No more blasting rockets into space

When writing science fiction it is almost impossible to predict the distant future with any sensible confidence. However, what I can say with pretty much total conviction, is that the future will definitely not be a bigger, faster version of the present. 

In 1903, a correspondent writing in the New York Times made a prediction. Human flight, he confidentially asserted, was so far beyond our reach that it might take mankind anywhere from one million to ten million years before the technical challenges could be solved.

It sounds absurd now, but by some reckoning, it was then felt to be a reasonable conclusion. For centuries, humans had dreamed of taking to the skies in heavier than air flying machines. Since the late 1700s people had of course flown in hot air and hydrogen filled balloons. In fact,  in 1862 two intrepid aeronauts had ascended as high as 37,000 feet. But despite these successful balloon flights, heavier than air, controlled, powered flight had repeatedly eluded the world’s brightest engineers’ best efforts, and was thus presented as an impossible dream.

Yet, less than seventy days after that New York Times article, two bicycle mechanics from North Carolina proved it spectacularly wrong. In their first 12 second flight, the Wright brothers changed that future, in a metaphorical blink of an eye, erasing what had been thought to be millions of years of progress. At the same time, they changed the world into a completely new place that just a couple of months before no one could have imagined.

After that first step, the development of powered flight literally took off, and in just 66 years, the jet-powered 747 Jumbo, was cruising at 650 mph, 40,000 feet above sea level, ferrying 400 passengers across oceans from continent to continent.  

“Okay, don’t forget to check the fuel level with the dipstick, and while you’re under the bonnet, check the oil level. Oh, and also you should check that the oil greaser is set to open. And remember to lubricate the chassis, actually that’s a two-man job. I’ll come out and help. I’ve run a kettle of water for you to top up the radiator, and I’ve made up a spare bottle for you to take with you, just to top it up again after you’re done at the store. Tell you what, I think I better get it started for you, especially after last time when you broke your thumb on the crank handle.

“It’ll only take twenty or thirty minutes for the full checks, the greasing, and the warm-up, and if everything goes smoothly, we should have you up and running and on your way in no time at all.”

This was how it was for the lucky few who owned a car, a little over a century ago at the true birth of the automobile age. The sheer effort, the required mechanical knowledge, the necessary physical strength, and the meticulous pre-trip rituals, putting to one side the cost, were all a significant barrier to entry. Every journey was truly an event, a minor expedition preceded by a mandatory checklist of fluid levels, lubrication points, and the hope that the temperamental engine would catch on the first few pulls of the starting crank.

Spin forward a century and a quarter, and the modern motor car is a universe away from that greasy, arduous process. Cars, already incredibly easy to operate by comparison. Starting at the press of a button, they are now about to take away even the last tiniest vestige of pre-drive, check-your-mirrors preparation, and replacing it all with a simple spoken request: “Drive me to the store.” Before long, the vehicle will handle all the safety checks along with the navigation, the roadcraft, hill starts, braking, and parallel parking, turning the complex act of driving into the simple act of travelling and then arriving. The need for a roadside tool kit or a spare bottle of radiator water is a romantic myth of a bygone age. It was this incredible march towards simplicity and automation that struck me profoundly while watching the preparations for humanity’s return to the Moon.

Watching the preparations for the first crewed trip aboard the Orion spacecraft, as the Artemis II mission astronauts prepared to travel to the Moon and back, only for the four hours that lead up to the launch, I was taken aback at the sheer, overwhelming amount of time and effort it took just to climb into the spacecraft and get going. This four-hour preparation marathon, of course, was merely the final, tiny fraction of the decade of planning, training, manufacturing, and mission preparation that led up to the successful liftoff. The journey to the launchpad itself, a complex symphony of logistics, safety protocols, and mechanical precision, is obviously merely the tip of an unimaginably large technological iceberg.

In my science fiction world of tomorrow, when I believe humanity will have solved many of the problems of propulsion and life support, spacefarers won't need to check the oil, have someone else check their space suit is zipped up multiple times, manually check the door pressure seals, and fill the massive tanks with liquid propellant, while keeping it topped it up as the cryogenic fuel continually boils off. Not for them the need to coordinate the literally thousands of essential, life-critical procedures that today's astronauts and their massive, global support teams need to manage before the final command to fire up the engines is given.

As I watched the amazing, humbling preparations, and then the utterly awesome liftoff, I felt that my story's vision of the future was maybe a little naive in this respect. In my fictional future, the characters hop on and off sentient, autonomous spaceships with scarcely a second thought about the incredibly complex mechanism is taking them halfway around the galaxy. The spacecraft is a trusted tool, no more demanding than a modern car.

I started writing Advances in the Art of Being in 2001. In the time it has taken me to complete this labour of love, I could have set off from Earth and travelled out beyond the orbit of Neptune. I would be wondering, as I sailed past the blue soup of watery ammonia and methane ices of our eighth planet, why the journey had taken so long. 

Crawling through RealSpace using only conventional chemical rockets (with a little bit of useful gravity-assist maneuvers along the way), by now I would have made it into the Kuiper Belt, on my way to touch the outer edges of the planetary system we call home. After brewing a cup of tea with the last of the teabags I had saved for the occasion, and holding the steaming cup in my hands, I imagine I would now be peering out of my spaceship window back at you, 10 billion miles from home. From here, even simple "hello" travelling at the snail's pace we call the speed of light, would take 15 hours to reach you and I would be waiting patiently well into the next day for your "hi, I'm doing fine, how are you?" to come back and rescue me from the solitude of my immense trip, my celebratory tea, drunk or cold by then.

But spin forward one hundred and seventy five years and how different things will be. The same journey will be measured in minutes, communications through j-space, instantaneous, distant suns will be holiday destinations, and asteroids towed into Earth orbit, mere daily commutes away. 

But you don’t have to slip into a cryochamber to wait out the next one and three-quarter centuries, or cross your fingers and hope that medical science comes up with the inevitable longevity miracle us boomers are hoping for and go the long way round to see those miracles of modern science come to life, nor wait the twenty six years for me to finish the story, because right now my book-writing journey is at its end, so your journey into this incredible world can begin right away.