Recently the Wall Street Journal (3/31/10) expressed concern about the “fading hope” of sanctions on Iran,

We are left with a stark alternative: Either Iran gets a nuclear weapon and we manage the risk, or someone acts to eliminate the threat,

according to Ms. Danielle Pletka, VP for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

And earlier this week Ronan Bergman, senior military and intelligence for an Israeli daily (Yedioth Ahronoth) and author of The Secret War With Iran (2008), pointed out that the three most likely scenarios for starting the next Middle East war “all involve Iran” (WSJ, 3/29/10). Despite the fact that a preemptive airstrike by Israel on Iranian nuclear installations is “somewhat less likely” now, due to Israel’s evolving perception of sanctions on Iran.

These issues need to considered in the context of the current “major flap in U.S.-Israel relations.” According to a recent interview in ForeignAffairs.com with Ehud Yaari, who is Lafer International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Commentator for Channel 2 news in Israel, and the the co-author (with the late Ze’ev Schiff) of Israel’s Lebanon War and Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising — Israel’s Third Front,, regarding the Israeli prime minister’s recent visit to the U.S.,

The general sense in Israel right now is that the prime minister was sorely humiliated by President Obama. There is quite a degree of amazement the way he was treated. I think it’s fair to say that neither the prime minister nor his defense minister, Ehud Barak, were aware of the kind of reception that they were greeted with at the White House.

Because of its importance to world energy supplies and the global economy, a Middle East war in the next few years would significantly reduce global security, as well as possibily threaten the new international space age expected to begin by 2015.

This is a different military threat than the one I focused on in July, 2008:

In addition to the expansive joy of Great Explorations from Lewis & Clark to Apollo, and stunning Macro-Engineering Projects (MEPs) like the Panama Canal, the last 200 years also teach us one sobering fact: Each Maslow Window is also associated with a tragic, major war (e.g. W. W. I).

And sadly, the 2020s are unlikely to be an exception.

Instead of the major wars (e.g., WW I) that occur near the end (or after) a typical Maslow Window, the near-term conflicts referred to here are a feature of early Maslow Window times or the years just before them; e.g., from 2010 to 2016.

And all Maslow Windows are aflicted by them.

Neither the early/pre-Maslow Window conflicts (that threaten Maslow Windows) nor the late-Window major wars (that terminate Maslow Windows) over the last 200 years, can be scientifically predicted with much reliability. But they are historically associated with long wave trends, including the upswing toward the major economic boom that triggers the widespread affluence-induced ebullience of Maslow Windows, as well as the long wave’s decline after the boom has peaked and an economic downturn is looming.

The early/pre-Maslow Window conflicts and the long economic waves they are associated with over the last 200+ years may be thought of in the context of a complex adaptive system model where self organized criticality produces typical events — e.g., early/pre-Maslow Window conflicts, financial panics, great recessions — just prior to the major economic boom of the Maslow Window itself. Niall Ferguson has described a similar model for the onset of World War I and other major geopolitcal events of the last 200 years.

In any case, the patterns associated with early/pre-Maslow Window years are clear. For example:

The Lewis & Clark/Jefferson Maslow Window:
If Napolean hadn’t been distracted from his interest in a North American empire by the need to fund his European war machine, Jefferson might not have gotten such a good price for the Lousiana Purchase, which led to the opening up of the American Northwest during the first Great Exploration of the last 200 years. (See: 10 Lessons Lewis & Clark Teach Us About the Human Future in Space)

The Dr. Livingstone/Suez/Polk Maslow Window:
One long wave later, the Mexican War played a major role in the early mid-19th century Maslow Window due to the ebullient, expansionist belief by the U.S. population in Manifest Destiny. (See: How the West Was Won — The Expansionist Effects of Ebullience)

The Peary/Panama/Roosevelt Maslow Window:
Just prior to perhaps the most ebullient decade in U.S. history, the Spanish-American War (1898) taught the future president and “Rough Rider” Theodore Roosevelt the potential strategic value of a Panama Canal — the greatest MEP of the last 200 years until Apollo. TR waited in Cuba for a key U.S. battleship from the Pacific which finally arrived, after a long trip around the southern tip of South America, 2 months after the war began. (See: 10 Lessons the Panama Canal Teaches Us About the Human Future in Space)

The 1960s Apollo/JFK Maslow Window:
One long wave later, early in the most recent Maslow Window, Cuba again eerily rose to center stage as the world came very close to World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962); this Crisis intensified the competition and global symbolism of the U.S.-Soviet race to the Moon, eventually won by the U.S. in 1969. (See: The New Cuban Space Center and Vladimir Bonaparte)

That’s the Bad News, and early/pre- Maslow Window international tensions — characteristic, as we’ve seen, of the last 200+ years — appear to be building again now in the Middle East as well as potentially elsewhere. (See, for example, Krepinevich (2009), 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century.)

But the Good News is that — although each early/pre-Maslow Window conflict was a time of war and/or even potentially global doom (i.e., the Cuban Missile Crisis) — over the last 200 years, all have amazingly accelerated the world toward the stunning Great Explorations and Macro-Engineering Projects of each ebullient Maslow Window, and have served as global quantum leaps as they transformed the world.

The New York Times (11/29/09) thinks we are.  According to Louis Uchitelle,

Generation after generation, giant public works projects have altered the American landscape. The Erie Canal and the transcontinental railroad come to mind. So do massive urban sewer and sanitation systems, the Tennessee Valley Authority, rural electrification, the Hoover Dam, the Interstate System, the subway networks in San Francisco and Washington, the Big Dig in Boston … and the list abruptly stops.

For the first time in memory, the nation has no outsize public works project under way.

Actually, the Times’ Superproject data is supportive of  21stCenturyWaves.com’s  Maslow Window model and its relation to Macro-Engineering Projects (MEPs) over the last 200 years – including the early 19th century, near-MEP Erie Canal mentioned by the Times — as well as current MEPs and those anticipated during the 2015 Maslow Window.

1. The 1960s Apollo Maslow Window appears in public works spending data for the last 60 years.
The signature of the long economic wave is visible in the Times‘ graphic of public works spending as a percentage of GDP from the late 1940s to the present; Click HERE.

The rapid rise in spending during the 1960s was enabled by  the major economic boom that triggered the 1960s Maslow Window;  it slammed shut just before 1970 and was followed by a precipitous decline across the 1970s and beyond. Both mirrored the trends of the long wave at those times.  As Uchitelle points out, “the strongest periods of economic growth in America have generally coincided with big outlays for new public works and the transformations they bring once completed.”

The  post-WW II spending boom of the 1950s and late 1940s has not been replicated in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Instead, the Panic of 2008 and our current great recession appears to be following the pattern of the Panic of 1893 and the great 1890s recession, which, after 1899,  rapidly rebounded into one of the most ebullient decades in U.S. history:  the 1903-1913 Maslow Window.  It featured Theodore Roosevelt’s transformative Panama Canal and the spectacular international races to both the north and south poles.

2.  Over the last 200 years, MEPs tend to cluster in rhythmic, twice-per-century pulses.
In “The Way MEPs Really Work,”  I adopted the definition of an MEP from Eugene Ferguson (1916-2004), a well-known professor of engineering and later history, and a founding member and former president (1977-78) of the Society for the History of Technology  According to Ferguson,

MEPs are: 1) at the state-of-the-art of technology for their time; 2) extremely expensive (at least $ 1 B,  in 2007 USD) and usually large in size; and 3) sometimes practical in purpose, but often they are aimed at satisfying intangible needs of a spiritual or psychological nature and are highly inspiring.

This is a demanding definition that excludes many extraordinary projects like trans-continental railroads or large highway systems because, while expensive and significant, they do not stretch technology.

The rhythmic, twice-per-century pulses of MEPs are visible in Cordell (1996).  Their association with Maslow Windows and regular timing suggests that the next flurry of Superprojects and MEPs will begin near 2015.  So, any “Superproject void” should be short-lived.

3. The Erie Canal was considered by Thomas Jefferson to be “a little short of madness.”

Courtesy of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester.

Uchitelle correctly identifies the Erie Canal as the key Superproject of early America, although I have been unable to convince myself that it is a true Ferguson-style MEP in the context of other MEPs of the last 200 years (e.g., the Panama Canal or Apollo Saturn V).

The Erie Canal is considered to be the greatest engineering marvel of its day and was often referred to as the 8th Wonder of the World.  Construction began in 1817 and it opened in 1825; the canal featured 18 aqueducts and 83 locks to accommodate the 568 foot rise from Albany to Buffalo.  It led to a population boom in western New York state, caused a drop in transportation costs by more than 90%, and opened up the western Great Lakes area to new settlers. In essence, the canal was a response to the pressures for westward expansion that had been ignited by the Great Exploration of Lewis and Clark earlier in the Maslow Window.

Jefferson’s “madness” quote referred to the canal’s cost: $ 7 M, courtesy of the New York state legislature; that’s about $ 0.1 B in 2007 USD, which is a little low for a true primary MEP. More impressive is its cost expressed as a fraction of GDP: 0.1 %.  That’s large and puts it in the same class as the Panama Canal (Apollo was 0.2 % of GDP); this is the best case for Erie being a Ferguson-style MEP.   However, despite the Erie Canal’s “engineering marvel” reputation, the project leaders were ebullient amateurs, not professional engineers because there were none in the U.S. at that time.  And its key technology advancements were limited to new, efficient techniques for removing tree stumps so the canal could be kept on schedule and within budget. 

The Erie Canal is definitely a Times-style Superproject, but not quite a Ferguson-style MEP.  I view it as transitional between the smaller, but still important, engineering projects of the late 18th century, and the more modern, true MEPs beginning in the mid-19th century Dr. Livingstone-Suez Canal Maslow Window.

4. Construction of the spectacular Golden Gate Bridge from 1932-37 did not end the Great Depression.
Uchitelle’s interest in the history of American superprojects relates to our recovery from the current great recession. 

President Obama has earmarked just $80 billion — a tenth of his stimulus package — for megaprojects, and put off most of that down payment until next year. His focus instead has been on spending hundreds of billions to quickly and visibly repair existing public works, especially highways, and also levees, dams and locks, particularly in the New Orleans area. That’s not a bad thing — those repairs are certainly needed — but it doesn’t create permanent wealth.

By the standards of the past, however, they are not the spectacular feats of engineering and ingenuity that greatly enhance the economy. The Erie Canal was just such a feat …

“Last year at this time we were debating whether we should be concentrating our spending on big projects that, in the long run, add to economic growth,” said John J. Wallis, an economic historian at the University of Maryland. “That debate never got resolved, and the stimulus bill we enacted in February ended up focused instead on quick spending.”

This is consistent with Harvard economics professor Robert Barro who finds that stimulus spending doesn’t work to stimulate the economy; “The available empirical evidence does not support the idea that spending multipliers typically exceed one, and thus spending stimulus programs will likely raise GDP by less than the increase in government spending,” (Wall Street Journal, 10/1/09)

The Golden Gate Bridge is a spectacular Northern California landmark that was built between 1932 and 1937 during the Great Depression  for $ 35 M; that’s about $ 530 M in 2007 USD.  As a fraction of GDP it’s 0.01%, much smaller than the Erie or Panama Canals, but still a sizeable amount of cash.

It’s significant that GGB was financed privately (without any significant expenditures of state or federal money), so it could have stimulated the economy, but in 1938 — almost a decade after the Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression and 6 years after Franklin Roosevelt was elected — U.S. unemployment was still about 14%.  Well-known Keynesian economists George Akerloff and Robert Schiller believe that FDR and Hoover were ineffective. In fact, “Confidence — and the economy itself — was not restored until World War II completely changed the dominant story of people’s lives, transforming the economy,” (Animal Spirits; 2009).

5. Current MEPs, the Panic/Recession of 2008+, and our current recovery suggest that any “Superproject void” will be brief. 
Indeed, the 2015 Maslow Window — a Golden Age of Prosperity, Exploration, and Technology – should not be late, based on the last 200 years of financial panics and great recessions (e.g., the 1890s great recession) that commonly occur in the decade just prior to Maslow Windows.  Plus pre-Maslow Window secondary MEPs — like the Large Hadron Collider and the International Space Station — point to the on-time opening of the 2015 Maslow Window.

Thanks to UK space expert and longtime Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society Stephen Ashworth for his comments about future space activities and Maslow Windows on his website, which I highly recommend (both the website and the comments!), by the way. He does an excellent job introducing the Maslow Window concept and indicating a few concerns.

Are happy days almost here again? A cheering, rain-soaked New York City crowd watches Neil Armstrong take his first step on the Moon in 1969. Click
Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

Let me borrow a few of his quotes here …

My own knowledge of recent history is not good enough to judge whether a cycle of roughly 56 years is in operation. And when people start saying that they have a sure-fire method of predicting the future of a highly complex system — whether the climate, or society; whether in an ostensibly scientific manner or through decoding secret messages in the Bible or the works of Nostradamus — my bullshit indicators start twitching.

Yet it is certainly conceivable that an overall cyclic pulsation in economic conditions — a two-generation business cycle — may be modulating the conditions for great scientific and exploration projects in a non-random way, allowing approximate forecasts to be made. And there is no bogus claim of certainty being made here — while great explorations may be imminent, we are also warned that the opportunity created by the newly favourable conditions could be squandered.

Actually, I don’t know much about Nostradamus except what I’ve seen on the History Channel! And I’m still not sure how he made his predictions. However, I discovered the Maslow Window by accident. I read a couple of books in 1992 that introduced and documented the 56 year energy cycle (one by Swiss physicist Theodore Modis), realized it was like a K-wave, and was impressed with the economic, technology, and societal parameters it was correlated with. So just for fun I checked to see if 1969 — culmination of the Apollo decade — was an energy peak. Of course it was, so I realized then that I’d have to check out everything back to Lewis and Clark to be sure it wasn’t real.

That’s when I noticed the Great Exploration/Macro-Engineering Project (MEP)/Major War clusters that line up with upswings and peaks in the long wave. (I should mention that the political scientists had already created a large literature on wars and the long wave, although I didn’t know anything about it yet in the mid-1990s. And Modis hinted at an MEP-long wave link, although I didn’t remember that until I noticed them preferentially popping up near long wave upswings and peaks over the last 200 years.)

So this is really a thoroughly empirical approach.

The theoretical part started when I tried to imagine how long business cycles could enable the clusters. It’s clear why the expensive MEPs would be favored by a large economic boom, but less so why Great Explorations would, until you connect a large, twice-per-century economic boom (part of the two-generation business cycle) with Maslow’s hierarchy. (Incidentally, before Apollo, the Great Explorations — e.g., Peary/Amundsen polar expeditions — were separate from the MEPs; e.g., Panama Canal.) This is the most likely time when large numbers of people in society will ascend Maslow’s hierarchy and momentarily be riveted by Apollo-style exploration and technology. But after the long wave peaks and begins to descend, this affluence-induced “ebullience” rapidly heads south; i.e., the “Maslow Window” collapses. Incidentally, that’s why we have 3 real Saturn V launch vehicles in museums today. In addition, Joshua Goldstein and others see major “peak” wars as interactive with the long wave, so they fit the broad pattern too.

This theory is certainly not perfect and cannot explain everything over the last 200 years. (And it doesn’t try to as you’ll see below.) As with anything involving real history about real humans and nations, there are always exceptions. But nevertheless, it does hang together rather well and points tantalizingly toward the 2015 Maslow Window and what’s in store for us!

More from Stephen Ashworth…

The difficulty I have with this theory is that Dr Cordell allows only about two decades of favourable conditions per century, in two “Maslow windows” 56 years apart.

The globalisation of the past half-millennium did not take place in scattered decade-long windows of opportunity, but was and had to be a continuous process over those centuries. Similarly, the multi-globalisation of the future will need to be a sustained effort. Certainly, there may be sudden leaps ahead, followed by long periods of relatively slow consolidation of the gains so spectacularly acquired.

Actually the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window itself (not counting the post-WW II long boom leading up to it) was even shorter than a decade; e.g., although Sputnik went up in 1957, Apollo didn’t really get going until 1961 and public support for it was already slipping by 1966. The length of the 2015 Maslow Window will probably be determined by how soon the expected mid-2020s major war begins. If it’s early (<2020) we could lose most of the Mars/Moon program, instead of only the last part of it as we did with Apollo in the late 1960s.

Secondly, Maslow Window theory does not really focus on globalization. Based on the last 200 years, it applies mainly to 3 things: Great Explorations, MEPs, and major wars; i.e., focused, large-scale endeavors that generate intense international interest. In fact, as I mentioned in the 1996 Space Policy paper (in the Articles), a lot of technology and science research proceeds consistently without much long wave modulation. To the extent that international cooperation and commercial relations expand and develop during Maslow Windows, globalization would be enhanced, but not limited to Maslow Windows.

More key Ashworth comments…

If each euphoric window of opportunity is only a decade long, then no groundbreaking government programme will in such a short time be able to create the conditions for steady progress during the following relatively depressed decades. The 1970s saw not only no further progress in lunar access, but even the loss of the limited access that did exist.

He’s really identified the problem with Apollo and its interaction with the 1960s Maslow Window very succinctly! The Windows do close abruptly and terminate great explorations and large engineering programs. For example, the ebullience of the early 20th century polar expeditions and “Panama fever” was as intense as Apollo but was quickly terminated by WW I. Likewise, government support for the amazing central Africa explorations of Dr. Livingstone – he’d previously returned to London as a major hero — was rapidly cut off, much in the style of his brothers-in-exploration, the Apollo astronauts, just past the peak of their wave, 2 long waves later.

A subtle, but important point is that funding limitations do not fundamentally cause great explorations and MEPs to die, it’s because of a lack of ebullience. As the long wave descends and contractions occur, it’s the perception of falling behind by many people that understandably weakens ebullience, not the lack of funding. This is demonstrated by our current situation in the U.S.; You could run the greatest space program of all time on part of the $ 787 B Stimulus bill that was passed earlier this year — and some suggest that a small part of it should be returned to fund NASA — but during this great recession, a time of deep anti-ebullience, there is little public interest to do so.

Ashworth concludes…

If Dr Cordell and his co-workers are right, the period 2015-2025 could see doubled and tripled government space budgets, with multiple manned landings on the Moon and even Mars. But by the same token, the late 2020s and 2030s will see retreat and retrenchment, with events on Earth dominated by economic depression and war. A new conspiracy theory will emerge: astronauts never really landed on Mars at all!

Therefore the hope that manned exploration can leap ahead in a renewed age of Camelot is ultimately an illusion. It may indeed — but if it does, it will quickly fall behind again, with the loss of most of the capabilities gained during the decade of ebullient expansion.

I agree with Stephen’s assessment of the positive effects of the next Maslow Window but do not think the aftermath will be as bleak as he suggests. For example, although we no longer have a Saturn V and haven’t returned to Moon in 40 years, the U.S. and others have gained much human space-ops experience in the Shuttle and the ISS, plus we’re seeing the birth of the private space tourism industry, and we are the recipients of a genuinely multi-polar space world — unlike where we left off in the 1960s.

Two more things:
1) To counter the negative effects of declining Maslow Windows, we (globally) should strive to achieve a largely self-sufficient presence on the Moon or Mars (as suggested recently by Buzz Aldrin and others) during the 2015 Maslow Window. This will avoid another crippling ~40 year interval (1972 to now) when we are trapped in Earth orbit and deprived the pleasures of solar system settlement.
And…
2) It was not an accident (and shouldn’t have been a surprise) that the Cold War space race began, as well as ended, the way it did. It’s been happening basically the same way for 200 years — all the way back to Lewis and Clark. The real power in learning these lessons is that we can begin to plan around these long waves, instead of being completely surprised by them.

We need a global, unified, multi-decade approach to human exploration and settlement of the solar system. And with knowledge of how Maslow Windows have operated in the past, we should be able to either moderate the long waves themselves, or at least reduce their effects on human expansion into the cosmos.

The World Future Society’s journal The Futurist (Jan-Feb, 2009; David Gelles) highlights an intriguing analysis of Silicon Valley’s attraction to physical immortality. The people involved call themselves transhumanists which involves “part science, part faith, and part philosophy,” but their focus is “radical life extension and life expansion.”

Dr. Aubrey de Grey, a world-class anti-aging champion, is head of the Methuselah Foundation. Click .

Some believers envision using biotechnology to reach ages near 1000 years, or “freezing the terminally ill…” using cryonics, in hopes of “…a second opinion from a future doctor,” and ultimately even uploading a human mind onto a computer. Drivers of this ebullient movement include the Who’s Who of Silicon Valley; e.g., dot-com millionaires like Peter Thiel (co-founder and former CEO of PayPal), technologist Ray Kurzweil (prolific inventer and Chancellor/Founder of Singularity University), and biologist Aubrey de Grey (Cambridge Univ PhD and head of the Methuselah Foundation).

Here at 21stCenturyWaves.com, Silicon Valley transhumanism piques our interest because it points to the growth of early ebullient thinking expected to be a key driver of the 2015 Maslow Window.

Over the last 200+ years, widespread ebullience has been at the core of fleeting and rare, but spectacular decades that we call Maslow Windows. Rhythmic, twice-per-century major economic booms trigger transformative clusters of Great Explorations (e.g., Lewis and Clark), macro-engineering projects (e.g., Panama Canal), and even major wars (e.g., WW I). For a few brief shining moments, many ebullient members of society are catapulted to higher levels in Maslow’s Hierarchy where their expanded world views make great explorations and massive MEPs seem not only intriguing, but almost irresistible. Other ebullient individuals — who for personal reasons, do not ascend to elevated levels in Maslow’s Hierarchy — sometimes become involved in destructive pursuits, including major wars.

However, the key is ebullience — an intensely positive, almost giddy, feeling of confidence in the future — that drives Maslow Windows like the 1960s Apollo Moon program and the Lewis and Clark explorations over 200 years ago. The next one is expected near 2015, and the early ebullience of Silicon Valley transhumanism suggests it will be on time.

Interest in immortality was generated during the early stages of the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window by physicist Robert Ettinger’s 1962 book, The Prospect of Immortality. Ettinger asserted that “if a body were frozen shortly after death, future technologies would be able to revive the recently deceased.” Ten years later, as the Apollo Maslow Window was closing, Ettinger brought transhumanism into focus by suggesting that “rather than relying on cryonics to revive the dead, forthcoming technologies might make death obsolete.”

Whatever questions you may have about the people and/or the technologies, this is truly the essence of 1960s Camelot-style ebullience!

After the 1960s Maslow Window, nearly 200 bodies were frigidly ensconced in the Arizona vaults of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. For a time Walt Disney was rumored to be among the elite 200 but he’s apparently buried in Forest Lawn Glendale near Los Angeles, not far from Michael Jackson’s new final resting place.

After the 1960s Maslow Window slammed shut, ebullience faded right on schedule as the long wave descended during the 1970s, 80s and into the 90s as “futurism gave way to materialism.” About the time of the Internet bubble burst (circa 2002) the famous Extropy Institute closed although scattered online discussions of transhumanism persisted.

During the early approach the 2015 Maslow Window, Alcor’s business was resurrected with over 800 ebullient members signing on to be frozen at death (and hopefully revived in the future), as the Silicon Valley became the “Galactic Center” for transhumanism, with several groups — e.g., Foresight Nanotech Institute, The Singularity Institute, the Immortality Institute — vying for prominence.

Today’s transhumanists see “the body as a machine, and the brain as a computer.” In a stunning display of ebullient techno-optimism, they believe that a Moore’s Law for medical technology will enable us to “fix, improve, and upgrade ourselves… (and) change the world.” And according to the popularizer of the most popular transhumanist concept — The Singularity — Ray Kurzweil explains that it is “a future period when the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed.”

The Transhumanists’ impressive early ebullience today virtually guarantees that the 2015 Maslow Window is right around the corner!

But even Kurzweil admits that The Singularity could ruin our entire afternoon if, for example, rogue nano-machines were to “disassemble everything on Earth…(or a) Cyborg army might decide to wipe out the human race.” And even Theil, a major transhumanist benefactor admits, “There’s always this big question about how much of this is too bizarre to be affiliated with.”

Others are more direct. For example, Johns Hopkins political scientist Francis Fukuyama labeled transhumanism “The world’s most dangerous idea…(because) the first victim of transhumanism might be equality.” Fearing a “new, high-tech eugenics,” Richard Haynes of the Oakland-based Center for Genetics and Society asks, “At what point do we start thinking of each other as humans and subhumans…Or humans and transhumans? And some wonder if there isn’t something sad about the incessant focus on avoidance of death in a Universe where “Life is a mystery and death is part of life.” It’s reminiscent of the first stage in Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ well-known “Five Stages of Grief“: denial.

However, all this may soon be beside the point. Indeed near 2015, when the next Maslow Window is expected to open, these issues will recede from our purview, because if the last 200 years are any guide, between about 2015 and 2025 we’ll be … simply … ebullient.

And for a brief few moments, like the transhumanists of today and the Maslow Window residents of the last 200 years, we’ll believe that almost anything is possible.

Grandiose structures with cosmic aspirations have a lot in common, regardless of when they were constructed, according to the New York Times (8/9/09; James Glanz). Built around 1500 years ago, Xunantunich, the sacred Mayan pyramid, was the product of a lofty, cosmically sophisticated society that mysteriously disappeared.

Xunantunich and its modern cousin, the Large Hadron Collider, point tantalizingly toward the spectacular 2015 Maslow Window. Click

According to Dr. Richard Leventhal, an anthropologist with the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on Xunantunich,

All of these multigenerational projects are based upon a strong and ongoing belief system in how the world works.

As long as that world view remains in tact, the project continues and is updated by each generation, but if it falters, “all bets are off.” This mirrors the views of 1960s sociologist Fred Polak who cited 2000 years of evidence supporting the importance of a positive vision of the future to the viability of a civilization.

With the Mayans we are apparently seeing evidence of a civilization-level collapse, but Xunantunich itself also speaks of the enduring power of the cosmos to motivate humans toward large, state-of-the-art engineering projects — supporting a major theme and expectation of 21stCenturyWaves.com as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window.

Glanz, himself “a former physicist,” seems to flirt with an anti-technology bias by suggesting that Xunantunich and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) “have something in common: overreach.” However, Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg counters, “I don’t see it in quite those apocalyptic terms.”

And of course Weinberg is right. In reality, despite it’s current technical snags, LHC is becoming a stunning Macro-Engineering Project (MEP) that fits the patterns of MEPs for the last 200 years and points to even bigger things during the 2015 Maslow Window.

Our technical definition of an MEP requires more than just state-of-the-art technology and a large price tag: it must also inspire and excite a large international audience, like the Saturn V Moon rocket of the 1960s did and the Panama Canal still does. As I noted before, in the case of the Superconducting Super Collider, this demand for global interest was one of the nails in its coffin, because major particle accelerators are buried underground and thus hard for the public to see and fall in love with. However, it appears that as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, the LHC is overcoming this limitation based on its pop culture references — e.g., searching for the “God Particle,” and speculations about small LHC-produced black holes that might gobble up the Earth — and its long wave timing.

Construction of LHC was approved in 1995, near the trough of the 56 year energy cycle, so the project benefitted from the generally upward trend of the long wave until recently. However, cost overruns, budget cuts, and engineering difficulties have driven the cost up to $ 9 B and delayed the opening date to September 10, 2008. Over the last 200 years, this is typical of MEPs that originate far from Maslow Windows.

Rather than comparing LHC to Xunantunich, it is much more interesting to compare it to analogous MEPs of the last 200 years, especially if we want a glimpse of the 2015 Maslow Window.

Each Maslow Window of the last 200 years — except for the first one, the Lewis & Clark Maslow Window — features one primary MEP and one or more secondary ones. For example, the Peary/Panama Maslow Window (1903-13) features the Panama Canal as its primary MEP, and the Titanic ship as a secondary MEP.

In the context of the last 200 years, the timing, technological complexity, and cost of LHC suggest it is a secondary MEP associated with a much larger primary MEP that will appear during the 2015 Maslow Window. LHC appears to be analogous to the Mackinac Bridge (connecting the peninusulas of Michigan), a secondary MEP of the 1950s that preceded the primary MEP — the Apollo/Saturn V transportation infrastructure — of the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

I have previously estimated the cost of the 2015 Maslow Window’s primary MEP as between $ 1T and 3T, based on a simple extrapolation of 20th Century MEP costs into the 21st century. (This assumes rapid economic growth characteristic of Maslow Windows as we exit our current major recession in a few years and reignite the “greatest global boom ever” that was interrupted by the Panic of 2008.)

Using simple ratios between the costs of primary and secondary MEPs for each Maslow Window, and assuming that LHC is a secondary MEP of the 2015 Maslow Window, allows another interesting estimate of the cost of the primary MEP after 2015.

Here are the primary MEP to secondary MEP cost ratios for the last 3 Maslow Windows:

Dr. Livingstone/Suez Maslow Window:
Suez Canal cost/Great Eastern ship cost = 50

Peary/Panama Maslow Window:
Panama Canal cost/Titanic ship cost = 50

Apollo Moon Program Maslow Window:
Apollo Moon cost/Mackinac Bridge cost= 200

If we multiply the cost of LHC by these factors we estimate the cost of the primary MEP during the 2015 Maslow Window.

The primary to secondary MEP cost ratios of the 19th and early 20th century Windows suggest a 2015 Window primary MEP cost of $ 0.5 T.

And the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window ratio suggests about $ 2 T.

This cost range — $ 0.5 to 2 T — is close to the earlier range ($ 1T to 3T) that I obtained from simple extrapolation of primary MEP costs.

One could argue that the most modern (e.g., 1960s) cost ratio might be more characteristic of the 21st Century, which would favor 2015 MEP costs of between $ 1T to 3T, like my previous estimates.

Thanks to Aron Sora, a recent high school graduate who blogs at habitationintention.blogspot.com for his intriguing comment about his and other young people’s future:

I’m going to graduate from college in 2013, just in time for the Maslow window. I want to be an active participant in the next window … I just feel really lucky about my birth date since it will lead to me having a undergrad degree two years before the window or a doctoral degree about mid-way.

The next Maslow Window should open near 2015, and trigger a New Space Age for young people! Click .

1) Let me reiterate that there is every reason to believe that the 2015 Maslow Window will open approximately on time, based on the last 200 years of Maslow Window timings and current data. I’ll give a brief summary here with more to come soon.

U.S. unemployment recently reached 9.5% and the prediction market Intrade projects, at the 80% level (up from 50% in April), that it will surpass 10% by December, 2009. Although “casting doubt on prospects for the U.S. economy to soon rebound,” (Wall Street Journal, 7/3/09), this is still a long way from the devastating unemployment rates during the Great Depression (25% in 1933 to 17% in 1939).

Although Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard economist, is “expecting the recovery to be a slow one,” (WSJ, 7/3/09), another Harvard economist — Robert Barro — who has examined data on recessions back to 1870 for the U.S. and 33 other countries, says there is only a 20% chance that our current crisis will result in a GDP decline of 10% or more (a major depression has 25% decline).

Akerloff and Shiller (2009) see current parallels with the Panic of 1893 and its major recession; e.g., “U.S. unemployment rose to 12.3% in 1894, peaked at 12.4% in 1897, and did not fall below 10% untill 1899.” However, the 1890s recession was followed by a time of “sustained prosperity” (Fischer, 1996) that we know of as the Peary/Panama Maslow Window (~1903-1913), one of the most ebullient decades in the history of the United States.

The fact that — over the last 200+ years — no Maslow Window has ever been delayed or in any observable way diminshed by a financial panic or recession, plus the special parallels with the “1893 to 1913 Panic – Recession – Maslow Window” experience , suggest the 2015 Maslow Window will open on time. (More to come in future posts.)

2) 1930 was a good birth year for future Apollo astronauts. What about the first Mars explorers?

It’s true. The entire Apollo 11 crew — Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins — was born in 1930, as were many others. An incomplete list includes Tom Stafford (Apollo 10), Pete Conrad (Apollo 12), Ed Mitchell (Apollo 14), Jim Irwin (Apollo 15), and John Young (Apollo 16), etc.

The irony is that they had to be born during the Great Depression to be chronologically positioned for the long wave as it ascended into the unparalleled economic boom of the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window. These and most other Apollo astronauts were born about 40 years before they went to the Moon (1969-72).

Using this model, and assuming the 2015 Maslow Window will culminate near 2025, the Apollo astronaut analogs — possibly the first Mars explorers — were born near 1985; they’re called “Millennials.” They graduated from high school near 2002 and college near 2006; some will get PhDs soon.

Like their Apollo analogs, the Millennials are positioned for their approaching Maslow Window (near 2015) but have less in common with them than you might expect. For example,
a) the Millennials have not experienced a major international war as destructive as WW II or Vietnam, and
b) the Millennials are affected by the Panic of 2008 and the current major recession in the decade before their Maslow Window, which did not occur prior to the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

Thus it’s interesting that the Millennials’ general life experience, as we approach their Maslow Window during a major recession, may have some key elements more in common with the polar explorers of the Peary/Panama Maslow Window than with the Apollo explorers of the 1960s. Remember also that although pre-Maslow Window financial panic/recessions are the rule over the last 200 years, they are not required to produce a Maslow Window as shown by the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

3) When’s the best time to be born?

Many good things and bad things happen near peaks of the energy cycle, about a decade after the Maslow Window begins. The exact timing varies with the specific Maslow Window over the last 200 years but, in general, Maslow Windows are usually terminated by a rapid decline in the economy and/or a major war.

The biggest challenges will be experienced by young people who leave school and come into the world looking for their first real economic opportunity (i.e., job) near the culmination of the Maslow Window. That often occurs around the age of 20. So based on this Maslow Window model, a good rule of thumb is: Think twice about being born about 20 years before an energy cycle peak.

At the most vulnerable time in your professional life, you will be impacted by the abrupt end of a major economic boom and you may be caught up in a major war. Although many are able to “turn lemons into lemonade” you should be aware that these twice-per-century challenges can be formidable. Perhaps the worst aspect is that you’ll be too young to personally participate in the great explorations or MEPs of your Window. And after 10 years of watching them, when you finally are old enough to join the fun, it will all end. We’re talking here about people born between about 2000 and 2010 (they may not be reading this yet!), between 1945 and 1955, and between about 1888 and 1898 (also probably not reading this).

It’s much better to be 20 years or older as the Maslow Window begins. As you emerge into the economic world the long boom will be fully warmed up. Almost anything you do will be profitable. And the ebullience of the Maslow Window will make you feel like it will never end. Of course it always does in about 10 years, but by then you’ll be better established in your career and less vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune — of the economy and the world. Remember the Apollo astronauts were about 30 as their Maslow Window opened, and as more mature people go into space, even being 40+ might be OK; e.g., in 1971 Alan Shepard became the oldest person to walk on the Moon at 47, and in 1998 John Glenn became the oldest human to fly into space at 77. To optimally participate and prosper from the last 3 Maslow Windows (including the 2015 Window), it was best to be born between about 1975 – 2000, 1920 – 1945, and 1863 – 1888.

Although these rules of thumb are broadly consistent with the last 200 years of macroeconomic data and historical trends, they are only approximate and are subject to many exceptions. For example, if you were born during “sub-optimal times,” having supportive parents or being a resourceful person can make up for many challenges associated with the long wave.

But if you’re secretly holding out hope that the lessons of the last 200+ years regarding Maslow Windows and long waves will magically melt away, don’t bet on it. For example, the stunning MEP trio of the Panama Canal, Apollo program, and the International Space Station illustrate the power of the long wave. Amazingly, neither Ferdinand de Lesseps nor President Ronald Reagan — both brilliant leaders about 100 years apart — could make their MEPs materialize during unfavorable portions of the long wave. While Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and John Kennedy became heroes for successfully initiating the Panama Canal and Apollo program during their respective Maslow Windows. And even the Clinton/Bush ISS has recently become known as an “international marvel” as we approach another Maslow Window. The moral of the last 200+ years regarding great explorations and macro-engineering projects is: “great leaders help, but the economy rules.”

In any case, if you’re thinking about having kids this year, and plan to be supportive parents … go ahead!! The economic recovery should begin next year and, although it may be followed by a few years of sluggish growth, we should return to the rapid growth levels of 2007 relatively soon. The long-awaited 2015 Maslow Window will open on time. And remember, history shows that whether you do experience a financial panic/recession just before your Maslow Window (e.g., 1903-1913; or 2015-2025) or whether you don’t (e.g., 1959-1969), your Maslow Window will be spectacular.

As for Mr. Sora, who just graduated from high school and was born in 1991, he is a Millennial and is well chronologically positioned to be about 24 when the next Maslow Window begins. Nice birthdate Aron, work hard and enjoy your Maslow Window!

I. Welcome to the Carnival of Space #110 at Kentucky Space.
If you’d like to sample a number of excellent space-related weblogs, please click HERE

The Carnival is run by Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today.

II. Interest in Panama Canal Continues to Surge
Over the 4th weekend, “10 Lessons the Panama Canal Teaches Us About the Human Future in Space” (5/18/09) moved up to #2 on the All-Time Readers’ Favorite List.

One of the greatest engineering marvels in human history — and one that points directly toward the ebullient 2015 Maslow Window — the Panama Canal continues to win awards for its Expansion Program. And the Canal Authority continues to modernize the current canal and to internationally market the canal’s future.

The Panama Canal Expansion Program is a remarkable example of “early ebullience” that signals our rapid approach to the long-awaited 2015 Maslow Window. Click .

An interesting measure of the Canal’s ability to attract major attention from an international audience — one of the key characteristics of a modern Macro-Engineering Project (MEP) — is the response to my recent post, “10 Lessons the Panama Canal Teaches Us About the Human Future in Space.” Published just under 5 weeks ago on May 18, it has surged to #3 on the All-Time Readers’ Favorite List; up from #4 as recently as June 16, and it continues to climb.

The Canal itself is a magnificent story and, in combination with the International Space Station and the Apollo Moon program, provides surprising insights into the future, such as: the probable costs of future space programs, the types of future MEPs most likely to succeed, and the key role of the long wave in major programs. I think the unusual, future-oriented approach of the post appeals to many, but I’m sure that most of the international web surfers who visit are attracted by the extraordinary nature of the Panama Canal itself.

For example, at the 2009 International Logistics and Material Handling Exhibition (SIL 2009) in Barcelona, Spain, the Panama Canal Expansion Program (CEP) was given the esteemed Samoter award for “Best Construction Project in the World.” The Canal Expansion Program was also named the “Best International Project” by judges for their management of the “largest infrastructure initiative in Latin America.” To date, the Panama CEP has won a total of 11 international awards.

The Panama Canal Authority continues to modernize its operations. Recently US$ 320 M were invested in a new lighting system for increased safety, a new track and turntable system that cuts transit times, and several new tugboats. The Canal Authority has also recently signed MOUs with U.S. east coast port authorities of Philadelphia (6/12/09) and Maryland (6/2/09) to promote trade and economic growth and the “All-Water Route” connecting Asia to the U.S. east coast via the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal Expansion Program continues to be perhaps the most visible example of “early ebullience” in the world today. And despite the global recession, the CEP remains a sparkling bridge to more properous times in the near future. With its completion scheduled for 2014, the Canal will signal the opening of the 2015 Maslow Window and stimulate economic growth throughout the world — enabling human expansion into the cosmos.

Last week the Nereus — an unmanned submersible — ebulliently plunged to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench near Guam in the western Pacific (Baltimore Sun, 6/5/09; F. Roylance). At 35,761 feet below sea level (SL), the Deep’s more than a mile farther below SL than the summit of Mt. Everest is above it, and the weight of the overlying water produces pressures 1100 times those at SL — “like having the weight of 3 SUVs on your big toe.”

Does Nereus point to a new race to “inner space”? Click nereus3.doc.

Indeed, “the deepest ocean trenches are cold and dark and hostile places, visited by humans even less often than the surface of the Moon,” (San Diego Union-Tribune, 6/3/09; S. Liewer). The last time the Deep’s frigid privacy was violated was in 1998 by a Japanese robotic craft, the Kaiko. But the ocean got its revenge in 2003 when Kaiko’s control cable snapped and it was lost. Although Nereus also has a cable, it can voluntarily separate from it and swim independently or float to the surface.

According to Andy Bowen, Nereus’ developer from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, “With a robot like Nereus, we can now explore virtually anywhere in the ocean… I believe it marks the start of a new era in ocean exploration.”

Although Nereus is officially a scientific and engineering project, it’s also evidence of increasing “early ebullience” as we approach the 2015 Maslow Window. Despite the global recession, early ebullience is evident around the world today — e.g., booming Antarctic tourism, architectural projects such as the Shanghai Tower, the Panama Canal Expansion Project, Spaceport America and the birth of the space tourism industry, the International Space Station itself (an “international marvel”), international plans for bases on the Moon. Widespread ebullience will fundamentally drive public interest in Apollo-style space spectaculars and MEPs and briefly become the dominant global zeitgeist from 2015 to 2025, as it did during the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

Despite its ebullience, or maybe because of it (!), Nereus has its critics. For example, well-known deep ocean explorer Robert Ballard — best known for discovering the remains of the Titanic in 1985 — thinks that “reaching the bottom of the ocean isn’t worth the effort,” (San Diego U-T, 6/3/09), because other submersibles can already reach 95% of the ocean floor.

But Chris German, also of Woods Hole, offers an ebullient reply to Ballard, clearly reminiscent of past Apollo astronauts on the Moon, “It’s not just a matter of planting a flag and saying ‘Aren’t we clever?’…Going to the deepest parts of the ocean means there’s no place on Earth we can’t go,” (italics mine).

And although Bowen insists that the Nereus team doesn’t aim to break the depth record of the Trieste and Kaiko, in a revealing ebullient moment, Bowen admits that indeed “we may be looking for that extra meter.”

Project Mohole was supposed to be Earth Science’s answer to the Apollo Moon program. Click .

Nereus reminds us that about one long wave ago, the ebullient race to “inner space” was closely linked to the race to outer space.

1960, January 23: The Trieste. Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh — the ocean’s most daring explorers — took the Trieste 35,813 feet straight down into the Challenger Deep. It was the first and only time that humans have made the trip. Bowen, Ballard, and others still regard the Trieste mission with awe (and a little envy)!

1961, March: Project Mohole. After this ebullient brainchild of Scripps Institute of Oceanography geophysicist Walter Munk — to drill through the crust to the upper mantle and return samples — was funded by National Science Foundation in 1958, the first test drills in spring, 1961 were very successful. Drill holes reached about 600 feet into the crust through a record 11,700 feet of water, off the west coast of Mexico.

Some ebullient geophysicists envision Project Mohole returning samples from the Earth’s mantle about the same time as Apollo astronauts arrive on the Moon. Mantle rocks and Moon rocks would provide clues to the origin of the Earth and Moon.

1961, April 9: President Kennedy Congratulates Mohole. The ebullient icon of the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window admired the Mohole team: “The success of the drilling in almost 12,000 feet of water…and the penetration of the ocean crust… constitute a remarkable achievement and an historic landmark…” (New York Times, 4/9/61).

1961, May 25: JFK’s To the Moon Speech. Before a joint session of Congress, President Kennedy announces that the U.S. will send an astronaut to the Moon and return him safely before the end of the decade. He wants to “catch up to and overtake” the Soviet Union in the “space race.”

1966, April 19: Congress Cancels Mohole. Due to scientific debates, political controversy, and budget stress due to the Vietnam War, Congress voted to cut off funds for Project Mohole. It’s cost estimates had finally soared beyond $ 100 M. Project Mohole sadly became Project “No Hole.”

In his 1999 book, The Executive Decisionmaking Process, Ralph Sanders criticizes the leaders of Mohole for getting caught up in the ebullience of the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window, “The scientists argued that, just as in the space program, the U.S. engaged in a race with the Soviets for discovering new and important facts about the Earth’s geology.”

Sanders asserts that Mohole failed because its leadership should have been engineers and technologists (in the style of Apollo) — not Earth scientists, and that the scientists were focused on more ebullient, and less engineering-related questions like:

“Can ocean and geologic science improve the nation’s image?”
and
“Can U.S. science beat Soviet science in this important field?”

My point here is not to question the visionary brilliance of Munk, Hess, and others who conceived of Mohole, but to simply illustrate the power of ebullience during a Maslow Window on even the best scientific minds, as well as on society at-large.

1969, July 20: Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to step on the Moon.

By analogy with the Trieste, Mohole, and Apollo, it’s likely that Nereus may be a precursor of the 2015 Maslow Window, when oceans, energy, and other global interests will interact strongly with human expansion into the cosmos.

The New York Times (5/24/09, J. Markoff) highlights the fun idea that developments in artificial intelligence may someday produce a Skynet-like system (as in Terminator Salvation); i.e., “a military R&D project that gained self-awareness and concluded that humans were an irritant…”

Technologist Ray Kurzweil believes The Singularity is near. Click .

This idea dates back to the ebullient Apollo Maslow Window in a 1961 short story by Arthur C. Clarke. First called “The Singularity” in 1993 by Vernor Vinge, it referred to a future time when humans would be overwhelmed by the acceleration of technological progress. Extrapolating from Moore’s Law, AI pioneer Ray Kurzweil predicted in 2005 that technological progress would accelerate to the point when machines had “not only surpassed human intelligence but took over the process of technological invention, with unpredictable consequences.”

And he said it would occur in 2045.

This is one reason I don’t forecast beyond 2030! But all kidding aside, it’s relevant to the favorite question of many of my friends: Besides WW III or a planet-sterilizing comet impact, what would it take to throw off the long wave of the last 200+ years and invalidate the 2015 Maslow Window concept?

My usual response is that it would apparently require something worse than the Civil War, WW I, WW II, the Cold War, the Great Victorian Depression of 1873, The Great Depression of the 1930s, and numerous financial panics and major recessions (including the current one) of the last 200 years. Because amazingly, the long wave didn’t blink during any of those. However, having computers take over the process of technological invention — and probably eventually everything else — would certainly be something new!

Kurzweil, currently 61, envisions uploading the contents of a human’s brain into a computing environment — providing a type of immortality — within his lifetime. At the 2006 World Future Society meeting in Toronto where I happened to catch him, Kurzweil also suggested creating a Manhattan-style project to develop this capability. He had an enormous crowd and we all caught the symbolism when his computer malfunctioned during the presentation and nobody could fix it. Nevertheless, Kurzweil’s a genuine celebrity in the technology and futures communities.

But not everyone is buying the show. For example, William Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, believes bad news is more likely than a Kurzweilian utopia with ultra-computers attending to our every need, “I wasn’t saying we would be supplanted by something, I think a catastrophe is more likely.”

And expanding on the fact that Moore’s Law is not a law of physics, merely an industrial pattern, physicist and management consultant Theodore Modis asserts that Kurzweil’s approach is not really scientific. “Kurzweil and the singularitarians are indulging in some sort of para-science, which differs from real science in matters of methodology and rigor. They tend to overlook rigorous scientific practices such as focusing on natural laws, giving precise definitions, verifying the data meticulously, and estimating the uncertainties.”

Modis questions Kurzweil’s key forecasts, including whether The Singularity will ever occur, because Kurzweil’s exponentials are actually “S” curves. For example, regarding supercomputing power, “assuming that the exponential trend will continue until 2045 (which I personally doubt) we find that computer power will reach 6×10**23 Flops (floating-point operations per second) at ‘singularity time’. But … until computer power reaches a final ceiling, there must be further growth of less than two orders of magnitude. This translates to an ultimate computer power of less than 10**25 Flops, which is in flagrant contradiction with Kurzweil’s forecast of 10**50 and beyond!”

Modis is passionate about his anti-Singularity beliefs. Although I first read about the 56 year energy cycle in his 1992 book and have been in contact with him since my 1996 Space Policy article, he more recently gently complained about Figure 1 in Cordell (2006), because it could be misinterpreted to support The Singularity.

Neither Modis nor I actually finished Kurzweil’s book. Modis admits that “Around Page 150 I got fed up and stopped … as science fiction goes, even realistic one like Kurzweil’s, I prefer more literary prose with plot, romance, and less of this science.”