Economic news — e.g., unemployment, economic growth, housing — suggests the hoped-for U.S. recovery has stalled. A couple of weeks ago the New York Times (8/15/10; J. Sommer) openly speculated about the possibility of “double-dip” recession.

Is this the growing spirit of the Great Boom of 2015?
Click (AP) .

Are we headed toward a Double-Dip recession?
The Huffington Post (8/16/10) reports that Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics and New York University, indicated that the “Risk of a double dip recession in advanced economies (US, Japan, Eurozone) has now risen to 40%.” And both David Rosenberg (the Gluskin Sheff economist) and Yale’s Robert Shiller (co-author of Animal Spirits) agree that the odds of a double dip recession in the U.S. are “higher than 50-50.” They both blame the problem on “jobs.”

Economists are concerned by the unexpected recent decline in U.S. GDP; for example, Q4 2009: 5.6%; Q1 2010: 3.7%; and Q2 2010: 1.6%. David Rosenberg predicts that the U.S. GDP for Q3 2010 “will be negative … and that the recession never ended.”

… Or a Japan-style “lost decade”?
Others even suggest we may be heading for a Japan-style “lost economic decade.” Michael Darda of MKM Partners (Wall Street Journal, 8/13/10) cautions that “These concerns are not without merit.” But he suggests that,

There are key differences between where we are now and where Japan was … (that) make it less likely that we’ll succumb to a deflationary double-dip recession or a lost decade.

To help reduce uncertainty and revitalize the economy, Darda recommends that we create fiscal policies that are “sustainable, pro-growth,” and that increasing marginal tax rates would negatively affect productivity and government revenues. In general, according to a WSJ editorial (8/17/10),

The way to avoid Japan’s fate is to avoid the same policy mistakes, which means returning to the policies of the 1980s that revived the U.S. after the last Great Recession.

What about the end of American optimism and the “new normal”?
Although we should remind ourselves that we’re immersed in a major political season, some commentators do insist that our economic challenges are indicative of what the future holds for the world and U.S.: “the new normal.” U.S. News & World Report editor in chief Mortimer Zuckerman (WSJ, 8/16/10) asks,

What was thought to be normal in the context of post-World War II recoveries? One is that four quarters into the recovery, real GDP would expand at an annual rate over 6%.

Recall that U.S. GDP for Q2 2010 was just 1.6%.

Zuckerman points out that we’ve spent trillions of dollars on stimulus and bailout packages and yet nothing is working “normally.” Then Zuckerman wisely illuminates the issue by asking this long-term question:

The answer is: Yes, but we are about to enter into a new 1960′s, Camelot-style decade — a Maslow Window — where growth and prosperity will exceed even JFK’s Boom. These transformative, twice-per-century decades feature very rapid, but sustained economic growth and are punctuated by great explorations (e.g., Lewis & Clark), huge technology projects (e.g., Panama Canal), and sadly even major wars (e.g., W W I). The next golden age of prosperity, exploration, and technology should arrive by 2015.

What will trigger the Great Boom of 2015?
Every Maslow Window back to Jefferson and Lewis & Clark — including the 1960s Apollo Moon decade — features the rapid ascent of many in society to elevated levels in Maslow’s Hierarchy (expanding their world-views) due to affluence-induced ebullience generated by an exceptional boom. Indeed, according to this theory, without the Boom of 2015 there will be no widespread ebullience and hence no Maslow Window.

Here are a few scenarios that could be a bridge from where we are to the next Boom by 2015:

a) The Milken Institute Ramp-Up Scenario:
According to Ross DeVol (WSJ, 8/25/10) gloom and doom can be economically devastating.

There’s a point at which pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, scaring business away from investing or hiring. The dark tone of today’s discourse is at risk of doing just that.

Milken’s report on …America’s Return to Growth, based on extensive econometric analysis, features “measured optimism” because “A return to modest but sustainable growth is at hand.” They see the U.S. economy aided by rapid growth in Asia, strong investment in equipment and software, and record low interest rates. They reject the “new normal” as a barometer for long-term U.S. growth rates.

According to Milken, the ramp up to the next boom begins with a real plan to reduce the deficit, temporary extensions of the Bush tax cuts, and a more positive attitude toward job-creating businesses.

b) The 2015 TechCast.org Green Boom:
While the Milken ramp-up scenario will begin to restore confidence in the economy and stimulate more businesses to think expansively, TechCast, founded by former George Washington University professor William Halal, is forecasting a huge boom near 2015.

The constant drumbeat of cascading business failures is certainly daunting, but technology forecasts suggest that a green revolution, advanced auto designs, surging e-commerce, and other new business sectors are poised to lead the global economy out of today’s recession, producing a new economic boom at about 2015 … I lead a research team that forecasts the evolution of technology and its massive impacts that are changing the world. We’ve developed an intelligent website (www.TechCast.org) that pools the knowledge of 100 experts worldwide to forecast breakthroughs in all fields … Our forecasts show that today’s surging interest in green business should take off in four-five years … Entrepreneurs are working on alternative energy sources – wind turbines, biofuels, nuclear plants, and solar cells. This entire “green revolution” is growing 30-50% per year, roughly the same rate of the famous Moore’s Law that drives information technology to double every 2 years … Green technology is roughly a $500 billion market and expected to reach $10 trillion in 2020, larger than autos, health care, and defense.

A boom this size could easily produce the large-scale ebullience that would drive the 2015 Maslow Window, including the development of Space Based Solar Power as the ultimate source for global power.

c) The 2009-2015 Global Infrastructure Boom:
Stanford University, as part of its Collaboratory for Research on Global Projects, sponsored a paper in 2009 by Eric Gerritsen of Global Internet Advisors, on “The Global Infrastructure Boom of 2009-2015: Strategic Economic Consequences for America, China and the Global Economy.”

Gerritsen observes that,

In response to the financial crisis of 2008 governments around the world have pledged to spend trillions of dollars over the next few years on what is loosely called “infrastructure” and what amounts to the biggest global build-out of physical economic assets in the history of man.

This global infrastructure boom will intensively unfold between 2009-2015 and will transform how the world looks, gets educated, moves goods and services, creates wealth, treats the sick, cares for the poor, powers its homes and businesses, and wages war.

The amounts of infrastructure money about to slosh into the world economy defy imagination: The Obama Administration will spend $150 billion of its $787 billion stimulus plan on infrastructure and is expected to add to that; China has pledged $585 billion and stands ready to do more; India is expected to spend $500 billion on infrastructure over from now till 2015; the EU $252 billion; Japan $129 billion; Canada $12 billion; Australia $4.7 billion, Singapore $13.8 billion; Germany $42 billion; and so on.

Gerritsen asserts that, during the next 5 years, the global infrastructure boom will have significant global economic, political, and technology impacts, and that it will likely drive “economic system convergence.” How this will play out for the relative positions of the states involved is anyone’s guess at this point. But it does provide a positive framework for the development of large-scale infrastructure (e.g., space based solar power) in space, as the 2015 Maslow Window swings open.

d) The New International Space Age:
Both long-term (e.g., 200 year long wave timing) and near-term (e.g., the Panic of 2008) indicators point to a new Maslow Window opening near 2015 that will feature the new international Space Age. Please search the last 2+ years of this weblog for the details, but the signals continue to appear.

For example, Putin announced this weekend that Russia will launch its manned space missions from a new space center 3600 miles east of Moscow, starting in 2018. In a display of Maslow-style ebullience and national pride, he called the construction “one of the biggest and ambitious projects of modern Russia” which “gives opportunity to thousands of young professionals to use their talent.” Recently I have suggested that Russia and China may decide to leverage their joint 2011 robotic mission to Phobos into a major bilateral collaboration for manned Mars colonization sometime after 2015. If taken by surprise, this could propagate Sputnik-like shocks though America’s economic, political, military, and educational institutions.

I’ve pointed out previously that, ironically — based on the last 200 years of macroecnomic patterns and global trends — the Panic of 2008 shows we’re within 3 to 5 years of a major economic boom and a new international Space Age. But the Panic/Recession seems to have triggered a political realignment in the U.S. that led to President Obama’s election and is continuing.

As usual over the last 200 years, this transformative event is announcing the approach of the next golden age starting in 2015, and has many interesting parallels with the Panic of 1893 and the ascendance of the ultra-ebullient Theodore Roosevelt during the Peary/Panama Maslow Window. Like a century ago, our current political realignment is motivated by — not political party or social class — but the return to prosperity. It’s always interesting that prosperity becomes Priority #1 as we approach a new Maslow Window.

The U.S. political realignment seems to be continuing based on the estimated 300,000+ attendees — an “enormous and impassioned crowd” — at yesterday’s spiritual rally in Washington, D.C., as suggested by today’s New York Times front page photo (8/29/10).

One way or the other, China will be a major player in space and on Earth during the next 10 -15 years (i.e., the 2015 Maslow Window)

The New York Times (8/15/10) concurs.

After three decades of spectacular growth, China passed Japan in the second quarter to become the world’s second-largest economy behind the United States. The milestone, though anticipated for some time, is the most striking evidence yet that China’s ascendance is for real and that the rest of the world will have to reckon with a new economic superpower.

Will China ascend to global leadership in space during the next 10-15 years?
Click .

The Times suggested that China’s surge will continue and may eventually approach the much larger capacity of the U.S. “as early as 2030.”

China’s continuing growth fits well into a scenario that 21stCenturyWaves.com sketched over 2 years ago in “10 Reasons Why China is Good for Space”:

China’s space program stretches back more than 35 years, suggesting that space will expand in importance because of the growing economic, technological, and scientific culture of the country … China’s very rapid economic growth hovers around 10% annually. This is very important internally to the Communist Party leaders, as well as to major export sources like Wal-Mart! It also provides the financial cornerstone for future Chinese technology and space initiatives.

China’s challenges include its low GDP per capita value of $ 3,600 –similar to “impoverished nations ike Algeria, El Salvador and Albania” – versus $ 46,000 for the United States. Interestingly, the Times credits the Communist Party with China’s surge.

There is little disputing that under the direction of the Communist Party, China has begun to reshape the way the global economy functions by virtue of its growing dominance of trade, its huge hoard of foreign exchange reserves and United States government debt and its voracious appetite for oil, coal, iron ore and other natural resources.

Quite a different view is offered by a Chinese General recently in the popular Hong Kong magazine, Phoenix, in which he sees a choice for China of either “American-style democracy or Soviet-style collapse.”
According to General Liu Yazhou,

If a system fails to let its citizens breathe freely and release their creativity to the maximum extent, and fails to place those who best represent the system and its people into leadership positions, it is certain to perish … ‘The secret of US success is neither Wall Street nor Silicon Valley, but its long-surviving rule of law and the system behind it … The American system is said to be ‘designed by genius and for the operation of the stupid’. A bad system makes a good person behave badly, while a good system makes a bad person behave well. Democracy is the most urgent; without it there is no sustainable rise.

This is similar to American self-described “panda hugger” Thomas P. M. Barnett’s view (2/12/10) about the necessity for more freedom in China.

Once the extensive growth period is done and the “golden period” of demographic advantage dissipates, there is no advantage to having authoritarian government–despite the many myths recently created about the “superiority” of China’s single-party state. China is heading to the all-things-being-equal part of advanced development, and when a regime reaches that point, democracies simply perform better–not by how they run things but by how they get the hell out of the way of those who really need to run things, aka the private sector.

Such a transition might actually be easier than it sounds based on the impressions of international analyst Chris Mayer who recently visited Beijing and reports that “A more bustling capitalistic city would be hard to imagine … (and) There must be more communists in Berkeley than in Beijing.”

On the other hand, despite China’s 11.1% growth rate in 1st half of 2010, Stratfor cautions against linear forecasting and, in fact, sees a “Japan-like collapse” for China by 2015. In their Decade Forecast for 2005 – 2015 (2/5/05) Stratfor asserted the following:

Perhaps our most dramatic forecast is that China will suffer a meltdown like Japan and East and Southeast Asia before it. The staggering proportion of bad debt, enormous even in relation to official dollar reserves, represents a defining crisis for China. China will not disappear by any means, any more than Japan or South Korea has. However, extrapolating from the last 30 years is unreasonable. We also expect there to be significant political consequences … Why, then, if STRATFOR sees a China on the verge — if not already in the midst — of massive internal upheaval, is there a general global acceptance of the idea that not only is China on an unstoppable rise, but that people should pour their money into the Chinese economy? In part, this is due to tunnel vision — assessors of the Chinese economy are looking only at the booming center-coastal economies in and around Shanghai. In part, it is intentional self-delusion, a failure to connect the dots.

China’s approaching tipping point presents an opportunity to highlight trends — without giving away too many trade secrets — that are illuminated by the empirical, long-term approach of 21stCenturyWaves.com. Here are a few.

1) Gen Liu Yazhou agrees with Stratfor.
After several admirable years of sticking to their unpopular, but rational China-collapse-by-2015 forecast, Stratfor recently found an important ally: the courageous Chinese General. Media hype about China catching the U.S. economically by 2030 appears increasingly unrealistic. But it also weakens somewhat the case for private investors to make long-term financial commitments to China’s economy. (Also, see #4 below.)

2) The Japanese deflationary decade was consistent with Long Wave trends.
According to the Wall Street Journal (8/17/10), “After its property and stock bubbles burst in 1990, Japan also embarked on what may have been the longest and most expensive Keynesian policy experiment in world history.” This deflationary trajectory mirrored the downward trend of the long economic wave which reached its trough in the late 1990s. By contrast, the U.S. experienced a remarkable economic boom in the 1990s, although — possibly due to long wave effects — it never gained the momentum or had the widespread demographic impact of the 1960s Kennedy Boom (which triggered the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window).

For more, see “200 Years of GDP Trends Support a Near-Term, New Space Age.”

3) Will China choose American-style democracy over Chinese communism?
China insiders insist that the country is held together by rapid economic growth and nationalism — both of which, of course, are strongly connected to China’s space program — not devotion to the Communist Party. Thus a near-term China collapse could indeed trigger major political changes like those advocated by General Liu Yazhou.

4) A near-term, Japan-style Collapse of China Will Be Relatively Brief.
There are at least 2 major reasons why a China collapse will be brief: a) Political reforms in China would be expected to stimulate the Chinese economy through increased freedom and innovation, and b) the dynamic upward turn of the global economy — much like we experienced in 2007 just before the financial panic — as we ascend toward the 2015 Maslow Window, will shorten the Chinese deflationary interval.

5) A Grand Alliance for Space or Apollo-style Competition?
The juxtaposition in time of a likely China collapse by 2015 accompanied by liberal political reforms, and the approach of the 2015 Maslow Window, is not as coincidental as it seems, and will virtually guarantee that China will not experience anything like the Japan Deflationary Decade. In fact, the real possibility exists that China will rebound early in the 2015 Maslow Window to become a (or “the”) global leader in space.

One key indicator to watch is China’s possible participation in a joint Russia-China manned Mars initiative after 2015 as an outgrowth of their joint mission in 2011 to Phobos.

Ironically, a robust, growing Chinese economy – which is in everyone’s economic interest around the world — might be more likely to trigger a new Apollo-style space race, instead of a more productive ‘Global Alliance for Space,’ that might be favored in less prosperous times.

I became convinced around 1990 while with General Dynamics that if you want a safe, inexpensive, and near-term path to the human exploration and colonization of Mars, there was only one way to go: Establish a manned base on Phobos (and/or Deimos) and mine the interior for ices or hydrated minerals, while you direct in real-time a global swarm of robotic rovers exposing scientific secrets on the Martian surface.

Is this mountain-size Earth-crossing asteroid the next step to Mars?
Click

One key reason is the stunning, but still obscure fact that every 2 years a launch window opens that makes it easier (energy-wise) to get to Phobos than the surface of our own Moon! But, although we currently have plenty of imagery of both Martian moons, we still aren’t quite ready to pull this off.

We need a sample-return mission from Phobos — like that planned by Russia and China (Phobos-Grunt) for launch in 2011 — or we can wait for Mother Nature to deliver a Phobos-like asteroid to our vicinity. That’s OSIRIS-Rex (Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer) which, if given final approval by NASA in summer, 2011, will target near-Earth asteroid 1999 RQ 36.

OSIRIS is About Science and Security:
Not surprisingly, NASA is officially selling OSIRIS based on its impressive science and Earth-security potential. About 1/2 kilometer wide, RQ 36 “Is a treasure trove of organic material, so it holds clues to how Earth formed and life got started,” says Joseph Nuth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

OSIRIS would offer an interplanetary first: return of samples from an asteroid for composition analysis in labs around the world. OSIRIS would launch in 2016, acquire samples of the asteroid in 2018, and return them to Earth in 2023. What a wonderful way to celebrate the opening of the new international Space Age during the 2015 Maslow Window!!

RQ 36 is also becoming famous for its designation by NASA as a “potentially hazardous asteroid” and that it has about a 1 in a 1000 chance of hitting Earth in 2182; this probability is quite uncertain as well as far-future. But veteran planetary scientist Clark Chapman notes that if it did occur, “It would be an enormous impact, like hundreds of the biggest nuclear bombs ever built exploding at once, creating a crater maybe 10 kilometers [6.2 miles] across,” although the impact would not be civilization-threatening.

The University of Arizona to the Rescue!
According to the UA News,

Michael Drake, director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, will serve as principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx. OSIRIS-REx brings together the UA’s leadership in planetary science, Lockheed Martin’s extensive experience in sample-return mission development and operations and the Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) expertise in project management, systems engineering, and safety and mission assurance. The OSIRIS-REx payload includes instruments provided by the UA, GSFC, Arizona State University and the Canadian Space Agency.

Mike Drake and I came to the University of Arizona at the same time: I was a new graduate student who came over from UCLA (to work for Gerard Kuiper), and he was a new assistant professor. Now he leads the Lunar and Planetary Lab that was created and initially led by the legendary “Father of Planetary Science” Gerard Kuiper.

Does OSIRIS Relate to Phobos?
Given that history I was curious if Mike saw any scientific relation between OSIRIS and future exploration of Phobos. In his email to me, he indicated that,

OSIRIS-REx is a free standing mission competing in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. So it has no programmatic relationship with any other mission. That said, our target asteroid (RQ36 for short) is an organic-rich NEO. Phobos is also probably organic-rich. So many of our scientific objectives relating to the origin of organics that led to life might also be satisfied with a pristine sample return from Phobos.

Regarding any similarities between OSIRIS and Phobos-Grunt, Mike admitted,

I don’t know much about PHOBOS-GRUNT. However, inasmuch as it succeeds in returning a Phobos sample to Earth for study, its results could be overlapping or complementary with respect to organics … How organically clean their mission will be is unknown to me. Although both are small objects, RQ36 is in free orbit around the Sun while Phobos is obviously in an unstable orbit around Mars … So operationally a Phobos mission would be very different from OSIRIS-REx.

The Russia-China Connection:
The timing and goals of OSIRIS versus Phobos-Grunt are especially interesting because — as I suggested in my decade forecasts and also more recently — Russia and China are becoming well-positioned for a joint manned Mars exploration initiative sometime after 2015. This is an example of a world-altering event with Sputnik-like potential to trigger a new space race as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window.

However, after missing the 2009 Mars launch window, Russia is targeting a 2011 launch to Phobos and Mars; e.g., this date is repeated on The Planetary Society website in connection with their LIFE experiment. Presumably Phobos-Grunt would acquire Phobos samples by 2013, while Drake has confirmed that OSIRIS launch would not be until 2016 with samples returned to Earth in 2023. In any case, even if Phobos-Grunt slipped another launch window, it would still be expected to acquire Phobos samples well before OSIRIS was even launched.

I always enjoy Cumbrian Sky, the astro blog by Stuart Atkinson of the Eddington Astronomical Society in England.

Surprisingly, the financial Panic of 2008 supports our forecast that humanity’s future in space is just around the corner…!
Click

Recently Stuart hosted the Carnival of Space #165 which included my post: The Way Space Really Works. As usual, I enjoyed his intriguing introduction to my post:

Many people, myself included, fear that we really have stalled in our efforts to get people off Earth and start spreading out across the solar system, and are frustrated that there are no signs of our self-imposed exile on Earth ending. But there are optimists out there, and one of them is Bruce Cordell, who firmly believes that manned space exploration is just half a decade away from receiving a seriously hard kick up the backside. Why? You’ll have to go to his inspiring and thought-provoking 21st Century Waves blog to find out how space “really works”… or will work in 2015…

Thanks for your comments Stuart!

It always pleases me to be considered an optimist, although I’m just tracking macroeconomic and other trends over the last 200 years that make it pretty clear we’re in for excitement around 2015. And many short-term indicators also converge on this result.

For example, check Bill Halal at TechCast.org; their continuous online Delphi polling forecasts a major economic boom in 2015. In this context, it’s reasonable to expect an Apollo-size space program in response to a JFK-size boom — so we do!

But forgive me for not being as optimistic as I’d like to be. Multi-century history indicates that Maslow Windows don’t last very long. For example, Apollo was in serious political trouble by 1966 and wound up having the last 3 Apollo Moon missions canceled. Imagine what might have happened if Vietnam had heated up 2-4 years earlier than it did — we might have lost the whole program.

So this time it’s important that we — Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Americans or whomever it is –strive for self-sufficiency in space beyond Earth orbit to avoid another “Apollo pause” like we’ve had for the last 40 years…

This is an updated end-of-July 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 July, and II) Favorites during the last Year.

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 8/1/2010

I. JULY — Readers’ Favorites

1) State of the Wave: Why No One’s Been to the Moon in 40 Years — How Soon We’ll Go Again — 7/11/10
2) Was Apollo a Beginning, A Dead-End, or…? — Penetrating Polarized Views — 7/22/10
3) The Moon is Not Enough…! — 11/22/08
4) Space: The Fractal Frontier — How Complexity Drives Exploration — 5/01/10
5) Phobos: The Key to the Cosmos? Just Ask Russia and China! — 3/27/10

II. THE LAST YEAR (365 DAYS) — Readers’ Favorites

1) How President Obama is Creating the New Space Age — 9/24/09
2) State of the Wave: 10 Space Trends for 2010 — 1/26/10
3) Space: The Fractal Frontier — How Complexity Drives Exploration — 5/01/10
4) State of the Wave: Why No One’s Been to the Moon in 40 Years — How Soon We’ll Go Again — 7/11/10
5) DecaState of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for the Decade 2010 – 2020 — 3/06/10