sounds like a waste of money...look how far we went with the automobile in 100 years...is innovation that dead? Will we not have any improvements to our space program in the next 100 years? I sure hope we do, because in the next 100 years the population problem will be huge
How far has the automobile industry advanced in the last 100 years? Four wheels, petrol engine. Personally I'm still waiting for my flying car.
Of course that could be slightly harsh. The land speed record has been broken again and again in that time period. That brings up an interesting point. Only one of those attempts set out to break the speed of sound, all the rest set out to beat the last guy.
We need targets to aim for and any project which aims to pass the incumbent leader in 10 years will be a lot more politically valuable than a project which will reach Alpha Centauri in 50 years. Even if they are the same project.
Having said that this discussion is entirely academic. The proposal was made in 1988 and not followed up. Today, we're just aiming for the Moon.
p.s. Good luck solving whatever population problem there may be via space. I wouldn't like to try shipping a billion people 100 miles. Moving them to another world would need more than improvements to the space program. It would need the space program to be made irrelevant.
a) We now have dozens of different forms of propulsion(gas, ethanol, biofuel, CNG, electricity, hydrogen etc)
b) We now have FWD, AWD, RWD
c) We now have cars that have 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16 cylinders
d) We now have cars that come naturally aspirated, turboed, supercharged, twin turboed, twin supercharged ,quad turboed.
e) We now have cars that can take a hit at 100 mph, and you'll survive
f) We now have cars that can do a 0 to 100 in just a couple of seconds.
g) We have cars that will adjust the suspension based on a hairline crack in the road.
h) We now have cars, that can go up a 89 degree slope, in the snow(Audi/Subaru AWD systems)
i) And of course our cars now come better equipped than CEO offices from when they first came out.
But yes space program needs to make space a commodity. Where you can walk to your roof, get in your personal space ship and go pickup your buddy on Sirius 3 to go that hot new restaurant on Mars.
And it could probably be done, just 100 years ago cars were a thing for the richest of the rich. Now everyone has one.
Cars still travel more or less the same speed for the purpose of personal transport, etc. Getting to Alpha Centauri is going to take a fundamental change in space travel technology.
Also,
a) we had diesel/electric/gas motors a century ago,
b) would you believe that we had FWD/AWD a century ago? We did!
c) we've always had engines with insane number of cylinders d) i'll admit turbos are newer -- 1930's planes first used them
e) i still don't want to be in them and they're not foolproof as we as having different engineering goals than a normal car.
g) no comment. :)
h) so could the original jeep (GP)
i) have you seen the inside of a chevy recently?
Our current space travel tech needs a couple of orders of magnitude in improvement before we can just travel to distant stars at will. Your examples are incremental improvements to practical problems. In the mean time, I say we send a probe! :)
I would think our space program more resembles locomotives of a long time ago. Certain fundamental physical constraints are standing in our way as far as very fast propulsion, but you've got a point -- who knows. However, I don't think it would be a waste of money. The costs are fairly minimal compared to what it will take to fix various social problems. :)
Also, worry about population won't help too much. Hopefully if the rest of the world gets industrialized the population will level off. Or we'll start eating each other. Either way...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe
It's the dramatic title that does it for me.