STARSHIP HUMANITY: imagine life 50, 100 AND 150 years from now…

I realized that fifty years from now; my youngest daughter will be at my present age meaning I will not be there but she and my grandchildren will be; insaallah!

Scientific American; January 2013 issue asked prophets of Technology what life would be like 50, 100 and 150 years from now. Reading it right now is like traveling in time because for certain; it will not be less but probably more than what we can right now imagine. Prophets of technology tends to be conservatively realistic to separate themselves from fiction writers but hey; when 007 talked to his watch some 45 years ago like a phone; we smiled at it like in a pleasant dream. When pictures were added to the fiction like a live-television on James Bond’s wrist; we laughed at it like too much fiction and yet we live not only to see it happen but to have one in our pockets while children use it for live-internet gaming; a toy.

I wrote a week ago how photos my daughter took with her tablet back home in the Philippine instantly uploads in my Google-plus that I can instantly see. Last night; I discovered something else. You probably know about this but I didn’t. There is in your facebook page a map where it says where you live; at least that was what I thought indicating from your profile your address? I was wrong. I always ignored that face of my facebook until last night when I saw the map says I was at the “Mall of Asia.” I said, “What?” I realized that Nishreen had been to 9 different places since she received her tablet 3 weeks ago the last being at MOA :-) I have no idea if it is a function of her tablet’s GPS or her Google map. Fiction…? Nah!

We see in science fiction movies flying cars that we now thought is pure fiction. We can’t imagine how it will be possible but if you are young; you may actually ride in one maybe even own it. Drones that USA uses not only to spy but murder enemies with the consequent death of many innocents will in the future turn into manned space vehicles (MSV) as well although unmanned space vehicle (USV) will still be around getting even more sophisticated. Some drones will be the size of your red blood cells that can circulate in your body to spy on your organs and hunt and kill whatever that makes you ill. Other drones will be insect size from mosquito size to birds that can spy and kill in urban areas. USA has 7,000 spy/killer drones with unknown numbers in many other countries. If drones can fly 24 hours and carry heavy loads of bombs; why not humans and to drive it; you don’t need a driver’s license :-) Drones technology is the next world changing technology after the internet. Electrical engineers should tread this path or be left behind by those who does.

What truly fascinates me is space travel. Again; 150 years from now for colonists to live and thrive on Mars is too conservative a time but ah; journey to the stars…150 years it is. With big business and moneyed individuals investing on Mars’ future colonies; I may even live to see it happen and when I see humankind walks on the surface of Mars; I will sail towards the sunset with a smile in my face.

NLK

STARSHIP

HUMANITY

How future generations will make the voyage from our earthly home to the planets and beyond—and what it means for our species

By Cameron M. Smith

SNIP:

If space colonization is to succeed in the long run, we must consider biology and culture as carefully as engineering. Colonization cannot be about rockets and robots alone—it will have to embrace bodies, people, families, communities and cultures. We must begin to build an anthropology of space colonization to grapple with the fuzzy, messy, dynamic and often infuriating world of human bio-cultural adaptation. And we must plan this new venture while remembering the clearest fact of all regarding living things: they change through time, by evolution. Three main concepts shape current thought about space colonization. First is the colonization of Mars. Widely publicized by the peppery space engineer and president of the Mars Society, Robert Zubrin, Martian colonies would be self sufficient, using local resources to generate water and oxygen as well as to make construction materials. Next is the concept of free-floating colonies—enormous habitats built from lunar or asteroid metals. Popularized by physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in the 1970s, these would house thousands of people, could rotate to provide an Earth-like gravity (as beautifully envisioned in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey), and could either orbit Earth or hang motionless at so-called Lagrangian points, spots where an object’s orbital motion balances the gravitational pull of the sun, moon and Earth. Finally, we might also consider the concept of the Space Ark, a giant craft carrying thousands of space colonists on a one way, multigenerational voyage far from Earth. I have been working with the nonprofit foundation Icarus Interstellar to design just such a mission. Each of these approaches has its merits, and I think they are all technologically inevitable. But we must never confuse space colonization with the conquest of space. The world beyond ours is unimaginably vast; it will be what it has always been. When humankind begins to make its home in space, it is we who will change.

Scientific American: January 2013

https://www.amazon.com/Nosca-Khalid/e/B01NA7APYQ