14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the European Science Foundation (ESF) are proud to announce the TECHBREAK initiative, which seeks to promote and encourage technology transfer from the private industry to the space sector.
Applying the latest innovation in fields such as photonics and nanotechnology could lead to cheaper and more regular space flights, experts believe. Rocket-related pollution could also decrease, as would the number of technical issues related to reaching orbit.
With the new initiative, what the ESF is trying to do is streamline the process of identifying technology areas that may be relevant for space exploration. This turns out to be more difficult to do than anyone anticipated.
But TECHBREAK could be able to look beyond immediately-available, space-related technologies, into sectors that are not necessarily related to space at first glance. For this, experts with it need vision.
ESF officials say that some of the areas which may benefit the spacecraft of the future include photonics, nanotechnology, energy innovation, nuclear propulsion and robotics, to name but a few.
“Space shares the technology and industrial base with other sectors and open innovation is the rule,” explains European Space Agency (ESA) expert Dr. Alberto Tobias.
“In some domains technology advances faster in terrestrial sectors and if space enters the game, it can become a lead user,” the expert goes on to say, SpaceRef reports.
“Bringing the two domains together offers many benefits: better products and lower costs for space; and an increased innovation for terrestrial industries, driven by space research,” he adds.
As some ESF officials put it, the space industry may in fact be unaware of what's happening on the ground, such as for example the development of innovative technologies in fields of research that did not exist a decade or even a year ago.
Therefore, uniting space and non-space communities could be one of the most important step fir promoting innovation. TECHBREAK will basically bring the main actors in both communities together.
The project appeared at the initiative of ESA, which is the European Union's main space innovator. The agency has been growing spectacularly since it was founded, but the pace of progress can be improved even further, the general feeling goes.