Future Space Travel and Missions

 

Future space travel will be light years ahead of anything we have right now (and I’m not talking about Buzz Lightyear). And future space missions will follow a certain progression that is not too difficult to predict.

In the near future NASA and JPL will wind down their operations as the space tourism industry is just starting to wind up. In fact, there have already been several multi-millionaire space tourists to fly in a Soviet Soyuz spaceship to the International Space Station (ISS) and back. And over the past decade this has just been the beginning.

Future Space TravelWithin the next 1 or 2 years, space tourists will be going into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for around $90,000 to $250,000 per ride. They will experience several minutes of weightlessness and get a grand view of the curvature of the Earth from orbit.

Spaceports are now being built in a dozen different nations to accommodate this emerging multi-billion dollar industry. In another 20 to 30 years, future space travel into LEO will cost about the same as a trip on a luxury cruise ship.

Future space travel by this time will also include trips to the Moon as the Lunar X-Prize will have chosen a winner by then and moderately expensive trips will have begun. Small scale colonization will be taking place. Several space hotels will be in orbit.

At this point, tourists won’t have made it to Mars, but what we now call astronauts and cosmonauts (privately contracted of course) will have ventured to the Red Planet.

Mars Travel

Mars Travel

These Mars trips will pave the way for future space travel for tourists. The future space missions that will enable tourists to go on these longer trips (and for businesses to excavate natural resources) will be made by spaceships that are on the emerging edge of technology now.

Cold fusion and hot plasma will supply the power for future spaceships on these ventures (before scientists and researchers discover how to use the superfluid from neutron stars for power, but I’m getting ahead of myself here). Work is now being done on both cold fusion and plasma energy technologies and several breakthroughs will occur within the next decade to propel space technology further along the path than we now imagine is possible.

In the next 10 years, science fiction will have become science fact. Problems with anti-matter won’t matter. And, yet I digress and egress at the same time. Let’s push forward.

As the Earth’s natural resources dwindle (especially our need for increasing amounts of energy), this will drive the need for future space travel. The need for security will also be a driving force as an alarming amount of unforeseen Near Earth Objects will have whizzed by that could have caused devastation if they had squarely struck the planet.

So, future space travel and missions will have several purposes 20 to 30 years from now including leisure, business, security and redistribution of the population. When there is a security threat, nations will band together and pool resources escalating the urgency and minimizing the time-frame for technological development.

Plasma Propulsion Rocket

Plasma Propulsion Rocket

Future spacecraft will become more powerful, more capable of detecting danger in space and more adept at maneuvering to avoid those dangers. Future space missions will also test weaponry in space in case it is needed for aggressors, foreign or domestic.

At this time in the future time-travel and teleportation will still be science fiction. But, what will be fact will be the increased use of combined technology in future space missions that won’t involve spaceships roaring out into the far reaches of the galaxy and beyond.

Just like satellites are now situated strategically orbiting the earth, so will telecommunications spacecraft (and most likely military spacecraft) be situated at key locations throughout the solar system.

This will allow the blending of technologies such as supercomputers with true artificial intelligence (sorry Watson), lasers, holograms, avatars and other future technology to explore in detail places where humans will not have to go. Or should I say these technologies will be used first for future space missions to map out and examine in detail the planets of the solar system before a human ever sets foot there.

Virtual Travel

Virtual Travel

Using nanotechnology scientists are now finding pairs of molecules that behave with identical properties large distances away from one another and move in tandem. The scaling up of the future technology surrounding this discovery and merging it with other emerging technologies will enable us to explore at a distance while keeping safe ourselves in a method of virtual tourism and exploration. But, this will not replace being there in person and experiencing different planets for ourselves.

Future space technology and the associated missions beyond 20 to 30 years from now are more uncertain as they will involve unforeseen breakthroughs in technology (plus political and social systems) and an increasing need for humans to work together democratically with less hierarchy than at any other time in history.

This is the place to see the latest news on future space technology and what today’s scientists, researchers and engineers are working on for tomorrow.

Credits: virgin Galactic, Star Chaser Industries, Skylon, Astrium

  10 Responses to “Future Space Travel and Missions”

  1. its called a magnetic field & blasting out split second gauss.
    it pulls the space ship ford non stop every split second building up speed non stop.

    1 photo on photo on facebook page.
    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1825645414903&set=o.183084708403986

  2. you put the magnetic points / spots behind the blast of gauss so it does not destroy the points. that or up & under the points.

    also making a force field. you EMP your magnetic field to tun it electrical force field.

    also removing space time radiation & everything in front of your space ship.

    different photo of faster then the speed of light.
    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1825638054719&set=o.183084708403986

    force field
    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1825646814938&set=o.183084708403986

    removing space time & so on.
    http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1825636894690&set=o.183084708403986

    you mite have to like the page. photos are on there wall, & in there photos. i posted them on there wall. they are also on BIG THINK wall on facebook.

  3. Well this is the way of the future. magnetic split second gauss blast & magnetic fields.

    the best magnetic field in the universe is 1000 trillion gauss, when it compresses it magnetic field it can make at its best 365 quintillion gauss. or 365 quadrillion 10,000 gauss MRI scanners as 1 force. so it = 365 quadrillion MIR scanners as 1. there is a way & this is the way for space travel.

    I worked it out & at its best for miles per/s. we could go at 1.8 sextillion miles/s after 10 years. that or it was distance.

  4. i dont realy see the point of virtual travel. 4 the half of the price money u just could send a droid with a camera! but u could use this technology 4 gaming! observating a virtual world like in real life sounds much more great than walking around another planet paying a fortune p/ minute! (sorry if i mistyped somhing im dutch and 13 not a american proffesor!)

    • You’re right doesntmatter, that virtual travel won’t be for everybody. Just like space tourism within the next 5 years won’t be for everyone. I don’t know if you remember the movie, “Total Recall” with Arnold Schwarzen-cheater, but that idea was appealing to me (except when it went wrong). I think I would also like to do a virtual skydive or even a low earth orbit space dive virtually rather than the real thing (at first anyway). But, it all comes down the personal preference and in the future I believe we’ll have many more choices than we do now in regard to travel and entertainment.

    • More posts of this quality. Not the usual crap, thanks. The future is ours to make or break. It’s not written in stone (Oliver Stone or otherwise). But, I digest. Keep up the fun and informative future technology site.

  5. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to travel to space. I was in astronaut training for a while until the doctors discovered an previously unknown health condition. The put me down and out. I think if I could go to low earth orbit as a space tourist this would satisfy my itch. I’m working on a weather balloon / iPhone setup now to take video on the edge of space. I’ll let you know how it goes.

  6. Yes we are advancing in space technology, but I think its going to slow. I don’t we will visit humans will visit mars for a very long time. We need some new advances or technology to push our future exploration of space. I like the idea of virtual travel I think that will happen in the next 20 years cause computer speeds are getting faster and faster.

  7. you wont see humans land on mars until at least 2050-2060 …..fusion power……… good luck with that commercially until the next century…someone other than millionaires for a couple days in space maybe 2100………..hope I’m wrong but that’s how I see it