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."

Comments

Sorry, no colonies on Mars or the moon in 50 years

[elrous0]

We may well have landed a man on Mars 50 years from now, and will probably have put another man on the moon (and by "we," I *DON'T* mean NASA, BTW). But we will likely never have colonies on either.

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."

Re:Commercialization is the key.

[rtb61]

That is what it actually boils down to, solve the whole gravity thing and then there will actually be a space age, with out tackling gravity we can only tinker about the edges. Private will not achieve more than government, it never has, it just spends lots of money advertising claims that it has, so it can suck up all the public funds it can get hold of. The current example of growing failures and corrupting everything that was handed over to private intrests only point to the reason why the public elected the government to look after those things in the first place.

So that whole tricky gravity drive thing is what needs to be the focus, shifting tons of cargo into space and not tons of fuel, after all, rockets are really, really, primitive technology.

Re:How I see the next 50 years in space shaping up

[elrous0]

I can't believe such an ludicrously arrogant post got modded "insightful" on /. I'm actually tempted to think that the poster is making a joke, and would be more appropriately modded "funny."

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.