How can space technology help us solve problems in the third world?

摘要

Many people in society today are looking for reasons to explore space. Although space industry is the fastest growing and most profitable industry in Norway today, people still want reasons to why we should prioritize space research in our nations budget. Why should so many of this worlds nations spend money developing space stations, planning trips to Mars, send probes to other planets and so forth? What does the space industry give us in return? If you ask this question to any scientist within the intellectual environment of the industry, he or she will look at you with a strange look on his/hers face. But facts are, that very few people outside the space community know much about what space has been giving to us over the years. With this paper, I try to shine a light on the possibilities of multipurpose useage of space equipment. Especially see how space technology can help us close the gap in development between the first and the third world. In my research for background material for this paper, I asked three important questions: What types of challenges does the third world face? The third world is faced with the difficulty of overpopulation, illiteracy, poverty, illness and diseases, poor housing, natural disasters, low access to clean drinking water, communication difficulties, war effects like landmines, sanitation and hygiene, energy sources, deforestation and desertification, insufficient transportation possibilities and much more. Obviously we cannot solve all these problems by merely using space technology, but a surprisingly high percentage of these areas can be improved with the help of technology derived from space activities. The second question I had to ask was: What kind of technology have space research and space activities given us? Ever since Sputnik went up into space in 1957, mankind have tried its best to evolve its ways of gaining information from the empty space around.