The Speculist

These Things Happen in Threes

First it was Ray Bradbury. Then the Professor.

Now yours truly. Blogging will be light today and tomorrow (which is Labor Day anyhow, plus I'm going to be suffering from a major cake hangover.)

One Last Approach

Homer Hickam, former NASA engineer and author of the book Rocket Boys, (which became the movie October Sky), wrote an op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (link requires paid subscription) in which he described the shuttle program as America’s Viet Nam. Hickam takes issue with the CAIB report assertion that NASA’s flawed culture is to blame for the Columbia disaster:

The problem, as he sees it, is the placement of the shuttle amid what he describes as " the turmoil of launch." The shuttle sits in a precarious position at launch, wedged between two solid rockets and strapped to a huge fuel tank which, as Challenger demonstrated, can explode like a massive bomb. Hickam attributes this flawed design to the mistaken belief that it would be cheaper to re-use the main shuttle rocket engine, so it needed to be a part of the orbiter.

Rand Simberg has some interesting reflections on Hickam's ideas.

I wonder whether Hickam is suggesting building a whole new launch infrastructure. If NASA creates a new rocket to place our shiny new space plane in orbit, it will no doubt be smaller and less powerful than the current shuttle launch infrastructure. As Robert Zubrin has pointed out, this will mean the loss of launch capability that could send us to the moon or Mars.

I have a modest proposal. After Hickam’s final 10 shuttle launches, why don’t we plan on four more uses of that infrastructure? Using the shuttle launcher in an expendable configuration, it would take four launches to complete the first phase of the modified Mars Direct mission. Four launches could place a habitat, an ascent vehicle, a return vehicle, and a crew all in place. We would have a proof of concept mission to Mars and, if we approached it correctly, a roadmap for moving forward.

Clearly, this would involve a lot more work than just launching the rockets: someone would need to design and build the hab, the return vehicle, the ascent vehicle, and the Mars transport vehicle. Who would do it? I propose that our new space agency (or a new and improved NASA) take on that piece by administering a series of X-Prize type initiatives for private companies to design workable versions of those components. Even the re-purposing of the shuttle launch infrastructure could be accomplished by private entities. After those first four launches, we would take NASA (or its successor) completely out of the loop except for setting direction and awarding incentives. The space agency would exist only to push private space development along. The new space plane, the next space station, and the ongoing exploration of the solar system would belong almost completely to the private sector.

From there, all the private sector has to do is draw a line from winning NASA prize money to making real money from the settlement of Mars or other commercial exploitation of space. If they can somehow traverse that line (or, if you like, cross that T Relative boundary), the human settlement of space will take off fast.

Mars isn’t a necessary component of such a scenario. It’s one of many possible destinations. But it has a lot going for it. It’s resource-rich. It’s fairly close. It would be a good staging area for expeditions to the asteroids or to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. And besides, as I have alluded to frequently during this week’s festivities, Mars has a hold on the popular imagination that no other destination in the solar system can match. A mission to Mars wouldn’t just be logical, it would be exciting. It would be fun. It might very well re-awaken the spirit that drove our ancestors to cross the Atlantic in dodgy sailing vessels or the Amrican continent in vulnerable covered wagons.

That, above all, is why I think we need to set our sites on the red planet.

Future Roundup 08/30/03

Here's the full list of this week's Mars-related predictions for the future. Hat tip to FastForward Posse members Mike Sargent and Robert Hinkley for helping us to keep looking ahead.

In the Future...

...people will be so smart that they will only need reassurance if an object passes within, say, 25 million miles.

...alterations will be included in the price of a suit. (See item dated August 22.)

...Martian colonists will sell Earth rocks on-line as a novelty gift item.

...every household will have its own Hubble.

...parts scavanged from vacuum cleaners and washing machines will also have a role to play in building Mars robots.

...Martian settlers will capture iceballs from the asteroids for their own use, while making a fortune selling bottles of Sparkling Olympus Mons back to Earth.

That does it for this week. I hope you all enjoyed Red Planet Madness as much as we did. And until next time, we'll see you in the future.

Seven Questions with Robert Zubrin

This week's special guest, Dr. Robert Zubrin, answers the Seven Questions about the Future.

1. The present is the future relative to the past. What's the best thing about living here in the future?

People have far more opportunity to exercise human potential.

We're not where we could be. NASA had planned to send the first mission to Mars by 1981. That's what should have happened. That's the road not taken. If we continued down that road, with the first humans on Mars in the early 1980's, the first base, the first embryonic settlement would have been in place by the late 1980's. And the first children born on Mars would be entering middle school right about now.

3. Assuming you die at the age of 100, what will be the biggest difference be between the world you were born into and the world you leave?

By 2052, there will be a new branch of humanity living off the Earth.

4. What future development that you consider likely (or inevitable) do you look forward to with the most anticipation?

The opening of the first community orchestra on Mars.

5. What future development that you consider likely (or inevitable) do you dread the most?

Biological warfare. I consider it likely, not inevitable.

6. Assuming you have the ability to determine (or at least influence) the future, what future development that you consider unlikely (or are uncertain about) would you most like to help bring about?

Well, the one I've been dedicating my life to, the settlement of Mars.

I think it's likely eventually because of the nature of humanity. We are species of explorers, we do have a fundamental drive to go where we've never gone before. And so we will go into space whether we have a hand in it or not, but I want to see it in my lifetime.

7. Why is it that in the year 2003 I still don't have a flying car? When do you think I'll be able to get one?

Blame Nixon.

(What's the deal with these seven questions?

The Good Stuff

FastForward Supplement

Just in time for the weekend, Posse Ringleader Vic is chiming in with some cocktail recipes for those post-Mars-Day/Labor Day parties that everyone is sure to be having. There's also another Mars cocktail recipe in this week's main FastForward feature, plus reader Sanjeev was good enough to provide one the other day (check the comments).

As old Jon Jonzz would say, "Drink responsibly, everybody."

Hey, Folks

This weekend is not too late to have a few friends over to celebrate our close encounter with Mars. Even geeky Future Fanboys like you can throw a decent Mars party if you have the right refreshments on hand. Consider serving your guests one or all of the following to sip on while viewing Big Red.

Valentine Michael Smith Martini Want to try to grok that special someone? Mix her up a couple of these. (Works quicker than plain water.) Ingredients: 1 oz Midori melon liqueur 2 oz Vodka or Gin	Viking Lander on the Rocks The perfect thing to down before extending your probe arm in the search for signs of life. Ingredients: 1/2 oz. Black Haus 1/2 oz. Midori Splash of Sour Mix Splash of 7-Up
Combine Gin and Midori in Shaker with ice. Shake. Strain into a martini glass. Enjoy.	Mix with ice and strain into a shot glass.
(Modified from a drink found on BarNoneDrinks.)	(Modified from a drink found on BarNoneDrinks.)

This one goes over especially well with the future-minded ladies:

Barsoomian Wallbanger

Turns the girl next door into a Princess of Mars every time. Ingredients: 1 oz. Blue Curacao 1/2 oz. Banana Liqueur 1/2 oz. Melon Liqueur

Shake with ice and strain into a 2 oz. shot glass.

(Modified from a drink found on BarNoneDrinks.)

I guarantee your exploration will be ultimately enhanced with the help of these extraterrestrial libations.

— Vic —

ITF #30

In the Future...

...Martian settlers will capture iceballs from the asteroids for their own use, while making a fortune selling bottles of Sparkling Olympus Mons back to Earth.

Futurist: Posse member Mike Sargent

Columbia Fall-Out

By the way, if you're interested in a serious, in-depth analysis of the Gehman Report on the Columbia disaster, you really need to drop by and pay Rand Simberg a visit.

UPDATE: Rand is directing us to the more spruced-up versions over at Fox News and NRO.

ITF #29

In the Future...

...parts scavanged from vacuum cleaners and washing machines will also have a role to play in building Mars robots.

Futurist: Posse member Robert Hinkley

Mars Day is Here!

What an auspicious day.

In addition to everything else going on, today is the Big Guy's birthday. Well, yes, that big guy, too. But the big guy I'm talking about is Ray Bradbury. He turns 83 today.

So, please. Before you do anything else. Before you take advantage of all the wonderful options you have for celebrating Mars Day, before you read today's startling interview Dr. Robert Zubrin on the path forward to Mars, take a moment to send a birthday greeting to the genius behind the Martian Chronicles.

Thank you.

The Case for Mars Revisited

Speaking of the Future with Robert Zubrin

Two items in the news set the stage for today’s piece.

• The Gehman Report on the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster has been released, and it is as critical of NASA as many predicted it would be. While the report calls for an overhaul of the culture that drives the space agency, there are those who suggest that fixing NASA won’t be enough. Some critics are calling for the end of the space shuttle program or for the abolishment of NASA altogether.

• Today, Mars and Earth are at their closest point in nearly 60,000 years. What a treat it’s been, on recent evenings, to stand in my back yard and gaze at this amazing golden light shining in the southern sky. There’s another world, right there, almost close enough to touch. It’s a world many of us have thought about, read about, dreamed about all our lives.

The crux of these two news stories is that it may be time to put away childish things where Mars is concerned. I’ve always believed that I would live to see the day that human beings set foot on Mars. And I’ve always assumed that, when that day comes, it will be NASA that makes it happen. Both that belief and that assumption are now seriously in doubt.

After all, if we were ever going to go to Mars, wouldn’t we be doing it right now? Wouldn’t this have been the perfect time, with Mars so close?

And how could NASA — an agency apparently still mired in the same cultural bog that gave us the Challenger disaster — possibly get us there?

Enter Robert Zubrin.

While many of us have been reading and dreaming about Mars, Zubrin has been making concrete plans. He’s a former Staff Engineer with Lockheed Martin, and the founder and President of both Pioneer Astronautics and the Mars Society. Zubrin is the author of several books on the future of space exploration and settlement, most notably The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must.

For years, Zubrin has been making the case that a series of missions to Mars could be deployed quickly and safely, and at a much lower cost than other experts have suggested. These missions would serve as the first steps in the human settlement of the red planet and of the rest of the solar system.

Some will argue that such ideas are pipe dreams, that any attempt by NASA to take on a major exploration initiative would inevitably dead-end just as Apollo did, to the detriment of other, more realistic space inititiatives. That may be true. On the other hand, if abolishing the space shuttle and even NASA itself are going to be on the table, then some other alternatives need to be there as well. And maybe — just maybe — it’s time to think big again, as we did when the space program was born.

In the wake of the Gehman report, with Mars shining bright in the southern sky, it’s time Robert Zubrin had a fair hearing.

You've been in the news this week saying, "Next year is a crisis that may well determine whether humans to Mars occurs in our lifetime. This is a unique opportunity, but if we let it slip by, we're going to blow it." Can you please explain what that means? How are we going to blow it?

We have a conjuncture of events that are facing us right now. First of all, NASA is about to be thrown into chaos over the shuttle report, which is going to be deservedly very harsh. It's going to be impossible to suggest that we should keep launching the shuttle orbiters for the next 25 years or so. Also, there's going to be a severe rethinking of NASA's overall priorities. Human space flight is risky. Is it worth taking those risks just to fly ant farms into Earth orbit? Or, if we're going to take those kinds of risks, should we be attempting goals that are worthy of those risks?

You mentioned keeping the shuttle orbiter going for the next 25 years. What's the plan of record for that?

Well, that's the party line prior to the Columbia, actually. And it's ridiculous. You can't maintain these things, they're Carter-Administration-era constructs. They take a hell of a beating every time we fly. Actually, it's somewhat incredible that they have had the good luck they have had up to this point. NASA has already begun to move on this and they've started a program called the orbital space plane.

You see, the shuttle is irrational as a launch vehicle regardless of whether an accident occurs. It's a huge launch vehicle; it has 7 1/2 million tons of thrust — the same amount of thrust the Saturn V, a moon rocket, had at take-off. A Saturn V could lift 140 tons of payload to Earth orbit. The shuttle delivers 20 tons of payload to Earth orbit. It actually delivers 120 tons, but most of that is the inert mass of the shuttle itself. So flying cargo to Earth orbit is like trying to truck cargo in a Winnebago. You've got a powerful engine, but most of it is hauling your house around. So we’re using the shuttle to transport crew to the space station, basically to perform a taxicab function . It can do it, but it's like using an aircraft carrier to pull water skiers. The vehicle is way oversized for the task.

That's why NASA has come up with a plan to create a thing they called the Orbital Space Plane, which would be, by comparison, a relatively modest capsule or a mini-shuttle.

Is that the ramjet/scramjet?

No. It's either a capsule or a miniature shuttle put on top of an expendable launch vehicle, an Atlas or a Delta, which sends it to orbit. It can have a crew of six people in it. It will have about one-tenth the take-off thrust and one-tenth the cost of the shuttle. That's rational. Fine. Okay.

However, the question then becomes: what do we do with the shuttle launch infrastructure? The shuttle launch infrastructure is more than the orbiter, it's also the external tanks, the solids, the space shuttle main engine, the pads, and all the people and technology that support that. Now if you simply discard that, you're discarding a gigantic asset.

Really, what you want to do with the shuttle launch infrastructure is lose the orbiter and replace it with an upper stage, a rocket stage. And then, all of a sudden, without the burden of this huge mass, this giant Winnebago, it becomes a proper launch vehicle. It provides Saturn V class launch capabilities, which means it could serve as the primary instrument to send humans to the Moon or to Mars. With this approach, we can achieve direct throw, straight from the launch vehicle, just like we had with Apollo. No monkeying around with trying to build gigantic science fiction interplanetary space ships. Just throw the payload to the planet using the booster. Bang! You're there.

NASA can do that, or not do it. They have a choice. They can simply rationalize the shuttle's taxicab function to orbit, to move people back and forth to the space station on a little capsule on top of an Atlas, and lose the shuttle pads, and capabilities. Or they can turn the shuttle into a heavy-lift vehicle. The only way they can rationalize turning the shuttle into a heavy lift vehicle is if they decide we’re going to go to the Moon or Mars, or both. With people.

Because otherwise we don't need that big lift capability.

Right. NASA has had an academic position for the past 30 years that some day, we'll go back to the Moon. Someday we'll go to Mars. Of course, someday we're going to do it. But now, they've got a choice: they either have to do it now or throw away a $10 billion asset. So it's like a guy who's been hanging around a girl for five years, and she finally turns and says, "Jack, are you going to propose or not?"

Let me give you a choice: shuttle launch infrastructure or Saturn V for going to Mars — which one would you pick?

I'd take the Saturn V.

We really lost something, there, didn't we?

Yes, we did.

Now, in risking throwing away the shuttle launch infrastructure, is NASA poised to repeat the mistake they made with the Saturn V after Apollo?

Yes, that's exactly what they did with the Saturn V after Apollo. And it was the most catastrophic mistake that has ever been made in the history of the space program. We destroyed tens of billions of dollars worth of space capability. We set ourselves back a generation. It was like Columbus coming back from the New World and Ferdinand and Isabella saying, "Oh, so what? Burn of the fleet." That's what happened after Apollo, and that's the juncture they're at right and now. So they can choose. Which way are they going to go?

Some of the contractors have a vested interest in how this position works out. There's jobs at stake. There's money at stake, here. Some of the contractors don't see the possibility of getting a moon/Mars program launched. And so what they're trying to do instead is to make the Orbital Space Plane as expensive as possible. It's basically you're the cabdriver, there's one fare at the airport, and you want to show him all the sites in town. They're coming up with designs for this capsule — I cannot believe this, but it's true — with proposed program cost-to-development of $17 billion. That's almost twice what it cost to develop the shuttle, the whole shuttle, its propulsion systems and its external tanks as well as the orbiter. It's three times what we were going to pay to build the Superconducting Supercollider. It's crazy. And yet all it gives you is a capsule, to go back-and-forth to the station. This program should be a $1 billion program, not a $17 billion program. Maybe $1.5 billion. But they're trying to run it up on the meter.

Now if they do that, there will be no money to convert the shuttle, there will be no money to do anything in space, except to build this stupid taxicab. And then people have to start asking the question, "If we're just going back and forth to the space station, why are we going to space all?" Because the only real justification for the space station is to prepare the way for human interplanetary flight. You can't justify that if, at the same time, you're destroying your main asset that would support this requirement.

On the other hand, for many of the contractors, the destruction of the shuttle infrastructure means they're out of business.

They are in crisis, too, and this gives the people who want to launch a planetary initiative a certain constituency right now. All this is happening at a time when five spacecraft are on their way Mars:

There's the Mars Express, the interplanetary probe from the European Union; there’s the Beagle 2, the first British interplanetary probe; there are two NASA Mars landers equipped with capable rovers, robotic rovers, which will move kilometers across the Martian surface; and finally there’s the Japanese Nozomi orbiter, which has been limping along towards Mars for several years now, but looks like it's finally going to get there in the spring. And then there's two American orbiters in orbit around Mars right now as well. So next spring, there will be seven spacecraft operating on Mars, representing Europe, the United States, Britain, and Japan. There's going to be worldwide excitement about Mars. If the robotic space program is ever going to have the effect of kickstarting a human exploration program, it has to happen next spring. There'll never be another show this big. It's going to be a hard act to follow. I mean, there will be other probes, which can do this and do that, but in terms of public impact, this spring is the climax of the robotic program.

So you've got NASA itself in a crisis, you've got the robots doing everything they can to move things forward, and it's all happening in the high political season in United States. The New Hampshire primary is going on virtually simultaneously with the Rover landings. The timing of these missions and the political climate make this an excellent opportunity to generate interest in a humans-to-Mars program among the American public.

Let me ask about something else that I think is going to attract a lot of attention towards the end of this year. I'd like to know what your views on it are. That is the X Prize. Will it generate interest not only in getting people into orbit, but in doing it in something other than a make-it-as-expensive-as-we-can kind of approach?

A little. But the X Prize, if someone does win it, is a sub-orbital junket on a rocket. It's not the same as planetary exploration. It's not exploration at all.

And it doesn't help to get us there?

Well, you know, it's giving some publicity to small launch vehicle companies that need some publicity and so, by running it as a race, you can generate public attention and perhaps some investment, but the scale of these operations are very small compared to what is needed to open the solar system for humanity. And that's what we're really doing now. So hats off to the X Prize. And hats off to anyone who wins it . But it's a peripheral element of the situation from where I stand.

The X Prize approach of doing it more-or-less on the cheap reminded me a lot of The Case for Mars.

That's true. But you know, you don't have to do things on the cheap if you're the United States. You just have to do them. The incredible waste that we've had in our space program is not a function of particular operations being expensive. It's a function of the fact that the space program as whole has no plan. They're literally spending as much money per year right now as we spent on average during the Apollo period, and accomplishing nothing. Nothing.

The average NASA budget, taken from 1961 when Kennedy made his speech, to 1973 when we had the close-down of the Apollo and Skylab missions was $17 billion per year in today's money, inflation-adjusted. NASA's budget this year is $16 billion. We're within six or seven percent of Apollo-level funding, and we're not accomplishing anything. We spent $150 billion on NASA in the 1990's, and we're not one step closer to the Moon or Mars today than we were in 1990. That is because they have no plan. So they launch a series of simultaneous programs. They start them; they stop them. None of them ever produces anything, with the exception of the robotic probes. The robotic probes are good. A few elements have advanced since 1990. We've got a bit more scientific knowledge about Mars from the Mars Global surveyor probe. Of the $150 billion, that was $150 million. Just one-tenth of 1 percent of the money was usefully spent.

I'll just give you one example. In the 1960's we had Apollo. We knew where we going. We're going to the Moon, thanks to Kennedy, and we had a deadline.

Within this decade.

Within this decade. Sitting there in 1961 they say, if we're going to do this by 1969, we’re going to have to figure out how we’re going to do it in a year and then put out contracts, and then build the elements and have them test-flying around 67, and then go on to the Moon from there. And that's exactly what they did. Take the Saturn V: from1961 to 1962, they figure out how they're going to do the Moon mission. In 1962, they said okay, these are the elements we need: the command module, the lunar lander, the service module. We need a vehicle that can throw all that to a trans-lunar trajectory, the Saturn V, it's got to have this capability. They put out a request for proposals to select contractors. The deadline is to fly by 1969. They have the first test flight in 1966. And they send people to the Moon in 1969.

Now contrast that to NASA's more recent approach. In 1996, NASA administrator Dan Goldin says he'd like to work on "new launch vehicle technology." No requirements, no deadlines, no nothing. So they spend a billion dollars and five years on the program they call X-33, which they cancel in 2001 without having flown anything, and without having achieved anything. And if you look at it, since the 1980's, NASA has had a series of launch vehicle programs: it was the Shuttle C, we had the Advanced Launch System, we had the New Launch System, we had the SpaceLifter Program, we had the X-33, we had the Space Launch Initiative — I know I'm leaving a couple of them out. But they just start them up and shut them down; start them up and shut them down. They just spend money without making any progress.

Administrator O'Keefe has been going around saying NASA should not have a goal. It should not be destination-driven. That's what he says.

What would NASA be driven by, then?

He says instead we're developing the technologies to allow us to go anywhere, anytime. So, organically, the technologies are being developed until they're mature. And then we will have them to go everywhere, instead of just a particular place, like Mars.

This could not be further from the truth. They're not developing the technologies that will allow them to go anywhere at all, let alone "anywhere, anytime." Without a goal, they don't develop a coherent set of hardware that can do anything. We didn't get to the Moon by a bunch of guys running into each other in the cafeteria at the Johnson Space Center in the spring of 1968 And saying, , "You know, if we put your booster together with my lunar landing module and his command module, we could call these pieces together and gee, we could go to the Moon. Isn't it lucky all the pieces fit?"

It went to the other way. You define the goal; you figure how do the goal; you figure out what hardware elements we need to do the goal; you build those hardware elements; and you go do it. The way they're attempting to develop space technology right now is like this: imagine a couple is trying to build a house. The way they're doing it is, they're accumulating things that might be useful to build the house. So they go to a garage sale, where somebody's got a banister and they think, hey, that's a good-looking banister. Hey, there's some aluminum siding, next year maybe we'll get a spiral staircase, how about a Doric column or two. They accumulate all this junk in their backyard and they hope that eventually they’ll have all the right pieces to build a house.

So that's the problem, here. NASA's spending $16 billion a year, and taking no material steps forward toward human space exploration, because they have no commitment in place to do human space exploration. They have no plan. Then have no goal. They're not destination-driven. They need to be a destination-driven. That's what's needed to create a productive space program.

You put together what reads to me like a really coherent plan to get us to Mars a number of years ago in your book, The Case for Mars. To what extent is the plan that you outlined there what you would propose now in this (potentially) post-shuttle era? Would you recommend the same approach?

Pretty much. If you look at the Mars Direct Plan, we used the shuttle as our heavy-lift launch vehicle. It moves the orbiter replaced with an upper stage. It was the right approach in 1990, and it's the right approach today.

Do you have any hope that there's going to be a change of heart at NASA around adopting a kind of mission-oriented, destination-driven approach to these things?

I'm going to try to make it happen.

The Mars Society is going to try to make it happen. We're going to mobilize our chapters to go and visit with Congressmen all across the country. The goal is to visit with at least 300 Congressmen in their offices over the next six months and tell them that America needs a space program that’s going somewhere. That's what we need if we're going to have a viable space program. We need to have a viable space program if we're going to continue to be a nation of pioneers.

Here's the question that maybe either doesn't get asked, or doesn't get answered properly. Why think about going to Mars? It's been 30 years since we've been to the Moon, we've done a fair job of exploring the planets with the unmanned satellites, we have Hubble doing a pretty good job for us. Have things just kind of evolved to where the human exploration of the planets of outer space is over?

Try exploring the Earth with orbiters. Yes, you can do some imaging from orbit, you can learn something about the Earth from orbit, but try to exploring the Earth from orbit. Try exploring Paris from orbit. The orbiters are worthwhile. No doubt about it. In pointing out the limits of robotic exploration, I am not opposing robotic exploration. I am simply making clear that it's a limited tool. It's like aerial reconnaissance. You can't win wars with aerial reconnaissance. It comes in handy. It's good to do. You should do it. But it's not the decisive element. The decisive element in exploration is the human being on the ground. If we’re ever going to find out if there's ever been life on Mars, if we're going to find fossils on Mars, we're going to have to drill into its crust to extract water from the subsurface, and examine it for life ... you have to send human explorers there.

These rovers that we're sending to Mars this year, in their life they will travel a kilometer. You know, the Mars Society has a simulated Mars exploration environment on Devon Island. We constrain people to operate as if they were on Mars. The can’t go outside without wearing space suits, for example. Our explorers on Devon have found stromatolites, which are fossils left by colonies of bacteria. I guarantee you that you could have parachuted a hundred robots to Devon Island and you never would've found those stromatolites. You could parachute a thousand of these rovers into the Rocky Mountains, and you'd never find a dinosaur fossil.

What about taking the argument one step further? So what if we drill into the crust and find those things? Why is it worth spending this kind of money to have people standing there so they can discover ancient bacteria on Mars?

Well, we get an answer to the question of life in the universe, whether it's a general phenomenon or not. We find out if it's life like on the Earth or not. Getting an answer to that question is worth the money. But beyond that, there's something worth much more: if we go to Mars, we're going to open up a new world for humanity. We're going to open up a world that has a surface area equal to all the continents of the Earth put together and that has on it all the resources needed to support not only life, but civilization. If we go to Mars in our time, then 200 years from now there will be a new branch — or perhaps many new branches — of human civilization on Mars, with their own dialects, literatures, cities and universities, used bookstores. They will have made contributions to social thought, to technology and invention, and they'll have epic stories to inspire those who go out further. When they look back at our time, what will they think that we're doing today that is equal in importance to what we did to make their existence possible?

We look back today to 1492: who was queen of Spain?

Isabella.

All right, who was queen of Spain in 1540?

Beats me.

And I bet you couldn't find one person and a thousand who could tell you that one. Or 1640. Or 1740. Or 1840. Isabella is only a significant person because she sponsored Columbus.

So this is a message you need to get to President Bush, right?

Yes.

What about this. I've heard it argued that Greens, people who support the environment, really should be in favor of space exploration. The argument goes like this: take the Apollo missions for example. For a short time, we brought life to what had always been a lifeless body. If we continue with the human settlement of space, we can bring life to many places where it's never been before. But at the same time, you hear about this movement to keep the Moon and now Mars pristine and make a preserve out of them.

Well, that point of view is anti-life. It is the nature of life to take barren environments and transform them to those that are friendly to the development and propagation of life. That's the whole history of life on Earth. That's why life on Earth has been a success. And we regard this process as marvelous. When Hawaii came out of the Pacific Ocean, this huge piece of bare basalt, would anyone have wanted it to stay that way? No, we want the birds to fly over and drop seeds so the islands become lush, then the animals arrive, then the Polynesians show up, and then Europeans come and build hotels. This is what life does. This is what life should do. Who would want the Earth today, with all its natural wonders, to become a place like Mars? No one sane. So, clearly, it is a good thing to take Mars in the state that it is in and transform it into becoming something as wonderful as the Earth.

So, if you get your way — if the Mars Society is successful, and a program is adopted — let me give you a list of things, and then you tell me when you think they will happen. Starting with a manned mission to Mars.

If we get our way, we can be on Mars in 10 years. We’re closer today, from a technological point of view, to having humans on Mars than we were to having people on the Moon in 1961 when that goal was adopted.

How about a permanent settlement on Mars?

Twenty years.

How about permanent settlement elsewhere in the solar system? And where you think that would be?

Well, you could establish a settlement on the Moon, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as self-sufficient as one on Mars.

Because of the lack of resources there?

Yes. And then similarly in the near asteroids, and eventually the main-belt asteroids. Mars is not the final destination, but it is the direction. It's where we establish our first new branch of humanity in space as a space-faring species. And if we do it, that in itself will develop our capabilities. The first people that go to Mars are going to go in chemically propelled spacecraft. They're going to make the passage in cramped and uncomfortable quarters. The grandchildren of the first Martian immigrants will find it difficult to credit the story that their grandparents tell about how long it took. Because they'll be traveling in fusion-powered spacecraft which can do it in three weeks in great comfort.

Once there is a branch of human civilization on Mars, we have the incentive to develop more of the technologies that will allow us to make the transit routine. Columbus fared the Atlantic in ships that even a generation later no one would have attempted to the Atlantic in. Because until there was transatlantic transportation, there was no need to develop transatlantic-capable ships. But after Columbus came a trans-oceanic civilization and your three-masted sailing ships, your clipper ships, your steamers, your ocean liners, your Boeing 747’s all followed in turn. But the same technology that makes the transfer to Mars routine, will also make it possible for more daring people to take much greater steps. If you can get to Mars in three weeks, you can get to the Moons of Saturn in a few months. Perhaps even attempt interstellar voyages within a few decades.

A few decades from now?

No, a few decades of transit.

Actually, that was the next item on my list. Using the same time line, when we would we venture to the stars?

If we go on this trajectory, if we take the high road, and establish a new branch of human society on Mars, such that 50 years from now there are growing settlements on Mars and we're seeing the beginnings of settlement of the broader solar system — with mining colonies in the outer asteroids and so forth — I think a few decades later, we will see the first exploratory missions beyond the solar system.

ITF #28

In the Future...

...Every household will have its own Hubble.

via VodkaPundit.

ITF #27

In the Future...

...Martian colonists will sell Earth rocks on-line as a novelty gift item.

Futurist: Posse member Robert Hinkley

My Favorite Martians

...all read The Speculist. Presented for your interplanetary enjoyment, a list they have compiled of things to do this week in celebration of the convergence of Mars and Earth.

(This and other righteous Mars Photos downloaded from Calvin J. Hamilton's Views of the Solar System.)

FastForward to Mars

Join the Mars Society. This week, we're closer to Mars than we've been in nearly 60,000 years, but we're still about 35 million miles away. The Mars Society believes that's too far, and they're working to close the gap.

See Mars at its best: A list of resources from Astronomy.com.

Grok the Red Planet. Read this essay on Mars as part of our popular culture.

Explore Mars now. Check out the interactive Mars Base.

Eat at Mars. Mars 2112 is a restaurant in NYC.

Buy a piece of Mars. It's easier to get than you think.

Read fun Mars fiction.

Fight City Hall. Why haven't we sent a manned mission to Mars yet? Is it a failure of NASA leadership? Some of us were discussing this over on Transterrestrial Musings last week and we concluded that the problem might be with the job title of the head NASA guy. He's called the "NASA Administrator." How lame is that? Give the guy (or his replacement) a better title, and maybe he or she can get more done.

Check current conditions.

Martian Clock & Calendar

The Daily Martian Weather Report

Read fun Mars nonfiction.

Get all Eastern and philosophical about Mars. Contemplate this haiku inspired by the long-suffering Nozomi probe.

Become a Martian.

Mars has the same land area as Earth plus a much weaker gravity well. In a few thousand years, it will be better connected to the rest of humanity than Earth will.

Will Mars be adapted to humanity or vice versa? It's more likely that the latter will occur, making "terraformed" Mars unlikely. We won't need a "second Earth". The weaker gravity will always mean some degree of adaptation by humanity is required. This may become part of the beginning of the speciation of the human race.

A key export product of Mars will be data from novel experimentation with social systems in an environment more Earth-like than outer space. A successful social experiment in, say, the Asteroid Belt might find its way to Earth via early adopters on Mars. That is to say, the belters take the big risks, Mars then tries it out, and finally conservative Earth slowly accepts it.

Get a telescope so you can get a good up-close look. Lots of choices here. Also here. (They're having a big sale called Mars Madness. Good name!)

Here's another possibility:

Also, they say that Mars is so close this time around that you can make out features of the planet using a good pair of binoculars.

Face the unpleasant possibilities. What if Mars is turns out to be very different from what we expected or hoped for?

Ponder what might have been. Man Conquers Space is a fictional documentary tracing the history of space exploration had it followed the path outlined in a visionary series of articles in Colliers Magazine in 1952.

Mix up a pitcher of Stoli Orange Martians and have some friends over.

STOLI-ORANGE MARTIAN

2 shots of Stoli Orange
l/4 shot Cointreau
Slice of Orange

Shake in chipped ice, pour in Martini glass and add slice of orange, voila!!!

Fight City Hall (2). Maybe we need more than just a change of job title. Joe Katzman explains why, perhaps, NASA itself has to go.

Go completely bonkers. Resources to help you in your quest to become some kind of unbalanced, flipped-out, in-need-of-medication Mars Nut.

Remember the good old days. Mars has been on our minds a lot over the past 150 years. Here are a few of the high points:

• Giovanni Schiaparelli and his canali
  
  
• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
  
  
• The John Carter novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs
  
  
• Percivel Lowell and the canals of Mars
  
  
• Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast
  
  
• The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (He turns 83 tomorrow!)
  
  
• Mariner 4
  
  
• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
  
  
• Mariners 6 & 7 and 9
  
  
• Viking 1 and 2
  
  
• Pathfinder
  
  
• Mars Attacks!
  
  
• Mars Global Surveyor
  
  
• Discovery of possible ancient Martian fossils in Antarctic meteorite
  
  
  
• Plus, think about things to come: Mars Rovers, for example.

A great big Martian thank you to our FastForward Posse for helping put this list together, and a warm Red Planet welcome to all new Posse members. Contributors this week: Mike Sargent, Troy Loney, Karl Hallowell, Steve Yeago, Jeff Patterson, Andrew LLoyd, Bob Baker, Robert Hinkley, Joanie (our number one Posse recruiter), and Vic (our resident artist). Plus anyone I missed. Thanks, folks.

White Mars

Check out Nick Hoffman's White Mars website.

Nick is a geophysicist at the University of Melbourne, with past experience in oil geology and several other areas; he contends that Mars has always been cold and dry, and that the fluid erosion so dramatically visible on the surface is due not to liquid water but to carbon dioxide — in both fluid and turbidity flows (he uses the term "cryoclastic flows", in analogy with the pyroclastic flows so familiar with terrestrial volcanos; what makes them active over longer distances on Mars is the continual addition of fresh gas from the entrained solid and liquid CO2 components). The concept also naturally explains the prevalent layering on Mars, in ways sedimentary rock can't.

While we'd all love to see a warm Mars, especially one which had developed life (and preferably one which still had relict life), Nick's arguments are persuasive; the cold, dry picture fits much better than the other ones, which
have tremendous problems in explaining where all that water went (in the White Mars scenario, the water is right where it's always been: frozen in the crust), why the amount of carbonate rocks is so small, and why the currently-active flow gullies are formed on the cold side of the cliffs in the martian arctic (rather than nearer the equator, on the sunlit sides).

And then there's Philip Christensen's (of Arizona State University) recent observation of olivine layers at the base of Valles Marineris, some 4.5 km below ground surface. These olivines quickly rust away when exposed to liquid water, yet they are preserved here after ~3 billion years. Therefore, the crust of Mars must have been frozen at this (equatorial) location for all of the last 3 billion years, to a depth of at least 4.5 km.

Recent statements from NASA appear to support the White Mars picture. This was also recently discussed on VodkaPundit. Don't miss Robin Goodfellow's interesting remarks in the comments section.

Submitted by: Posse member Troy Loney

NASA Chief Redux

Posse member Mike Sargent recommends the following alternatives to "Administrator," the current wimpy job title of the head of NASA.

1. Secretary Simberg er, that is to say, Surname of the Cabinet-level Department of Space Development.

2. Doctor Surname, Lead Presidential Advisor of the National Advisory Council on Aerospace Science [NACAS], a sub-unit of the National Science Foundation.

3. Admiral Surname, Chief of Staff, United States Space Fleet (USSF) a uniformed branch of service within the Department of Defense. This position would be equivalent to an Undersecretary of a Cabinet-level Department.

4. General Surname, Chief of Staff, United States Space Force (USSF) a uniformed branch of service within the Department of Defense. This position would be equivalent to an Undersecretary of a Cabinet-level Department.

5. Director Surname, of the Central Space Agency (CSA), or the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), or the Congressional Office of Space Policy or the Presidential Office of Space Policy, etc., etc. etc.

6. Senator Surname, Chair of the Senate Select Committee on National Space Policy

7. Representative Surname, Chair of the House Committee on National Space Policy

8. Commissioner Surname, Executive of the United States Commission on Space Policy. The Commission would be an independent governing body similar in concept to the Baseball Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission.

9. Supreme Astro-Commander Surname. Organization unspecified.

10. Ouranarch Surname, Leader of the United States Center for Exo-Atmospheric Research and Development. Ouranarch: [pronounced OW-ran-ark] literally ‘leader of the heavens’ from ancient Greek root words and akin in construction to nauarch, the ancient Greek term for admiral.

Types of Future

Time Traveler’s Toolkit, Part 3

Previous Entries:
What's a Speculist?
Practical Time Travel
Divvying up the Future

We begin with a simple question: to what extent can the things we do affect the future? Can we change the future only for ourselves or can we change it for others and for the world in general??

First, let’s back up and answer a more basic question: what doe we mean by "the future?" I can think of three pretty good answers:

1. The future is everything that hasn’t happened yet.
   This is the best and most straightforward definition of the future. We’ll call this the Simple Future.
   
   
   
2. The future is something that happens after something else happens.
   We often use signposts to separate the present from the future. A good example comes from World War II. Most people thought of the war as being the present and the post-war world as being the future. So it wasn’t just a distinction between what had happened yet and what hadn’t. The present was not the immediate moment, but the current era. The future was the next era. We’ll a future so defined the Relative Future.
   
   
   
3. The future is something that happens after everything else happens.
   The future is the end of time, the end of the world as we know it. The Big Crunch, the Apocalypse, and (perhaps to a lesser extent) The Technology Singularity all fit into this category. This is the Absolute Future.

Now let’s review the three points of view we identified last time and give a handy short name for each :

• T
  The Future, Omniscient view. The T is short for "the."
  
  
• 3PL
  The Future, Third Person Limited view.
  
  
• IAM
  The Future, First Person view. The IAM is short for "it’s all about me" and also has a more obvious meaning which I think we can all grasp without any elaborate explanations.

If we combine our types of future with our three points of view, we come up with nine different flavors of the future, as shown here:

We can assume that an individual’s ability to affect the future is greatest in the upper left corner and diminishes to almost nothing as we work our way from left to right and from top to bottom.

Let's take a closer look at each and see how that analysis holds up.

IAM Simple
At the outset, we should note that a person's ability to influence any of these different types of future is going to vary greatly from individual to individual. But the IAMs are pretty straightforward, especially this first one. All those futures in which we are fat, skinny, tattooed, and pregnant exist in the IAM Simple future, although any of those might slop over into the next category depending on how important we take any one of those changes to be. Other exciting futures that lie along the IAM Simple path include those in which we have decided what to have for breakfast, which shirt to wear, and whether to go to work or call in sick.

The IAM Simple includes many events which are (apparently) not under our control. My phone may or may not ring in the next hour. I may or may not get the parking space I’m looking for. That check may or may not clear before the weekend. These are all things that haven’t happened yet, they are about me (or at least can be defined as being about me) and I would appear to have little or no control over them.

And there is an interesting middle ground between these kinds of future events. What about the question of whether I will be happy tomorrow? To what extent am I able to control that? I may not be able to do much about it if something terrible happens (assuming I’m not capable of preventing terrible things from happening) but what if tomorrow is a "normal" day? Can I just choose to be happy? Or do I have to create circumstances that will make me happy? In any case, to whatever extent our future subjective emotional state is our own doing, the doing of others, or the product of an uncaring world, it is part of the IAM Simple future.

IAM Relative
We are expecting a landmark, a milestone, and things are going to be different when we get there. Of course when we reach the landmark or pass the milestone and things aren’t as different as we had planned, a condition that I call Future Disappointment sets in. Many of us had this after the year 2000. So many of the things we had been led to believe would happen by that year never came about. (Questions 2 and 7 of the Seven Questions about the Future have to do with Future Disappointment.) But it isn’t just about a particular year, Future Disappointment can occur around much more individualized false horizons:

• After I lose all the weight...
• When I get promoted to senior manager...
• After we’re married...
• Once I get my degree...

Calling these events false horizons is not to diminish the impact that they might have on us. But how often do they really pan out to have the kind of impact we expect? They are relative. The IAM Relative future includes changes like moving, switching jobs, changing haircuts. It can be planned events, such as the events listed above, or unplanned events such as a really nice weekend or a really bad hangover or moving, only this time because you’ve been evicted. In the case of planned milestones (getting a car, coming out of the closet) we can plan for the change and the relative future really does exist for us as the future. In the case of the unplanned milestones (car accident, waking up and realizing that you’re gay), we only see them as a relative future that we are currently living in (or have already passed.) And of course, the term "future" is at that point more of a temporal courtesy. Few of us really believe that we’re living in the future, question 1 of the Seven Questions notwithstanding.

IAM Absolute
Declaring so many personal crises, above, to be relative, we hardly left room for the notion of a personal absolute future. Even without thinking about it, however, there are two obvious examples:

• Birth
• Death

Of the two, the second probably has the better case for being an Absolute Future. Birth is stuck in a kind of a permanent past. It’s the Go space on the game board.. As we saw last time in the example of the three predictions of the future that turn out to be true, death represents an absolute, ultimate future.

But are there other life-changing events which could be classified as Absolute? Possibly. There do seem to be certain events that can reflect a kind of "end of the world" and the beginning of a completely different, transcendent reality. These might include:

• Falling in love
• Religious conversion
• Conviction for a crime
• Death of a loved one
• Military service
• Head injury
• Heavy drug usage

How are these distinguished from the signposts that lead to the relative future? On the one hand, it’s purely subjective, so maybe there isn’t even a good case for keeping the two categories separate. On the other hand, when your world ends, you know it.

Some of these example may seem absolute at the time they occur, but don’t necessarily thrust their subject into a completely different plane of existence. Perhaps a few weeks/months/years after the amazing transformation occurs, we awaken to find it somewhat less amazing. And although our lives have been fundamentally transformed, the transcendence has passed.

We are at that point in the same position as the children of that caveperson who discovered fire. We are in a position to appreciate the magnitude of the change, and we may still consider it to be the turning point in history, the beginning of the new age. However, we no longer lose sleep thinking about it.

Our lives have been transformed, but not ended. Not replaced with something utterly different. Life after the discovery of fire was much better than life before the discovery of fire, but when the excitement died down...we were still cave people.

With that in mind, I'm going to update our model thusly:

Bridge events are milestones that are transformative but not absolute. They are, if you don’t mind a small paradox, near absolute. Bridge events are different from the events that trigger a relative future in that they tend to be unplanned. They are what those paradigm people refer to as "discontinuous change."

Let’s look at some examples. Getting married is listed as an event that triggers an IAM Relative future. It is definitely a milestone: the anniversary of the event is tracked for years to come. It’s almost always a planned event. And it is for most people, to say the very least, a significant change. Getting married is generally not, however, the end of the world as we know it or the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It’s big. But even the bigness is expected. Unless there is something fundamentally wrong (or amazingly right) with the marriage, we know that what we are experiencing is somewhere along the spectrum of what is to be expected.

So getting married is relative.

Falling in love, on the other hand, is much closer to being absolute. It is by and large unplanned. We don’t exactly cause it, which is not to say that our behavior doesn’t play an enormous role in its coming about. And it is hugely transformative, an upheaval that impacts almost every aspect of what we do and how we feel.

However, the transcendence experienced with falling in love (or religious conversion, or going to prison, or what have you) wears off after a while. So what occurred was transformative, but not absolute. It wasn’t really the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It wasn’t really the end of the world. It was a bridge event.

3PL Simple
Like the IAMs, the 3PLs are pretty straightforward, especially this first one. The 3PL Simple includes all those futures in which those around us become fat, skinny, tattooed, or pregnant. We can have tremendous impact on this future. Everything we do for the people in our lives, everything we do to them, and everything we allow to happen to them by doing nothing...these all factor into the 3PL Simple.

3PL Relative
Some of the IAM Relative events that we experience are shared by the people who are closest to us and so become doorways to the Relative future for them as well. Getting married, which I listed above, begins a Relative future for you and at least one other person. If you and that person decide to have children, it also marks a major event in their pre-history.

There are other examples of ways you can impact the 3PL Relative future. Many of these have to do with family. For example, if you decide to pack up the old Buick Roadmaster wagon with your spouse, three kids, and all your worldly goods and head out from your little house in Kentucky to a much smaller apartment in San Diego, you have probably defined a relative future horizon for everyone involved (including some of the folks in San Diego.) There are also good opportunities to spark Relative futures among your friends, co-workers, and even total strangers. It can happen.

All that being said, opportunities to impact the 3PL Relative future are limited. It’s no easy task to create Relative future horizons for other people. People tend to want to make up their own minds about what the big stuff going on in their lives is. And besides, who wants to create the definitive future for someone else? Generally, when you think about the future (obvious family considerations aside) you think about your own future. Often as not, when you create a Relative future horizon for another person, you didn’t even intend to do it. You were trying to make something big happen in your own life and you just happened to drag a few of the rest of us along with you.

Witness the Kentucky/San Diego move detailed above. Much as they may end up appreciating it (or hating you for it) later, the kids probably didn’t have that much of a say.

3PL Bridge Events
Can you cause 3PL Bridge Events? Can you give others a whiff of a near absolute future, a future that transcends everything they’ve ever known?

Possibly. Maybe you can provide information or point someone in a direction that fundamentally transforms their life. But more likely, you just happen to be in the vicinity when these things occur. Even gifted teachers and spiritual leaders will rarely claim full credit for major changes taking place in their subjects’ lives. Like relative future horizons (only moreso), people tend to bring these on themselves.

3PL Absolute
You can give birth to another person. You can kill another person. That’s all I can think of. Even if you save another person’s life, this is just a relative future horizon.

T Simple
Technically, every event that occurs in the IAM Simple future also occurs in the T Simple future. So, yes, you can control things that happen in The Future^® to the same extent that you can cause things to happen in your future. That doesn’t mean, from the broader perspective, that anyone will necessarily notice or care.

T Relative
The previous example given of a relative future was the end of World War II. Can we as individuals have an impact on this level of event? A very few of us will have a visible impact. Many, many more of us will have a smaller, but real impact. The war effort provides good examples. Only a few people signed declarations of war or stormed Omaha Beach. Many more folks were involved in scrap metal drives or in manufacturing equipment. But everyone involved had a real impact.

Several future developments that we’re interested in at the Speculist will represent the beginning of a Relative Future for humanity. Both the development of a cure for aging and the establishment of the first interplanetary settlement are good examples. It isn’t hard to view the present as the era when human beings can generally expect to live a century or less, or the era when human beings live only on Earth. Nor would it be hard to define the future as the period that occurs beyond one of these landmarks.

T Bridge Events
As individuals, we can impact T Bridge Events to the same extent that we can impact T Relative events. The only question is whether there are any on the horizon. The one I can think of is the Technology Singularity. Although I listed this earlier as an Absolute Future, it might fit better in the Bridge Event category.

You can argue it either way. If the Singularity is the end of the human era, it's an absolute future. If it's the migration of human intelligence to a new computational substrate, maybe it's just a Bridge Event.

It's till bigger than the invention of fire, though.

T Absolute
Again, we can have some impact on it, but is it on the horizon? Some religious folks believe the Apocalypse is imminent. We could collide with a giant meteor. It would be that kind of thing, an unexpected catastrophe that brings the world to the end. Personally, I don't see any T Absolute Futures on the horizon (with the possible exception of the Singularity.) And, clearly, that's just as well.

Next time, we’ll begin to look at how these different futures fit into what I call Possibility Space.

Enzymes for Young Astronauts

I recently opined that amongst the long-living humans who will populate this planet in the years to come, perhaps those of us who are alive now will be the best-suited for space travel. We might be a tad less risk-averse than our progeny, and more willing to take on the hardships involved in long voyages, especially the interstellar variety.

Several readers wrote in to the effect that the only thing standing between themselves and taking part in a dangerous, long-term space mission is the invitation/opportunity to do so. Such invitations and opportunities are pretty scarce right now, but they will no doubt start cropping up more frequently in the future. All we have to do is live to see it.

Here's some help in doing so. KurzweilAI.net reports this morning on a major development in aging research: the discovery of the means to increase production of an enzyme whose presence seems to have the same anti-aging properties as caloric restriction. According to the Washington Post article that Kurzweil links:

"It's looking like these sirtuins serve as guardians of the cell," said Harvard Medical School researcher David Sinclair, who led the new work published in yesterday's online edition of the journal Nature. "These enzymes allow cells to survive damage and delay cell death."

Now the race is on, Sinclair said, to find the most potent sirtuin stimulators -- or create synthetic ones -- and test their ability to extend the lives not only of cells, flies and worms but also of mice, monkeys and humans.

Other researchers were more cautious, warning that aging is a complex and poorly understood process that is unlikely to be slowed by any single drug. As promising as the research may appear today, they said, sirtuin would not be the first fountain of youth to prove a mirage.

That last note of caution is an important one. Readers of the Speculist know that aging can be attributed to not one, but seven distinct causes. It's unlikely that this enzyme will take on all seven. But, hey, every little bit helps.

We've got a flight to catch.

ITF #26

In the Future...

...alterations will be included in the price of a suit. (See item dated August 22.)

Futurist: Posse member Mike Sargent

ITF #25

In the Future...

...people will be so smart that they will only need reassurance if an object passes within, say, 25 million miles.

via MarsBlog

This Week 08/25/03

On Wednesday, Earth and Mars will be closer to each other than they've been for nearly 60,000 years. To mark this momentous occasion, all this week we'll be slanting everything we do in a Marsward (or at least a spaceward) direction

Let the Madness begin.

This week:

Monday
Time Traveler's Toolkit. So far we have explained what a Speculist is, defined Practical Time Travel, and had a glimpse at how the future looks from different points of view. This week, we're going to classify nine — no, make that twelve — distinct kinds of future and talk about the role we have to play in each.

Tuesday
A rapidly growing FastForward Posse provides the ulitmate guide to all things Martian.

Wednesday
We'll be Speaking of the Future with Dr. Robert Zubrin, President of the Mars Society and author of The Case for Mars. Dr. Zubrin will explain why we shouldn't just focus on how close Mars is to us, the real question is how close are we to Mars? He has some ideas for getting us a whole lot closer.

Thursday
Stillness, Chapter 4. Reuben's date with Ksenia takes the promised ugly turn. We say goodbye to all that kissy-lovey stuff as we plunge into heart-pounding suspense.

Friday
Robert Zubrin will answer Seven Questions About the Future.

Saturday
Future Round-up. All of the In the Future... predictions for this week brought together in one handy list. We're still not caught up from doing only four a couple of weeks ago, so we'll see how it unfolds.

Plus, throughout the week we'll be blogging developments in Mars, nanotechnology, Mars, artificial intelligence, space exploration (especially like to, say, Mars), robotics, Mars, and other future-impacting areas. Such as Mars.

Special Offer

Speculist readers are eligible for a $50 discount (13% off) when they register for the upcoming Accelerating Change conference (see previous entry.) Just use this discount code

ACC2003-Speculist

when registering on-line. Or, if you register by phone, simply mention that you're a reader of the Speculist.

Accelerating Change Conference

I just got a reminder that the Institute for Accelerating Change is holding their conference September 12-14 in Palo Alto, California. Check out that lineup: Ray Kurzweil, Steve Jurvetson, James Gardner, Robert Wright, and our good friend Christine Peterson, among others. (Not to mention Eric Drexler!) If you're interested in getting a handle on the staggering implications of the changes that are taking place all around us, I can't think of a better event to attend. I had the pleasure of listening to talk by John Smart, President of the IAC, a few months ago and it absolutely blew me away.

If there's any way you can make it to this event, don't miss it. And be sure to tell 'em the Speculist sent you.

Future Roundup 08/23/03

Here's the full list of this week's predictions for the future. Hat tip to FastForward Posse member Robert Hinkley for providing a couple of these.

In the Future...

...some of us will be cool again.

...parents will be fully qualified to assess whether their children are overweight.

...few homes will be without a potted Prozac or Viagra plant.

...genetic technologies will familiarize the public with giant forest animals, letting us know that we need not fear them.

...they'll make their own monthly payments, too.

That does it for this week. Thanks for dropping by. And until next time, we'll see you in the future.

Red Planet Madness

Next Wednesday is an important day in the history not just of the Speculist, but of planet Earth. On Wednesday, the Earth will be closer to the planet Mars than it has been for almost 60,000 years.

Cool.

To celebrate, I've declared that next week will be Red Planet Madness at the Speculist. Everything we do will have a Mars or space theme.

This would be a great time to think about joining the FastForward Posse. To apply for membership, all you have to do is send us something to use in next week's FastForward column. If we use it, you're in!

Here's what we we're looking for:

• Links to interesting Mars-related websites, news stories, products, pictures
.


• One-liner tips about how to make the best of Red Planet Madness, etc.



• Write a mini-essay (50 words or less) on Mars, space, rockets, that kind of thing.



• Any and everything else you'd like to do. Surprise me!

Send your submissions to me before noon, Mountain time on Tuesday.