Most people have never heard of Aerospace
Tooling. Even fewer know what exactly an aerospace engineer does, even though
it is one of the most exacting disciplines on the face of the planet. Where
tolerances are measured in microns and a single mistake can cost millions or
billions of dollars in losses of hardware and even human life.
In this
article, we will look at some of the aspects of the field of High Tech that
allows man to go into outer space and someday set foot on Mars and the rest of
the planets.
When you
have finished reading you will become aware of just how much the future of
America depends on this little know field that put men on the Moon in 1969.
The Wright Brothers started it
Wilbur and
Orville were the first Aerospace
Engineers, a long line that ran all the way from Kitty Hawk up to Wernher
Van Braun and the Saturn 5 rocket. Nowadays the US has outsourced much of its
space launch work to Russia and China. We have scaled back to sending unmanned
probes to the moon and Mars where small robots are running around the surface
and a few days ago both a new American and Indian Space Probe took up orbit
around the Red Planet.
Unfortunately,
the Martian cities like Helium and the world of Barsoom envisioned by Edgar
Rice Burroughs do not exist. There is still a lot of knowledge to be had by
going there. The Earth is badly in need of new sources of energy and natural
resources. The only place we can get them is from outer space. We have damaged
our fragile ecosystem in our quest for energy sources and manufacturing our
current way of life.
New Technology
America got
its greatest leap forward in the technology field through Aerospace tooling,
during the development of the Apollo program. Spinoffs from the Space Program
created by those in the Aerospace
industry changed the world.
The world is
about to get another boost after the Dragon unmanned space vehicle delivered to
the International Space station the first in a series of new aerospace tooling
machines that may well change the face of manufacturing on the Earth as well as
space.
The Dragon
delivered a 3D printer, which can build and entire car in 33 hours here on
earth. What is its potential for outer space manufacturing. Creating the shells
for satellites and assembling them in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) would save millions
of dollars on each launch.
New
additions to the space station and space habitats can now be assembled via a
technology that can create everything from a suitcase to possibly soon your
next meal.
NASA is planning to use this technology to
create food for manned missions to Mars and here on Earth it would have a
direct impact on the millions who go to bed each night without enough to eat.
Global warming is having an impact on the arable land and war is erupting in
Africa because of drought and famine.
This new
technology has the possibility of changing all that, as already 3D printers can
synthesize edible products from the basic molecules of chemicals that make up
food. That means we can make food from things that many would now consider
inedible. Cellulose that we cannot digest can be processed into a form that is
digestible and given a pleasing taste and texture. Insects that devour our
crops may become a new source of protein that we can reshape into familiar
shapes and flavours though this new technology.
Housing one
of the great problems facing the people nowadays can now be solved as a home
can be constructed in sections and assembled like a puzzle at a cost of only a
few thousand dollars. Already these new houses are being built and put on the market.
Just think
of what this would mean to the people who survived super storms like Sandy or
the many earthquakes that have occurred in recent month that have left
thousands without basic shelter from the elements.
Aerospace tooling is spearheading the
development of this and many other forms of technology that are now becoming a
necessity rather than a luxury for the survival of the human race as our
numbers climb past 6 billion and approach 7 billion in the next few decades.
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