The 20 tallest buildings completed in 2011 point to a new 1960s-style “Golden Age” that’s just around the corner.
Click

For example, last month the CTBUH announced that the new One World Trade Center tower in New YorK City (at Ground Zero) might not become the tallest in the Western Hemisphere after all because the 408 foot antenna atop the building would not be enclosed in an architectural spire; according to the CTBUH, spires count, but antennas sans spires don’t (Wall Street Journal, C. Bialik, 5/12/12).

Indeed, such erigible esoterica is of considerable significance as we at 21stCenturyWaves.com continue our development of a global ebullience index.

This is because — over the last 200+ years — large Macro-Engineering Projects (e.g., Panama Canal) and Great Explorations (e.g., discovery of the N and S poles) appear to be triggered by large economic booms, but are fundamentally driven by “ebullience” (e.g., “Panama fever”, “pole mania”) — a somewhat irrational, but highly positive view of the future.

For example, In the 1960s Apollo program and Peace Corps of John F. Kennedy it was the ebullient feeling that we could do almost anything; in the early 20th century it was Theodore Roosevelt’s Panama fever and (north & south) pole mania; in the mid-19th century it was manifest destiny of James Polk and the central Africa adventures of Dr. Livingstone, I presume; and about 200 years ago it began auspiciously with Jefferson, Napoleon, and Lewis & Clark.

Earlier this year at the University of Southern California an internationally recognized architect confided to me that erecting tall buildings is usually more about egos than profits.

The CTBUH executive director agrees and the early abullience shown by Saudi plans for the first kilometer supertower — that bests the current tallest Burj Khalifa in Dubai by 500+ feet — and other recent extraordinay endeavors suggest we are indeed headed for a new 1960s-style “golden age”.

For example, in their annual review (for 2011) of tall building trends, the CTBUH noted:
1) 2011 continues the trend since 2007 that each successive year has more 200 meter+ buildings completed than ever before; this record-setting pace is now expected to continue even through the current great recession.

Looking to the future, it is now foreseeable – indeed likely – that the recent trend of an annual increase in building completions will continue for the next several years, perhaps even through the end of the decade. This represents a change in recent predictions. It had been expected that skyscraper completions would drop off very sharply after 2011, as a result of the 2008 global financial crisis and the large number of projects put on hold. Now however, due in large part to the continuing high activity of skyscraper design and construction in China, as well as the development of several relatively new markets, this global dip is no longer expected.

2) Global shifts in the locations of the top 100 buildings are significant. For example, Asia (with 46) is edging toward 50% of the all top 100 towers, and the Middle East increased by three, while Europe dropped to only one building in the top 100.

3) While China remains a dynamic market for 200 m+ buildings, its production declined from 33% in 2010 to only 26% in 2011, which indicates the market is diversifying. For example, Panama — site of one of the most ebullient MEPs in the world today: the Panama Canal Expansion Project — is enjoying a 200 m+ spurt:

Before 2008, no 200 m+ buildings existed in all of Panama. Then, between 2008 and 2010, three buildings opened. In 2011, Panama City completed ten 200 m+ skyscrapers, more than any other city and more than double the number of completions in all of North America. With these completions, there are now 12 such buildings in Panama, perhaps signaling a new day for the tall building in this region.

The CTBUH Summary for 2011 concludes by forecasting a decade-long surge in tall buildings around the globe.

With over 300 projects above the 200-meter mark currently under construction internationally, the tall building community is set to continue to develop at an incredible pace. As new markets continue to discover and develop the tall building, it is quite possible that this pace will continue through the end of this decade. Without a doubt, the skylines of the world will see tremendous change by the year 2020.

The tall building community sees beyond current global economic difficulties to a more ebullient 1960s-style “golden age” that will sparkle into the 2020s. It’s called the 2015 Maslow Window and will also feature the new international Space Age.

Annual growth of GDP per capita from 1960 to 2000, is directly correlated with international math test scores.
Click

In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries’ PISA rankings for 2009 the U.S. ranked only 31st in math — comparable to Portugal or Italy — while 16 other countries dwarfed the U.S. with twice as many “high achievers” per capita in math. Even the state of California — once a national leader in K-12 education — is now ranked behind 40 other states in math achievement, at about the level of Greece.

This kind of performance will condemn the U.S. to a “low-growth path,” and is consistent with record low SAT scores in reading and writing, China’s ascent to world leadership in math and science scores, and even the World Economic Forum ranking the U.S. 48th in quality of math and science education.
For example, click: State of the Wave — 10 Space Trends for 2011. (see #4).

These concerns are reminiscent of Sputnik-era anxieties about U.S. education and technology that triggered the first Space Age, and are harbingers of the approaching new Space Age, as I wrote in 2010:

Shultz and Hanushek suggest that if the U.S. adoped K-12 reforms that made it competitive with Canada — i.e., increasing its PISA scores by 40 points —

The improvement in GDP over the next 80 years would exceed a present value of $70 trillion. That’s equivalent to an average 20% boost in income for every U.S. worker each year over his or her entire career.

In their recent front-page Sputnik-style headline, the Wall Street Journal (4/26/12; D. Wessel, S. Banchero) suggests that an “Education Slowdown Threatens U.S.” Since Lewis and Clark, nearly each successive generation in America has had considerably more education than their parents — until now.

For example, when Babyboomers born in 1955 reached 30, they had almost 2 years more education than their parents, compared with the 30-year-olds born in 1980 who had only 8 months more. This has key implications for increased unemployment and lower wages which typically afflict less educated workers, as well as a lower general standard of living in the U.S.

Thirty years ago the U.S. led the world in young people (25-34) with at least 2 years of college. Since 2009, the U.S. has been superseded by 14 other developed countries. By the way, The Space Report 2012 indicates that China is currently the leader in production of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) university bachelor degrees, having doubled their production between 2002 and 2006.

Part of the reason for the decline in college education in the U.S. is rising tuition costs and large student debt, but the New York Times Sunday page one story (5/6/12; S. Greenhouse) also blames it on:

the worst job market in decades.

Timeframes of the readers’ lists below are: I) Favorites during April, and II) Favorites during the Last 7 days.

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 5/1/2012

I. APRIL — Readers’ Favorites

1) Did the New Space Age Begin This Week With Planetary Resources? — 4/26/12
2) The Moon is Not Enough…! — 11/22/08
3) The Allure of Moving to Mars Points to the New Space Age — 10/30/10
4) Panama Canal Named Best Construction Project in the World — 6/21/09
5) Kepler Update: Earth-like Planets Are “Extremely Rare” — 3/19/12

II. THE LAST 7 DAYS — Readers’ Favorites

1) Did the New Space Age Begin This Week With Planetary Resources? — 4/26/12
2) Panama Canal Named Best Construction Project in the World — 6/21/09
3) Parallels Between Presidents Truman and Bush Provide Insights into the Future — 4/15/10
4) Long-Term Stock Trends Support Maslow Window Forecasts — 11/3/11
5) The Cold War-Style Arms Race in Asia and the New Space Age — 2/12/11

IN MEMORIAM: Dr. Ken Meehan

I’m very sad to report that our good friend and Contributing Editor Dr. Ken Meehan passed away this week. He was an excellent psychologist who provided key guidance and encouragement to 21stCenturyWaves.com from the very beginning and especially to the concept of “ebullience.” Ken was a great person and is greatly missed; God bless Ken and his family.

Planetary Resources (PR) finally announced their intent to create a “gold rush” to the asteroids, for both water and platinum group metals. The water will fuel an interplanetary highway and the precious metals will create prosperity on Earth.

Like the California Gold Rush ~150 years ago, a new asteroid “gold rush” may change the world.
Click

Never before has a technologically sophisticated and well-capitalized private group publicly announced their intention to mine the riches of space!

It appears the world took a giant step, at least symbolically, toward the new international Space Age, and the long-anticipated, 1960s-style Maslow Window.

Regardless of their ultimate success or failure, no group in recent memory has provided a more world-class display of ebullience — an exceptionally positive view of the future — than PR’s leaders this week.

For example, co-founder Peter Diamandis exclaimed that they intend to create “abundance” (also the title of his new book) on Earth, while co-founder Eric Anderson indicated that this “seminal event…is fun!” and that their goals are “so audacious, we may fail.” Technology chief, Chris Lewicki concurred that the innovations required would be “bold, crazy!”

This is the language of ebullience that historically signals the rapid approach of a new golden age in technology, exploration, and prosperity.

For example, two centuries ago during their Maslow Window, not only Lewis and Clark but Thomas Jefferson himself was overwhelmed by the ebullient thrill of discovery and opened up the American northwest. Half a century later, during the mid-19th century Maslow Window, the California Gold Rush drew many ebullient people to the new frontier. Today’s proposal of an asteroid “gold rush” by PR displays an eerily similar historical rhythm and ebullient style with the Apollo Moon program of the 1960s.

Despite continuing economic challenges, 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 (an “international marvel”), international plans for bases on the Moon., and most recently, the stunning deep ocean adventures of James Cameron, also a featured PR investor and team member.

However, the PR crew indicated clearly that initially there are no humans in this vision (except on the ground) and this is definitely not a JFK-like thrust featuring humans to the Moon or Mars. Indeed Lewicki specifically cited Failure is Not an Option — the famous book title by Apollo-era flight controller Gene Kranz — as an outmoded notion for PR because of redundancies provided by robotic convoys.

This is a totally unprecedented type of space program whose fundamental goal is to shower the Earth with precious metals … and eventually provide greater access to space.

It’s easy to attack the boldness of this group, and their presentation did (self-admittedly) have a sophisticated infomercial feel to it — i.e., they are looking for new investors and engineers.

However win or lose, Planetary Resources will stimulate a cascade of other visionary leaders, investors, and even governments to think and act seriously about near-term opportunities in space.

That’s how the new, international Space Age begins.

Fractal Maslow Windows and the Near-Term Colonization of Mars

Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) is an emergent property of complex systems whereby they organize themselves into a critical state such that rapid changes, including catastrophes, can occur.

In 1998, based on power-law plots like this, Roberts and Turcotte concluded that “World order behaves as a self-organized critical system independent of the efforts made to control and stabilize interactions between people and countries.”
Click

SOC is indicated for space exploration by the following: 1) Apollo is the most recent in a string of rhythmic, twice-per-century clusters of great human explorations, large macro-engineering projects (MEP), and major wars, back to Lewis and Clark, suggesting punctuated equilibrium, 2) Based on their power law size-frequency distribution, Roberts & Turcotte (1998) showed that wars are SOC processes; my recent analysis of cost data suggests the same is true of NASA programs, and 3) Space programs obey Bak’s gap equation (1996), which describes the system’s evolution from weak SOC to the fractal, self organized critical state; i.e., a “Maslow Window.”

While in the critical state, large changes (e.g., in space, MEPs, and/or war) can rapidly occur in response to even a minor stimulus. The classic example is the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis which raised the stakes for the Moon Race, and suggests the road to the next critical state may also be bumpy.

Long-term and current global trends – including the financial Panic of 2008, the great recession of 2008-10, and geopolitical tensions in the Persian Gulf and in North Korea – signal that a new, 1960s-style critical state is expected by mid-decade. This should trigger a new, Apollo-level, international Space Age.

Bak’s model shows punctuated equilibrium — long periods of stasis (horizontal portions) interrupted by rapid changes (vertical sections) while in the critical state.
Click

As in Bak’s numerical simulations, the real-world transitions of a critical state are abrupt – including both into it (e.g., in 1901; in 1958) and out of it (e.g., in 1914; in 1970). To avoid another 40 years of being trapped in Earth orbit (since Apollo 17) due to sudden closing of the approaching Maslow Window, human spaceflight should establish near-term bases on or near Mars and/or the Moon by the 2020s that do not require frequent re-supply from Earth. Because of its exploration, science, and colonization potential, Mars is preferred.

Timeframes of the readers’ lists below are: I) Favorites during March, and II) Favorites during the Last 90 days.

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 4/1/2012

I. MARCH — Readers’ Favorites

1) The Allure of Moving to Mars Points to the New Space Age — 10/30/10
2) The Moon is Not Enough…! — 11/22/08
3) Kepler Update: Earth-like Planets Are “Extremely Rare” — 3/19/12
4) State of the Wave: The Geopolitics of a Moon Base — 3/12/12
5) Long-Term Stock Trends Support Maslow Window Forecasts — 11/3/11

II. THE LAST 90 DAYS — Readers’ Favorites

1) Is Earth Unique? What This “Benchmark Moment” Means for ETs and Our Future — 1/5/12
2) State of the Wave: 10 Space Trends for 2012 — 1/10/12
3) Are Stratfor’s “Generational Shifts” Like “Falling Grains of Sand”? — 2/13/12
4) The Allure of Moving to Mars Points to the New Space Age — 10/30/10
5) The Maslow Window — Summary — 4/2/11

Cameron’s space-inspired description of the Challenger Deep included “very lunar, a very desolate place, very isolated.”
Click

Cameron repeats a stunning feat first accomplished in 1960 — early in the Apollo Maslow Window — by the ocean’s most daring explorers, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh who first descended into the Challenger Deep, which is much farther (a mile+) below sea level than Mt. Everest is above it. Although unmanned submersibles have been there in recent times, until Cameron no human had risked the trip again.
Click: Nereus, Mohole, Apollo and the New Race to Space

Although Cameron and National Geographic view this voyage into inner space as an important scientific and engineering project, it’s also evidence of increasing “early ebullience” as we approach a new international Space Age expected by mid-decade.

Despite continuing economic challenges, 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 (an “international marvel”), international plans for bases on the Moon.

One might ask the rather naive question of why — in this day of remotely operated vehicles (ROV) and telepresence — he risked the trip personally. After all Cameron did have to surface early because of hydraulic problems.

Patricia Fryer (University of Hawaii) gives the standard “scientific” explanation:

The critical thing is to be able to take the human mind down into that environment, to be able to turn your head and look around to see what the relationships are between organisms in a community and to see how they’re behaving—to turn off all the lights and just sit there and watch and not frighten the animals, so that they behave normally. That is almost impossible to do with an ROV.

While true, considering the ebullient entertainment instincts of Cameron, it reminds me of the NASA official who once pointed out that,

We don’t give tickertape parades to robots.

Widespread ebullience and an increasingly fractal geopolitical situation will fundamentally drive public interest in Apollo-style space spectaculars and briefly become the dominant global zeitgeist over the coming decade, as they did during the 1960s Apollo Maslow Window.

According to Space Daily, “the pessmistic characteristic of these results suggest that to find earth-like worlds elsewhere, we should prepare to look hard – and quite possibily very hard for decades if not centuries.”
Click

This is important because, to the public, the two most enticing drivers of human expansion into the Cosmos during the approaching new International Space Age are: 1) the discovery and exploration of Earth-like worlds, and 2) the prospects for extraterrestrial life, especially with intelligence.

The new Kepler data is consistent with analysis by JPL scientists Joseph Catanzarite and Michael Shao, that I discussed here, based on 4 months of Kepler data, but not with other more optimistic estimates.

Catanzarite and Shao — whose paper was accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal in 2011 — adopted an Earth Analog region characterized by a planet radius of 0.8 to 2 (Earth radii). The lower value corresponds to a mass of about 50% of Earth’s, the lower limit for retention of an oxygen atmosphere. The upper value is adopted by the Kepler scientists and, assuming Earth-like parameters, implies a planet with twice the surface heat flow of Earth and half Earth’s lithospheric thickness. Active plate tectonics and volcanism would be expected..

Catanzarite and Shao fit the Kepler transit data to power laws for both the planet radius and the scaled planet distance; they judge that the power laws are excellent fits to the data for distances from 0.2 AU to 0.5 AU (inside the HZ limits) and planetary radii from 2 to 4 (just larger than the EA range).

Using the power laws, the Kepler data set is then extrapolated into the Earth analog region defined above to obtain their estimate — based on the first 4 months of Kepler data — of the fraction of Sun-like stars likely to have Earth-analog planets: 2% +1.6%/-1.1%.

The addition of 12 more months of new Kepler data is summarizied in this table from Space Daily:
Click

Bins of planet radius versus bins of planet period, out to the habitable zone (Earth is 365 days) are shown here; planet frequency estimates are the product of actual observed numbers of planets times their de-bias factor. This compensates for Kepler bias towards close-in and larger planets in the data.

The Kepler data show that planets with nearly exactly one Earth mass (0.9-1.1) are most likely at periods of 4-8 days, well inside a Mercury-like orbit (88 days), and also 6 bins inside the habitable zone. These are hot planets.

We can make this data more comparable to the radius limits of Catanzarite and Shao by summing appropriate bins and extrapolating them to the right (to the habitable zone) using Rehling’s median factor (0.72) relating a bin’s frequency to that of the bin to its left.

The new value — based on 16 months of Kepler data — for the fraction of Sun-like stars with Earth-analog planets is about 3.6%. This is very close to Catanzarite and Shao’s previous result, and suggests strongly again that Earth-like planets are rare.

This latest Kepler analysis reinforces:

1) An updated, anthropic Drake Equation, suggesting that high intelligence is rare in our Galaxy.
Click: Kepler, Watson, and Gott Point to the Rare Earth Hypothesis,

and

2) The proposition that — in defense of high intelligence — space colonization should be a high priority for humanity.
Click: Is Earth Unique? What this “Benchmark Moment” Means for ETs and Our Future

In the short term — As I commented last year in Space News (6/29/11) — such front-burner aspects of a Moon program will be trumped by the slow economic recovery.

President Obama’s cancellation of Constellation — the U.S. program to return to the Moon by 2020 — was not a big surprise. It appears to be merely a speed bump on the road to near-term international commercial and scientific development of Earth-Moon space and even humans to Mars.

For more perspective on a Moon base, Click: Is the Moon a “Golden Oldie” or a “One Hit Wonder”?

In 1990, Lawrence Livermore scientists proposed an inflatable base on the Moon within a decade that would become self-sufficient, require only 60 tons of hardware transported to the Moon, and cost only ~ $ 11 B.
Click

Miller makes the Moon base cost-effective by reducing Earth launch costs by a factor of 10+ to $ 500 per pound and achieves this by focusing on development of a totally reusable spaceplane. The technology requirements remind Miller of the X-37, an unmanned Mach 25 resuable spacecraft that launches like a rocket and lands like an airplane similar to the Space Shuttle.

According to Miller, reusable spaceplanes are the key to commercial space.

The nation that builds the first true reusable spaceplane will be in a position to dominate the much broader commercial space industry … such as satellite servicing, tourism, and medical breakthroughs from zero-gravity research.

The X-37 began as a NASA project in 1999 but was transferred to DARPA in 2004 where it became a secret program. Recently the X-37B spaceplane celebrated one year in orbit although its mission is classfied as is its return date.

In 2010 Tom Burghardt (Space Daily; May 11) asserted that the X-37 will help achieve Air Force Space Command’s stated goal of “space dominance” that includes,

a johnny-on-the-spot weapons platform to take out the satellite assets of an enemy, or as a launch vehicle that can deliver bombs, missiles or kinetic weapons anywhere on earth in less than two hours.

Miller confirms that our critical strategic assets in space (e.g. comsats, surveillance satellites) are currently vulnerable to potential anti-satellite weapons being developed by China (successfully tested in 2007) and even North Korea and Iran, but that spaceplanes “will transform national security” by their ability to rapidly replace such orbiting assets, and thus reduce the incentive to attack them in the first place.

Traditionally, the Moon has been viewed as the most secure location for Earth surveillance, as expressed in 1984 by the famous physicist Edward Teller at the Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century Conference. (I also spoke at this event on importing water from the moons of Mars for use in the Earth-Moon system.)

Teller stated he would like to see an outpost on the Moon (~12 people) as soon as possible. As a “special proposal” he recommended that,

Surveillance of the Earth — permanent continuous surveillance that is hard to interfere with — is an extremely important question, important to us, important to the international community, important for peace-keeping … It is in everyone’s best interest to have observation stations that are not easy to interfere with.

Teller also suggested that in the name of global peace, Earth surveillance images obtained from Moon orbit should be made “universally available.”

More recently (1/6/12), Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt — the first scientist on the Moon — sees the current status of civilian space as a geopolitical crisis for America.

America’s eroding geopolitical stature, highlighted by the July 21, 2011, end to flights of the United States Space Shuttle, has reached crisis proportions. Obama Administration officials now spin the nebulous thought of Astronauts flying many months to an undetermined asteroid in 2025 as an actual “National Space Policy”. On the other hand, Republican candidates for President have not yet recognized the importance of international civil space competition in the federal government’s constitutional function to provide for the nation’s “common defence”. Candidates appear to be uninterested in having the United States lead deep space exploration, including establishing American settlements on the Moon …

Meanwhile, China is building a major new deep space launch facility in Hainan and developing new rockets and spacecraft to take over the exploration of the Moon from the United States and the free world.

Given the geopolitical significance of the Moon in the coming mid-decade Maslow Window, I have surveyed several friends in the military and NASA communities, and none claims knowledge of any studies of potential national security applications of a Moon base done over the last 10-15 years.

The closest I could come was a chilling Moon-related military scenario in George Friedman’s (Stratfor.com) book The Next Hundred Years (2009); he agrees with Teller’s opinion of the value of Earth surveillance from the Moon and suggests that, “Sustaining and defending a base on the Moon will actually be easier than doing the same for orbital systems.”

Although no specific references are provided, Friedman insists that:

These forecasts are based on real technology, reasonable extrapolations about future technology, and reasonable war planning.

In Friedman’s mid-21st century scenario, both Japan and Turkey — two key space powers by then — become understandably threatened by powerful U.S. command and control “battlestars” in Geostationary orbits that can very rapidly direct a variety of weapons — advanced versions of the X-37, lasers, hypersonic missiles — at any point on Earth or in space.

By this time many nations will have bases on the Moon, however Japan and Turkey build an underground base on the Moon’s farside where they secretly use lunar materials to develop, build, and launch missiles to attack the Battlestars in Earth orbit.

I won’t give away how the story ends here. However, it is unlikely that “secret” military activities could go unnoticed for long on the anti-Earth side of the Moon. For example, many astronomers have already chosen the Moon’s farside as the best location for a radio observatory in this part of the solar system.

Coming Soon: A Window of Opportunity for the Next Space Age; Pictured is Wernher Von Braun, the great German rocket scientist and visionary who was the driving force in the post-W. W. II American space program.
Click

Thanks to Pat Silver, Managing Editor of Ad Astra for producing such an excellent magazine and for this introduction:

Dear Ad Astra reader,

Are we on the verge of a new space age? Bruce Cordell thinks we are. Based on historical trends and the Maslow Window model, he sees that a resurgence of public interest in space exploration is coming soon! And that’s great news for space enthusiasts like us. In this issue, we look at the many preparations needed to send mankind back to the Moon and beyond, and how they’ll fourish there.

But when will we actually see these things happen? According to Cordell, a Maslow Window, or a period of high interest in space, is due by mid-decade. The last Maslow Window opened during Kennedy’s presidency in the early 60s, the period when Wernher von Braun fathered the American space program …

Thanks especially to Katherine Brick, Associate Editor of Ad Astra, for her many suggestions to improve the article; For the text, CLICK “A New Apollo-Level Space Age.”

For more information on Maslow Windows and the new, international Apollo-level Space Age expected by mid-decade, CLICK HERE.