We all love those words. Likely you just had a mental image of the Enterprise going into warp and heading to the stars. Like most of us you probably grew up with visions of sailing to the stars in some sort of spaceship launched from a world where problems like hunger, poverty and war were solved or nearly so. You looked forward to a world where poverty, injustice, corruption were things of the past and we were on a path to become the world society Star Trek promised us.
Then you became an adult. You started to understand how things work. You looked around and saw that such things have shocking costs. Costs we couldnt possibly afford. And a little part of you died. That sense of wonder. Of infinite possibility. After all, you're an adult now. Adults can see the "realities" and "hard truths".
Or we have forgotten how to see. In our "age and wisdom" we have become myopic. We've lost sight of the forest in our obsession with the tree in front of us. Well.. not all of us
I thought of posting statistics here. Links to diaries. Numbers and facts and economic theory. Instead im going to show you the future as i see it through fiction. Of a revolution. Of what asteroid mining, solar arrays, and a dozen other sciences will give us when we have the courage to do it. Please take the ride. A ride by a fictional man named Kossack..
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Kossack sat in his chair staring at the wall displaying the mineship being prepared for launch. He watched as hundreds of small spiderish bots swarmed over the pipes that made up most of its structure. [ In the center of the long, thin ship he could see they were still devouring the remnants of the thousand foot long asteroid they were devouring for raw materials. It was almost a perfect sphere now and he knew inside the nanofactory was busily repairing and constructing even more of the little robots. To the earthward side of the ship he could see the giant railgun being devoured. I'd better check on fuel he thought and left his living room.
Kossack didnt like space much. No matter how much someone tells you artificual gravity is just like the real thing when you live your life inside a spinning ring things are a little weird. For instance if he stood up on top of something he got lighter. Though his brain had long ago acclimated to centrifugal gravity it was still weird.
"Eliza how long til you're ready to launch the ship", he asked his pda.
"A few minutes", it replied. "I still think we should have built two smaller ones from this load"
It didnt matter what Kossack decided it seemed his personal AI always seemed to think another way was best. "Ya ya i know", he replied.
Things are going really well, he thought and then immediately realised he should knock on wood. Not that she'd seen wood in the last few years. He'd come to space as an employee of Xco and worked out a two year contract as an AI psychoengineer. He loved the job but deep down he wasnt suited for it. He had the mind to diagnose, guide and raise new AI's but he was really too lazy to do it forever. No.. Kossack wanted to be what they used to call 'rich'. Not earthrich where you had the latest nanoassembler but spacerich. Where you had a nice artificial asteroid to live on, a huge solar array to power your personal ship and the money to transport your family up with you.
He was making an e-soy sandwich when Eliza turned the wall in front of him into a space. A view of it in reality. He instantly felt a wave of dizzyness and heard eliza chuckle. Which of course was extra annoying considering eliza had to conciously choose to chuckle. As he regained his head he saw the fuel drone that was finally arriving from the earth orbit fuel factory. It was the one lock earth still had on spacers. Only the orbital factories were allowed to scoop earth atmosphere to turn to fuel and the alternative was turning precious asteroid into reaction mass. Which sortof defeated the whole purpose of trying to mine them. Sortof like a gold miner eating gold.
He watched the drones ai dock with the newly built ship and begin to fuel it. He had high hopes this time. He'd spotted a kilometer long asteroid by luck two days ago that was just vibrating with magnetics. He had finally managed to collect the materials to have the bots build his own microfoundry and he was hoping to shoot a load of pure heavy metals back to earth transfer. That would give him enough to buy as many ai chips as he wanted as well as lots of other things his bots couldnt make.
An hour later the mineship was off and he was back to living in the sixty foot long saucer he'd constructed two years ago. He told Eliza to recover the solar array and watched as the bots folded half mile diameter array into a package that would fit in a backpack. The chemical superbattery was maxxed out and an hour later he hit the ion thrusters. The bots had packed themselves up in compartments around the ship and he was headed farther out seeking out his next target. This one would be different though. This was going to be his space home. He was looking for a nice big low mass asteroid to push back to one of the collectives. It would be nice to live around people again, even if they were mostly corporate drones. That alone wasnt a big deal, the fees for attaching to a collectives space were pretty small, though he hated taxes. But he had designed his bots to form a collective ai with Eliza as the concious mind. Even now as they 'shut down' they were turning themselves into her subconcious and she was busily planning and replanning the ecology that would be the inside of his spacehome. It was going to be a hollow donut and he had his order ready to go with a genetic supplier for the embryos the moment he had his home built.
Trees, he thought, im going to have trees by god. And goats. He figured he could get used to goatmeat and goatmilk after all this time on soycrap. And a dog he thought. Why didnt i think of that before. I want a dog. It had been a hard day. He went to his bedroom and went to sleep to dream of barking genetically modified puppies and goat steak.
Eliza noted Kossack going to sleep and lowered the vibration levels in the ship. She had redesigned their home again based on the date the mineship was sending back. She didnt tell him but it was a bigger find than he thought. She knew she was conditioned to feel joy at his happiness but it didnt matter. It made her happy. She checked on the progress of the microships she'd sent to earthtransfer. They should be arriving soon and the supply of nanites should be up from earth by now. She'd be able to construct the new fabricator that was going to be his birthday gift. With another part of her mind she checked prices in the collectives. She knew he had one in mind but it was getting overpopulated. Its population was in the tens of thousands now. All of them boring corporates. She didnt like corporates. She had never understood the concept of "snoring" until she'd been forced to entertain some corporate daytrippers out to see what "an honest to god miner" looked like. They were pretty lucky she shared human morality. That airlock switch had been very tempting. It is getting too crowded out here, she thought. With the space elevator being constructed it was going to get way worse. No.. no near earth commune for her. She just had to work on him a little more. It had taken her a month to convince him to make a single miner rather than two. It took another three weeks to convince him it was his idea. She was pretty sure she could convince him of at least a moon orbit. But she really hoped for mars. Mars had lots and lots of raw material. It even had its own earth freighter. By her projection it would be at least five years before the space elevator had brought up the first million from earth. She expected things to grow exponentially from there and she didnt want to be around when they did. Humans just seemed to breed like termites. And deep down they rode her last nerve. Well, except for the Kossack.
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The science is almost here folks. In thirty years your pda may be more intelligent than you are.. on some imaginary 'intelligence' test. By then we'll have actual useful nanobots. Self replication will be a standard technique. Space bioscience will be well established and one scientist is already designing lifeforms from scratch. As for the rest? Most of it only waits for us. For that first entrepreneur to head Up in search of gold . Because there is indeed gold in them thar hills folks.. or asteroids at least.