving people’s lives across the globe. “What makes the biggest difference to the world we live in today is putting satellites into orbit above our heads that can take pictures, allow us to communicate better, help us navigate and track shipping and monitor things like climate change. Getting things in to space is very expensive, and this rocket might reduce the costs by 80 per cent, which is an enormous decrease.” Baker says that cheaper rocket launches could enable more
satellites to be sent into orbit together, cutting the costs and making space services more widely applicable – and in the longer term, it could even help solve the world’s energy problems. “There’s almost limitless energy coming out of the sun in space but it’s far too expensive to put large solar panels
up there and beam energy down,” he said. “But if we can reduce the costs, we could see a future that includes giant solar power stations in space. We could also build bigger, cheaper space stations to let more people spend time understanding what it’s really like to live there.” Interestingly, in March 2017, SpaceX filed with the US
regulatory authorities plans to field a constellation of an additional 7,518 V-band satellites in non-geosynchronous orbits to provide communications services in an electromagnetic spectrum that had not previously been heavily employed for commercial communications services. Called the V-band low-Earth-orbit (VLEO) constellation, it would consist of 7,518 satellites to follow the earlier proposed 4,425 satellites that would function in the Ka- and Ku-band.
SECRET SECOND PAYLOAD Meanwhile, in another UK link, the Falcon Heavy also carried a second, secret payload hardly anyone knew about. Stashed inside the midnight-cherry Roadster was a
mysterious, small object designed to last for millions (perhaps March 2018 /// Environmental Engineering /// 11
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