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[91] Of life goes on

I think I will take a break from writing about the future for this entry. The Future series demands me to spend more time than I had planned to invest earlier.

After all my life, I have finally realized that the thing that had kept me going on was the phrase “life goes on”.

Whenever something bad happens, I will regret it but at the same time, I will tell myself to go on and forget about unfortunate event that had befallen me. My inner voice will always say too bad Hafiz. It is your fault but there is no point of blaming, is there? Learn from it and live on. Hope for the better for life goes on.

That was the only thing that had given me hope to live on. Hope for the best. Yet, it seems that hope is something forsaken. On everything that went against my favor, I went through it and hope for a brighter future – nevertheless, when I went through it, immediately after that, the situation took another turn, for the worse. How could it be? How could it be when you said life goes on, life seems to take a worse twist?

Yes, life goes on but must it always be for the worse? Aye, perhaps always is too tough a word but from my perspective, the word always appears to be an underestimation.
A person somewhere in war torn part of Africa, where famine is everlasting, is it possible to hope, to see into the future and say tomorrow is going to be better? How is that possible when now, right at the very moment, that person is dying from hunger, lying on his back while his face faces the scorching UV? Is it possible to say life goes on when at the very moment, when it seems that life is non-existence in the very next minute?

Just a few days ago, I found a better phrase to hang on to. Concentrate on the moment. Yes, hope for the best but hope is nothing when you just hope and dream. What makes hope possible is the moment that you are facing now, at the present, at the very second of your existence; not the past neither the things that will be. When a person is dying from hunger, he (I refuse to use “she”, I am a chauvinist and yes, chauvinism still exist well into the 21st century. At least I am not an extremist. I think that feminism movement should be banned but let us not steer into that water just yet. And oh, I am a little bit racist but let put that aside) needs to concentrate on the moment, find the precious water to live on, not yelling silently to himself I am going to die nor I am going to live through this. If he says he is going to die, then he will not try to search for water. If he believes that he is going to survive, he will depend too much on blind hope.

All he needs to do is concentrate on the moment. He may die but at least he concentrated on the moment and did his best to survive.

Aye, life goes on but like what Yoda said, concentrates on the moment.

I am having a terrible headache now and I have an exam on Thursday. I am worry about the exam but I need to concentrate on the moment. I need to sleep to let the headache pass through me. I need to concentrate on the pain rather than the exam first.

Good night, and pray for my future.

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Future Sci-fi

[90] Of I dream of an utopia IV

Space Lanes and Spaceports

Once the Solar System or at least the inner region of the system is populated, there will be space lanes, much as the present shipping lanes transporting goods and people across vast distance. Although it will take sometimes before lots of lanes to be defined and accepted among the public, the only lanes that will be accepted will be the safest or the fastest route. Once the space lanes are defined, space buses will be the main vehicle transporting Human back and forth from Earth to other colonies. The existence of the lanes is vital to Human expansion in space. It will enable ship pilots to save time instead of trying to figure the best way to navigate their ships.

These lanes or sort of course will not be built with similar fashion as the tube. It would be ridiculously stupid to buill a tube from one place in space to another. By the way, the hazard of meteor shower or the same sort prevents such idea to be implemented.

Instead, a buoy will be placed after every certain among of distance along the lanes. The buoys will transmit some kind of signal to traveling ship. The signal gives out useful information regarding navigation.

One would argue that these buoys be effectively be replaced by a space station placed in a quadrant or so. However, communication between a ship and the station will take time. The buoys effectively tell ship pilots.

Buoys nevertheless do not dismiss the importance of a space station. It must be stressed that these buoys will be under the jurisdiction of the station.

There will at least space station in every planet’s orbit, controlling the space traffic of a particular planet. These space stations will usually act as spaceports, a commercial center of a planet. This will allow space traders to sell their goods at the spaceport instead of descending to the planet and waste precious energy.

There will also be stations built in the middle of space, especially in the middle of a long space lane. The station will act as a pit stop and an entreport station.

Back to the orbit, the spaceport will possibly have an extra feature, or at least a spaceport with a solid planet rather than the gaseous Jupiter or Saturn. The feature will accelerate the economic growth of a planet rather dramatic and check the demand for fuel effectively. Spaceports in Earth’s and Mars orbit will be the upper part of a space elevator. For more information on space elevator, read a past posting in The __earth Inc. here.

To be continued…

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Future Sci-fi

[89] Of I dream of an utopia III

The Minerals and Space Colonization

Currently, crude oil reserve will only sustain us barely through half of the 21st century and it is only the matter of time until all of the minerals will finally be exhausted.

Nevertheless, Human will develop a way to dig even deeper to obtain more mineral. Mines will be built deep in the dark sea trenches. These mines will sustain Human needs when all ground mines are rendered useless.

Although these underwater mines will be prominent in the future scenario, with the ongoing developing aerospace technology, there will be no doubt that future minerals will be mined in outer space, both on Earth’s natural satellite and beyond. These mines will be the foundation of future space cities.

The need of more minerals will lead to the colonization of the Moon. The colonization of the Moon will without doubt be expensive but the advantage of it, by far suppress the economic burdens. During the “Age of Lunar Colonization”, there will be a point where the idea of transporting the water supply from Earth to Moon bases (that will become Moon cities) is unfeasible. In the end, the mining of water will be one of the main agenda. It is known now that there is ice cap somewhere at one of Moon’s poles. If this is not enough, perhaps Human will have to resort to technology that fusions hydrogen and oxygen together to produce the most precious elixir in the universe.

Once science allows Human to explore and travel farther in the cold space, the asteroids will be heavily mined. The asteroid belt will become the place for major mines in the Solar System.

Mars, Earth’s twin will also be the victim of Human expansion because the colonization of the fourth planet will promise a non-stop supply of resources. As time passes by, the notion of terraforming will come to mind. The process of terraforming will consume many years but the possibility of a new Earth will not stop Human from continuing with the process.

The other main reason for space exploration will be Earth inability to support Human’s exponential growth. With open space far becoming scarce, the only way to avoid conflict among the Human is a habitat expansion outside of Earth.

To be continued…

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Environment Future Sci-fi

[88] Of I dream of an utopia II

Two third of Earth surface is covered by water. Two third is such a large portion to be left unused and it goes unmentioned that human will scour for land in any way that is possible. They “reclaim” land for the sea and build skyscrapers to provide more space for their business. Between these two, land reclamation is the most destructive method. Not only it destroys the natural habitat of underwater creatures, it also diverts the natural flow of the ocean and in the end, causing great catastrophe to ecosystems such as swamp and beach.

This is why in the future, in the middle of the ocean, there will be great cities comparable to today’s major cities. The cities will stand under the sea level as well as floating in the middle of nowhere.

The underwater cities will be protected against the powerful water pressure by multiple great dome made out from some high pressure tolerance material. The cities might be built in ocean trenches or simply on shallow sea floor. Some of the cities, if it is huge enough and if the depth of the city is not so great, will reach the water surface and have the pleasure of sunlight to some extend. It will not be surprising to see the city of Singapore or Hong Kong to be both ground-based cities and underwater cities. The land problem there is so critical, in times to come, we might see of these cities’ structures to be built underwater, near its coast instead of seeing major land reclamation projects.

Between the underwater cities, transportation tubes will be constructed much as the same fashion as its ground counterpart plus a few technical details that enable it to survive the intense water pressure. Although there will be tubes, the main type of underwater vehicle will depend on rotor much as what is being use nowadays. These vehicles, submarine if you may, will be amphibious, allowing it to be operated on land (or in the tubes) and underwater.

Being under the water, the water pressure could be another method of producing clean energy and thus helping solving the problem of transporting the much needed electricity to the underwater world.

There will also be cities floating on the wave. It may well be exaggeration to call these Human’s habitat as city as the floating structure is just a large ship that are sailing all around the world. Like on land, almost everything is available for its residents. These ships will only come to shore to restock its supplies. This idea is not far fetch as even right now, the project of such magnitude is underway. Read all about it at www.freedomship.com. Perhaps, the only time when these ships need not to call a port is when they are out of fresh fish supply.

To be continued…

Categories
Environment Future Sci-fi

[87] Of I dream of an utopia

The future that I dream of, an utopian dream.

Once in a while during those times when I was younger than today, the days when I would look into the clouds and think of something that will not relate to my problem in life, the days when a sleep could solve all of my problem, I had always dreamed of an elaborate future society. With details so minute in a scale, I could be God of an advanced populace, managing their life.

The future of which I dreamed of will be a total triumph for the environmentalism movement. The waste management will be so efficient that almost none of the waste, whether it is solid or not, will be recycled. The phrase “want not, waste not” will extinct.

The future holds so many hope and dream. Nightmare could also come true with nuclear holocaust or widespread conventional war. But looking at the bright side, it could be a utopian dream. Described below is my utopia, a situation where environmentalism (rather than democracy) is the crux of Human society.

Pollution

First of the all, the cities of future time will be the main concentration of the Human society as it has for thousand of years. Since the cities contain ton of activities, pollution will be produced most there. To protect the global ecosystem, each city will have lofty towers that will function as supporting structures that will make sure that a city will be enclosed totally within a giant sphere. This sphere is not a physical object but rather, a shield, a cell’s wall that will function a lot like a plant’s membrane that will allow osmosis or more accurately, reverse-osmosis-styled process. The shield will have the ability to filter out any harmful gases or particles from crossing it. This will form an isolated system for a particular city.

All the pollution produced by the city will be recycled or at least being reprocessed locally. For instance, any gas produced by a plant will not be given the right to pass through the shield membrane. This in turn will make a waste build up in the city. For this reason, the processing ability must be both fast and efficient. The rate of the waste processing ability must be at least equal to the pollution that is being produced. It is essential to have a sure ability of pollution reprocessing before the shield is constructed. To ensure this, every polluting entity will have its own pollution eliminator.

In addition, having an enclosed environment for the city will allow the administration of the city to control the condition of the city. To obtain that capability, the shield should have the power to filter the amount of radiation that is allowed to pass through the shield. Having a shield that will sort out both particles and radiation could be hard. Therefore, the shield should have two layers of membrane; one layer will act as a radiation shield while the other as a particle shield. With the ability to sort of radiation, light pollution and in effect, the problem of reprocessing all kind of pollutions will be solved.

If the shield could be seen by naked eye, it will probably not be geometrically hemispherical but rather will have an almost flat surface at the top. A few strong towers will support the shield from within the shield.

Transportation

Secondly, the issue of transportation will be addressed. Ground transportation will mostly be based on magnetic technology, such as the current Maglev train in France. There will be magnetic track in tubes running in the city from one end to another. Tire will be placed by magnetic field generator that will allow vehicles to move forward, backward etc without friction on the track. The vehicles will need not to be fed with fuel but instead, it will run on electricity thus generating no byproduct with the likes of sulphur or carbon dioxide.

The power source of the vehicle will be produced from the movement of the vehicles relative to the track. Nevertheless, there will be some vehicles that will have hover capabilities. Hovering capabilities will allow the driver to travel off the track.

Most likely, the city will only depends on public transportation, not like the present time. The public transportation will be efficient, running 24 – 7. The need to have a personal vehicle will be eliminated although the production of such a vehicle will not be prohibited.
For inter-cities transportation, there will a huge tube connecting cities much like today’s highways. These tubes will also act as pipe lines, power lines and communication lines.

Power

As mentioned above, these tubes will produce electricity. So, while the tubes are serving the populace as a mean of clean transportation, it will also act as a clean, enormous power generator. This idea will make power failure almost unimaginable since these tubes are omnipresent in the city.

Tomorrow’s power plants will be clean-based plant, neither producing harmful gases and particles like coal power plant nor destroying to habitat of animals like hydroelectric power plants. Instead, fusion will play an important role in providing electricity. Solar panels will be placed in the hot blazing barren deserts and wind turbines will be placed in places where strong wind is prevalent, usually in the middle of the seas, like what is being plan somewhere in North Atlantic Sea near Europe. Some of the energy will also be produced in the orbit of Earth and beam down to a receptor on Earth. As a summary, clean energy will dominate the energy market.

To be continued…