Requiem for the Once-Imagined Future

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The underwhelming Discovery mission has the Wall Street Journal Online's Real Time columnists lamenting the space program's failure to realize the sort of intergalactic exploration they once imagined as kids through the works of Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein. Considering the Viking landers were digging around Martain soil back in 1976, 'we figured the place would be necklaced with orbiters and cris-crossed by rovers by now. Maybe there'd even be astronauts (or cosmonauts or taikonauts) tracing the courses of unimaginably ancient rivers.' Instead, we get a mission whose highlights were 'a) it came back; and b) an astronaut pulled bits of cloth out from between tiles.' At this rate, the columnists fear the innovations of the future won't be much more exciting: 'Maybe Real Time 2030 will fret about how our college kids do little more than steal full-res holographic porn when they're not getting their financial identities stolen by cyber-jihadists eager to build more backpack nukes.'"

Comments

The crossroads of my generation

[Skyshadow]

It seems to me as if the "future" is waiting for another kick, the sort of boot-in-the-pants that we saw twice in the last century. Right now, it's stuck. There are a lot of real Buck Rogers-style things that could be going on if only people seriously thought they were possible, if only there was a spark that could get us up and moving again. But that's not going to happen on its own, we need to figure out how to move again.

I dunno, maybe part of the problem is that progress just outran the global society's ability to adjust at some point -- that definately seems to be the case with a lot of the more disaffected people both in the US and overseas. IMO, the crazed religious zealot in Iran and the crazed Kansas schoolboard member have a lot of root causes in common. Those wackos are extreme examples, granted, but it seems like they're also symptomatic of larger societal problems.

I'm ready to pick up and keep moving, though, and I think a lot of people of my generation are. We never saw a moon landing; it happened before we were born and, frankly, even if we went back it would seem like old hat. "Yeah, Earthrise. Great, never seen that before". We read about this shit in the *history* books, man. But that's not a bad thing: I suspect a lot of us wouldn't find the concept of, say, mining asteroids as exotic as the Boomers would, and maybe that's all we really need. And hey, if that's possible, if that improves our lot, maybe it'll finally be that human advance where, once it starts, it just continues on and on.

Of course, speaking of the Boomers, I fear that my generation (I'm 28) might be one of those unlucky historical examples of one which didn't get to do jack shit because they were so busy catering to the needs of their wealthy elders while trying to patch up the disasterous debts they left us. By the time they start to croak en masse it'll be too late to do anything all that interesting -- we'll be too old and too unimaginative, left only with the shadow of the dreams we once entertained.

Honestly (and sadly), I'm pretty sure that's the direction we're headed in. Happily, however, I also believe it's not too late to change that. That's why I support ideas like the Space Elevator; it's the sort of kick that might get us out of this funk and allow us to overcome the fate of being a generation the just paid too much for their houses.

Re:The crossroads of my generation

[gcatullus]

Sadly the "kick in the pants" has always been things like a world war or having a well funded arch enemy, like the old US vs. USSR enimity. Adversity breeds inovation. Prosperity breeds complacency. So, be careful what you wish for.

Re:The crossroads of my generation

[Monty845]

It would be great if the Government of the US cared about space. Congress simply lacks the imagination nescessary to understand the value of space exploration. There are several things that need to change if the US (at least the government) is going to get anyway new with space exploration.

1. Accept that space exploration is risky, people will die, they knew the risk when they signed on, taking reasonable steps to ensure safety - great, stoping an entire program because of a small chance of something going wrong - not so great

2. Congress needs to think about what is in the best interests of the American people as a whole, not just thier constituents, even better they would think about the best interests of the world.

3. Congress needs to realize that most great discoveries are not predicted, funding a strong space program could provide unimagined rewards.

Frankly I doubt thats going to happen. I think the future of space lies in the hands of privite industry, they will find ways to make money is space and that is what will push us into the future. If the Government of the US lacks the will to lead us into space others will step forward eventually.

-P.S. I know that NASA has plans to go back to the moon etc, but they are not nearly ambitous enough.

Re:The crossroads of my generation

[Rei]

What I don't get is why the author sees the shuttle mission as having anything to do with the Mars mission. What, in his vision of the future, did he not picture people being in LEO as well?

We do send rovers and orbiters to Mars, all the time - at any point in time, there's usually 2-4 operational rovers or orbiters. So I don't know what he was talking about when he mentioned that he was expecting to see Rovers crisscrossing the planet. Perhaps he wants more capable rovers (ignoring that the current ones gave us a treasure trove of info)? Then don't divert money into manned spaceflight, which is incredibly expensive. Even as is, it won't be long before we get to see Mars Science Laboratory on the Red Planet - a rover the size of an SUV which can take drive around, take core samples, do complete isotopic and minerological determination of samples, and even burn coatings off a rock with a laser from a distance to do spectral analysis.

Speaking of manned spaceflight, his desire to have people trudging over the red planet ignores one sad, but true fact: chemical energy density isn't getting any better. We somewhat peaked out on fuel potentials in the 1960s. Now, there have been small improvements - for example, strained-ring hydrocarbons may replace kerosene - and there are some interesting "high ISP/high density" fuels that they're trying to stabilize (such as alane - stabilized aluminum hydride); however, the sky is not the limit as far as fuel density goes. And, as chemical fuels look to be our way of getting off the planet any time soon...

So, what can we advance, as far as getting payload off the Earth is concerned? We've improved engines, but there's only so much performance that improved heat management and refined shapes will get you. We can advance materials, but while we have some great "potential" materials on the horizon (such as nanotube composites and CVD diamond), and superalloys have been coming down in price, we're not the leaps-and-bounds beyond top-tech 1960s materials that would help.

So, in short, lugging payloads into space on disposable rockets remains expensive. Reusables were supposed to change this, as fuel is cheap; however, at least our first-gen reusable had serious maintenance problems (will a next-gen reusable be better? We'll have to wait and see).

This is simply the problems on getting large payloads off of Earth. Getting humans to Mars and back safely requires a complex system of precursor missions, engine and power plant development, habitation R&D, lots and lots of shielding research (the "bremsstrahlung issue" from GCR still hasn't been solved), getting reliable long-term use versions of *almost all* of the things that keep breaking on ISS (oxygen generation, water reuse, spin stabilization, etc - you can't just ship up a new one), "large mars entry craft" development (the atmosphere is nothing like ours, and we've only dropped in small craft, which are easier to deal with), dust handling (Mars dust is particularly nasty, with its electrostatic potential and tiny grain size), return fuel generation (optional), and dozens of other issues that the Apollo astronauts never had to deal with.

In short, the Mars mission is much more complex than Apollo, and yet, our rocket technology, bound by physical constraints and the requisite constraints of a spiral development process, has not come that far. Hence, the cost is high, the immediate payback low, and thus securing funding for it has, to this date, not occurred. It's not a difficult thing to understand. Meanwhile, our various robotic probes and telescopes keep dumping back copious amounts of valuable data to Earth, while tech keeps on advancing at its "slow and steady" pace.

Re:The crossroads of my generation

[Wudbaer]

Oh come on. Whine whine whine. What kind of world did our parents and grandparents inherit from their parents ? A world devastated by two disastrous world wars (and for Europe and large parts of Asia that not only meant financially devastated and devastated by the loss of a large percentage of young men but total destruction of large parts of the infrastructure, housing etc. plus the killing). A world of the cold war, of wide-spread political unrest.

Don't kid yourself, we are still living in one of the most prosperous ages the Western hemisphere has ever known. If our parents had blamed everything on their parents we would still sit on a large heap of rubble roasting dead rats on fires made in scrap metal from broken tanks.

Re:The crossroads of my generation

[CompSci101]

I will take exception with what you had to say:

The United States suffered *none* of the disaster that was World War II with regard to our infrastructure and general populace. In fact, our economy got such a kick out of the production the war spurred that it put the US into what many people consider its Golden Age: the 1950s.

Eastern Europe was *devastated* by World War II, and was under the control of the Soviet Union for much of the Cold War. The result being that the area never truly recovered from the war and only now under the European Union is seeing any progress. Western Europe was also badly damaged, but had many important advantages: it had the United States to bolster its regrowth, and the population loss wasn't as great as in the East. Europe is still second fiddle to the United States economically, and will probably never regain its former position in the world with the rising economies of the Far East.

The United States basically lucked out of WWII (though I don't say that with any intention of diminishing the accomplishment or the sacrifice), and relative to the rest of the world, we got off very easy. The political unrest in the aftermath of the Cold War, by the way, is what *we* are dealing with today in the form terrorism -- you can't fight secret wars on the backs of poor people without engendering serious animosity. The threat of nuclear annihilation was actually *more* unlikely during the Cold War than it is today -- terrorist groups might not hesitate to spark a nuclear war or use a nuclear weapon, as they have very little to lose relative to the former Soviet empire.

forget space

[Anonymous Coward]

You want to talk about the short commings of the predicted future then forget space where is my ROCKET CAR!

full-res you say?

[vertinox]

Maybe Real Time 2030 will fret about how our college kids do little more than steal full-res holographic porn

Bah! If it doesn't have full tactile neural input, then I'm not interested.

There is hope!

[Ken Hall]

I, for one, am heartened by how much the shuttle has come to resemble the Millenium Falcon. At least in the reliability department.

Why Mars?

[Swamii]

When we haven't even done much with the Moon? I say start smaller then work our way up. Establish a base on the moon; grow plants in a contained greenhouse, get some population on the moon, make it a place that can sustain life for some time.

From there, with we'd have better understanding and experience in exploration and cultivation, and thus we could more easily work out our grander visions of Mars exploration.

Re:Why Mars?

[Skyshadow]

Read "The Case for Mars" by Roberty Zubrin. It basically demonstrates that the moon isn't actually an easier starting point and that Mars is, in most ways, far more worth the effort.

Don't Forget C

[MrCopilot]

Instead, we get a mission whose highlights were 'a) it came back; and b) an astronaut pulled bits of cloth out from between tiles.

Lest we forget c.)Took out the trash.

Transhumanism will never happen

[DogDude]

The things that "transhumanists" describe simply will not be possible? It has nothing to do with technology: it's resources. We're seeing oil prices soar right now. With oil and other basic resources that we need for a modern society quickly dwindling: breathable air, drinkable water, etc. society as we know it will collapse long before most of these pie-in-the-sky ideals are reached.

Re:Transhumanism will never happen

[tgibbs]

Concerning the price of oil/gas, do you think that if prices keep rising like they are (+$0.15 this past weekend alone), do you think we'll even be able to afford space travel in the future? It used to be that the hardware was the expensive part. Imagine if the cost of fuel eventually rises above the cost of the shuttles themselves.

It is misleading to extrapolate short term price fluctuations, which tend to reflect global politics and production quotas more than actual oil and gas reserves. In any case, the cost of fuels will not rise indefinitely, because eventually they will become competitive with fuels produced by renewable energy sources, and price will plateau. An additional source of energy in the medium term is likely to be nuclear power, because with newer reactor designs, and greater awareness of the environmental damage from combustible fuels, the hazards of nuclear power no longer look quite so daunting.

Re:Far greater things lie ahead

[Phoenixredux]

I disagree. One thing that the English language does not lack is superlatives, although sometimes individual speakers forget them and use the same ones over and over. For example, some superlatives inspired by this discussion of "transhumanism" may include: over-blown, phantasmagoric, fantasy, delusional, raving, and lunacy. Don't worry - there are many, many more. The English language holds a depth and breadth greater, in many instances, than those famed Martian canals.

Um, we're getting what we paid for

[Colin Smith]

We're not paying for space travel, or even space exploration. We're paying for programmes. We get a space programme, then another one, then another one.

When we start paying for results, we'll get space travel and space exploration.

The problem is power

[SlayerofGods]

Seriously, we need a new power source. As long as we're burning shit to get into space we're never going to be able get anywhere.

Re:The problem is power

[Blakey Rat]

We need to invent that glowy crap on the back of every spaceship on TV and in the movies. The Millenium Falcon had no trouble landing and taking off from a planet without a fuel tank... you just turn on the glowy crap, and bam you're there. The starship Enterprise just makes the glowy crap flash really bright, and they're going faster than light itself! Even the Stargate uses glowy crap technology to bridge planets.

We just need to invent that glowy crap and everything else will fall into place.

It's true

[Bob3141592]

The future is not what it used to be.

Dear Sci Fi Whiners

[ackthpt]

Considering the Viking landers were digging around Martain soil back in 1976, 'we figured the place would be necklaced with orbiters and cris-crossed by rovers by now. Maybe there'd even be astronauts (or cosmonauts or taikonauts) tracing the courses of unimaginably ancient rivers.' Instead, we get a mission whose highlights were 'a) it came back; and b) an astronaut pulled bits of cloth out from between tiles.'

Sadly, it appears most sci-fi writers and buffs were somewhat lacking in the taste of reality department. Economics, i.e. business potential are more likely to drive space exploration than scientific interest. While we're seeing fledgling efforts, it's still a pretty iffy thing to leave a perfectly good planet behind to build a house on the Moon or Mars.

Seems much of the Sci-fi I've read was more a vehicle for another story, i.e. it's not about the lasers stupid, it's the exploration of man's inhumanity to man, sorta thing.

Looking at how ultimately fragile our space crafts are, and the terrific amount of stored energy it takes to escape the Earth's surface, the one thing that should come home to people who expect Buck Rogers is this isn't as easy as putting pen to paper and scribbling up interplantetary travel.

Sadly, the real drama of what has transpired to get this far isn't as entertaining (although The Right Stuff and Apollo 11 took a stab at it) as Star Wars.

This just in!

[swelke]

This just in! As a way to get into space, the space shuttle sucks! Wow, that's amazing. Do you mean that all of those glowing reviews of it I've heard for as long as I can remember (I'm 23) were bull?

Seriously though, a lot of science fiction writers have been warning us about just what is happening. If we focus on "solving all our problems on the ground first" then we'll never move into space properly. The same will happen if we're too pussyfooted to accept the occasional death due to space travel. It's already safer than any major frontier exploration in history. (I'm not saying we should waste astronauts, but that doesn't mean we should quit going into orbit for 2+ years just because a few die either.) If we don't go out and build something semi-permanent beyond Earth (the Moon or the asteroid belt, maybe Mars) pretty soon, we're going to end up screwing things up on Earth badly enough (economic collapse, ecological disaster, evil killer robots, whatever) that we can't go to space. In the long run, having groups of humans separated by a few million miles is probably the best way to keep us from killing each other all the time.

Physical limitations to the universe

[revscat]

I think this highlights the fundamental difficulty we face in getting elsewhere in the universe, namely the difficulty of getting enough energy to move stuff around. This is not an easy nut to crack, and despite optimistic predictions it is quite possible that it is one that is insoluble. Yes, we have had many scientific breakthroughs throughout human history. Yes, naysayers are frequently proven wrong. But "past success is no indicator of future performance", as the disclaimer says, and I think this is no different.

Until we are able to get bodies of non-trivial mass to speeds that are an integer percentage of light speed we will for all practical purposes be stuck on this zealot-infested rock. Getting men and women into space and having them survive is extremely difficult even for the short periods of time the STS is in orbit. This shows that allowing them to survive for months on end is a nigh-impossible task without some fundamental advances, and there are no areas in physics that we can look to for hope in this regard.

Yes, it's possible we may one day colonize Mars, Kim Stanly Robinson style. But I doubt it. Just because it is wished for and can be imagined does not mean it is physically possible in any real sense.

No, great things have, and KEEP HAPPENING

[ScentCone]

If you substitute "the rich" for "we", you dont sound so crazy:

The rich will be powered by lithium-ions, and thus need no oxygen. As the rich will be engineered machines, the whole terraforming things will be moot.

Come, now. You wouldn't have to go too far back before you'd have said the same thing about refrigeration, anti-biotics, and tiny little devices that you could hold up to your ear and use to talk to other people, almost anywhere in the world. I'm not rich, but I've got things that my great grandparents would have considered essentially magical.

Yes but...

[ravenspear]

Tanks for example are quite protected against nukes, and our vastly superior engineered bodies will not have much problems with nukes unless one goes off right by you (get better implanted radar!).

I can think of a few downsides to having a metal, indestructable body. For example, the sex probably wouldn't be as good.

Re:Yes but...

[xs650]

Au Contraire, the sparks would fly.

Re:A rule of thumb

[amliebsch]

Really, what happened was that most sci-fi writers at the time guessed completely wrong at what the major focus of innovation, engineering, and research would be. It's not their fault, of course - after all, the things they envisioned are perfectly rational extensions of the most modern trends of their times, and conveniently, made for good stories as well.

But for each unit of research, much larger results were found elsewhere - namely, in computers and communications. What most sci-fi writers didn't predict (until the trends became obvious) were personal computers cheaper than televisions, and a massive distributed network rapidly assimilating all human knowledge. The average person has an amount of computing power at his disposal simply unimaginable - or worse, impossibly unbelievable - to the sci-fi writers and futurists of the space age.

I predict that sci-fi writers and futurists who center their stories around extrapolations of today's advances in computing power are similarly missing the next unimagined leap in technology, the seeds of which almost certainly exist today.

To The Idiots at the WSJ:

[RickHunter]

You want to know why we don't have a space program like the one you're imagining? Because you and the idiot businessmen you write for decided it was too expensive, and pushed your pet politicians to cut funding for it and dump productive space programs in exchange for pork, business pay-offs, tax cuts, and other corrupt practices. Now you've realized that to expand, your economy needs to go into orbit, and that you needed to fund these things 20 years ago for them to be ready now, and are trying to find someone else to blame for the predicament your greed caused, so as not to risk your grossly overinflated salary.

Of course, I doubt you'll learn anything from this, as you and said businessmen have, as a collective, the recall and adaptation ability of the average peanut. But on the off-chance that you do, in fact, remember something, I'd like it to include the phrase:

"Payback's a bitch, ain't it?"

Hunger eliminated? I don't think so.

[nathan s]

Check this link for statistics (with sources) - some 30 million people in the US itself experience some level of hunger.

I've been there; when I was a kid, there was a period of time when my parents had no food in the house, and my mother baked corn meal and water because we had absolutely nothing left. We were the recipients of the local church "feed a needy family" that year, and that wasn't really fun.

I'll take the asteroid

[Tackhead]

> Sadly the "kick in the pants" has always been things like a world war or having a well funded arch enemy, like the old US vs. USSR enimity. Adversity breeds inovation. Prosperity breeds complacency. So, be careful what you wish for.

Which is why, for what little it's worth, I was disappointed to find that 2004 MN4 was going to miss the Earth in 2038.

Because 35 years is just about the right length of time, not just to develop the technology to deflect the thing, but also to generate a new generation of kids - who won't merely value science and engineering as career paths, but who will see them as essential survival tools for the species.

Instead, we've got a dumbed-down educational system that would make Harrison Bergeron cringe, and the mentality that the only careers worth having are those of criminal/thug, celebrity/whore, or lawyer/lobbyist/politician.

Fuck it. We deserve to have that rock hit us.

Re:I'll take the asteroid

[Pfhorrest]

...the mentality that the only careers worth having are those of criminal/thug, celebrity/whore, or lawyer/lobbyist/politician.

So you're saying there's basically just one commonly desirable job in today's market? ;-)

Before the 70s no one saw cheap computer resources

[jdb8167]

Something that any one who is concerned that we didn't meet the goals of "golden era" science fiction should consider. Not a single one of those authors envisioned cheap, ubiquitous, and unspecialized computer hardware and software. Not one. The closest was Heinlein and he didn't get very close. See Heinlein's The Rolling Stones or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I grew up on science fiction in the 70s and recognized around 1977 that things were not going to be like in the books. Just because we didn't meet one goal doesn't mean that we should be pessimistic about the future. What the future holds is unpredictable.

Emotional words...check

[Eunuch]

Repugnant. Emotional knee-jerk reaction. I suppose it's a sin too.

As for repugnant, I happen to think that staying as human is severly repugnant.

Highlights? Highlights?!!

[Gruneun]

From the WSJ columnist:

we get a mission whose highlights were 'a) it came back; and b) an astronaut pulled bits of cloth out from between tiles.'

From NASA:

Several elements will be carried in Discovery's payload bay for delivery to the Station. These include the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Raffaello, containing racks of supplies, food and water, and the Human Research Facility-2 rack. Also, the External Stowage Platform and a replacement Control Moment Gyroscope will be carried in Discovery's payload bay.

Excuse me for doubting the infinite wisdom of a whiny journalist, but I think I just saw a spaceship take food, water, supplies, and new equipment to a fucking space station. I apologize for not taking that accomplishment for granted. I don't know if I will ever get used to that being a simple, common occurence.

As for the astronaut who made repairs to the spaceship in fucking space, one has to wonder if the same whiny journalist changes the oil in his own car... on Earth.

Re:As Gregory Benford's Corollary Says:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."

Re:Far greater things lie ahead

[Digital Vomit]

And I bet you any money that, when we reach this stage, we still won't have any damned flying cars!

Re:Far greater things lie ahead

[Mant]

That's good--but transhumanist organizations deserve more as it is a far more pressing goal.

It really isn't

Space isn't all the pressing given the problems we have on Earth, but I do recognise the value in getting people off Earth for our survivability, science and technology we learn, and less tangible benefits like inspiration and wonder.

Transhumanism though? A tiny, tiny group of people want to turn themselves into something else. Great, you go work on that, but it isn't a priority at all to the vast bulk of humankind, who wants to stay that way.

I'll add even if it were to solve current problems, its naive to think there wouldn't be new one. Biological viruses don't kill you but computer ones do. If you "transhumanist" looks like a machine, others will have a lots less inhibitions killing it. I do think some humans will choose to modify themselves in the future, but I don't see any sort of utopia there.

I'm not so sure

[second class skygod]

... that the world could successfully rally to protect the planet from an asteroid in 35 years.

First, as you say, new technology would have to be developed and perfected. Not impossible but it's very difficult to predict the pace of such things. If, in fact, it took 36 years we'd still be screwed. Almost making the deadline [pun intended] wouldn't cut it.

The biggest problem would be mustering the needed level of international cooperation. No doubt the cost of the program would be too much for even the richest nations to go it alone. How many years would go by before enough nations could get together and decide on a plan of action? What would the USA do if 20 years down the road more accurate estimates of the impact point proved that the asteroid was going to impact on the other side of the globe? Would the USA withdraw its participation? I'd like to think not but I've lost much of my faith in American largess. Anyway, balancing an enormous economic drain versus the morality of allowing a serious disaster to occur to someone else (possibly an enemy) would be a serious quandary for any nation.

The problems are certainly surmountable; in theory. The world's track record regarding other crises is spotty at best. How much progress have we made at:
eliminating controllable diseases,
controlling global population growth,
controlling greenhouse gas emissions?

The list goes on and doesn't even address the more important but tougher issues like war and poverty. I'm sure someone will come up with a good example where the world got together and solved a problem but overall history shows little that it's rare and difficult.

So I don't think 35 years is really enough time. I'd say more like 300 years. At least in that much time one could hope for salvation from radically new technological advances such as anti-gravity or really really frickin powerful lasers in space.

-scsg