Posted on 12/26/2013 1:54:41 PM PST by BenLurkin
think it is possible for humans to become an interstellar race. I think it’s possible, but not within my lifetime, not the next hundred years without some really transformative technologies in between. The key one on the International Space Station right now we’re testing life support systems, and doing phenomenally well.
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don’t see us becoming that space-faring race, not within the next hundred years, not perhaps within the next thousand years. But again, these are timescales that I can’t even fathom within my small existence. We’re talking about a galaxy that’s billions of years old – we’re talking about missions that could conceivable take hundreds of years to get to the nearest group of stars. I think we need to start changing the way we think, and science fiction helps – it helps with the warp drive and all that – it kind of pushes us in ways that we wouldn’t understand. But in realistic terms, at least a hundred years before that even becomes a possibility."
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Sometimes technologies are so disruptive that they just collapse time and distance. Railroads back in the 19th century were one. In the eastern USA canals were built in the 1820’s. This technology is roughly 5000 years old. Railroads were built starting in the 1830’s. They were a 5000 year leap forward, collapsing the time it took to get between places.
Roughly the same thing is going on today with computers only in reverse. They are collapsing distance by collapsing the time it takes to work through the issues of space travel. The faster computers go — the sooner will come intersteller travel.
We live in a moment of time during which computers are one speed. 10 years ago computers were much slower—so intersteller travel was much further in the future. 10 years from now computers will be much faster so intersteller travel will come much sooner.
I look to the Kurizwell’s inflection point in +-2039. He figures computers will become sentient at that point.
I don’t know that that will happen. But its likely that technology will move to the point where all the ingredients will be in place for large scale off world migrations. Certainly anyone paying attention today knows that by then 3d printing and advanced robotics will make offworld mining and manufacture quite do able. Thorium, h3 and water on the moon and mars will enable stable plentiful power sources.
My WAG is that large offworld migrations begin about 2050-60.
That’s breakout into the solar system.
Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek—which came out in 1969— took place mostly between 2250 and 2290. That’s roughly the same distance in the future as the French and Indian wars of 1750 and the american constitution’s creation in 1790 are in the past. That puts already mature interstellar travel 250 years in the future.
A more primitive form of interstellar travel is shown in the 2009 movie Avatar. This movie is set roughly 150 years from now in the mid 22nd century.
It has been roughly 500 years since Columbus sailed across the atlantic.
Our age today is very like that one.
Somethings we can predict but not do at the time but when the technology catches up the advances happen with amazing speed.
A lot of our stealth tech was well understood and in many cases tested back in the 50s. It was computers with processing power to make the constant adjustments that made those planes into stable flight platforms. Now things look like science fiction compared to when we saw the first stealth fighters.
Oh no! I think you just opened the door to the time traveler posters ... :-) ...
I expect DNA to be used in computing within 5 years. That should be a game changer. I post a lot of tech stories here, even though I am anything but a techie and most of it just amazes me.
If faster than light travel is possible we will figure it out and use it. If it’s not we are unlikely to ever bother with manned travel outside our solar system.
And that’s about the size of it!
The era when armed guys could drive around the southwest in a Stutz Bearcat, make a profit, and deal with a few anachronisms. Sign me up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MrerM_vgA8
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bearcats!
I have the DVD set as well.
Thank you so very much for honoring me with what you wrote! Most illuminating!
Looks like the same type James Garner rode around on in the short lived but pretty good pre-Rockford series called Nichols. The DVD copy looks pretty good.
A piece from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnAjCWSuQ74
But you also have to take into consideration that right now we have Marxists and muslims hellbent on starting WW3 nuke style, so mankind may never even reach 2039. I mean just think how close we are right now to that...Obama has pretty much given the OK for Iran to build nukes. IRAN!!!
I’m a little old for that kind of gig!
This low budget 70s series had an interesting premise about multi-century space travel to save part of the human race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xWGxqq37_Q
If government can’t design a simple e-commerce website, how is it supposed to come up with interstellar travel?!
Same here but I’d think good and hard about it.
But don’t forget, like Roddenberry and others, knowing the past is one thing but predicting the future another.
Many marvel about the communicators and the fact we now have cell phones. Uh, when Star Trek came out I was 8 years old and had pretty good walkie talkies. Seemed normal to me they’d have better ones.
But things like warp drive and matter beamings aren’t going to happen by 2300. Don’t see any science on warp bubbles much and that is why the ship can travel at those speeds, not because of the propulsion engines. And it will take some really sophisticated computers before there is matter transfer.
But again, old science fiction rethought (for Roddenberry it was a budget issue - cost less that constant shuttle effects): Remember the original “The Fly” with Vincent Price?
Also, a lot of what we now think is new is really just making the old better. You’re railroad example is a real change, as was flight. Roads, canals, ships on oceans...all got better but have been around for millenium. Even plumbing, water systems, sewer systems, or the toilet...all old stuff.
Great post ckilmer. Love this stuff.
Sending men to the moon in 1913 sounded about as implausible as sending men to a different galaxy today.
We had clear vision of what we wanted. “to go to the moon in this decade.” We set goals and reached them both personally and for the nation.
But when you manage for what you don’t want, you get lost. We don’t want poverty, we don’t want pollution, we don’t want to offend anyone........................
I don’t think I ever saw this.
Interesting.
Even though, a lot of the future written about usually has solved those “what we want” problems but I never really fell for it since a lot of the future confrontations were still whining about them.
LOL. That, plus we have to keep the Universe PRISTINE!
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