53% people interested in travelling to space: Survey

Around 53 per cent people will like to travel to space, says a new survey ahead of the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo lunar landing on July 20.

Nearly 80 per cent of the respondents said they would feel safe if a human-looking robot were piloting that spacecraft, according to the survey by technical professional organisation IEEE.

The participants identified solar panel (65 per cent), athletic shoe (40 per cent) and heart defibrillator (32 per cent) as top three items linked to earlier space travel technology.

The respondents believed the next decade of space travel would have the greatest impact on medicine (26 per cent), transportation (23 per cent), computer technology (21 per cent) and environmental resources (20 per cent).

The Apollo 11 mission relied on four computers, considered decades ahead of their time. Interestingly, today's smartphones are more powerful than the computers the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) used for the mission.

When asked who they would video call from the Moon with their smartphones if they had the opportunity, 56 per cent of those surveyed said they would video call their spouse or partner. Their next choices would be mother (14 per cent), friend (9 per cent) and then father (8 per cent).

Nearly 400 attendees at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, held from January 8 to 11, participated in the survey.

The Apollo 11, launched on July 16, 1969 with three astronauts -- Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins -- touched down on the Moon's surface on July 20.