> I am a rocket scientist who was motivated to do the work to understand
> rockets with the idea that in my future, there would be a helicopter
> in every garage, daily commercial flights to the moon, settlements on
> Mars, industrial development of the solar system in support of freedom
> and liberty for all...

>
> A litle of it is described herehttp://www.trashotron.com/agony/columns/05-24-02.htm
>
> And I found a few sympathetic voiceshttp://www.bigear.org/JDKpassage-articles.htm#Dispatch20040723
>
> The reality that transpired didn't involve space ships plying the
> spaceways, and helicopters filling our skies -relies on reducing the
> cost of imparting momentum to payloads.  This is the critical factor.
> Investment in cost reducing technology, stopped in the 1960s - and
> progress ended there.
>
> As a consequence, the reality our world is that over 12 million rocket
> engines have been built and used, as rocket-propelled grenades.
> Rocket science has been applied in the production of shaped charges
> for these grenades to penetrate sheilding, and in the construction of
> thermobaric weapons like the RPG-29 that efficiently decimate anything
> within a well defined area of action for such weapons.
>
> This has created a world that falls far short of the idyllic vision of
> my youth.
>
> My first job offer was with McDonnell Douglas to improve camera guided
> bombs used in Vietnam.  Much was made of the Nitske Criterion during
> Reagan's SDI program - where the weapon cost more than the target.
> We had already waged such a war in Vietnam, sending $200,000 bombs to
> destroy mud hamlets.
>
> This is not what I grew up to do with my creativity.  My world was
> more like that described in the video below ...   I didn't want to be
> the guy who made the bombs, airplanes and rockets more efficient - and
> support a nation that had turned from liberator to oppressor.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7vCww3j2-w
>
> When I hear the following song, particularly the first two verses, I
> am reminded that during the Clinton Administration following a
> thorough inventory of of Russian nuclear arsenal, there were a handful
> (exact number classified) of nuclear weapons missing from the Russian
> inventory.  Nearly all the man-portable weapons were gone.  These
> loose nukes are out there, we know they were built, we know they are
> gone, we don't know who has them.  Terrorists, or pre-placed to thward
> a successful SDI development.
>
> We won't know until they are used.   All these weapons are larger than
> the bomb that we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   Every State
> Capital is a target, even Ohio's Capital.
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9dFs0KaXA
>
> Our goal as a nation should be to build a world of freedom and
> liberty, opportunity and plenty where war is a thing of the past where
> technology is appropriately applied to our problems to create win-win
> solutions throughout.
>
> To do otherwise, we are merely managing the decline of our species
> into a post-technical era where our present hopes dreams and
> aspirations will be impossible for our children and their children to
> imagine.
>
> Creating low-cost oil from sunlight and coal is but the first step.
> There are others, even more difficult, but we must take them, we will
> take them, with the right leadership.
>
> Reducing the cost of momentum makes the following development arc
> possible - based on the velocity relationship between Earth's surface
> and the rest of the universe;
>
>    1) small suborbital payloads
>           consequence: ICBMs
>           paradigm:  world peace/global thermonuclear war
>
>    2) moderate orbiting payloads
>           consequence: Telstar to Sirius Satellite
>           paradigm: global services - communications, navigation,
> weather, sensing
>                  (telerobotics at low cost change the way industry is
> done)
>    3) large cislunar payloads
>           consequence: Apollo
>           paradigm: environmental movement/earth from space
>
> The result of each development is a shift in global conciousness and
> the arising of a global political paradigm since anything beyond Earth
> affects everyone on Earth equally.
>
> What's the next step?
>
> The development of nuclear pulse rocketry permits;
>
>     4) very large interplanetary payloads
>             consequence:  Industrial development of space resources
>                 a) power satellites
>                 b) asteroid capture and development
>                      (using telerobotics)
>                 c) settlement of the moon and mars
>                 d) settlement of asteroids
>                 e) manned outposts throughout solar system
>                 f) interstellar probes
>             paradigm:  Earth as center of an interplanetary frontier
>
> Beyond nuclear pulse there is laser propelled rockets - which
> traverses the same development arc as energy and power levels increase
> - but at far lower costs and in far larger numbers
>
>       5)  sub-orbital payloads at very low cost
>              consequence:  instant package delivery
>              paradigm:  global community subsumes nation states
>
>       6) moderate orbiting payloads at very low cost
>              consequence: expansion of industrial system to low orbit
>              paradigm:  Earth dominates interplanetary industry
>
>       7) large cislunar payloads at very low cost
>              consequence:  Space homes
>              paradigm:  Diaspora - movement of humanity off-world
>
>       8) very large interplanetary payloads at very low cost
>              consequene:  Mobile space colonies
>              paradigm:  Golden age of Interplanetary development
>
>       9) very large payloads at 1/3 light speed at very low cost
>              consequence:  Mobile slow boat starships
>              paradigm:  Golden age of sublight interstellar expansion
>
> Here, clouds of automated solar pumped lasers in tight orbit around
> the sun coordinate their activity to synthesize large apeture
> emissions - beam width's 6 million km in diameter - to project
> powerful beams to light sail driven space colonies traversing to
> nearby stars.
>
> Next, worlds within 20 light years - will be settled within 60 years
> of step 9 -
>
> http://www.solstation.com/stars/s20ly.htm
>
> 131 stars, with 1,500 worlds/worldlets, all terraformed, or converted
> to monumentally sized space colonies powered by the central star in
> each system..
>
> These stars exchange valuable objects at 1/3 light speed - and a
> handful arrange to organize the collision of shaped iron-56 objects at
> 1/3 light speed -in an effort to create engineered black hole dusts.
> The gravitational, electronic, and magnetic interaction of these
> collection of dusts can be made to implement a wide range of products,
> including computing platforms, and if certain engineering results are
> forthcoming, brand-new ways to transcend time, space, and light speed,
> even tapping into the zero-point energy of the cosmos to power new
> forms of transport, and even self-replicate dusts made the hard way by
> colliding iron-56 at high speed.
>
> Success here provides the potential of the next step - which is more
> speculative than the preceeding steps;
>
>      10) faster than light travel
>            a) time telephone
>            b) time travel
>            c) cosmic exploration
>            d) cosmic engineering
>
> Starting with small masses and proceeding to larger ones.   Self
> replicating machines that tap the zero point energy of the cosmos to
> extract from the Higgs field whatever is desired, would be unlimited
> in their potential.
>
> To Fermi's question; Where are they?   The answer is obvious when we
> look at it this way;
>
> Starting at subsistence level, as industrial development proceeds,
> standard of living rises with rising income for a given amount of
> work.  As standards rise, improvements are made in medical science,
> which increases longevity, and survival of children.  This leads to a
> population explosion which peaks around $5,000 per person per year.
> Beyond this point, reproductive rates fall.  Why?   Likely explanation
> is that women become more educated, and both men and women are more
> distracted in non-procreative activities.  At around $15,000 per
> person per year income, we fall below replacement level.   The world
> is at around $8,000 per person per year now, but nations like the USA,
> Canada, most European nations, most Middle Eastern nations, and the
> Asian Tigers, and Australia, are below replacement level and grow by
> immigration.
>
> This suggests that as the standard of living continues to rise
> population growth rates will fall below replacement levels worldwide.
>
> Not to worry, longevity research will extend life dramatically, and
> the development of practical AI and its application to robotics, will
> provide a means for the low wage nations to shift their labor burden
> to robots as they ascend the industrial development curve.
>
> Our propensity to warfare is a temporary fixation.  It has been fully
> explained by those who study it - ie. see Alice Miller and Drama of
> the Gifted Child - and the development of 'tame' humans appears to be
> a natural consequence of abundance.  ie. see the development of the
> Silver Fox by Russian researchers - and contrast that with the Cold
> War Generation Gap of the baby boomers and their parents.  A life
> lived without serious frustration of desire leads to a different sort
> of human than those who face nearly continuous frustration.
>
> The result for humans is that
>
>    a) agressive impulses are reduced, and
>    b) numbers peak and then fall.
>
> Comparing changes in reproductive rates and economic growth rates,
> indicates that human numbers will peak at 8.5 billion - by mid
> century, and decline slowly - as aging research extends lifespans.
> Robot numbers will grow starting just after the peak, and rise to
> exceed human numbers by the 22nd century.
>
> Dropping at just 1/10th percent per year - with a human sphere of
> influence expanding at 1/3 light speed - human numbers per star system
> drop dramatically with distance - reaching barely 100 light years in
> 300 years where 2.5 billion people spread among 14,600 stars - 172,000
> people per star.
>
> Well before we reach the edge of the ...
>
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