Living and working in space will also dramatically affect people’s lives on Earth, where regenerative life support systems (RLSS) and ecological engineering will have applications for climate restoration. And, of course, all of this advancement will blur the lines between simulation and reality, robotic and human, artificial intelligence and natural. One thing is clear: life will never be the same again… again!

Migration to space
Some major developments are expected for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and beyond by the end of this century. As noted in our previous segment, Life in 2050, humanity can already expect LEO to be a very busy place by mid-century. At that point, the space lanes will likely be criss-crossed by reusable spaceplanes, commercial space stations, and many satellites!

By 2100, LEO will likely have transitioned from a commercialized environment to a populated one. This will be helped immensely by the creation of a Space Elevator, which could be realized using graphene ribbons, as soon as the late 2030s. By 2050, it is a safe bet that this structure will be in development, and by 2100, it’s a safe bet that more than one will exist.

In fact, three Space Elevators could exist by the turn of the century, located equidistant from each other along the equator. These could be elevators on land located in northern Brazil (serving the Americas), Kampala, Uganda (servicing Africa and Eurasia), and the island of Borneo (serving East Asia-Pacific). Alternatively, they could be built at sea on the islands of Isla Santa Cruz (Pacific), São Tomé and Príncipe (Atlantic), and the Maldives (Indian Ocean).

Possible names include the Beanstalk, the Ladder, the Cable, the String, and the Thread, or whatever the nations hosting them decide. The presence of these elevators will mean that spaceplanes and rockets will have limited use. While they will still probably be used for launching small payloads or private customers, large groups of people and heavy cargo will be “lifted” to orbit and beyond.

As a result, Low Earth Orbit Habitats (LEOH) could become very common by 2100, allowing for an “orbital population” that numbers in the millions. These habitats will consist of pinwheel stations, O’Neil Cylinders, or both. They will rotate to provide artificial gravity, have functioning biomes that act as regenerative life support systems (RLSS), and accommodate tourists, research facilities, workers, and residents.

These habitats will require regular transportation services, which could involve small spacecraft using ion thrusters powered by tiny nuclear reactors. This will mean that the space lanes need to be kept clear of any “space junk,” which will probably require a fleet of automated robotic “trash collectors” to remove it on a regular basis.

Since the task of junk removal will likely have been perfected during an earlier “commercialization” phase, it will take care of itself at this point. Similarly, stations in orbit between Earth and the Moon will rely on autonomous robots to handle everything from manufacturing and asteroid mining to refueling and refurbishing services for spacecraft.

Speaking of automated robots, several emergency stations are bound to be in cislunar space by 2100. These stations and their robots will have one purpose: to launch kinetic impactors (high-tech bullets with guidance systems) to slam into Near-Earth Asteroids (NEA) or interstellar objects (ISO) that threaten Earth and the Moon.

This raises another important possibility. By 2100, based on our current plans and rate of progress, humanity will have established permanent settlements on the Moon and Mars. After the U.S., the EU, China, Russia, and India build long-term habitats around the Moon’s south pole, with additional facilities in orbit, regular trips to the Moon will become possible.

By 2050, a commercial tourism industry will emerge, followed by the creation of permanent housing. This will be followed by the rise of local economies, the adoption of local cryptocurrencies (e.g., Luna Coin, Marscoin, etc.), and the creation of an interplanetary internet.

Educating ourselves
Given the exponential growth in communication technology, digital media, the Internet of Things (IoT), and implanted devices, distance and self-directed education will likely be common. While people will still be able to “go to school,” physical schools will likely be gone by 2100, as will physically present (and human) teachers.

Instead, people will hop on the internet (or whatever it has come to be known at this point) and join virtual classrooms. This will likely be mandatory for children and adolescents, and curricula will still be subject to standardization. Instruction will be assisted by advanced AIs that can direct student learning, recommend resources, pose questions and challenges, and organize virtual “field trips.”

AI will also play a major role in diagnostics and the assessment of student progress. While gene-editing and augmentation technology are likely to have eliminated neurological conditions like Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Dyslexia, and Learning Disabilities (LD), student activities could still provide insight into any possible difficulties they are experiencing (or may experience down the road). This same data could also be used for career counseling and identifying fields where a student will excel.

The process will be more open and voluntary for young adults and those seeking education later in life. In fact, for anyone with the proper augments, education may be a matter of simply downloading information directly into their brains. This could be done via neural implants capable of encoding data into synaptic form in the temporal lobes, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

Since schooling will no longer be restricted by physical environments, a wide array of classes and subject matter will be available. While children will still be required to learn the basics — reading, writing, arithmetic, coding, and virtual environment engineering — mature students will have access to a virtually limitless array of information and knowledge.

Language AIs are also likely to eliminate any communication barriers, making it possible to receive an education in one’s language of choice while also providing schooling in other languages. Given the international situation expected by 2100, when all continents will have achieved economic parity, well-educated students may be fluent in a variety of English, Arabic, Mandarin, Hindi, Swahili, Spanish, and similar major languages.

Education is also projected to become far more ubiquitous by the end of the century. According to statistics from the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, the gap between rich and poor nations will narrow considerably by 2100. In 2020, 1.62 billion people worldwide (21%) reportedly had a secondary school diploma, 932.28 million (12%) had a post-secondary education, while about 730 million people (almost 10%) had no formal education whatsoever.

Based on projections, the study estimate that by 2100, about 3.11 billion people worldwide (33%) will have a secondary diploma, 3.53 billion (38%) will have a post-secondary education, and just 81 million people worldwide (less than 1%) will have no education.

A positive outgrowth of all this will be a new sense of globalism in education. Rather than merely learning about their own country, its culture, and its history, students will be exposed to a diverse range of materials that help prepare them for life in an increasingly connected world.

Will we still go to war?
In 1898, the Polish-German railway financier and military analyst Ivan Bloch published a six-volume study titled Future War and its Economic Consequences, published in English as, Is War Now Impossible? In this prophetic study, Bloch predicted that industrial production and technologies like smokeless powder, magazine rifles, machine guns, and quick-firing artillery would make dominance on the battlefield impossible.

Bloch’s insights accurately predicted World War I, where trench warfare, stalemate, and attrition brought societies to the verge of collapse and triggered revolutions. However, there was another “prophet” who made accurate predictions before the war. In his 1913 novel, The World Set Free, famed British writer H.G. Wells anticipated that the future of war would see the development of even more powerful weapons that would break any stalemate and lead to the total destruction of societies — the nuclear bomb!

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this, it is that technological development can lead to bottlenecks but can also be used to break them. The timeless game of one-upmanship between the sword and shield is not likely to end any time soon. And between augmentation, nanotechnology, clinical immortality, and the migration of human beings to space, there is immense potential for new weapons and new theatres of war.

Even so, warfare by 2100 will probably be entirely unrecognizable by today’s standards. Tanks are not likely to survive to mid-century, and armored vehicles will likely become completely automated. Robots, drones, and autonomous weapons systems are likely to do the majority of the fighting, and conventional firearms are likely to have already been replaced by Gauss rifles and directed-energy weapons (aka. lasers)

Soldiers themselves, though perhaps still flesh and blood, will be enhanced via augmentation and nanotech to the point that they are “transhuman”. They will be protected by suits of nanofabricated supermaterials that make them highly resistant to explosions, ballistic impacts, shrapnel, and other forms of physical assault.

These suits might also come with additional shielding made possible by nanoparticles and “Teslaphoresis.” In this process, a Tesla coil generates an electromagnetic field that can be used to manipulate matter. When applied to a soldier’s armor, graphene nanoparticles or other supermaterials would be organized to form a protective envelope to stop incoming objects.

Handheld laser and plasma weapons will surely be called upon to counter these suits, which have rendered bullets all but harmless. In response, engineers could turn to “force fields” to protect against focused energy attacks. According to research by a team of students from the University of Leicester, shields can be created using ionized particles (plasma) to shield oneself from electromagnetic radiation.

Under these circumstances, soldiers may choose to put aside their projectile and beam weapons and get up close and personal. Using the same technology that provides for shielding, soldiers could command their suits to produce melee weapons from nanoparticles (just like the villains from the Terminator franchise) And given all the high-tech equipment involved, electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons and countermeasures will surely be used!

As for new theaters of war, the migration of humans to space could mean that future wars will be fought in space, on the Moon, on asteroids, and on other planets. Combat operations could include battling piracy and “rogue factions” that prey on commercial traffic, protecting orbital habitats and stations from raiders, or nations enforcing sovereign claims over land and resources.

 

Again, the majority of the fighting will probably be handled by autonomous robots, but could also involve transhuman soldiers. This will mean that future soldiers must be trained to deal with microgravity and low gravity as part of combat operations. It’s also likely to mean that military space vessels will be needed to deploy them and their robotic helpers, as well as fighter craft capable of operating in the vacuum of space and Earth’s atmosphere.

Already, military planners are preparing for the day when 6th generation fighters take to the air, capable of hypersonic speed and operating in the upper atmosphere. By 2100, these fighters will have been replaced by several subsequent generations that expand on their capabilities.

Based on developments in other fields, the odds-on possibility is that these fighters will combine directed-energy weapons, missiles, and railguns with sophisticated AI and mind-machine interface and self-modulating fuselages. This will allow them to go from operating in an atmospheric environment to the vacuum of space and landing or docking with ships. The age of the aerospace fighter will be upon us!

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These and similar predictions are in no way, shape, or form guaranteed to come true. In fact, any attempt to predict the future is likely to fail — if past rates of success are any indication. However, predictions are still important because of what they tell us about today. To quote William Gibson:

“Every imaginary future ever written is about the time it was written in. People talk about science fiction’s predictive possibilities, but that’s a by-product. It’s all really about now.”

In a way, predicting what life will be like 25, 50, or 100 years from now is about measuring the state of our civilization today and expressing our hopes for the future. And hope is certainly the right word when it comes to some of the more realistic projections for the future. By mid-century, many unpleasant and frightening developments are expected to happen.

These include mass extinctions, rising tides, drought, famine, wildfires, disease, and migrations caused by anthropogenic climate change – in short, pestilence, famine, and death! But if we survive all this, by 2100 the projections look more positive. Not only will global populations begin to level off and slowly decline, but mass extinctions are expected to be over, and the process of climate restoration will have begun.

As history has shown, no change is ever all good or all bad, but always mixed or ambiguous, only the pace changes.