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Humanity must prepare for a sweeping revolution as nations and companies gear up to build moon bases, space stations and orbiting factories, and uncover evidence – if evidence is out there – that we are not alone in the universe.
A horizon-scanning report from the Royal Society envisions a new era of space activities that will reshape the world, including clean energy beamed to Earth, robots that mine asteroids or recycle dead satellites, and manufacturing plants that circle the planet churning out products labelled “Made in Space”.
Prediction is difficult, especially about the future, but the report anticipates radical developments that will generate some of the most important technological and economic opportunities of the century. While some countries are well-placed to benefit, Britain lacks a clear plan and is at risk of missing out, the authors warn.
“We’re not trying to predict the future, but these are the sorts of things that could happen,” said Sir Martin Sweeting, the report’s co-chair and professor of space engineering at the University of Surrey. “And if we think about them sooner rather than later, we’ll be better off.”
The Space: 2075 report aims to kickstart discussions on the possibilities and consequences of space science and technology over the next 50 years, so governments, regulators, businesses and the public can prepare. The implications are as consequential to today’s industry, society and culture as the Industrial Revolution was in the 18th century, the authors write.
Future advances in reusable rockets and spaceplanes may pave the way for factories that make products feasible only in microgravity and larger-scale facilities for constructing spacecraft that could never launch from Earth, the report says. Interplanetary space stations could be built in orbit and deployed across the solar system as desired.
Existing industries may relocate into orbit. Power-hungry data-farms, for example, would benefit from plentiful solar energy and free cooling in space. Meanwhile, radical new technologies may emerge, such as satellites that capture solar energy and beam it efficiently through the atmosphere to ground-based receiving stations by converting it into microwaves or laser beams.
The ever-increasing volume of space debris from spent rockets, defunct satellites and fragments from collisions and explosions is driving ambitions to recycle the junk. This would reduce collision risks and prevent the materials from polluting the atmosphere when they burn up on re-entry.
As space becomes more congested, conflict becomes more likely, the authors warn, with nations and companies clashing over prime spots on planetary bodies, valuable orbits and critical radiofrequency bands.
While the UK is strong on a handful of technologies such as Earth observation, communications and small satellites, it needs a “clear national ambition” to keep up with the pace of change, the report finds. “The UK government, the international community, and society at large need to comprehend, anticipate and be prepared,” it states.
Ethical challenges are expected, too. Extremophile bugs that endure harsh environments on Earth could be engineered to make “living tools” on Mars that convert natural resources into useful compounds.
But what if those bugs colonise the planet and crowd out yet-to-be-discovered native microbes? Terraforming trials, in which patches of planets are engineered to be more hospitable to humans, raise similar concerns. And if humans move to the red planet? “What happens if we end up with humans being born on Mars?” asks Sweeting.
At several public workshops convened for the report, questions arose about alien life and how it should be handled should proof arise. One participant at a workshop in Wrexham marvelled at the number of galaxies in the cosmos. “In all those galaxies, there has to be one planet to have something similar to a caterpillar,” they asserted.
If aliens, caterpillar-like or otherwise, live nearby, we will probably know in the next 50 years, the authors write. “I would hope that would bring nations together and say: let’s forget about our petty arguments and think about the bigger issues,” said Sweeting, “but that may be wishful thinking.”
