1.
Apollo 13
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Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The mission was commanded by James A. Lovell with John L. Jack Swigert as Command Module Pilot, Swigert was a late replacement for the original CM pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded by the flight surgeon after exposure to German measles. The story of the Apollo 13 mission has been dramatized multiple times and that crew was composed of L. Gordon Cooper, Jr, Donn F. Eisele, Edgar D. Mitchell. Deke Slayton, NASAs Director of Flight Crew Operations, never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to another mission and he assigned them to the backup crew simply because of a lack of flight-qualified manpower in the Astronaut Office at the time the assignment needed to be made. Slayton felt Cooper had no more than a small chance of receiving the Apollo 13 command, if he did an outstanding job with the assignment. Thus, the original assignment Slayton submitted to his superiors for this flight was, shepard, Jr, Stuart A. Roosa, Edgar D. Mitchell. Seven days before launch, the Backup Lunar Module Pilot, Charlie Duke and this exposed both the prime and backup crews, who trained together. Mattingly was found to be the one of the other five who had not had rubella as a child. Three days before launch, at the insistence of the Flight Surgeon, Mattingly never contracted rubella and was assigned after the mission as Command Module Pilot to Youngs crew, which later flew Apollo 16, the fifth mission to land on the Moon. Vance D. Brand, Jack R. Lousma, Joseph P. Kerwin, Gene Kranz – White Team, Glynn Lunney – Black Team, Milt Windler – Maroon Team, Gerry Griffin – Gold Team. The astronauts mission insignia was sculpted as a medallion titled Steeds of Apollo by Lumen Martin Winter and was struck by the Franklin Mint. Mass, CSM Odyssey 63,470 pounds, LM Aquarius 33,490 pounds, Perigee,99.3 nautical miles, Apogee,100.3 nautical miles, Inclination,31. 817°, Period,88.19 min. The Apollo 13 mission was to explore the Fra Mauro formation, or Fra Mauro highlands and it is a widespread, hilly selenological area thought to be composed of ejecta from the impact that formed Mare Imbrium. The next Apollo mission, Apollo 14, eventually made a flight to Fra Mauro. April 14,1970 UTC Oxygen tank explosion,03,07,53 UTC,173,790.5 nmi from Earth CSM power down, Crew was on board the USS Iwo Jima 45 minutes later. The mission was launched at the time,02,13,00 PM EST on April 11. An anomaly occurred when the second-stage, center engine shut down two minutes early. The engine shutdown was determined to be caused by severe pogo oscillations measured at a strength of 68 g, the vehicles guidance system shut the engine down in response to sensed thrust chamber pressure fluctuations
2.
Aeronautics
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Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies the aspects of aeronautical Art, Science and Engineering and the profession of Aeronautics. A significant part of science is a branch of dynamics called aerodynamics, which deals with the motion of air. Attempts to fly without any real aeronautical understanding have been made from the earliest times, typically by constructing wings, wiser investigators sought to gain some rational understanding through the study of bird flight. An early example appears in ancient Egyptian texts, later medieval Islamic scientists also made such studies. The founders of modern aeronautics, Leonardo da Vinci in the Renaissance and Cayley in 1799, man-carrying kites are believed to have been used extensively in ancient China. In 1282 the European explorer Marco Polo described the Chinese techniques then current, the Chinese also constructed small hot air balloons, or lanterns, and rotary-wing toys. The lifting medium for his balloon would be an aether whose composition he did not know, although his designs were rational, they were not based on particularly good science. Many of his designs, such as a four-person screw-type helicopter, have severe flaws and he did at least understand that An object offers as much resistance to the air as the air does to the object. His analysis led to the realisation that manpower alone was not sufficient for sustained flight, da Vincis work was lost after his death and did not reappear until it had been overtaken by the work of George Cayley. The modern era of lighter-than-air flight began early in the 17th century with Galileos experiments in which he showed that air has weight and these would be lighter than the displaced air and able to lift an airship. His proposed methods of controlling height are still in use today, by carrying ballast which may be dropped overboard to gain height, in practice de Terzis spheres would have collapsed under air pressure, and further developments had to wait for more practicable lifting gases. From the mid-18th century the Montgolfier brothers in France began experimenting with balloons and their balloons were made of paper, and early experiments using steam as the lifting gas were short-lived due to its effect on the paper as it condensed. Meanwhile, the discovery of hydrogen led Joseph Black in c.1780 to propose its use as a lifting gas, on hearing of the Montgolfier Brothers invitation, the French Academy member Jacques Charles offered a similar demonstration of a hydrogen balloon. Charles and two craftsmen, the Robert brothers, developed a material of rubberised silk for the envelope. The hydrogen gas was to be generated by chemical reaction during the filling process, the Montgolfier designs had several shortcomings, not least the need for dry weather and a tendency for sparks from the fire to set light to the paper balloon. The manned design had a gallery around the base of the rather than the hanging basket of the first, unmanned design. On their free flight, De Rozier and dArlandes took buckets of water, on the other hand, the manned design of Charles was essentially modern
3.
Science
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Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations, disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences. However, during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws, over the course of the 19th century, the word science became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era and in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge. In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to each other, for example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought. This is shown by the construction of calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible. For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and they were mainly speculators or theorists, particularly interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans. A clear-cut distinction between formal and empirical science was made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, although his work Peri Physeos is a poem, it may be viewed as an epistemological essay on method in natural science. Parmenides ἐὸν may refer to a system or calculus which can describe nature more precisely than natural languages. Physis may be identical to ἐὸν and he criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism. He was particularly concerned that some of the early physicists treated nature as if it could be assumed that it had no intelligent order, explaining things merely in terms of motion and matter. The study of things had been the realm of mythology and tradition, however. Aristotle later created a less controversial systematic programme of Socratic philosophy which was teleological and he rejected many of the conclusions of earlier scientists. For example, in his physics, the sun goes around the earth, each thing has a formal cause and final cause and a role in the rational cosmic order. Motion and change is described as the actualization of potentials already in things, while the Socratics insisted that philosophy should be used to consider the practical question of the best way to live for a human being, they did not argue for any other types of applied science
4.
Technology
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Technology is the collection of techniques, skills, methods and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation. Technology can be the knowledge of techniques, processes, and the like, the human species use of technology began with the conversion of natural resources into simple tools. The steady progress of technology has brought weapons of ever-increasing destructive power. It has helped develop more advanced economies and has allowed the rise of a leisure class, many technological processes produce unwanted by-products known as pollution and deplete natural resources to the detriment of Earths environment. Various implementations of technology influence the values of a society and raise new questions of the ethics of technology, examples include the rise of the notion of efficiency in terms of human productivity, and the challenges of bioethics. Philosophical debates have arisen over the use of technology, with disagreements over whether technology improves the condition or worsens it. The use of the technology has changed significantly over the last 200 years. Before the 20th century, the term was uncommon in English, the term was often connected to technical education, as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The term technology rose to prominence in the 20th century in connection with the Second Industrial Revolution, the terms meanings changed in the early 20th century when American social scientists, beginning with Thorstein Veblen, translated ideas from the German concept of Technik into technology. In German and other European languages, a distinction exists between technik and technologie that is absent in English, which translates both terms as technology. By the 1930s, technology referred not only to the study of the industrial arts, dictionaries and scholars have offered a variety of definitions. Ursula Franklin, in her 1989 Real World of Technology lecture, gave another definition of the concept, it is practice, the way we do things around here. The term is used to imply a specific field of technology, or to refer to high technology or just consumer electronics. Bernard Stiegler, in Technics and Time,1, defines technology in two ways, as the pursuit of life by other than life, and as organized inorganic matter. Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems and it is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator. Tools and machines need not be material, virtual technology, such as software and business methods. W. Brian Arthur defines technology in a broad way as a means to fulfill a human purpose
5.
Space exploration
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Space exploration is the ongoing discovery and exploration of celestial structures in outer space by means of continuously evolving and growing space technology. While the study of space is carried out mainly by astronomers with telescopes, Space exploration has often been used as a proxy competition for geopolitical rivalries such as the Cold War. The early era of exploration was driven by a Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United States. With the substantial completion of the ISS following STS-133 in March 2011, constellation, a Bush Administration program for a return to the Moon by 2020 was judged inadequately funded and unrealistic by an expert review panel reporting in 2009. In the 2000s, the Peoples Republic of China initiated a successful manned spaceflight program, while the European Union, Japan, from the 1990s onwards, private interests began promoting space tourism and then public space exploration of the Moon. After the war, the U. S. used German scientists, the first scientific exploration from space was the cosmic radiation experiment launched by the U. S. on a V-2 rocket on 10 May 1946. The first images of Earth taken from space followed the year while the first animal experiment saw fruit flies lifted into space in 1947. Starting in 1947, the Soviets, also with the help of German teams, launched sub-orbital V-2 rockets and their own variant and these suborbital experiments only allowed a very short time in space which limited their usefulness. The first successful launch was of the Soviet unmanned Sputnik 1 mission on 4 October 1957. The satellite weighed about 83 kg, and is believed to have orbited Earth at a height of about 250 km and it had two radio transmitters, which emitted beeps that could be heard by radios around the globe. Analysis of the signals was used to gather information about the electron density of the ionosphere. The results indicated that the satellite was not punctured by a meteoroid, Sputnik 1 was launched by an R-7 rocket. It burned up upon re-entry on 3 January 1958, the second one was Sputnik 2. Launched by the USSR on November 3,1957, it carried the dog Laika and this success led to an escalation of the American space program, which unsuccessfully attempted to launch a Vanguard satellite into orbit two months later. On 31 January 1958, the U. S. successfully orbited Explorer 1 on a Juno rocket, the first successful human spaceflight was Vostok 1, carrying 27-year-old Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961. The spacecraft completed one orbit around the globe, lasting about 1 hour and 48 minutes, gagarins flight resonated around the world, it was a demonstration of the advanced Soviet space program and it opened an entirely new era in space exploration, human spaceflight. The U. S. first launched a person into space within a month of Vostok 1 with Alan Shepards suborbital flight in Mercury-Redstone 3, orbital flight was achieved by the United States when John Glenns Mercury-Atlas 6 orbited Earth on 20 February 1962. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, orbited Earth 48 times aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963
6.
Military
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The armed forces of a country are its government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations. They exist to further the foreign and domestic policies of their body and to defend that body. Armed force is the use of armed forces to achieve political objectives, the study of the use of armed forces is called military science. Broadly speaking, this involves considering offense and defense at three levels, strategy, operational art, and tactics, all three levels study the application of the use of force in order to achieve a desired objective. In most countries the basis of the forces is the military. However, armed forces can include other paramilitary structures, the obvious benefit to a country in maintaining armed forces is in providing protection from foreign threats and from internal conflict. In recent decades armed forces personnel have also used as emergency civil support roles in post-disaster situations. On the other hand, they may harm a society by engaging in counter-productive warfare. Expenditure on science and technology to develop weapons and systems sometimes produces side benefits, although some claim that greater benefits could come from targeting the money directly
7.
Engineering
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The term Engineering is derived from the Latin ingenium, meaning cleverness and ingeniare, meaning to contrive, devise. Engineering has existed since ancient times as humans devised fundamental inventions such as the wedge, lever, wheel, each of these inventions is essentially consistent with the modern definition of engineering. The term engineering is derived from the engineer, which itself dates back to 1390 when an engineer originally referred to a constructor of military engines. In this context, now obsolete, a referred to a military machine. Notable examples of the obsolete usage which have survived to the present day are military engineering corps, the word engine itself is of even older origin, ultimately deriving from the Latin ingenium, meaning innate quality, especially mental power, hence a clever invention. The earliest civil engineer known by name is Imhotep, as one of the officials of the Pharaoh, Djosèr, he probably designed and supervised the construction of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt around 2630–2611 BC. Ancient Greece developed machines in both civilian and military domains, the Antikythera mechanism, the first known mechanical computer, and the mechanical inventions of Archimedes are examples of early mechanical engineering. In the Middle Ages, the trebuchet was developed, the first steam engine was built in 1698 by Thomas Savery. The development of this gave rise to the Industrial Revolution in the coming decades. With the rise of engineering as a profession in the 18th century, similarly, in addition to military and civil engineering, the fields then known as the mechanic arts became incorporated into engineering. The inventions of Thomas Newcomen and the Scottish engineer James Watt gave rise to mechanical engineering. The development of specialized machines and machine tools during the revolution led to the rapid growth of mechanical engineering both in its birthplace Britain and abroad. John Smeaton was the first self-proclaimed civil engineer and is regarded as the father of civil engineering. He was an English civil engineer responsible for the design of bridges, canals, harbours and he was also a capable mechanical engineer and an eminent physicist. Smeaton designed the third Eddystone Lighthouse where he pioneered the use of hydraulic lime and his lighthouse remained in use until 1877 and was dismantled and partially rebuilt at Plymouth Hoe where it is known as Smeatons Tower. The United States census of 1850 listed the occupation of engineer for the first time with a count of 2,000, there were fewer than 50 engineering graduates in the U. S. before 1865. In 1870 there were a dozen U. S. mechanical engineering graduates, in 1890 there were 6,000 engineers in civil, mining, mechanical and electrical. There was no chair of applied mechanism and applied mechanics established at Cambridge until 1875, the theoretical work of James Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz in the late 19th century gave rise to the field of electronics
8.
Aircraft
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An aircraft is a machine that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the lift of an airfoil. The human activity that surrounds aircraft is called aviation, crewed aircraft are flown by an onboard pilot, but unmanned aerial vehicles may be remotely controlled or self-controlled by onboard computers. Aircraft may be classified by different criteria, such as type, aircraft propulsion, usage. Each of the two World Wars led to technical advances. Consequently, the history of aircraft can be divided into five eras, Pioneers of flight, first World War,1914 to 1918. Aviation between the World Wars,1918 to 1939, Second World War,1939 to 1945. Postwar era, also called the jet age,1945 to the present day, aerostats use buoyancy to float in the air in much the same way that ships float on the water. They are characterized by one or more large gasbags or canopies, filled with a relatively low-density gas such as helium, hydrogen, or hot air, which is less dense than the surrounding air. When the weight of this is added to the weight of the aircraft structure, a balloon was originally any aerostat, while the term airship was used for large, powered aircraft designs – usually fixed-wing. In 1919 Frederick Handley Page was reported as referring to ships of the air, in the 1930s, large intercontinental flying boats were also sometimes referred to as ships of the air or flying-ships. – though none had yet been built, the advent of powered balloons, called dirigible balloons, and later of rigid hulls allowing a great increase in size, began to change the way these words were used. Huge powered aerostats, characterized by an outer framework and separate aerodynamic skin surrounding the gas bags, were produced. There were still no fixed-wing aircraft or non-rigid balloons large enough to be called airships, then several accidents, such as the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, led to the demise of these airships. Nowadays a balloon is an aerostat and an airship is a powered one. A powered, steerable aerostat is called a dirigible, sometimes this term is applied only to non-rigid balloons, and sometimes dirigible balloon is regarded as the definition of an airship. Non-rigid dirigibles are characterized by a moderately aerodynamic gasbag with stabilizing fins at the back and these soon became known as blimps. During the Second World War, this shape was adopted for tethered balloons, in windy weather
9.
Spacecraft
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A spacecraft is a vehicle, or machine designed to fly in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, a spacecraft enters space and then returns to the surface, without having gone into an orbit. For orbital spaceflights, spacecraft enter closed orbits around the Earth or around other celestial bodies, robotic spacecraft used to support scientific research are space probes. Robotic spacecraft that remain in orbit around a body are artificial satellites. Only a handful of interstellar probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, orbital spacecraft may be recoverable or not. By method of reentry to Earth they may be divided in non-winged space capsules, Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, the launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments, while the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the Space Age. Apart from its value as a technological first, Sputnik 1 also helped to identify the upper atmospheric layers density and it also provided data on radio-signal distribution in the ionosphere. Pressurized nitrogen in the satellites false body provided the first opportunity for meteoroid detection, Sputnik 1 was launched during the International Geophysical Year from Site No. 1/5, at the 5th Tyuratam range, in Kazakh SSR. The satellite travelled at 29,000 kilometers per hour, taking 96.2 minutes to complete an orbit and this altitude is called the Kármán line. In particular, in the 1940s there were several test launches of the V-2 rocket, as of 2016, only three nations have flown manned spacecraft, USSR/Russia, USA, and China. The first manned spacecraft was Vostok 1, which carried Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961, there were five other manned missions which used a Vostok spacecraft. The second manned spacecraft was named Freedom 7, and it performed a sub-orbital spaceflight in 1961 carrying American astronaut Alan Shepard to an altitude of just over 187 kilometers, there were five other manned missions using Mercury spacecraft. Other Soviet manned spacecraft include the Voskhod, Soyuz, flown unmanned as Zond/L1, L3, TKS, China developed, but did not fly Shuguang, and is currently using Shenzhou. Except for the shuttle, all of the recoverable manned orbital spacecraft were space capsules. Manned space capsules The International Space Station, manned since November 2000, is a joint venture between Russia, the United States, Canada and several other countries, some reusable vehicles have been designed only for manned spaceflight, and these are often called spaceplanes. The first example of such was the North American X-15 spaceplane, the first reusable spacecraft, the X-15, was air-launched on a suborbital trajectory on July 19,1963. The first partially reusable spacecraft, a winged non-capsule, the Space Shuttle, was launched by the USA on the 20th anniversary of Yuri Gagarins flight
10.
Outer space
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Outer space or just space, is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including Earth. The baseline temperature, as set by the radiation from the Big Bang, is 2.7 kelvins. In most galaxies, observations provide evidence that 90% of the mass is in a form, called dark matter. Data indicates that the majority of the mass-energy in the universe is a poorly understood vacuum energy of space which astronomers label dark energy. Intergalactic space takes up most of the volume of the Universe, there is no firm boundary where outer space starts. However the Kármán line, at an altitude of 100 km above sea level, is used as the start of outer space in space treaties. The framework for international law was established by the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty precludes any claims of sovereignty and permits all states to freely explore outer space. Despite the drafting of UN resolutions for the uses of outer space. Humans began the exploration of space during the 20th century with the advent of high-altitude balloon flights. Earth orbit was first achieved by Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union in 1961, due to the high cost of getting into space, manned spaceflight has been limited to low Earth orbit and the Moon. Outer space represents an environment for human exploration because of the dual hazards of vacuum. Microgravity also has an effect on human physiology that causes both muscle atrophy and bone loss. In addition to health and environmental issues, the economic cost of putting objects, including humans. In 350 BCE, Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that nature abhors a vacuum and this concept built upon a 5th-century BCE ontological argument by the Greek philosopher Parmenides, who denied the possible existence of a void in space. Based on this idea that a vacuum could not exist, in the West it was held for many centuries that space could not be empty. As late as the 17th century, the French philosopher René Descartes argued that the entirety of space must be filled, in ancient China, there were various schools of thought concerning the nature of the heavens, some of which bear a resemblance to the modern understanding. In the 2nd century, astronomer Zhang Heng became convinced that space must be infinite, extending well beyond the mechanism that supported the Sun, the surviving books of the Hsüan Yeh school said that the heavens were boundless, empty and void of substance
11.
Propulsion
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Propulsion is a means of creating force leading to movement. The term is derived from two Latin words, pro, meaning before or forward, and pellere, meaning to drive, a propulsion system consists of a source of mechanical power, and a propulsor. A technological system uses an engine or motor as the power source, components such as clutches or gearboxes may be needed to connect the motor to axles, wheels, or propellors. Biological propulsion systems use an animals muscles as the power source, an aircraft propulsion system generally consists of an aircraft engine and some means to generate thrust, such as a propeller or a propulsive nozzle. An aircraft propulsion system must achieve two things, first, the thrust from the propulsion system must balance the drag of the airplane when the airplane is cruising. And second, the thrust from the system must exceed the drag of the airplane for the airplane to accelerate. In fact, the greater the difference between the thrust and the drag, called the excess thrust, the faster the airplane will accelerate, some aircraft, like airliners and cargo planes, spend most of their life in a cruise condition. For these airplanes, excess thrust is not as important as high engine efficiency, some aircraft, like fighter planes or experimental high speed aircraft, require very high excess thrust to accelerate quickly and to overcome the high drag associated with high speeds. For these airplanes, engine efficiency is not as important as very high thrust, modern military aircraft typically employ afterburners on a low bypass turbofan core. Future hypersonic aircraft will employ some type of ramjet or rocket propulsion, ground propulsion is any mechanism for propelling solid bodies along the ground, usually for the purposes of transportation. The propulsion system consists of a combination of an engine or motor. Maglev is a system of transportation that uses magnetic levitation to suspend, guide and propel vehicles with magnets rather than using mechanical methods, such as wheels, axles and bearings. With maglev a vehicle is levitated a short distance away from a guide way using magnets to create lift and thrust. Maglev vehicles are claimed to move smoothly and quietly and to require less maintenance than wheeled mass transit systems. It is claimed that non-reliance on friction also means that acceleration and deceleration can far surpass that of existing forms of transport, marine propulsion is the mechanism or system used to generate thrust to move a ship or boat across water. Recent development in liquified natural gas fueled engines are gaining recognition for their low emissions, spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites. Each method has drawbacks and advantages, and spacecraft propulsion is an area of research. However, most spacecraft today are propelled by forcing a gas from the back/rear of the vehicle at high speed through a supersonic de Laval nozzle
12.
Materials science
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The interdisciplinary field of materials science, also commonly termed materials science and engineering, involves the discovery and design of new materials, with an emphasis on solids. Materials science still incorporates elements of physics, chemistry, and engineering, as such, the field was long considered by academic institutions as a sub-field of these related fields. Materials science is a syncretic discipline hybridizing metallurgy, ceramics, solid-state physics and it is the first example of a new academic discipline emerging by fusion rather than fission. Many of the most pressing scientific problems humans currently face are due to the limits of the materials that are available, thus, breakthroughs in materials science are likely to affect the future of technology significantly. Materials scientists emphasize understanding how the history of a material influences its structure, the understanding of processing-structure-properties relationships is called the § materials paradigm. This paradigm is used to advance understanding in a variety of areas, including nanotechnology, biomaterials. Such investigations are key to understanding, for example, the causes of various accidents and incidents. The material of choice of a given era is often a defining point, phrases such as Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Steel Age are great examples. Originally deriving from the manufacture of ceramics and its putative derivative metallurgy, materials science is one of the oldest forms of engineering, modern materials science evolved directly from metallurgy, which itself evolved from mining and ceramics and the use of fire. Materials science has driven, and been driven by, the development of technologies such as rubbers, plastics, semiconductors. Before the 1960s, many materials science departments were named metallurgy departments, reflecting the 19th, a material is defined as a substance that is intended to be used for certain applications. There are a myriad of materials around us—they can be found in anything from buildings to spacecraft, Materials can generally be divided into two classes, crystalline and non-crystalline. The traditional examples of materials are metals, semiconductors, ceramics, New and advanced materials that are being developed include nanomaterials and biomaterials, etc. The basis of science involves studying the structure of materials. Once a materials scientist knows about this structure-property correlation, they can go on to study the relative performance of a material in a given application. The major determinants of the structure of a material and thus of its properties are its constituent chemical elements and these characteristics, taken together and related through the laws of thermodynamics and kinetics, govern a materials microstructure, and thus its properties. As mentioned above, structure is one of the most important components of the field of materials science, Materials science examines the structure of materials from the atomic scale, all the way up to the macro scale. Characterization is the way materials scientists examine the structure of a material, structure is studied at various levels, as detailed below
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