Thursday 4 December 2008

The Next Big Thing

Over at TechLifePost, a prognostic article I wrote about the likely near-future of Space Development.

I wrote it before the questionnaire I mentioned in the previous post was made public, but the writing has been on the wall for some time now. Now things could change of course, my reading of tea-leaves is only 70% or so accurate at best, but that's really the way I think things will go. Had the Ares-I project not been in severe technical trouble, had off-the-shelf components actually been adequate, things may have been different. But they're not.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There are 2 people, person A and person B. B has an idea for how to accomplishes thing X and he disseminates and publishes it. A is mildly interested in that idea and wonders how he can, using B's idea as a model, accomplish X in his own situation. A has a lot of respect for B. A wonders how B's model applies to a situation S, which A suspects applies to both of them, so he sends forth correspondence and the following dialogue occurs:

A: Hey B, I like your thing X. Hey, how do you apply it to situation S?
B: Why are you so interested in my situation S? Do I worry about your situation S? That's really creepy: I hope I don't have to call the police and be on the look out for you. Please focus only on your situation S and don't go snooping on mine, pervert.

A is confused.

What do you call what B did, and do you think what B said was correct under the defined circumstances? If not, under what circumstances would what B said be correct?

Anonymous said...

A fairly good article Zoe, I wonder if it is at all bad that space lift in the West becomes a private enterprise opportunity. I would doubt that private space lift operators would only confine themselves to passenger transport, wouldn't all business opportunities be explored, including heavy lift, ala Falcon 7? In a historical context, think the East India Company approach to space development by the West (less the slave trading and the other bad stuff).

WRT Luna becoming the sole source of fusion fuel (anuetronic He3) I suspect commercial fusion power generation will happen somewhat sooner than 2050 and probably won't be of a tokomak design. There are a number of promising fusion techs currently underway, receiving variuos levels of public and private support, particularly in the US. One to watch is Bussard's pollywell, currently undergoing testing and evaluation at Los Alamos, funded by the US Navy. It is theorised that this tech could utilise proton Boron 11 fusion, also anuetronic, the fuel being exceptionally common on earth.

Antipodean

Anonymous said...

sumptos--threadjack much?