Results tagged “Space Migration” from Astranaut

Like many people I believe the current crisis is a wake-up call for humanity.  However, unlike many of the voices dominating the discussion lately, I have come to some very different conclusions.

The dirty little secret behind many environmental movements and their followers is a deep wish to see large segments of the human population die off.  This way the the Earth can restore itself from the overpopulated human civilization that has drained it.  Ideally, these same loyal econauts see themselves as inheriting this New Earth paradise after all the unworthy people have died off.  If you think I'm making this up or exaggerating, just ask them. One prominent "visionary" (who shall go nameless) said if people don't get with the program, they will be turned into mulch. Being an environmentalist myself, I'm not accusing all of them, just many of the louder voices currently dominating the conversation. You'll hear all sorts of scenarios of doom, gloom, and even glee that when it's all over, the Earth will have maybe at most a billion inhabitants left (if we're lucky) by the end of the 21st Century.  Did I mention those same people will ride bicycles or walk, as technological civilization will be gone? These same people wax poetic about "peak civilization", a "return to nature", deindustrialization, and a wholesale shedding of technology. They're just like Ted Kaczynski, only nicer and not wanting to blow you up personally... nature will do it for them.

However they are right about one thing.  Given our current level of dirty technology, population growth and rates of resource extraction, the human game of continual growth and material abundance cannot continue much longer without a severe environmental backlash from simple resource constraints.  You can't extract what's no longer there.  In other words, unless we find a way to magically transform our society through advanced nanotechnology into one that is 100% regenerative, large segments of the population will die off from a lack of resources necessary to feed, house and clothe them.

The honest truth is advanced nano-enabled regenerative technology is still a distant dream, and until it's realized, we can't count on it.  Instead we must solve our problems now using tools already available or that can be built without requiring unforseen breakthroughs.

Clearly as long as we continue doing business within a fragile planetary ecosystem, pretty much everything we do needs to change, adapt, ephermalize, regenerate. I just hope that along with these changes, we don’t loose site of the bigger impetus which this all points - which is to continue onward, upward, outward off the planet and become a space faring species.

This is the first time in our planets evolution such a possibility is upon us. Given what’s at stake (massive ecological, economic and population collapse), it’s now or never that a strong push for space development must be made. Those talking about peak civilization and mandatory de-industrialization are a depressing, anti-evolutionary lot.

I think when real-world constraints start culling the population, radical evolutionary pressures upward will re-exert themselves. I’ve never known people to go quietly in the night, especially when bigger, better alternatives present themselves.

My fellow Lifeboat adviser Brian Wang is actively working on some very radical space propulsion designs which could reduce orbital launch costs to less than $1/Kg without the need for any new technological advances.

When billions of lives are at stake from a lack of biosphere support capacity, space migration is by far the saner choice, especially when many if not most industrial processes can be taken off world.

This way everyone wins.  The ecoheads can celebrate as all the industrialized processes they hate so much move wholesale offworld.  The Earth, through tender stewardship by those choosing to stay behind, can be ushered back into a veritable garden of Eden without it requiring any devolution or death of the human species. 

EARTH: The Pale Blue Dot from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

This video was put together by Michael Marantz using words from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

The decedents Carl talks about could very well be many of us living today.

Although the original article appears on Space.com I think it's too important not to re-post in its entirety.

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Thirty years ago, Princeton Professor Gerard K. O'Neill published his scenario for space settlement.

"Is the surface of a planet the best place for an expanding technological civilization?" O’Neill’s question to his advanced physics students inspired a young generation of thinkers to examine the possibilities of space migration. In the middle 1970s, the accomplishments of Apollo were fresh in our minds and the next steps forward seemed only paused but not yet abandoned. We still dared to have great dreams, and great choices seemed to be opening up.

The results of Dr. O’Neill’s initial classroom think tank were described in his Physics Today article in 1975. His 1976 book The High Frontier explored the subject in more detail. As others became enthusiastic about the idea, many articles appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world.

O'Neill never wanted the space settlement movement to be a one-man show, and he was happy to see a proliferation of books expanding on the idea. Stuart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame published a book called Space Colonies, a thought-provoking anthology with ranges of opinion impossible to find in government and academic writings. (A lightly censored version is archived at NASA’s Space Settlement pages.)

In the mid-1970s I had occasion to ask one of the contributors, Paul Ehrlich, his opinion of the space colony idea. He laughingly dismissed it, saying, “Maybe the Army Corps of Engineers will build it." His skepticism was based on some of the early rhetoric that population problems could be addressed by space migration, an idea he rightfully dismissed on mathematical grounds alone. A few years later he published (with Anne Ehrlich) Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. One chapter contained a discussion that showed a good deal of further thought about space colonies, especially the problem of creating stable ecosystems from scratch, even in such large volumes as O’Neillian habitats.

This remains a major challenge, and requires a body of knowledge we have scarcely begun to gather. Just as the Human Genome Project is mapping out the intricate details of our genetic code, there will need to be the equivalent of a Gaia Genome Project to take inventory of the varied ecosystems across Earth, mapping out the interaction between the environment and its inhabitants. It may be that certain soil bacteria, insects, and plants are critically important in as yet unknown ways. When these subtle complexities are better understood, we can more intelligently design and build closed-cycle ecosystems in space.

Unfortunately, human expansion on Earth is in the act of displacing and erasing more and more pieces of the ecosystem. Those who would compile such a massive study of the Gaia system may soon be in the position of trying to copy the pages of a document that is burning and falling apart before their eyes.

Time is of the essence in deciding if there will ever be a space settlement effort, on this and other critical fronts.

As the initial tide of space colony interest waned in the late 1970s, there was less talk of visionary ideas and more about economic justifications. The main industry was seen as mass-production of solar power satellites, collecting energy in space and beaming it down to antenna farms for use on Earth. When the second round of 1970s oil shortages hit at the end of the decade, the idea looked even more attractive. But this was in the day when oil was rising from $15 a barrel to $37 by 1980. By 1986, oil was down to $15 again, and the sense of urgency faded. Today, with oil running over $50 a barrel and the supply a constant source of uncertainty, such a novel energy source could begin to look more inviting again.

Visions of space colonies and space power industries faded in the glare of some harsh realities: the Shuttle not living up to its selling points, the space station’s protracted birth agonies, and the dwindling prospects for going beyond Earth orbit.

If the ideas for space settlement have engineering validity, they deserve to be kept ready so they can be considered as an option when the times become right. The English Channel Tunnel was an idea gathering dust on shelves since the days of Napoleon, long predicted never to happen, but suddenly the work was done and now the tunnel is taken for granted, as if it always existed.

It’s time for a new generation to be made aware of the possibilities of space settlement. One motivation that may be compelling—more than the Earth-saving energy production scenario, worthy as that is and even more than the thrill of just going out there—is the idea of living in a small but independent world of one’s own choosing.

There are now practically no new nations created on Earth without episodes of bloodshed. Short of revolution and war, there are few options available for those who dream about establishing a new society somewhere, as various ideological and religious groups have historically done. But even today, there are many people who would welcome the chance to settle a new frontier, where new ways of life could be tried. If enough people believed there was an opportunity to leave whatever they didn’t like about society behind and start over with a new nation aligned to their shared passions, I believe that could stir the pioneer spirit that still slumbers in many.

Space settlement may really get started if the idea finds appeal in influential circles, especially among world leaders. Several Great Themes have successfully circulated among leaders of the industrial societies, such as the need to avoid nuclear war, the importance of economic ties, and the need to make and honor international agreements. A Great Theme of establishing a permanent human presence in space—as a way to develop new energy sources to maintain high standards of living for the growing population of Earth, and as a way to back up Earth’s living populations and preserve our collected knowledge, and to create new living spaces for those wanting new ways of life—would provide a guiding principle for vital policy decisions.

During the Kennedy era, when Project Apollo was presented, many influential people recalled the Colliers symposium articles and the Disney space television special. The idea was already real to them, so they instinctively knew it could be done. It was just a matter of priorities.

Having a technological civilization that’s able to afford nice things like space travel depends on the infrastructure not being destroyed by wars or natural disaster. The ability to “back up” our selves and our gathered knowledge may not always be possible as it is today.

As long as we live in a world where limited resources must be allocated among a growing population, we are ultimately doomed. All our efforts to increase food production and extend individual longevity will end up trading a sooner catastrophe for a later one of greater scope. So far, we are succeeding in a kind of pyramid scheme with Earth’s resources, but in time the pressure of human numbers will strain and drain them. When resources become scarce and populations dense, individual freedoms are unaffordable luxuries.

If civilization is to be allowed to spread beyond Earth, it must take place before the world's resources are forcibly redistributed or squandered and disrupted by major wars. In recent history, we have seen we have seen our ability to reach the Moon thrown away to pay for a massive military effort that only managed to delay the communist takeover of South Vietnam by 10 years.

We have lost precious decades of establishing a beachhead in space due to wavering priorities and economic downturns. We cannot assume conditions will always be as right as they are now for such bold ventures as space travel. Instabilities tug at the house of cards that we call civilization. We still have time to accomplish the miracles we know are possible to achieve, but we need to begin the work while we can still afford to do it.

Don Davis (donaldedavis.com) is the artist most responsible for making space colonies look like a good place to live. He won an Emmy for his work on Carl Sagan's TV series Cosmos. Today he is the leading astronomical artist for full-dome theater shows in planetariums worldwide.

Hi everyone. It's been a while since I wrote anything. I've been so busy with more practical matters, but some recent news has captured my attention and imagination.

Indictments and Political Scandal

As you may have heard, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff was indicted on five felony counts. In those moments where I take politics seriously, this could be a big deal and make me happy, but it doesn't. It's quite possible these indictments are only the beginning of seeing this criminal administration fall from power as much as it deserves to. Regardless of the probability of that, it all doesn't matter. The damage has already been done. America's reputation has been shattered, the deficits are soaring, dramatic increases in police state powers have been essentially cemented into law , etc. Basically, the entire political game is a dead end. I can't possibly think how any reform, no matter how sweeping will make much of a difference.

Post-Politics:

If we hope to have a future, we need to start thinking post-politically. I know many have a problem with that whole concept, and unfortunately it depends on gravity escape, but there are interesting possibilities while still living within our planetary biosphere that are far more harmonious than we have now.

Timothy Leary made a strong case that politics is rooted in power struggles within the constraints of a planetary 2-dimensional surface. Ian Banks makes the most compelling case I've ever read. As long as we remain on a planet, there is limited space in which we can travel. Any direction we decide to go in, we will inevitable end up back where we started. All corners of the globe have in some way been explored, colonized, utilized, cordoned off, walled, fenced, enclosed, patented, owned, copyrighted, raped and plundered. There is no wild and free frontier left, no place left to explore or to escape to. Sure, there are some places more free than others, but the differences are often trivial. For most people on the planet, life is hard, brutish and short. For those of us lucky enough to be in the developed world, the walls are closing in, fast. But,

End of Hierarchies and Traditional Power Structures:

Don't loose hope folks, because things are a accelerat'n! The current system with all its corruption, greed and shear stupidity and incompetence can't last much longer. Not only from an environmental and sustainable point of view, but because there is rapid, but still deep current change underway. It's all around us, and it's happening without anyone noticing much. It's not some big monolithic light from the sky change that we are archetypically expecting, but a much more subtle and profound change happening that we won't notice until its already happened. These changes are all around us. Humanity is waking up. People are becoming more aware, we are taking all of these tools and technologies for granted. The network is growing, and will continue to grow. Meanwhile, what we actually see with our traditional conditioning is more laws, copyrights, restrictions and so on. It's all an illusion folks. They only exist if you believe they exist. Most, if not all of these new laws are almost entirely uneforceable. The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to network intelligence, peer to peer technologies, free internet, sustainable energy systems, etc.

Power of the Network:

Here is an example of some of the stuff that the power of the network is producing by motivated programmers:

Netsukuku the Anarchical Parallel Internet (Internet)

Developed by the Freaknet, Netsukuku is a new p2p routing system, which will be utilised to build a worldwide distributed, anonymous and anarchical network, separated from the Internet, without the support of any servers, ISPs or authority controls. In a p2p network every node acts as a router, therefore in order to solve the problem of computing and storing the routes for 2^128 nodes, Netsukuku makes use of a new meta-algorithm, which exploits the chaos to avoid CPU consumption and fractals to keep the map of the whole net constantly under the size of 2Kb. Netsukuku includes also the Abnormal Netsukuku Domain Name Anarchy, a non hierarchical and decentralized system of hostnames management which replaces the DNS. It runs on GNU/Linux.

On the alternative energy front:

don't even know where to begin. Breakthroughs in this area are happening almost daily. If you've been reading blogs like World Changing, you'll see that there is so much going on with alternative energy now, that it is now impossible to keep up with the overwhelming rapid pace of global conversion to post-peak-oil alternatives.

Canda Proposing 30 GW wind farm in far north

On the space migration front:

Spaceship One and Two, and then Space Ship Three hold so much promise. There are only the beginning, but they are the first genuine steps of humanity getting off of the planet. With the advent of mass produced nanotubes, we could soon see the commercial construction of several space elevators. Space elevators mean price to space in the hundreds of dollars. Hundreds to change your life forever. What does this mean for the space game? It means that almost everyone who wants to go will go. When you have millions, billions of people who can now afford to go to space, there will be the infrastructure to support it. Every enterprising, capitalizing individual or group will make sure of that. Because the profit potential of this will be enormous beyond all comprehension. To give you an idea, imagine what the total World Gross Product is today. It will triple within the first 5 years of a sub-$1000 price to orbit, and after that it will continue to grow at a conservative 20% a year. Imagine the total economy of humanity growing by 20% a year. You are not rich now? You will be, and so will everyone else. Nothing will ever be the same after this.

I can already hear people, saying, "But what about molecular nanotechnology?". Yes! What's amazing about the above figures is all of that is possible without molecular nanotech. It only requires some master of nanomaterial construction. Once nanotech assemblers hit the scene, things will really take off.

On the longevity front:

If you make it the next 20 years, you're going to live damn near forever. So you might as well accept it. :)

So, what's in store in the next 20 years and beyond:

• Indefinite Lifespans


• Total freedom on the space frontier


• Total leisure and full-immersion hyper-eudaemonic lifetstyles - think Burning Man in Space all the time.


• Expansion out into the Galaxy and beyond

Have fun! Now for me, back to the work at hand. :)

From my dear friend Jessica:

I find that I want to pray, but not to the deadbeat God of my childhood; that reckless progenitor forever tossing down rules and promises but never apologies, and never explanations.

What use has Immortal perfection for offspring? Amusement? A balm to loneliness? The child of a sheep grows up to be a sheep. The child of a human being grows up to be a human being…

Life moves directionally through time. It must renew and replace itself. It bootstraps itself from lower order singularity to higher order singularity through multiplicity. It’s what this machine does. It evolves.

I cannot be made to worship a higher power whose engendering and birthing is but a pale mockery of our own; a god who cannot create something greater than itself, or who fears to, and must content itself with mud golems endlessly enacting a tragic farce scripted in the inexorable fall of matter.

To whom then am I to address my prayers? To the deaf Logos? Should I broadcast my dreams and my soul’s unrest wideband hoping to chance upon the frequency of some benevolent intelligence?

My great-great-grandmother was the last of her line taught to pray to her ancestors; the last born free before the change and not indoctrinated by the victor’s violent, fearful and self-hating memes. While I cannot bring myself to expect succor from the dead, I find that I do resonate with the impulse to call back to that life of which I am the natural fruit. Therefore, Grandmother, I address my prayer to you. Perhaps it will come as sudden thunder after four generations of silence. In truth I expect to be heard by no one but myself, but there may yet be some link of identity between you and I unbroken by time’s transforming illusion.

I am your daughter.

You were successful. You passed the torch of life into the future as your ancestors did before you. It is now incumbent upon me. I am the body of life. I see now the infinite gift that this is, and also the burden, so heavy it can only be born by my own children. I see the tunnel of life as it points away into the insentient past. I see all the travails of those who manifest on the event horizon separating Math and Story. I see the fire of language kindled and multiplying out of itself like a thing alive. I see the drumming breaking out in Africa, the rhythm, the rhythm, the rhythm patterning the blank template mind. More and more the thought matrix bound us; made us possible. We ask; What are we? Why continue in this absurdity? Why bear this life, it’s sweetness and savagery, the infinite indignity of it, the irony, the wild joys that take us and are taken from us? Why do we die for our children?

Yes, it is the Impulse to Life; that song which called us down from our ancestral trees and points us towards the stars. The desperate insensate drive to continue it. To be! To be! To be! It is this that brings human beings together in ecstasy amid death.

Oh Grandmother! I reached the age of understanding and I did not understand! I was raised amongst lost souls imprisoned by their own elevating symbols. I thought myself filthy and I was, weak and I was, powerless and I was.

I am your daughter and I have been made to feel ashamed of being a woman. I have been ashamed of my humanity. I was raised in a culture that perverted the worship of the spirit into a weapon of fear to extract tribute and impose control.

I am your daughter and I find myself made manifest in a time of crisis. Here the fetus has begun to soil the womb. Here we must catalyze the metamorphosis or be reabsorbed by the Mother to await a more perfect incarnation. We are great with our pregnancy; with our fullness and our fear. Our expectancy. Clearly it is a time that must give birth to heroes.

The eternal myths that the fractal pattern has enfolded everywhere within itself are of course as much prophesy as history. The time has come again for true avatars of the Impulse to Life to step forward and challenge the Great Sea, or rather to accept it’s awesome challenge with the courage and passion born of necessity.

We have all been told legends of past glory, past victories of the human spirit against overwhelming odds. We say to ourselves, “Had I been in that story, I would have done likewise. I would have left my family and my lovers and borne great hardship and done terrible battle!” I see now that I am in the same story and have always been so. I am living in the story that began with the Word and will end with the Silence, the only tale there is to tell. Here has been the endless pageantry of human enterprise. Here millions upon millions have chosen to give themselves into the service of that which they were collectively above that which they were individually; again and again sacrificing even experience itself in order to advance a flag or promote an ideology.

If ever within the divine play some struggle within the plot merited the dedication of the actor’s lives, surely it approaches the irrelevant when held up against the effort to transform the collective consciousness in time to insure the very continuation of the tale itself! Will we survive into our racial adulthood and carry our story on to hundreds of worlds for millions of years, or will we founder and die, unfit to survive? The events of the coming century will bear heavily upon this question.

I am your daughter and I have been denied my rights of passage. How can we mark the end of our cultural adolescence when we each remain unconfirmed as individuals, our allegiance to the human cause unsworn? How can we free ourselves from superstition if we cannot bring ourselves into accord with the truth about our existential predicament?

Here we are. That’s what it comes down to. Again and again here we are. Again and again we are ourselves; suffering, ephemeral, bound up in a universe that defies expectation and transcends metaphor. So be it. Our only tenable position is to say yes to it, whatever it is.

Very well, then. I’ll take it! It’s what there is. I accept those terms of existence that I cannot change. I give my retroactive consent and take up my adult status of my own free will. Bring it on! I find that I do not yet resonate with the desire to end the cycle of birth and death. Life is more than a bridge between nothingness and nothingness. It is the perfect figure that dances upon that perfect unmanifest ground. It is what is before me and I will seize it with both hands. I am a part and product of this life, no more stuck inside of it than it is stuck inside of me.

I am alive at the turn of the Millennium! What great spirit has ever walked the Earth who would not have traded places to be me? Staggering miracles are my daily fare. Here I am, on stage for the climax. (A climax, anyway) The luckiest of the luckiest of the lucky! It is unbecoming of me to complain about anything ever, really. I have only to try to be worthy of this greatest honor.

Grandmother, Impulse to Life, Logos, Creator, Inner Self, this is my prayer. Help me to free myself from the bondage of self-centered and inefficient thinking. Help me to transcend the useless fear that has shackled my spirit. Help me to conquer my ignorance, apathy and cowardice. Grant me the perspective, focus and dedication requisite to the task at hand. Inspire me. Wash me with love. Let me be undaunted by the overwhelming complexity of it all, and the seeming uselessness of individual action. Remind me that I am never alone. Remind me that the tale has it’s own inner artistry and probability is not what it appears to be. We shall surely succeed, for all that action is needful to make it so. Grant me faith.

Thank you, Grandmother, for sending life into the future. Everything that I have and will experience, richness beyond counting, beauty unimaginable, these gifts have passed through you to me. In gratitude, indeed in reverence, I wish to help insure that the flame does not gutter and die at this crux, but burns on. It is yet possible that all this may come to an aesthetic conclusion.

Perhaps one day a young woman will stand with her feet firmly rooted in the soil of another planet, and she will call back to me across time with a joyful and impassioned voice, crying “I am your daughter! I am Cheiftess of a free people! I have reached the age of understanding and I do understand! Thank you for my life!” I need no more reason than this to persist; the beauty that I experience and the beauty that my experience makes possible.

It is sufficient.

Glory be to our Mothers and Fathers as it was in the Beginning, is Now, and Ever shall be, worlds without end.

My favorite author of all time, Ian Banks, has an interview over at Salon.

Salon: But you've also written that something like the Culture may happen not as a result of individual, or even societal choice, but as a consequence of advances in technology. Ian: In the purest sense, you get to the Culture almost whether you like it or not. But it does involve getting out to space, and it does involve just a huge amount of manufacturing capability. Because what you end up with is entities, space ships or whatever, that become self-sufficient and free moving in space, and it's very hard to keep effective control of them.

The control a state can exercise is largely about the fact it can just go and get you if you are holed up in your ranch in Waco or wherever. It can surround you and attack you and go in and get you. That is going to be impossible when people can live in space or more or less anywhere. Once that becomes the case, the very idea of the state does start to wither away. But it does all eventually go back to technology. Technology determines the possibilities of society. So as technology progresses, the idea of something like the Culture is almost inevitable.

As you may know, $87 billion is how much the Bush Administration has allocated for the continuing occupation of Iraq. Recently, a study was done about how much energy $87 billion could generate if it was for windmills. The answer is about 25% of all US power consumption. And then last week Bush announced a return to the moon. But I'm afraid this new space effort will probably be the same costly, bureaucratic and unimaginative boondoggle we've come to expect from NASA. I seriously doubt, if this new expensive space program will actually do much to create a sustainable space enterprise. But what if we spent the $87 billion on a rational and sound space program whose purpose was to create an economically sustainable and wealth generating space program? Could it be done? I think the answer is yes, and here is my step by step plan on how to do it without requiring any major advance in technology, nanotechnology or otherwise.

1. Scrap NASA and create an entirely new agency whose only purpose is to manage the flow of $87 billion towards generating a private and commercial space enterprise.

2. The first objective of this agency would be to create the cheapest and safest space transportation system possible with the stated goal of reducing the dollar per pound as much as possible. All finalists would have to have a system that approaches or surpasses the safety of current air travel. The most likely candidate would be the space elevator. The basic technology is already available, and if the money was available a space elevator could be built with minimal R&D. Total cost for a working space elevator - about $20 billion. This would immediately bring the price per pound to less than $100, and after awhile below $10 per pound. So how does a trip to space for $2000 sound? Obviously with these price points it changes EVERYTHING, most specifically each dollar goes a lot further. So what was once a potential $10 billion project, now becomes only a billion dollar project using the space elevator. Imagine current space budgets giving us 10 times as much progress per dollar as it does now.

3. Once the space elevator was working reliably, I would spend the next $20 billion on kick-starting private enterprise to take up shop in GEO for a variety of industries - tourism, manufacturing, metallurgy, materials and energy. GEO is the perfect place to release super-advance communications satellites and better still Solar Power Satellites beaming Gigawatts of pollution-free energy back to earth. With the necessary assembly plants up there, and $10 per pound transportation costs, a whole new era of economic growth would be started with space offering a nearly unlimited amount of energy and resources compared to Earth's current limits. Already over 10,000 industrial, material and metallurgical processes have been identified that could be done more efficiently, effectively and cheaply in space than on earth. The first technology to benefit from zero-gravity manufacturing could be microprocessor development and carbon nanotube technology. Companies with sound business and technology plans developing such technologies could very quickly turn their space enterprises into large profit ventures. This in turn would generate more investment dollars into space development - meaning more space-based factories, more R&D zero-g laboratories, more mining of space-based resources and further reducing dependence on Earth for its sustainability. Remember that each dollar goes a lot further because launch cost have been substantially reduced.

3. I would take the next $20 billion and invest the money along with the existing space enterprise in establishing a permanent asteroid capturing infrastructure. The amount of materials from just a single 1km asteroid would supply the earth and its space colonies with enough material in excess of 50 years of current rate of global consumption. Bringing a near earth approaching asteroid into a stable orbit around the earth or into the L4 or L5 points would quickly pay for itself and turn a very tidy profit for everyone involved. These heft profits would further even more investment dollars into solar system space vehicles , space-based mining, and genuinely workable and stable biospherics (CELSS - Closed Ecological Life Support Systems). Eventually, we'd see a rather sizable population taking up residence in the Asteroid belt. Most likely real hardy pioneer types, a new wild west or great frontier - and for many... freedom.

4. I would take the last $27 billion to use this existing and stable space infrastructure to launch several new ambitious exploratory scientific and manned missions into the solar system and beyond. Promising contenders would be space and moon-based large-scale telescopes. A moon based telescope could be built on the far side that would have enough power to discern actual photographic images of earth sized planets around other star systems. If you are impressed with the Hubble, imagine images thousands of times more crisp and detailed! And for those planets that are the most promising and close by, develop new light unmanned probes capable of at at least a sizable fraction of c (speed of light) to those stars for closer investigation.

So imagine the $87 billion that we are about to spend on the Iraq occupation transforming the entire economy of the world into a space faring civilization. WOW. Now only if Bush's new space program had even remotely similar goals and we'd be getting somewhere. Since the details have not been ironed out, I can only hope.

Almost everything that has transpired with launch technology up to this point has been done with government bureaucracy and its predictable and outrageously expensive launch costs. Nothing even remotely close to competitive market forces have played a part in the advancement of space technology and the reduction of launch costs. Therefore, projecting future progress based on past progress has no basis in reality, as the Law of Accelerating Returns, as Ray Kurzweil calls it, has not played any significant role yet. That is all about to change.

Approximately each year, the power of both the computer and the network doubles. By 2010, we can anticipate a $1000 computer close to teraflop speeds. Wireless devices will be everywhere interconnected. The marketplace for ideas will be enhanced by things like smart mobs and online reputation systems, which will further accelerate the already rapid pace of "expert networking" and knowledge collaboration. The pace of technological growth will continue to accelerate and take all other fields of endeavor with it - including Space technologies golden child - nanotechnology.

Now I'm not talking about molecular replicating nanotechnology, not yet. I'm however talking about a material that already exists, but has not yet been mass produced - carbon nanotubes. The economic payoff of mass produced nanotubes is so great, that it's almost inevitable that venture capital will pour into this field as much if not more as it poured into silicon. Not only can we expect even more rapid increases in processors made of carbon nanotubes, but massive quantities of the strongest material ever made.

Carbon nanotubes have the necessary strength to manufacture a space elevator. A new company, High Life Systems, probably the first of many to come, has been established with this direct goal in mind. If they are successful, launch cost will plummet from their $20,000/lb to less than a $100/lb, and probably much less than that.

Reduced launch costs change everything.

It will radically democratize the space race, making it affordable for a lot more people and enterprises to take up shop. This in turn will create more economic incentives to reduce launch costs even further and advance basic space technology, including CELSS (Closed Environment Life Support Systems). As launch costs are reduced, and long-term habitation of space become easier, the drive to utilize space-based materials (near-earth approaching asteroids) will begin in earnest. Creating a permanent human presence on the moon would be easy as pie at this point. Not to mention that by this point, the state of nanotechnological development will be way past the mass-production of carbon based nanotubes.

As for timelines its hard to say. But I don't think its too far out of line to say that construction of the earths first space elevator could begin in the next 10-15 years. If that is the case, then we could easily see dozens, if not hundreds of humans taking up semi-permanent residence in GEO by 2020. By 2025, the number of human permanently residing in space - in GEO, at LaGrange, the moon and asteroids could easily number in the thousands.

Of course, all number of catastrophes could happen between now and then, but if the underling economic drivers are allowed to continue, such a timeline could even be conservative.

I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said most predictions tend to hype and exaggerate short-term gains while completely underestimate long-term ones.

Assuming we don't destroy ourselves of course.

So many headlines of the past few years have a common background theme: the dependence of modern economies on a steady, dependable supply of energy, and the consequences of our current fossil fuel dependency for global stability and climate. Clearly this cannot continue forever. Worse still, most of the people of the world do not even live under modern economic conditions as yet, and as China, India, and other similar nations continue to progress, world energy needs will almost inevitably double or triple from their current levels. So where is all that energy going to come from?

In the November 1, 2002 issue of Science, Marty Hoffert of NYU and 17 co-authors have published an analysis of the energy options that will be available to meet world demand a few decades from now, under the constraint of constant or reduced carbon dioxide emissions. While there are many short-term measures that could make a difference, the only long-term viable alternatives seem to be fusion and space-based solar power.

Fusion is still a gambit, and could take decades before it energizes. Space-based solar power relies on mostly existing technology. Nanotechnology will of course improve the efficiency of such power systems, but it and the economic drive to build solar power satellites will reduce the cost of escaping gravity. With the economic drive to increase our energy output and the feasible and affordable means to do it - we will go into space. This economic drive will encourage large investments of cash into long-term sustainable space technologies.

For me the greatest prospect of migrating into space is freedom. Not only political and sociological freedom, but also means freedom from living on a constrained flat gravity-fixed surface. Combine all of this and you gain the ability,to create and inhabit any environment your imagination can conceive with freedom that only Utopian anarchists imagined. Of course, virtual realities will be extremely sophisticated offering compelling cyber-spaces rich in knowledge and interactivity.

What this all means is that as space access becomes increasingly affordable, more people are likely to become highly motivated to go there - perhaps to escape the repressive regimes of earth that may inevitably form to "keep the world safe" Like the new world, space will offer a release valve, of an over-populated and stangled earth, for a species that has outgrown the womb.