FEATURES
essentials of the future anticipated by the practiced forecasters who make up TechCast’s international brain trust of experts. The late 2020s are likely to see the growth of a vibrant space industry born with NASA’s encouragement of private launch services. It should then expand with space tourism and eventually move deep into the solar system about 2050 to start the Space Age. In the process, private space industry will relieve the planet of much polluting mining and manufacturing, provide an endless supply of clean and cheap energy, contribute to global prosperity, and in the long run give humanity a way to survive the next extinction-level asteroid impact. Next to all those benefits, the cost of the world’s pioneering space programs is clearly a bargain. All these breakthroughs are pioneering efforts to explore and map the new terrain of space, much as the first pioneers explored the American West centuries ago. But that’s only half of the journey. Then comes the hard part of settling these new lands, just as ordinary citizens became settlers taming the Wild West. Judging from the mess the world is still in, we still have a long way to go here on Earth, much less to settle space.
HUMAN FUTURES
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