The Coming Space Age
This chapter draws on forecasts from The TechCast Project to map out the beginning of the Space Age about 2050. The author's work on the Life Cycle of Evolution shows that the world is moving beyond the Knowledge Age, which began about AD 2000, and is now entering an Age of Consciousness about 2020. This seems to mark the culmination of civilization on Earth, when the planet reaches a stage of maturity needed to resolve historic threats such as climate change. If this passage to a unified global order is successful, it should mark the beginning of space exploration beyond the solar system. The commercialization of space will likely be well underway, and colonies established on the Moon and possibly Mars, solar satellites will likely be functioning, and space tourism will become normal. With Earth a stable civilization, attention should then turn to this final frontier of space. The intellectual resources of roughly 10 billion educated people will be drawn on to make the breakthroughs in our understanding of physics needed to travel to star systems.