To serve as a center for space technology transfer and adaptation both for incoming technology and outgoing adaptation. This would be similar to the technology transfer offices that already exist within both the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. But the Starfleet Academy’s technological synergy with the private sector would hopefully be more ambitious and fluid.
Such tech transfer efforts might also help placate those who continually argue against money spent on space research of any sort.
To serve as a research center for real-life training for long-duration spaceflight and colonization. This part of the Academy would foster research into everything from radiation shielding to artificial gravity generation (while en route to and on the surface of other worlds). It could research the physiological and psychological constraints such travel will place on the human body. Cadets could even volunteer to participate in research trials.
To serve as a research center for advanced and breakthrough propulsion studies. The major space agencies and a few not-for-profit, non-governmental organizations such as the Tau Zero Foundation have recently tried to further such research. But a Starfleet Academy would serve as a central incubator for new propulsion technologies in a way that others hadn’t.
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