fncceo, you remind me of the articles I read concerning the possibility of aircraft prior to 1900. 50 years later, aircraft were circling the globe.
Why didn't powered flight become practical prior to 1903 (or 1901 if you accept the claims of Gustave Whitefield)?
Otto Lillienthal, Octave Chanute, Horatio Phillips, all had built functional flying machines that could have flown, but didn't.
They didn't fly because they were missing a vital piece of technology and that was an efficient internal combustion engine that had sufficient power to weight ratio to lift their machines off the ground. It didn't matter than all those men had developed aerodynamically sound flying machines. Without the engine to power it, they were as locked to the ground as everyone who came before them.
It wasn't a mystery. Anyone living in the 19th Century who understood aerodynamics understood what was missing and could explain very simply WHY we couldn't fly in 1863 and why we could in 1903.\
The reason I'm skeptical about the colonization of space is precisely because I know how feasible it is. In the 1970's, Gerard O'Neill detailed how space stations could be built to provide earth-like environments not for 10 astronauts, but for 10,000. He proposed entire cities that could be built in high earth orbit or orbital Lagrange Points around the solar system. Those vast cities could provide resources to Earth not only in materials but as orbital power stations. Unlike colonization of fixed bodies, persons would live in those cities for years and not lose bone mass or muscle function and be unable to return to Earth, as would the inhabitants of Mars or Moon colonies.
The technology to build those cities existed in the '70s with one exception. Lift costs were too expensive. The effort, while technologically sound, was much too expensive to any one nation or consortium of nations to fund.
Since then, no technology has been developed (not even the ones I mention above) to eliminate that hurdle.
But, enough of me being a Luddite. I want to hear from you EXACTLY how you envision humans colonizing space. What technology they would use and
Do think the answers to your questions might be different and/or more clear 20 years from now? 50?
Probably not. It's not a matter of time, it's a matter of technology. There hasn't been an advance in rocket technology since World War II.
The trigger behind the great leap in aerospace in 1903 was the internal combustion engine. Before that, no other engine had the power to weight ratio to make an airplane feasible. No matter what kind of aircraft you designed, it would not fly without the right engine. By applying that engine to an already existing glider air frame the airplane was born. Every plane there after was a perfection of that design. A faster, stronger, greater endurance version of the original.
There isn't any significant technological difference between a Saturn V and a V2 Rocket. They use the same technology, one is significantly larger than the other.
There are technologies being pursued that could reduce that lift cost from tens of dollars to pennies per KG but none of them are being pursued seriously. Launch loop, Star Tram, Mass Driver and other maglev technologies show promise but are cargo only systems because of the massive G forces a passenger would have to endure at launch.
The Space Elevator is the most promising known alternative to rockets and would literally open up commercial and private space travel to the everyman. However, this technology would require a massive engineering project that, in the current global political climate, is not being considered.
Anti-gravity technology is a possibility, finding a way of cancelling out the space time warp that all matter generates and using it as propulsion to orbit. But, we currently don't understand the mechanism behind what causes mass to warp space time so finding out how to counteract it seems a long way away.
Once a technology is perfected that can lower launch cost from their current 'astronomical' levels, the push into space won't be measured in centuries, but in decades. Until it is, we are Leonardo DiVinci, playing with models and dreaming of flying into space. It may very well be hundreds of years before that dream is realised.
You can't just write off rocket tech because of a stall in tech, not allowed. And we wouldn't really rely rockets, except for steering, for the lion's share of any interplanetary trip. Rockets are archaic and will eventually be limited to escaping Earth's orbit.
Love the maglev stuff... But that is as big a design problem as is the thrust:fuel problem. The acceleration forces will affect our design. But if you were to say that we should be using robots instead of humans anyway, I would agree 100%.
Robots in space is our future for the next 100 years or more.
The life support requirements of humans makes the expensive lift cost to orbit problem of rockets insurmountable.
The idea of robots in space just doesn't spark the human imagination and is, frankly, anticlimactic.
Robot Kirk just isn't gonna get to nail the Space Princess or fight a Gorn in slow motion.
