21st Century Space Travel

[tampaDreamer]

From the time we invent something that works, it takes 20 years just to use it. And that's if it totally works. I think your timescale is based on a bunch of assumptions that don't pan out in the real world.

Specifically, when it comes to developing robotic mining technology here on earth, there are a lot of populations out there with lower wage scales that will fill the gap and ****** the need for this technology for many more decades.

 

[Valcan]

WAKE UP!

You really think it is enough to melt stones to get steel pipes? http://science.howstuffworks.com/iron3.htm

To create a ton of pig iron, you start with 2 tons of ore, 1 ton of coke and a half ton of limestone. The fire consumes 5 tons of air. To refine the stuff into steel, add 2 to 5 tons of oxygen and about 200 tons of water.

It takes 210,500kg of various stuff, plus a tremendous amount of energy, to make just FOUR METERS of std. steel pipe.


Where are you going to find COKE or LIMESTONE on the MOON?

I'm out, this discussion makes me want to cry

Well i wasnt talking about the moon but here i one way.

http://www.space-mining.com/IRONRECOVERY.htm

Though if the need was shown and a proffit made possible threw say government grants etc. Im sure new was of making steel in space or even new materials entirely would be developed.

 

[cavesofmars]

In viewing the replies of many respondents, note how many reference how long it takes today to do one thing or another. The main point I have been making is that we are at the beginning of a revolution in human history in which exponential change is about to transform the world we live in. The rate at which the internet arrived and took hold in society will seem like ages compared to what is about to happen in the next twenty years.

A competitive global economy linked to the exponential increase in the intelligence provided by information technology will transform everything--schools, medicine, transportation, energy, and manufacturing to name a few. The next two decades will be the equivalent of a century of change. Think of what has happened from 1910 to now.

It is in this context that I am trying to point out how the expansion of a transformed human race into the solar system might take place. Furthermore, the rate of change continues into the following two decades. The changes that will take place then will be the equivalent to two centuries. Humans today are not prepared for this rate of change and reject the idea that anything of this sort can happen. But the future belongs to the dreamers!

 

[Valcan]

In viewing the replies of many respondents, note how many reference how long it takes today to do one thing or another. The main point I have been making is that we are at the beginning of a revolution in human history in which exponential change is about to transform the world we live in. The rate at which the internet arrived and took hold in society will seem like ages compared to what is about to happen in the next twenty years.

A competitive global economy linked to the exponential increase in the intelligence provided by information technology will transform everything--schools, medicine, transportation, energy, and manufacturing to name a few. The next two decades will be the equivalent of a century of change. Think of what has happened from 1910 to now.

It is in this context that I am trying to point out how the expansion of a transformed human race into the solar system might take place. Furthermore, the rate of change continues into the following two decades. The changes that will take place then will be the equivalent to two centuries. Humans today are not prepared for this rate of change and reject the idea that anything of this sort can happen. But the future belongs to the dreamers!

I think the problem is your not counting in the social, political or economical factors in your time line or the million other things that can go erong and delay, slow or stop technological advancment.
Basically your saying in the next 10 yrs atleast. We are going to undergo more technological change than in the last 200 yrs. It wont happen. Give me a fusion reactor maybe. Anti gravity maybe or AI.
But without those you are going to have to weight a little longer.

Plus dont forget with a global economy comes global risk. Say china starts to collapse or some other large industrial country does. Say a large war begins. Say a huge disaster happens that diverts resources......

I believe the things you talk about could happen by the begining of 2100 and atleast colonies by 2040 to 2050 but not so much it simply wont happen.

Dont get sucked into the idea of a future utopia history has shown how much of a folly that is.

 

[cavesofmars]

The problem with making predictions about what will emerge from the exponential growth of information technology is that we don't know who will take advantage of the new capabilities and in what direction they will choose.

Looking back over the previous decade, who would have predicted Google, Facebook, or Twitter. Or that a computer company would successfully develop the ipod, iphone, and ipad. The potential for all these was latent in the technology but someone with the right combination of imagination and entrepreneurship had to make it happen.

Similarly, the emergence of SSTO technology is latent in the activities of men like Burt Rutan and Elon Musk. In secret, scramjet technology is being developed for national security reasons. Later in the coming decade, enough of the required technology will be in place to design and plan the initial prototype. In the 2020s, a privately built version will be built and made available for various missions by companies like SpaceX. This technology will be feasible because it will be supported by the advanced modeling and simulation technology of massively parallel processing machines.

 

[cavesofmars]

The movies 2001 and Avatar provide a sense of where today's information processing technology is heading. In Kubrick's 2001, Hal provides the monitoring and intelligence to maintain and control the spacecraft. Over the next decade, we will see the approximation of Hal in both planes and automobiles. By the end of the 2020s, this capability will be even more advanced and will be the most common vehicle in the sky and on the road. So, as the human race begins to build bases on the moon during the 2030s, the technology of automated vehicles to facilitate the construction of the bases will be in place.

In the movie Avatar, we are given a sense of the massive size of the construction machines that might be possible as well as the smaller machines that would allow humans to move about and explore a hostile environment. However, the humans need not be actually inside the machines since a 3D virtual experience will be just as effective. It is quite possible that the initial construction of the bases on the moon will be from a moon orbiting space station via telepresence.

 

[EarthlingX]

thefutureofthings.com : Mind Controlled Bionic Limbs

In the George Lucas classic Star Wars, hero Luke Skywalker's arm is severed and amputated during a lightsaber fight and consequently fitted with a bionic arm that he can use as if it were his own limb. At the time the script was written, such a remedy was pure science fiction; however, the ability to manufacture bionic arms that have the functionality and even feel of a natural limb is becoming very real, with goals of launching a prototype as soon as 2009. Already, primates have been trained to feed themselves using a robotic arm merely by thinking about it, while brain sensors have been picking up their brain-signal patterns since 2003. The time has come for implementing this technology on paralyzed human patients and amputees. This article will provide a brief explanation of the technology, its current status, and the potential future it holds.

Miguel Nicolelis, and Jose Carmena with robot arm (Credit: Duke University)

 

[cavesofmars]

One of the areas that will be most affected by the exponential growth of information technology will be medical science. It will not just be regrowth of limbs or replacement of organs grown from one's own stem cells, it will be the overall enhancement of the human organism to the point where living a century or more in superb health will be a common occurrence by 2030. This will have all kinds of social ramifications and one of these will be population pressure which will stimulate the expansion of the human race off the planet. We are reaching an inflection point in human history in which we will see an emergence of a new race of humans with augmented abilities and with adaptations suited to the space environments in which they will live. These humans will have a high comfort level with robots of all kinds and will be highly adaptable to rapid advances in robot technology. In later decades after 2050, these humans will have assumed so much cyborg technology as to no longer considered to be called 'human'.

 

[cavesofmars]

During the next decade, the exponential growth of information processing technology will see major advances in natural language processing, language translation, and simulation of human facial and vocal expression. The result of all this will be the ability to combine highly realistic human simulations with detailed expertise in specific subject areas. For example, daily scanning of one's bodily fluids by medical sensors in the home can be combined with readouts by a simulated medical advisor to provide regular monitoring of one's medical condition. The information on any area of concern would be automatically transferred to one's human doctor.

These simulations would be so life-like that only an expert would be able to detect that it was a simulation and not a real human. This technology will spawn thousands of applications to provide advice on an unlimited number of subject areas. Even experts in particular subject areas will find their expertise complemented and extended by these simulations. The technology will completely transform education as it will provide an ideal and tireless teacher at one's side for a relatively low cost compared with going to college today.

 

[cavesofmars]

The simulation capability of this massive processing power will extend itself into every area of manufacturing technology. The design and testing of new systems will all be checked by highly realistic simulations of the designs. The effect of this will be to exponentially speed up the implementation of new manufacturing processes. Global competition will then force rapid adoption of the new technologies as businesses struggle to keep up with their competition.

During the 2020s, the speed at which manufacturing methods and procedures are replaced by more efficient ones will be like night and day compared to the rate at which this is occurring today. Use as a baseline the rate at which businesses adapted to the internet in the decade from 1995. By 2030, this capability will be brought to bear on building bases and factories on the moon and SSTO technology will be ready to move what is needed in short order. Each major nation will have fleets of SSTO freighters moving massive amounts of men and materials to build and support the bases.

 

[MeteorWayne]

cavesonmars;

You know, you say with 100% assurance that you can predict the develpoment of technology. You must be very young to be so self assured. Those of us with more age rings make no such self assured predictions.. It's like the "Fusion power is 20 years away" for 40 years now....

 

[cavesofmars]

Sorry if these predictions seem too self-assured. I'm aware that lots of variables could intervene to change the timeline or even to eliminate human expansion into space. A volcanic eruption in Yosemite would do the trick. But I find it interesting that so many responders resist the implications of exponential growth in information technology as it applies to space travel in this century.

 

[Valcan]

Sorry if these predictions seem too self-assured. I'm aware that lots of variables could intervene to change the timeline or even to eliminate human expansion into space. A volcanic eruption in Yosemite would do the trick. But I find it interesting that so many responders resist the implications of exponential growth in information technology as it applies to space travel in this century.

Its not that we dont think it can happen just that it wont happen that way. Your post read like a bad prophacy.

People arent that neat. Plus most of that instant technological change was by accident or because we just haddnt been using a entirely possible technology. Plus there are more hampers on advancement now.

 

[cavesofmars]

New inventions emerge from the capabilities provided by advanced technology. My predictions arise from powerful trends that will have an ever greater impact as the years pass. The pattern of predictions is often over-optimistic in the short term and under-optimistic in the long term. The rapid doubling of processing speed and data storage drives the ever increasing intelligence of the tools we use that are based on this technology. When this is combined with a world-wide network that supports real-time sharing of the new information generated by our tools, the rate of transformation of our environment proceeds at an ever faster pace.

At the same time, our habits of thought are constrained by our present time experience. This is why so many respondents to this post reject out of hand the rate of change for human expansion into space predicted in the post. Today we produce millions of new cars every year. Imagine a few decades hence what vast numbers of intelligent, self-replicating robots will be able to produce.

 

[SteveCNC]

Here's something you might see in the future since it is buildable now just requires the money and desire to do so

or the link if you want to see a better picture

edit * altered link and pic

 

[Valcan]

New inventions emerge from the capabilities provided by advanced technology. My predictions arise from powerful trends that will have an ever greater impact as the years pass. The pattern of predictions is often over-optimistic in the short term and under-optimistic in the long term. The rapid doubling of processing speed and data storage drives the ever increasing intelligence of the tools we use that are based on this technology. When this is combined with a world-wide network that supports real-time sharing of the new information generated by our tools, the rate of transformation of our environment proceeds at an ever faster pace.

At the same time, our habits of thought are constrained by our present time experience. This is why so many respondents to this post reject out of hand the rate of change for human expansion into space predicted in the post. Today we produce millions of new cars every year. Imagine a few decades hence what vast numbers of intelligent, self-replicating robots will be able to produce.

Yes but knowing how to do something doesnt mean you can.

China for instance "knows" how to build most of our weapons systems even the really high tech ones thanks to congress and all leaking like a....well....anyways. However that doesnt mean they are turning out F-22 knock offs. They simply in many ways dont know how a certain method of production is done, dont have the facilities or such.

Not all information is share some is simply lost in the shear MASS of data. And there is still time required to sort this information into useful ideas/technics. Also it takes time to begin a new project, aquire funding, get permission, get permits etc.

OK on AI. First off ive heard AI for the last 10 yrs. We arent sur what makes a man intelligent and not a monkey yet. So lets hold off on that. However, new computer programs and systems DO allow for faster research and development by learning and they are getting better every year.

I dont see everyone just letting self aware robots just start replicating around. To many people however wisely dont trust just giving free rein to machines that way. I do see Production rates going up and the amount of nessesary resources per amount of product going down.

However remember the American auto industry is a mentaly deficent child in some respects. For a factory that produces the same amount of cars as a japanese one an american factory might employ 500-2000 people the lowest making well well above minimum wage. (thats true i used to know a guy who worked in a auto factory up north-i live in tennessee-he said the janitors in the factor made $20.50 a hr thats a well paying job down here). Meanwhile the japanese factory employs....100 people. Entirely.

Ford i know is building factories outside the states like this however doesnt in the US because the Auto Unions have made sure they wont to cut jobs so.....

And we were dang near dragged kicking and screaming to use robotics hear in the US for auto manufactoring when everyone but the soviets had switch already.

That doesnt count availability of resources or how those stupid Carbon Credit scheems will affect everything (which they will from power to water to litteraly everything we by or consume). :evil:

So you see Caves the deamons in the details.