The next 35 years...

[prkaye]

The rate of technological advance is accelerating, not moving ahead in a linear way as would be the intuitive sense. Thus, next year there will be MORE new discoveries than there were THIS year, in a near exponential progression.

I have this discussion with other scientists frequently. We've seen a massive expolosion of technology in the last few decades, but much of that can ultimately be traced back to the invention of the transistor (often indirectly - computing power has been applied to many other areas of science, and so they too owe their rapid advancements to the transistor). But Moore's "Law" is not a fundamental law of nature, it's just a trend, and for digital computers we will see it flattening out soon, I promise. My own area of expertise is in quantum computation, and I would be very surpised if this becomes a useful "technology" in anything near 35 years. Moore's "law" for digital computers (the power of which drives advancements in many other areas of science) is limited by fundamental physics. Once we make transistors too small, classical physics, implicit in their design, no longer holds. This limit is coming sooner than you may think.

Technology has its roots in physics. Lee Smolin, a leading theoretical phycisist whom i have met several times at the Perimeter institute in Waterloo, has a new book called "the trouble with physics". The trouble with physics is that really nothing fundamentally new has been discovered for the last 30 years. String theory is very likely a dead-end, or at least not useful in making predictions (which is the very purpose of science).

As someone else posted earlier, there was for a time a "moore's law" type trend in aerospace technology. How rapidly we went from the first flight of the Wright brothers to landing a man on the moon. But rocket technology has not really changed in decades, and we're still flying fundamentally the same piston and jet-powered airplanes we were decades ago. Only the computers on them have really changed much (sure there have been other incremental improvements, but certainly not exponential-type leaps forward). Ramjets and Scramjets have yet to really pan-out. So that was an example of the Moore's "law" that lasted only a few decades before flattening out. Just like Moore's "law" for digital computers will flatten out in the coming decades.

Genetics on the other hand, is right at the beginning of the "Moore's law" type trend... I bet we'll see a massive explosion of that technology over the next 35 years which will dramatically change things (and hopefully we can manage the risks associated with it). It too will eventually flatten out though... only a finite subset of the structure of the universe can be accessible to finite minds. As an immediate corollary, science and technology cannot increase without bound.

[breister]

Originally Posted by N941WR

You still need to produce that electricity some place. Today most of that comes from coal.

Excellent point - but another point that is missed by most proponents of ecological solutions is that once we HAVE practical energy storage, we don't NEED to produce electricity LOCALLY.

The Rocky Mountains have enough geothermal energy easily / cheaply tappable at a cost 1/2 of coal (or less) to last the next 50,000 years. Now, load up a train with boxcars filled with batteries; replace the diesel motor with more batteries and a current converter; and you have nearly created perpetual motion. The "cost" of transporting such a load to, say, New York becomes thousands of times cheaper than trying to push the electricity across wires.

As for the batteries, they are one nasty product and I suspect that in 35 years they will be banned as we know them because of production and disposal issues. This is going to be a real issues when people start replacing the batteries in their hybrids. Even bigger

Newer batteries, unlike the nickel metal hydride, are completely recyclable. But, I absolutely agree that the carbon nanotube capacitors with their unlimited number of recharge cycles will supplant them once they get the bugs worked out.

[breister]

Originally Posted by rph142

Fortunately gliders will always be an option. I say we all start heaping our trash in nice long ridges so in the future we can all go trash ridge soaring.

As motors and storage shrink, most folks will probably opt for self-launching electric gliders. Not only more convenient, but adds a safety factor to allow short bursts of propulsion in case you don't quite catch the thermal you were hoping for...

[breister]

Keeping in mind that I don't have any SPECIAL knowledge of the future, and that what really happens may be a complete surprise to me, too...

Originally Posted by Steve Brown

I agree about the acceleration of technology advancements. Also that we are waiting for batteries.
The problem is, we have been waiting for batteries for decades with only small and slow advancements. Batteries have not kept pace with all the gadgets that use them.

The Human Genome Project was started with a goal of identifying all of the major genes within a 15 year timespan. 7 1/2 years into the project, they had identified less than 1% of the genes, and pundits were writing it off saying, "it was too ambitious."

They finished early.

It is easy to say that we have been "waiting for batteries for decades" and predict that it will thus be more decades before a solution appears. It is much more challenging for most of us (myself included) to remember that the rate of advancement accelerates beyond our intuitive expectations.

Well engineered hydrogen fuel cells are likely practical for cars, possibly for airplanes if they can be made light enough.

The downfall of hydrogen is space, not weight. Even liquid hydrogen is too bulky for cross country flight - it is a dead end of the paradigm of combustion power.

The power electronics / motor control for an airplane is a different story. That technology is well advanced. Motor control for an airplane is inherently simple - move the lever forward to get more power, back for less. auto control is much more complex because of stop/starts, energy recovery braking, etc.

When considered as a space / weight penalty to add the features that cars need, the difference is immaterial. It is just software.

So, the power electronics is not at all the limiting factor for electric flight.

Correct. Here is a good example of horsepower to weight:
Raser Technologies

By the way, "DC Motor" is a misnomer. A true DC motor does not exist. So called DC motors use either an electromechanical stator or a power converter to create the moving field (AC) needed to run the motor.

Picky! Yes, the rotation of the motor causes the DC current to energize successive coils, constantly placing the magnetic field in a position to continually attract / repel the correct magnets to cause continuous one-way rotation.

My point was just that the AC controllers are currently in the neighborhood of $10-15 thousand - and we don't need them for those of us looking to upgrade inexpensively. The only "price" of going the cheap route would be annual inspection / replacement of brushes and power solenoids.

IMO, recharging is not going to fly (NPI) except for local recreational flying. For cross country flying, a way of putting fuel into the airplane (hydrogen?) quickly is a must.

It really depends on how dense they can store the power. If you can store, say, 3,000 miles of flying in a charge, would you want to pay "away from home" prices for electricity? Because, they will charge (pun intended) a serious markup on that juice. Too, once they master the carbon nanotube capacitors (or whatever actually transpires that is equivalent), charging may become a 15 minute affair in the barn. We would just have a similar capacity "battery" in the hanger ready to discharge at 10,000 amps for a rapid recharge; this "accumulator" would be on constant charge to the grid.

[MacNab]

Still waiting for the invention of the Shipstone...

[Ola]

I can only make one sure prediction. The TV of 2042 might be holographic or telepathic, but the "technology of the future" shows it will display will feature the Moller Skycar as still in development.

[breister]

Originally Posted by prkaye

I have this discussion with other scientists frequently. We've seen a massive expolosion of technology in the last few decades, but much of that can ultimately be traced back to the invention of the transistor (often indirectly - computing power has been applied to many other areas of science, and so they too owe their rapid advancements to the transistor). But Moore's "Law" is not a fundamental law of nature, it's just a trend, and for digital computers we will see it flattening out soon, I promise. My own area of expertise is in quantum computation, and I would be very surpised if this becomes a useful "technology" in anything near 35 years. Moore's "law" for digital computers (the power of which drives advancements in many other areas of science) is limited by fundamental physics. Once we make transistors too small, classical physics, implicit in their design, no longer holds. This limit is coming sooner than you may think.

Technology has its roots in physics. Lee Smolin, a leading theoretical phycisist whom i have met several times at the Perimeter institute in Waterloo, has a new book called "the trouble with physics". The trouble with physics is that really nothing fundamentally new has been discovered for the last 30 years. String theory is very likely a dead-end, or at least not useful in making predictions (which is the very purpose of science).

As someone else posted earlier, there was for a time a "moore's law" type trend in aerospace technology. How rapidly we went from the first flight of the Wright brothers to landing a man on the moon. But rocket technology has not really changed in decades, and we're still flying fundamentally the same piston and jet-powered airplanes we were decades ago. Only the computers on them have really changed much (sure there have been other incremental improvements, but certainly not exponential-type leaps forward). Ramjets and Scramjets have yet to really pan-out. So that was an example of the Moore's "law" that lasted only a few decades before flattening out. Just like Moore's "law" for digital computers will flatten out in the coming decades.

Genetics on the other hand, is right at the beginning of the "Moore's law" type trend... I bet we'll see a massive explosion of that technology over the next 35 years which will dramatically change things (and hopefully we can manage the risks associated with it). It too will eventually flatten out though... only a finite subset of the structure of the universe can be accessible to finite minds. As an immediate corollary, science and technology cannot increase without bound.

Based on your occupation, I will assume for arguments' sake that you are "smarter" than I am - the many tests I have taken across the years peg me at the top 1/2 of 1%, which just means that there are still 30 MILLION folks smarter than I am! Kinda helps keep things in perspective...

Still, even smart folks can get caught in a paradigm of thinking which distorts their perspective. Just because we have not achieved the expertise in materials; propulsion; engineering; etc. to ECONOMICALLY fly faster than current jets does not mean we have not advanced. It took 5,000 years of struggling for man to exceed 30mph in travel; looking at a "normalized" exponential curve our rapid advancement to supersonic flight would indicate that the curve just isn't perfect, not that the trend is wrong.

I would fundamentally disagree that the transistor is the primary invention of the last 50 years - in fact, it was not even much of an invention except in that it made manufacture of logic devices much more economical.. Logic gates existed before the transistor; it was merely one of many advances in materials and engineering and physics which enabled placing computers in smaller places. However, I will agree with you that computation will ultimately be the paradigm which supplants humans as the smartest intelligences on this planet.

Nor are we truly nearing the limits of miniaturization. We have yet to successfully explore 3 dimensional manufacture of circuits - that alone guarantees us another decade or so of Moores' Law.

If you have not already done so, I would heartily recommend reading, "The Singularity is Near" by Ray Kurzweil (whose name may be familiar to you for his work in Artificial Intelligence). Dummy that I am, I can't read more than about 5 pages at a time before I have to take a week to think about what he relates about what is really happening in science today. Basically, it is not any ONE field of advance in our knowledge which is fueling the exponential growth in knowledge, but the interplay between the various fields.

Of course, at the end of the day Life doesn't really care what you or I think! But I'm sure that whatever happens, the next 50 years will be fascinating.

Cheers,

Bill

[prkaye]

However, I will agree with you that computation will ultimately be the paradigm which supplants humans as the smartest intelligences on this planet.

Ha!! I actually have real doubts about that... but the philosphy of mind is perhaps too far-afield to debate on VAF forums Penrose has some good books on that topic.

I am familiar with Kurzweil's singularity idea, and I don't buy it for one minute! It's a neat argument, but I don't buy it. However the idea about new progress being at the interface between discliplines is right-on. Quantum computing has physicists and computer scientists talking to each other like never before, and each of those disciplines brings powerful new ideas to the other. I love hearing cosmologists use information theory to explore ideas about black holes. Anyway, debates about this sort of thing merit an entire forum on their own... so probably VAF is not the place to go too far with this. The easiest way to settle this is to talk again in 35 years and take stock of the advanges in technology then.

By the way, having a PhD doesn't really say a whole lot about one's intelligence (except that it's probably above some reasonable threshold). The guy in the office next to me "only" has a Master's, and he's waaaaaay smarter than I am. He's no good with his hands though, so he says he could never build a plane.

[sprucemoose]

Originally Posted by Ola

it will display will feature the Moller Skycar as still in development.

That is the funniest thing I have read here in a while. Well done!

[Steve Brown]

Originally Posted by breister

.............
The Human Genome Project was started with a goal of identifying all of the major genes within a 15 year timespan. 7 1/2 years into the project, they had identified less than 1% of the genes, and pundits were writing it off saying, "it was too ambitious."
They finished early.
............
The downfall of hydrogen is space, not weight. Even liquid hydrogen is too bulky for cross country flight - it is a dead end of the paradigm of combustion power.
...................
My point was just that the AC controllers are currently in the neighborhood of $10-15 thousand - and we don't need them for those of us looking to upgrade inexpensively. The only "price" of going the cheap route would be annual inspection / replacement of brushes and power solenoids.

It really depends on how dense they can store the power. If you can store, say, 3,000 miles of flying in a charge, would you want to pay "away from home" prices for electricity? Because, they will charge (pun intended) a serious markup on that juice. Too, once they master the carbon nanotube capacitors (or whatever actually transpires that is equivalent), charging may become a 15 minute affair in the barn. We would just have a similar capacity "battery" in the hanger ready to discharge at 10,000 amps for a rapid recharge; this "accumulator" would be on constant charge to the grid.

You analogy with the human Genome project is flawed for several reasons.
-That is "exploration" not engineering. They didn't design a human Genome, they simply mapped out what was there.
-The Genome project was recently conceived due to the recent discovery that there even is a Genome.
-The Genome project had only very speculative commercial value
-Etc

Electric cars (propulsion) has been in existence for over 100 years. Battery power of other gadgets: radios, watches, computers, phones, etc, has provided a very tangible & strong commercial incentive to improve. The slow pace of development has been related to battery chemistry - storing energy in a reversible chemical reaction.

The big advancements have come with different reactions: NiCad, NMH, Lithium (in various flavors). Each one comes with it own challenges that can take decades to master.

I don't completely disagree with your assertions about hydrogen. It is bulky, and hard to store. I don't think I would go as far as saying its a "dead end".

The problem with carbon nanotube capacitors, or any high density capacitor technology is charge/discharge rates. High capacity does not correlate to fast charge rates. In fact, the opposite tends to be true. The geometry that dramatically increases the plate surface are of the capacitor also dramatically increases the equivalent series resistance (ESR) of the capacitor. Ohm's law is the enemy:
Power = current^2 x Resistance

That is why as a general rule the RMS current ratings go down as storage density goes up. Fast charge or discharge rates are limited by heating of the capacitor.

That "general rule" only changes (significantly) when you use a different conductive material (silver, copper, aluminum, etc). Carbon is not a great conductor so I'm doubting a carbon nanotube capacitor will have a relatively high RMS current rating.

Brushes, solenoids, etc - electromechanical devices, are neither as efficient or as reliable as their solid state counterparts. Highly efficient electric motors using brushes are not reality. Neither are highly reliable ones.They are also much noisier from an RF standpoint since their operation inherently involves arching to some degree. Electromechanical switching for electric powered flight is not even a dead end, it a non-starter.

The good news is that the production cost of power electronics has very good economy of scale. Also, once volumes go up the competition is brutal. There is no reason for this stuff to cost $10k-15k in volume. I'm going to shoot from the hip and say that the cost should be somewhere between the cost of a fixed pitch prop and a constant speed prop in volume.

BUT: I'm sticking to my main assertion that "charging" will never be a practical means of electric powered cross country flight. The "fill up" is going to be in play until long after I am dead. If a fill up for electric power is not workable, then electric power is not workable for (cross country) flight.