Getting to the Future of Space

Neil deGrasse Tyson at the World Government in 2018

While the last post definitely looked to the far future. Today we are going to be a little more down to Earth. Well actually not really, but we are more looking at our time. This video is from the World Government Summit in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It is long by highly entertaining. Here are some of the key takeaways.

We are really bad at predicting the future

Predicting the future is based on what you know and extending it. It is probably hopeless beyond 10 to 30 years as some of their quotes show.

It is scarcely possible that the twentieth century will witness improvements in transportation that will be as great as those in the nineteenth.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle 12/30/1900

Man will not fly for 50 years.

Wilbur to Orville Wright in 1901.

Landing and moving around on the moon offer so many serious problems for human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them.

Science Digest, August 1948

That is not for pessimism. It is also for optimism.

A manned lunar base will be in existence by 1986.

The Futurist 1967

It does seem like the bottom line for predictions is that they are too optimistic in the short run and too pessimistic in the long run. So what does this have to do about colonizing space. It is the understanding that there are very few drivers for great projects. They are:

• War (also cold war)
  • Apollo
  • The Mahatten Project
  • Great Wall of China
  • Interstate Highway system (Eisenhower realizing what a military advantage the German Autobahn was.)
• Praise of a Deity or Royalty (not as relevent today)
  • Pyramids
  • Palace at Versailles
  • Cathedrals
• Promise of economic return
  • Columbus
  • Magellan
  • Lewis & Clark

These can also be summed up as I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to die poor. This also tells you something else. Is that private enterprise won’t do it. In what we have seen governments lead and companies follow. Companies will not take the lead unless they have a better idea of the risks. So governments have the need to move in and take the unprofitable risks. Then companies will move in for the profitable risks.

Now that we have had governments take some of the risks, companies will be willing to move in. The estimate is that the first Trillionaires we have will be involved in asteroid mining. This move needs to be made by governments first.

Check out the whole video below.