Will space travel ever become a safe mode of transportation in the year 2050?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the potential for space travel to become a safe mode of transportation by the year 2050. Participants explore the unpredictability of technological advancements and draw parallels with historical predictions about technology, while speculating on future developments in space travel and colonization.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants reflect on past technological predictions that were proven wrong, suggesting that predicting the future of space travel may also be fraught with uncertainty.
  • There is speculation about the safety of space travel, particularly in comparison to current modes of transportation, such as automobiles.
  • Participants express a desire to see significant efforts towards space colonization within their lifetimes, although they acknowledge the unpredictability of technological advancements.
  • Some argue that experts often fail to foresee the direction of technological development, citing historical examples of misjudgments by industry leaders.
  • There are discussions about the role of innovation and the emergence of new technologies that cannot be easily predicted.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree on the unpredictability of technological advancements and the potential for significant changes in the future. However, there is no consensus on whether space travel will become a safe mode of transportation by 2050, and opinions vary on the feasibility of space colonization.

Contextual Notes

Participants express uncertainty about the future, highlighting the limitations of current knowledge and the difficulty in imagining entirely new technologies. The discussion reflects a range of assumptions about technological progress and safety in space travel.

QuantumTheory
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Didn't people think 50 years ago, heck, 100 years ago, we'd all be flying in airplanes? I can't help wonder if this will be true in 50 years..

There's a video game for the computer (I love video games) called Civizilation 4. It is basically a very complex history lesson, and you actually play god and control human civilization from stone age to space age! :!)

Unfortunately, I have a windows '98, and my mom has a XP (With no graphics card) so I can't play it. Also, it is apparently having tons of problems crashing. Oh well.

I highly doubt its possible to actually imagine the future, here are some wrong predictions:
1899
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - falsely attributed to Charles H. Duell, director of the US Patent Office. This is curiously redolent of the epigram by Sir Max Beerbohm 'Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently; things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth'
1943
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Falsely attributed to Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM
1955
"Television will never be a medium of entertainment" (David Sarnoff, the General Manager of RCA corporation)


1977
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation


1985
"(by 1985) Machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do." - Herbert Simon, US Nobel laureate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_future_in_forecasts


In 2050, I will be 62. I wonder if medicine will have advanced significantly by then? Hmm, more importantly, I wonder if we'll travel in space ships. Won't that be a problem though? I was thinking about it last night. Considering teenage automobile accidents is the #1 cause of death for adolescents, wouldn't flying be more dangerous? Especially harder to teach..
 
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It always amazes me when you think of how much changes happen in a lifetime. I'm 26 so I guess the onslaught of the computer is the big one so far. Others would have seen the automobile come in. Imagine how big electricity changed lives.

Assuming I quit smoking and live to be 100 and on my deathbed I tag off to my great great grandkid who has just been born, that's 200 years covered. Then only about 5 tag-offs ago the europeans had not yet even discovered north america. Only FIVE lifetimes!

It's a good thing there are people with a lot more ambition and smarts out there or I'ld still be clicking stones together to get supper started.
 
The future sure looks exciting, doesn't it?

Also, though it's offtopic, have you played the Age of Empires series by microsoft? I'm sure you will enjoy playing that. Unlike Civilization, it's real time as well, and you don't need really high speed comps (AoE 2 worked on my Win 95,166Mhz comp)
 
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation

IBM pretty much had the same attitude, and besides the fact that they let Bill Gates retain rights to the OS, they were SO WRONG! And both DEC and IBM were the experts in the technology - and experts are so often wrong!

I bought a PC back in 1982 - 8086 with two floppy drives (320 RAM and 360Kb floppies) to which I added an 8087 math co-processor - and that cost about $2000. Within two years, we had 300 kbs modems, so we could dial into the campus network - this was before the internet (outside of the government and research institutions, e.g. Arpanet), and networks were isolated.

The thing that PC makers failed to realize was that there were scientists and engineers out there who wanted autonomy from mainframes - i.e. "Scotty, we need more power!" All these manufacturers had to do was look at what calculators (then programmable calculators) scientists, engineers and students were buying.

It probably hard for today's students to appreciate sliderules, punch cards and time sharing. :biggrin:

As for "Machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do," we are seeing the effect of automation, which has reduced the need for employment/labor, and that seems to be a continuing trend.
 
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And then Gates himself said something similar about 640K ram...
 
Astronuc said:
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." - Ken Olson, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation
IBM pretty much had the same attitude, and besides the fact that they let Bill Gates retain rights to the OS, they were SO WRONG! And both DEC and IBM were the experts in the technology - and experts are so often wrong!
...
The thing that PC makers failed to realize was that there were scientists and engineers out there who wanted autonomy from mainframes - i.e. "Scotty, we need more power!" All these manufacturers had to do was look at what calculators (then programmable calculators) scientists, engineers and students were buying.
Bill Gates is the one who made them wrong by developing Windows. Olson's quote might be an exaggeration, but the average person wouldn't want a computer if they had to actually learn about them. Customers would still be limited pretty much to the same individuals that currently own programmable graphing calculators.

What the experts so often fail to see is that sooner or later, someone comes along who sees limitations as just another interesting problem to solve.
 
Well if there were flying ships to travel, I would think there would be computer systems controlling everything... maybe

However, in my lifetime, I would like to see a significant effort to "colonize" space, or at least go to various places... Other than that, nobody knows what will happen because we can't imagine it. Nobody 50 years ago could imagine people on an internet running windows XP playing multiplayer call of duty 2 or anything of the sort. Improvements can usually be expected of things, but entirely (or nearly) new technologies cannot be forseen that easily... By the time I get a degree from college (in around 6 years), things will probably be immensly different.
 
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What the experts so often fail to see is that sooner or later, someone comes along who sees limitations as just another interesting problem to solve.
Some experts.

I think people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak knew the direction to go, but they also trapped by their success, which happens a lot in technology. Success can sometimes lead to complacency.

Bill Gates is the one who made them wrong by developing Windows.
He copied someone else's idea. :biggrin:
 
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moose said:
However, in my lifetime, I would like to see a significant effort to "colonize" soace, or at least go to various places...
Haha, me too. I'm only 17, so maybe I'll live longer than you :biggrin: , but I doubt, even my lifetime, this will happen.


moose said:
Nobody 50 years ago could imagine people on an internet running windows XP playing multiplayer call of duty 2 or anything of the sort. Improvements can usually be expected of things, but entirely (or nearly) new technologies cannot be forseen that easily... By the time I get a degree from college (in around 6 years), things will probably be immensly different.

Yeah, good one! I know, who could've thought that? Heh. At least this thread wasn't locked (I made a rational post in the debunking forum and it was locked after like 3 responses due to 'speculation'.)
 
  • #11
QuantumTheory said:
Haha, me too. I'm only 17, so maybe I'll live longer than you :biggrin:

I'm 16 :evenbiggergrin: :biggrin:
 
  • #12
BobG said:
Bill Gates is the one who made them wrong by developing Windows. Olson's quote might be an exaggeration, but the average person wouldn't want a computer if they had to actually learn about them. Customers would still be limited pretty much to the same individuals that currently own programmable graphing calculators.

What the experts so often fail to see is that sooner or later, someone comes along who sees limitations as just another interesting problem to solve.
Agreed. It's a failure of imagination - those quotes are often right (if overly general) if taken in the context in which they are meant, but the person saying them can't imagine how the context might change.

Ie, the quote you are referring to is pretty much correct when talking about the style mainframe that existed at the time. But the speaker failed to imagine that what he thought of when they said "computer" would be radically altered by the imaginations of others.
 
  • #13
RE: Apple vs MS - people generally consider MS (Gates) the bad guy and Apple (Jobs) the good guy, but generally forget that the GUI wasn't Apple's idea either: they stole it from Xerox. Jobs and Gates were playing the same game - Gates just played it better.
 
  • #14
Great link, Andre. I hope all of those sorry-ass Mac-bashers out there read it. It sums up my experience totally, and all I have is a G3. :biggrin:
 
  • #15
I don't care what Mac did, I don't care what MS did. All I know is that Macs lack common sense and any options. You can't pick any options whatsoever, you either love the setup, or you buy software for a few hundred dollars to have a few options, or you choose the awesome windows XP. :D
 
  • #16
moose said:
I'm 16 :evenbiggergrin: :biggrin:
i m 14...:evenbiggergrin: :biggrin:
 
  • #17
Danger said:
Great link, Andre.
Entertaining story, but...
http://www.securemac.com/

Less flaws than Windows? Sure. But...
The Mac really has few, if any, known viruses or major debilitating anything, no spyware and no Trojans and no worms... For the most part and for all intents and purposes, Macs are immune. Period.
...No.

The link I posted was the first of a Google. It has several dozen viruses, trojans, and security vulnerabilities (and their fixes) listed on it.
 
  • #18
Are you nuts, moose?! It's the other way around. You can configure a Mac just about any way you want to, and networking a bunch of them involves hooking a cord between them.

Just saw your post now, Russ. Almost all of those things seem to be directed toward OSX, which I don't use. I've absolutely never had anything go wrong with mine that wasn't directly attributable to a software glitch. (Except once when I had to extract a sizeable wad of cat hair, and even that just required a re-start.)
 
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  • #19
There's no particular merit in going around with all sorts of woozy ideas about how the future MIGHT (or might not) change in some general way.

People of that sort has never actually changed anything.
 
  • #20
moose said:
I'm 16 :evenbiggergrin: :biggrin:

Seriously? HAHAHA. That is hilarious. Well, I guess you'll outlive me! :smile:
 
  • #21
arildno said:
There's no particular merit in going around with all sorts of woozy ideas about how the future MIGHT (or might not) change in some general way.
People of that sort has never actually changed anything.

I'm sure we all imagine what the future will be like at some points in our lives.
 
  • #22
QuantumTheory said:
I'm sure we all imagine what the future will be like at some points in our lives.
Precisely, that's why there isn't any particular merit in doing so all the time.
 
  • #23
moose said:
or you choose the awesome windows XP. :D

You do that. Have fun.
 
  • #24
franznietzsche said:
moose said:
or you choose the awesome windows XP. :D
You do that. Have fun.
Yeah. If we don't hear from you much, we'll know why. :-p
 
  • #25
im most interested in implants.. i think i'll work on reversed engineering for nerve systems and neurons after i'll finish all the things i already have to do...
connecting ourselves to cameras, microphones, lifts or even computers (matrix) is the next step in my opinion for making this world a better place, injured and disabled people would be normal again, and finaly maybe even conserving the mind in a machine... but i don't think i'll live to see it.
 
  • #26
Danger said:
Yeah. If we don't hear from you much, we'll know why. :-p

I've been running XP for two years now, and I've had a virus once... Never had significant spyware or anything else...

If you run firefox... you're fine. Nothing has ever crashed on me, nothing bad has ever happened. Maybe I'm just lucky? Or maybe smart?
 
  • #27
As long as you have some idea of what you are doing and how to not get viruses, spyware, worms, ect then it really doesn't matter what sort of OS you are running. Though some are just a pain in the patoot depending on whaqt you want to do with them. XP has been a pain here and there but I suspect I would probably just have other problems with other OSs.
 
  • #28
Oubache, do you have a virus?

---edit---
never mind...
 
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  • #29


You may want to look at Michio Kaku's book http://www.mkaku.org/books/visions/ .. He discusses exactly what you are addressing, advances and discoveries we can expect in the next 50 to 100 years and beyond.

If you enjoy reading popular physics, Michio really does a super job reaching a wide audience. This book Visions is not about physics but where technology has come from and where we are heading. I've been through this one twice. It is fun reading.

"Kaku predicts the future according to those who are working to shape it, through interviews and talks with leading scientists."

"This brilliant futurist catalogue from the renowned physicist.. convincingly predicts where the next hundred years of technological advancement will take us."

"Kaku moves far beyond the usual futuristic fare of gadgets and gizmos, offering up the hard science principles and soft science social impact of the advances he describes.”
 
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  • #30
siddharth said:
The future sure looks exciting, doesn't it?

Also, though it's offtopic, have you played the Age of Empires series by microsoft? I'm sure you will enjoy playing that. Unlike Civilization, it's real time as well, and you don't need really high speed comps (AoE 2 worked on my Win 95,166Mhz comp)

any of the civ games >> aoe. this is mostly due to the fact that I hate rts-games anyway. I like to plan my moves carefully.
 

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