Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

This is a nice, quickie almost Star Trekkey type of thought process in the advances of humans for space exploration.  I think a flaw in the argument here is the depiction that advances are linear and no key events act as catalysts for enhancing or hindering these movements.  For my beloved readers out there, I actually have similar thoughts involved here in my own novel, that I have not yet published nor finished.  But rather than focusing on a point in time (which to me is arbitrary as catalysts can always trigger things to move faster or slower), I focus on events that lead towards the expansion of humans in space.

That said, I think the real key to the article isn't what's possible in 50 years.  We now have real time video conferencing, which seemed so cool in the movie Aliens and that movie was shown in 1986.  So forget timelines.  Time honestly means nothing.  It's all about goals and budget and whether the stimulus exists in mainstream culture.  But pointing specifically to the article, I can safely say that I've seen some parallel thinking between myself and this writer:

- Environmental concerns for planets outside of Earth (in this case Mars)
- The colonization of Mars
- The complete exploration of the solar system
- Utilizing nanotechnology to terraform planets (i.e. Mars)
- Space platforms (stations)
- Primary colonists being scientists, businessmen and engineers
- The issue of energy
- Titan as a source for colonization
- The moon being heavily colonized
- The motivation of moving away from earth as preserving one's culture

Whether or not these things will come to fruition in the next 50 years really is irrelevant to me.  Again I emphasize events vs timeframes because I've personally witnessed the massive growth of something dear to me (computing) which was generated heavily through the demand from society.  Also, witness the incredible growth in modernizing engines due to the high demand of gas, thus impelling the auto industry to change by moving towards more fuel efficient cars.  You can't put your finger on a single date and expect something to occur.

What you can do is demonstrate what people want because of inefficiencies or shortcomings in society.  Changing topics slightly, if we were to pinpoint some of those elements, here's some trends I see emerging:

- Improving energy production (moving away from inefficient, environment damaging, limited resources like oil and harnessing more efficient or abundant resources like solar power)
- Population escalation (China and India will fare the worst)
- Strains on other limited resources due to population escalation (natural food, water, forests, etc.)
- Increased density in major cities
- Increased forms of bacterial outbreaks from the toxins caused through pollution or chemicals in foods
- Increased forms of disease as the population increases, space shrinks, living conditions worsen, poverty levels soar, mutations come about from chemicals and toxins in the air, food and growing radiation (since the ozone layer is depleting)
- Decreasing quality of life as the middle class shrinks while the levels of poverty increase

I think the increasing population in this world will be the #1 motivating factor among anything.  It's a simple formula: more people = less resources.  All decisions will be based off that.  Also, I often point to the increasing levels of poverty.  While the world will mature, what I don't see changing much is that there will be more money floating around or that goods will be cheaper.  I think goods will continue to skyrocket in price, currently highly prized skills like tech will become commonplace, thus making that industry moot, save for the few that run it and that we're bound to hit a major wall soon in terms of expanding the most important tasks in computing. Instead, other forms of education would have to be emphasized with math and sciences being the biggest.  I see America slowly getting nailed in these categories and then corporate America selling its own out (as if they haven't already) by moving the money even moreso offshore.  But the reasons this time wouldn't be because the talent is cheaper, but because the talent is just better.

I also forecast more disease in the world.  The outbreaks in Hong Kong to me were just foreshadowing of larger, more serious plagues brought on by confined living conditions.  I think medical science, compared to computer science, is just too slow moving to make meaningful leaps to prevent major outbreaks from occurring.  I'd prefer to see advances in that area more than in space.

The other huge problem are resources.  We're just eating things up and not replacing them.  Or rather what we're replacing is utter crud.  It's making us sick with all the unnatural chemicals.  It's quite possible that we'll manufacture our own virus through eating something as simple as a carrot.  Then what do you do about things like the rain forests or melting glaciers in Antartica?  While I doubt we'll see something as dramatic as The Day After Tomorrow, I have no question in my mind that more Katrinas will be on their way without more prevention occurring via the governments.

At any rate, these things will somehow create a necessary catalyst to propel the next generation of technology and space exploration.  Perhaps, a war will arise  or that countries like China and India find it necessary to catapult themselves to the stars faster than America.  But those type of things will trigger the world into moving faster into space.  It's just a matter of when that will occur.