Engineering:
Versabar VB10000
This rig remover can unearth an entire oil rig from under water in a few short hours and for a quarter of the price. The Versabar VB10000 is extremely necessary, as the U.S. has identified 1,800 rigs that have to be excavated within 10 years.

Green Tech:
Bio Soil Enhancers Forage Boost
These bio soil enhancers raise productivity and lower watering needs. Grass yields increase by 20% over standard fertilizer. Learn more about the inventors at AuroraAgra, LLC.

Wysips
The world’s first transparent photovoltaic film. Wysips turn almost anything into a power source. This film has thin strips filled with solar cells alternating with transparent areas, so it appears transparent has thousands of potential applications.

Health:
Diagnostics for All
All it takes is a drop of blood on a stamp-size paper chip and in 15 minutes a color will appear that indicates liver health. Diagnostics for All’s “chip lab” costs less than a penny to make and allows patients to pay about a nickel for treatment.

Avita/ReCell Spray-on-Skin
ReCell Spray-On-Skin grows cells quickly and applies new skin to a bad burn, helping it heal more quickly.

Aviation and Space:
Messenger
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab’s Messenger probe was the first spacecraft to enter Mercury’s orbit. The probe sent back the first close-up photos taken of Mercury since 1975.

Security:
Recon Scout XT
This bot is tough enough to be thrown into any environment, even through a window, beaming back to its handler live video footage.

Gadgets:
Eye-Fi Direct Mode
Eye-Fi SD cards do not need Wi-Fi to share photos and video from a camera on the Web. All you need is a location with cell service and you can download, upload and share through e-mail any photos you want.

Home Entertainment:
Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface
This 40-inch thin tabletop computer sees and responds to whatever gets placed on it.

This past summer I heard about a project to extend the concept of 3D manufacture to space. It seems like a great idea, if we are eventually going to become space faring. The concept is simple. Rather than manufacturing everything needed on earth and launching it at great expense into space, instead put 3D manufacturing machines into space, and provide a stock of raw materials, either from earth or acquired in space from asteroids, Mars, wherever. Then, when a need for a new or replacement device arises, manufacture it on the spot.

MADE IN SPACE team members Adam Ellsworth, Brinson White and Jason Dunn wave to the camera while testing multiple 3D printers in zero-gravity.

One company with this dream is Made in Space. They are pioneering “additive manufacturing,” which means simply the process of building a product layer by layer. Materials can include plastics, titanium, aluminum. When Made in Space conducted their tests over the summer, they manufactured items like a scaled-down wrench, that became the first ever tool manufactured in limited gravity (they were flying on the NASA parabolic flights that simulate zero-gravity.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, author, consultant, blogger, internet video producer and Founder of Futurist.com. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Glen Hiemstra is a futurist speaker, author, consultant, blogger, internet video producer and Founder of Futurist.com. We are booking programs for the Fall-Winter and for 2012. To arrange for a speech contact Futurist.com.

Related Blog Posts:
Our Future in Space: Moving Ahead
Space Tourism 2011
Travel to Mars in 39 Days

Photo and illustration courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith

Interestingly, the assumption about this material in the meteorites is not that they are passengers who just happened to be along for the ride, but that comets and asteroids may have the chemistry to actually manufacture the stuff of life. Either way, such research lends credence to the likelihood that life exists elsewhere, and the possibility that life here began somewhere else.

The final space shuttle mission ended with the landing of Atlantis this morning.

How do you feel about these three milestones? I feel some pride and optimism that the human venture into space will continue. But more than that I feel a sense of regret that so little of the original promise has been fulfilled, because we did not try.

It is safe to say that my interest in “the future” coincided with my interest in our future in space. Coming of age as Sputnik was launched, eagerly getting up in the early morning to watch all the manned launches of 1960’s, waiting nervously for Eagle to touch down on Tranquility Base in 1969, were all formative experiences in how I thought about the future. By sheer synchronicity the college at which I was a student in 1970 hired as its president the person who had been director of program planning for building Apollo, Ed Lindaman. Working with him cemented my belief that the human adventure in space would be part of the likely, and desired future.

Dr. Lindaman said, in the 1970’s that while the early manned missions from Mercury through Apollo, along with the Russian manned space program, were analogous to the early explorers of the globe. They would go out, see what is there, and return with a report. The shuttle, he believed, would be more analogous to the Conestoga Wagon, which carried average people into the wilderness with the intent that they stay there as settlers.

One can make a case that the final shuttle missions, which focused mostly on building and maintaining the International Space Station, have in a way succeeded in delivering settlers into a near permanent presence in space. It is an achievement, but a modest one. Along the way we have been diverted into other investments, other problems and issues. For the next few years U.S. astronauts will rent space on Russian spacecraft when they want to go into space. Several private companies will compete to build the next U.S. spacecraft designed to put people into orbit. It will be several years before we know who succeeds, or whether they will succeed. We will find out whether companies that must ultimately show a profit can actually make a business of space travel. If the answer to that is no, then I suspect that years from now when we watch humans return to the moon, or land on Mars for the first time, they will not be from the U.S.

Other writers are noticing the same events as I, and commenting in pithy ways. I was especially taken by the work of The Pain Comics, who thought to compare the adventure of going to the moon to the adventures in Afghanistan. Both the cartoon comparison and the commentary that goes with it are enlightening.

The author comments…

So this is the future we’ve chosen: instead of colonies on the Moon or Mars, sandbag bunkers in Afghanistan and concrete fortifications in Iraq. Instead of soaring upward and outward, we’re hunkering down with ammo. The new generation of consumer toys that mostly just lets us pursue the same tawdry old primate pastimes of bragging, gossip and getting off are pretty chintzy consolations for the promise of new worlds reneged on. So okay, we can find out whether that old PSA about lead poison that gave us nightmares as kids is on YouTube yet, or get back in touch with our middle school crushes on Facebook. That’s cool, I guess. But we could have walked on Mars.

I do think that human destiny is in part tied up in moving off world. If I was King for day, we’d go there faster.

Were you there 42 years ago? Where should we be 42 years from now?

Can we become Apollo’s Children?

The space experience race is on.

I have always wanted to go into space. It could happen sooner than we think. All I need is the money.

According to the Space Tourism Society, billionaires such as Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, and Sir Richard Branson are spending hundreds of millions of dollars building space enterprise/tourism companies. Millions of government dollars are supporting these efforts as international competition for space business prestige and profit heats up. The U.S. federal government in particular is pushing the entry of private companies into the space launch business, intending soon to rely on private companies for most space access.

For those of you wanting to be a space tourist, or wanting to work in the business, the Space Tourism Society is hosting Space Tourism 2011 (ST11) on April 28, 2011. This international annual event will bring together leaders in many fields involved in building the space enterprise/tourism industry and creating the orbital lifestyle as well as new participants seeking business, marketing, and investment opportunities and exciting space careers.

There are a number of companies already selling seats on their rocketplanes. You can read more about these on MSNBC and Popular Science.

Our favorites for personal access so far are Virgin Galactic‘s SpaceShipTwo and XCOR’s Lynx. Virgin Galactic is pricey, charging $200,000 per passenger, but they already have $30 billion in pre-bookings from over 200 people. SpaceShipTwo plans to take you on a 2.5 hour trip with 6 minutes of complete weightlessness. They are currently running tests and plan to start taking ticketed passengers in 2012 .

XCOR‘s Lynx rocketplane is planning commercial rides starting this year for only $95,000. It reaches 60 miles in 30 minutes and travelers achieve weightlessness during the 4 minute apogee. The Lynx has only 2 seats, so you get to sit shotgun next to the pilot every time. XCOR has established a commercial relationship with an entity named Space Experience Curacao (SXC). In November 2010 SXC linked up with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. KLM plans to offer vacation packages to Curacao (in the “Netherlands Antilles” in the Caribbean) and from there into space aboard an XCOR Lynx spaceship.

Both of the XCOR and Virgin Galactic rocketplanes currently launch from Mojave Spaceport in California, but Virgin will move eventually to their Spaceport America now being built in New Mexico and they also have plans for Sweden.

“Eventually there will be a price war,” according to Doug Graham, former spokesman for XCOR. “The market is going to decide if floating around demands a premium over a front row seat.” He may be comparing the XCOR seat next to the pilot to primary competitor Virgin Galactic, where passengers will sit in the cabin, but the same comment could easily be directed at the more complex and costly space tourism goal of placing people in orbit.

Space Adventures, based in Virginia, is the one company offering the true astronaut experience complete with training. Space Adventures flies private-pay passengers on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, and for the trip they charge over $20 million. If you ask us, $20 million is steep, though you do get an extended stay in orbit.

However, if space hotel dreamers like Bigelow Aerospace succeed with their inflatable space station-like modules, cheaper accomodations in space may become available. Bigelow is currently testing its inflatable module Genesis II in orbit while the more advanced module called Sundancer is scheduled for launch and testing in 2014. NASA too is looking into adding a Bigelow module to the International Space Station.

Meanwhile, perhaps the most successful commercial space company to date, SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, became the first company to send a privately developed craft into orbit and retrieve the craft upon re-entry. Now they set their sites on the long-term goal of launching human crews into space. As SpaceX announced in a press release on January 17, 2011:

The Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to fly at least 11 more times and the Falcon 9 launch vehicle is scheduled to fly 17 times before the first Dragon crew flight. Given the extensive manifest of Falcon 9 and Dragon, the SpaceX system will mature before most other systems will be developed.

The inaugural flight of the Dragon spacecraft confirmed what we have always believed—the responsiveness and ingenuity of the private sector, combined with the guidance, support and insight of the US government, can deliver an American spaceflight program that is achievable, sustainable and affordable. The SpaceX team is excited about the new opportunities and challenges the New Year will bring.

To sum up, wider access to space, including for you and me if we have the money, is coming. Companies like Virgin Galactic, are already pre-selling seats. It is likely that they, and others, will succeed and through efficiency and competition bring down the prices. A few more years and it might be affordable for everyone.

[This post was updated on January 20, 2011 based on factchecking from XCOR. Please see their comment.]

But, SpaceX and Dragon are aimed at Earth orbit operations, not Mars, and so how are the two destinations connected?

First, SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk, made history yesterday and today, as indicated in their press release:

“SpaceX launched its Dragon spacecraft into low-Earth orbit atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 10:43 AM EST from Launch Complex 40 at the Air Force Station at Cape Canaveral.

“The Dragon spacecraft orbited the Earth at speeds greater than 17,000 miles per hour, reentered the Earth’s atmosphere, and landed in the Pacific Ocean shortly after 2:00 PM EST.

“This marks the first time a commercial company has successfully recovered a spacecraft reentering from low-Earth orbit. It is a feat performed by only six nations or government agencies: the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India, and the European Space Agency.”

You can see more on the story here.

If we dig deeper we find that this launch program was supported though not fully paid for by NASA. NASA’s hope and plan is to turn the low-earth orbit business over to private companies like SpaceX, and thus free up NASA’s limited resources to concentrate on missions to far away destinations, like Mars.

That is where another private company comes in, AdAstra Rocket Company (AARC), whose CEO is former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz. This company is also working with NASA, to develop the Vasimr plasma engine. Such an engine will use a small nuclear reactor to generate electricity, which in turn transforms hydrogen gas into plasma, generating a thrust level capable of speeds sufficient to get to Mars in 39 days. This is in contrast to the current journey of about two years for the round trip and even that requires selecting a very limited launch window that come around only every 25 months. Prototypes of the Vasimr engine have been successfully fired on earth, and AARC plans a test in space at the Space Station in the coming years in hopes of being operational by 2020.

Obviously, then, SpaceX becomes critical in ferrying people and materials into orbit for such testing, so that trips to Mars become feasible.

And, in fact about three years ago at a Future In Review conference I attended a small seminar with Elon Musk of SpaceX, where he described his own dreams of travel to Mars, in a way that was inspiring and confident. Musk said he expected people to be traveling to Mars by 2030, and I certainly hope he was right.

The SpaceX company of Elon Musk launched its Falcon 9 into orbit for the first time today – this is one of the private spacecraft that NASA is counting on for future access to space.

After one aborted launch attempt that shut down automatically when telemetry readings were not correct, a second attempt took the craft successfully to orbit. Look for updates here

What I find especially interesting about SpaceX and their plans is that they are quite clear about their vision to expand human activity in space. They are not timid about saying so. And by the way they have some 31 launches already scheduled through 2015, including becoming the supply ship to the space station if all goes according to plan

Exciting.

Update:
Video now on YouTube…