The Universe s03e11 Episode Script
Edge of Space
In the beginning, there was darkness and then, bang giving birth to an endless expanding existence of time, space, and matter.
Now, see further than we've ever imagined beyond the limits of our existence in a place we call "The Universe.
" Imagine a place where a satellite can circle the earth in 90 minutes where a tourist on vacation wakes up and takes in their view from a hotel room in space or where a speck of paint becomes a lethal weapon able to blow a hole in the side of a spacecraft.
These are the realities of Earth orbit the gateway to the solar system and it's the turf of astronauts space junk and the ultimate thrill seeker.
Journey out with us to "The Edge of Space.
" In the not so distant future, a human will board a rocket sit on an open platform and launch 120 miles straight up into Earth orbit.
Dressed in a high-tech spacesuit he'll peer through a quartz-coated visor and take in an unparalleled view.
Being in low Earth orbit is spectacular.
When you look up you see the inky blackness of outer space and the stars the stars shining even in daytime.
Looking down, you see the hazy blue glow of this gigantic ocean right underneath your feet.
This observer is a space diver a new breed of ultimate thrill junkie.
And as he unhooks from his safety harness and stands at the edge of space he takes one last look out to the universe and leaps, speeding towards Earth below.
Space diving is one of many futuristic ideas planned for Earth orbit the zone of space that surrounds Earth and begins 120 miles above sea level.
It's the home to satellites and the space station and, if Orbital Outfitters have their way the ultimate extreme sport: skydiving from space.
Earth orbit is a window to the universe and perhaps will become an extension of Earth itself for industry, exploration, and fun.
But the environment in Earth orbit is very different from home.
Oxygen ceases to exist here and the atmosphere that provides a protective shield around Earth disappears.
Cosmic threats lurk for those who dare explore here.
We forget that outer space is dangerous.
We forget that in outer space we have cosmic radiation we have solar flares, we have meteors we have space debris.
It's an obstacle course being out there in outer space.
Like free-fall skydiving junkies who leap out of planes and speed towards Earth space diving might seem like the ultimate thrill but its idea is based on very serious intentions.
Dr.
Jonathan Clark, a Navy flight surgeon and former Navy high altitude parachutist is one person behind the space diver concept but for very personal reasons.
I was assigned to NASA to work on space operations and then my wife was an astronaut.
Columbia, Houston, UHF comm check.
She died on the Columbia mission in 2003.
While military pilots routinely eject safely from imperiled aircraft currently there is no evacuation procedure for astronauts to eject from a spacecraft during a catastrophic event.
About one percent of the time we have a major booster rocket failure or a catastrophe in outer space.
Perhaps the skydiver spacesuit will become a new safety device for astronauts to use on missions and its first test is a 160,000-foot jump.
To survive reentry the skydiver spacesuit has many critical features: a protective one-piece jumpsuit that insulates from the negative-40-degree Fahrenheit space environment to the 464-degree heat generated from reentry small gas jets on each glove to orient and direct the body during weightlessness a full closed loop oxygen system that will recirculate and remove carbon dioxide for the 10-minute trip home a drogue parachute to stabilize the space diver as they comes closer to Earth and a traditional parachute that will deploy at 3,000 feet for a safe landing.
And the journey will be spectacular.
In the first two minutes of the jump the space diver will reach speeds of 2,500 miles per hour while in free fall.
Atmospheric drag will heat the spacesuit to 474 degrees Fahrenheit and slow the space diver to terminal velocity As his drogue parachute breaks free at seven minutes he will begin to slow down.
Finally, at 3,000 feet a regular parachute deploys and the space diver lands safely on the ground.
It will be cinematic.
Chris Gilman is a Hollywood costume designer and chief designer for Orbital Outfitters.
He has an array of spacesuits he's designing for the company.
His passion for accuracy in his costumes eventually landed him a real commission with NASA to design a woman's upper torso spacesuit.
While looking at real suits very close up you start to understand that they're not just a white jumpsuit with plastic fittings and a bubble helmet.
Think of a spacesuit as a personal spacecraft.
To protect the body, spacesuits are designed in layers.
Imagine the kind of clothes that you'd have to wear if you were walking through the Sahara on twice its worst day ever and then make one more step and you're into the arctic.
That's the kind of clothes you have to wear.
And when considering the form and function of his Orbital Outfitter suits Gilman looks back in time to medieval armor to help create future designs.
Here is our 14th-century hourglass gauntlet.
That knuckle bow is almost identical to the one that is under the fabric cover in a shuttle spacesuit glove.
And interesting enough, it's almost the exact same shape as well and it performs the same function.
While space diving might be years away from becoming a reality thrill seekers are already making their way to the edge of space, the realm of Earth orbit.
Up until 2001, the privilege of orbiting Earth was reserved for the elite few: astronauts chosen to work in space.
But that's before space tourism became a reality.
One of the dreams of most of the people associated with the space-flight world is to actually fly themselves.
And so space tourism has been an important component in people's thinking about spaceflight from the very beginning.
Right now, Space Adventures Limited is the only company delivering that dream.
We are the world's only private space travel company.
Space Adventures started ten years ago when its first client took a very high-altitude ride on a Russian jet.
When he came back and talked about what it was like to see the curve of the Earth and the black sky above I knew that we would have a great business and there would be literally millions of people out there in the world who wanted to participate in Space Adventures experiences.
Then, in 2001, American investment manager and multimillionaire Dennis Tito approached Space Adventures about arranging a trip into Earth orbit and the era of private space tourism was born.
The flight of Dennis Tito to the International Space Station was an enormously significant accomplishment and many people watching in the space community cheered.
They thought this was great.
It's a new age that has begun.
I love space.
Space Adventures Limited now offers trips to the International Space Station for $33 million.
You learn about the rocket.
You learn about the spaceship that you're going to fly in.
You learn about the space station.
You learn about what it's like to live and eat and work and even go to the bathroom in space.
To get to the space station space tourists must hitch a ride with the Russians in a Soyuz capsule.
It's flown successfully for 35 years.
This great feat of human engineering will deliver you from the ground to orbit in less than eight minutes.
Once delivered to the space station space tourists live like real astronauts.
Comfortable is a relative term.
So if you're comfortable on a camping trip then you'll be fine on the space station.
And if you're at all used to being in the outdoors where you don't have all the comforts of home then you'll be quite comfortable living in a spaceship.
The food is great but you're not going there for the food.
The real enjoyment of space is being able to float weightless and see the Earth and be really part of the future of space exploration and being able to see what it's like to step off the planet and go somewhere that very few people have been before.
You'll be seeing the Earth in all its glory and splendor.
You'll be watching sixteen sunsets and sunrises every day because you travel so fast around the Earth.
Right now, taking a trip to space is too expensive for most private citizens.
If you were to just go in low Earth orbit around the Earth that would cost about $10,000 a pound.
That's your weight in gold.
There are many companies currently designing new spacecraft to make space travel affordable.
I can't tell you when it will be $4,000 but I can tell you it will never be $4,000 if it doesn't start off at $40 million.
Regardless, Space Adventures Limited has big plans to expand their offerings in space.
One of our future clients will be undertaking a space walk for the first time.
Additionally, we're very excited about our circumlunar flight program and doing a flight around the moon.
They will come literally within a hundred kilometers of the lunar surface.
Sending private citizens into space has changed the paradigm for space exploration.
We've really, I'd say, banged down the door for the rest of the industry.
There are many people now who are interested in opening up this frontier and doing it privately.
And we hope to be seen in history as the catalyst which really motivated that entire industry to begin.
Perhaps the most exhilarating part of a space adventure is getting to the edge of space.
But space is a big domain, and there are threats here that are unlike anything we have on Earth.
Earth orbit, our edge of space, is generally divided into three parts.
Low Earth orbit is a 1,100-mile-wide belt that is closest to Earth's atmosphere and begins only 120 miles above sea level.
There are tremendous advantages to low Earth orbits.
First of all, most of the manned space program takes place in that radius.
One, zero, and liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour.
Also, spy satellites, communication satellites weather satellites occupy that low Earth orbit.
Low Earth orbit is like a busy city, lots of activity.
The Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station call low Earth orbit home.
Soyuz and the space shuttle complete missions here.
Objects and people in low Earth orbit can travel around Earth in an astounding 90 minutes.
Forty-five minutes on the sunny side of Earth forty-five minutes on the dark side of Earth.
Houston.
You're go for landing.
Over.
Except for a few trips to the moon all of humankind's visits to space have been to low Earth orbit.
The bottom line in low Earth orbit is if you can't reach it you can't go anywhere else.
And human spaceflight, ultimately, is about going somewhere else.
Low Earth orbit is kind of the entry point for that effort.
Above low Earth orbit is a region called medium Earth orbit.
This wide stretch of space is Many communication satellites are launched into orbit here including global positioning satellites.
GPS satellites roughly orbit the Earth at about 12,000 miles what we call a semi-synchronous orbit.
So, basically, they orbit the Earth twice per day once every 12 hours.
GPS is set up into six orbital planes.
So if you can imagine a globe, there are six orbits positioned in equal spacing around the Earth with roughly four or five satellites per orbital plane.
And basically that gives us coverage around the world.
GPS satellites sit at this altitude so that multiple satellites are in view from one location on Earth at any time of day.
It takes four satellites to get you your exact location.
The first will give you a roundabout area the second one will refine it, as well as the third and finally the fourth says, "You are exactly here.
" Medium Earth orbit is also home to the treacherous Van Allen radiation belts.
These belts of high-energy charged particles can send a $300-million satellite spiraling out of control or give a human being a fatal dose of radiation.
These belts stretch out from Earth like elongated rings.
Satellites are carefully placed in specific altitudes to avoid these destructive belts of particles from the Sun.
Even farther out lies high Earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit.
If low Earth orbit is a busy city, high Earth orbit is rural farmland.
above sea level satellites hover above Earth taking in an unparalleled view from a distant vantage point.
Here, over 2,000 satellites call high Earth orbit home.
These satellites appear to be stationary.
They make a circuit around the Earth every 24 hours but so do we.
So we have the optical illusion that the satellites are sitting there in outer space.
But in order to reach Earth orbit an object must first leave the ground and be delivered into space.
To do this, a rocket or spacecraft needs to achieve the appropriate speed and hit a target direction and altitude.
Go even a few miles per hour too slow and the forces of gravity and drag of the atmosphere will pull a spacecraft down, crashing it to the ground.
So the idea is to get out of the drag of the lower atmosphere beyond all that turbulence and friction and then start racing for the right direction and speed after you get up above the sensible atmosphere.
And there's a very good reason why spacecraft launch straight up rather than at an angle like an airplane.
So what typical space launches do is go straight up through the atmosphere to get through the thickest part initially and then they begin to arc over a few miles up and then start to increase their velocity in the desired direction.
To reach a target orbit a spacecraft must travel and follow a specific trajectory from the ground to desired altitude.
Even one degree off and a spacecraft will end up in the wrong orbit.
After an eight-minute ride and millions of gallons of fuel burned a spacecraft is now in orbit.
An orbit is a reoccurring path around another object.
Like Earth revolving around the Sun a satellite or spacecraft is held in orbit by gravity.
Earth's mass creates a gravitational force that deflects an object's path from a straight line.
It might be assumed that Earth's gravitational pull loses much of its influence this high in the sky but in low Earth orbit Earth's gravity is only two percent less powerful than it is on the surface of the planet.
The way you stay in orbit is to go at a high enough speed or velocity that you are falling back to the Earth but you're going so fast that your curved path actually never strikes the curved surface of the Earth.
You just keep falling around the world over and over again.
So you're not leaving the gravity behind but you're being spun around the planet by gravity.
It's what's holding you in this circular path around the planet and it's making you fall back to Earth.
In theory, objects can stay in orbit forever as long as they have enough speed to resist the pull of Earth's gravity.
There are two types of orbits, circular and elliptical.
Circular orbits are for satellites or spacecraft that need to maintain a consistent altitude and travel in a regular circle around Earth.
Mapping satellites, GPS, and weather satellites all use circular orbits.
Elliptical orbits are oval in shape.
They're used when a high altitude is needed for part of the orbit without having to go all the way to high-altitude circular orbit.
Spacecraft delivering satellites into high orbits use elliptical orbits to deliver their payloads.
Whether traveling in a circle or an elliptical path there are many things in Earth orbit that are dangerous.
In October 2007, the U.
S.
Navy shot down an out-of-service satellite with a cruise missile before it re-entered the atmosphere.
The reason? The satellite carried hazardous material onboard and, had it crashed to the ground, could have poisoned thousands.
That hazardous material was which is a standard propellant.
The operation was called "Burnt Frost" and it was the most elaborate effort thus far to protect the world from a serious yet growing problem called space debris or space junk.
Space junk is anything that's manmade that was put into space and is no longer functioning.
We've got junk that's been up there for as long as we've been in space.
Like a junkyard slowly becoming cluttered with debris from the first launch of Sputnik in 1957 debris has steadily been accumulating around planet Earth.
Fifty years into the space race we have littered the heavens with our garbage.
And now, about 20,000 pieces later Earth orbit has turned into a deadly, debris-filled junkyard.
It looks like the Earth is surrounded by a hive of bees.
Most of the space debris includes shards of rockets satellites that no longer function or pieces of an object that have broken up after a launch.
Caught in Earth's gravitational pull these pieces are traveling upwards of 22,000 miles per hour.
Say, more than ten times faster than a bullet.
A collision between functioning objects such as satellites or inhabited spacecraft and space junk could be catastrophic.
The Joint Space Operations Center, or JSPOC is a top-secret Air Force surveillance unit that makes it their business to track every object that orbits around Earth including space debris.
We use a number of different sensors around the world known as the Space Surveillance Network.
It's a network of 29 stations all around the globe radars as well as optical telescopes that track over 18,000 manmade objects in space.
That includes active satellites, as well as dead satellites and then rocket bodies that were associated with those launches as well as debris, things that have just shed off.
If they were to run into each other it really would be a catastrophic conjunction.
To be tracked by JSPOC debris must be at least two inches wide.
There are much smaller objects that cannot be tracked.
On most of my shuttle flights we always saw small pits in the windows about the size of a pencil point.
The highest population of debris are in low Earth orbit.
And in 2008, an intentional collision between two satellites created an international outrage and a cloud of debris that threatened low Earth orbit like never before.
Our edge of space is Earth orbit a new frontier for space tourism and exploration.
But danger lurks here: space debris and it threatens our spacecraft and satellites like never before.
In 2007, the total estimated amount of space debris was 20,000 pieces, Then, in 2008, China's space program intentionally crashed two satellites together as an anti-satellite test.
The international space community was outraged.
By the 10th of January of 2007 the number of objects we were tracking was less than 14,000.
Here we are, 16 months later, and we've increased that number by over 30 percent, to over 18,000.
The problem of space debris continues to grow.
And collisions have already occurred between space junk and functioning objects.
One of them was a piece of debris that struck a gravitation boom on a spacecraft severed the boom.
To avoid future collisions JSPOC is in constant contact with NASA and other international space entities to inform them when a spacecraft or satellite might be threatened so that the spacecraft could be maneuvered around the space debris much like a boat maneuvers around hazards in a waterway.
Beneath the surface of the water here what you can't see is what's going to actually give you the most damage if we run into a log or a snag beneath the surface.
And in orbit, that's the same problem that we face.
We don't track all the debris that could actually cripple or kill your spacecraft and we rely on the fact that you're just statistically unlikely to hit a piece of debris to protect you and that insurance policy is going to run out someday.
Fortunately, there haven't been any catastrophic collisions between inhabited spacecraft and space debrisyet.
We've never seen a human-piloted spacecraft run into orbital debris and been damaged but we've had some close calls.
Objects, no matter what their size are always in danger of being pulled out of their orbits by orbital decay.
Orbital decay occurs when an object loses speed, caused by friction and begins to be pulled towards Earth by gravity.
Atmospheric drag is the major cause of orbital decay like a bicyclist on the road.
When you're pedaling along at a constant speed you're balancing your muscle power against the drag on the tires from the road and the resistance of the air that you're moving through.
And you overcome that resistance on a bicycle with your muscles or in space by firing your rocket engines to add a little speed, overcome that air resistance.
That's what has to happen in space to keep the space station from falling back to Earth and burning up.
And if you stop adding thrust, that air resistance will eventually slow you down to the point where you'll stop or fall back into the atmosphere and re-enter.
Some pieces survive re-entry and the size of these pieces that have fallen to Earth is terrifying.
In the last 40 years have survived re-entry.
Back in 1997, we had a 570-pound stainless steel tank that landed about 50 yards from a farmer's house in Texas.
He was not particularly pleased by that.
If a piece of debris does survive re-entry it travels at subsonic speeds of 120 miles per hour until it hits ground.
There was a re-entry that came into Cape Town in South Africa.
It was during the day and there were people out working in fields.
They heard a sonic boom and they looked up and they basically saw this material coming down.
The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California is a facility that collects and studies space junk for the military and private companies.
This is a piece of what was once a piece of space junk.
This was a part of a rocket stage that was used to put a GPS satellite in orbit.
Here you can see the brackets that were actually melted off as this came down.
We actually have cut samples here to try to understand what happened in this area, how hot did it get and we use that information to improve our models.
Understanding how these pieces survive re-entry is important for future spacecraft and satellite construction.
Recovering and reusing critical spacecraft parts could save millions in manufacturing costs.
However, collecting space debris remains tricky.
Three-quarters of the Earth's surface is water so a lot of it lands in the water.
So when you find a piece on the ground it's actually a very rare event.
It's estimated the amount of space debris will double by 2050.
But that hasn't deterred entrepreneurs who continue to explore Earth orbit as a business location.
For a mere $2,500, Memorial Spaceflights which began service in 2008 will launch ashes of a loved one into low Earth orbit.
It's a fitting end to anyone who dreamed of one day visiting outer space.
This is just one of the many ideas entrepreneurs are developing for Earth orbit.
But to run a business in space there needs to be a way to obtain permanent occupancy.
Here we are in the early years of the 21st century and I foresee space becoming an industrial park.
Skylab, Mir, and now the International Space Station have all provided an arena for long-term habitation and experiments in space.
What if private companies could also have spacecraft orbiting the Earth? I think we were and are the first company to have deployed that kind of structure.
Just off the Las Vegas Strip Bob Bigelow and his team at Bigelow Aerospace are hunkered down in a high-security facility creating a new generation of spacecraft.
I'm living out a childhood fantasy is what it is.
And I think that we are involved in something really important.
Private industry is exploring the opportunities of our edge of space.
Bigelow Aerospace is developing inflating workspaces called Genesis to launch into Earth orbit.
The technology was inspired by NASA.
I came across an article about a technology that NASA had been working on and I thought, "Oh, my God, this is great.
" NASA developed an inflatable module, a room called the TransHab.
It was going to be joined to the space station to provide more living space.
NASA was never able to afford executing that plan.
Eventually, after a number of years we acquired the licenses from NASA for their patents.
The concept is ingenious.
Bigelow spacecraft are inflatable pods that tuck into the nose of an unmanned rocket during launch then expand to three times their travel size to full capacity once released into orbit.
In a rocket ferry, you only have so much volume so much room like this bottle.
That's as big as it gets.
That's it.
But if you launch something in that volume that can later expand to three times its size you have a lot more room to do something with.
We use compressed gas to expand it into its form.
The inflatable spacecraft could be adapted to whatever a client might need- research laboratory, manufacturing facility, hotel space- all emerging industries for Earth orbit.
We can host a variety of different kinds of clients and they only have to pay for the specific time that they're interested in.
The spacecraft is assembled from very durable but bendable materials called soft good systems.
You've driven all your life on soft goods.
You've driven on tires.
Inflatable systems can be extremely reliable and very strong.
Bigelow is not worried about the reliability of his launch system.
The Dnepr 18 rockets he's using are the same ones the Russians trust with some of their most precious payloads.
They have about 1,100 of those rockets with nuclear missiles on them right now.
We're not going to fail because the rocket failed.
Once in orbit, instrumentation is powered by four solar panels just like the International Space Station.
The Genesis spacecraft is a new generation of space station and it might be a vast improvement from the government-issue brand.
What we're working on, if we're successful is a much safer vessel for humans to be in than the aluminum cans are.
Our inflatable hull structure is adequate to protect against any type of thermal effects micro-meteoroid protection, radiation effects.
Bigelow Aerospace now has two private spacecraft, Genesis I and II orbiting 340 miles above Earth the only privately owned spacecraft of their kind orbiting in the edge of space.
Launching spacecraft into Earth orbit is only one challenge.
Picking an appropriate inclination for its orbits is another.
The orientation of an orbit really is just a measure of the degree of tilt from the line running through the equator.
You can have anything from zero-degree inclination to 90-degree inclination.
The zero-degree inclination is absolutely no tilt whatsoever from the equator and that is called an equatorial orbit.
Whereas, if you have a 90-degree tilt from the equator that is a polar orbit.
Satellites and spacecraft are launched into different inclinations depending on their mission because different inclinations pass over different parts of Earth.
If you're going around the Earth around the equator, what do you get to see? It's just what's below you, which is going to be what? The equator.
So an inclination of the orbit, at, say, 56 degrees covers almost all of the population of the Earth.
A polar orbit satellite has the ability to view the entire Earth in a few orbital rotations.
As the Earth slowly rotates below the satellite keeps sweeping overhead allowing the entire Earth to be observed in a short period of time.
If the mission is for espionage or observation Sun-synchronous orbits allow satellites to pass over the same point on Earth at the same time every day.
They shift one degree each Earth day to stay in sync with the Sun at a given location.
If constant communication is necessary geosynchronous satellites are positioned far away from Earth so that entire continents are within their view.
It matches the rotation of the Earth and appears to hover in the sky.
That's a very useful trait of that orbit because you can then stay constantly in radio or television touch with the spot on the ground below.
Earth orbit is the natural extension of Earth's occupation in space.
And if future plans pan out the industrialization of the edge of space will happen in the near future.
It was only 40 years ago John Glenn entered Earth orbit.
What the next 50 or 100 years holds for the future of Earth orbit is as exciting as perhaps a walk on the Moon once was to an older generation.
Bigelow Aerospace has already reached a major milestone by launching their Genesis I and II pods into orbit.
But future spacecraft will be ready for private citizens.
Nobody's done this before.
I mean, people have gone into space but what we're trying to do is make it available.
It's called Sundancer, a 300-cubic-meter inhabitable space that will have the capacity to support up to three human lives indefinitely.
We have to add a lot of life-support equipment to make sure that the environment is sustainable for a crew of three.
That goes into anything from the air concentration system where oxygen has to be delivered, C02 has to get removed all the way through more rigorous thermal control and humidity control.
One Sundancer spacecraft offers more space than is currently available on the entire International Space Station.
Eventually, multiple pods will be connected together like Tinkertoys for larger facilities.
What kind of shape you're choosing depends on the purpose, the mission for the spacecraft.
But like pioneers setting off across the open sea in search of new land, this is uncharted territory.
We have an opportunity to turn that vision into a reality and so far that's exactly what we're doing.
They are one group of many that dream of permanent occupancy at the edge of space.
One thing remains clear.
Earth needs an easy way to deliver spacecraft, cargo, and people into space to take advantage of Earth orbit and the ideas are spectacular.
There have been all kinds of concepts like space elevators.
How about a space fountain- a highly energized wave of particles that lifts cargo up into Earth orbit? The key is finding a cheap way to get those materials up to space.
Or perhaps the resources of space can be mined in a facility orbiting Earth.
Using the resources that are on the Moon and the asteroids nearby to build things in space themselves.
Not have to spend the money to haul them up from the ground.
For example, Lewis and Clark when they went across the continental U.
S they didn't haul all their drinking water and firewood with them from St.
Louis on the way west.
They used what they found along the way.
Earth orbit's greatest gift might be sustainable power.
Imagine an array of solar panels that generates enough power to light up a continent.
That's probably one of the most promising avenues to pursue in the next 50 years in space is to find a way to make cheap solar collectors and then build the collecting antennas on the ground so that we can use inexhaustible solar power to reduce our reliance on the finite supplies of fuel and energy we have here on Earth.
One thing is certain: the edge of space is the entryway to future exploration a stopping point to the destinations across the universe.
I'm very excited about a future decades from now where the Earth really is the Garden of Eden of humanity where we've taken care of our planet our parks, our enjoyment and the things that we love about the Earth are taken care of.
And all the things that we do in terms of manufacturing and resource extraction and energy and mining those things take place in space.
And, of course, low Earth orbit is the gateway to the rest of the solar system.
Now, see further than we've ever imagined beyond the limits of our existence in a place we call "The Universe.
" Imagine a place where a satellite can circle the earth in 90 minutes where a tourist on vacation wakes up and takes in their view from a hotel room in space or where a speck of paint becomes a lethal weapon able to blow a hole in the side of a spacecraft.
These are the realities of Earth orbit the gateway to the solar system and it's the turf of astronauts space junk and the ultimate thrill seeker.
Journey out with us to "The Edge of Space.
" In the not so distant future, a human will board a rocket sit on an open platform and launch 120 miles straight up into Earth orbit.
Dressed in a high-tech spacesuit he'll peer through a quartz-coated visor and take in an unparalleled view.
Being in low Earth orbit is spectacular.
When you look up you see the inky blackness of outer space and the stars the stars shining even in daytime.
Looking down, you see the hazy blue glow of this gigantic ocean right underneath your feet.
This observer is a space diver a new breed of ultimate thrill junkie.
And as he unhooks from his safety harness and stands at the edge of space he takes one last look out to the universe and leaps, speeding towards Earth below.
Space diving is one of many futuristic ideas planned for Earth orbit the zone of space that surrounds Earth and begins 120 miles above sea level.
It's the home to satellites and the space station and, if Orbital Outfitters have their way the ultimate extreme sport: skydiving from space.
Earth orbit is a window to the universe and perhaps will become an extension of Earth itself for industry, exploration, and fun.
But the environment in Earth orbit is very different from home.
Oxygen ceases to exist here and the atmosphere that provides a protective shield around Earth disappears.
Cosmic threats lurk for those who dare explore here.
We forget that outer space is dangerous.
We forget that in outer space we have cosmic radiation we have solar flares, we have meteors we have space debris.
It's an obstacle course being out there in outer space.
Like free-fall skydiving junkies who leap out of planes and speed towards Earth space diving might seem like the ultimate thrill but its idea is based on very serious intentions.
Dr.
Jonathan Clark, a Navy flight surgeon and former Navy high altitude parachutist is one person behind the space diver concept but for very personal reasons.
I was assigned to NASA to work on space operations and then my wife was an astronaut.
Columbia, Houston, UHF comm check.
She died on the Columbia mission in 2003.
While military pilots routinely eject safely from imperiled aircraft currently there is no evacuation procedure for astronauts to eject from a spacecraft during a catastrophic event.
About one percent of the time we have a major booster rocket failure or a catastrophe in outer space.
Perhaps the skydiver spacesuit will become a new safety device for astronauts to use on missions and its first test is a 160,000-foot jump.
To survive reentry the skydiver spacesuit has many critical features: a protective one-piece jumpsuit that insulates from the negative-40-degree Fahrenheit space environment to the 464-degree heat generated from reentry small gas jets on each glove to orient and direct the body during weightlessness a full closed loop oxygen system that will recirculate and remove carbon dioxide for the 10-minute trip home a drogue parachute to stabilize the space diver as they comes closer to Earth and a traditional parachute that will deploy at 3,000 feet for a safe landing.
And the journey will be spectacular.
In the first two minutes of the jump the space diver will reach speeds of 2,500 miles per hour while in free fall.
Atmospheric drag will heat the spacesuit to 474 degrees Fahrenheit and slow the space diver to terminal velocity As his drogue parachute breaks free at seven minutes he will begin to slow down.
Finally, at 3,000 feet a regular parachute deploys and the space diver lands safely on the ground.
It will be cinematic.
Chris Gilman is a Hollywood costume designer and chief designer for Orbital Outfitters.
He has an array of spacesuits he's designing for the company.
His passion for accuracy in his costumes eventually landed him a real commission with NASA to design a woman's upper torso spacesuit.
While looking at real suits very close up you start to understand that they're not just a white jumpsuit with plastic fittings and a bubble helmet.
Think of a spacesuit as a personal spacecraft.
To protect the body, spacesuits are designed in layers.
Imagine the kind of clothes that you'd have to wear if you were walking through the Sahara on twice its worst day ever and then make one more step and you're into the arctic.
That's the kind of clothes you have to wear.
And when considering the form and function of his Orbital Outfitter suits Gilman looks back in time to medieval armor to help create future designs.
Here is our 14th-century hourglass gauntlet.
That knuckle bow is almost identical to the one that is under the fabric cover in a shuttle spacesuit glove.
And interesting enough, it's almost the exact same shape as well and it performs the same function.
While space diving might be years away from becoming a reality thrill seekers are already making their way to the edge of space, the realm of Earth orbit.
Up until 2001, the privilege of orbiting Earth was reserved for the elite few: astronauts chosen to work in space.
But that's before space tourism became a reality.
One of the dreams of most of the people associated with the space-flight world is to actually fly themselves.
And so space tourism has been an important component in people's thinking about spaceflight from the very beginning.
Right now, Space Adventures Limited is the only company delivering that dream.
We are the world's only private space travel company.
Space Adventures started ten years ago when its first client took a very high-altitude ride on a Russian jet.
When he came back and talked about what it was like to see the curve of the Earth and the black sky above I knew that we would have a great business and there would be literally millions of people out there in the world who wanted to participate in Space Adventures experiences.
Then, in 2001, American investment manager and multimillionaire Dennis Tito approached Space Adventures about arranging a trip into Earth orbit and the era of private space tourism was born.
The flight of Dennis Tito to the International Space Station was an enormously significant accomplishment and many people watching in the space community cheered.
They thought this was great.
It's a new age that has begun.
I love space.
Space Adventures Limited now offers trips to the International Space Station for $33 million.
You learn about the rocket.
You learn about the spaceship that you're going to fly in.
You learn about the space station.
You learn about what it's like to live and eat and work and even go to the bathroom in space.
To get to the space station space tourists must hitch a ride with the Russians in a Soyuz capsule.
It's flown successfully for 35 years.
This great feat of human engineering will deliver you from the ground to orbit in less than eight minutes.
Once delivered to the space station space tourists live like real astronauts.
Comfortable is a relative term.
So if you're comfortable on a camping trip then you'll be fine on the space station.
And if you're at all used to being in the outdoors where you don't have all the comforts of home then you'll be quite comfortable living in a spaceship.
The food is great but you're not going there for the food.
The real enjoyment of space is being able to float weightless and see the Earth and be really part of the future of space exploration and being able to see what it's like to step off the planet and go somewhere that very few people have been before.
You'll be seeing the Earth in all its glory and splendor.
You'll be watching sixteen sunsets and sunrises every day because you travel so fast around the Earth.
Right now, taking a trip to space is too expensive for most private citizens.
If you were to just go in low Earth orbit around the Earth that would cost about $10,000 a pound.
That's your weight in gold.
There are many companies currently designing new spacecraft to make space travel affordable.
I can't tell you when it will be $4,000 but I can tell you it will never be $4,000 if it doesn't start off at $40 million.
Regardless, Space Adventures Limited has big plans to expand their offerings in space.
One of our future clients will be undertaking a space walk for the first time.
Additionally, we're very excited about our circumlunar flight program and doing a flight around the moon.
They will come literally within a hundred kilometers of the lunar surface.
Sending private citizens into space has changed the paradigm for space exploration.
We've really, I'd say, banged down the door for the rest of the industry.
There are many people now who are interested in opening up this frontier and doing it privately.
And we hope to be seen in history as the catalyst which really motivated that entire industry to begin.
Perhaps the most exhilarating part of a space adventure is getting to the edge of space.
But space is a big domain, and there are threats here that are unlike anything we have on Earth.
Earth orbit, our edge of space, is generally divided into three parts.
Low Earth orbit is a 1,100-mile-wide belt that is closest to Earth's atmosphere and begins only 120 miles above sea level.
There are tremendous advantages to low Earth orbits.
First of all, most of the manned space program takes place in that radius.
One, zero, and liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour.
Also, spy satellites, communication satellites weather satellites occupy that low Earth orbit.
Low Earth orbit is like a busy city, lots of activity.
The Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station call low Earth orbit home.
Soyuz and the space shuttle complete missions here.
Objects and people in low Earth orbit can travel around Earth in an astounding 90 minutes.
Forty-five minutes on the sunny side of Earth forty-five minutes on the dark side of Earth.
Houston.
You're go for landing.
Over.
Except for a few trips to the moon all of humankind's visits to space have been to low Earth orbit.
The bottom line in low Earth orbit is if you can't reach it you can't go anywhere else.
And human spaceflight, ultimately, is about going somewhere else.
Low Earth orbit is kind of the entry point for that effort.
Above low Earth orbit is a region called medium Earth orbit.
This wide stretch of space is Many communication satellites are launched into orbit here including global positioning satellites.
GPS satellites roughly orbit the Earth at about 12,000 miles what we call a semi-synchronous orbit.
So, basically, they orbit the Earth twice per day once every 12 hours.
GPS is set up into six orbital planes.
So if you can imagine a globe, there are six orbits positioned in equal spacing around the Earth with roughly four or five satellites per orbital plane.
And basically that gives us coverage around the world.
GPS satellites sit at this altitude so that multiple satellites are in view from one location on Earth at any time of day.
It takes four satellites to get you your exact location.
The first will give you a roundabout area the second one will refine it, as well as the third and finally the fourth says, "You are exactly here.
" Medium Earth orbit is also home to the treacherous Van Allen radiation belts.
These belts of high-energy charged particles can send a $300-million satellite spiraling out of control or give a human being a fatal dose of radiation.
These belts stretch out from Earth like elongated rings.
Satellites are carefully placed in specific altitudes to avoid these destructive belts of particles from the Sun.
Even farther out lies high Earth orbit or geosynchronous orbit.
If low Earth orbit is a busy city, high Earth orbit is rural farmland.
above sea level satellites hover above Earth taking in an unparalleled view from a distant vantage point.
Here, over 2,000 satellites call high Earth orbit home.
These satellites appear to be stationary.
They make a circuit around the Earth every 24 hours but so do we.
So we have the optical illusion that the satellites are sitting there in outer space.
But in order to reach Earth orbit an object must first leave the ground and be delivered into space.
To do this, a rocket or spacecraft needs to achieve the appropriate speed and hit a target direction and altitude.
Go even a few miles per hour too slow and the forces of gravity and drag of the atmosphere will pull a spacecraft down, crashing it to the ground.
So the idea is to get out of the drag of the lower atmosphere beyond all that turbulence and friction and then start racing for the right direction and speed after you get up above the sensible atmosphere.
And there's a very good reason why spacecraft launch straight up rather than at an angle like an airplane.
So what typical space launches do is go straight up through the atmosphere to get through the thickest part initially and then they begin to arc over a few miles up and then start to increase their velocity in the desired direction.
To reach a target orbit a spacecraft must travel and follow a specific trajectory from the ground to desired altitude.
Even one degree off and a spacecraft will end up in the wrong orbit.
After an eight-minute ride and millions of gallons of fuel burned a spacecraft is now in orbit.
An orbit is a reoccurring path around another object.
Like Earth revolving around the Sun a satellite or spacecraft is held in orbit by gravity.
Earth's mass creates a gravitational force that deflects an object's path from a straight line.
It might be assumed that Earth's gravitational pull loses much of its influence this high in the sky but in low Earth orbit Earth's gravity is only two percent less powerful than it is on the surface of the planet.
The way you stay in orbit is to go at a high enough speed or velocity that you are falling back to the Earth but you're going so fast that your curved path actually never strikes the curved surface of the Earth.
You just keep falling around the world over and over again.
So you're not leaving the gravity behind but you're being spun around the planet by gravity.
It's what's holding you in this circular path around the planet and it's making you fall back to Earth.
In theory, objects can stay in orbit forever as long as they have enough speed to resist the pull of Earth's gravity.
There are two types of orbits, circular and elliptical.
Circular orbits are for satellites or spacecraft that need to maintain a consistent altitude and travel in a regular circle around Earth.
Mapping satellites, GPS, and weather satellites all use circular orbits.
Elliptical orbits are oval in shape.
They're used when a high altitude is needed for part of the orbit without having to go all the way to high-altitude circular orbit.
Spacecraft delivering satellites into high orbits use elliptical orbits to deliver their payloads.
Whether traveling in a circle or an elliptical path there are many things in Earth orbit that are dangerous.
In October 2007, the U.
S.
Navy shot down an out-of-service satellite with a cruise missile before it re-entered the atmosphere.
The reason? The satellite carried hazardous material onboard and, had it crashed to the ground, could have poisoned thousands.
That hazardous material was which is a standard propellant.
The operation was called "Burnt Frost" and it was the most elaborate effort thus far to protect the world from a serious yet growing problem called space debris or space junk.
Space junk is anything that's manmade that was put into space and is no longer functioning.
We've got junk that's been up there for as long as we've been in space.
Like a junkyard slowly becoming cluttered with debris from the first launch of Sputnik in 1957 debris has steadily been accumulating around planet Earth.
Fifty years into the space race we have littered the heavens with our garbage.
And now, about 20,000 pieces later Earth orbit has turned into a deadly, debris-filled junkyard.
It looks like the Earth is surrounded by a hive of bees.
Most of the space debris includes shards of rockets satellites that no longer function or pieces of an object that have broken up after a launch.
Caught in Earth's gravitational pull these pieces are traveling upwards of 22,000 miles per hour.
Say, more than ten times faster than a bullet.
A collision between functioning objects such as satellites or inhabited spacecraft and space junk could be catastrophic.
The Joint Space Operations Center, or JSPOC is a top-secret Air Force surveillance unit that makes it their business to track every object that orbits around Earth including space debris.
We use a number of different sensors around the world known as the Space Surveillance Network.
It's a network of 29 stations all around the globe radars as well as optical telescopes that track over 18,000 manmade objects in space.
That includes active satellites, as well as dead satellites and then rocket bodies that were associated with those launches as well as debris, things that have just shed off.
If they were to run into each other it really would be a catastrophic conjunction.
To be tracked by JSPOC debris must be at least two inches wide.
There are much smaller objects that cannot be tracked.
On most of my shuttle flights we always saw small pits in the windows about the size of a pencil point.
The highest population of debris are in low Earth orbit.
And in 2008, an intentional collision between two satellites created an international outrage and a cloud of debris that threatened low Earth orbit like never before.
Our edge of space is Earth orbit a new frontier for space tourism and exploration.
But danger lurks here: space debris and it threatens our spacecraft and satellites like never before.
In 2007, the total estimated amount of space debris was 20,000 pieces, Then, in 2008, China's space program intentionally crashed two satellites together as an anti-satellite test.
The international space community was outraged.
By the 10th of January of 2007 the number of objects we were tracking was less than 14,000.
Here we are, 16 months later, and we've increased that number by over 30 percent, to over 18,000.
The problem of space debris continues to grow.
And collisions have already occurred between space junk and functioning objects.
One of them was a piece of debris that struck a gravitation boom on a spacecraft severed the boom.
To avoid future collisions JSPOC is in constant contact with NASA and other international space entities to inform them when a spacecraft or satellite might be threatened so that the spacecraft could be maneuvered around the space debris much like a boat maneuvers around hazards in a waterway.
Beneath the surface of the water here what you can't see is what's going to actually give you the most damage if we run into a log or a snag beneath the surface.
And in orbit, that's the same problem that we face.
We don't track all the debris that could actually cripple or kill your spacecraft and we rely on the fact that you're just statistically unlikely to hit a piece of debris to protect you and that insurance policy is going to run out someday.
Fortunately, there haven't been any catastrophic collisions between inhabited spacecraft and space debrisyet.
We've never seen a human-piloted spacecraft run into orbital debris and been damaged but we've had some close calls.
Objects, no matter what their size are always in danger of being pulled out of their orbits by orbital decay.
Orbital decay occurs when an object loses speed, caused by friction and begins to be pulled towards Earth by gravity.
Atmospheric drag is the major cause of orbital decay like a bicyclist on the road.
When you're pedaling along at a constant speed you're balancing your muscle power against the drag on the tires from the road and the resistance of the air that you're moving through.
And you overcome that resistance on a bicycle with your muscles or in space by firing your rocket engines to add a little speed, overcome that air resistance.
That's what has to happen in space to keep the space station from falling back to Earth and burning up.
And if you stop adding thrust, that air resistance will eventually slow you down to the point where you'll stop or fall back into the atmosphere and re-enter.
Some pieces survive re-entry and the size of these pieces that have fallen to Earth is terrifying.
In the last 40 years have survived re-entry.
Back in 1997, we had a 570-pound stainless steel tank that landed about 50 yards from a farmer's house in Texas.
He was not particularly pleased by that.
If a piece of debris does survive re-entry it travels at subsonic speeds of 120 miles per hour until it hits ground.
There was a re-entry that came into Cape Town in South Africa.
It was during the day and there were people out working in fields.
They heard a sonic boom and they looked up and they basically saw this material coming down.
The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California is a facility that collects and studies space junk for the military and private companies.
This is a piece of what was once a piece of space junk.
This was a part of a rocket stage that was used to put a GPS satellite in orbit.
Here you can see the brackets that were actually melted off as this came down.
We actually have cut samples here to try to understand what happened in this area, how hot did it get and we use that information to improve our models.
Understanding how these pieces survive re-entry is important for future spacecraft and satellite construction.
Recovering and reusing critical spacecraft parts could save millions in manufacturing costs.
However, collecting space debris remains tricky.
Three-quarters of the Earth's surface is water so a lot of it lands in the water.
So when you find a piece on the ground it's actually a very rare event.
It's estimated the amount of space debris will double by 2050.
But that hasn't deterred entrepreneurs who continue to explore Earth orbit as a business location.
For a mere $2,500, Memorial Spaceflights which began service in 2008 will launch ashes of a loved one into low Earth orbit.
It's a fitting end to anyone who dreamed of one day visiting outer space.
This is just one of the many ideas entrepreneurs are developing for Earth orbit.
But to run a business in space there needs to be a way to obtain permanent occupancy.
Here we are in the early years of the 21st century and I foresee space becoming an industrial park.
Skylab, Mir, and now the International Space Station have all provided an arena for long-term habitation and experiments in space.
What if private companies could also have spacecraft orbiting the Earth? I think we were and are the first company to have deployed that kind of structure.
Just off the Las Vegas Strip Bob Bigelow and his team at Bigelow Aerospace are hunkered down in a high-security facility creating a new generation of spacecraft.
I'm living out a childhood fantasy is what it is.
And I think that we are involved in something really important.
Private industry is exploring the opportunities of our edge of space.
Bigelow Aerospace is developing inflating workspaces called Genesis to launch into Earth orbit.
The technology was inspired by NASA.
I came across an article about a technology that NASA had been working on and I thought, "Oh, my God, this is great.
" NASA developed an inflatable module, a room called the TransHab.
It was going to be joined to the space station to provide more living space.
NASA was never able to afford executing that plan.
Eventually, after a number of years we acquired the licenses from NASA for their patents.
The concept is ingenious.
Bigelow spacecraft are inflatable pods that tuck into the nose of an unmanned rocket during launch then expand to three times their travel size to full capacity once released into orbit.
In a rocket ferry, you only have so much volume so much room like this bottle.
That's as big as it gets.
That's it.
But if you launch something in that volume that can later expand to three times its size you have a lot more room to do something with.
We use compressed gas to expand it into its form.
The inflatable spacecraft could be adapted to whatever a client might need- research laboratory, manufacturing facility, hotel space- all emerging industries for Earth orbit.
We can host a variety of different kinds of clients and they only have to pay for the specific time that they're interested in.
The spacecraft is assembled from very durable but bendable materials called soft good systems.
You've driven all your life on soft goods.
You've driven on tires.
Inflatable systems can be extremely reliable and very strong.
Bigelow is not worried about the reliability of his launch system.
The Dnepr 18 rockets he's using are the same ones the Russians trust with some of their most precious payloads.
They have about 1,100 of those rockets with nuclear missiles on them right now.
We're not going to fail because the rocket failed.
Once in orbit, instrumentation is powered by four solar panels just like the International Space Station.
The Genesis spacecraft is a new generation of space station and it might be a vast improvement from the government-issue brand.
What we're working on, if we're successful is a much safer vessel for humans to be in than the aluminum cans are.
Our inflatable hull structure is adequate to protect against any type of thermal effects micro-meteoroid protection, radiation effects.
Bigelow Aerospace now has two private spacecraft, Genesis I and II orbiting 340 miles above Earth the only privately owned spacecraft of their kind orbiting in the edge of space.
Launching spacecraft into Earth orbit is only one challenge.
Picking an appropriate inclination for its orbits is another.
The orientation of an orbit really is just a measure of the degree of tilt from the line running through the equator.
You can have anything from zero-degree inclination to 90-degree inclination.
The zero-degree inclination is absolutely no tilt whatsoever from the equator and that is called an equatorial orbit.
Whereas, if you have a 90-degree tilt from the equator that is a polar orbit.
Satellites and spacecraft are launched into different inclinations depending on their mission because different inclinations pass over different parts of Earth.
If you're going around the Earth around the equator, what do you get to see? It's just what's below you, which is going to be what? The equator.
So an inclination of the orbit, at, say, 56 degrees covers almost all of the population of the Earth.
A polar orbit satellite has the ability to view the entire Earth in a few orbital rotations.
As the Earth slowly rotates below the satellite keeps sweeping overhead allowing the entire Earth to be observed in a short period of time.
If the mission is for espionage or observation Sun-synchronous orbits allow satellites to pass over the same point on Earth at the same time every day.
They shift one degree each Earth day to stay in sync with the Sun at a given location.
If constant communication is necessary geosynchronous satellites are positioned far away from Earth so that entire continents are within their view.
It matches the rotation of the Earth and appears to hover in the sky.
That's a very useful trait of that orbit because you can then stay constantly in radio or television touch with the spot on the ground below.
Earth orbit is the natural extension of Earth's occupation in space.
And if future plans pan out the industrialization of the edge of space will happen in the near future.
It was only 40 years ago John Glenn entered Earth orbit.
What the next 50 or 100 years holds for the future of Earth orbit is as exciting as perhaps a walk on the Moon once was to an older generation.
Bigelow Aerospace has already reached a major milestone by launching their Genesis I and II pods into orbit.
But future spacecraft will be ready for private citizens.
Nobody's done this before.
I mean, people have gone into space but what we're trying to do is make it available.
It's called Sundancer, a 300-cubic-meter inhabitable space that will have the capacity to support up to three human lives indefinitely.
We have to add a lot of life-support equipment to make sure that the environment is sustainable for a crew of three.
That goes into anything from the air concentration system where oxygen has to be delivered, C02 has to get removed all the way through more rigorous thermal control and humidity control.
One Sundancer spacecraft offers more space than is currently available on the entire International Space Station.
Eventually, multiple pods will be connected together like Tinkertoys for larger facilities.
What kind of shape you're choosing depends on the purpose, the mission for the spacecraft.
But like pioneers setting off across the open sea in search of new land, this is uncharted territory.
We have an opportunity to turn that vision into a reality and so far that's exactly what we're doing.
They are one group of many that dream of permanent occupancy at the edge of space.
One thing remains clear.
Earth needs an easy way to deliver spacecraft, cargo, and people into space to take advantage of Earth orbit and the ideas are spectacular.
There have been all kinds of concepts like space elevators.
How about a space fountain- a highly energized wave of particles that lifts cargo up into Earth orbit? The key is finding a cheap way to get those materials up to space.
Or perhaps the resources of space can be mined in a facility orbiting Earth.
Using the resources that are on the Moon and the asteroids nearby to build things in space themselves.
Not have to spend the money to haul them up from the ground.
For example, Lewis and Clark when they went across the continental U.
S they didn't haul all their drinking water and firewood with them from St.
Louis on the way west.
They used what they found along the way.
Earth orbit's greatest gift might be sustainable power.
Imagine an array of solar panels that generates enough power to light up a continent.
That's probably one of the most promising avenues to pursue in the next 50 years in space is to find a way to make cheap solar collectors and then build the collecting antennas on the ground so that we can use inexhaustible solar power to reduce our reliance on the finite supplies of fuel and energy we have here on Earth.
One thing is certain: the edge of space is the entryway to future exploration a stopping point to the destinations across the universe.
I'm very excited about a future decades from now where the Earth really is the Garden of Eden of humanity where we've taken care of our planet our parks, our enjoyment and the things that we love about the Earth are taken care of.
And all the things that we do in terms of manufacturing and resource extraction and energy and mining those things take place in space.
And, of course, low Earth orbit is the gateway to the rest of the solar system.