All our achievements can dissipate, the Indus Valley way

The Indus Valley Civilization is a classical example of an extremely advanced urban meritocracy that had all the signs of leapfrogging into the future, but which instead just dissipated over time as the climate changed.

It shows that the future is not guaranteed, no matter how promising everything looks at any moment in time.

Unless we use the current opportunity to expand beyond Earth soon, we might meet the same fate, and our descendants a few 1000 years later might wonder why we never moved on to the stars. Or worse, they may forget about us. Or there may not be any descendants, and the people examining our ruins might be aliens from a nearby system.

How unimportant can lost greatness become? Interestingly, most people outside India don't seem to have read about the Indus Valley Civilization in their school books, despite it being one of the pinnacles of the ancient era. There may yet come a day when no one will learn about the Apollo missions or the Hubble Space Telescope- if we give up our current chance to reach the stars, and get bogged down in inconsequential bickering.

Imagine where we would be if the Indus Valley Civilization had gone into the industrial age in 3000 BC, over 2000 years before the classical Greek civilization got its chance, 3000 years before the Romans got their chance, and 5000 years before the Europeans finally got their oppurtunity and used it.

There are other examples of lost "almost there" civilizations in human history, but Indus Valley was the first that came so close to the threshold and then dissipated.

Our current "Space Age" is the first threshold towards reaching the stars. Are we going to be one of the many in our galaxy that get this oppurtunity but never quite make it? Don't be so sure of the answer; but it is up to you, me, and all of us to make sure that it does happen!

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.