The definition of space colonization is to “live, work, and play in space” for a comfortably long period. And eventually, part of this experience for some lucky people will be to start their married lives together in space. “Eventually” may not be too much longer according to the UK’s Daily Mail who reported last month that Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire boss of Virgin Galactic, plans to be the first person to marry a couple in space. The happy couple is on the first flight sometime in 2009.

Virgin Galactic’s cost per person is $ 200,000. Reportedly 200 people have already reserved seats on the two-hour suborbital flights that peak 70 miles up (officially in space) and experience a black, twinkle-free, star-filled sky, and a brief zero-g experience. Physicist Steven Hawking and actress Victoria Principal are booked (not to get married, by the way!). This is definitely early “ebullient” behavior signaling our approach to the 2015 Maslow Window (See Perspectives Wave Guides 1 and 6), and will become even more compelling as more companies join the space tourism business and competition drives the prices down.

When the suborbital tourist business matures and prospers, you’ll be able to spend your honeymoon (first or second!) in an Earth-orbit hotel! The Shimizu Corporation proposed an innovative design in 1989.

The Shimizu Space Hotel concept spins around a 70 meter radius. .

Their concept features 0.7g artificial gravity using a 3 rpm hotel spin with 64 guest habitation modules. During the guests’ 2 day stays, part of the excitement will be deciding when to enjoy weightlessness and when to retreat to their suite for near-normal gravity! Shimizu’s 1989 cost study assumed 11,500 guests per year at the orbital hotel with a price of $ 43,500 per guest.

Sometimes a trend is very disturbing but potentially of strategic importance to the next race to space, so it cannot be ignored. The possibility of a new cold war is the perfect example.

In the 1950s, Cold War pressures between the Soviet Union and the United States played a major role in stimulating the first race to space (see Politics-Wave Guide 3, and Global Conflict-Wave Guide 9). It was the unexpected 1957 launch of Sputnik that almost instantly stimulated a nationwide crisis in education at all levels in America, the founding of NASA, and the inspirational 1961 commitment by President John F. Kennedy to land a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.

It isn’t just that last August President Putin started long-range patrols with strategic bombers that hadn’t occurred since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. And, it isn’t just that Putin attended the NATO Summit this March seeking to discourage deployment of missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. It’s not even “Putin’s torture colonies”, as described by the Wall Street Journal (2/12/08), that were toned down under Yeltsin, but sadistically reinitiated when Putin came to power.

According to Edward Lucas, who’s covered Eastern Europe for 20 years for The Economist, it’s all these things and more, in his new book The New Cold War. Russia’s current Soviet-style issues include: return of the KGB, pressuring former Soviet satellite states, intimidation of journalists, repression of internal dissent, and the global threat of Russia’s huge oil and gas reserves.

Today, we already have the War on Terror. Superimposing a new cold war on this situation would be extremely dangerous. A new cold war would hugely impact the 2015 Maslow Window, and make this decade more like the 1960s than anyone would want it to be.

Is the sky falling? In The Atlantic (June, 2008) Gregg Easterbrook says that “it’s inevitable”. At a public event in Orange County last February that I organized, Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart described the populations of potential asteroid “bullets” in space, including the Main asteroid Belt and Kuiper Belt, and their threat to civilization. Some scientists like Richard Gott of Princeton have suggested that space colonization would provide a “life insurance policy” for humanity in the event of another large impactor.

Easterbrook also highlights newly discovered ocean floor craters that confirm what those of the continents suggested. Take a look at the pockmarked Moon sometime. That’s what the Earth used to look like 4 billion years ago before rain, oceans, and plate tectonics gained the upper hand and erased most of the craters due to hypervelocity asteroid and comet impacts.

However, the real question is what’s the likelihood we’ll be hit in your lifetime? Nobody knows of course, but it’s probably more than you think. The well-known 1908 Tunguska meteor, that produced an atomic bomb-like airburst over Siberia, could just as easily have leveled London or Moscow if it had hit there. We were lucky. Tunguska shows that even relatively small impactors (30 meters across) can be locally devastating, and they occur more frequently than big ones — perhaps a 10% chance per century of a locally dangerous asteroid or meteor impact.

What’s interesting is that NASA doesn’t have an asteroid/comet mitigation program, and although the U.S. Air Force seems interested, action on their part is unlikely due to international concerns. The message from Rusty in Orange County was that few people are aware of the real asteroid-impact threat. Indeed, the fact that The Atlantic chose to publish this article at all is remarkable. It suggests that The Atlantic editorial staff senses there is increased public interest in this topic, although there is no official action and little public outcry about it, yet. Although it could be a coincidence, this is the limited, but growing level of interest we would expect as public sensitivity to things cosmic increases as we ramp up to the next Maslow Window, due in only 5 -7 years.

Today marks the first-ever State of the Wave for this Weblog.

Every other Friday we review the previous two weeks for signs of progress toward real, near-term space colonization focused on the approach to the 2015 Maslow Window. In particular, world events and trends are compared directly with our Forecasts, specifically in the context of the Ten Wave Guides. In addition to international and U.S. space and technology activities, these include a diverse set of indicators such as economic growth, education, global conflict, and popular culture.

Because this blog is still very new, this week we identify and limit discussion to only the top three most revealing indicators. In the future we’ll provide more in-depth reviews and syntheses of our Wave Guides’ trajectories toward space colonization. The following editors contributed to this summary: Rachel Nishimura, Olivia Wolfe, Ann Hovey, and the author.

Based on this early analysis, the State of the Wave is good. In recent Daily Wavelets we are especially impressed by signs of early ebullience and by evidence that potential key players are (becoming) well-positioned for the upcoming Maslow Window. The following prioritized list suggests to us that the Maslow ramp-up is occurring nominally:

1. “Google Recruits Mars Pioneers!” 5/11/08: We are impressed that the founders of Google are sincerely promoting a human mission to Mars based on “sufficiently advanced” technology and mission timing, which is very consistent with our forecasts. Because it’s highly unlikely their business plan requires human settlements on Mars (!), we consider this to be a genuine sign of early ebullience that’s very consistent with a Maslow Window-minus-7 timeframe.

2. “Surging Brazil is a Global Space Power!” 5/20/08: Brazil’s expertise in space technology has been evident for a long time, including their collaborations with China, Russia, and the U.S.. Now that their economy is booming they are perfectly positioned for the international thrust into space expected around 2013.

3. “The U.S….Leviathan or Left Behind?” 5/21/08: Despite current economic problems in the U.S., the long-term view is as we expect: America’s dynamic economy and vibrant society should enable it to be a leader in the next race to space, starting after 2013 and culminating in the 2020s.

You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the F-22 Raptor in a demo flight! Contributing Editor Ann Hovey and I had this extraordinary experience May 3 at the March AirFest in Moreno Valley, California. It’s pure ebullience!

To see the F-22 in flight Click f-22-air.jpg.

Here at 21stCenturyWaves.com “ebullience” is a technical term associated with twice-per-century economic booms which elevate society to the highest levels of the Maslow Hierarchy. This extraordinary confluence of affluence and ebullience creates a climate supportive of great explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark) and stunning MEPs (e.g., Panama Canal); see Economic Growth, Wave Guide 1.

The crowd at the AirFest was huge, around 400,000 this year, 100,000 more than in previous years, according to Major Donald Troud of March Public Affairs. Most likely this was due to the F-22’s first public appearance in Southern California although the Thunderbirds also awed the crowd!

The Thunderbirds were magnificent. Click thunderbirds.jpg.

From the vertical take-off to the hovers, and from the very fast to the very slow passes and the incredibly tight turns, the F-22 is an emotional symbol of extraordinary technological capability and the promise of the future. The huge family crowd was stunned and thrilled, an intense version of the feeling of ebullience — albeit momentary on May 3 — that spreads across society as the ramp-up to a Maslow Window proceeds.

The huge crowd was ebullient. Click marchfamilies.jpg.

Happy Memorial Day! And happy Early Ebullience!

There’s no doubt that the U.S. economy leaves the public cold, as reflected in the Consumer Confidence Index now at a 30 year low. This certainly gets one’s attention in terms of its ability to drive near-term technology and space activities characteristic of a Maslow Window. (See Economic Growth, Wave Guide 1) Even the Wall Street Journal’s front page assurance (May 14, 2008), “Recession? Not so fast, say some..” might not fully restore one’s bouyant faith in the future.

However, fear not. The long-term picture looks very bright according to Fareed Zakaria (Editor of Newsweek International) in the current Foreign Affairs (May/June 2008). Zakaria immediately disposes of the notion that the U.S. will decline British-style because of the long-lived dominance (since the 1880s) of America’s economy and its vibrant society. In fact, he suggests that even in 2025 — the end of the upcoming Maslow Window — the United States’ nominal GDP will still be double that of China. This is consistent with our nominal forecast model that features China leading a group of space powers (instead of going it alone) during their aggressive (i.e., Sputnik-like) move into space near 2013. Patterns of GDP values over the last 200 years suggest the U.S.’ GDP in 2025 will be 2 to 3 times its current value (Cordell, 2006).

Zakaria emphasizes the U.S. economy has produced around one quarter of the world’s GDP for over a century, and for 25 years has maintained GDP growth over 3% (higher than Japan or Europe). This, and the consent of the world, allows the U.S. to account for nearly 50% of global defense spending and to assume the role of “Leviathan” (i.e., the trusted enforcer) in the globalization strategies of Thomas Barnett and others. Even so, defense is only 4% of U.S. GDP (about 40% of the Cold War value), and Iraq and Afghanistan sum to less than 1% GDP. Zakaria concludes that America’s bright future is also assured by its world-class universities and its robust demographics, due largely to its traditionally liberal immigration policies. The moral of the story is: As we approach the 2015 Maslow Window and beyond, America’s dynamic economy and vibrant society will continue to facilitate its role as a key leader for human expansion into the cosmos.

Congratulations to Brazil! Last week the Wall Street Journal (5/13/08) headlined that, “Brazil Joins the Front Rank of New Economic Powers!” Finally joining the surging, emerging “BRIC” group — Brazil, Russia, India, China — Brazil has added a robust currency to its already world-class power in agriculture and natural resources. Although growing at only 5% (not yet at stratospheric Chinese levels), Brazil has become a “growth engine” for the global economy, and is so cash rich it enjoys a new $ 125 B plan to stimulate Brazilian high-tech industries and exports.

In this blog I speak often of an expected Sputnik-like shock materializing near 2013 possibly led by China and other dynamic space powers who will announce their plan for the large-scale development and colonization of space (see International Space -Wave Guide 5). Brazil’s association with BRIC suggests they would be well-positioned contenders for such a group as we ramp up to the 2015 Maslow WIndow.

Brazil has Latin America’s most prominent space program including their own launch vehicles, environmental and communication satellites (some in cooperation with China), and their enviable Alcantara launch site (within 2 degrees of the equator)! In 2006, the first Brazilian astronaut — Marcos Pontes — after training with NASA, ascended on a Russian Soyuz rocket for a $ 10.5 M, week-long stay on the International Space Station. Colonel Pontes’ instant celebrity power exceeded even the best soccer stars that Brazil has to offer, and gave him access to the Brazilian president and a prominent association with Brazilian comic books and toys! However, in typical pre-Maslow Window style, some Brazilian scientists and journalists suggested the $ 10.5 M could have been better spent elsewhere.

In 1992 writing in Space Policy, I suggested that Rio de Janeiro would be an ideal headquarters city for a new global space organization that we forecast will form by 2014. Today it seems even more appropriate considering Brazil’s likely pivotal role in the rapidly approaching international race to space.

I highly recommend Matthew Parker’s new book, Panama Fever - The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of all Time — The Building of the Panama Canal. (See Non-Space MEPs, Wave Guide 8) Parker dazzlingly explains how the greatest macro-engineering project (MEP) of the last 200 years - until the Apollo Moon Program of the 1960s — set the stage for the “American Century” and dramatically accelerated globalization. Indeed, the Panama Canal of 1914 was the equivalent of Apollo for the early 20th Century Maslow Window.

Just as Apollo captured global attention and passion during the 1960s, “Panama Fever” spread through the early 20th Century Western World, despite the fact that the cost, management, and technological challenges of the Canal were unparalleled. And the tragic war-like death toll exceeding 25,000 — although the “war” was with disease and disasters — indicates the high international stakes associated with the Canal.

Roughly every half century during periods of unparalleled economic booms, exceptional societal affluence makes monumental MEPs financially possible, and the associated ebullience (as society ascends the Maslow Heirarchy) makes them, at least momentarily, politically irresistible. Panama and Apollo show how compelling this combination of affluence and ebullience can be. As I remarked in the Wave Guide 8 Perspectives piece, there is no shortance of early ebullience on display around the world today. Perhaps the most impressive example is the Panama Canal Expansion project. The overwhelming political support by Panamanians for this risky, estimated $ 5+ B MEP (more than original cost) is stunning. It’s precisely the sort of early ebullience we’d expect within 10 years of the rapidly approaching 2015 Maslow Window.

The studly black man that has been the center of attention in the presidential race interests us because of his relevance to the Big Question: Who will be the 21st Century analog to President John F. Kennedy – i.e., “The Space President” (SP) – who will officially usher in the new race to space?

The Nominal Model timeline (see The Forecasts) provides a big hint. Our SP will be elected either in 2016 (assuming 56 years after Kennedy’s election in 1960) or possibly as early as 2012. The SP will respond to an international Sputnik-like “shock” that will occur near 2013 (Sputnik in 1957 plus 56 years), so either date is a reasonable forecast. Indeed, near 2013 we expect that an international group probably headed by China will announce their intention to begin the large-scale development and colonization of space (e.g., Earth orbit, Moon, Mars, etc.).

Obama’s timing is interesting. If he is elected president this year he will probably require a second term to be the SP. If he loses this year but wins in 2012 and/or 2016 he is likely the One!

Mr. Obama has been compared often to President Kennedy because of his charisma and youth; Kennedy was 43 when elected president and Obama is 45. And like Kennedy, Obama’s popularity transcends traditional political loyalties and societal expectations. (Even Rudy Guiliani’s daughter supports Obama!) His youth, mixed heritage, and Harvard education lends him a symbolic strength.

Much like Kennedy, Obama’s candidacy has come during turbulent times when Americans are seeking “change.” They’re attracted to Obama because he is the most progressive presidential candidate. His charisma has overshadowed questions about his lack of experience and his candidacy has become a fashionable cause. While Hilary Clinton may appear to have more experience than Obama, her public image has suffered (e.g., “Sniper-gate”) throughout her campaign and she is simply not as personable or inspiring. It is much like a high school student council election where the most popular and good-looking candidate receives the most support overshadowing the smart, ugly girl.

Like Obama, Kennedy had his issues and detractors and interestingly they centered around religion and his youth. In 1960 some were concerned about having a Catholic president; e.g., how would he relate to the Pope? Although hard to imagine now, it did initially cost Kennedy some support and contributed to a very close election; Kennedy won nationwide by only 112,000 votes (0.1%). Obama’s issues with his blunt Chicago pastor have not injured him among Democrats but are expected to impact the general election if he is nominated.

The New York Times reports (4/27/08) that, for apparently the first time, the Navy is restricting the number of applicants — only 50 this year — for NASA Astronaut positions. For a service that nominated 1000+ Navy personnel to astronaut candidacy since 1984, and annually nominates between 105 and 211 (in last 15 years), fifty isn’t very many. Interestingly it’s not Navy pilots who are getting the ax, although there’ll be less American space piloting to do when the Shuttle retires in 2010, instead it’s the mission specialist-types such as Navy Seals, engineers, and military professors. And some of these folks openly admit that they joined the Navy for a good shot at NASA.

The Navy claims it has no choice. It still supports the space program but we are fighting the global war on terror and certain skill sets are in big demand. This is a very interesting position and not everyone’s buying it. For example, the Times quotes former astronaut and retired Navy Captain William M. Shepherd who fears this could be a profound shift away from supporting NASA, “This is the first tick of the needle…Our committment to doing this might be changing.”

If Captain Shepherd is right then this seemingly tiny news story buried at the bottom of page 17 of the Sunday Times might have real significance, especially to those who are sensitized to the potential meaning of long-term trends. For example, the scariest wildcard imaginable (see Global Conflict, Wave Guide 9)) might occur in the 2020s when a major war is expected, because if the war is early (pre-2025) it could eliminate human trips to Mars or other large-scale space operations, much like Vietnam in 1968 led to the cancellation of Apollo 18 through 20. What’s surprising is that we are far (17 years) from the culmination of the next Maslow Window (2015-2025) and yet ongoing military operations are apparently already starting to gently effect the space program!

On the other hand, it’s probable that the Navy is just prudently reacting to the somewhat nebulous state of the plans for human spaceflight in the 2015+ timeframe.

Today has parallels with the situation in 1952 (56 years ago). Imagine a world where: the Today Show just debuted on NBC-TV with Dave Garroway (who?), the first-ever commercial passenger jet started operations, President Eisenhower was elected, and “The Adventures of Superman” with George Reeves was the rage on TV. Now imagine going back to those folks and explaining that in only 17 years Neil Armstrong would land on the Moon! And yet it happened!

The point is that similar economic, technological, and political forces are at work in today’s world. They are gently drawing us toward the 2015 Maslow Window, but are just as hard to see now as they were in 1952, unless you’re armed with a 21stCenturyWaves.com-style perspective that spans generations, budget cycles, and most human memories.