EDGE TECHNOLOGY ENABLEMENT
Transformative leaps that redefine boundaries
Edge Technologies
Edge-technologies that are still in their infancy will play a significant role in relaxing the constraints that shape and bound the growth of the space industry:
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: AI systems like AlphaGo and GPT are beginning to show the potential of machine learning. In space, AI could autonomously navigate spacecraft, optimize resource allocation, and analyse vast amounts of scientific data.
Quantum Computing: Quantum computers like IBM's Quantum System One have the potential to solve complex problems at unprecedented speeds. In the space industry, quantum computing could revolutionize areas like complex trajectory optimization, advanced material design, and secure communications.
3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing: The ability to print complex structures, as demonstrated by companies like Relativity Space, offers the prospect of manufacturing spacecraft components, and even habitats, using local materials on the Moon or Mars.
Miniaturisation of Electronics: Advances in microelectronics have given rise to CubeSats and small satellites, like those used in the Starlink network. This makes space more accessible and affordable to a wide range of entities.
Energy Storage and Generation: The advent of silicone-based solar cells, advanced nuclear reactors, and improved battery technology, provide the means to power long-duration space missions and off-world habitats.
Fusion Power: Fusion reactors could provide virtually unlimited power for spacecraft, eliminating the need for frequent refuelling and vastly extending mission durations. This would enable higher speeds and thus reduce travel time between planets and stars, making more viable energy-intensive operations like asteroid mining and in-space manufacturing, and even enable high-power electric propulsion. Fusion could also provide power for future space colonies, making them less reliant on solar power and enabling human presence in the outer solar system where sunlight is weak.
Reusable Rockets: SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Starship are seeding a revolution in access to space by demonstrating that rockets can be reusable, significantly reducing the cost of launching payloads into orbit. Over the coming decade this will transform the way space technology is done, less risk aversion will lead to more rapid advancement.
Advanced Materials: Materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes offer extraordinary strength-to-weight ratios; highly relevant to tether-based space infrastructure. While new alloys and composites resist the extreme temperatures of re-entry, enabling the construction of more robust spacecraft and space infrastructure.
Laser Communication Systems: The advent of laser communication systems, as demonstrated by NASA's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, allows for high-throughput and long-range data transmission compared to RF communications. Expansion of this into deep space will radically reduce costs associated with deep space activities.
CRISPR Gene Editing: Could be used to create organisms or ecosystems capable of surviving in the harsh conditions of space or other planets, and could revolutionise the production of food or self-contained artificial biomes in the microgravity environment.
Nanotechnology & Nano-manufacture: Advances in nanotechnology and nano-manufacture, like the development of nanowire batteries, could revolutionize areas like energy storage, spacecraft material design (lightweight, high-strength), medical technology for long-duration space travel, and could facilitate in-situ resource utilization.
Room-Temperature Superconductors: Superconductors are materials that can conduct electricity without resistance, but currently, they only work at extremely low temperatures. In space travel, it could facilitate the creation of powerful, efficient magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters.
Edge Discoveries
Exoplanets: The discovery of thousands of exoplanets by missions like NASA's Kepler and TESS has ignited interest in technologies for deep space exploration. A combination of ground and space-based telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope, will in the coming couple of decades identify the atmospheric composition of thousands of exoplanets. Future spacecraft could be designed specifically to explore these distant worlds.
Mars Viability: The detection of the requisite materials for the sustainment of a civilisation, including an abundance of water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen, coupled to a 24.5-hour day, is inspiring ambitions of colonisation. This could lead a wide range of developments associated with in-situ resource utilisation, life-support systems, and automated manufacturing.
Oceans and Seas: The recognition of subsurface oceans on moons like Jupiter's Europa, Saturn's Enceladus, and Neptune's Triton have intensified the search for life beyond Earth, spurring the development of advanced robotic exploration technologies capable of drilling through thick ice crusts and exploring alien seas. The unveiling of massive methane and ethane seas on Saturn's Titan, could serve as a resource for future exploration and habitation. For instance, they could be used to manufacture rocket propellant, enabling Titan to serve as a fuel depot for deep space missions.
Digitising the Human Mind: The concept of digitising the human mind, often referred to as mind uploading or whole brain emulation, involves scanning a physical brain in detail and copying its state into a computer system. If feasible, this technology could significantly impact space exploration. Digital minds could be sent on long-duration space missions where biological humans couldn't survive. These digital astronauts could control robotic bodies or entire spacecraft, performing tasks far beyond the capabilities of human astronauts.
Quantum Entanglement: This principle, which allows particles to affect each other instantly over vast distances, has been demonstrated in several experiments. Harnessing this principle could revolutionize communication in space, enabling instant, secure communications over interplanetary—and potentially even interstellar—distances. Coupled to digitisation of the human mind and advances in AI sentience, this suggests a radically different future.
Human Gene Editing and Space Travel: Studies like NASA's Twin Study shed light on how space travel affects the human body at a genetic level. These insights, coupled to CRISPR-based genetic modifications, could lead to the development of humans, advanced life-support systems, and medical technologies tailored for long-duration space missions.
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Polarisation: The ongoing pursuit to detect primordial gravitational waves through B-mode polarisation in the CMB could lead to more sensitive space-based observatories, pushing the boundaries of sensor and imaging technologies.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Dark matter and dark energy could play a significant role in reshaping the space industry. If dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the universe, could be harnessed, it might be used to propel spacecraft to near-light speeds, drastically reducing the time it would take to travel to distant stars. Similarly, dark matter could lead to breakthroughs in propulsion or energy generation.
Fermi Paradox: Deepening our understanding of the factors that enable technological intelligence to arrive, and continuing the search for it, will more clearly position humanity and the values held. If we discover that advanced civilisations inevitably self-destruct, it would be a sobering warning. If we find that life, let alone technological intelligence, is exceptionally rare or unique to Earth, it might motivate a greater commitment to space exploration and the preservation of life.