Astronautics - That's what you get out of it!

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Walter
Institute of Astronautics
TU München, Garching
© 2004

Don't worry, this is not a story about the Teflon pan. On the contrary, the Teflon pan is on of the innumerable rumours related to astronautics, just as the daily training runs of astronauts in centrifugal machines, the supposed meals out of tubes, or the impeccable teeth of astronauts; they are all simply wrong. But nevertheless the rumour about the Teflon pan is inextricably linked to astronautics, just like high iron content is linked to spinach, or that the language of the Eskimos has the largest number of words for the different types of snow and ice. But in fact the high iron content of spinach can be traced back to an error in the laboratory, where the iron content was calculated with reference to the dry weight of spinach instead of its wet weight which led to the wrong calculation of the iron content approximately ten times higher then what it actually is (and generations of children had to suffer because of that miscalculation), and according to a study of a US linguist investigating into the Eskimo rumour, this honour is claimed by the Bavarian language. And what about the Teflon pan? Teflon was invented by the US company DuPont already in 1938, and a Frenchman named Gregoire took out a patent on the Teflon padding of a steel pan in 1954. So the Teflon pan has nothing at all to do with astronautics! But where does the rumour come from? It may have its origin in the frequent use of Teflon as an insulating material for cables for the Apollo flights. But that is pure speculation, and nobody really knows it.

Now, if it's not the Teflon pan, what are then the benefits of astronautics? I would like to say beforehand that the practical benefits of astronautics, the so-called spinoffs are its waste products. They may be striking and interesting, they are however not the reason why astronautics is done, but they only appear afterwards, be it deliberate or not, as an application for other areas. Within the framework of a medical experiment on our D-2 Mission to find out the reasons and the progress of ocular hypertension a small device was developed, also to avoid possible ocular damage, that makes it possible that the astronauts measure their own ocular tension. The benefit of this device for patients suffering from ocular hypertension or where this is suspected, was only realised later. The device was further developed until it was ready for production, and is now produced by the company EPSA Elektronik & Präzisionsbau Saalfeld GmbH as a commercial good. Everybody can use it to measure their own ocular tension at home.

Commercialised astronautics There are astronautic areas that are fully commercialised today because of their direct benefits. They have become so familiar that we don't really think about their origin from space. The exact course of the weather of the day before can only be communicated in a visual form with the help of weather satellites, here it is Meteosat, and weather forecasts have considerably improved since these data have been available.

Without TV satellites such as ASTRA or EUTELSAT we would not have available the large variety of different TV programmes, and especially not digital TV. GPS receivers also get their signals from about 30 GPS satellites from space, operated by the US military. As these tracking systems turned out to be very successful, and because the independence from the military's arbitrariness became important, at the moment a similar system called Galileo with further 30 satellites is being developed by the European Space Agency.

As more and more of these satellites crowd the sky, there is also an increasing demand of space shuttles to get them into space. A whole industry formed around this market. Thanks to the French determination years ago, and the Germans only agreed reluctantly, today we have the European company ARIANESPACE, whose ARIANE rockets cover more than 50% of the profitable space shuttle market leading to considerable profits. Only until 1996 ARIANESPACE generated 3½ times the ARIANE development cost which shows its extraordinary success. But the market also includes other types of rockets: the US Delta/Atlas rockets, and also more and more Russian Proton rockets, Indian launcher rockets as well as the until now less successful Chinese rockets called "Long March".

Earth Observation with Satellites

Satellites as well as the shuttle have a position in space that enables them to excellently observe details as well as large-scale connections and changes. Commercially successful satellites like the US LANDSAT, the French SPOT, or the Indian IRS have been used and developed in the optical areas to systematically observe the Earth's surface. The European Union for example preferably uses the LANDSAT data up to a value of 100 million euros per year to crack down on agricultural subsidy fraud. This makes it possible to check on farmers who declare that their fields lie fallow. Apparently this saves the EU billions of euros of subsidies. Satellite-based radar systems are particularly important for Europe. Although the interpretation of radar data is still in its infancy, i.e. at the moment their use is relatively limited, they are able to provide high-resolution pictures even with heavy clouds and, as they are active systems, also at night. Radar systems is one of the few, albeit at the moment relatively unimportant issues, where Germany together with the US and Canada is a system leader, particularly in the field of radar systems in the x-band area, the so-called X-SAR.

figure 1: Surface temperatures at the Strait of Gibraltar in August 1996

Environmental sensors are an absolutely new field. The hole in the ozone layer was only discovered with US-American TOMS systems, and we have been able to observe its expansion over the years.

Scientific Findings by means of Space Probes and Space Missions

All our detailed knowledge about the outer planets in our solar system comes from the popular probes Pioneer and Voyager as well as later on from Galileo. Only the Mars probes of the Mariner and Viking series and lately the US probes Spirit and Opportunity and the European probe Mars Express as well as the Venus probe Magellan gave us a more specific insight of their surfaces and properties. With the space telescopes Hubble, ROSAT or GAUSS on the D-2 mission, stationed in space and thus avoiding the limiting influence of the Earth's atmosphere, we can not only penetrate further into space, but their totally new findings provided us in the last year with a clearer idea about the creation of our world (creation of stars) and their fading in black holes.

Astronautic Spinoffs

figure 3: Microchips from the Apollo era revolutionised Electronic Engineering.

Let's talk about the direct practical applications from astronautics. One of them is the device to measure ocular tension of the D-2 mission already mentioned. But also the pocket calculator has its origins in space. The first pocket calculators were launched onto the market in 1974 shortly after the Apollo missions, because in the Saturn rockets there was hardly any space for system control due to the huge amounts of fuel. That's why the first electronic chips were created to use even the smallest corners of the rocket stages. And only these chips enabled building the first compact

But also the shuttle technology starts to have an impact on our daily life: Velcro tapes, which are today widely used for children's and sports shoes as well as for casual clothes, were developed by and for astronautics. In weightlessness you cannot put anything down, all the loose parts just hover and drift around. That's why every part onboard a space craft is equipped with a piece of Velcro tape, so that you can stick it onto its counterparts which you can find everywhere in the shuttle.

One of the problems of the NASA when building the most complicated vehicle that has ever been built by mankind was to manage the vast number of shuttle parts. So they developed the bar code which you can find today on all packaged goods considerably facilitating cash accounting as well as goods logistics. The principle of the fuel cell produced and used for the shuttle, which uses the cold burning of hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity and pure water, is the main energy source of the shuttle, and in the future it will play a decisive role for the environmentally friendly hydrogen circulation; it was first presented in the car "neCar II" by Mercedes-Benz in May 1996 as the light alternative for electric cars without polluting batteries. All the larger heater manufacturers are today working on the decentralised production of electricity and heat for houses by means of fuel cells.

figure 4: A spinoff of the D-2 mission: The space mouse can be used to turn and move projections in all direction in CAD applications

But also the so-called memory alloys of titanium for flexible glasses frames and high-strength kevlar and non-combustible nomex fibres of DuPont for extreme conditions such as bulletproof vests or ultralight high-pressure tanks were originally developed for the shuttle. A kevlar layer in the space suit protects the astronauts from micrometeorite impacts during a space walk, and this is exactly the material which is today used as PET for "indestructible" returnable bottles.

The German company DORNIER took out a patent for the lithotripter which also has its origins in space development. Heatpipes, GaAs solar cells, micropumps etc. were also refined by means of space research and development patents. Apart from the device for measuring ocular tension, we owe the D-2 weightlessness research improved engine plain bearings, development contributions for the Audi A8 "Space Frame", the space mouse for CAD applications, the UV biofilm, the baby suit against cot death, ...

There are so many practical applications, and their extent has not yet even been explored, that there is a marketing company for aerospace developments called MST Aerospace GmbH in Cologne. The NASA publishes a yearly booklet about the NASA spinoffs.

Mankind in Astronautics

If you ask people on the streets what is the most important event of space travel in the past, almost everybody will say it is the moonlanding. But of course most people won't think about the following spinoffs and the new findings about the composition and origin of the Moon, but the moonlandings were achievements in their own right. The step on the Moon has manifested itself as the symbolic step of mankind into space to gain new experience about the Earth and themselves. Mankind throws off the shackles of the Earth, goes beyond the limits of what used to be possible. That is the higher, cultural task of astronautics, which the US has long realised; this is even laid down in the statutes of the NASA. The Americans are the ones who are aware of the historical dimension of space travel, and they also understand it as their task for the future. John Pike of the Association of American Scientists: "Some countries built cathedrals, the British have their monarchy and Westminster Abbey, we have a space programme and the aerospace museum" And: "Just like the cathedrals are a place of pilgrimage for the Old World, Cape Kennedy and US space travel is the place of pilgrimage of US citizens."

If only one person is able to fly, we all do it! That is the foundation of the very own interest people have in manned space travel. To look back onto our space ship Earth from space and to see it with very different eyes, that is the new discovery of space travel - and the astronaut is the messenger.