Space in the home: what industry developments do we use in our daily life?

Cosmos penetrates into all spheres of life. What things and technologies have entered into everyday life and what innovations may appear very soon, the Skoltech Space Center expert Alexander Harlan told MIR 24 TV channel.

– If you make a rating of technologies that have migrated from the field of space development into everyday life, which ones will be in the top?

Alexander Harlan: First, this is originally a military space technology – satellite navigation, without which we cannot imagine everyday life, and secondly, space communications, with the help of which many in remote regions of Russia, including talking on a mobile phone, which is then connected via satellite. In addition, there are many technologies in the field of materials science – many high-tech materials were invented to make something lighter, more heat-resistant – this was all invented for space, today it is used in everyday things.

Space in the home: what industry developments do we use in our daily life?

WORLD 24 More videos SHARE Tweet SHARE SHARE MAIL What else to see

The composition of the new expedition to the ISS is approved before the launch at Baikonur

WORLD 24
Zoom said they are ready to sell services in Russia directly

WORLD 24
Edible packaging: an environmentally friendly cling film was created in the Urals

WORLD 24
A Soyuz rocket with a portrait of Gagarin was installed at the Baikonur site

WORLD 24
The nutritionist told how many times a week children can eat sweets

WORLD 24
Finding out what longevity depends on

WORLD 24
The scientist explained how the disappearance of the magnetic field will affect the protection of the Earth from radiation. EXCLUSIVE

WORLD 24
Displacement Point: Could Magnetic Pole Reversal Occur?

WORLD 24
Developers will be able to update “Sputnik V” in two days in the event of a virus mutation

WORLD 24
The neutrino hunt: why do we need to know how the galaxy began?

WORLD 24
Switzerland invented a robot that kills coronavirus

WORLD 24
Expert: You need to take a good place on the moon. EXCLUSIVE

WORLD 24
Who and why seeks to gain a foothold on the moon?

WORLD 24
Space Race: the artificial satellite “Luna-10” entered orbit 55 years ago

WORLD 24
The immunologist explained where the coronavirus will go after the pandemic

WORLD 24

Click to Expand Repeat Video

The composition of the new expedition to the ISS was approved before the launch at Baikonur. The crew included the Russians Oleg Novitsky and Peter Dubrov, as well as the American Mark Vande Hai.

Zoom said that they are ready to sell services in Russia directly. On the eve of the management of the American company banned from providing government agencies and state-owned companies with paid access to its service.

Edible packaging: environmentally friendly cling film was created in the Urals. The film can be used for packaging meat, sliced fruits and vegetables.

FOLLOWING

– How did sneakers with an innovative sole entered our lives?

Alexander Harlan: Shoe designers took inspiration from spacesuits and sealed helmets, and this came in handy when it became necessary to protect the runner from shock loads, and tried to implement what is already in spacesuits. An air capsule appeared in the sneakers, which, upon impact, when the foot touches the surface, flows into the associated air channels.

– In 2008, NASA, together with one of the sports brands, introduced a seamless swimsuit. In Beijing at the Olympics, 98% of the medalists in water sports wore such suits. What is the specificity of these suits? What technologies were used to create them?

Alexander Harlan: Although this is a development that was positioned as made together with NASA, it is not very directly related to space. There, just a special water-repellent fabric was used, there are no seams, and the fabric reduces water resistance, the friction of the athlete's body against the water, and the swimming speed increases by several percent. We know that in Olympic sports, a few percent is everything.

This is a development that was carried out under the NASA brand, because many different studies are being carried out for space, some of which never enter space, but the materials science of space is moving forward very much, and, perhaps, some developments were used in these suits.

– Is the ability of cameras also a result of space exploration?

Alexander Harlan: A digital camera sensor was first used on the Apollo Moon missions to capture high-quality footage of the lunar surface. This also includes a laser radar.

Matrices of digital cameras, technologies, indeed, step forward largely due to space applications. This is not so much about the Moon, but about modern near-Earth satellites, which make high-quality survey of the Earth's surface in various applications – from military to civilian type of meteorology, monitoring fires, emergency situations, and so on. It is a powerful driver of technologies for the development of both optics, and electronics related to optical systems, and many other things.

– In 2018, human cartilage tissue and mouse thyroid tissue were printed on the ISS using a bioprinter. The results were considered successful. How soon can such devices enter our lives?

Alexander Harlan: It is difficult to talk about this, because years can pass from a successful experiment to implementation in everyday life, especially in the case of bio- and medical technologies. Everyone has heard of the vaccine testing cycle, we remember that from the first successful vaccination to the introduction to the masses, a year passed, even with the situation that we know, when everyone really wants to. In such things as organ printing, you also need to formulate a business case, a business model, so that someone can buy it and put it somewhere. It is unlikely that now clinics around the planet will rush to buy all this quickly, because it is not a fact that it will pay off.

The first stage is – the experiment is successful. The second stage is to prove that it is safe for people, the third is to create a successful industrial design. The fourth stage is its optimization to levels where everything can be cheap and cost-effective. Fifth – an advertising campaign. To get people to buy it, to be interested in services, to consider getting organs printed, to go to the clinic and ask for help. I think that another ten years should pass before that.

– Some scientists believe that the future is a 3 D hybrid printer that recycles plastic waste and can print other items.

Alexander Harlan: This technology was not created for space. It is used in space, but this is a consequence of the fact that the technology has already been invented on Earth. I have a positive attitude to this, because we know what problems all of humanity is experiencing with garbage, with waste. The fact that we have become one step closer to efficiently and efficiently recycling plastic waste, using it again for printing parts – this is important not only in space, but also on Earth, it is on Earth, it needs to be developed.

– A team of Moscow engineers has created a photobioreactor that can grow algae. Can it be useful on Earth?

Alexander Harlan: I know this team. They did not create this for the Earth, it is just created on Earth for space, in order to answer one of the main questions: if a person flies in a spaceship very far, suppose we solved the problem of accelerating the ship or what are people on board doing all the time, and how to generate air, how to ensure the normal regeneration of oxygen from carbon dioxide, how to turn this spaceship into a closed ecosystem. The most obvious answer is to bring algae there, which will use photosynthesis to produce oxygen back. So far, this is not particularly necessary on Earth – not all the trees have been cut down yet.

– What good and useful things can come to us from space in the near future?

Alexander Harlan: Of course, I would like to mention the broadband Internet, which we are about to expect to see in the Internet performance, when the zone in which you can get a broadband communication channel on your phone will be expanded to the whole Earth – there will be no problems with roaming. with local operators, providers – everything will be distributed from space. This is, indeed, a very cool technology that arose from the space communication of previous generations, which originated as the need to communicate with the board from the Earth. It would be good to see it in the near future, and we will see how it transforms our lives.