By Joseph Gettenberg
On December 19, 1972, the Apollo 17 command module reentered the Earth’s atmosphere and splashed down into the Pacific Ocean, concluding a highly successful operation to the moon. Apollo 17 spent several days on the moon and retrieved massive amounts of lunar samples. The mood inside NASA at that moment was jubilant; the epic Apollo program had been concluded, and tantalizing prospects were just over the cosmic horizon: permanent research stations on both the moon and in orbit, an ambitious Space Shuttle program that was envisioned to allow space travel as easy as taking a commercial flight, and probably-not-feasible plans for ships capable of transporting tens of thousands of pounds of supplies to the moon.
Many took for granted that American boots would be on the red sands of Mars in the beginning of the 21st century. While these predictions and concept studies certainly had an element of fantasy to them, we can’t ascertain how much could have been achieved had the optimism clear in these proposals persisted in the American people and NASA. However, due to the war in Vietnam, inflation, the incredible dangers of space travel, and an increasing outcry against the absolutely astronomical spending necessary to send men to the moon (roughly 4% of the Federal budget in 1964-1966), using technology that mostly had to be invented, interest in NASA and available funds waned. The space program slowly faded from the minds of many Americans after a pair of heartrending tragedies, the Challenger and Columbia disasters in 1986 and 2003 respectively, and unfortunately overlooked space stations. Since the twilight of Apollo, no manned craft has gone farther than 300 miles from earth, the distance at which the International Space Station (ISS) and its predecessors operate.
Yet, in the early 2000s, a potential savior surfaced. Private space ventures began to emerge, foreseeing massive profit and monumental development in making space accessible and (relatively) cheap for exploration and tourism alike. Initially, companies like Blue Origin and Space X knew that reusable rockets – programmed to land following detaching from their payload – were the future. Breakthroughs included when reusable rockets were pioneered by Blue Origin and SpaceX and space tourism companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX were being hired to deliver astronauts to the ISS. Even in Europe, known for its aversion to privatization, the European Space Agency (ESA), following glitches and delays in its rocket programs and the hostile geopolitical situation restricting their access to Russian Soyuz launchers, announced they were welcoming private partnerships in order to ensure Europe’s competitiveness in the coming years. While in the past the march of space privatization has been inexorable, it has now reached a fever pitch.
Polaris Dawn was an entirely private space mission operated by SpaceX and paid for by tech CEO, stunt pilot, and astronaut Jared Isaacman, who orbited the earth for 72 hours in 2021. Although private space flights have occurred for years, Polaris Dawn is exceptional in numerous ways. For instance, the specially modified SpaceX Crew Dragon craft went 870 miles from the earth for a portion of the five day mission. Although this apogee, or high point of an orbit, is only about .3% of the way to the moon, it was no touristy jaunt. Indeed, it was the furthest humans have ever been on a non-lunar mission. Additionally, the mission raised money for a great cause: St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
Furthermore, Polaris Dawn was actually productive. Commander Isaacman, Pilot Scott Poteet, mission specialists Anna Menon, and Sarah Gillis had a litany of mission objectives, mostly to further medical and operational safety in space. The target apogee of 870 miles from earth allowed the studying of the Van Allen radiation belts, a somewhat poorly understood region of space where Earth’s magnetic field traps high energy particles from the sun, leading to a torus shaped “belt” of concentrated (roughly 1000 times that of regular space) radiation around the Earth. Although a short transit through the belt is fairly safe, both extended stays as well as solar storms could pose a threat of radiation poisoning as well as malfunction in sensitive electronics. Understanding the belts and the effect of their radiation on humans is critical to advancing space ambitions, especially considering that cosmic rays from outside our solar system are a much more serious threat.
Besides the ambitious distance obtained by Polaris Dawn, there were several other significant highlights from this mission, including the fact that it was the first ever commercial spacewalk, where Isaacman and Gillis took turns leaving the craft. Because the mission used the SpaceX Crew Dragon, which lacks an airlock, astronauts exiting the craft exposed the entire craft to the vacuum of space and depressurization, meaning all four crewmembers were, technically speaking, on a spacewalk. The primary goal of the livestreamed spacewalk was to test out procedures and maneuverability in the new SpaceX EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) suits, which are billed as the future of space travel. Instead of a bulky, complex suit whose fundamental design was decades old, the new suits were much more light, sleek, and intuitive, allowing for increased mobility and a shorter learning curve. They also integrated various cutting edge technologies not present on other suits like a heads up display (HUD) akin to that of a fighter pilot. SpaceX opted to connect the suits to the ship by an umbilical which provided most of the life support. The mission also conducted an extensive battery of medical tests and monitoring to learn more about the effect of all stages of space travel on human physiology, and test using SpaceX’s Starlink for high bandwidth connection in space.
If Polaris Dawn and the upcoming Artemis missions by NASA do kickstart a new “Space Race,” hopefully with international cooperation, the results could be immeasurable. The Apollo program invented integrated circuits so central to the modern world that their trade alone accounts for roughly four percent of the global GDP. If space travel is normalized and the tantalizing prospect of mining space for resources occurs, our society could look significantly different. We can’t know exactly what will come from space exploration, but there’s only one way forward: up.
Photo Caption: Polaris Dawn launching into outer space
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons