21 replies to this topic

[MarcusAurelius]

Thats exactly right, we predict the future with only a smattering of accuracy and all of it is based on technologies that we see today and how we envisage it taking shape in the coming decades. But none of these timelines can account for a sudden breakthrough in fusion technology, or nanotechnology or if we get quantum computers a decade earlier and then it propel us into even greater possibilities.

My prediction is that in the future, say 2030-2050 there will be a very huge explosion of ideas and engineering techniques that will be primarily focused on space habitation. With the aid of a more mature nanotech industry and massive automation due to robotics and AI we will be sure to see things like the international space station come down in cost so significantly that building things beyond the hundreds of metres in space become feasible. Coupled with the inevitable decline in price of payloads to space (Space elevator?) I think the future arena of a burgeoning space industry will be quite different to what we can predict now. We might surprise ourselves in that today we see a space industry as a very slow and painstaking endeavor. But think of how quickly we went from no airplanes to the first commercial flights across the atlantic. And that was with lesser technology. With the technology of the next 30 years we will see pervasive changes in space that will take mere decades to what we would of thought would take us a century to master.

[Raklian]

Thats exactly right, we predict the future with only a smattering of accuracy and all of it is based on technologies that we see today and how we envisage it taking shape in the coming decades. But none of these timelines can account for a sudden breakthrough in fusion technology, or nanotechnology or if we get quantum computers a decade earlier and then it propel us into even greater possibilities.

My prediction is that in the future, say 2030-2050 there will be a very huge explosion of ideas and engineering techniques that will be primarily focused on space habitation. With the aid of a more mature nanotech industry and massive automation due to robotics and AI we will be sure to see things like the international space station come down in cost so significantly that building things beyond the hundreds of metres in space become feasible. Coupled with the inevitable decline in price of payloads to space (Space elevator?) I think the future arena of a burgeoning space industry will be quite different to what we can predict now. We might surprise ourselves in that today we see a space industry as a very slow and painstaking endeavor. But think of how quickly we went from no airplanes to the first commercial flights across the atlantic. And that was with lesser technology. With the technology of the next 30 years we will see pervasive changes in space that will take mere decades to what we would of thought would take us a century to master.

That's what Ray Kurzweil has been trying to tell us. We think too linearly.