On the eve of the 45th anniversary of the first manned space flight, what do you forum members speculate for the next 45 years?

While I dream of trips to the moon and mars I'll go with ...

"More of the same?"

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Will we be content still with LEO?

We'll be a lot closer to being able to get to Geosynchronous or bit in a tram.
In 45 years, the Opportunity Rover will be getting near a really big crater
The Rosetta probe will be making another pass near the Sun
The Neptune Orbiter will be near the end of its useful life
The Interstellar Probe will be 500 AU from the Sun

I don't know. this is quick speculation. I may give this some more thought over the evening.

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The only thing guaranteed is that the 90th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight will make its appearance at the end of that time span.

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You have a good point there Ant. We continue to make stunning progress with automatic probes. Maybe this will be the way of the mid 21st century, excellent planetary research with this technique.

In terms of our ability to probe the heavens, let’s hope that Clarke’s third law will apply.

My guesses, just for fun:

1.) We will have landed on Mars, but will have no colonies there.

2.) We will have small, expensive, useless facilities with rotating staff on the Moon. Nobody will care, but I think interesting science will be done (primarily selenological). At least two or three other countries besides the U.S. will have sent humans there.

3.) I'm cautiously optimistic about space tourism. I say cautiously, because a single disaster early in the program could put the whammy on the whole concept; notice that dirigibles are still not carrying trans-Atlantic passengers since the Hindenburg? If it can weather the first disaster--and it *will* happen--then I see a bright future for it in 2051.

4.) Almost all the basic astrophysical questions--the mass-luminosity relation, binary stars, black holes, SN rates, extragalactic distances--outside of cosmology will be answered due to missions like GAIA, JWST, SIM, and the like. I think this will subtly change astrophysical research, making it increasingly theoretical.

5.) We will have a rough idea of how common terrestrial planets are versus gas giants, and will know of thousands--maybe even tens of thousands--of each. We will also know if earthlike--those with intriguing spectroscopic signatures--planets are common or not.

6.) We will have sent an orbiter to every major planet, and possibly a lander/atmosphere probe as well. Ditto for Titan, Europa, and Enceladus.

7.) Advanced propulsion methods outside of ion propulsion (solar sails, nuclear thermal, VASIMR, etc.) will still be woefully understudied and underfunded.

8.) We will finally have CATS, from something in the Falcon strain.

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Well, I've said it before and I'm willing to repeat it, although last time people on this board spontaneously started calling me names....

In 45 years, in my very humble opinion, there will be no manned spaceflight. At all. But I do believe we will walk on Mars before that. Purely for psychological reasons. You know what they say about Mnt. Everest? You have to climb it, just because it is there. Mars is our next Everest. After that, the next mountain would be a planet around another star. And that is forever out of reach, so... manned spaceflight becomes pointless.

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That is an interesting idea Cugel; for different reasons to that which you state, I speculate too that a possible near-term future holds a cessation to manned space flight. My rationale is indicated in the recent ISS thread.

No government-funded manned spaceflight, I can believe. But what makes you think people who can afford it will not be flying simply for fun (aka "tourism)?
I do not. But assuming you are right...
...why is Mars "the next mountain" and Pluto (or Europa, or Titan) is not?
Same objection I have for Cugel -- what makes you think people who can afford it will not be flying simply for fun (aka "tourism)?

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Undoubtedly they will, in the next few years with the sub orbital craft. If I could afford it, then I would be the first in line. But an orbiting tourist craft - well that is an entirely different ball game. Consider the infrastructure that is required to support an orbital mission just for starts. You need a global tracking network, and the ability to de orbit in an emergency just about anywhere on the orbital path. That requires a rescue service that is global, and that in itself will be expensive enough.

Other than the fact that I don't know what #8 means, I think those are pretty good guesses. I suspect #2 might also be true for LEO.

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Quite simply because its closer. Its easier to get to. When Mars has been visited, then no doubt we'll look to see what the next achievable goal is, then step by step, we'll get closer to the other objects you mentioned.

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Answers to Ilya:

1) regarding space tourism: you are right, I was talking about state sponsored spaceflight only (and didn't make that clear, sorry). There probably is a market for 'billionaires in space', but if it will get beyond that? I don't know.

2) Why Mars is the 'next Everest' and not Titan or Pluto?
Well, after Mars we have set foot on our Moon (a first) and another planet (a first). After that you can do only a second, third, etc. landing on another planet. The next 'first' would be to go to another star. Besides that you simply can't reach any other planet with chemical rockets. For manned spaceflight there is only 1 planet in the entire universe, Mars.

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<<Other than the fact that I don't know what #8 means>>

Ah, "CATS". Acronym learned on the Space.com boards; it means "Cheap Access to Space", "cheap" being anything much less than the $20,000 per kilogram it takes to put stuff in LEO.

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So that's up to the year 2051 ?

Wow this is gonna be fun, here's my take with a tiny dash of future economics and a sprinkle of space-politics
don't take what I say serious, it's just a wee bit of fun.


2006-2009

The USA flys some fantastic missions like Dawn, Phoenix, LRO but also see's more budget cuts as Iranian problems arise and the USA is forced to deal with more anti-Amercian trouble in the Middle East, JWST and the VSE are under threat year after year. The US economy continues to move forward but the debt levels continue to go higher, the US 2008 election is dominated by issues such as creationism, the middle east and the economy. The United States now produces the world's best beancounters or lawyers most technical jobs have been outsourced to India or China indirectly giving them a huge advantage in space exploration. Meanwhile record bunch of temperature rises, hurricanes and sea-ice melts force Washington to admit mankind may be causing climate change, but by this stage reversing the trend is too late because its been going on too long and China and India are now polluting more than America. A large section of the US gulf coast is now under sea and Flordia is a disaster zone, Europe barely matches Kyoto targets Hansen paints a more gloomy picture and sells lots of doomsday global warming books.

2010-2016

Russian's build the Kliper and ISS becomes an orbital space hotel with a big Neon sign saying open for business and the Ruskies are now flying tourist trips around the Moon. The major percentage % of science and engineering degrees in are no longer coming from the USA but are instead coming from Europe and China. USA's 2012 election is dominated by issues such as the deficit, religi-osity, and oil prices. The European's have built an Ariane-6 are now starting to dominate robotic space flight doing lander missions to Saturn's Moons, Venus-lander, Mercury and a robo Sample Return from Mars but Europe chickens out on manned flight when a European astronaut doing EVA outside a Kliper is suddenly killed by space-junk, ESA tries to blame Russia and Russia tries to blame the 'Euro-naut' who wasn't obeying orders from Russian ground control.

2016-2021
The 2016 US election is more of the same nonsense, a scandal errupts as news breaks that the 'live' Presidential debate was pre-filmed. However most people in America including active lobbies of minorities and political groups now refuse to even vote. Never ending war continues in the Middle east, the USA has broken many terrorist cells but the Neo-jihadists inflict heavy losses on US troops. China starts to shift away from Washington's Greenbacks and move to the Russian currency, Brazil's real, the pesata, and the Euros, we see a major stock market crash in the United States. LISA mission, GAIA and JWST answer some of our greatest questions but also open up a whole other area of cosmology never seen before, multiple twin-Earth's are discovered. The EU gets a little bit of spot-light with success from nano-tech, stem-cell research, brain wave mapping, fake hearts et cetera. However the Chinese have already copied and re-produced Europe's major scientific inventions, the Euros complain to the UN that the Japanese and Chinese have stolen Europe's most valued industrial inventions and secrets.
Europeans and Russians have some major political and economic disagreements, deep bitterness still exists within Latvia, former East Germany, Estonia, Poland, and Euros try to scold the Russians. Most of the USA's Apollo astronauts have died and a new monument marks their great deeds, the USA returns to the Moon but not before the Chinese have already planted their red-flags and claimed the Helium-3 resources for Beijing. By twenty-ninteen to twenty-twenty the USA has already done the VSE and marked the Armstrong/Aldrin anniversary. Neo-Jihadists hit Texas in a kamikaze style attack, the President promises he'll hunt down the suicide bombers and destroy them. The 2020 US election issues are dominated by issues like should we waste money on space or put more money into defeating the 'terrorists'. majority of the un-educated US public asks why are we watching re-runs ? Didn't we see this tv episode before ? They change the channel and the US public seems only concerned about creationism and the Neo-jihadists.

2021-2035

The foundations for a joint manned mission to Mars is layed down by the UnitedStates, Russia and the ESA. Some of the first operational fusion reactors go online in Paris, London and Berlin, Europe is now trying to make the EU self-sufficient, French and Polish busses and trians now run on nuclear power cells. The Euro company SolarWind is involved in an enron style scandal for faking ratings and charging outrageous prices. Tidal power provides a massive benefit to Europe and the EU now uses hybrid tech to power its cars and trucks. China again quickly acquires some of the USA's and EU's best technology to be built in mass Chinese production, French are accused of selling invisibility tech to Beijing. Chinese after building a number of failed Lunar-base-stations have finally built the first Lunar city - patriotic Chinese tune into Moon tv 24/7 to check out reality tv from the lunar surface.
Chinese fail to fully move to fusion power and now secure a number of oil pipe lines running from Uzbekistan, Russia, Iran, Tajikistan right into Beijing.
The United States of Iraq and the Islamic Iranian Empire launch a full scale war against each other, biological, nuclear weapons, and chemical warheads are used. Much of the area becomes uninhabitable. With China's Iran resource supply and Iranain oil line destroyed the the Chinese and American's now make threats at eachother in a Kennedy vs Castro style showdown - EU and Japanese are worried about WW3 calls for restraint and logic while Russian president Vlad Yeltsin steps-in using clever diplomacy and helps both sides cool the Chinese/American tempers. Mars Sample Returns and robotic Europa missions have found life beyond our Earth.

China and India have conflicts and the US has no influence over the two anymore, while India is distracted with China the airforce of Pakistan with the f22-raptors and F30-Trex takes the opportunity to blow a new radioactive crater in New Delhi and seize most of Kashmir along with parts of India, the Indian's also loose much land near the himalaya as the Chinese army crushes many of the Indian military. In a hypocritical move the US/EU place sanctions on India for its agressive nature and praise Pakistani and Chinese bravery.
By 2024 Canada's economy see's massive growth, the iron-ores and im-pure oil resources in Canada are now a huge hit globally, Candians and Japanese are now heading companies which sell great robotics. Latino Immigrants now have Canada rather than America as their number-1 destination plan, even some less affluent Americans are moving to Canada cashing in on the oil rush. Latin America has a huge global influence as the Middle East burns the Latin Americans in Brazil, Argentina and Chile make great sales and now sell massive exports of expensive timbers, electrical equipment, plastics, machine parts and ores. The joint UnitedStates/Russian/Euro mission to Mars ends in failure with the death of all astronauts, some anti-NASA scientist living in Canada named Jenny-Bell says 'I told you so' and explains why the mission failed.

In the year 2028 the majority of the USA's political leaders now speak some degree of Spanish, the 2028 US Presidental election focus is whether the VP candidate can 'speak Spanish well' or not. North and South Korea unite and by 2029 the Chinese have multiple manned capsules, Saturn-LongMarch rockets and Shenzhou-Kliper-colony ships running off their production lines, Russia and the US accuse China of stealing technology and by 2032 despite a few tens of Chinese Martains dying the Chinese have finally established a manned base on Mars and the first Martians now speak Chinese.

The Russians and Chinese have now supply routes running to Mars while the Europeans launch unmanned craft to Mars to set up a trade route, the yuan, Euro, renminbi establish themselves as a Galactic currency, the USA sets up multiple small trade routes running from Earth to the Chinese colonies on our Moon. The 2032 US elections are dominated by issues such as medicare for our heroic war-vets and educating our children in science so they can grow-up smarter than the Chinaman or Japanman, the US election is also dominated by idea of banning the cults practice of Neo-Islam while the UN accuses the USA of anti-Muslim racism during the elections. NASA wins over the US Evangelical lobby by promising to bring Chirstian missionaries to the Red-Planet so that they can help those unfortunate Chinese who have to live and die under Mars totalitarian rule and Martian communism. As the USA builds multiple hydro-dams and fusion reactors, the US President now turns his back on the Middle East, the USA has grown weary of the Middle East and decides never to set foot in the area again. Saudi Arabia sees civil war and the whole of Arabia decends futher into the dark ages. Japan and a unified Korea go to war over rescoures near Takeshima/Dokdo

2036-2051
Trying to display unity in an unstable and unsure world the Euros quickly pass an EU constitution. In an attempt to stem the flow of radical muslim immigrants from the Middle East into Europe the EU provides funding to Turkey to erect a giant Berlin style electric wall across Turkey thus sealing off the Middle East. British and Germans are keen on the idea but the French and the Turkish aren't to sure about the request but the EU bribes Turkey with the promise that Turks will become the EU's most valued citizens and gain seats in EU government. Desperate immigrants and families in Arabia sell themselves to human trafficers and criminal gangsters, the EU sets up a Euro-military to stop militant human slave sellers, the military consisting of Spanish, British, Italian warships frequently opens fire on desperate boat-people, the UN accuses the EU of racism and crimes against humanity. The US economy grows healthy but elections in 2036 are dominated by the global economic depression and the Asian wars. East Asia has now become a warzone, the Beijing stock market collapses, neo-social-communism has finally failed in China.

The Chinese people now go through civil conflict in a war of self discovery to find out what government would be best for ruling 2 billion people as well as the Beijing Martian colonies, China goes through changes in leadership over a few months Monarchy, Neo-Democracy, Totalitarian Republic and on and on and China grows weaker by each month...charged with war-crimes China's elite leaders flee to Mars where another revolt is underway.

France no longer runs the show at ESA and instead the ESA is dominated by Russian or ex-Soviet ideas, Italian scientists, the ESA is run by British policy and Canada's people, the ESA considers re-naming itself the Earth-space-agency rather than European agency. The EU has now grown to 34 nations including new members Ukraine, Turkey, Romania, Iceland, Macedonia, Croatia, Georgia, Bulgaria. Many of Europe's upcoming ex-Soviet nations help drive the EU economy forward but the EU faces many Muslim immigrants who are now coming in through Russian areas and onto Europe, corruption from its oldest members such as France and big debts from the Italians cause the Mega-Euro-zone to go into a recession. With the Euro becoming unstable this hurts the European trade route to Mars, the Martian currency fluctuates and shares on the Galactic stock exchange tumble.

Year 2044 a new political party wins the US election, this new group is neither Democrat or Republican but draws on the best values of both former parties and creates some massive changes for America. In the year 2045 the United States of America makes a massive come-back on the global stage it is now a true Hyperpower rather than a Superpower, multiple missions by many agencies to the foreign planets has helped develop new technologies and provided cheap and fast access to space this has helped US-Airlines set up a new tourism route to the Red-Planet and the US Mayflower One sets off on a tourism trip to the Red-Planet. US gains control of the lunar colonies and an American Democrat wins the Moon elections. In the year 2048 an aged Arnold Schwarzenegger kept young by biotechnology is elected Republican President of Mars, he promises to the Martians that Mars-communism is a thing of the past and Martians can choose whatever language they wish to speak, Spanish, Chinese, English and Practice whatever Martian religion they want without persecution as long as the religion isn't banned by his Schwarzenegger security cabinet.
Mars becomes the 51th state of American and NewBejing is re-named Lowell-town, the Shanghai-village is also re-named Squyres-city. As promised by previous McCarthy-style leaders Western American culture and start to dominate Mars not Chinese-communism. The Middle East finally wakes up from its nightmare and goes through a period of self discovery and enlightenment the USA build multiple space-ports in the stable regions in Africa. In the year 2051 Mars President Schwarzenegger is forced to resign in a Nixon style scandal, Martain Paparazzi use nano-bots to record Arine's scandalous exploits in Venus-Ville, the Martian socialist party promises to win the next election Lowell-town. Back in the United States on Earth, and worried about the spread of socialism on Mars during the state of the Union President José-Juan-Kennedy promises to send a Manned mission to explore the oceans of Europa and return them safely to Lowell-town on Mars.

Sounds like you've done this sort of speculation before launch.

Interesting take on things you've got there, but I think it has more than 6 degrees of separation from reality buddy.............

I certainly hope so!

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.

What We Could do if we had the will:

1. Colonies/regular flights to the Moon with real science and comercial efforts.
2. Multiple visits to mars heading toward a goal of permanent colonization.
3. Orbiters/landers/atmospheric probes for all planets and interesting moons out to Neptune.
4. More "grand tour" flybys to the KBOs, Oort cloud and beyond.
5. Much bigger/more capable versions of the various space telescopes.
6. Develop much more powerful/efficient propulsion capable of achieving a small percentage of the speed of light along with at least designs for the first true (capable of functioning when it gets there and sending back data) interstellar probe.
7. Manned visit to the asteroid belt.
8. Plans for manned visit of Jovian moon(s).

What we will likely have:

1. See Romanus' post (Item 2).
2. Ibid (Item 1).
3. Maybe one or two probes to Jovian moon(s). Possibly a Neptune orbiter. Possibly a new Jovian orbiter.
4. At most 1 or two of these grand tour missions beyond New Horizons.
5. If we are lucky, Hubble will have been repaired, but will be defunct with no replacement in sight by the 45 year mark. The other deep space scopes will be long forgotten.
6. Chemical fuel, Baby!
7. Maybe, Dawn will have gotten funding.
8. Yeah. Right.

sigh...

In order for there to be continued further reaching manned spaceflight beyond mars, there is going to need to be a major breakthrough in how to escape earths gravity. My money is on a space elevator. I just don't know if it will be achievable in the next 45 years. If achieving earth orbit becomes relatively cheap, then amazing things will happen both in scientific exploration and space tourism.

If we are stuck with massive chemical rockets to achieve obit, then I believe we will still have a presence in space, it just won't be a manned one. Technology for robotic probes is increasing at such an amazing pace that incredible discoveries will continue to occur. Soon it will almost be like we are there. We will be able to watch video (grant it not real time) of other planets. Cover great distances on the planet surface each day and explore vastly different terrain.

I'm hoping that we have the breakthrough that allows us to have manned exploration. However, I'm not so sure I want to push ahead with the current idea on how to get to Mars at the expense of robotic exploration and other scientific discovery.

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It is robotic exploration that has been done at the expesne of LV development! Now is the time to cut these probes since all the planets will have had a visit by at least one of them.

On Mars it is hard to pick up a rock, throw it--and it not hit a craft.

I think we are just now seeing the promise of robotic probes. These mini science labs are going to continue to become more autonomous. Just look at DARPAs great race. If all we could do is send probes that had the capabilities of the ones just a few years ago, I would agree with you. But, the promise of increased capabilities in just a few years time is pretty impressive. The cost difference of sending a probe and launching a full scale manned assault on the Moon/Mars is pretty amazing. Sending probes anywhere would have to completely stop to fund the manned program. The ISS was supposed to allow for all of this great scientific study by the astronauts. How much of each day is consumed by reasearch compared to general maintenance, and routine upkeep. The same will be true of any mission to mars. Enormous resources will be used just to keep all of the systems needed to keep the astronauts alive going. Very little will be accomplished other than leaving footprints. Seems we've been down that path before....Hmmmmm.
That said, I do want to see us go to Mars and beyond. Even if just for the sake of doing it. But, I also want to expand our knowledge of the universe by continued exploration and right now robots are our most cost effective tool.

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That is a good set of predictions, Romanus. In the 1960’s, nuclear thermal looked like the future for the early 21st century. It always strikes me as curious, how research in this field was abandoned.

Thanks for the compliments, people.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

Another way to look at it, in the last 45 years we've really accomplished quite a lot in terms of our space endeavours, the disappointing thing is though, that when you cut that back to the last 35 years, progress has really been quite slow.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.

If you look at it in terms of where men have been, then yes. If you look at what kind of information we are getting from our space probes and space infrastructure, I don't think it has been slow at all. It's true that in the first ten years we exceded all expectations. Since then expectations have expanded quite a bit.

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Yep, you're exactly right there Anton, that was a pretty sloppy comment of mine. In terms of manned exploration, I expect the next 45 years to be a case of hastening slowly - hopefully including somewhere along that time-line a manned mission to Mars. (Hoepfully - but its certainly no given)

I would expect men/women walking on the moon before 2030, but I am a little skeptical about those first Martian footsteps occuring before 2050. I think it'll be pretty tight - because by mid-century - barring some sort of major catastrophe - China will have the world's biggest economy - and (likely) its most well-funded space program.

There will be competition there between China and America in all sorts of areas - one can see the beginnings of this even today (can anyone say yuan?). So it'll be interesting to see whether an atmosphere of competition/(confrontation?) encloses this relationship - or broader co-operation. I believe either is possible - but that will obviously be dictated by the politics of the day.

As for unmanned exploration, I really think this could explode this century - it really could (and this belief is based on the advancements that have occured over the last 25 years as you've pointed out Anton). To be honest - considering how few places our probes have actually gone in the Solar System - by observation we already know an incredible amount about the place. By the end of this century I would hope/(and probably 65-75%) expect - that we will have sent multiple probes to all the major bodies of the Solar System perhaps 2-3 times at a minimum(I'm thinking Pluto/Charon here - even if its not a planet - its still a major body) - many many more for Jupiter (15-20?), Saturn (15-20?), Uranus (5-10?), Neptune (5-10?).

Really hope that all these planets and their moons have been fully explored and that just about every secret that they have has been found out (short of actually conducting a manned mission to them).

Really hope this, and hope that (as I'm sure it will) something like Google Earth/Moon/Mars will eventually extend to cover the entire Solar System in great detail - and just thinking about that - its likely that within 20-30 years there will be Google Galactic/Milky Way and Google Universe - now those could be interesting products to play around with with some increased computing power.

I'm sure they're in the pipeline somewhere, hope to see them soon.

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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." Arthur Schopenhauer - renowned 19th Century German philosopher.