Interplanetary space

“ Interplanetary space we have the radiations of the sun to depend upon, and they are decidedly sufficient, usually superfluously so. But in the infinite depths of interstellar space, there is only darkness and a perfect reservoir for radiations. There would be continuous cooling by radiation, and no sun to warm the ship. I could understand how the ship might carry enough matter to warm it for one hundred years, but in sixteen hundred years so much energy must be radiated that the entire mass would not suffice. Nothing short of an entire planet would be sufficient. ”

“ At last there came a time when the planet of the globe-men was fast becoming too cold for existence there, and then their scientists stirred themselves to find a way out. Spurred on by necessity, they hit upon the invention of the gravity screen and with it constructed their first interplanetary space-ships. ”

“ This process would be gradual, because the molecules of a gas fly in all directions, only a small proportion having their trajectories directly away from the center of the globe on which they are held. But a singular consequence of this theory is that interplanetary space must contain an enormous number of such wandering molecules, and every attracting body must draw more or less of them to its surface, thus forming an atmosphere for itself. ”

“ But about the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth the insufficiency of this view began to be fully recognized, and interplanetary space was conceived as tenanted by shoals of moving bodies exceedingly small in mass and dimension as compared with the planets. ”

“ Our space vehicles have probed the interplanetary space to distances of tens of millions of miles from the earth. They have shown that the earth is not moving through an empty space but through an exceedingly thin magnetized plasma. ”

“ The Earth satellite vehicle will have to prove itself as a practical base, a sort of aerial aircraft carrier from which rocket ships can operate on the Earth shuttle. Before we are ready for interplanetary travel, we will have to harness some tremendous power not now available -- perhaps cosmic rays. There may have to be other space bases established as refueling stations or navigation check points. Incredible as this sounds, intelligent scientists and engineers expect to do it in a few decades. ”

“ It thus appears that the upper strata, both of the sun and of the earth, consist of the lighter constituents which are largely removed from the lower atmosphere by their lightness, and no limit can be placed upon the distance to which these elements would travel from sun or earth into interplanetary space. What is true of sun and earth is doubtless true also of other planets and other suns, and it seems not impossible that even interstellar space may contain these and similar gases in an almost infinitely attenuated condition. ”

“ For every new irregularity that was found, in the motion of Mars, for instance, a new and additional bar was requisitioned, until interplanetary space was hopelessly filled with revolving bars, each producing one of the epicycles, some large, some small, that were needed to take up the vagaries of the several planets. ”

“ Increase man's knowledge of the universe.
Exploration of the solar system and observations beyond the solar system should be important continuing broad objectives of the Nation's space program. Many unanswered scientific questions remain about the planets, the interplanetary medium, the sun - both as a type of star and as a source of the earth's energy - and about a variety of celestial objects, such as pulsars, quasars, X-ray and gamma ray sources. ”

“ In view of the various cosmogonies which have been advanced for the genesis of the solar system it is interesting to note what these speeds imply as to the effect upon the satellites of the impact of particles circulating in the interplanetary spaces at the time the system evolved. To simplify the question we shall suppose—which is sufficiently near the truth—that the planets move in circles, the interplanetary particles in orbits of any eccentricity. ”

“ During the satellite’s planned 52 hours in orbit, it relayed information on the relationship between terrestrial and interplanetary magnetic fields and the solar wind.
To continue the study of solar wind and interplanetary magnetic fields, Explorer 12 was orbited by a Delta launch vehicle on August 16, 1961. It was the first in a series of satellites to study energetic particles in space. These electrons and protons constitute the earth’s radiation belts and they affect weather and other phenomena on Earth. ”

“ If the appearance of our observer units and manned craft caused too violent reactions on the planet, the explorers would withdraw to their orbiting space vehicle and either wait for a lull or else start the long trip back home. Another interplanetary craft from the earth might take its place later to resume periodic surveys. ”

“ Since the beginning of the Space Age, scientists had dreamed of sending probes to Jupiter and its family of satellites. Initially, robot spacecraft were limited to studying the Earth and its Moon. In 1962, however, the first true interplanetary explorer, Mariner 2, succeeded in escaping the Earth-Moon system and crossing 100 million kilometers of space to encounter Venus, studying Earth’s sister planet at close range using half a dozen scientific instruments. ”

“ Many persons concluded that the unknowns must be interplanetary in origin because, as Life magazine commented, no natural object hurtling at such a speed could execute a right-angled turn, and no known machine could fly so fast without making a sound or leaving a trail. ”

“ An extensive study of the outer solar system is recognized by us to be one of the major objectives of space science in this decade. This endeavor is made particularly exciting by the rare opportunity to explore several planets and satellites in one mission using long-lived spacecraft and existing propulsion systems. ”

“ Supplies of energy, stored and generated, must be established if extrasolar spacecraft are to survive in the depths of interstellar space far from convenient sources of power (such as stars) for a major portion of their lives. The technologies of command, control, and communication over stellar and galactic distances ultimately also must be developed. ”

“ Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. ”

“ You know, of course, that a long time ago, before even interplanetary ships were developed, the belief was general that not more than about four planetary solar systems could be in existence at any one time in the whole Galaxy? ”

“ After ten more years the Sun would be unable to support its family. The planets they now inhabited—Earth, Venus and Mercury—were supported artificially. The atmospheres of all the planets had long since slowly dissipated into space, and with them had gone the water. These vital things were being replaced constantly by transmutation of the elements of the rocks of the planets. Long ages ago Earth had had a large satellite, which had been used through the ages to supply energy for the factories of man, and to supply the necessary atmosphere. ”

“ It is well that we have made the wonderful advance that we have, for it has given us the secret of interplanetary flight, and in time to relieve the pressure of our population. Fortunately, your earth is only a little larger than ours, some 10%, and though almost half again as far away from the sun, your atmosphere is even better suited to us than our own. ”

“ Our own solar system, composed as it is of many parts, of thousands of meteors and comets, of numbers of satellites and planets, all revolving around one common centre, also forms a complete and perfect mechanism in itself. For millions and millions of years this perfect mechanism has been harmoniously working together in all its parts, as it moves in all its unity through the realms of infinite space. ”

“ Whatever difficulties we may have in forming a consistent idea of the constitution of the ether, there can be no doubt that the interplanetary and interstellar spaces are not empty, but are occupied by a material substance or body which is certainly the largest and probably the most uniform body of which we have any knowledge. ”

“ In flight, each spacecraft would have to perform more than 90,000 measurements per day, reporting back to the Earth on 52 engineering readings, the changes in interplanetary magnetic fields, the density and distribution of charged particles and cosmic dust, and the intensity and velocity of low-energy protons streaming out from the Sun. ”

“ And further, a planet having an axis inclined to the plane of its orbit, must, while its form is very oblate, have its plane of rotation greatly disturbed by the attraction of external bodies; whereas its approach to a spherical form, involving a less extreme precessional motion, implies less marked variations in the direction of its axis. Nor is it only in respect of space-relations that the Solar System in general and in detail has become more precise. ”

“ Thus, if every planet and satellite could be conceived to be motionless in space, and these two forces could be set in operation without producing rotation or translation in space, which is impossible, then every planet and satellite would occupy, by the joint exercise of these two forces, the same position in relation to the sun represented by their mean distances, as long as the solar system existed as a separate system in the realm of aetherial space. ”

“ Probably many round trips to the moon will be made before going farther in space. Which planet will be explored first, after the moon?
According to Air Force reports, it is almost a certainty that planets outside the solar system are inhabited. But because of the vast distances involved, expeditions to our neighboring planets may be tried before the more formidable journeys. More than one prominent astronomer believes that life, entirely different from our own, may exist on some solar planets. Besides Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, there are five more that, like the earth, revolve around the sun. ”

“ The medium which fills universal space, whether it be a luminiferous ether, or arise from the indefinite expansion of planetary atmospheres, must retard the bodies which move in it, even were it 360,000 millions of times more rare than atmospheric air; and, with its time of revolution gradually shortening, the satellite must return to its planet, the planet to its sun, and the sun to its primeval nebula. The fate of our system, thus deduced from mechanical laws, must be the fate of all others. Motion cannot be perpetuated in a resisting medium ”

“ There are thousands of millions of suns in our galaxy, and not less than one in three has planets, and among these myriads of unknown worlds there will be thousands with seas and land and clouds and continents, fit for men to enter upon, there to rear their cities. There will be starships roaming distant sun-clusters, and landing on planets in the Milky Way. We ourselves will see freight-lines to Rigel and Arcturus, and journey on passenger-liners singing through the void to Andromeda and Aldebaran! ”

“ Our scientists have spent centuries in perfecting a machine for interplanetary flight. We have long had the necessary power. The problem was to determine the relative position of the two planets, the pull of gravity of the sun, Venus and your earth, the time necessary to make the flight, the provisioning and ventilating of the projectile, the perfecting of a device to detect and repel meteorites, and countless other problems, all vitally important. ”

“ Such a distance reduces proportionably the attraction; yet our sun with its attendant planets is drawn by mutual attraction toward the nearest star, supposing them to be of the same size, with a force great enough to break a cable, each of whose strands, 236 in number, should be a solid bar of steel one mile square; or, if we change our scale, and employ such bars as those used when speaking of the interplanetary forces, bars of steel one foot square, then the attraction between the nearest tiny speck of light and our sun would be equal to the united strength of 6,500,000,000 such bars. ”

“ Fortunately, the exploration of the moon and nearby planets need not be held up for lack of rocket engines big enough to send men and instrument carriers out into space and home again. Much that scientists wish to learn from satellites and space voyages into the solar system can be gathered by instruments and transmitted back to earth. ”

“ And yet the thousands of stars which stud the heavens are at distances so much greater than that of Neptune that our solar system is like a little colony, separated from the rest of the universe by an ocean of void space almost immeasurable in extent. The orbit of the earth round the sun is of such size that a railway train running sixty miles an hour, with never a stop, would take about three hundred and fifty years to cross it. ”

“ Actually, most of the planets have been found by this technique, either from telescopes on Earth or space ones.
The Kepler space telescope, which is currently on the TESS mission and, in the near future the PLATO mission, have been and will be responsible for discovering new planets, such as the Earth, orbiting other stars, and bringing humanity one step closer to the search for another possible Earth where life may exist because, despite the progress achieved, the most crucial question remains unanswered: Is there life beyond our planet? ”

“ Once the Voyager spacecraft leave the solar system (by 1990, both will be beyond the orbit of Pluto) , they will find themselves in empty space. It will be forty thousand years before they come within a light year of a star, called AC + 79 3888, and millions of years before either might make a close approach to any other planetary system. As Carl Sagan has noted, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. ”