The far future

[English assassin]

Yes, i do believe the future will be like mad max. Maybe not quite so drastic,

Phew. Mad Max had me worried, but Mildly Miffed Max, I think I can cope with.

[rotorgun]

@ Seamus and Rotorgun: I don't see space travel developping before there's really something out there worth our time, effort and money. The people financing those endavours will probably remain on earth and would want something tangible for their money. The people leaving would need a really good reason to leave. Remember that the 'new world' back in the age of discovery was a pretty nice place to go and live, Mars ain't.-doc_bean

Just let one of our probes discover something really valuable in large enough quantites to justify the expense, and it'll be "Katie, bar the door" in the efforts made to get there first. Imagine the gold rush of 1890. There were plenty of folks willing to risk life and limb to attain the "mother lode" and thereby gain a lifetime of wealth. As for those who would want to live on Mars, I agree that it is beyond the scope of most people today, but it is seriously being considered by some pretty smart folks among the worlds space exploration community.

Heck, I might even want to move there if I wasn't so old and tied down with the cares of my life. At least I would get a little peace and quiet for a change.

[doc_bean]

Just let one of our probes discover something really valuable in large enough quantites to justify the expense, and it'll be "Katie, bar the door" in the efforts made to get there first. Imagine the gold rush of 1890. There were plenty of folks willing to risk life and limb to attain the "mother lode" and thereby gain a lifetime of wealth. As for those who would want to live on Mars, I agree that it is beyond the scope of most people today, but it is seriously being considered by some pretty smart folks among the worlds space exploration community.

Heck, I might even want to move there if I wasn't so old and tied down with the cares of my life. At least I would get a little peace and quiet for a change.

But whatever they find ahs to worth transporting too, gold is nice stuff, but do we really need more of it ? And is it worth the cost of mining and transporting (which would be huge) ?

Maybe rich uranium could be worth the effort, but we have enough of that here on earth for a few hundred years, and I doubt the populace would be in favour of making our planet just a little more radioactive.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Maybe rich uranium could be worth the effort, but we have enough of that here on earth for a few hundred years, and I doubt the populace would be in favour of making our planet just a little more radioactive.

Actually...

I recall reading something somewhere (not sure what, but it was a credible source) that said at the rate our power plants and constant renewal of bomb uranium are consuming the stuff, we only have 70 years of it left.

[doc_bean]

Actually...

I recall reading something somewhere (not sure what, but it was a credible source) that said at the rate our power plants and constant renewal of bomb uranium are consuming the stuff, we only have 70 years of it left.

There are indeed two schools of thought on the subject, I know professors supporting the hundreds of years theory and left wing environmentalists supporting the few decades estimate.

Either might be right of course, but considering the supporters I know, I'd say a few hundred years seems more likely.

[Mikeus Caesar]

The source i heard it from (which i repeat, was credible but i can't recall) wasn't getting their info from left-wing environmentalists, but from a scientific source.

[doc_bean]

Well, either way, it's besides the issue, we'd REALLY need some Uranium before we decide to get it from Mars. The costs of personel that need to be payed for 4 years alone would be immense, not to mention equipment and mining costs.

[Lemur]

Just let one of our probes discover something really valuable in large enough quantites to justify the expense, and it'll be "Katie, bar the door" in the efforts made to get there first.

I got one for ya: helium-3.

Assuming we can ever get efficient fusion power working, this stuff is going to be worth its weight in rather more than gold.

[rotorgun]

Here's an intersesting possibility to wet the appetite of future space entrepreneurs.

The long-term possibilities are even more celestial. Ever heard of 3554 Amun? It's a space rock about 2 kilometers in diameter that looks as if it might have fallen straight out of The Little Prince. There are three key things to know about 3554 Amun: First, its orbit crosses that of Earth; second, it's the smallest M-class (metal-bearing) asteroid yet discovered; and finally, it contains (at today's prices) roughly $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion of cobalt, and $6 trillion of platinumlike metals. In other words, whoever owns Amun could become 450 times as wealthy as Bill Gates. And if you time your journey right -- 2020 looks promising -- it's easier to reach than the Moon.

Business2.0 http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/27/tech...etospaceintro/

That's just the sort of thing that would kick-start our entry into the solar system
in the near future. From there it is only a short step to colonization and exploitation. Once a decent propulsion system is produced that can make Solar System travel feasible, it will become a relaity rather quickly. Look how far we have come in just over 100 years since manned flight became a reality. I am no tremendous optimist, but I have faith in the human race to follow suit with the past and head out into the unkown in the future.

PS: Very good example Lemur

[doc_bean]

Here's an intersesting possibility to wet the appetite of future space entrepreneurs.

There are several key problems with mining the asteroid though

1)practical considerations of mining: there are probably two ways to go about mining such an asteroid, the crude way is flying up to it, blowing it to bits and collecting as much as you can carry. The more sophisticated way involves connecting with the asteroid and forcing it into a geostationary orbit, then cutting off little pieces (possibly extracting up there ?) and fly those back down. Both aren't trivial operations by far.

2)The cost of mining, operations as described above will cost billions, perhaps they would be profitable, but you'd need serious venture capital before considering it.

3) Environmental impact. I might sounds like a Euroweenie here, but does transporting more heavy metals, which are for the most part dangerous, to earth sound like a good thing ? What happens if one of the transport ships blows up in the atmosphere ? The environmental catastrophy that could lead to would be tremendous.

4) Supply and demand laws. Some claim to huge amounts of gold imported from the Americans in the end helped bankrupt Spain. Is there a demand for so much heavy metal ? What would they be used for ? Prices would probably drop tremendously, thus making the whole endavour operate at a loss.

Frankly, the only reason I can see we'd need the extra recyclable resources is if we'd go into space, then it might become a self supporting system.

EDIT: Though Lemur seems to have a point according to wiki:

It is believed that the Moon's surface has large amounts of helium-3 in the lunar regolith.[12] At the start of the 21st century several countries planned to explore the Moon and to use its resources. Helium-3 is expected to be one of those resources if a commercial fusion process is created. Yet to be determined is the exact quantity of helium-3 which the solar wind traps and deposits on the lunar surface. As of our current knowledge of lunar regolith, it is exceedingly scarce (ppb quantities mixed in with ppm quantities of He4), and may be beneath the point of economic recovery. However, processes to extract other materials from the lunar regolith could cover the majority of the energy expenditures in extraction; Helium-3 extraction might be piggybacked on these processes.

Cosmochemist and geochemist Ouyang Ziyuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is now in charge of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has already stated on many occasions that one of the main goals of the program would be the mining of helium-3, from where "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world."[13]

In January 2006 the Russian space company RKK Energiya announced that it considers lunar helium-3 a potential economic resource to be mined by 2020.[14]

[Rodion Romanovich]

Far future: I think we'll manage to build an uber-cool space shuffle shortly before the sun explodes, but it will turn out that all energy needed to launch the shuttle had already been used for playing "snake" on mobile phones, vibrating massagers, and watching "Lost" on TV.

[KafirChobee]

Energy? How did we get to worrying about nuclear power? Isn't France already recycling their Uranium, and it seems an indeffinate process - though the off spring of it is High weapons grade plutonium.

Back around 1973 a guest on Paul Harvey radio show [ http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Harvey ] made the suggestion that just three turbines place in the Gulf Stream would generated enough power for the entire Eastern seaboard - two in operation and one in refurbishment on a rotating basis. Of course nothing was ever done, and has yet to be done - though it is plausable.

A teenager a few years back won some H.S. scientist award for proving the generation of energy using tides (waves) - of course this is hardly a new concept, but if even a kid can develope a system to do it? Why aren't more human resources (sciences) being used to develope it. To costly? To what?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

There are simply to many natural sources of energy - and safer than nuclear - for there to be any concern about energy. Except the new push to approve more coal power plants - and this insain idea about selling off pollution points.

Depending on who wins the debate on our sources of energy, may determine whether there is a future. Deter global warming, or continue contributing to it. Continue the attack on the worlds' environment - or not.