Futurology From Bobby Heinlein

I love Robert Heinlein. He was an arrogant bastard with some seriously frakked views on gender and sexuality, but I love his work. I grok him.
Well, when I found this list (on Lists of Note) that he wrote in 1949, I was super excited. Futurist lists like this are some of my favorite things ever. If the list is even partially correct, it makes me hopeful that the predictions we’ve made in the last few years might see fruition within my lifetime.
Anyways, on to the list!

So let's have a few free-swinging predictions about the future. Some will be wrong - but cautious predictions are sure to be wrong.

1. Interplanetary travel is waiting at your front door -- C.O.D. It's yours when you pay for it.
Well, that’s definitely true, but not in the sense I think he meant. We’re still trying to figure out how to get our current space program paid for, which ABSOLUTELY drives me nuts. But that’s a topic for another blog post. Oh, wait.

2. Contraception and control of disease is revising relations between the sexes to an extent that will change our entire social and economic structure.
Not gonna lie, I was a bit surprised to see this in a list compiled by Heinlein. But sure! Once birth control became more widely used, the number of women of “reproductive age” in the workplace increased, and a similar trend has been the increase in median age for first marriage, as well as the tendency for romantic pairs to cohabitate before (or instead of) getting married. This issue has also polarized the political scene. Fun, right?
Similarly, disease control/treatment has increased our expected lifespan, which changes the way our families are structured. And increased healthcare technology means higher portions of our income being spent on keeping us alive. Which is interesting, because it seems that doctors aren’t interested in the same.
Anyways, moving on.

3. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space.
Pretty much wrong. The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to prevent or defend against an attack from someone who does not care what happens to them.

4. It is utterly impossible that the United States will start a "preventive war." We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have guaranteed to defend.
Hahahahahahaha. Next.

5. In fifteen years the housing shortage will be solved by a "breakthrough" into new technologies which will make every house now standing as obsolete as privies.
Fifteen years from the year 2000 or fifteen years from 1949? I wish we all had smart houses. That would be absolutely amazing. Now I have this mental image of S.A.R.A.H. from Eureka.

6. We'll all be getting a little hungry by and by.
Well, some of us. Some of us are getting fatter. Yeah, you know who you are.

7. The cult of the phony in art will disappear. So-called "modern art" will be discussed only by psychiatrists.
Yeah, what?

8. Freud will be classed as a pre-scientific, intuitive pioneer and psychoanalysis will be replaced by a growing, changing "operational psychology" based on measurement and prediction.
Ummm, sort of. And by “sort of” I mean not really. Freud is pretty much a psychology faux pas, nowadays, but psychoanalysis still exists. But nowadays, statistics backs up a lot of what goes on in psychology.

9. Cancer, the common cold, and tooth decay will all be conquered; the revolutionary new problem in medical research will be to accomplish "regeneration," i.e., to enable a man to grow a new leg, rather than fit him with an artificial limb.
You know, I never really would have pegged Heinlein as an optimist. This is kind of refreshing.

10. By the end of this century mankind will have explored this solar system, and the first ship intended to reach the nearest star will be a-building.
So. Much. Fury.

11. Your personal telephone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple inquiries, and transmit vision.

In the year 2000, this was true, at least for some house phones. In the year 2012, my “personal telephone” does all of the things that Heinlein said the house telephone would do. I love how quickly technology advances.
12. Intelligent life will be found on Mars.
Yeah, wishful thinking there, Bobby. We won’t find intelligent life on Mars until we put it there.

13. A thousand miles an hour at a cent a mile will be commonplace; short hauls will be made in evacuated subways at extreme speed.
I wonder what the dollars per mile breakdown is for air travel, nowadays. As a matter of fact, yeah, I’m going to do that calculation.

14. A major objective of applied physics will be to control gravity.
I think I remember something about DARPA working on anti-gravity, but the rest of applied physics isn’t even glancing in the direction of gravity control. We’re not even 100% certain what causes gravity.

15. We will not achieve a "World State" in the predictable future. Nevertheless, Communism will vanish from this planet.
False. I mean, no World State, not really. Europe got part of the way there with the Eurozone, but it’s starting to fray at the edges, which may be partially our fault.

16. Increasing mobility will disenfranchise a majority of the population. About 1990 a constitutional amendment will do away with state lines while retaining the semblance.
Interesting. If anything, on some issues, the states have become more separated.

17. All aircraft will be controlled by a giant radar net run on a continent-wide basis by a multiple electronic "brain."
SKYNET. But really, there are aircraft control systems in development that might actually do this soon. We just haven’t gotten there yet. Close, though.

18. Fish and yeast will become our principal sources of proteins. Beef will be a luxury; lamb and mutton will disappear.
This should be the case, as cows and sheep are just about the least space/resource effective meat out there. We should be eating ostriches and fish. However, yet again, Heinlein is wrong.

19. Mankind will not destroy itself, nor will "Civilization" be destroyed.
Yet.

Here are things we won't get soon, if ever:

-- Travel through time
-- Travel faster than the speed of light
-- "Radio" transmission of matter.
-- Manlike robots with manlike reactions
-- Laboratory creation of life
-- Real understanding of what "thought" is and how it is related to matter.
-- Scientific proof of personal survival after death.
-- Nor a permanent end to war.
We’ve gotten… two of those. See if you know which ones!!

A Eulogy

On Monday, the world lost a master bard and we will be forever changed. Anne McCaffrey, author of The Dragonriders of Pern, The Rowan, The Ship Who Sang, and around 100 other works of fiction, died of a massive stroke at her home Dragonhold-Underhill in Ireland. She was 85 years old, and …

Letter to Congressmen Regarding NASA Budget Cuts

     Photo Credit: Associated Press

I'm postponing working on my entry about my trip to see the last shuttle launch, because something much more pressing came up.

The Hundred Year Spaceship... ON CRACK

I was reading an interesting article involving the shifting of tectonic plates, and it got me thinking: what if one person were somehow able to see the before and after?

So... I really don't want to do the math (and I can, just so we're clear), but I'm fairly certain that there is no way that a single person could last that long, even taking into account relativistic speeds. But let's pretend anyways, okay? Either we're bending the laws of physics so that this hypothetical person(s) could go faster, we're imagining a world with true anti-aging medicine, or we're dealing with some kinda wizard (or Methuselah).

Can you imagine what it would be like to return to a world literally transformed? Not just society, but the face of the planet. I suppose recognition would hinge on what part of the world was seen first; if our Methuselah saw the North and South American continents first, recognition would be relatively easy - they are the same shape, after all. But then, after a moment, uneasiness would set in... There are islands there that shouldn't be. And Antarctica is just... wrong. As more of the surface is seen, it would become painfully obvious that this is not the world that was left behind; same physical planet, but everything would be different. Too much time had passed.

Priorities, or Why Congressional Budgets Are Bogus

Organizing my thoughts when politics is involved feels a lot like organizing rocks. Or herding cats. Which is a rather appropriate metaphor for the whole charade, I suppose. The biggest contribution that politics has to the space program, at least once we really got started, is that Congress is where the funding comes from. Which also happens to be my biggest problem with politics.

I imagine this'll turn into a rant on the perceived cost of the space program versus the actual cost of the space program. I know that this has been covered before by other people, but I like to do my own number checking.

So let's establish some facts about the cost of the space program, shall we? NASA's budget for 2011 was just under $19 billion. Compared to your average household income, that's quite a lot!! But remember, there are 307 million people in the United States (you can find this out with a Google search), which amounts to about $62 a year per person. But that's counting dependents and those without income, so let's just look at households: with about 115 million households, that's $165 a household per annum. That's still quite a lot, but amounts to about half a dollar a day, per household. Most of those I know who are passionate about space would gladly pay twice that or much, much more! It would certainly cost less than the gaming habits of some people I know.

Reading Between the Orbital Lines

I read an article/press release/whatever on what's next for NASA today, and I have a few thoughts on it:

First, I love that it was made perfectly clear that NASA is still in the business of manned spaceflight and exploration.  I can't tell you how frustrating it is to hear people say "oh, well, NASA's not going to have a manned spaceflight program after the shuttle retires."  Uh?  HELLO!?  There are still American astronauts, employed by NASA, on the International Space Station.  Right now, that defines our manned spaceflight, as the shuttle has basically served as a high profile ferry to this orbital laboratory.

Priorities, or Why We Can't Take Education For Granted

Let's just get this out in the open:  I think we should colonize other worlds, and I think we should do it yesterday.  There is no greater aspiration that I have than to facilitate the beginning of a diaspora of the human race to the rest of the solar system, and even (or especially) beyond.  Perhaps "trickle" would be a better word than diaspora, though, to begin with.

And that's all I feel I need to say about that, if all that stood in the way was the engineering.

Except that there are so many other things that go into such a feat.  Some things I can think of off the top of my head are education, politics (unfortunately), and public interest.