The Future Has Come Sneaking In Upon Us
Interstellar spaceflight is still far away, but the beginnings are already here.
A sizeable chunk of science fiction features cheap interplanetary travel where zooming off to the moons of Saturn is an afternoon sightseeing affair. Some of the stories go into the technical details of what made such travel possible, while some do not.
The ones which do so often describe it in one of two ways -
- In terms of contemporary science extrapolated to a seemingly logical breakthrough
- In terms of a completely unfamiliar technology (hyperdrive, stardrive) peppered with future sounding jargon (along the lines of Clarke's 'indistinguishable from magic')
Fiction apart, how far have we actually gone along that path? When was the last time you bought a ticket to the moon? It seems like once we make those breakthoughs, manufacture those magical drives, we can just soar off into space. It all seems to be far away in the future!
Well, not really.
On June 21, 2004, the spaceplane SpaceShipOne completed the first privately funded manned spaceflight. And that's more than 5 years ago.
The important point to note here is that it was privately funded. Space travel (or the beginnings of cheap space travel) is not in the hands of the world's governments any more. SpaceShipOne was designed by Burt Rutan (of Voyager fame - the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refuelling) and funded by Paul Allen (of Microsoft). Although not a spacecraft as we scifi buffs would understand it, SpaceShipOne represents a crucial achievement for multiple reasons - it's reusable, it broke the Kármán line (recognized as the boundary to outer space), it kicked off lots of parallel industries in the process and it rekindled worldwide interest in the space program.
SpaceShipOne also won the Ansari X prize - a worldwide competition for launching the first private manned spacecraft. The fact that this competition was participated in by 26 teams shows the level of enthusiasm and development that is going on in this area.
In the near future (within 5 years) we will have tourist trips to near-Earth orbit. Richard Branson's corporation Virgin Galactic is already accepting bookings. Of course, these are for the super rich only. It will be quite some time (yes, we need that breakthrough!) before suborbital flights become commonplace. Till then, we scifi buffs have our books and space simulators.
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Technology and Time
One of the big problems in looking at the future is that we have NO idea at the timeframe. Like setting our own goals, we often over reach what we want to be able to do in a single year, but we set our goals far short of what we can do in five years and even more when seeing 10 years out. Sci-fi space novels tends to go 100+ years out to allow time for their advanced technology to be built and distributed, but we can possibly get that level of technology in only 50.
People dreamed about flying for millenia, but we went from the Wright Brothers in 1903 to transatlantic flights in barely 30 years. We've written fiction about going to the moon since the Roman Empire, but Apollo was a mere 40 years ago. Now that the government monopoly has been broken, private space industry can take over and speed development of both reducing costs and increasing performance. Aren't we glad that the computer and automotive industries weren't government controlled all this time? One design has been proven and commercialized; more designs will reach the door given the right incentive.
Prizes and races help but a day-to-day reason needs to happen before the breakthrough will occur. A reason to go to space needs to be discovered to give greater reward to the necessary risk of investment. Currently, all space activity is geared toward the Earth which has limited use beyond military and telecommunications. Space based mining has been suggested, but the cost is still in excess of profit. Thus, we're left with science space programs run like a non-profit government charity (NASA).
The problem of cost has to do with economies of scale. The price per pound goes down when we have a reason to build a more expensive reusable vehicle, but the investment to build such a vehicle is excessive considering the meager returns of such a construction. The major cost of the vehicle is still fuel since the more weight that's lifted required more fuel which requires a still bigger vehicle until the ship at launch in 90% fuel weight, 7% vehicle weight, and only 3% payload weight. It takes a 365 ton rocket to launch a 12 ton payload at the lowest cost to orbit currently available (SpaceX's Falcon 9: http://www.spacex.com/falcon9.php).
The breakthrough that will happen will occur 'simultaneously; (in retrospect) between science and industry: a lower cost to LEO will make space accessible to more investors and a reason to go to space will make space accessibility a higher priority on more corporate business budgets. We are nearly the convergence of that synergy, but it's not today.
-NH