Aerospace
Written by Tega Jessa
A line graph of the NASA budget
Aerospace refers to any science or technology dealing with moving or traveling through the earth's atmosphere and outer space. This term is broad as it refers to all technologies used under military, commercial, and industrial applications. In many ways this makes sense as it follows the natural progression of the science of flight from private invention, to military application, to aeronautics and space exploration.
An interesting fact is that due to its capital intensive nature, the major consumers of goods produced in the aerospace industry are governments. This has produced interesting relationships where key private companies procure government contracts to produce vehicles and proponents for military and scientific use. In the United States the two main Aerospace companies are Boeing and Lockheed Martin. In Europe the equation is slightly altered with some of the companies being owned by the government. A current example is AirBus, the commercial plane manufacturer that is owned by France.
The two biggest government consumers of Aerospace goods is the United States Military and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The military mostly order fighter jets, carrier craft, missiles, and their supporting components. NASA is more directly involved with space exploration and scientific research. The interesting side effect of this arrangement is that many technologies flow freely from the government into the private sector. This is what created the modern commercial airline industry. In the case of NASA, many key technologies are appropriated for use in the private sector.
As mentioned before the private sector also play a role in aerospace. It builds the craft and components and many of the technologies used in the manufacturing process are used in other industries. However, new player are now emerging in the private market with the promise of the commercialization of space travel. Companies like Virgin Galactica are now investing in producing the apparatus in infrastructure to launch vehicles on their own. This would be a huge step since only governments have had the resources to so for the past 40 years. One of the benefits is that the private sector will be able to spur innovations in cost reduction and manufacturing that will help make more advanced projects possible in the future.
Aerospace is often overlooked, but thanks to this industry many of today's modern advances in technology and the birth of new industries has been made possible. It becomes more important to support continued research in this field as the global economy looks for new engines of growth.
If you enjoyed this article there are others on Universe Today that you will enjoy. There is a great article on the Space Race. There is also another good article on space hotels.
There are also great resources on the web. Stanford University did a study on the expenditures of the Department of Defense and NASA. The NASA website has an article that goes into detail about its 2009 budget.
You can also listen to Astronomy Cast. Episode 144 is about space elevators and talks about the challenges of finding resources to build it.
Filed under: Astronomy
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