Why rocket science is hard

When the next moonwalk happens, it will be because of brilliant people who have mastered rocket science, as hard as it is.

Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? View the discussion thread. Skip to main content. A must-read political newsletter that breaks news and catches you up on what is happening. Most Popular - Easy to read, daily digest of the news from The Hill and around the world.

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National Security. Not saying you'll enjoy it, but you can do it. Rocket Science: Although home rockets are obtainable and you can make your own and space travel is becoming more accessible, you still need a great deal of money and resources to perform "true" rocket science. Outcome: When you carry your subject matter around with you at all times, it doesn't get more accessible than that.

Neuroscience : Modern neuroscience uses MRI scanners and the like to give colourful, fascinating images of a working brain and its activity in specified circumstances. This strikes many people as quite profound, given that the brain is the seat of the mind and consciousness.

The brain itself is not so glamorous looking, though. It resembles nothing so much as a walnut with a major thyroid problem. Rocket science: Rocket science has given us images of Earth from space , distant stars and galaxies , the surfaces of other planets , and people regularly gather to watch rockets go screaming into space on gigantic pillars of flame.

Outcome: A view of the entire universe on one side, a big walnut on the other. No contest, really. Neuroscience: Neuroscience is slowly creeping into more and more pop culture.

Sadly, it is mostly used in dubious ways, such as neuromarketing , dodgy " facts " and films like Phenomenon. Rocket Science: Rocket science is unusual in that it technically existed in popular culture before it did in the real world. Popular culture and fiction seem to have influenced rocket science and vice-versa since their inception.

Outcome: Did you even see Phenomenon? And don't get me started on Johnny Mnemonic…. Neuroscience: Although there are a number of high-profile, respectable neuroscientists out there, it's hard to think of one who's a household name. In the UK at least, the most well-known neuroscientist is probably Susan Greenfield. I believe this actually counts against neuroscience as a whole, though. However, as a student in the row beside me pointed out, Michael Collins got to be the first human to travel to the dark side of the moon.

This got Professor Schumacher bouncing on his toes. From there, we uncovered that Michael Collins was, at that moment, the most isolated human in history, which is kind of cool in its own regard. We needed to know the math and do the problem sets, but our class tutor at the Math and Science Skills Center made that part of class pretty easy. Our big project was to launch a model rocket on the rugby field, and you got an A on the assignment if the rocket took off and flew a pretty low bar.

The point of the class was to excite us all about physics, and I came away with several ideas along this theme. As a part of a different Apollo mission, a few astronauts got to drive the moon rover. A mechanical device would then be used to climb up it, hauling a payload into space. The cable would have to be nearly 38,km long.

A typical 28mm steel cable of this length, capable of supporting around 50 tonnes, would weigh , tonnes. In principle, though, we have materials strong enough to build a space elevator on the Moon.

When it comes to deep space, we could replace some of the requirements for rockets with solar sails, which use the pressure of sunlight to gradually accelerate a vessel, or mass drivers, which are like external thrusters that push the whole ship.

But the most dramatic alternative, dreamt up in , is to propel a ship by exploding tiny nuclear charges behind it, riding the shockwave. It was never built in part because the original idea to use these nuclear charges for taking off from Earth was, to say the least, impractical. But the idea has been revisited in later concept spaceships. The huge advantage of nuclear fuel is that it compresses far more energy into a particular mass but the risks attached have so far made this approach impractical.

Ballistic missile — One that starts under power, reaching a considerable height before dropping in freefall to its target. The V-2 was the first ballistic missile. Intercontinental ballistic missile icbm — Modern space rockets were mostly developed from the rockets designed to send nuclear missiles around the world.

Ions are atoms that have electrons removed or added and, as a result, have an electric charge that means they can be propelled by an electric field. Meganewtons MN — Newtons N are the standard unit of force. A meganewton is a million newtons. Reaction mass — The stuff thrown out of the back of a rocket to push it forward. In a traditional chemical rocket this is the exhaust gas from burning the fuel.

Thrust — The amount of force generated by an engine to push a vehicle forwards, such as the force that is generated by a rocket motor.