From 1964 - predictions by Arthur C. Clarke

[billvon 2,410]

When I was a kid my parents got me an old set of Life Science books. They were great for a curious kid - big chapters of text followed by lots of pictures. I learned a lot about science from them. I studied them so much that the minor mistakes in them came back to trip me up years later when I learned those subjects for real.

They were ancient - published in 1964 - and contained all the old, unconscious bias of the times. Automatic telephone exchanges were said to make modern telephony possible; without them, the authors explained, it would "require every woman in the US to work as an operator."

We recently came across a set of them (in the in-laws basement) and gave them to our kids. And they're just as fascinated. One book in particular - Man in Space - is especially interesting to Liam, even though it details a time before we even landed on the Moon. I was reading it the other night with him and realized two things. One, that it was written by Arthur C. Clarke, the man who effectively invented communications satellites. Two, he made some very interesting predictions from 54 years ago. Here is some of his commentary:

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Trying to list all the possible ramifications of communications satellites at the present time is a little like having attempted in 1800 to forecast all the conceivable applications of electricity. The most important developments, it is certain, will be overlooked. But here are a few which seem inevitable:

The orbital post office. The very first Telstar could transmit more than the word output of 18,000 typists. One day there will be direct facsimile links between all major towns, so that exact copies of letters can be delivered to almost any region on earth only minutes after the letters are posted.

The orbital newspaper. What the public requires from the press is information, and it need not be printed on paper. Perhaps a generation from now, when a man wishes to read his daily paper he will dial some designated numbers from among the thousands of available television channels and see the paper screened before him. Editorials will be on one channel, sports, book reviews, science, drama, advertising on others. A few giant newspapers (if indeed that name survives) will cover the world, for it will be just as easy to receive the latest New York Times in Tristan da Cunha as in Manhattan.

Global conference facilities. Communications satellites will make un-necessary much of the present intercontinental junketing on the part of politicians, administrators and other people who travel regularly on busi-ness. Instead, it will be a simple matter to hold a full-scale conference with all the participants in their home countries—perhaps even in their own homes.

Global television. This, of course, is the most glamorous, though not necessarily the most important possibility opened up by comsats. The first television satellites were low-powered relay devices whose feeble signals could be picked up only by enormous antenna systems and ultra-sensitive receivers. These signals were then amplified a millionfold for rebroadcast.

But the time will soon come when we can put high-powered transmitters into orbit, and then every home will be able to tune in directly to broadcasts coming down from space, and international television will become a daily occurrence.

Communications satellites will probably increase agitation for a basic world language; more realistically, they will perhaps hasten the development of automatic translating devices.

The promise of precision

The very first use ever suggested for an artificial satellite—in the Reverend Edward Everett
Hale's 1870 Brick Moon—was as an aid to navigation. To fix one's position on our little planet using the existing heavenly bodies is an involved process, requiring some cumbersome mathematics; furthermore, it cannot be practiced in cloudy weather. Although many radio aids to navigation now exist, they all have definite limitations. But a satellite transmitting a radio beacon could serve as a navigational "lighthouse" in even the worst of weather. Such a navigation satellite—Transit—was first launched in 1960, and may point to the day when a radio navigational network will cover the whole earth. Then no one need ever be lost again if he carries a small indicating set which ultimately might be no bigger than that ancient aid, the compass.

New Vistas

Quite recently, the astronomers have opened up a new window on space by observing the universe through the radio waves that it emits, along with all the other sorts of rays. The infant science of radio astronomy has already revealed a cosmos quite different from that disclosed by visible light. If we could observe the heavens by X-rays or gamma rays or short ultraviolet rays, we would see still-different pictures, and we need them all to obtain a full understanding of this diverse universe in which we live.

However, all the short waves from space are completely blocked by the earth's atmosphere. Only instruments in orbit can observe really short waves, and satellites carrying X-ray and ultraviolet detectors have already revealed many surprising and puzzling facts.

Moreover, shining out there among the stars are unknown entities which we have never seen from earth and never will—sources of intense ultra-violet radiation which are, almost literally, too hot to be visible. Only in space—or on the airless moon—will astronomers be able to study them.

The future

Today, when it costs several thousand dollars to put a pound of pay-load into orbit, these vast projects are mere dreams. They will remain dreams so long as space travel is in its present primitive state and has to employ monstrous vehicles which are largely destroyed on every flight. (Where would transatlantic travel be even now, if the Queen Mary—carrying no passengers and only a three-man crew—sank at the end of every voyage? Saturn V will cost more than 20 times as much as the Queen Mary!) What is needed is a vehicle which will make the round trip from earth to orbit and back again intact—that would be refueled after every mission like a conventional airplane. Once that has been achieved, immense vistas will be opened up. Today, we can no more imagine the research projects and the giant industries that will one day flourish out in space than the fish in an imaginary sea could conceive the possibilities that would be opened up on dry land.

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It's remarkable how many of those things came to pass. I imagine that back then a reusable booster would seem like one of the first things to come to pass, since it enabled everything else, and a worldwide network of almost all known literature, music, art, research, drama etc would be the last to come. And yet it was only a few years ago that SpaceX landed their first booster.

[SethInMI 145]

billvon

(Where would transatlantic travel be even now, if the Queen Mary—carrying no passengers and only a three-man crew—sank at the end of every voyage? Saturn V will cost more than 20 times as much as the Queen Mary!)
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And yet it was only a few years ago that SpaceX landed their first booster.

I wonder about his accounting. I can't imagine that the production cost of single Saturn V was 20x the Queen Mary.

An impressive prediction list though, not only for what he got right, but what he didn't get wrong.

It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

[billvon 2,410]

>I can't imagine that the production cost of single Saturn V was 20x the Queen Mary.

You're right; it's only about 4x. I think he was talking about the Saturn V program.

[BillyVance 34]

billvon

>I can't imagine that the production cost of single Saturn V was 20x the Queen Mary.

You're right; it's only about 4x. I think he was talking about the Saturn V program.

Was 20x referring to the cost of the Saturn V when it was built vs the Queen Mary when it was built? And 4x referring to if the Queen Mary was built the same time as the Saturn V?

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[Bob_Church 7]

BillyVance

***>I can't imagine that the production cost of single Saturn V was 20x the Queen Mary.

You're right; it's only about 4x. I think he was talking about the Saturn V program.

Was 20x referring to the cost of the Saturn V when it was built vs the Queen Mary when it was built? And 4x referring to if the Queen Mary was built the same time as the Saturn V?

And I got 8x. I think we're in trouble.

[billvon 2,410]

4x was referring to the (original) Queen Mary's cost in 1934 pounds, then converted to 2017 pounds, then converted to 2017 dollars - compared to a Saturn V's cost in 1971 converted to 2017 dollars. Given all the conversions and relative differences in pounds vs dollars over the years, there's going to be a fair amount of error.

[SethInMI 145]

billvon

>I can't imagine that the production cost of single Saturn V was 20x the Queen Mary.

You're right; it's only about 4x. I think he was talking about the Saturn V program.

Queen Mary cost in 1934 3,500,000 pounds = 315,000,000 dollars in 2017
Saturn V launch cost (for the vehicle itself per wikipedia) in 1969 110,000,000 dollars = 763,877,000 dollars today.

So I got ~2x.

Shows how cheap (good) SpaceX is that the Falcon Heavy launch cost is only $90,000,000 or so. That is an order of magnitude less than the projected SLS launch costs.

It's flare not flair, brakes not breaks, bridle not bridal, "could NOT care less" not "could care less".

[ChrisL 2]

billvon

They were ancient - published in 1964

I was born in 1964

Signed,

Ancient Chris

__

My mighty steed