I had brief vision of the future, and I thought I'd share it with you all. I am an atheistic prophet.
Anyone who has ever talked to me about stocks knows that I'm a huge bull regarding Tesla Motors. One of the reasons why I am is because of their CEO Elon Musk (Jon Favreau's inspiration for Tony Stark in the Iron Man Movies). But this article isn't on Tesla Motors, although they are kicking ass in the market as I write this, it's on the other company he's CEO of, SpaceX.
2012 was widely proclaimed the year of private space flight, and for good reason. SpaceX made history by being the first private company to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Not only has SpaceX succeeded, but a host of other companies are starting to compete here too. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, as well as a host of smaller startups come to mind. I don't really care which business ends up dominating this market, I'm more concerned with the drastic impact these companies will have on the course of human history.
Elon Musk's stated goal behind SpaceX is to hedge the survival of the human race by making us a multi-planetary civilization. He plans to launch a manned mission to Mars in 10-20 years. Another company, Golden Spike, plans to land mining equipment on the moon to gather lunar resources. Another company with even bigger ambitions, Planetary Resources (funded an run by a huge list of entrepreneurial billionaires) plans to mine the extraordinary amount of precious minerals in asteroids.
I often think about how fun it would be to travel back in time and astound people there with our smart phones, our airplanes, our computers, etc. In my vision, I met myself from the future and had my mind blown.
With the privatization of space, travel between planets will become as ordinary as taking a flight from Dulles to Miami. Think about that. Within a definite timeframe after making the decision, you'll be standing at the Martian Spaceport staring back at the Earth. Extraterrestrial mining will increase the raw resources available to the human race a million fold, driving costs of producing down, increasing the proliferation and facilitating the development of higher technology.
Permanent human settlements will grow on other planets and moons until they cannot be simply governed by international treaty like the ISS, they will need a permanent human government of their own. Our current concept of "countries" may become equivalent in the future to the concept of planets. Or maybe the human race will remain splintered in their terrestrial nations, in which case there will be a race to grab extraterrestrial land and resources. We may even have wars spanning space, planets, and moons.
So many of Earth's current problems will be solved. We could drastically reduce Earth mining in favor of asteroid mining. Settlements on other planets and moons will serve as a pressure valve for our burgeoning overpopulation. We can get rid of any unrecycleable waste by simply shooting it into deep space. This all sounds like science fiction, but it is realistically within our grasp. It's happening now.
We are at a special moment in human history, as we as a species grow into a Type 1 civilization. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) I am proud and honored to have witnessed the moment in time when man took his first steps venturing forth into the cosmos.
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