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The Next Fifty Years In Space
MarkWhittington writes "2007 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Space Age, agreed by most to have begun with the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik, on October 4th, 1957. While some are taking stock of the last fifty years of space exploration, noting what has been accomplished and, more importantly, what has not been accomplished, others are wondering what the next fifty years might bring."
At some point, people will get beyond the PR, dreams, and hype and realize that the resources required for such an effort FAR exceed any possible benefit. And, at that point, they will quietly back away. Then they will do exactly what NASA has done for the last 30 years: keep making big promises, keep funnelling money to contractors, keep offering grand visions--but delivering on NONE of them.
Lunar and Martian colonies are like personal jetpacks and lying cars: forever "in the future."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If private businesses are able to over take NASA we will see more progress then just a visit tot he moon!
A lying car - like when it says the tank is full even though it's empty? Already got one of those...
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
From the USA: Nothing. They're headed back to the Dark Ages as the economy collapses. I wouldn't be surprised if the ISS ends up a big, expensive piece of space junk. From the Chinese: Unclear. Space exploration doesn't carry a whole lot of practical value for them. Unless the next 50 years brings a China v. India dickwaving contest, space advances in the next 50 years are quite unlikely.
I would say that in terms of costs, it is going to be politically unjustifiable to push forward these missions, more to the point I am fairly sure we are entering into a period of rather more upheaval on earth, politically, economically and ecologically. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more work done in space, more opportunity to explore, but I just don't see the will to do so or even the suggestion of the rewards that would be possible by doing so.
Interesting read, but it makes no mention of the anticipation from existing space projects and what they'll reveal in the next 50 years. As was recently stated in another article, Voyager 2 is still up and running while feeding back information over 12.5b km away (source: Wikipedia). The same is true for Voyager 1 - with it being expected to reach the heliopause by 2015.
I know there's still plenty to discover around here, but I find the possibility of discovery through those resilient probes much more fascinating than a space elevator. I just hope they can maintain power long enough to relay something back to us.
Until space has a serious market among non-government-backed customers, it will be subject to the political whims of the "how can we spend money on space when we have problems on Earth?" constituency. As much as I love and support space exploration for the purposes of scientific and engineering R&D, feeding at the public trough is a the greatest single point of failure for the development of space. It does not matter whether it is tourism, materials synthesis in zero-G, mineral extraction n the moon/asteroids, or power generation. Creating an environment in which consumers and corporation gladly pay for the fruits of space travel will be the key to creating a truly stable, non-bureaucratic flow of funds and a thriving industry that depends more on proving economic value than on lobbying politicians.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
We have technologies that serve the same purpose as personal jetpacks and flying cars, generally safer and more economical. Personal jetpacks and flying cars are really exotic luxury items, so I don't think those are a good comparison.
Fusion energy might be a better example. It is something that would be of real value and something we have thrown a lot of money at. Other energy sources may become cheap and easy enough though where fusion is not as attractive.
I think the time scale required is beyond 50 years for space colonies, and it is hard to guess that far in the future. Could someone 50 years ago guess about computers today? Star Trek was guessing about computers a couple of hundred years in the future, but our current computers are already pretty close to their mark.
... and we all know what was the best momment of all: doing the right stuff!
--
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I hear this jokingly asked by plenty of friends. Of course, most people still can't handle earth-bound vehicles. Then again, we've still got Tang, mercury switches, and Teflon. It's not been a total loss.
realize that the resources required for such an effort FAR exceed any possible benefit.
At the moment. Some breakthroughs in technology could change this- such as a way to get off the planet at a significantly reduced cost. It really just takes a couple of shifts before the whole thing opens up to other opportunities. Really it's just one Big Idea that will lead to a chain reaction of the others.
In 1957, who could have predicted the next fifty years in space? Sputnik had not yet been launched - the Space Race hadn't even begun.
On the other hand, who 40 years ago could have predicted where we are now? In 1967, the Space Race was a dead heat, the Mercury and Gemini programs in the U.S. were blazing successes, and the challenges of Apollo putting a man on the Moon (though formidable) seemed within our grasp. People were already talking of space stations, Moon colonization, and Mars exploration, certainly all within a generation. Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick were starting their collaboration for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
My point is: predictions are cheap, and over a span of fifty years mean little. Things develop far too quickly for a 50-year prediction to carry much weight. Predicting the future of space means also predicting the future of technology - what will be possible in fifty years. It also means predicting the future of the geopolitical and economic landscapes. All of these different factors influence one another - predicting the future of one will mean predicting at least a portion of the others.
Yes, I said non-polluting, because the exhaust is non-radioactive hydrogen. (Read the article before denouncing, please.) For in-system work, we could use Orion or variants, or even the nuclear salt-water rocket. Those do have radioactive exhaust, but out in space that's not exactly a major problem. With that level of specific impulse along with high thrust, the costs of developing space resources are drastically reduced.
Colonies on other planets may or may not be a good idea (though with a big enough space economy a moonbase becomes attractive). But mining asteroids and putting dangerous industries in space is a very nice idea once we're not bogged down with just chemical propellants.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
What that article says may become true, but in 100 years time, not 50.
... unless they get moon-side construction techniques down to a tee very quickly. By 2099 we'll probably be at the stage where the TV show Space 1999 thought we would be 8 years ago. Sad, eh?
In 50 years time I expect a colony of up to 200 people on the moon. 10 by 2030, 40 by 2040, 100 by 2050
Also I think space elevators will be like flying cars. They're a nice idea and concept, but not before 2057. 2107 maybe.
Space related research and exploration is a tiny proportion of money in comparison to military expenditure, and whilst it remains small things will be very very slow. Maybe the USA will get its arse in gear if China start having some successes, but by the time the cogs of political will have turned China will be at least 10 years ahead.
...given all the recent murmurings of policy shifts, etc.
Most of these endeavors from TFA may be pie-in-the-sky, literally; however, according to this article from the Economist the other week, the Goddard Space Flight Center has some serious plans for missions to the moon under direction of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration. Going for the pie-in-the-sky plans may sound exciting and adventurous, but reality needs to set in eventually. Making gradual steps and acting when the technology is developed is the best plan to ensure safety and success in the space in the future.
...and it should be known by now
>At some point, people will get beyond the PR, dreams, and hype and realize that the resources
>required for such an effort FAR exceed any possible benefit.
At some point, someone with a dream will harness the resources necessary to profit from the benefits that you cannot yet foresee.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Fusion power, planetary settlements and the like were all "about 50 years away" then. The only "new" bits are terrorism being an issue (it only is now because we haven't had a real war for a while) and perhaps the public / private split.
The big question not asked? Whose flag flies beside those space elevators in the Pacific...
"lying cars" already exist. Plenty of people have run into trouble when the navigation system in the car tells them a lie...
"Turn left now"
But there is no left.
I think the only way space exploration will receive substantial funding is if energy can be provided from it more cost effectively than can be produced on earth. Part of this being successful is to develop a very heavy lifting capability.
This means that we must go away from a petroleum based economy to some form of fusion based economy - when I say "fusion", I mean either energy from the sun (in the form of O'Neill PowerSats) or from Moon based Helium-3.
In either case a large infrastructure would have to be created which would mean some kind of heavy lift capability (I remember a quote from one of the ISS project managers saying that it's hell trying to build a space station at 35,000 lb (the maximum payload capability of the shuttle) at a time). The heavy lift capability would have to be measured in millions of pounds (much more than the 200,000 lbs of the Saturn V).
In terms of how I see actually happening, I would expect a hybrid of the PowerSat solution and Helium-3 fueled power plants in that the Helium-3 would be sent to the PowerSats and the energy produced beamed down to the Earth. Somehow I don't see how it could ever be cost efficient if we are sending Mass back down (thinking of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress") and I would expect people to be unwilling to allow nuclear fuel to be dropped down through the atmosphere.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
... had been hit by a small asteroid instead of planes. We'd be halfway to Mars by now.
This sounds a bit like the fanciful predictions made in the 50's about the moon colonies, flying cars and rocketpacks we'd have by 1990.
To begin, I doubt there are enough people at the top of earth's wealth pyramid to support the thriving tourist industry proposed to exist in 50 years. I think the costs of space travel will continue to remain, pardon the pun, astronomical, for quite a while. (I know, space elevators et al., but I think the spectre of guaranteeing Health and Safety will handicap this industry).
Furthermore, if there's one very important lesson to be learned in the last 20 years, is that rapid advances in space technology requires a very particular combination of scientific accumen and willingness to tolerate risk. The Apollo project had it, but noone has replicated the right mix since. We see the same stunted progress in other industries that are on the high end of the risk spectrum (airline travel, nuclear power).
This is much unlike advancement in the computer industry, to cite one example, which can race ahead at breakneck speed, because there isn't much of a human cost to screwing up.
Thus, I believe that it's a mistake to assume we will necessarily recreate that climate of rapid progress. I can easily imagine another 50 years of sending robotic probes that crash land half of the time (but work marvelously otherwise).
Afterall it is the ultimate high ground.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
So basically "moon colony" "mars colony" "manned exploration of titan" "space elevators" "many private space stations" and soon "robot -> another solar system."
A moon "colony" of 2000 scientists is probably the most likely prediction. I mean, we're supposed to start building a permanent moon base in 2020 and I could certainly see an antartica type multinational presence on that scale within 50 years. It'll be useful for telescope maintenance and probably other things. Maybe we'll have H-3 mining on the moon by then as well, though that is somewhat less predictable.
A mars colony I don't see happening in 50 years. I can see us re-building the moon base on mars, but not having it manned constantly. There just isn't a good reason to be there every day unless a terraforming process is underway. And since we haven't even been able to do a bio-dome on earth, yet, I'm a little bit iffy about having started preparations (even) for the complete teraforming of mars, within 50 years.
Manned exploration of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn could happen in the next 50 years, easily. But then... well certain people thought it would happen by 2001...
Space elevators. A most interesting concept. We seem to be relatively close to the material strength we'd need. Other challenges I can't see lasting 20 years if people are seriously interested. All the same, I give us a 50/50 chance of *ever* building a space elevator. (A sky hook seems a near certainty, even if just for the novelty, but not a space elevator for primary lifting). I'd say there's an even chance of finding a better way to lift sensitive cargo off the earth, and certainly a big slingshot makes more sense for cargo that can take the acceleration.
The vision of privately operated space stations drifting around the earth is nice. I can see a really expensive hotel happening in space in the next 50 years. Perhaps even with artificial gravity (via spinning, not some sci-fi magic) on part of it. I can also see a cluster of private science space stations. I don't really see more then a few private space stations for anything other then private science, though, in the foreseeable future.
As for sending a robot to another solar system in 50 years.... Well, hopefully we'll be *able* to. The problem is speed. Even with optimistic speeds it would probably take another hundred years to get any data back from the mission, even just to know if it worked. And then in the next hundred years someone could find a way to go faster then light and the entire mission would be pointless. (And yes, it is technically possible. Acceleration from less then light speed to greater then light speed takes infinite energy, but if you find a way to skip that acceleration you're good to go. I wouldn't go so far as to say it can't happen in the next 150 years.)
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
I'll get beaten up for this, but the next 50 years in space will continue to be more of the same: I'll be stolen from more (through taxes), with more lost opportunities for people to work in a real market rather than a State-planned market that focuses on generating new technology for the war machine, rather than new technology that will actually solve some real problems. Yes, yes, some of NASA's discoveries over the years have been adapted for consumers or health or what-not, but this is more an accident than it is a regular reality.
I could care less which country gets to Mars first -- I don't believe in "us versus them." We're individuals, regardless of citizenship, and it is always "me versus everyone" until I am comfortable enough to be able to help others through charity, purchasing goods or services, or hopefully saving in a full-reserve bank so my money can be honestly loaned to those who can use it wisely. I don't need to venture to space, even though I'm a Sci-Fi geek. I'll look forward to McDevitt's next book and get my fantasies worked out there rather than in billions or trillions lost to government waste, bureaucracies, and preferential treatment for their elite friends.
Space is a waste UNTIL the market economy provides for it. Let the private industries battle it out competitively, with lessened regulations, than what we've had for the first 50 years.
who was the first man in Space in 1962!
We won the space race. The victors get to choose how things are measured and who is remembered. Why should anyone care about a load of technically retarded Russians? What have they ever done? We went to the moon, and they could never get there!
It's evil KITT. Night rider's worst enemy.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars
--
"I got me no less than 5 mod points and I'm not afraid to use 'em. I'm a Moderator on the edge..."
Move along now, nothing to see here! Go on!
Not, KITT, KARR ("The Knight Automated Roving Robot")
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
...won't happen. We're almost out of many of our fossil fuels. Unless we find a sustainable way of getting "up there", we're going to be landbound for a while. I suspect the idiot Americans will start working on the nuclear air craft idea again. Why must business and lawyers interfere with EVERYTHING that could spell progress for us? We could have been so far ahead with the electric car (solar, rechargeable or fuel cell) if business didn't intervene to protect it's interests and try to squeeze every last dollar of profit out of fossil fuels. We could have had much better public mass transportation if the greedy heads of the auto industry didn't dismantle what once was (beautiful electric trolleys) to put down paved roads. Think about how much better off we'd be if all businesses actually paid attention to human considerations first: nature, natural approaches to health care starting with proper diets for everyone, renewable energy sources, and finally product built to last a long time instead of planned obsolescence and limited durability. My folks had a refrigerator from General Electric that they got in 1969 and it lasted until 1990. THAT is a perfect example of what a quality product's lifespan SHOULD be. Today, you can buy a fridge that has more bells and whistles, but it will die on you in seven years or less. You might be able to push ten years, but not without having some repair bills. The same thing should apply to big servers in IT. You SHOULD be able to buy a server today that will last 25 years for the capacity and applications you need. Those apps and the OS should be well supported within that 25 year period. THAT is a very realistic and responsible approach. THAT is something that vendors like Microfaust can't offer, but Linux based distros can. So, get with the program folks! Of course it won't happen. The money grubbing idiots of Amrican capitalism would just as soon burn their own children as fuel (which they are doing in Iraq) before they'd take any kind of financial hit. Our world is run by money addicts.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Once people figure out how to profit from the Moon they'll be there like gophers in a golf course.
Oh, expense, we can't have huge expenses before realising a profit. Duh. Get back to your landscaping job and don't forget to pull all the weeks this time.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Prolly be another fifty years of spending oodles of dollars on pointless crap like growing crystals in "zero-G" or seeing how earthworms like weightlessness, while occasionally throwing a buck or two at the unmanned missions that produce the REAL science.
First and foremost, it has to go. Nothing is going to happen in space until that moment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
It essentially bans property in space and therefore there is little incentive to bother going there.
Deleted
Based on what I read and what I know of the challenges involved, here's my guess as to a rough timeline for the next 50 years in space:
2010: Space shuttle retired
2014: New Orion vehicle mission to space station
2020: Moon landing by NASA
2027: Moon landing by China
2030: Privately owned shuttle equivalent
2031: Start construction of moon base
2035: Start construction of privately owned space station
2037: Manned Mars mission
2040: Permanent moon presence
2045: Construction of high earth orbit station
2050: "Space tug" type utility vehicle in use - first reusable vehicle permanently in space
2055: Permanent Mars presence proposed and reachable
2057: Testing of new drive types (ion perhaps) well underway
Looking beyond 2057 is futile. Perhaps even looking as far as 2057 is futile. I forget who it was that said this but perhaps it is apt: "The future is not only different from what we imagine, but different from what we CAN imagine."
Ok, fact of the week:
The atmosphere on titan is so thick, and the gravity so weak, that humans could fly about by flapping wings attached to their arms.
I want to go to titan NOW!
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Never is a long time.
I think a better projection is that we will never put viable colonies anywhere in space using current technologies. Not even in improved versions. Not economically feasible unless there are very, very high finacial or scientific returns to be realized from such a colony. Right now, there is no reason to believe that there will be.
But there will likely be other technologies developed in the next century. Maybe one of them will work out. When (if) the cost of getting a man or woman to the moon or Mars becomes comperable to today's cost of getting a man or woman to Antarctica, provisioning them, and getting them home, we'll see permanent colonies. When will that be? I haven't a clue.
For the short term, I'll settle for getting a few kilograms of rocks back from ten or twenty places in the solar system -- which is sort of probably within the limits of what we can do with current technology and doesn't require human assistance.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Obvioulsy you have not encountered one of the millions of vehicles that turn on Check Engine lights for no good reason.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Either:
Private space start ups will successfully sell and launch tourists then branch out into exploration projects intended to lead to colonization, or
Governments will allow them to develop to the point where it can let them think they're competing with Big Aerospace, offer them 10% of what it pays its corporate welfare favorite children, then have them merged and absorbed into those corporations to provide the equivalent of generic brand launch systems for resale to customers who couldn't otherwise afford it.
Then:
On the first weekend in October 2057 the last three living members of the National Association of Rocketry will meet up at the annual Homer Hickam And The Rocket Boys book signing and barbeque in Coalwood, West Virginia to fly some model rockets and brag about their massive knowledge of widely known (though incorrect) tricks for optimizing drag reduction and nostalgically misremembered trivia from space history, as all 200 citizens of Coalwood try to sell hamburgers and snow cones to the 15 tourists who've shown up to listen to the old farts and gawk at the Homer-shaped robot purchased with funds from the West Virginia Tourism Council, autographing paperback books and DVDs of "October Sky", while the Chinese Ministry of Smiling and Showing Off Our Glorious Technology for Public Relations Purposes launches a Soviet R-7 shaped Long March IX to orbit a Sputnik replica carrying a sample of Burt Rutan's ashes purchased on eBay from one of the 17 of trillionaire His Honorary Majesty Lord Sir Richard Branson's clones.
I intend to be one of those three.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
While agree that we won't have colonies in the next 50 years, you really shouldn't say "never." Assuming humans are still around hundreds of years from now and haven't suffered some major setback/die-off, we could be doing some amazing things.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
"It is October 4th, 2057..."
:( - If I can make it.
And I'll be 87 years old
I sure hope they come up with some nanotech to keep me around to see a manned mission to Titan.
While colonies may be a bit extreme without the ability to terraform or some other method of self-sustainment for a significantly sized population, a moon and/or mars base as an operations center for mining the asteroid belt is a distinct possibility. Due to the lower gravity it would be far more economical to operate off of one of these opposed to earth or space stations in earth's orbit. The initial startup would be a huge amount (since we still need to launch the initial materials into space) but once you can build and launch craft from the moon/stations the costs would probably be worth it in the long run.
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6970031.stm
We can already make flying cars. The problem is you need a pilot's license to fly them higher than 10 feet.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
ppl are now taking vacations to space. You need to read some history. When the wright brothers invented the aeroplane, many swore that it would not matter that it would lead to nothing. Within 25 years, was the start of mail and cargo flying (like launching satellites) as well as exploratory flights for testing purposes. It was all spotty, and many companies went bankrupt. A few survived and went on to build big businesses. Boeing was creating aircrafts that were used in the 30's for an airlines (later to be called United). Within 50 years, came be the true beginning of passenger flying, which was followed by the golden ages of flight. We are now at 50 years of space, and looking at companies building rockets for PRIVATE flights. Not just for sale to a gov. Colonies on the moon will be funded by folks like Paul Allen, Elon Musk, and other far thinkers. It will not be those that are earth bound and think small or just about their niche (such as those that say space will never happen or say that it must be robotics or we need to focus on earth first).
I have no doubt that we will have a base on the moon within 15 years (barring war or a depression; though it may still happen). I suspect that we will be on mars within 25 years. This will come down to not just nationalistic pride, but access to future resources; LAND. China and American govs. will be shooting for the moon for a different reason, but in the end, all countries want to get to the moon quickly. The reason is that a very small amount of real estate offers "inexpensive" development, and that is the poles.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But "there is no left" either? Oh my god!
From TFA: "Thrown into that mix is the private sector, a factor that was never imagined in 1957." It certainly was imagined. Heinlein _The Man Who Sold the Moon_ in 1951, etc. The exploration of space has always been advocated by visionaries, and beset by nay-sayers.
You're describing the colonization of space in terms of return on investment. What you've said has been said by many others, for decades. History certainly doesn't justify this, as national prestige was what drove the original space race. The huge economic returns brought through miniaturization, materials, weather forecasting, etc., were largely serendipitous. Yet they've paid for every dime ever spent on space, many times over.
Nor do I think that a prediction based on ROI will be any more accurate in future than it's been in the past.
Available technologies (which could radically alter the I in ROI) do not remain fixed. What about the 'R'? I doubt that the desire for national prestige will disappear. It's also quite possible that we, as a species, might gain the ultimate R--survival. A couple of scenarios for that might include having a self-sustaining colony away from earth when some bio-weapon is used, whether by a nation, or a non-state actor. Or having enough experience doing industrial-scale things in space to deflect an asteroid or comet if necessary.
There are other arguments, but these will do to go on with.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
As a "baby boomer" my life has basically spanned the "space/computer/indoor-toilet age", almost every boy at my primary school (in Australia) wanted to be an astronought at the time of the moon landings, it really was a "big deal" that stopped people in their tracks. The only recent event that compares is the 9/11 attacs, unfortunately they had the opposite "vibe". OTOH: Now I'm older I realise the "space race" was also a "missile race" and the "men to mars", "colonisation", "terraforming", ect comes from politicians hoping to "do what JFK did", but they can't because just like Beattle-mania it's already been done!
The only thing that will impress the general population in a "moon landing" kinda way will be the discovery of alien life/fossils, microsopoic bugs would stir some interest but wouldn't have that "in your face" impact since there is too much room for people to dismiss it with self-serving mumbo-jumbo.
"keep offering grand visions--but delivering on NONE of them."
Not all the "grand-visions" from NASA have been flops or pipe dreams, there have been plenty of long term scientific projects like the great-observatories, landsat, voyager, cassini, ect, ect, that have been enourmously fruitfull. IHMO the moon shots were a social phenomena that changed (for the better) the way we see the universe and ourselves. If nothing else the skills learned in building robotic craft for the moon shots have been refined and have produced scientific images of such popularity and "religious awe" that people display them on their walls, screensavers and t-shirts the world over. This is the standard you get when scientists are picking the projects, sure they may screw up metric/imperial occasionally but it's politicians and the military who waste billions planning/building space age cube farms in a feeble attempt to impress voters.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
>>
Star Trek was guessing about computers a couple of hundred years in the future, but our current computers are already pretty close to their mark.
>>
Naah. The flashing checkerboard lights and MO-NO-TONE COM-PYU-TER VOICE alone will require another fifty years at least.
Yeah, I still remember reading about em being a few years away in the mid/early nineties.... That company is basically the reason flyincars are considered up ther with cold fusion :p
www.aleo.no
Well, I'm not saying they're something that is likely to become common or profitable (or even a good idea) but they have made working prototypes which means we can in fact make flying cars.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
And what I sensed in the adults was the paranoia of having this Russian thing overhead every hour. In contemporary parlance, a circling Orange Terror Alert that supported the Cold War. So Sputnik had a dark side in its cultural context.
the more you know
As a "baby boomer" my life has basically spanned the "space/computer/indoor-toilet age"...
Hello Bennett Brauer!
And yet...my computer can't realistically generate 3D images of people with flawless likeness. /I want my f'ing holodeck //Would never come out ///Guess what I'll be doing in there.
will be the mainstay. Someone will find commercial value in doing work off planet and from that point forward, permanent habitats will be self sustaining (in terms of population -- you'll still need imports from Earth to survive).
As for the next 50 years, I expect commercial access to low Earth orbit to be the limit achived by private enterprise. Of course, private companies provide the equipment for the future manned lunar launches. Given that they have the technology, a few corporations will be capable of sending people and supplies off world; but, they will be waiting for someone to come along with a viable business model to foot the bill for the launch vehicles, equipment, shelters, etc. Until then, it will remain goverment funded.
This is just one of those cases where, if you build the infrastructure, the people will follow; but, you have to build the infrastructure first. This is such a hard thing to do, governments are going to have to do it. Once there's a destination and some capacity to travel back and forth, business' will become interested in taking over different aspects. Once they're in, corporations will look for other ways to make money from the resources. Once they find ways to make money, they'll build out, hire people, etc. I wouldn't expect this to happen for 100-150 years.
The European Union Canada, and US governments have basically turned into nanny states, more interested in the distribution of health-care dollars and the care and feeding of old people. You know, the people who vote the most.
Given that these governments are basically huge wealth-transfer pumps, taking from the producers and giving to the consumers, with no room for anything else, I expect nothing from them but decline.
India and China aren't burdened like this - yet, so I expect much of the work to come from them. I also expect more from private individuals like Jeff Bezos.
But from the ESA, or NASA, I expect nothing.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
If we were just much nicer to each other. Awwww, diddums.
The thing you've forgotten... No, scratch that, you're clearly about 12 years old... The thing you've never learned. Every human being on the planet is in direct competition with every other for status, resources and power.
Deleted
A number of your future freaks will want to send you there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I would say that the economics of a Mars base in particular depends upon two factors; cheap native Mars fuel (perhaps nuclear fuel) and the economics of asteroid mining. If asteroid mining for raw materials did become practical, a Mars base would have many advantages, such as closer proximity to the belt, as well as lower gravity and thinner atmosphere so take-offs/landings would be cheaper on the whole.
Other than that, I can't see any up-front economic benefit to such an endeavor, though there would likely be many lateral benefits from the research necessary to produce the technologies to make a Mars colony sustainable.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
A probe mission to the Alpha Centauri system. It's doable in pretty reasonable time with current technology. It would be cool to send 3 probes (one to each star), even equip each with a lander should they discover a decent planet to explore. We could have some really interesting data back within 15 years and do plenty of new science along the way.
What about KARRs, the evil versions of KITT?
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
2010: Space shuttle retired
2014: New Orion vehicle mission to space station
2020: Moon landing by NASA
2025: Start construction of privately owned space station
2027: Moon landing by China
2030: Privately owned shuttle equivalent
2031: Start construction of moon base (Many nations cooperate)
2035: Permanent moon presence
2045: Manned Mars mission
2057: Space Elevator from the Moon to L1 begins construction.
In other words, I agree on most points, but perhaps not their exact dates. The space elevator from the moon can basically be built as soon as there's permanent presence (or even earlier, but that's unlikely). It doesn't really require any tech we don't have today (which is not to say it wouldn't require any R&D), all it takes is a massive effort and loads of money. But if many nations can cooperate with a permanently manned lunar base, there would basically be no reason not to consider it. I don't think we'll ever see one on earth, however.
Two steps forward, one step back. Cut funding further. Sit on arse for 15 years. Repeat.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
*blue steel*
"The need to build the internet comes from something inside us, something programmed... something we can't resist."
But strangely, I don't feel neutral.
I'm really disgusted with the paucity of American ambition. I'm struck by the audio tape from Sen. Wide Stance's police interview as he tries to explain how his trolling for gay sex in a men's room was something other than exactly how it looked. The cop was disgusted. "This is why we're going down the tubes." A better metaphor, however unwanted, could not have been asked for. To continue the sexual metaphor, the Republicans are the tops, nobody fucks this country harder or longer than they do. And the Democrats, they're the bottoms. They'll take it up the pooper like troupers and meekly wait for their slice of corruption pie. In government as well as private enterprise, the future is never looked at past the next quarter and the top priority of those in power is the lining of pockets with as much cash as possible with the minimum level of exposure. It's all about power for power's sake.
We the people are allowing ourselves to be distracted from the consequences of empire by bread and circuses. We're complicit in this debacle. Every one of us swayed by corporate arguments about not needing socialist health care, believing the government when they tell us terrorists are our biggest threat, believing all of these professional liars when they swear that what they're lying about is true... We have become truly worthy of contempt. We're better than what we've allowed ourselves to become. I'd like to think that it's not too late to pull our fat out of the fire.
People like a good challenge to rise to. Traditionally it takes a war for us to unite as a nation, invest our blood and treasure in the grand crusade of going overseas and killing brown people. But a space race could be just the kind of bloodless competition to appeal to the better side of our ambition. We've been the kings of low-earth orbit for decades. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we continued to laugh at the Russian space program, seeing it as a comical shadow of our own. But now the Russians are getting serious, the Chinese and Indians are hungry for a slice of the high orbital pie. Human organization is never better than when the men in power say "Shit, we need to get something done and get it done right," when they identify the right people to run the job, give them the blank check and then stay the hell out of the way. Small, motivated teams, little political interference, just a goal to achieve and the means to achieve it.
I'd like to think that we'll go further in the next fifty years than we have in the past fifty. My fear is that we'll just be dicking around in LEO, scratching our balls with nothing to show for it. If we of the US of A can't get our collective asses together, then maybe those other countries might make a go of it. If so, more power to them.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Mine turns on the low oil light when i put the key to Run(haven't started it at this point) Turn the key off, turn it back on, the light goes out.
If you idle long enough, the low coolant light comes on.
Both fluids are just fine.. Bad sensors.
Old cars go from where you have to pay attention to warning lights because something is broken, to where you have to ignore the warning lights because they're broken.
Not even the most foolish sci-fi writer would think they could predict the future in anything other than the most general, generic terms--much less offer a TIMELINE--much less offer an incredibly AMBITIOUS timeline, no less.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...but it did explain in no uncertain terms that way should stay far away from Mars. What are they thinking?
Perhaps you did not read that last part? He qualified his predictions with a nice dose of modesty. To call the GP ludicrously arrogant, is... ehh.. ludicrously arrogant?
Predicting and dreaming of the future is at worst, just for fun. There is no harm in it. And, if we don't do it, what's to guide our aspirations?
We have flying cars. They're called helicopters.
Based on my tremendous experience as an internet expert:
2011-12 Space Shuttle retired *unless* one of them is lost earlier 2015-2016 Ares 1 starts manned launches. Ares 5 followup is officially discontinued.2015 Bigelow finally gets a manned station up there. Cryogenic fuel storage and refueling in orbit demonstrated.
2020 Private reusable launch vehicle to orbit. Orbital assembly demonstrated by private business. Space tug demonstrated. Private industry can match Ares 1 performance.
2025 Moon landing by China. ISS discontinued. Replacements are inflatable along the lines of current Bigelow designs.
2030 Moon landing by NASA. Moonbase established in the next few years using technology developed by private enterprise. First private prospecting efforts in the asteroid belt and on the Moon. China encourages Chinese industry to enter space. NASA leaves the Earth to orbit launch business permanently.
2035 First permanent lunar presence. Probably the Chinese followed shortly by a NASA base. By now, China has a larger economy than the US.
2040 First private lunar factory. Makes something mundane like concrete or glass products for local use.
2050 Manned Mars mission. First asteroids placed in Earth orbit. Solar panels made on the Moon in large quantities. First factories in Earth orbit.
2057 Private capability for manned travel beyond cislunar. Routine travel to the Moon.
I'd say that looking past 2025 is futile, but futility has never stopped me before. As I see it, there are big unknowns now. For example, what will happen to the private launch platforms (the EELVs, SpaceX, and Orbital Science), the Ares 5, Bigelow's space stations, and the ISS? Losing a Shuttle (something I put at around 10%) will mix up the schedule, I think, just due to the funding shift from a suddenly ended Space Shuttle to any sort of replacement.
Holo-ball?
Much of your computer was manufactured in ... China, Philippines, Malaysia? If you don't live in the Pacific Rim, that's likely on the opposite side of the planet. At first glance, it doesn't make any sense to put your manufacturing facilities so far from the customer ... right?
Eaten any avocados recently? They probably came from Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, or Mexico. If you were living in the mid-1800s, those items would never survive the transportation time. Today, it's a no-brainer.
If you change the transportation dynamic, the entire market will shift. Things that are un-possible today will be commonplace tomorrow. And I hate to use the P-word (because it's been so over-used to be cliche,) but using today's social paradigms to establish expectations for tomorrow's environment is totally inappropriate. The GP can't see "any possible benefit" because he's using today's cost model against a future environment. If I was transporting vegetables and fruit for a living, and using only horse-drawn carriages and sailing ships for transport, the costs of importing perishable items from far distances would be excessive. So there's no possible value in doing so, right?
To quote my father - "It's not impossible. You just haven't figured it out yet."
It's a joke people, a joke... For those who don't understand: the summary says "4 October 1957", today is 4 September 1957 - so the "old news" is therefore 1 month early.
All this moonwalking is gonna end up with us staring at the big rock that's gonna wipe us out.
I was starry junior high school nerd in 1968 when the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" came out. It seemed like most of those inventions would be likely 33 years from then- a computer as smart as humans, computer graphics, routine orbital and lunar travel etc. Especially when the moon land landing was just around the corner. Only computer graphics exceeded anyones expectations in those 33 years. (Yes all the computer in 2001 were hand-drawn animation cels, because computer graphics was just some white lines on an oscilliscope then.) The energy crisis, the cold war, disappointment with big government programs all intervened to slow down space exploration. I rememebr crying seeing "2001" in 2001 because all those dreams were crushed.
Give them time. They're working on that...and getting pretty amazing results: http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/latest_research/2006/ 20060210/20060210.html
There's so much entailed in that statement that it's hard to know where to start.
Let's start with this question: have we got our money's worth for the money we've invested so far?
That's not the same as asking whether everything that we've spent money on has paid for itself in benefits, or the same as asking whether everything we've spent money on was the best thing we could have spent money on or the most efficient way of getting the benefits we've received. Just speaking net, are we ahead of where we'd be otherwise?
I'd say that given the military and economic benefits of space communication technology, remote sensing, and navigation, yes. My gut tells me we are ahead, although IANAE (I am not an Economist).
Now the next thing to examine is opportunity cost. Could we have got the benefits of space technology for less investment? Almost certainly. Almost certainly for much less. This, however, is where a purely economic analysis of the 60s space program falls down. We would not have made the investments in technology development if we weren't -- in a sense -- wasting lots of money on manned exploration. People would not have stood for spending money so that twenty years down the pike we'd have communication satellites, weather satellites, and GPS.
You have to have lived through part of the era to understand.
The 60s space program was about two things: national prestige and fear. The Soviets launched Sputnik while the US space program was in shambles. They put the first man in space, and the first man in Earth orbit (Yuri Gagarin). There was a sense that America was being encircled in a new and unique way: not by encroachment on two dimensional map borders, but over our very heads. How much was it worth in terms of national self confidence and prestige to get out from under this feeling? I don't think anybody can say, but the nation gladly spent, at its peak, 0.75% of the entire national GDP to show that we weren't encircled by our Communist enemies.
As a side effect, we got lots of technological benefits that we'd never have had the foresight to invest in.
Once we got to the Moon, there wasn't any point to prove by going on. We couldn't exactly close up shop and admit it was not really about creating a new frontier for humanity, that it was just a matter of boosting prestige and allaying fears. So the manned space program has been on a downward coast ever since. Today we are farther from putting a man on the Moon than we were in 1964. The current program is the tail end of maintaining the pretext of a space as a national frontier.
It seems to me that the fact we were as happy as we were to pay for the Apollo program, combined with the success of that program, has to mean we got our money's worth out of that program in terms of national prestige; there's no other way to measure the value of something like that. Given that we got our money's worth in prestige, and a boatload of useful technology to boot, I'd have to say the space program has been a bargain.
The lesson in this is that things aren't always what they seem to be in space exploration. I believe that we will probably want a manned program again at some point not to far in the future, for much the same reasons we did in the 60s. However an ambitious manned program is very, very expensive, and I don't think that we can make meaningful marginal improvements to the manned program at what we are willing to pay right now. For that reason, I'm against the President's plan for a manned Mars mission at some date far, far in the future. I'd rather see a step up in unmanned missions until such time it's important enough to us to put a manned Mars mission on a meaningful planni
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A small change to your list...
2037: Manned Mars Mission2038: Yellowstone Caldera explodes behind schedule
2039: Earth tempurature falls 10 degrees due to complete obscuring of sun... Global Warming declared non-issue
2040: Permanent moon presence rescheduled
2041: Human population reduced to 10,000 mating pairs... Overpopulation declared non-issue
2042: Construction of high earth orbit station rescheduled
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
The cover story in the current issue of Popular Mechanics deals with this same concept of looking ahead to the next half-century of spaceflight, and they've just posted a round-up of "expert" predictions, with everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Arthur C. Clarke and Burt Rutan to Tom Wolfe. Good stuff...
"Turn left now"
But there is no left.
Which, depending on what is actually to the left (cliff, fuel depot, power station) could mean that not only do we have lying cars, we have homicidal cars. Thus bringing to pass yet another prediction of a well-known futurist.
The enemies of Democracy are
Obviously, your claim is going to fail in a billion years when the Sun heats up to the point life on Earth will end. Leaving will have great benefit. So the real question is how long before you become wrong? Obviously, if you're wrong only after a few hundred million years, it's not a big error. My take however is that you will be in error much sooner than that. You seem to be making claims about the cost of entering and doing things in space that aren't based on any feature of space.
Lunar and Martian colonies are like personal jetpacks and lying cars: forever "in the future."
We already have personal jetpacks and have had them for some time. Almost no one has a use for them. Flying cars (flying vehicles that can travel legally on roads) are impractical. There's no way that any country could handle all their cars, if those cars could fly. It requires support infrastructure that we don't have or need.
With space development, we already know what the biggest costs are. The biggest is the cost of getting something into orbit. That cost in turn is most dependent on launch frequency. Launch vehicles have high fixed costs (eg, development, infrastructure like launch towers). Economically, it's more efficient to spread the fixed cost of the vehicle over a lot of launches than to design a vehicle with lower fixed costs (eg, "big, dumb rocket"). Insurance, reliability, safety costs are dependent on the number of launches. Each launch, whether successful or not, tests the vehicle and the crew becomes more experienced and efficient in launching future vehicles.
Almost no one tries this approach. The Russians have done so, yielding the most successful launch vehicles to date (the Proton and Soyuz launch vehicles).
So my take is that we haven't tried yet to build a cheap space launch system, aside from what the Russians have (which started forty years ago). Saying "never" in the face of such ignorance is foolhardy.
I guess you haven't heard of Bigelow Aerospace? They already have launched TWO 1/3-scale prototypes of their orbital habitat, and they recently announced they will be moving UP the development schedule for their first functional habitat (that's right, a space program that is ahead of schedule).
I've read much better fiction than the FA.
Nice and fun read, but definitely irrelastic, with absolutely no serious base to back all the nice dreams.Good luck with your team of 10 on Titan, 300 on Mars and "thousands" on the moon in 50 years, but us here in Real Life aren't on the moon yet, still trying to figure out how to survive 10 days on Mars with a crew of 3, and stare at Titan in amazement with telescopes while hoping and crossing fingers that the decade-long journey of our preferred probe makes it there.
I don't understand those who pin our hopes for space exploration on the private sector and capitalism. The payoff just isn't there, other than possibly in some esoteric fields such as Zero-G manufacturing. But who cares? This is a dream more grand than money. I was hoping that as a species, we were evolving past the need for more and more superfluous accumulation of wealth anyhow. Perhaps I am too naive - I've been told that before.
I know, there is a cost with space exploration. But to thrive, humanity needs to explore and learn. This is a core need, and historically, it is the sign of a society moving forward. I'm not hung up on discovering the next Teflon, or whatever other cool terrestrial inventions may come out of the space program. I DO care that as a child, I watched as we, for the first time, left our own planet and set foot on another place in our cosmos. Sure, it was only a quarter of a million miles away. But it was amazing! And, it was a milestone. We need more of those moments.
Rivalry got us to the moon, no doubt, and political supremacy was the driving force - "We're better than the Ruskies". Blah. I didn't even know about that stuff as a kid - to me, it was amazing that humans were on the moon. Not Americans, humans. We can work together this time, as the world, and achieve something together that we can be even more proud of than what we achieved separately.
I also know that there are many pressing problems in the world, such as hunger, disease and war. I am sensitive to those issues, but I also think it's a strawman to believe we have to focus on one issue to the exclusion of another. We already have the means (transport, agriculture, processing methods) to solve the world's hunger and thirst problems - we just choose not to do it, mostly because we don't have the will. There again, we need the desire to do something that transcends accumulation of wealth. It's about more than making piles of money. If we want to work on those issues first, then go back to space, that's fine - as long as we would really do it. But would we? Perhaps seeing that there are exciting things we can do that amount to more than lining our pockets would be inspiring.
Wealth is not a bad thing, but it's not everything. We should get back to space, and do it for the mountain climber reason ("because it's there"). It's lofty. It's interesting. It's something that makes us proud. Been a long time since I've felt like I did in those days in the late 60s. Go ahead, call me naive, or tell me my priorities are misplaced. But then, tell me about something that we've done as a people that made us more proud than going to the moon.
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
What the hell kind of nerd are you if you can't see the inherent benefits of space exploration? People don't go to the Grand Canyon for profit, they go to see something spectacular, and it's the human desire to see and experience more that will drive space exploration.
Vadersez: You will pay for your lack of vision!
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
Don't ever type shit like that again.
The one thing that has remained constant over the last 50 years has been the complete overestimation of how fast our space technology would advance by futurists and science fiction authors. Anyone remember the television show "Space 1999"? How we doing on that lunar colony? However, it really doesn't matter, we won't make it past 2012... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012
!#&*
"This is why we're going down the tubes."
No, we're going down the tubes because we have valuable law enforcement resources sitting in bathroom stalls all day busting idiots. I still can't figure out why Senator Craigslist was even arrested in the first place. He was trying to make a sort of pass in some secret Gay Jedi Code? OK. Is gay sex illegal in Idaho? Was there any clear intent to have the sex *IN* the bathroom? I guess I'm just not privy to the what's on those Gay Decoder Rings.
Heh heh... privy...
You're not going to see a whole lot of tourists to the grand canyon if they started charging $2 million a head to get in, you needed several weeks of pre-visit training, and you needed to stay inside the tour bus at all times or suffocate to death.
I have just one word, for you. Just one word. Plastics.... Or, maybe ghammahydroxentium, or whatever the newest, most interesting, non terrestrial ore/mineral/etc is discovered. The key will be getting someone to physically live on the Moon, Or Mars, and start doing some semi deep core drilling to find what exploitable resources may exist in non-terran environments. And then researching those ores to find a use for them, and then finding a way to make that use profitable. The colonization of the western US was enbouldened by the dreams of many striking it rich on Gold. You will see a similar 'Space Rush' based on profitable exploitable resources discovered in environs outside of ours. I envision that this material will be something new that offers revolutionary new power generation yields, or an item that will increase the yield of electronmagnetic environments, which in turn will be the catalyst in both fusion research as well as long term anti-matter storage and containment, either of which will, almost in their own right, create a need that funds it's own extraction. Until a profitable, and exciting 'everyman' concept of space is envisioned, it will remain an environment we dabble in from time to time just to make sure we keep our technological advantage in the only endeavour that validated itself in regards to mankind actually taking a dream and making it a reality.
If russian, no. If American, most likely. The simple truth is that the race started with sputnik. It caught us off guard. We had no idea that the USSR was that far ahead. Like us, they were building a small space program. Turns out that sputnik and Gagarin were pushed heavily via their politicians, and they took some dangerous shortcuts that paid off. In the end, the truth is, they beat us to it. The race started with Sputnik, and I thank USSR for doing that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You will make it (assuming that you have a nice retirement fund).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The use of Nuclear Powered Rockets such sa the Orion or NERVA designs would be immensely economical. Too bad the hippies would be up in arms.
What the next Fifty Years in space will bring.....
10) Hyper-inflated budgets: Too little going to useful projects, and too much going to developing pointless, useless, and stupid ideas.
9) Billions wasted inventing pointless crap, like ball-point pens that write upside down in zero gravity and a Space Elevator.
8) NASA opens Astronaut-only orbiting saloon/cyber-cafe called "The Space Bar". Annonces "Doller Shot" special.
7) The worlds first $75,000,000 hammer, and it's companion $20,000 nail.
6) Bungling, over-paid bureaucreats and half-retarded politicians replacing engineers.
5) More Standard/Metric conversion disasters.
4) NASA spends millions designing new "Mile-High Club" Astronaut merit badge.
3) People give up on space exploration and development, as advertisers have clogged it all up with ads and flasing neon signs.
2) Congress spends $10B on bolt, but holds out for a better deal on the nut.
1) Congress gets better deal on the nut, but spent all its cash on the bolt. Asks American Taxpayers if they can Bogart a couple billion. Promises to pay it back.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Anybody who hasn't seen it already should check out Clark Lindsay's private spaceflight timeline on RLVNews.com. Basically, every January he compiles a listing of recent happenings in private spaceflight, and compiles announcements and predictions of future activity, trying to walk the line between being overly pessimistic and overly optimistic to try to get a realistic forecast. Of course, since the current forecast is almost a year old there's some things which are a little out of date: for example SpaceX has ran into some launch hitches, while Bigelow Aerospace has accelerated their private space station plans.
It's simple you just need a Hulk.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
>>Guess what I'll be doing in there.
Making life miserable for whoever mops the floors...
> I would say that in terms of costs, it is going to be politically unjustifiable to push forward these missions..
..more to the point I am fairly sure we are entering into a period of rather more upheaval on earth,
Which is governments won't be doing it. NASA would have never been funded for Apollo had it not been for the Cold War. But go we will because it will become economically justifiable. Do the math people. One medium sized asteroid has enough metals in it to satisfy our needs for decades even assuming an ever growing appetite for resources. Sooner or later somebody will figure a way to get at those sort of virtually limitless riches. It just won't be pinhead politicians.
>
> politically, economically and ecologically.
All the more reason to get our butts out there. Many of our political problems would lessen with a new frontier opened up. Economic problems get easier with boundless riches flowing in from the new colonies and ecologically it just makes sense to more heavy polluting industry up and out of the ecosphere.
> or even the suggestion of the rewards that would be possible by doing so.
Well if the potential for virtually limitless living space and material resources don't qualify as a 'reward' in your eyes you should get them examined by a specialist.
Democrat delenda est
As a Slashdot regular and the expertise in world affairs that this gives me, here's my timeline for the next 50 years:
2009: Rudy Giuliani elected (or appointed, take your pick) President of USA; vows to continue war in Iraq
2010: Space Shuttle retired; money freed up goes to Iraq War; Space program frozen due to "national emergency"
2011: American economy collapses, taking global economy with it
Well, that's about as far as I can predict; after this, there's no telling what will happen. But it definitely won't involve any more space exploration.
is not economic justification. Given current and projected technology, there is little likelihood of that in the foreseeable future. Even if we developed a practical He3 reactor and the technology to mine moon rocks, the cost of the resulting energy would either make it irrelevant or bring down civilization just as quickly as an energy shortage. There might be something valuable enough out there to be worth bringing back here, and we might come up with (for starters) a propulsion system that would make it possible to go look, but that's not something anyone can predict: we simply have no idea how to start building or looking.
Aviation progressed incredibly quickly, from the Wright Brothers to heavy bombers flying thousands of miles in 40 years, while space travel has gone nowhere (so to speak.) Two things made aviation different:
- War. Two world wars made government money available without immediate economic justification. It works, but there is no reason for humans to fight a war in space with manned vehicles, and fighting aliens (who have the technology to get here in the first place) is not a winning strategy.
- Private experimenting. It was possible from the first for individuals to build and fly airplanes; modern ultralights (that dodge the worst FAA regulations) are still a growing business. Space travel never really captured the imagination like airplanes did because of its exclusivity: very, very few have any prospect of reaching space in their lifetimes; most who do are either government / corporate employees on a mission or the super rich. The rest of us get to pay the bills and watch on TV.
Capturing the imagination is the missing ingredient: the Apollo missions sort of succeeded, but they got dull after a while and had little impact beyond the very few who got to go; the ISS is cool but not really relevant to most of us who can't afford $20 million for a two week visit. While I personally don't expect a manned Mars mission to ever happen (and certainly not by the US; I believe western civilization peaked in the 1960's and has fallen too far to make such a sustained effort possible), the only hope is to forget the science and make something average "people" can care about, for long enough to get out there again.
Yeah, we'll never sail around the world, either.
[Ego]out
Space will be explored less than ever, and if it is we won't hear about it. First maybe you should make NASA reveal all of what they have discovered...
For the record, space may have been explored many years B.C. by ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians.
I agree almost with everything you say, except for the fact that I cannot see it happening in 50 years, nor can I see private enterprise getting over the rather large barrier to entry into a space based resource collection industry. Some of this will happen if there is a need for it, or if it is required for a bit of political posturing.
Thinking about it you may be right, except I would be hard pressed whether it would be Russia or the US in the lead this time, after all the Russian space program is seemingly more robust than the American one, not to mention ahead of it in terms of environmental systems. All that is missing is the cash to fund it, maybe with russias large oil and gas reserves coupled with the weak dollar it will be the US paying the Russians to beat them this time.
I think the OP is way off on the estimates. Bigelow Aerospace will have a space station up in running before 2010.
Stephen
It's almost impossible to make predictions for this far in the future because of the sheer number of factors that would apply to space exploration. Provided Kurzweil's predictions for strong AI hold true, we'll develop the nano-engineering capabilities required to construct a space elevator with ease, and from there moon and mars bases would be a cinch. We could well be mining Jupiter's moons and preparing for travel into the great beyond. If technological and social change starts slowing down, then we may not be any further than the current "we're going to the moon soon, honest" posturing. Interesting article, though.
Actually on most cars the oil light is connected to a pressure sensor and the light should come on with the key on but engine not running.
Also a good chance the low coolant light is actually hooked up to a temperature sensor. When idling you don't have enough air movement through the radiator and the engine temperature goes up, especially if the rad is partially blocked (old vehicle)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
This one's an LT1, I wonder why turning it off and on without ever turnning the engine over will reset the light..
As for the coolant sensor, it's on the side of the rad, it apparently gums up very easily, I have to order a new one and replace it.
sounds like an underwater tour... I'm sure they are around...
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
The war ends and Russia and America swoop in, the Russians taking the physical rockets and plans and some engineers, and the Americans getting Von Braun and the brains of the V-2. Between the end of WWII and the launch of Sputnik, the only reason either nation was interested in "space travel" was their desire to make intercontinental weapons. The coincidence that any missile that could get a warhead to land a thousand miles away could also get a satellite into orbit meant that dreamers within each nation were able to get small pieces of the military budget for such a goal.
The next big break for space exploration came with the launch of Sputnik. Not because Sputnik was a particularly important technological achievement. It wasn't. The race for space only began in earnest because of the hysteria and panic felt in reaction to Sputnik. People were declaring the end of western civilization, the Cold War was being called in favor of the Soviets, and many, many people who were only familiar with the sci-fi term "satellite", which was used to mean entire space stations which were usually capable of dropping atomic weapons on earth, thought that their very lives were at stake. Into this atmosphere stepped the Democrats, led by the Lyndon Johnson, and they created the notion of a "missile gap" and set up congressional hearings to figure out what went wrong. NASA comes out of those hearings, and suddenly America really starts trying to get into space.
I apologize for all of this exposition, but the point that I am trying to make is that fear, and fear alone seems capable of driving mankind to devote the energy and money into getting off of the planet. Perhaps it could be argued that the national shame that America felt after being shown up by the "stupid peasant" communists was also instrumental, but I believe that the palpable fear of nuclear annihilation was more powerful.
After Sputnik II went up in November of 57, Bertrand Russell wrote an article called, "Can Scientific Man Survive?". He said: If we may judge by the actions of great States, and by the public opinion which support these actions, it is a characteristic of homo sapiens that he is more anxious to kill his enemies than to stay alive himself. I know that almost everybody will repudiate this statement and say that it is a libel on human nature. I should reply that we must judge men by their actions rather than by their professments, and that one of the surest tests of a man's genuine desires is what he thinks it worth while to spend his money on." His critera certainly hold, and it is evident that the great states have virtually no interest in space. And I do not think that will change on any large scale unless it is driven by war or fear. So I doubt that the next 50 years will be that different from the past 40 unless we have another shock like Sputnik.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
They're always 'just five years away'. ...oh wait
Probably about as reliable as the above..
2010 Space station de-orbits due to lack of interest
2014 Last space shuttle falls apart (no more Intel 4 bit processors can be found to repair it!)
2015 NASA goes bust as USA tries to pay off national debt
2027 the moon claimed by China (suits me as at least there will be good food for when I get there!)
2030 Somebody (Pleeaaaseeeee) Invents anti-gravity (and nobody claims it violates a previous patent!)
2037 Apple launches the iRocket to compete with the google-anti-grav harness
2056 First British inter-galactic probe Beagle3 lands (heavily) on alpha-centuri wiping out first emerging life
2057 President Bush the third declares war on ninja space terror robots (which may or may not have giga-weapons of mass destruction)
www.boznz.com Simple solutions to complex problems.
The most unlikely event to happen is nations actually co-operating to build a space faring race, but this is also the most likely to succeed where resources and expertise can be combined. Of course that could imply a World government, beyond our federal systems of government. I think people might be afraid of that for the same reason we are afraid of the multi national corporation's capability to behave as a law unto itself.
The irony is with the resources of space our wasteful economic systems, that do not consider the externalities that have been trashing our planet so far, may even start to make sense. More likely though our economic systems will have evolve to deal with, as simple as it seems, waste to resource processing here on earth. I mean can you imagine any large scale space station, or long term space flight, that cannot reprocess resources? Isn't this what "Life Support Systems" would be?
Of course there is one other incentive - survival - a true galvanising force. If the survival instinct soaks into our mass consciousness it may happen, because the human race deserves to survive, deserves a space faring future.
I don't know how the future of space exploration, well any future, will be like in 50 years, I only know how it will start...
By seeking to avoid annihilation, ten years of frenetic activity turned human beings into a space faring culture...
Get of this rock or die!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Amazing to see boys and men buying chemistry sets and building rockets at home to help the USA catch up with the USSR.
I always say that my father's education was paid for by Sputnik, or the post Sputnik realization that training Engineers was in the national interest. Too bad we lost that meme- cheaper to outsource thinking to India and China.
Funny that you don't even ask the real question: why is there a cop in the toilets which want to catch gays in the first place?
How about we stick to earthly aspirations for a while? I like Star Trek as much as anyone else. But with the U.S. $8 tillion in debt and running a huge deficit every year, it hardly seems the time to be dreaming of space adventures.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"Fusion power plants, powered by helium 3 mined on the Moon, are popping up like mushrooms ..."
...
The moment I read this, I had visions of little mushroom clouds popping up all over the planet, like the invasion of Caprica in Battlestar Galactica. I know fusion doesn't work that way, but he might want to consider another turn of phrase
> Obviously, your claim is going to fail in a billion years
> when the Sun heats up to the point life on Earth will end.
Actually, in only 100 million years, it will have heated to the point that one molecule of CO2 or methane will be enough to cause a runaway greenhouse effect even if everything else is controlled, and the whole Earth painted bright white.
Although by that time, we might be willing to spend a few 100,000 years moving the Earth's orbit to a more comfortable region, ala Niven.
Actually, in only 100 million years, it will have heated to the point that one molecule of CO2 or methane will be enough to cause a runaway greenhouse effect even if everything else is controlled, and the whole Earth painted bright white.
If we do the corrective measures you mention, then Earth probably could last longer than a billion years.I very much doubt this. First of all the tether is too easily damaged by micrometeoroids. Perhaps the thing could be designed to self repair, or constantly repair, but there is a risk there.
Secondly, if the space elevator is monumentally expensive, it would make a perfect terrorist target. So I wonder how we'd muster up the political will to pay to build one? One way to defeat the terrorist target problem is to make a lot of em... say, one in every city in the world or more. But that seems inconceivable to me as they are likely to be enormous projects to build.
Finally, aren't carbon nanotubes pretty much the maximum strength material we can conceivably build with? I've heard a material scientist saying pretty much that... the fundamental nature of molecular matter (in this universe anyway) is such that there is no other way to arrange chemical bonds that can produce a material any stronger than CNT's. Moreover, I thought I had read somewhere that CNT's were just about at the borderline of what kind of strenght to weight ratio we would need to begin to make a space elevator work, but that doesn't seem to leave much margin for structural safety. Can anyone speak to this point?
Actually, I am pretty unsure of the assertions in that last paragraph... Really I'm just making them to try to stir up some informed opinion on these questions because I'd like to hear them confirmed or denied by someone knowledgeable.
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We are just missing voice and intelligence which were big parts of the computers on Star Trek. Sure there are programs for Text to Speech and Speech to text, but it isn't widely used and it still needs to be improved. Sure that would let you talk to your computer and the computer to respond by voice, but the most important part is still missing. Until we get some good AI, our computers have a long way to go before we reach the Star Trek computers. Even the Star Trek characters made fun of the lack of intelligence in the ship's computers. There was an episode in Voyager where the Doctor we alone on Voyager that hi-lighted that fact. The ships computer would go as far as understanding what you said and respond or carry out the action, but if it ran into a problem it wouldn't do much to think its way out. Then again the Doctor was a computer so maybe we should strive for his level of intelligence. He not only thought, reasoned, responded, acted, but got annoyed at the ship computer's inability to learn. That would be a tall order for a computer.
The USA is finished as the pioneer of space exploration. Exploring space is a fun, challenging pursuit, with no conceivable financial return, a huge amount of risk, and planning is susceptible to fracture as administrations come and go. The next big achievement in the field of space exploration will belong to Russia, or maybe China; as these are countries that are still willing to push the boundaries of our knowledge.