Make It So - Energy Science Fiction Becoming Science Fact

[Oilguy]

It's no secret that Gene Roddenberry's venerable "Star Trek" metaseries has inspired the imagination of millions since it first debuted in 1966. Strange worlds, compelling characters, and more techno-babble than you could shake a stick at have always been hallmarks of the series. But Star Trek has also been noted on many occasions throughout the series for seemingly predicting (or perhaps inspiring) the progression of technology.

While we're certainly not cruising the galaxy in starships trying to pick up green women, a lot of Trek tech seems to have not only become commonplace but in some cases even obsolete and antiquated. Taking the original series as a key example, the flip-style wireless communicators seemed space-age during the show's run. Today if your phone isn't a touch-screen equipped slate-style smartphone, it's practically an antique. Modern communications equipment is more in line with Trek's famed tricorders than it is with a simple communicator.

So what does this mean for the world of energy? Quite a bit, if the trend seems to follow. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of "Star Trek" and virtually all other forms of science fiction knows that a vessel capable of interstellar travel never stops at a gas station or tries to get by with "putting five bucks in." Unless you count Lone Starr's space Winnebago from Mel Brooks' “Spaceballs," but that's beside the point. In the realm of sci-fi, traditional energy sources like fossil fuels have been largely abandoned in favor of presumably more efficient and abundant energy sources.

Granted, we aren't exactly harvesting dilithium crystals for our warp cores just yet, but science is slowly and surely crawling its way towards a new era of energy production. Even the staid alternative, solar power, is seeing a new lease on life
Full article at: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-Gener ... -Fact.html

[pstarr]

so by your reasoning star trek flip phones will insure fusion-powered space-skateboards?

okay.

[eXpat]

Just about time!!!!, Anybody knows where can i get a replicator???, and a holodeck would be nice too
I just checked in Walmart btw, but they doesn't have those

[jedrider]

Well, we have Moore's Law and Hubbert's Peak. So far, they are both on track! We'll be able to compute our ultimate demise down to the last mating couple perhaps. Who needs a Holodeck when we have huge flat screen televisions. The better to dissociate ourselves from external events.

[rockdoc123]

Although obviously there are limits to this, the holodeck concept has actually been in use for several years by the big O&G companies. They call them virtual work rooms or some other similar name. Basically it is about the ability to display in 3D your seismic coupled with well trajectories and every other bit of data you can collect from the reservoir in a room where you can walk around and look at the bits you are interested in, zoom in, change display etc. Not anything like Captain Piccard showing up as a 1930's gumshoe but still amazing considering it wasn't that long ago that the computing power I hold in my hand these days took up a whole room.
It would be interesting to look at the technological advances that occurred from the seventies onwards and see how they could be linked back to the imagination of scifi writers. It seems to me that as a youth I went for a very long time where the best technological advance was fibreglass coating on your hockey stick, screw in cleats for your football boots and drip coffee machines. I think that there is definitely a link between those folks who imagine something fantastic and those folks who say...hold on, nary a prob, I can make that.
I probably need to clarify my backgrond here. When I was an undergrad we used slide rules ( I had a really spectacular one that did cube roots!) and near the end of my stay the first T1 came out...it added, subtacted and multiplied and as I remember you could also do squares but that was that. I wrote my masters thesis on a typewriter, there was no other means available. I learned Fortran 4, Basic and a couple of other extinct languages. I took a course in computer applications in the sciences that had me walking a huge box of cards over to a card reader to churn out a few pages of calculations. All fun until half way through your cards the machine spits one out! I typed my PhD dissertation on a terminal linked to the mainframe of the Univesity computer. The text editing software was in its infancy so if you didn't know Unix language you were in trouble. After I graduated and got out into the business world I was able to buy an Apple 2C (can't remember how many year that was until I could do that) and then came various PCs etc. What is surprising to me is the exceleration in technology that has occurred.
I really do wonder how much of that has to do with someone imaging what is possible, someone making that happen and then someone else imaging the next obvious step....etc.
But I'm just an old guy wondering about how all this happened!

[Keith_McClary]

Just about time!!!!, Anybody knows where can i get a replicator???, and a holodeck would be nice too
I just checked in Walmart btw, but they doesn't have those

They're on the same aisle with the warp drives and E-Cats. Just ask the greeter to beam you over there.

Actually, the problem is,
sci-fi writers have gone all doomeristic

Neal Stephenson worried that the gloomy outlook prevalent in modern science fiction may be undermining the genre's ability to inspire engineers and scientists. Describing himself as a "pessimist trying to turn himself into an optimist," and acknowledging that some of his own work has contributed to the dystopian trend, he added "if every depiction of the future is grim...then it doesn't create much of an incentive to building the future."

Consequently, Stephenson is trying to make a literary course correction, and last year launched the Heiroglyph Project, with the goal of creating an anthology of plausibly optimistic science fiction.
...
Much of the discussion with editor-in-chief Jason Pontin explored Stephenson's fear that big thinking, of the sort that once drove the space program and other large scale projects, has fallen out of vogue. In part, Stephenson explained, this was because of the Internet: "Everything got put on hold for a generation," while civilization digested the Internet and figured out what it could be used for.
...
In fact, said Stephenson, we already have much of the fundamental technology we need to fulfill such science fiction ambitions as large scale solar power production, or routine space flight. Instead, he said, we need to start looking at the non-technological obstacles to these advances, citing insurance as a key example. The development of alternative space launch systems has been curtailed by the unwillingness of the insurance industry to underwrite satellite launches on systems for which there is no good model of the risk involved.

I've pretty much finished digesting the Internet (burp).
Nuke plants and deepwater oilwells don't need no steenkin' insurance, they just buy gubmints to give them immunity and impunity.

[SeaGypsy]

The series "The Prophets of Science Fiction" has been released around the world through various licensed channels. I caught the episode on Jules Verne the other night on tele, amazing really. The commentary ran that Verne was not atypical in his bleaker outlook as he grew more reflective.

[Loki]

Science fiction also includes 1984, Brave New World, the Matrix, Road Warrior, Terminator, Children of Men, the Postman, Blade Runner, Earth 2100, the Handmaid's Tale, etc. I'd venture to guess these works of fiction have more to say about our future than Gene Roddenberry's socialist techno-utopia.

Not that I don't love Star Trek. Just finished my third or fourth viewing of Deep Space Nine, and started my umpteenth viewing of Next Gen. Couldn't warm up to Enterprise, and Voyager is pretty hit and miss. The last movie was nicely done, though, hopefully they'll make more in that style. But I don't mistake it all for reality.

[Repent]

I'm still running SETI at home on my computer. Hoping we can contact those aliens, to get ET's phone number so to speak.

I'm sure we'd have no issue with buying 'warp drive' and 'fusion power plants schematics' from them. Make's it a lot easier if we don't have to wait for 2283 to get some Romulan ale if we could just buy some from a passing alien space ship.

Alas, Earthlings might be the only space faring civilization anywhere nearby.

[Cog]

Contacting a technologically advanced race is an extremely bad idea. Turn off your SETI program and maybe they won't notice us.

[vision-master]

How about a spiritualy advanced alien race, we could use a little of that, ya think?

[Cog]

How about a spiritualy advanced alien race, we could use a little of that, ya think?

Do they smoke weed?

[SeaGypsy]

How about a spiritualy advanced alien race, we could use a little of that, ya think?

Do they smoke weed?

Na, they smoke hippies

[vision-master]

Life in 3D, ain't it grand.......

Life.........

Is Nothing More

Than One

Being As Many

vm



The Reptilian Brain

[EnergyUnlimited]

Make It So - Energy Science Fiction Becoming Science Fact

Coming soon in a theatre near you.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Contacting a technologically advanced race is an extremely bad idea. Turn off your SETI program and maybe they won't notice us.

Too late, now the only hope is that they don't exist or are not advanced enough to record the signal and pinpoint source.