The thrill is back!

Leonard David's Space Colonization: The Quiet Revolution on Space.com is the most exciting thing I've read in a long time. It reminds me of the way I used to feel about technology back in the 60's when I was a kid who was addicted to NASA launches and whose favorite TV show was Jonny Quest. Back then, the words "New and Improved!" were anything but a tired advertising gimmick to me.

David begins his article by suggesting that the "giggle factor" is gone from the general public's perception of private space efforts, thanks mainly to Burt Rutan's achievement with his SpaceShipOne. But, to me, there may be something much more profound going on, something that is usually derided as "gee-whiz", but which is, I think, actually - hopefully - a growing excitement about the possibilities of the future:

"During the last half of the 20th century, a host of technologies and disciplines which had witnessed millennia of slow or no growth…suddenly went exponential," McCullough reported at the STAIF meeting.

McCullough pointed to photography, chemistry and quantum mechanics that have combined to produce a new industrial revolution. Electrical and mechanical engineering are on courses that appear to indicate unbounded exponential improvement. Delving into the structure of DNA has spurred a better understanding of the cellular processes. The human genome has been sequenced and micro biomechanics has taken off, he said.

Furthermore, the centuries old technology of printing has been extended to three dimensions with inks of polymers, ceramics, wood and metals.

"These technologies have affected other technologies so that now at the dawn of the 21st century, one technology after another is assuming an exponential trajectory," McCullough noted. . . .

"There are so many technologies coming on," McCullough told SPACE.com. "The commercial drivers of these technologies are so massive, and the money is so large, that they they’re going to come right out of the blue," he said.

There are many more advancements that are already in the pipeline, McCullough said. "Some of the technologies that are out there are going to allow us to do some things that people are going to find incredible."

I can only hope that we see fit to provide the freedom required to keep this revolution going.