by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright August 2014
Will extensive space travel be part of mankind's world Post-Snap?
In truth, I don't know.
Unlike automated manufacturing and service, and ubiquitous communications and computers, how much space travel we will have is a big question mark. The key to the space travel revolution is cost, just as it has been with other technological revolutions. As costs come down, the revolution progresses and the impact grows in both magnitude and variety.
Sadly, space travel has not experienced the equivalent to Moore's Law which describes the steady and dramatic reduction in the cost of electronic components that has gone on since the 1970's. The costs are not dropping steadily and dramatically. Nor are the returns on entrepreneurial space travel-related activities rising dramatically. The key to these happening is... commerce! Once again, this is what has been the case for other technological revolutions.
As of the 2010's people have developed profitable reasons for unmanned satellites to be in space, such as communications satellites, but no one has developed profitable reasons for people to be in space. The closest we are coming to people-in-space profitability is space tourism.
This lack of commerce has happened in spite of the deep desire in many people to become space travelers. This means the challenge is a big one.
When they happen, space travel and space commerce activities are going to divide into two broad categories of activities:
o those that involve moving material things between Earth and outer space
o those that involve moving material things from place to place within the low-G areas of the solar system -- comets, asteroids and small moons
These two activities are going to be as different as railroads and cargo ships are on earth. The two forms will have little to do with each other, and their progress will be independent of each other.
First, an example of something that isn't going to happen on a large scale is moving raw materials from space down to earth. This is a dream that gets talked about a lot in the 2010's visions of space traveling -- often called asteroid mining -- but it isn't going to happen because it is never going to be profitable. Earth is a big planet, and it already has plenty of raw materials to utilize. It will always be cheaper to build a new mine, farm or factory than to pay for moving a cargo-filled space ship back and forth between earth and space.
In the same vein, moving finished goods from earth into space will be profitable only in the early stages of space development. As soon as factories can be assembled in space, they will use the raw materials available on asteroids and comets, and when using these low-G raw material sources they will produce finished goods much more cheaply than those that have to be lifted out of earth's deep gravity well.
In sum, these are concepts that get talked about a lot in the 2010's but in reality they won't happen.
Instead, what will move constantly and in large quantities between earth and space is information. Think of the communication, GPS and surveillance satellites orbiting earth today. The other thing that will move constantly and in large quantities are space tourists. These two are about all that will move once the space-side infrastructure gets developed. This means that the earth-to-space fleet will consist mostly of shuttles moving people to luxury liners, and the luxury liners themselves, which will be the equivalents of the big ocean-going cruise liners on earth today.
The space to space activities will be a mix of humans and creations moving around the solar system and landing only on low-gravity bodies such as comets, asteroids and small moons. These bodies are spread thinly throughout the solar system, so travel times are going to be long. This means that in the early phases of exploration and exploitation, all of the crew will be specially designed creations who don't mind being weightless and inactive for years at a time.
The important breakthrough here will be constant acceleration propulsion systems -- the kind that can be kept running throughout all the journey. Even if the thrust is feeble compared to earth's gravity, if it can be kept running through the entire journey travel times will be reduced dramatically -- trips between planets will shrink from years to months.
Space to space is going to happen in low gravity conditions. It is going to be a long, long time before any constant acceleration propulsion system gets above .1G acceleration, much less approaching 1G. This means that low G will be the environment for all space to space activities.
Thanks to what has been learned by manning the International Space Station (ISS) we know that spending months to years in low gravity is hard on human health. This means that part of the space to space revolution is going to be genetically designing special classes of humans who are well suited for low gravity conditions -- the genetics and health revolutions will be a vital part of the space traveling revolution. And space to space people are going to be a different breed of humans.
For the same reason, should mankind decide to colonize Mars and maintain a large population there, a special class of humans will be designed for that environment.
Space travel for humans in the Post-Snap world is going to remain an exotic adventure. How much commerce will develop, how much colonizing of other bodies in the solar system will take place, is wildly uncertain as of now.
If a space travel revolution happens on a large scale, part of it will be a genetics and health revolution. The human and creation colonizers of space will be very different from the humans and creations who live on earth.