
What We’ll Do in Space by 2116 - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/heres-what-well-do-in-space-by-2116
======
liamconnell
Based on economic incentives, I would guess that the mining industry would
conquer the new frontier way before any commercial space travel for humans--
one way or two way. Unfortunately the mining industry today is the scummiest
on earth. I honestly hope that Elon Musk and SpaceX get into space mining
before say Rio Tinto, just because he deserves the billions more and would
probably reinvest it for more socially good projects as well.

My vision of how it could be in [N=no_fucking_clue] decades: Completely
unmanned from the beginning (just like mining on earth nearly already is),
with a large-scale base on the moon. It starts with mining on the moon that is
processed on the moon and shipped to the earth and the infrastructure is set
up so that [M] decades later it would be the hub for inerplanetary mining
operations as well.

Get building Mr. Musk!

~~~
adwn
You might be interested in Planetary Resources [1]. They're planning to mine
resources from asteroids though – no gravity well (like the moon) makes for
easier transport from the source to the consumer.

It's very unlikely that SpaceX will be entering the space mining business.
Musk doesn't seem to be a big fan of it, except in the context of mining
resources on Mars for consumption on Mars.

[1] [http://planetaryresources.com/](http://planetaryresources.com/)

~~~
zardo
SpaceX will certainly be interested in putting someone else's mining equipment
in space though. If there is an asteroid gold rush, they're selling the
tickets.

~~~
infectoid
This is probably a better point. Established mining companies would be better
off investing in research on how to extract raw materials once they are at the
location.

Let another company (e.g. SpaceX) deal with the transportation. The level of
specialisation at every steps is huge.

------
aerique
_> In a mere 60 years, we of Earth have gone from launching our first
spacecraft, to exploring every planet and major moon in our solar system, to
establishing an international, long-lived fleet of robotic spacecraft at the
Moon and Mars._

Put like that it's pretty impressive. A lot of people, including me, tend to
focus on humans in space and on other planetary bodies so think look a bit
grim from that perspective.

We're doing pretty well exploring our solar system. I wonder how the jump to
other solar systems is going to be once we're 'done' here.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>We're doing pretty well exploring our solar system. I wonder how the jump to
other solar systems is going to be once we're 'done' here.

We can reallydo a lot more in our current exploration. Ideally we would have a
permanent human presence on the moon and Mars if budgets kept up. Also a good
exploration of Europa, Titan and other moons.

As of now we do not have the ability to travel to another solar system in a
human lifetime and the technology to do so doesn't even seem possible. No
hints at near light speed travel, let alone faster than light.

~~~
Grishnakh
It's absolutely possible to travel to another star system in a human lifetime.
(BTW, there's no such thing as "another solar system": there is only _one_
Solar system, and that's our own. It's called that because our star is called
"Sol", hence "Solar". Other systems are "star systems".)

The tech doesn't exist now, but it could with antimatter propulsion.
Basically, you just need to create a large spacecraft which can accelerate
continuously at 1 _g_. Then, you point the craft to Alpha Centauri and
accelerate at 1 _g_ for half the distance, then spin around and decelerate at
1 _g_ for the second half. With 1 _g_ acceleration, you don't need artificial
gravity. And the trip should take less 4 years from what I read here:

[https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=reb6mf...](https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=reb6mf99h3i7m8lvj9idsnvmu5&topic=34996.msg1217547#msg1217547)

The occupants of the trip will actually achieve apparent faster-than-light
travel! (Alpha Centauri is almost 5ly distant.) Relativistic dilation at work.
Of course, the problem is the huge amount of energy needed. But if they could
achieve 0.1 _g_ acceleration, it's much less and the trip is still only 13
years; for 0.01 _g_ , it's 41 years, still within a human lifetime though a
bit much. But that might even be possible with nuclear propulsion.

So, in summary, it's absolutely possible to travel to other star systems
within a human lifetime, as far as physics is concerned. However, building
antimatter drives and obtaining enough antimatter fuel for the trip seems
pretty impractical, and also unlikely that anyone will want to expend the
resources to do that. But if you accept much lower acceleration, and combine
that with cryogenic technology ("suspended animation") so that people don't
need to age during the trip, it might be doable. But it'd be a one-way trip
most likely, since everyone the passengers knew on Earth would be dead when
they got back, unless of course we eliminate aging.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>BTW, there's no such thing as "another solar system": there is only one Solar
system, and that's our own. It's called that because our star is called "Sol",
hence "Solar". Other systems are "star systems".)

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/solar-
system](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/solar-system)

>Basically, you just need to create a large spacecraft which can accelerate
continuously at 1g. Then, you point the craft to Alpha Centauri and accelerate
at 1g for half the distance, then spin around and decelerate at 1g for the
second half. With 1g acceleration, you don't need artificial gravity. And the
trip should take less 4 years from what I read here:

You would need a colossal amount of energy to maintain that acceleration. I
would believe 8 years, but the system is already 4 light years away.

~~~
Grishnakh
>[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/solar-
system](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/solar-system)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_System)
From Wikipedia: "This article is about the Sun and its planetary system. For
other similar systems, see Star system and Planetary system."

>You would need a colossal amount of energy to maintain that acceleration. I
would believe 8 years, but the system is already 4 light years away.

And your belief is wrong. I already gave you a reference. The trip takes less
than the distance in light-speed. A trip to the center of the galaxy at even
0.1g acceleration takes far, far less than the lightyear distance, in ship-
time.

------
adwn
> _With lower budgets and less aversion to risk, private companies are also
> more likely than public agencies to suffer disasters in space._

I disagree very much. Throwing bureaucracy and money at problems does not
decrease risk. NASA has killed several astronauts: Challenger (bad internal
processes and "go-fever"), Columbia (bad technical concept and design), and
Apollo 1. Then there are those near-misses with Apollo 13 and Gemini 8 [1],
which could have easily resulted in the loss of the crew. Money and
bureaucracy also don't protect from stupid mistakes, as seen in the Mars
Climate Orbiter case (output data in wrong units) [2].

Private companies also have a strong incentive to minimize risk to human life,
due to all the bad PR and losses in revenue that brings.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_8#Emergency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_8#Emergency)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)

~~~
jellicle
Everything in your comment is belied by the evidence. Yes, NASA's attention to
detail certainly does reduce the risk involved, and there have been numerous
HN articles about its software processes, such as:

[https://gigaom.com/2012/08/20/nasa-scrubbed-mars-rover-
code-...](https://gigaom.com/2012/08/20/nasa-scrubbed-mars-rover-code-clean-
over-and-over/)

[http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/making_robust_software/](http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/making_robust_software/)

> Private companies also have a strong incentive to minimize risk to human
> life

There's no evidence of that whatsoever. OSHA, for example, has vastly reduced
workplace fatalities and injuries.

[https://www.osha.gov/dep/fatcat/dep_fatcat.html](https://www.osha.gov/dep/fatcat/dep_fatcat.html)

~~~
adwn
> _NASA 's attention to detail certainly does reduce the risk involved_

Bureaucracy and several layers of subcontractors is _not_ the same as
"attention to detail". You can easily have the latter while avoiding the
former; I'd even argue that bureaucracy is dangerous in this context, since it
maximizes ass-covering and minimizes personal responsibility. Personal
responsibility is still the best way to ensure attention to detail.

> _There 's no evidence of that whatsoever. OSHA, for example, has vastly
> reduced workplace fatalities and injuries._

My statement was in the context of human space flight. When an astronaut dies
during a mission, that will have a massive impact on the company's reputation,
unlike some construction site accident. OSHA does not apply to space flight
missions.

Compare commercial airplanes: Whenever a plane crashes, you'll be sure to hear
about it and which airline it belonged to.

~~~
lukeschlather
> Compare commercial airplanes: Whenever a plane crashes, you'll be sure to
> hear about it and which airline it belonged to.

Plane crashes are rare events thanks to the massive bureaucracy known as the
FAA.

------
swatkat
ISRO has few exciting space exploration projects lined up in the coming years:

a) Chandrayaan-2[1] in 2017. Second lunar mission; this time with a soft
lander and rover.

b) Second Mars mission[2] in 2018. More science payloads than the first
mission. May have a lander as well.

c) Venus orbiter mission[3] in 2018-2020.

d) Aditya L1[4] solar observatory mission in 2020.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalyaan_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalyaan_2)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_orbiter_mission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_orbiter_mission)

[4][http://www.isro.gov.in/aditya-l1-first-indian-mission-to-
stu...](http://www.isro.gov.in/aditya-l1-first-indian-mission-to-study-sun)

------
gtirloni
I'm a complete newbie about space travel so when the article says it takes
decades to reach planets like Mercury, I went searching for the fastest way we
can/could travel today.

From the Wikipedia article about the Solar Probe+, it seems the spacecraft
should achieve 200km/s as it passes by the Sun. At that speed, a trip to
Mercury (57.91 million km) would take 80 hours?

Could someone with more knowledge about space travel weight in on the
difficulties of achieving this and/or any glaring mistakes I have made in my
assumptions and calculations?

To clarify, I'm interested in how fast we should ship super advanced robots to
these planets. So things like human survival while it passes by the Sun aren't
important in this case (I think? Is melting a huge problem for shipping robots
that way?).

~~~
airza
The speed as it is passing by the sun is the highest that it will reach in its
route (the closest part of its elliptical orbit around the sun) You couldn't
change that momentum to be going in the right direction (Towards mercury's
gravitational influence, which is small compared to the sun) or slow it down
enough to orbit mercury after it gets there without expending a crazy amount
of fuel. So you could do it for a flyby, but trying to land something on the
surface wouldn't work.

The other problem is since 200km/s is the fastest speed, you have to get to
that point at the normal one.

~~~
S4M
Yes, the moment Earth and Mercury are the closest is when the Sun, Mercury and
Earth are aligned, so going from Earth to Mercury at this moment is heading
towards the Sun, but then gravity from the Sun will be too strong to be able
to stop at Mercury.

------
mihaifm
There's no mention of exploring Europa or Enceladus. I think sending probes
there will have far more important consequences than sending orbiters to
Uranus.

~~~
godber
Perhaps Emily was thinking more about things in the distant future. There is
already a Europa mission under development:

[http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-europa-mission-
begi...](http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-europa-mission-begins-with-
selection-of-science-instruments)

We should be there within the next 10 to 15 years.

------
davesque
To be totally honest, it's hard to feel any enthusiasm for future space
travel/exploration when it seems like a real question as to whether or not
civilization will still be around in one hundred years. Climate change is such
a huge problem that it dwarfs other scientific concerns. That being said, I
suppose there's a chance that space exploration could drive technological
innovations that could help on that front.

~~~
arnold_palmur
> _That being said, I suppose there 's a chance that space exploration could
> drive technological innovations that could help on that front._

I'd say there is more than a chance, the amount of technology that was
produced during the "space-race" is incredible - I personally think that an
emphasis on space exploration would continue that advancement.

------
DanielBMarkham
If we're talking 100 years, my money's still on some kind of field propulsion.
Here's why:

Take any 100-year period of time over the last few centuries. It's not just
that folks in one period of time would not understand the activities of the
next period, _they wouldn 't even understand the concepts involved_ So
horseback folks really didn't grok riverboat steam power at all. Same goes for
railroads. Or aviation.

That leads me to believe that what's up next is something we currently think
impossible or silly. "Field propulsion" is a nice moniker for that, whatever
in reality it turns out to be.

~~~
simonh
Im a bit of a contrarian in this area. I know Ray Kurtzweil thinks we advanced
as much in tge last 14 years as the previous 100, but thats tosh. What amazing
new technologies have we developed even since the 70s? Silicon chips? Genetic
enginering? Rocketry? Solar power? Nuclear power? All those are baby boomer
technologies. What advances from the last 30 years even come close to those? I
think the truth is we discovered most of the exploitable physics in the mid
20th century and from now on it will be mainly iterative improvement.

------
ifdefdebug
> Which means it’s likely that the first humans on Mars will not have been
> sent there by NASA or ESA.

Yes I agree that's likely but for very different reasons from what is said in
the article:

"Since the retirement of the US Space Shuttle in 2011, only Russia and China
have maintained human spaceflight capability with the Soyuz program and
Shenzhou program."[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_spaceflight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_spaceflight)

------
ifdefdebug
> Still, we could see humans on Mars in 20 years, give or take.

After a whole paragraph describing how difficult it is, this seems rather
optimistic. Give or Take? Give another 100, I'd guess.

~~~
zardo
NASA says 20, SpaceX says 9, I'll call it 15.

------
fit2rule
Here's what I wish we'd do in space in the next 100 years:

\- Make industrial-scale self-reproducing robots, and send them to an
asteroid. \- Build more robots out of that asteroid, send robots to next
nearest asteroid. \- Build a ringworld out of asteroid and robot parts.

The great thing about space being so enormously big, is that .. once you get
off Earth .. you've got so much of it to play with. Send some of these robots
to the rings of Saturn, get as much water together as possible, take your
fish-tank and get on with it ..

We have the technology to do this. We truly do.

We just don't have the will.

~~~
kabdib
> We have the technology to do this

We're not even close to being able to make self-reproducing robots.

Even a simple robot requires a huge supply chain. Take, say, the photoresists
used in chip manufacture -- that's an entire chemical industry that you need
to box up. That little industry has a bunch of needs on its own. Okay, box
those up, too. Repeat. Now let's do insulation for wires . . . or _batteries_.

It takes a lot more than a village to make a robot, it pretty much takes a
country. Probably several, given how suitable raw materials are so
inconveniently spread around (and often, hard to find, so I guess we need to
add some kind of prospecting facility now).

Short of general-purpose nano-assemblers, which are likely to remain science
fiction for quite some time, you'll not put a self-reproducing robot into a
probe-sized package any time soon.

~~~
tim333
Ok, we're not close just now but at some point during the next 100 years
perhaps?

~~~
kabdib
It's hard to project 30 years out. Ask Charles Stross (he's written near-
future SF, and -- I'm probably misrepresenting him -- has said he's abandoned
story lines because technology caught up with his predictions). Predicting 100
years is pretty much impossible.

But absent "nanotech" or "micro-mechanical biotech" or some similar game-
changing advance, self-replicating machines will need to incorporate self-
replication of so much of their technology base that they will basically look
like factories. Now, there's nothing wrong with a self-replicating factory,
but it's not portable and cuddly, and you can't stick it on a rocket and
launch it (not in one piece, anyway).

I would be delighted to be proven wrong.

~~~
KineticLensman
Stross (who is active on HN) explores the subject of abandoning stories in
some detail on his blog, e.g. regarding the Halting State series [1]. He also
describes here how political uncertainty can kill a story; in this case
uncertainty regarding the outcome of the 2014 Scottish Independence vote.
Halting State books 1 and 2 are set in a near-future independent Scotland, but
were written well before the vote happened. Regarding Halting State 3, he said
(2013) "In just two years the map of the Scottish near future will have
changed, unpredictably and drastically, from where it is now. I therefore
conclude that there is simply no point in my starting to write..."

[EDIT: added quote, made it clear that it was the third book in a sequence
that was canned]

[1] [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/psa-
why-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/psa-why-there-
wont-be-a-third-.html)

~~~
Grishnakh
It sounds like he set his story too near in the future. Set your story 25-50
years into the future and then you can make reasonable predictions and avoid
political things ruining them, for the most part (until a couple of decades
have passed). Scottish independence could still happen, just not in the next
couple of years. But in 30 years, it's possible. That far out, the state of
the entire EU is in serious doubt.

Look at 2001: A Space Odyssey for example. In 1969, it looked like a fairly
reasonable prediction of what things would be like in 2001 (42 years away),
given the rate of change at the time in aerospace technology. By 1974, it
still didn't look too bad. It didn't start looking overly optimistic until
probably the late 80s, 20 years later.

Also, if Stross is one of those writers who makes multi-book story arcs
spanning over a decade (like Herbert did with the Dune series), that's a sure
recipe for total failure when doing near-term sci-fi. Stuff just changes too
fast; Herbert's stuff worked sorta-Ok because Dune was set 8000 years in the
future (IIRC), but even there one big premise was the idea of genetic
memories, which were postulated when he started, but eventually disproven with
greater knowledge of genetics, probably before he finished his last book.

This is stuff like Blade Runner worked well: it was a singular story, set
about 35 years into the future. At the time, it looked like a somewhat
reasonable depiction of 35 years in the future, though rather grim. Of course,
now it's almost 2017 and things don't look anything like that, so it's
interesting to watch from a historical perspective. It is a little disturbing
that they now want to milk it with a sequel after all this time, when
obviously things aren't going to look anything like that in 1 year, but I
guess I can ignore it like I ignore the Matrix sequels.

------
maxxxxx
I hope that there will be a major breakthrough in propulsion in the next 100
years. With current technology there are pretty hard limits to what can be
done in space.

~~~
hughes
The biggest breakthrough might not be in technology, but in policy.

Nuclear propulsion has offered high-Isp and high-thrust together in the same
engine since the 60s[1], but for various reasons it hasn't flown. With the
right safety precautions, public perception, legal changes, and luck, this
could be the "breakthrough" you're looking for.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA)

------
nxzero
Using species known to survive outside Earth’s atmosphere like the
Tardigrades, especially given their size, for space based efforts might be
worth considering.

~~~
samstave
Using them to do what exactly?

~~~
nxzero
Off the cuff, using water bears as biobots and space-seeds might be of use,
but just doing any research relate to using them in space to me is worth
looking into; NASA has already done some research. Generally speaking, right
now their our best bet to transfer life out of the solar system.

~~~
samstave
Can we implant them with Human DNA packets and randomly send millions of
little "DNA Bombs" off into space?

~~~
Namrog84
And that is out humans got banned from the galactic alliance.

------
shmerl
_> it’d take 100 years to get there, give or take, unless there is some
revolution in spacecraft propulsion._

What about ion thrusters? They are known and it's not a revolution but rather
evolution of technology that's needed to make them more useful.

~~~
XorNot
No it'd be a revolution. An ion thruster with comparable performance to
chemical rockets would be revolutionary and is by no means a logical extension
of any technology.

~~~
shmerl
Ion thrusters aren't comparable to common chemical engines and they don't need
to be. They can't offer same high acceleration (to enable escaping the planet
gravitation for instance). What they can offer however is very long operation
and constant acceleration (even if not high). What it means that when in outer
space you can accelerate the spacecraft to huge speeds over long time, which
you can't do with regular fuel, simply because you quickly run out of it. It's
not a revolutionary idea by any means (at least not anymore) - it is pretty
well known.

------
yyyuuu
how far is our current tech from cryo sleep?

Most science fiction assumes that humans will survive long duration space
travel through chemical induced sleep, waking up only when they are about to
reach the destination.

Is it just science fiction or do we have someone working aggressively on this.

~~~
zimpenfish
6 months seems to be the outer extremes of medically induced comas
([http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-a-
medicall...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-a-medically-
induced-coma/)) and that's nowhere near long enough to get anywhere useful.

Although I guess you could wake people up every 3 months for some muscle
replenishment exercise and mission updates.

~~~
q-base
But as far as I know you still age while in a coma. So while you may be in a
unconscious sleep - it won't do you any good for long term space travel. Then
you might as well be awake and look at the scenery along the way.

~~~
zimpenfish
I guess the bigger problem is that you'd almost certainly need a staff of
medical personnel to monitor and manage the sleeping people (whether they're
in a medical coma, held at a low temperature to slow everything, etc.) and
you're back to the same problem of how they cope with the time and distance.

------
superkuh
This needs more electrostatic solar sails and fission fragment rockets.

------
dsr_
Private companies have a long record of killing their employees and causing
huge amounts of environmental damage, as long as they think it will be
profitable and that they won't suffer awful repercussions.

[http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/mnmstats.asp](http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/mnmstats.asp)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars)

"all the bad PR and losses in revenue that brings" is insufficient.

~~~
adwn
Your references only show that 100 years ago, safety and human lives were held
in lower value than today – companies and government institutions alike were
more inclined to accept fatalities back then.

Your first reference is pretty useless, since it doesn't show fatalities in
relation to total man-hours worked. If anything, it would indicate that
companies have become less inclined to accept human deaths!

~~~
samstave
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster)

------
peteretep
All I got from this articles was an excessive desire to post childish Uranus
jokes.

Predictions of the future are supposed to inspire and bewilder

