The Future And You--July 1, 2015

Les Johnson on space exploration and development: where we are exploring now, and where we will explore in the next few years. Also, plans for a future satellite-based Internet provider which will not only lower the cost of high-speed Internet and make it available everywhere on Earth, but also make it very difficult for governments to censor.

Also: the increasing need for leap-seconds to keep our clocks accurate, since the earth's rotation rate is less stable than we previously believed; NASA's plans for a Europa mission; America's dependence on Russian-made rocket engines; the value of nuclear thermal rockets to explore the solar system; a planned near pass of the sun to within 3 solar radii; an 85 meter solar sail will use the pressure of sunlight to travel to an asteroid; sending hair samples to the stars; a proposed electrodynamic propulsion; the first launch of the SLS is set for 2018; three flights of solar sails; the flyby of Pluto is still on track; the James Webb Space Telescope will be bigger and better than Hubble; Bigelow inflatable space habitats may be used on Mars; the "lunar flashlight" will look for water ice on the moon by reflecting sunlight into one of the craters at the lunar south pole which has been at 4 degrees absolute for over a billion years; and many other projects.

Les Johnson is Senior Technical Assistant for the Advanced Concepts Office at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He is also a physicist, author of nonfiction books about space, and scientifically accurate science fiction novels.

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the July 1, 2015 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 53 minutes] This presentation was recorded in front of an audience at the science fiction and fantasy convention LibertyCon in Chattanooga TN, on June 27, 2015.

Stephen Euin Cobb has interviewed over 350 people for his work as an author, futurist, magazine writer and award-winning podcaster. A contributing editor for Space and Time Magazine; he has also been a regular contributor for Robot, H+, Grim Couture and Port Iris magazines; and he spent three years as a columnist and contributing editor for Jim Baen's Universe Magazine. For the last nine years he has produced a weekly podcast, The Future And You, which explores (through interviews, panel discussions and commentary) all the ways the future will be different from today. He is an artist, essayist, game designer, transhumanist, and is on the Advisory Board of The Lifeboat Foundation. Stephen is the author of an ebook about the future entitled: Indistinguishable from Magic: Predictions of Revolutionary Future Science.