On July 20th of this year, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos flew into space on the Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. This was done shortly after Virgin Group founder Richard Branson flew into space on his Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo on July 12th. Both men are billionaires who are making space exploration and travel a real possibility. But to do the kind of thing you see in science fiction movies or television, a lot is still needed. In fact, there is an entire space travel checklist one needs. With each having a higher or lower level of importance versus the rest. What do we mean by this?
The “space travel checklist” is simply a list of things we will need to be capable of long-term space travel and exploration. It will surely be needed if humans, as we know them, will be capable of living on another planet. Having NASA work on things like this is great but they are funded by the American government. Obviously, this is too much to ask of them. However, getting billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk into the space sector will likely move a lot of things forward much quicker. A lot of the stuff needed for our checklist will likely be priorities for them, so let’s dive into what they’ll be working on.
Fleet Of Different Ship Types
Level Of Need: 10
It’s quite obvious, right? You cannot hope to travel the universe if you do not have a ship to do it in. Therefore, the number one thing we need for our space travel checklist is a ship. However, different ship types are perhaps the most important thing to consider here. While it would be good to have a large ship meant to take people from planet to planet, a travel ship basically. It would also be critical to have other ship types too. Basically, we’d need to treat this like ships we have on the water.
Some are used as cargo ships, meant for taking a large supply of goods from one nation to another. Others are used for war purposes (not as much today but they do still exist). In space, it is possible we’ll need to go into battle. Therefore, warships are something to consider. At the same time, we also need ships meant for discovery or exploration. These need to be capable of having a large crew with more to spare, on top of enough room to handle any needs one might have.