The World Future Society recently published technology forecasts for 2010 through 2030 (The Futurist, March-April, 2009). Since this interval is essentially the expected 2015 Maslow Window — where exceptional affluence-induced ebullience thrusts many to elevated levels in Maslow’s heirarchy, making major technology and exploration initiatives seem momentarily very attractive — it’s of interest to examine their projections.

Will Virgin Galactic send the first paying customer into suborbital space (70 miles) on/before 31 Dec 2010? The prediction market Intrade says 25% yes, while Cetron’s panel says 2012 is more like it. Click .

The first article, by well-known futurist Marvin Cetron (Forecasting International Ltd.), describes a timeline first developed by British Telecommunications in 1991. Cetron has updated this effort using 6 consultants, including Dennis Bushnell of NASA, William Halal of George Washington University, and just to make it more mysterious, a Department of Defense technology expert “who chose to remain anonymous.” I heard Professor Halal’s well-attended technology talk at the World Future Society’s annual conference a couple of years ago in Toronto, and was impressed. He authors the second article and describes the TechCast Project as essentially a continuous, online Delphi poll of 100 high-tech executives, scientists, engineers etc. who are provided with data and analyses and then supply their best judgment about most likely timeframe for 70 technologies.

Cetron’s timeline is divided into 5-year intervals, a dozen disciplines (artificial intelligence through wearable and personal technology) and includes a few “Wild Cards.”

The first interval — 2010 to 2014 — is the run-up to the 2015 Maslow Window, and thus is likely to be a very stimulating time. The expected level of unusual excitement is suggested by events of about one long wave ago (i.e., in the late 1950s); e.g., Sputnik, the International Geophysical Year, and the formation of NASA. Cetron’s timeline lists the first suborbital space tours — a fairly safe prediction — for 2012. The Wild Card is “Zero point energy engineered/commercialized; all other energy sources become obsolete.” Because it isn’t clear that such uses are theoretically possible, this is a fun Wild Card. Halal’s timeline also shows space tourism in the same timeframe along with “climate control.” It’s very unlikely that a full-blown Angel-style albedo geoengineering scenario could materialize that early (by 2015), so it must refer to something smaller.

Cetron’s forecasts for 2015-2019 include a artificial heart, quantum computer (Halal lists it near 2023), and 25% of TV celebrities that are synthetic — I thought they already were? The Space category lists “Space tugs take satellites into high orbits (2015).” By analogy with the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window, this is likely to be a time of system and technology development (e.g., like Mercury and Gemini programs), including zero-g medical countermeasures at ISS, for upcoming space missions. This may include pioneering space missions such as the first human interplanetary mission to a near-Earth asteroid — a potential stepping-stone to Mars.

The 2015 Maslow Window should be at its peak between 2020 and 2025+ however Cetron’s timeline lists nothing space-y between 2020 and 2024, but for 2025-2029 he suggests a 350 guest space hotel (2025). Wild Cards include a bio/nano experiment that goes haywire on a regional or global scale, and something that hints at the discovery of extraterrestrials: “Discovery of artifacts that force reconsidering significant aspects of common understanding of human history.”

All Cetron’s big space stuff is at or beyond 2040, including a Moonbase “the size of a small village”, and the first manned Mars mission. Based on the last 200 years, this timing is highly unlikely because the next Maslow Window should open near 2015 and remain open only until the mid-2020s, unless its prematurely closed Apollo/Vietnam-style by a major military conflict expected sometime during the 2020s. Unless we establish a permanent beachhead in space at the Moon or beyond by 2025, it’s likely that post-2025 space adventures will be like those since 1973 — no human missions beyond Earth Orbit — because the next Maslow Window opens near 2071. Halal shows a significant Moon base near 2029, which is more consistent with macroeconomic and historical trends of the last 200 years.

One final point: Cetron explains that adoption of a technology depends on it being “technically feasible, economically feasible, and both socially and politically acceptable.” He then uses the space program as an example and unfortunately propagates a common misconception. “The space-related events…assume that putting human beings into space will remain a priority, but that is not guaranteed…(because) future administrations might downgrade human spaceflight…In that case, the events on our timeline…and the dates will need significant adjustment.”

In fact, patterns in long-term trends in the economy, technology, and society — over the last 200 years — indicate that Great Explorations (like Apollo) and MEPs (e.g., Panama Canal) are fundamentally driven by long waves in the economy. For example, during the 1960s Maslow Window, President Kennedy was easily able to initiate the Apollo program that culminated in humans on the Moon, but collapsed rapidly (and predictably) after 1969. On the other hand, the best efforts of President Reagan couldn’t make the space station materialize in the decade after he proposed it — a decade almost the economic opposite of the great boom of the 1960s, that included the Crash of 1987 (Black Monday).

The rule of the last 200 years appears to be: Great leaders help, but the economy rules.
Which suggests “the new 1960s” should begin in only 5 – 7 years.

The recent completion of the solar arrays on the International Space Station (ISS) and having just marked its 10th anniversary in space, invite us to celebrate and contemplate the station’s birth way back in the 1980s.

It was in 1984 that President Ronald Reagan proposed a manned space station in low Earth orbit; named Space Station Freedom (SSF), it became the progenitor of the current ISS. Called “the next logical step” into space, Freedom was to be ambitiously multifunctional: a satellite servicing facility, spacecraft assembly center, astronomical observatory, a lab to study microgravity’s effects on astronauts, a commercial/industrial manufacturing facility. Reagan’s inspirational rhetoric soared almost as high as the station, “We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain.”

Cost estimates for Space Station Freedom were $ 12.2 B in 1987 and it was to be permanently manned by April, 1997. Click .

The day after Christmas (2008) we decided to visit Reagan’s Presidential Library in Simi Valley because — although we both admired the “Father of the Space Station” — neither of us had ever been there. We were impressed by the beautiful setting, the story of Reagan’s humble beginnings in Illinois, his movie career (including the “win one for the Gipper” video!), his ascent to the California governorship and the Presidency, and most of all, his actual Air Force 1 (a 747) that you see Contributing Editor Carol Lane smiling in front of.

Carol enjoyed this view of President Reagan’s Air Force 1, but still felt that something was missing. Click af1.jpg.

But one thing was missing, and this led to the 1st Shocking Truth about President Reagan (or at least about his library): There was NO mention of the space station!! After looking everywhere we finally gave up. It’s 3 months later now and we’re still surprised.

Of course, compared to “winning the Cold War” — which led in 1993 to the transformation of SSF into today’s ISS — and dismantling the Berlin Wall (a large piece of which is on display in the west courtyard), we know that a project (like SSF) that never came to fruition during Reagan’s 2 terms — and in fact was almost voted out of existence by Congress — would be considered small potatoes. But we still expected something!!!

More recently, as we enjoyed the mountain drive on the way to Indian Wells for a couple days at the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament, we began to come to psychological terms with this (to us) stunning omission in Reagan’s Library. We remembered how President John F. Kennedy played the key leadership role in the first race to space. His charisma, timing, and courage contributed to the first man on the Moon in 1969. But we also were reminded that patterns in long-term trends in the economy, technology, and society over the last 200 years suggest that the fundamental driver behind the Apollo Moon program was the unparalleled economic boom of the 1960s.

Indeed the captivating question about which was most important to Apollo — President Kennedy or the 1960s economic boom — lingered. It all boiled down to this: Could President Kennedy have successfully kicked-off Apollo at any other time than when he did it — the early 1960s? For example, could JFK, the charismatic leader of “Camelot“, have successfully motivated a large space program in the 1980s?

This led us to the 2nd Shocking Truth about President Reagan: Not even the “Great Communicator” himself, arguably at least as charismatic as JFK, could make the space station program happen during the decade after he proposed it.

Were the 1980s just not conducive to Apollo-level Great Explorations or MEPs? Or was there something “wrong” with the Space Station project itself?

Why did the space station experience endless concept redesigns, political turbulence, a hefty $ 100 B price tag, and an unbelievable delay in its completion date from Reagan’s 1994 initial target to the actual date in 2011? …Only 17 years late!!

Of course, ISS is not a Great Exploration in the sense of Apollo or Lewis and Clark, it’s a “national laboratory” circling the Earth every 90 minutes. And it is, after all, the most expensive man-made project in history, by some accounts totaling $100 billion in costs. It involves 16 countries and there is approximately 1,000,000 pounds of hardware in space. The International Space Station comprises 100 elements that were built all over the world and integrated into one structure only in space. In total, the ISS is both an extraordinary engineering and foreign policy accomplishment that guarantee it’s an MEP historically comparable to the Saturn V or the Panama Canal.

On June 12, 2008, while explaining why the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) ultimately failed to generate public support, we proposed 4 “rules” for success for MacroEngineering Projects. Although the SSC violated all four, the space station only violated two of them:

Rule 1: Never initiate a $ multi-B MEP during the downgoing portion of the 56 year energy/economic cycle (it peaked in 1969)…
and,
Rule 3: Large MEPs like SSF or SSC that are proposed between Maslow Windows (i.e., “trough” projects) must be associated with a strategic conflict (e.g. the A-Bomb project during WW II) for them to be viable….

The two other rules were less a factor for the space station:

Rule 2: Never propose a big MEP during the downgoing portion of the 56-year energy/economic cycle when another spectacular MEP has already been approved. Although President Reagan announced Space Station Freedom in 1984 after he had proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) in 1983, they were not really competitive because SDI was a “survival” program — not typically dependent on long waves in the economy — while SSF was a genuine “Maslow Program.”
and,
Rule 4: MEPs proposed at any time must be impressive and inspirational to achieve public approval. Unlike the pyramids, European cathedrals, and the Panama Canal, most of SSC was buried underground and invisible, while SSF/ISS is highly visible directly in space and indirectly visible through the large number of Shuttle launches since 1998 needed to construct it.

Thus it appears likely that the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window was fundamentally driven not by President Kennedy, or even by the specific Great Exploration and MEP involved — but by the huge economic boom that triggered wide-spread ebullience and momentarily elevated Maslow heirarchy levels.

A similar confluence of societal affluence and ebullience is expected near 2015.

It’s true that “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) is one of our favorite classic science fiction films, along with such stalwarts as “Forbidden Planet” and “2001 – A Space Odyssey.” Almost everything about TDESS is fondly remembered today, including the phrase, “Klaatu barada nickto,” which is a safe-word uttered in the film by Patricia Neal to Gort the super-human robot — who has the rather anti-social habit of projecting a death ray out of his nose — so he wouldn’t destroy the world after Klaatu had been shot. The list of pop culture references to this uber flick is impressive even today, over a half century later.

How has Klaatu changed over the last 56 year long wave? Click .

But you can imagine what went through our minds here at 21stCenturyWaves.com when we heard a sequel was being made, and when it appeared in 2008. No matter how many times we redid the calculation in our spreadsheets — the difference between 2008 and 1951 — it always came out the same: 57. To us that’s a magic number because it’s the period of the long wave in the economy (and the energy cycle) that appears to fundamentally drive great explorations, macro-engineering projects, and even major wars over the last 200 years.

Now it could be a coincidence, and we haven’t done the full study of many films and TV shows, and how they’ve resonated with the 56 year cycle. If you know of a study like this please contact us! But when a great, classic science fiction movie like TDESS and its sequel are separated by nearly 56 years, that’s at least symbolic of the signature of the long economic wave that we expect to find in major pop culture elements. Our model explains this signature as due to the omnipresent financial, technological, and cultural influences that long-term fluctuations in the economy have on society during similar portions of the wave; e.g., both the original and sequel of TDESS appeared 7 -8 years before their respective Maslow Windows opened!

The original Klaatu was shot shortly after his arrival on Earth while presenting a gift that would have enabled communication with other planets. His escape, and most of the rest of the movie, is motivated by Klaatu’s desire to learn more about humans and their mutual suspicions and violence. He eventually explains to Professor Barnhardt that our recent (circa 1951) discovery of atomic power and experiments with rockets constitute a threat to the residents of other planets. If humans do not listen, then planet Earth would have to be “eliminated.”

The 2008 Klaatu also arrives with a message: to warn that humanity is on a course to destroy the Earth. But the difference this time is that Klaatu isn’t here to save humanity, he’s here to save planet Earth from humanity! An alien friend of Klaatu, Mr. Wu — who in the film has studied planet Earth and humans for 70 years — states that “there is no hope for them” (humans) and that the process should begin to complete their mission: “Kill the humans to save the Earth.”

In the mid-1980s Bruce went to the World Science Fiction Convention in the Anaheim Convention Center across the street from Disneyland. The Sci Fi memorabilia dealer tables were endless. An extraordinary panel discussion featured all the principals of TDESS, including Robert Wise (director), Edmund North (screenplay), and Julian Blaustein (producer). Although they did not mention that the equations on Professor Barnhardt’s blackboard were courtesy of famous UCLA astronautics professor Samuel Herrick, they did express their greatest pre-release fear that movie audiences would laugh when they saw that the elbows and knees of Gort flexed like rubber, instead of the incredibly strong material the military could not penetrate.

Well nobody laughed.

And like nearly 6 decades ago, we’re worrying again about the original Klaatu’s final warning — that if we continue on our present course, “This Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder.”

Today’s New York Times (3/22/09; M. Higgins) asks rhetorically, “Is Antarctica getting too popular?” The number of tourists traveling to Antarctica reached 45,213 in 2007-08, according to the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators. Over the last decade, Antarctica has experienced an adventure travel boom with the number of tourists skyrocketing more than fourfold.

Antarctic tourism continues its ebullient, decade-long boom because trips are “otherworldly”, moderately expensive, and even risky! Click .

And the Antarctic trips are not cheap. Typical per person cost is around $10,000, but despite the current recession, people are continuing to flock to the “last place on Earth.” Part of the reason, according to tour operators, is that, “Like Everest, Antarctica has become a destination with cachet, favored by adventurous travelers seeking bragging rights.” According to Barbara Banks of Wilderness Travel, Berkeley, CA, “one can experience an otherworldly realm…”

Here at 21stCenturyWaves.com, we call this attitude “early ebullience.” It’s typical of the approach to a Maslow Window when certain elements of society — e.g., high-end clinentele, dynamic societies, and/or groups especially excited about a particular MEP, — anticipate the ebullience that eventually engulfs society during the height of a Maslow Window. Since we apparently are only 5 – 6 years from the opening of the 2015 Maslow Window, early ebullience is expected.

Antarctica is increasingly compelling because it’s not only enthralling, but risky. The Economist (2/14/09) characterizes it as “Waiting for another Titanic.” (Their Titanic imagery is especially interesting considering that the celebrated ship was a seconday MEP of the early 19th Century Peary/Amundsen Maslow Window.) According to Jim Taylor of Polar Cruises, Bend, OR, it’s not as simple as a Mediterranean cruise, because of Antarctica’s severe weather and ice-covered waters. “It’s very different when you’re operating in such a remote part of the world…It truly is adventure travel.”

Indeed, in recent years two ships have run aground just off the coast of Antacrtica, and in November, 2007 a ship from Toronto did a “mini-Titanic” by becoming the first commercial passenger ship to sink near Antarctica after hitting an iceberg. Its 150 passengers were safely rescued. They were “very lucky with the weather,” warned a top official from Chile’s navy.

In a few years, what adventure traveler will be able to resist the otherworldly experience, gentle risk, and impressive cost of a suborbital trip into space? Imagine the bragging rights someday to a weekend in Earth orbit! And the ultimate adventure tourist prize — the Moon — has beckoned since the last Maslow Window in the 1960s.

Today’s Antarctic adventure travelers — with their “early ebullience” — are sparkling harbingers of what awaits us all in the 2015 Maslow Window.

This is an updated mid-monthly list of our readers’ favorite posts, based on the number of times each post was visited during the times indicated below. The lists below include both Daily Wavelet posts and State of the Wave posts.

Timeframes of the readers’ lists below are: I) Favorites over the Last 7 Days, II) Favorites over the Last 30 days, and III) Favorites over the last Quarter (3 months).

To see readers’ favorite posts for each previous month, click HERE.

The lists below give only the top 5 favorites in each category in order of reader preference.
All posts below are clickable and their publishing dates are given.

Updated 3/20/09

I. THE LAST 7 DAYS — Readers’ Favorites

1) State of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for 2009 — 1/17/09
2) India and NASA Search for the Lost Lunar Lakes — 3/7/09
3) Economic Crisis Supports Maslow Wave Forecasts — 10/20/08
4) A Vision for the Next 100 Years — Courtesy of George Friedman — 1/10/09
5) Forecasting the Next 20 Years in Space — State of the Wave, 9/12/08 — 9/14/08

II. THE LAST 30 days — Readers’ Favorites

1) State of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for 2009 — 1/17/09
2) Are Great Explorations Driven By Keynesian “Animal Spirits” On Steroids — 2/15/09
3) North Korea’s New Space Program? — 2/8/09
4) A Vision for the Next 100 Years — Courtesy of George Friedman — 1/10/09
5) Economic Crisis Supports Maslow Wave Forecasts — 10/20/08

III. THE LAST QUARTER — Readers’ Favorites

1) Economic Crisis Supports Maslow Wave Forecasts — 10/20/08
2) State of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for 2009 — 1/17/09
3) Marcel Vs. Fermi — Toward A Possible Convergence — 1/07/09
4) A Vision for the Next 100 Years — Courtesy of George Friedman — 1/10/09
5) Forecasting the Next 20 Years in Space — State of the Wave, 9/12/08 — 9/14/08

A few of my academic friends believe that the 2015 Maslow Window may not be as spectacular as previous Windows (e.g., the Panama Canal Window, or Lewis & Clark Window) because of a possible climate and/or energy crisis. They fear that the financial resources required to mitigate a global crisis will drain societal affluence and restrain ebullience — thus limiting the ascent of many to elevated levels in Maslow’s heirarachy — that are the hallmarks of Maslow Windows over the last 200 years.

As we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, the public is becoming more optimistic about the human future in space…and on Earth. .

Although the notion of “global warming,” associated with human emissions of CO2, has experienced considerable popularity in recent years, Gallup has recently sensed a turning point in public attitudes, “Altogether, 68% of U.S. adults believe the effects of global warming will be manifest at some point in their lifetimes,… (but) only 38% of Americans…believe it will pose ‘a serious threat’ to themselves or their own way of life.”

Moreover, “most Americans do not view the issue in the same dire terms as the many prominent leaders advancing global warming as an issue…Importantly, Gallup’s annual March update on the environment shows a drop in public concern about global warming across several different measures…over the past year.” This trend is probably due to growing public awareness of scientific data indicating that global warming ceased in 1998 and of unusually severe recent winters. And while Al Gore has made a major contribution to public science literacy by drawing attention to global climate concerns, his current reluctance to publicly defend his views — e.g., his refusal to debate European economist Bjorn Lomborg, and others — may be perceived by some as indicating growing uncertainty.

However, as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, two other effects will increasingly come into play: 1) the fact that Maslow Windows are characterized by unusually optimistic (even ebullient) public attitudes, and 2) the increasing global fascination with large, international technology programs and space colonization – expected during the 2015 Maslow Window — will suggest to many around the world that solutions to key global challenges (e.g., the environment, energy) will benefit from space technology and resources.

An example of this accelerating trend is already visible in futurist George Friedman’s new book, The Next 100 Hundred Years. Friedman sees 21st Century global carbon issues as moderated by population trends and the increasing use of space-based solar power (SSP) systems; SSP may also “solve the problem of delivering power to the battlefield from space”…as the U. S. becomes “the largest energy producer in the world.”

Despite it’s self-doubts and real external threats, Friedman forecasts a “Golden Age” for the U.S. in the 21st century, “American culture is the manic combination of exhultant hubris and profound gloom. The net result is a sense of confidence constantly undermined by the fear that we may be drowned by melting ice caps caused by global warming or smitten dead by a wrathful God for gay marriage…” But in an ebullient expression of Maslow Window-style optimism, Friedman’s and Stratfor’s geopolitical and technological sense is that “the United States is stunningly powerful. It may be that it is heading for a catastrophe, but it is hard to see one when you look at the basic facts.”

Friedman’s optimism is supported by conceptual studies of space systems that could ameliorate a future climate catastrophe with minimal invasive effects on the biosphere. For example, Roger Angel, a National Academy of Science member and MacArthur Fellow at the University of Arizona, envisions cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft reflectors located near Earth’s inner Lagrange point (L1), a region directly toward the Sun about 1.5 million km from Earth.

Although containing innovative design elements, Angel’s Macro-Engineering Project (MEP) concept builds upon current technologies. Fully deployed, Angel’s 100,000 km-long “cloud” would consist of millions of meter-size autonomous deflectors capable of reducing the incoming solar energy by 1.8 %, and thus cooling the Earth. Angel envisions using very thin refractive screens to deflect sunlight from Earth, to minimize the effects of radiation pressure on each spacecraft’s location near L1, and to limit the total Earth launch requirement to 20 million tons. For a launch cost of only $ 50/kg, Angel prefers an electromagnetic launch system.

Angel estimates that his space cloud could be developed and deployed within 25 years — making it potentially a 2015 Maslow Window project — with a total cost of a few trillion U.S. dollars. Although a large number, assuming the typical GDP growth implied for the 2015 Maslow Window by macroeconomic trends over the last 200 years, a decade-long program would cost roughly the same fraction of U.S. GDP as similar MEPs of the past (e.g., Apollo, Panama Canal). Use of global human, financial, and technological resources — another expected hallmark of the 2015 Maslow Window — would be central to the project.

This summary updates recent posts on the economic crisis and on space trends for 2009, with a focus on economic data and forecasts. The last 200 years support a model of nearly decade-long ebullient Maslow Windows triggered by major economic booms, that are typically preceeded by financial panics and major recessions. But surprisingly, the Maslow Window activities (e.g., the next race to space) are not delayed or dimished by the contractions. Forecasts for the current recession continue to mirror this two-century pattern.

Will the next international race to space start “on schedule” near 2015? Click .

Robert J. Barro, a Harvard economics professor and Hoover Institution fellow, has studied data on GDPs, consumption, and stock market directions for the U.S. and 33 other countries as far back as 1870 (WSJ, 3/4/09).

Mr. Barro defines a “depression” as a drop in per capita GDP or consmption by 10% or more. (A major depression is 25% or more.) Since 1870, he finds two such events in the U.S.: 1) the Great Depression from 1929-33 with a decline of 25%, and 2) a fall of 16% during the post-WW I time from 1917-21. Note that the pre-Maslow Window panic/recessions of 1893 and of 2008, although severe events, are not classified as depressions. Barro’s data also supports our observation that post-Window panic/recessions are considerably more severe than pre-Window events.

Barro’s international bottom-line is that “periods experiencing stock market crashes, such as 2008-09 in the U.S., represent a serious threat. The odds are roughly one in five (20%) that the current recession will snowball into a macroeconomic decline of 10% or more that is the hallmark of a depression.” This is consistent with our observation that, over the last 200 years, 4 out of 5 Maslow Windows were preceeded a financial panic and recession, but not a depression. By the way, the only Maslow Window of the last 200 years that was not presaged by a panic/recession was the 1960s Apollo Window, but ironically it was prematurely terminated by the Vietnam War.

Interestingly, for the last two months, participants in the prediction market Intrade.com have been estimating the odds that the US GDP will decline by 10.0% or more from its peak value between 2008 and 2009, as about 20%. (It appears that many Intrade.com participants are also Wall Street Journal subscribers!)

Despite plummeting house prices, increasing unemployment, and the lowest consumer confidence since 1967, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is currently projecting a relatively optimistic scenario. He sees the economy recovering during 2010, if President Obama can revitalize the financial system. This would enable the global economy to re-ignite the “greatest global boom ever” — that was interrupted during summer, 2007 — in plenty of time for the opening of the 2015 Maslow Window.

Bernanke’s optimism is echoed by Strafor: Although “the world begins 2009 in its first synchronized recession since 1974…Stratfor sees the American economy as a strong entity that will bounce back relatively quickly.”

Although the 4th quarter was “dismal,” Fisher Investments is also bullish and does not expect a Great Depression or a “Lost Decade” like in Japan in the 1990s. They see President Obama as “moving toward the center…but very willing to spend enormous sums of money which can be and usually is appropriate at this stage of the economic cycle.” Fisher sees current market prospects more like Keynesian tennis than gravity, “What falls most usually bounces most,” and like Bernanke, they expect a “V”-style recovery within the next year or so.

However, Barro’s study of 59 international, non-war depressions shows they average almost 4 years in duration. This would put our recovery near 2012 — still sufficient for happy days to usher in a full-blown, spectacular Maslow Window in 2015. Barro believes that “if we are lucky, the current downturn will also be moderate, though likely worse than other post-World War II recessions, including 1982.”

The search for the lost lunar lakes continues into the 21st Century! This adventure, worthy of Indiana Jones, will strongly influence human expansion into the cosmos. If they are found, the lakes will be the key to lunar development and human settlement of the inner solar system during the 2015 Maslow Window. If not, hydrogen may have to be imported to support future lunar science, industry, and tourism.

Our latest search for the lost lunar lakes began in 2008 at the ISRO Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota off the coast of Andhra Pradesh in India. Click .

Today, the search for the lost lunar lakes involves a beautiful international collaboration between India, NASA, and others. The Chandrayaan-1 — India’s first mission to the Moon — was launched by the ISRO on October 22, 2008 using its 4-stage PSLV rocket. The vehicle achieved lunar orbit on November 8. A week later India became only the 4th entity reach the Moon’s surface (after former Soviet Union, U.S., and European Space Agency) when its Moon Impact Probe hit near the Moon’s south pole. The MIP’s impact released debris from near the crater Shackleton that may provide clues to the presence of lunar water ice. You may remember that Shackleton is a famous name associated with the “Heroic Age” of Antarctic exploration during the early 20th Century Peary/Amundsen Maslow Window.

Happily hitching a ride on Chandrayaan-1 is NASA’s Mini-SAR, a synthetic aperature radar expected to help search “the inside of (polar) craters for water ice” (Space News, 1/26/09). According to planetary scientist Benjamin Bussey of the Mini-SAR program office at Johns Hopkins University, this is “the only way to explore such areas.”

The birth of the first Space Age stimulated serious interest in the lost lunar lakes when 3 Caltech scientists proposed in 1961 that water and other volatiles could be trapped in eternally shadowed crater floors near the Moon’s poles (K. Watson, B.C. Murray, H. Brown, J. Geophys. Res. 66, 3033 (1961)), because of the Moon’s low axial tilt (only 1.5 deg vs. Earth’s 23.5 deg). Their model indicated that lunar polar cold traps would have temperatures below 100 degrees K (- 173 deg C) and could retain ices for billions of years.

Ten years after the Apollo Moon landings, UC San Diego chemist James Arnold commented that like the lunar lakes, “an important paper by Watson, Murray, and Brown (1961) seems to have been lost.” The desiccated character of the returned Moon rocks showed that any water on the Moon probably came from elsewhere, so Arnold suggested water-rich meteors and icy comets.

In 2007, the National Research Council identified the lunar (and Mercurian) polar microenvironments as “unique in the solar system” because of their potential for illuminating “the volatile flux over the latter part of solar system history.” The NRC recognizes that “cold trapping of hydrogen-bearing volatiles does occur,” but their identity (e.g., water vs. hdrogen) and sources (e.g., comets vs. lunar outgassing) are currently unknown. However they see strong links between “lunar resource utilization, science, and human exploration.”

The first really successful searcher for the lost lunar lakes was Dr. Alan Binder, who led Lunar Prospector science in 1998. According to the NRC, LP detected a “distinct neutron albedo deficit over the poles.” This implies significant concentrations of hydrogen, possibly in the form of patchy ice, but most likely not at the immediate surface.

In an email to me on March 4, Alan commented that the LP discovered “an enhancement of up to 1700 ppm of hydrogen in the permanently shadowed craters of the north and south poles over the 50 to 100 ppm in the lower latitudes.” At this point, “the theoretical arguments favor … water ice crystal, at a very low mixing ratio of around just 1%, (but) we have no proof that the hydrogen is … not just enhanced deposits of solar wind hydrogen.”

Because of the low mixing ratio of 1%, Dr. Binder believes that “a spacecraft radar/radio experiment will not detect the ‘water ice’,” so he points to the upcoming LCROSS repeat of his LP impact experiment. According to NASA, this year LCROSS will target a shadowed lunar polar crater with two large impactors; the resulting debris cloud will be analyzed for the presence of lunar water, hydrocarbons, and hydrated minerals. Launch is scheduled for April 24.

The search for the lost lunar lakes intensifies!

This is an updated end-of-February list of our readers’ favorite posts, based on the number of times each post was visited during the times indicated below. The lists below include both Daily Wavelet posts and State of the Wave posts.

Timeframes of the readers’ lists below are: I) Favorites during February, II) Favorites over the Last 7 Days, and III) All-Time Favorites (the first daily post was published on 5/11/08).

To see readers’ favorite posts for each previous month, click HERE.

The lists below give only the top 5 favorites in each category in order of reader preference.
All posts below are clickable and their publishing dates are given.

Updated 3/1/09

I. FEBRUARY — Readers’ Favorites

1) State of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for 2009 — 1/17/09
2) Economic Crisis Supports Maslow Wave Forecasts — 10/20/08
3) A Vision for the Next 100 Years — Courtesy of George Friedman — 1/10/09
4) Are Great Explorations Driven by Keynesian “Animal Spirits” on Steroids? — 2/15/09
5) Long Waves and the Future of Human Spaceflight — 1/24/09

II. THE LAST 7 DAYS — Readers’ Favorites

1) State of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for 2009 — 1/17/09
2) Are Great Explorations Driven by Keynesian “Animal Spirits” on Steroids? — 2/15/09
3) North Korea’s New Space Program? — 2/8/09
4) A Vision for the Next 100 Years — Courtesy of George Friedman — 1/10/09
5) New Model Suggests 361+ Civilizations in the Galaxy — 2/23/09

III. ALL-TIME — Readers’ Favorites

1) Economic Crisis Supports Maslow Wave Forecasts — 10/20/08
2) State of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for 2009 — 1/17/09
3) 10 Reasons Why China is Good for Space — 6/22/08
4) 10 Lessons Lewis & Clark Teach Us About the Human Future in Space — 8/17/08
5) Marcel Vs. Fermi — Toward A Possible Convergence — 1/07/09

In their recent book, The Liberal Hour — Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s (2008), G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot, both historians educated at Harvard, chronicle the brief rise to ascendancy in the U.S. of liberal leaders, policies, and programs during the 1960s. Their historical account provides impressive support for specific features of 21stCenturyWaves.com’s Maslow Window model. This model — based on 200 years of macroeconomic data and historical trends — points toward the ebullient attitudes and spectacular technology and space activities we can expect after 2015.

Camelot, Apollo, and “The Liberal Hour” point to the next race to space starting near 2015. Click .

Specific examples of our Maslow Window Model and The Liberal Hour’s historical support include:

1. Maslow Windows are brief, rare, profoundly transformative intervals for society; they are watersheds that feature quantum leaps in technology, the economy, politics, and culture.
“Powerful historical forces caught up with America in the 1960s and swept through every corner of natonal life…for a short time…What distinguishes the 1960s is the mysterious and momentous convergence of a public ready for change and a government poised to act.”
One particularly effective way to experience the 1960s, in both text and images, is The Sixties Chronicle with a Forward by former CBS Evening News anchor (from 1962-1981), Walter Cronkite, “Despite all the turmoil of the Sixties, the decade ended on a resounding note of triumph. I maintain that of all the incredible technical and scientific developments of the 20th Century, July 20, 1969, the date of our landing on the Moon, will be remembered by schoolchildren 500 years from now.”

2. Over the last 200 years, Maslow Windows are triggered by unparalleled economic booms accompanied by unusual society-wide affluence.
“America’s unprecedented affluence in the postwar years, (was) keyed to an industrial engine that nearly doubled its output during the 1950s and again during the 1960s…”
Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith marveled that in the 1960s “the ordinary individual has access to amenities — foods, entertainment, personal transportation, plumbing — in which not even the rich rejoiced a century ago.”
“Disposable personal income, in constant dollars, grew by 33% in the 1950s. In the 1960s it grew by more than 50%.”
“Americans could more readily embrace measures to lift those at the margins of society when the good life seemed within reach of all.”
In effect, “The Liberal Hour” was made possible by the unparalleled 1960s economic boom.

3. The major, twice-per-century economic boom of a typical Maslow Window creates widespread affluence-induced ebullience; as many people ascend the Maslow hierarchy, this brief, almost giddy feeling makes most technology, exploration, and social programs seem not only favorable, but almost irresistible.
“With wealth never before imagined, Americans could dream dreams never before possible. In the early years of the 1960s , national optimism reached epidemic levels.”
“Soaring revenues convinced many in Washington that ‘the wealthiest country on the face of the earth’…could accomplish whatever it set its mind to.”
“The 1960s were presumed to be an age of unique possibilities. The wealth produced by the powerful engine of the American economy…made anything — and everything — seem possible…It was an optimistic age, and belief was too easily suspended.”
Here Mackenzie and Weisbrot offer us what is essentially the perfect definition of Maslow Window-style ebullience.

4. Despite the spectacular technological, economic, and social progress accomplished during a typical Maslow Window, they typically end abruptly. As the economic boom begins to slow, ebullience fades, and elevated Maslow states collapse. Major wars, triggered by ebullient individuals or nations who do not ascend the Maslow hierarchy, sometimes cause Maslow Windows to close prematurely.
“By mid-1966 the liberal storm was passing…It came suddenly and raged briefly, but it left a deeply altered landscape in its wake.”
“And the booming economy of the early 1960s…that fueled the limitless sense of possibility in those years, was also confronting the inevitabilities of the business cycle and the impacts of the combined costs of a foreign war (Vietnam) and a Great Society…”
While in 1964 President Lyndon Johnson could insist that the U.S. — the richest, most powerful country in the world — “can do it all.” By 1966, “that kind of talk had begun to ring hollow even in the White House.”

Mackenzie and Weisbrot have sketched the political, economic, and social factors that are likely to repeat during the 2015 Maslow Window. Historical records of the last 200 years of great explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark) and macro-engineering projects (as well as macroeconomic data) support their account.

However an interesting question arises: Because there was no financial panic or major contraction (analogous to the Panic of 2008 and our current recession) during the post-WW II boom prior to the 1960s Apollo Maslow WIndow, will our experience of the 2015 Maslow Window be less positive than the 1960s? The answer is no, probably not. Indeed, no Maslow Window of the last 200 years has ever been delayed or diminished in any observable way by a financial panic and/or major recession in the decade prior to the Window.

For more perspective on this, you’re invited to consult what happens to be currently the most frequently read post on 21stCenturyWaves.com: “Economic Crisis Supports Maslow Wave Forecasts.”