As we enter the next 50 years of space exploration, what sort of things should we expect? In this blog I will take a look at what we can reasonably expect over the next 50 years.
The next 10 years
Over the next 10 years, SpaceX and other companies will develop reusable rockets. This will make access to space much cheaper, and perhaps by 2025 we can expect a trip to cost as little as $100k per person. By then, space tourism will be becoming a reality and many people will be able to experience weightlessness in orbit.
Possibly by 2030 we could see the first human colony on Mars founded. The technology required for such a mission is within our grasp right now, but there are many political and social hurdles that must be overcome before such a mission could go ahead. With the increased popularity of space travel thanks to SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and others, it is likely that such a mission would be fully commercialised and funded by private enterprise. If governments do become involved with such a project, it will most likely be an international effort involving groups from around the world working together for the greater good of humanity.
The future is coming, whether we like it or not. The question is, what will it look like? In 50 years, where
will we be living? How will we get there? What will we eat? What will we do for fun? Will there even be a planet
left in another 50 years?
Here at Future Technology Blog, I hope to answer some of these questions for you. I’ll talk about what’s currently happening in the field of future technology and how I think those new technologies will affect the world around us.
50 years ago, there was a different mentality to technology. People were inventing to make life easier for themselves. They weren’t inventing for the sake of making money or because it will be the hot new thing.
I think the next 50 years will see a return to this mindset. We are already seeing some of it, with open source software and hardware projects like Arduino. However, this will not be the norm, as these people and projects are still in the minority.
In 50 years time, I think people will have a more open attitude to sharing information with each other, rather than keeping it secret and only releasing small snippets that they can profit from. If they do profit from these snippets of information, I think they will give most of it back to society in some form or another, whether by providing better services or just by donating money to good causes.
The next 50 years will see the development of the most amazing technology humanity has ever seen. The most important focus of these developments will be the improvement of the human condition. By 2061 the aging process will have been largely cured, with new technologies allowing people to live indefinitely long and healthy lives.
Over the next 20 years, we will see major advances in genomics, including a cure for cancer by 2025. Self-driving cars will also be commonplace by 2025, along with cheap electric cars (and planes) powered by renewable energy. Robots will take over many manufacturing jobs, and 3D printers will make manufacturing at home a reality.
By 2035 we’ll see computers that are 10,000 times more powerful than today’s PCs. They’ll connect wirelessly to brain implants that greatly expand our memory and ability to communicate. These implants may even allow us to communicate telepathically with one another.
By 2040, there will likely be a cure for AIDS and schizophrenia, and xenotransplantation (e.g., animal-to-human transplants) will be commonplace. By 2045 we’ll upload our entire brains to computers and become digitally immortal. We may even start living on other planets using genetically engineered bodies designed for particular planetary environments (e
The next 50 years will see great changes in technology. Some of the technologies we are working on now, like self-driving cars, dematerialized manufacturing, and personal robots, will become relatively commonplace.
But we also expect new technologies to emerge that nobody has thought of yet. To predict what might happen in the future, it is useful to look at what has happened before. Here is a list of important new technologies that were invented or discovered in the last 50 years:
* Personal computers (in the 1970s)
* The Internet (in the 1980s)
* Email (in the 1980s)
* Cell phones (in the 1990s)
* The Web (in the 1990s)
* Social networking sites (in the 2000s)
If you think you can come up with a better list of five technologies, then make your own blog post!
The future is hard to predict. You could take a guess based on the trends of the last few decades, but technology changes exponentially. A year can be a long time in technology, so what will the world look like in 2064?
In 1934 the Russian-born science fiction author David H Keller wrote an article titled “The Future of Television” in which he said that while it was technically possible to transmit moving pictures via radio, it would never be commercially viable. Ten years later television went live in New York City.
Keller’s mistake was to assume that because something had not yet been done it could not be done at all. The same error can be made today, when we look at what has happened over the past few decades and then extrapolate forward just a few years. The result is that we expect incremental change when actually we should expect revolutionary change.
So, using nothing more than a bit of common sense and some educated guesswork, here are my predictions for what you and I will see in the next 50 years:
Technology has been advancing at an exponential rate since the beginning of time, and it is only now that we are beginning to realize the impact this will have on our lives. Our world will soon be completely unrecognizable, as technology continues to advance in every field.
Let’s take a look at how things are changing at a high level.
-The average human lifespan will rise to 120 years.
-Manual labor jobs will all but disappear.
-You will be able to 3D print anything you want, including housing.
-Cars will drive themselves.
-Grocery stores will go away, as food delivery becomes more efficient (and groceries can be 3D printed).
-Mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety will become curable using direct brain stimulation.
-We will have bionic limbs that function better than real ones.