| Abstract from DBPedia | Astronautics (or cosmonautics) is the theory and practice of travel beyond Earth's atmosphere into outer space. Spaceflight is one of its main applications and space science its overarching field. The term astronautics (originally astronautique in French) was coined in the 1920s by J.-H. Rosny, president of the Goncourt academy, in analogy with aeronautics. Because there is a degree of technical overlap between the two fields, the term aerospace is often used to describe both at once. In 1930, Robert Esnault-Pelterie published the first book on the new research field. The term cosmonautics (originally cosmonautique in French) was introduced in 1930s by Ary Sternfeld with his book Initiation à la Cosmonautique (Introduction to cosmonautics) (the book brought him the Prix REP-Hirsch, later known as the Prix d'Astronautique, of the French Astronomical Society in 1934.) As with aeronautics, the restrictions of mass, temperatures, and external forces require that applications in space survive extreme conditions: high-grade vacuum, the radiation bombardment of interplanetary space and the magnetic belts of low Earth orbit. Space launch vehicles must withstand titanic forces, while satellites can experience huge variations in temperature in very brief periods. Extreme constraints on mass cause astronautical engineers to face the constant need to save mass in the design in order to maximize the actual payload that reaches orbit.宇宙工学（うちゅうこうがく、（英: astronautics、cosmonautics）は、宇宙開発を行うことに関連した工学の一分野である。地球の大気の外側を飛行するための理論および技術であり、言うなれば、宇宙飛行の科学技術である。 最近では宇宙工学は、航空工学とともに航空宇宙工学という領域をなしている。航空工学と宇宙工学は実際上重なっている領域が非常に多く、それらを分けて考えるのも作為的で不適切な面もあるので、航空宇宙工学として統合されており、学会や大学の学部なども「航空宇宙工学会」や「航空・宇宙工学科」などという名称になっていて、その中で2大柱のひとつとして宇宙工学が扱われる形になっていることが一般化してきているのである。 (Source: http://dbpedia.org/resource/Astronautics) |
