The Future of Humanity: Galactic Empire, PEZ-Driven Starships, and Girls Drinking Beer

“Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich, and, on the whole, tax-free.”  – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This is what happens when you don’t pay your PEZ® bill – they send in the enforcers.

I had a comment from James Dakin in the comment section the other day that really made me think, which is as painful as it sounds.  James runs the excellent blog Bison Prepper (LINK) and is also a prolific author – he’s got bunches of books on Amazon.  His comment was especially nice, because it made me realize that from the outside this blog might look a little, well, schizophrenic.  In one post I’m talking about a future American Civil War, and in another I’m talking about A.I. taking the place over.  What I realized after the comment and stepping back is that in many of these posts what I really do is look at alternative futures.  I try to do it in a dispassionate way.  I’ll not live to see lots of the things I’m predicting, and, like your mom’s butt, hope not to see some of them.  No rational human being wants to see another Civil War, but yet the possibility of that next Civil War exists, and is growing every day.  Also like your mom’s butt.

So, this comment made me step back and realize what I’d been building over time with many of my posts – a range of predictions or projections of alternate futures, which fits in well with the purpose of the blog – these are big picture thoughts – really big picture – it’s harder to be bigger picture than “what is the ultimate future of humanity.”  I then outlined what I’ve written so far, and realized I had gaps about futures I hadn’t talked about.  Those missing alternate futures will be the subject of a few Friday posts from time to time.  I’ll end it up with a capstone piece where I dust off my crystal ball and determine with amazing exactitude the likelihood of any of these futures taking place.  I won’t be doing these every week – I’ve got too many other topics I really want to get to, but I’ll finish eventually next year.  Thanks for the comment that made me realize this, James!

None of these futures is set, but some are more likely than others.  For those playing the home version of our game, you can make your own scorecard out of moist Post-It™ notes, coffee creamer cartons from the break room and green Sharpies®.  Oh, and you’ll know when to use the thumbtacks.

Today’s future is . . . Galactic Empire.

Galactic Empire is the future we’ve all been told to expect, or at least were told to expect when the Soviets were making East German women as feminine as Bruce Jenner.

See, the East German women’s gymnastics team looked no different than the US team. 

Galactic Empire encompassed strong men leading gleaming starships to rescue scantily clad women from danger in sixty minutes, at least weekly, and daily in re-runs.  But the idea was older than that.  Going back to the pulp magazines of the 1920’s to the 1960’s, Galactic Empire wasn’t just a plywood set – it was manifest destiny.  Humans were designed to go out into that, ahem, “Final Frontier” and make everything safe for democracy, even if we had to defeat the Space Nazis®.  Yes, there were always Space Nazis® – I think Hollywood was never satisfied defeating Germany just the one time.  The end result of all of this striving and endless Nazi-vanquishing is that humanity ends up with planetary homes on dozens to thousands of worlds.

When Space Nazis® take you prisoner, they turn up the heat and make sure you’re shirtless and as sweaty as your mom at a paternity test.

Why would we have a Galactic Empire?

Mankind has, for all of the history that we can find, been in an expansion mode.  Bands grew into tribes which grew into nations which grew into kingdoms which grew into empires.  It’s hardwired into us.   And part of why it might be hardwired into us might be the desire to spread our genetics as far and wide as we can.  As individuals and as cultures we have a primal need to for continuity – I want my grandchildren to take my genetics, my ideas, my values into the future.    And space is vast – what wonders await us?  How many places can we set up little paradises in space?  Will there be hot green chicks from Orion?

We’ve even categorized what these Galactic Empires look like – and a Soviet was the one to do it.  Nikolai Kardashev came up with the scale in 1964, and came up with three categories:

• Type 1 – Harness all the energy hitting your home planet.
• Type 2 – Harness all the energy from your star.
• Type 3 – Harness all the energy from your galaxy.

We’re type zero – we haven’t managed to harness every bit of energy hitting the Earth.  Physicist Michio Kaku has stated he thinks we’re 100-200 years out from this goal.  I think he’s just making that up with no particular backing.  Just because Michio has a good handle on theoretical physics doesn’t mean he can even run his cell phone, let alone project civilizational development across centuries regarding multiple complex systems, cultures and projected technological progress.  Oh, wait, he lives in New York.  They know everything.

What’s required for a Galactic Empire?

• New Physics (Maybe) – You can move across the galaxy within the span of a human lifetime. It’s actually conceptually not that difficult at all.  Just move really, really fast.  The faster you move, the slower that time moves (for you).  Light takes 100,000 years to cross the galaxy.  You could do it in a dozen years.  I’ve even calculated how fast you’d have to go:  Very close to the speed of light.  How close?  Within 10* miles per hour of the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second.  And if you did it in that 10 year span, 100,000 years would still have passed on Earth.  At least Blockbuster® is out of business so you don’t end up with the largest return fee in history.

Spoke too soon!

• Excess Energy – Starships require energy – vast amounts. The starship (weighing a mere 80,000 pounds at rest mass) above would require 19X10²⁴ Joules* of energy to get up to speed.  Sounds like a lot?  It is.  It’s the entire energy equivalent of every barrel of oil produced on Earth this year.  For the next 34 million* years – or enough oil to fill a hole the size of New Mexico a mile deep*, or almost enough to cover Kim Kardashian’s butt.  It’s a scale that’s incomprehensible to humans.  There is literally NOTHING I can compare it to so it makes any sense.  And that’s just the fuel.  It would still need oxygen to burn in space, unless they left the vacuum off.
• Back to New Physics – Just about every movie that deals with space travel uses warp drive or worm holes or some sort of jump drive. Why?  Space is just too large and requires astonishing amounts of energy.  Does this physics exist?    Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre has set the (mathematical) groundwork for a . . . warp drive.  He said was inspired by Star Trek™.  Really.  The way the warp drive works to move you quickly across the universe is simple – you cheat.  You shrink the space in front of your ship, and stretch it behind your ship.  It’s like running a forty yard dash in one step.  See?  Cheating.

Here is what warp drive might look like.  Really.

• Willpower – NASA (pronounced naaaay-saw) originally produced more enough rockets for three more missions to the Moon. They got cancelled when Congress saw a shiny new car they wanted to buy.  The follow on Mars mission slated for that distant future of 1991 was cancelled when the nuclear rocket engine was cancelled.  We have to wait for Elon Musk, I guess, I know that he and his rockets can both get high.
• Economic Surplus – To invest in space requires a civilization with sufficient extra productive capacity, I mean, someone has to dig out New Mexico to store the oil. All kidding aside – a sustained program for spaceflight and technological improvements would be required lasting at a minimum for decades.  And more likely the program would have to last for more than a century.  And I can’t keep my attention in one place long enough to . . . oh, a bird.

*I really calculated those numbers – they’re not made up.

Why we might not have a Galactic Empire.

• Space is hard. Every time we look space gets more complex.  Huge speeds.  Massive amounts of force.  Complex systems that all must function.  Then you add in long term effects of weightlessness on the human body, and the hard radiation that our life-giving Sun blasts out into the Solar System.  The good news?  I keep all my stuff on Earth.
• Space is not politically popular. I remember reading a magazine that was geared towards construction, I picked it up one day at an office.  There was an editorial cartoon showing the space shuttle, with the obvious background showing that we needed to spend more money on . . . sewers.    Everybody wants those dollars.  And, I’ll note that for years now the United States has had zero ability to put people into space, instead relying on Russian technology that is more or less Vietnam-war era.  Also like your Mother.  Oh, wait, she really might be that old.

This was an actual cartoon just after we landed men on the moon.  Buzzkill!

• That warp drive thing – it may depend on stuff that may not even exist. Exotic matter?  Negative energy?  We have seen no clues that this stuff even exists.  So maybe Roddenberry was just all about the ladies and spinning a good yarn.
• Energy requirements are vast. Unless the warp drive thing is real, well, we’d have to come up with an alternative propulsion system.  Say . . . PEZ®?    We could create a PEZ© drive.  But for it to work, we would also need to create ANTI-PEZ™.  ANTI-PEZ© is just PEZ™, but made of your normal, garden variety anti-matter.  Unlike pesky oil, when you mix a PEZ™ with and ANTI-PEZ™ they annihilate each other, turning their mass into pure energy.  The good news is that for our starship example above it will only take 110* years to make it at the current PEZ™ production rate of 3,000,000,000 PEZ™ per year.  So, that’s 55 years of PEZ™, and 55 years of ANTI-PEZ™.  I suggest we do the PEZ™ first, since we have absolutely NO idea how to make ANTI-PEZ™.  Note that in this example, I’m assuming we don’t have to transport the mass of the PEZ™/ANTI-PEZ™ with the mass of the ship, and that the PEZ™/ANTI-PEZ™ reaction is 100% effective in adding energy to the ship.  These aren’t outrageous assumptions given that I’ve just postulated a spaceship powered by PEZ™.  Also?  No way to stop the ship other than hitting something.  And when you’re travelling at 99.99999712%* the speed of light?  That might leave a mark.

PEZ

• Timescales are vast. So, unless we spend vast amounts of energy, it will take years.  And years.  And that doesn’t seem like our Galactic Empire at all.

It’s not that a Galactic Empire is impossible, it’s just not horribly likely at this point.  Who could go without PEZ® for 110 years???

*Again, real numbers.  I really did do these calculations because it amused me to turn PEZ™ into a starship propellant.

What other alternatives that get us into space without a Galactic Empire?

All of these are potential ways to get into space.  Note that we might have colonies, but we’d never have foreign exchange students or a Death Star®.

• Seeding – We could send starships filled with stuff to make babies out to new planets. And then?  Planet run by toddlers.  Definitely need to send PEZ™ with them.

 

PEZ® – it can make or break a career.

• Von Neumann Machines – We could send self-replicating robots out into the universe. They stop off at a new Solar System and build copies.  And so on.  Even NOT going much faster than 10% of light speed, in half a million years, these machines could be at every solar system in the Galaxy.  We haven’t seen them . . . so it’s unlikely they’ve been made.  Are we alone?
• Generation Ships – We could send out vast habitats that support life for the thousands of years that it would take to move from one solar system to the next. Hopefully, in a thousand years the civilization didn’t go all Space Nazi, but I’ve seen enough TV to know that it’s 100% certain they will.
• Space Tupperware – We could freeze ourselves (if this is possible) before shipping out. Downside?  Freezer burn.  Imagine cooking a 1000 year old steak.  Now imagine BEING a 1000 year old steak.
• Digitized Human Consciousness – We could digitize a human consciousness and send it into space! No food, no boredom, and it could go see other solar systems.  Dunno about you, but for me this has all the excitement of shooting a Playstation IV™ into space with a copy of Red Dead Redemption 2.

Sadly, the future sold to us back in the day seems to be fairly unlikely.  I’ll rank it against the competition in a future post.  The bright side is that we won’t have PEZ™ shortages for the next 55 years.  Until the killer robots develop a taste for it.  Or until the Civil War breaks the factories or . . . OH, since this is a post about the future of humanity, I almost forgot – it has to have a picture of Oktoberfest girls.  Silly me!