Space Age ends with a whimper

On July 20, the space shuttle Atlantis will land with its crew, as well as all the crew of the International Space Station. This means that for the first time in over a decade no human will be in space, and for the first time since the Mercury mission back in the 1960s the U.S. will not have a way of putting a human in space. This is a rather strange and almost depressing ending to the so-called "Space Age."

It's clear to me the Space Age ended some time in the late 1980s, early 1990s when it was obvious the space shuttle mission was on a treadmill, NASA's budget was losing altitude, and no new big push into space would occur. The so-called "Information Age" may be roaring along with new whiz-bang computer stuff coming out all the time, but it's hard to get excited or romantic about computers, which are basically a composite TV, phonograph, filing cabinet, and typewriter. Sure, Ages have been named after basic trends, tools, or inventions (Bronze, Iron, Industrial Age), but after the heady romance of space with heroes like John Glenn, Werner von Braun, Spock the Vulcan, and Albert Einstein with his relativity theories, it's hard to come back to something called the Information Age.

Science fiction bailed on the Space Age sometime in the 80s, too. Instead of big adventures in space, you saw authors like William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, and Rudy Rucker turn back to the home planet where, in a near-future timespace, they wrote about very depressing, unpleasant dystopian scenarios. Today it's very hard to find a good old-fashion space-based sci-fi book or movie. Yes, the new Transformers film will pack 'em in this summer, but it, too, is far more apocalyptic cyberpunk than real space adventuring. And as soon as the final Harry Potter film comes out this Friday, Transformers will have been forgotten.

I grew up with the Jetsons and Star Trek. My boys are growing up with Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. What does it tell you when I see the neighborhood boys using sticks as swords rather than as pretend guns? Indeed. At this point you're probably wondering what my point is in all this. Actually, it's rather simple. If there's anything left in this whole millennia-long science and technology progress campaign, would it please, please, please come up with some alternative energy solutions? Like real quick. If this whole science and technology juggernaut can give us anything we really, really need, yes, it would be renewable energy sources.

We humans have doubled our population in just my lifetime. Very soon we will number 7 billion humans. And this massive blob of humanity is consuming circa 14 tera-joules of energy per year - most of it in the form of dirty fossil fuels. But our science gurus tell us we've hit a brick wall with fossil fuels: Fossil fuels are destroying the planet and they're running out. No surprises, though. My 8th grade teacher told us oil is a finite and non-renewable energy source - just like yours did, too. We all knew there was no real future in fossil fuels. Oil, for example, will not be around as a serious base resource for even another 50 years. Many argue that its production has already peaked and will now dwindle, the price rising accordingly. And of course coal is our main worry with global climate change. Dead end there, too. Natural gas is supposedly still plentiful (this is debated, however), but plentiful or not, it, too, creates greenhouse gases. The clock is ticking. . . .

I guess I'm not too sad about the end of the Space Age. Space is, well, very spacious, and it's not easy to overcome its spaciousness and actually do anything worthwhile out there in it. The dull realization of this basic fact has finally caught up with us. Other pieces of the high-tech pie are impressive, but seem to be a bit of the cart before the horse, seeing how we don't have our basic energy house in order. Sure, we've seen great strides in medicine and especially great things come on with computer technology. But the real challenge is to get ourselves off of fossil fuel and onto things like solar and wind. Because soon it won't matter if we've cured cancer, figured out how to not pass your ugly genes to your kids, or whether we all get iPad 5.0, 6.0, 7.0s. . . because if we can't get off risky, dwindling fossil fuel, it will be game over very soon!

Again, for someone who grew up in the Space Age, it's a rather odd feeling to see its end. I mean, who would have guessed that it would simply die one day in the early 21st century due to lack of interest? And it's also a rather odd thing to see the end of nuclear energy, another one of those "miracles of science" that came up parallel to the Space and Information Ages. Sure, there's still hundreds of nuclear reactors worldwide, but Germany's recent decision to bail on nukes and replace them 100% with renewable energy inside of ten years is really the death knell for this orphaned technology. Technically, the "Atomic Age" will go on with nuclear weapons, but that's a whole other can of worms. I'll wrap this post up by reiterating, We need to get to a new energy base and off of fossil fuels very soon. We've been riding this progress mule now since the ancient Egyptians, and unless we want to see 7 billion people in serious disarray (if not collapse), we'd better get moving!