Last week in Ireland is called Space Week where the focus was on promoting space exploration and related science and technologies among people. This time for Ireland is so special because they are building a cube satellite with the joint contribution of universities and Irish space technology companies. During this space week, there were so many events organized by different institutions all over the Ireland. Even though I was busy with my work, somehow I finally managed to attend to an interesting event organized by the University College Dublin.
The event was titled
Designing for Extreme Human Performance in Space which was conducted by two very interesting personalities. The first person was
Dava J. Newman, who is a former deputy administrator of NASA and currently works for the MIT. The second person was
Guillermo Trotti, who is a professional architect and has worked for NASA on interesting projects. Seeing the profiles of these two speakers attracted me to attend to the event. The session was held for about an hour and a half where the two speakers shared the time to talk on two different areas they are interested in. Finally, the session was concluded with a Q&A session.
In her presenation, Dava talked about the extreme conditions in space which raise the requirement of designing life support systems to assist astronauts. When she asked from the famous astronaut Scott Kelly (
@StationCDRKelly), who spent a year in ISS, about what would be the most needed thing if we are to improve in space technology, he has responded that life support systems to ease the operation of astronauts on space is the most needed thing. Dana presented the work she is involved in designing a new kind of space suit for astronauts to use on other planets such as Mars. The pictures she showed indicates a skin-tight suit which is custom designed to the body specification of an astronaut very much like a suit from a sci-fi movie.
Gui Trotti in his presentation talked specifically about his architectural interest on building habitable structures for humans on the Moon and Mars. As a professional architect, he is so inspired to bring his skills into human colonies in outer space. During that presentation, his mentioned three things that inspired me so much. The first is the fact that when an astronaut goes to space and turn back to look at his home planet, all the borders and nationalistic pride goes away and comes the feeling of we all are one human race and that planet Earth is the only home we have. Secondly, he described his tour around the world in a sailing boat which reminded him that space exploration is another form of human courage to explore and see the world. Finally, he said that his dream is to build a university on the moon one day to enable students from the Earth to visit and do research appreciating our home planet.
During the Q&A session, a lot of people asked interesting questions. Among those, one question was about the commercialization of space. They responded with the important fact that there is a potential of performing commercial activities such as manufacturing on space, especially the things which can be done easily on zero gravity environments rather than on the surface of the Earth. Various things such as growing food plants and 3D printing have been tried on the ISS towards this direction. In the near future such as a decade along the line, we would be able to see much more activities from the private sector on space than today. They are so positive about the progress in this area.
Even though I'm not working in anywhere related to space exploration, I'm always fascinated by this topic and I will continue to be.
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