How far off do you think the main event of 2001: A Space Odyssey will turn out to be? I don’t mean alien contact. That’s completely too random. I just mean a manned mission to Jupiter. Think of how little we’ve achieved out of the milestones depicted in that film. Moon base. Passenger travel to orbit. A space station with artificial gravity. To consider visiting Jupiter, we would have to first successfully visit Mars and the asteroid belt.

I think we’d also probably expect to have more robotic missions to the outer and inner planets, and perhaps permanent satellites around both Mars and Jupiter.
Read the rest of this entry »