A sleek, futuristic vehicle takes off and splits in two. One part is piloted safely back down to the the ground, the other heads for orbit. And there - this is the really cool bit - it changes shape, reconfigures and then returns to earth itself.
This is of course Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo design, unveiled today. It could so easily be out of a Gerry Anderson adventure - well, maybe apart from the fact that it returns safely. There's an added thrill in realising the project is backed by a multi-millionaire, though sadly not one with five sons and a purely platonic relationship with the flower of English aristocracy.
Gerry Anderson's vision of the future was of course flawed - it was undeniably technophile but the Health & Safety Executive was obviously strangled at birth (hence mile-high skyscrapers with no sprinker system, brought down by a fire in the basement) and, crucially, there were unlimited resources for all. If it didn't make lots of smoke and flame, it wasn't a proper machine. Sadly we know it's not going to be like that.
That's why I'm betting he never imagined that one day supertankers would be crossing the Atlantic powered by kites - my second favourite story from the BBC's Science/Nature page. I'll be honest - that's even cooler than SpaceShipTwo (though I don't want it to be) and a lot more useful.
When I accidentally lived in London for six months, I did all the touristy things one does and I was astonished to find that Westminster Abbey was white, Parliament was a kind of golden yellow, other buildings were all kinds of shades. You could see the stonework. When I came up to London as a kid, everything was black. London had finally cleaned itself up while I was growing, shedding centuries of soot and exhaust and grime. Go London.
We know so much more than we used to about the environment, about materials, about micro-engineering, about energy conservation. We can manage a pretty good lifestyle for a whole lot less than we did. There will be further changes ahead and some of them will take getting used to: I doubt I'll be cooking or heating my house with natural gas for the rest of my life and I certainly won't be driving a car powered by fossil fuels for much longer. There's a lot of inertia to overcome, dead infrastructure to get rid of. New superpowers will arise and the West will decline. But a new equilibrium will be found and it will be worth it. I really feel that future historians will decide it was during my lifetime that we finally found the balance between a decent standard of living and looking after the world. That makes me quite proud.
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ReplyDeleteSorry for the delete and repost. I always thing of something else to add just after I hit the submit button.
ReplyDeleteYour vision of the future sounds lovely. I just wish that your fellow writers would occasionally pen a genuinely utopian future. A question for the pub: can you think of a sci-fi movie, book, or story of any type where a utopian future is described. I mean a truly just and happy future without there being a secretly corrupt government or an oppressed sub-set of society.
The only one I can come up with is the 30 seconds of Bill and Ted's future world due to their peace-bringing music, and to be honest, I expect we only needed to spend a little more time there before we uncover something sinister. Ben, I'll expect 5 real utopian futures by the end of work today.
Well, there's utopian and there's utopian. Neal Stephenson's wonderful The Diamond Age describes a hi-tech but economically and environmentally sustainable future. There's nothing actively sinister going on in the background ... but, the decline of the nation state has also meant a decline in state-guaranteed safeguards that we take for granted. So it's a lot more laissez faire and a lot more anarchic than some may prefer. But still a damn fine read.
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