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Thursday, June 15, 2006

Mars: The Foundation for an Interplanetary Civilization

I made a presentation recently to the local Austin Mensa chapter on behalf of the Austin Mars Society. Here is an html version of that presentation online. I suggest going through the whole presentation, in case you are interested to know more about where the future of space exploration is headed. However, do not miss the really nice part about the future of human society beyond Earth that starts from slide 124.

It took me a lot of time to bring this together- I have yet to find a presentation on the web that covers so many issues in combination; it is important that any prediction about the future incorporates the network of events that influence each other, and hence the future. Things do not happen in isolation. If I were to ignore all the non-NASA related changes happening in our World- political, economic and cultural, I would come up with a depressing, quixotic and grossly incorrect estimate of the future of Mars and Space exploration- something that would resemble what many of the traditional American media and this ex-NASA guy have done. Instead, I have tried to imagine what would happen because of these interacting World-changing shifts happening, especially: (1) massive growth in economies of India, China and a resurgent Russia, (2) major and ongoing advances in biotech, robotics, AI, electronics, material science (3) increased private entrepreneurship in space exploration; both manned and unmanned, (4) a revolution in SETI, telescopes and planet discovery that is only going to get bigger because of (2) and, (5) major findings on Mars making it more attractive than we could have ever imagined.

Hope you enjoy the ride! Any feedback is welcome. Click here to start the presentation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I first of all respect your drive and motivation of thought.

This will all happen with time and my invention. my invention is about to change the world. it is of greater magnitude than the ICE and will revolutionise world government. this is a platform for a united effort for space exploration and colonization. it opens a fuel cell economy outside of O&G. I cannot let anyone take this away from its origin of application. we will see my friend. we will see.