Space-Transport

Pedestrians Rushing More and More A study by American Scholar Arianna Salazar-Miranda from Yale University shows something astonishing – and worrying – about our cities. Gone are the days in which people would stroll leasurly through the city centers. Instead, people are increasingly only rushing from A to B, which the study proved by comparing video data from the years 1979-1980 and 2008-2010. They found the average walking speed increased by 15% while the time spent lingering was reduced by 50%. Is it that cities are less attractive nowadays, or do people have less time? My personal theory: Using smartphones, you rarely have to spent some time waiting for someone at a certain place, as you can know up to the minute when the person arrives. But is this really true? More data is needed, but the research direction looks very promising. Will Berlin Become a Car-Free City? Can a big city become completely car free? Paris has made some moves in this direction, decreasing maximum driving speed on many streets and even making some streets car free. Yet the whole city, this would be a completely new level. Do the people in Germany’s capital city want to be the first? This is the proposal of the citizen’s initiative “Berlin Autofrei.” Their idea is that the area within the S-Bahn circle shall become a zone with limited car access. People in this area could use their car only a few times per year - with exceptions for disabled people and first responders. They aim for a referendum, and if the referendum is successful, their initiative could become law. What would be the effect on people if such a drastic change happened in their lifes? Can they adapt their patterns for how to get to work or their kids to daycare in time? Will public transportation be able to cope with the increased demand? Would car ownership really drop? These are interesting questions, but it is also a big experiment. Will the people in Berlin be willing to become part of this experiment? Australias First Rocket Fails Australian Company Gilmour Space launched their first rocket of the type “Eris”. Unfortunately, it failed after only 14 seconds of flight. Yet this flight was enough to put Australia on the list of countries that could soon have access to space. The circle of space nations, it seems to keep growing every day. Title image generated with Stable Diffusion.

Many people dream of colonizing Mars and of using ressources in space to improve life on Earth. To make these dreams come true, we both need an industry in space and an interplanetary transportation system. This article gives an outlook how such an interplanetery transporation system could look like.

If we ever want to colonize the moon or other planets like Mars, we will need to transport huge amounts of material and many colonists to space. Doing this with rockets is costly, inefficient and also dangerous. What if we could lift material and people into space just like an elevator? This is the concept of the Space Elevator. This article summarizes the concept of the Space Elevator and examines what would happen if we really built one.

A colony on Mars has been a dream and a vision for many people. The plans for a trip to Mars that SpaceX and Elon Musk revealed earlier this year have given these dreams a fresh boost. Should Humans ever go to Mars and establish a colony there, they will need a functioning, self-sustaining economy. This economy will need a transport infrastructure to support it. In this article, I lay out how this infrastructure could look like and which forces influence it.