Predictions Take Flight: The Future As Seen in 1910

New Year's invites predictions. New Year's at the start of a decade seems to beg for them. Looking back at past predictions is a helpful way to keep all the current prognosticating in perspective.

One cautionary example: a forecast for the coming decade in aviation published 100 years ago.

It appeared in the January 2, 1909, edition of the New York Times -- in the "Automobile" section -- under the headline, "Limit of Flight Not Yet Reached." The author was Cortlandt Field Bishop, an early aviator and president of the Aero Club of America. Bishop wrote about the "astonishing development of aeronautics" in the half-dozen years since the Wright Brothers historic flight in North Carolina. "That the advancement of human flight has exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the boldest and most enthusiastic follower of the sport must be admitted, and it would seem the wildest prediction as to the future may not be classed as impossible," he said.

But the writer's personal predictions were fairly reserved. Wing design, engine power, control issues and safety considerations meant "the practicability of the heavier-than-air machine is still far in the future," Bishop said:

"From an experimental standpoint aviation has graduated into actuality. It is a lasting tribute to the inventive genius and ingenuity of man, but the question of adaptability to commercial purposes and practical uses is yet far removed. The practical heavier-than-air machine is not here, and it is doubtful whether this decade will ever see it."

Early aviators had pulled off headline-grabbing feats in the final months of 1909. Wilbur Wright himself had soared over New York City and even circled the Statue of Liberty during a series of demonstrations that fall. Two weeks later, Count Charles de Lambert made an unannounced half-hour flight high above Paris, circling the Eiffel Tower in yet another Wright-made aircraft.

But the capabilities, range and safety of those early airplanes were still extremely limited. Focusing on those realities, Bishop cautioned that the new flying machines would be of "doubtful value in warfare," except perhaps for certain surveillance missions. Any "suggestion of equipping heavier-than-air machines with small guns" was simply impractical, he wrote, and "the use of aeroplanes at night for warfare purposes is entirely out of the question."

The Aero Club president also reminded readers that using aircraft to transport "cargo of any weight" was "impossible" at that point -- "but progress is being made rapidly and a revolution of the science may accomplish wonders."

Overall, Bishop hoped the aeroplane would quickly evolve from being a vehicle primarily used for stunts and experimentation to one that could become a dependable personal transport -- a flying motorcycle with longish range:

"For some considerable time the practicability of the heavier-than-air machine will be confined to record-breaking flights and gradual improvements in construction, and it will be a pleasant recreation for the owner of an aeroplane to jump into his machine and make a short call on a friend at a distance of from ten to 100 miles and return, but while many changes in mechanical flights will be accomplished in the next decade, the social life will not be disturbed and conditions will exist similar to those of the present day."

So how did our prognosticator do? Well, by 1911, a year after Bishop's article appeared in the Times, the first air mail routes were sprouting in various places around the world. Within a few years aircraft were conducting military reconnaissance and bombing missions over Europe. Aerial combat quickly followed -- changing warfare forever.

The aeroplane's far-off future arrived ahead of schedule. But Bishop had no reason to be ashamed of his forecast. After all, no less an aviation authority than Wilbur Wright had once famously told his brother "that man would not fly for fifty years." That was 1901 -- just two years before their breakthrough at Kitty Hawk.

"Ever since," Wright said, "I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."

(Image above from Wikimedia Commons: A Wright Military Flyer arrives at Ft. Myer in Northern Virginia in 1908.)

NASA Plays Asteroids: Leapfroging to Mars?

Asteroids, the iconic video game of the early 1980s, marked its thirtieth anniversary last month. You can honor the occasion by shooting up some space rocks in the embedded player above or by playing on the official Atari Web site.

NASA recently dropped more than 1.2 billion quarters on its own version of the game with its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The space agency launched the $320 million orbiting observatory earlier this month in part to help identify previously unknown asteroids and comets, among other astronomical objects.

And if President Obama takes the advice of an advisory commission that looked at the space program's future, an even higher-stakes version of Atari's arcade classic could be in the works -- one that would involve sending astronauts on a mission to explore one of the nearby planetoids.

A number of robotic space probes have already paid visits to asteroids and other Near Earth Objects (or NEOs) in recent years. The image here shows the shadow of Japan's Hayabusa space probe as it passed over a half-kilometer-long, potato-shaped object called Itokawa in 2005 (click to enlarge). Hayabusa's seven-year mission is scheduled to end this coming June when it returns to Earth with a small sample from the asteroid's surface.

Space scientists have been eying asteroids as potential destinations for human explorers as well -- possibly as a more challenging alternative to the Moon missions envisioned for the end of the coming decade. October's brief suborbital test flight of a rocket intended to be a key component of NASA's future lunar expeditions gave the Moon plans an equally brief burst of attention. But so far Congress and the public just have not shown sustained interest in paying for what critics have dismissed as a been-there-done-that sequel to NASA's late-1960s lunar triumphs.

As the U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee noted in its final report this fall, the space agency won't be able to meet its 2020 time line for returning to the Moon with its current funding levels. The advisory panel offered the new administration several recommendations for moving forward, such as using new commercially developed spacecraft to ferry crews to and from the International Space Station after NASA retires its space shuttle fleet. That would free the agency to concentrate on human exploration instead. But exploration of what?

The main reason for going back to the Moon was to provide a stepping stone for an eventual trek to Mars. But an asteroid or some other object might be a more remote -- and more exciting -- destination, beyond the immediate gravitational neighborhood of the home planet. The technological, navigational and biological challenges of a months-long roundtrip journey would provide a better testing ground for an even lengthier Mars mission.

Others in the space community have been thinking along these lines for some time. The idea got a serious hearing during a high-level, two-day workshop on space exploration at Stanford University in February 2008. In a paper summarizing the discussion, the workshop's organizers said missions to near-Earth asteroids -- or perhaps the asteroid-like Martian moon Phobos -- would offer "valuable rewards in their own right, in addition to advancing the capability for sending astronauts on long interplanetary voyages. But their greatest value could be to supply what is missing in the current human space-exploration plan -- publicly engaging milestones on the road to Mars."

The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) made a similar case for sending human crews to NEOs in a 2004 report. One scenario that report examined: mounting a two-month expedition in 2025 to the asteroid 1999 A010 -- a journey that would require a yearlong roundtrip. A mission like that would "stretch the capabilities of human exploration just enough to greatly reduce the risk of the Mars missions to come," the IAA said, and therefore "play an important architectural role as a bridge between Earth's neighborhood and Mars."

The IAA also pointed out that asteroids could quite literally help build that bridge by providing relatively easy access to valuable minerals for future space colonists. "Importing materials from Earth to space is very expensive, so a key to establishing a permanent human presence in the solar system is to find means to utilize resources found in space," the report said. Scouting missions would help determine whether rocky space islands offer opportunities "to develop in situ resources including the production of energy, fuel and construction materials."

"Because NEO's have very low gravity, transportation of these resources to other locations can be done relatively inexpensively, and thus they could be extremely useful in the development of a long-term human presence in space. Early human explorers at NEO's could complete resource assays begun by robotic missions, select the best locations for resource processing units, and initiate their operation. It may also be determined that NEO resources have commercial potential, in which case larger-scale processing operations requiring human presence may be appropriate."

And if the idea of space mines doesn't capture the imagination, there's always the doom-and-gloom angle: Passing asteroids pose threats to life on Earth, as the popular press enjoys reminding the public every time a NEO is projected to tumble into our vicinity. A 2007 NASA study ordered up by Congress looked at a variety of techniques for changing the course of a threatening asteroid or comet. It detailed all kinds of diversion techniques -- from nuclear options to "gravity tractors." The study also outlined various manned and unmanned opportunities for learning more about what the report called "Potentially Hazardous Objects," or PHOs. (It's a NASA study -- an abbreviation is required.)

So would any of those reasons be enough to reengage the public in making big investments in human space exploration during a time of war and economic distress?

We'll see if the White House and Congress are willing to line up their quarters for a multibillion-dollar round of Asteroids -- or whether other, more terrestrial games take precedence. In the mean time, Hollywood already has ideas for its own expensive version of Asteroids. Over the summer, blockbuster film producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura ("G.I. Joe," "Transformers") secured the film rights to Atari's arcade game. Tentative release date for Asteroids, the movie: 2012.

(Japanese space agency image of the Itokawa asteroid shown above from The Planetary Society.)

A Flight Plan for California's Aerial Giant

This grainy nighttime picture of a zeppelin passing over a deco hotel in Los Angeles looks like it might have been shot in the 1930s. But it actually was taken with my iPhone on Sunset Boulevard two weekends ago.

Airship Eureka is the same Silicon Valley-based zeppelin that I traveled on over the summer, when it last ventured down the coast for a few days of L.A.-area tourist flights. I happened to be in town last week, too, and spotted the 246-foot, helium-filled craft several times while I was there -- in the air over Interstate 405 and above West Hollywood, and on the ground at the airport in Long Beach.

Long Beach also was the destination at the end of my July flight from Eureka's home at Moffett Field near San Jose. That 9-hour, 20-minute trip offered spectacular views down most of the length of the Golden State. We also made an unexpected pass over the media swarm that had gathered near Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch to cover the pop icon's death a few days earlier -- a test flight for the zeppelin's potential as a platform for TV crews.

Photo highlights from my trip are linked here and embedded in a slideshow below. But few of those shots convey how enormous Eureka is. From the ground, it might look like the kind of blimps that often circle over sporting events. But this zeppelin -- different from a blimp because of its semi-rigid framework inside -- is closer in length to a Boeing 747 or a colossal U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy cargo jet.

Enthusiasts of lighter-than-air vehicles such as the historic zeppelins of the early 20th century have been waiting decades for an airship renaissance. They imagine a time when aerial giants are once again common sights over big cities, if not to ferry passengers than perhaps to deliver airborne cargo to hard-to-reach destinations. Economics and aerodynamics have thwarted many such ventures over the years, as I noted in a previous posting. But those past failures aren't daunting the founders of Airship Ventures, Eureka's California operator.

Company president Brian Hall is a software entrepreneur with a soft spot for technologies that "ended prematurely" or were never "fully explored." He and his wife obtained their Zeppelin NT under a long-term lease from the legendary German airship-builder. The Halls' immediate plan for their zeppelin -- one of just three such aircraft operating around the world -- was to launch a high-end "flight-seeing" business for tourists and charter passengers, supplemented by the kind of sponsorship dollars long associated with traditional blimp operations. In an in-flight interview during my flight, Hall said "healthy profits" appeared to be in reach -- probably within a year, despite the hardly buoyant economy in which the privately held enterprise lifted off in the fall of 2008. Hall also said he eventually hopes to operate an additional airship or two, including one possibly based on the U.S. East Coast.

The longer-term plans for Airship Ventures are even more ambitious. Hall explained that the company's "public-facing business" -- tourism and advertising -- was designed in part to support the development of new and improved airships while also providing a showcase for their future potential. And as those vehicles become available, Hall clearly indicated he wants to be among the first in line to capitalize on their capabilities. "I don’t think it's the best airship," Hall said of Eureka as we passed a few thousand feet over the California coast south of Santa Barbara. "I think it's the best airship you can buy."

What could a better airship do? Hall said improvements in propulsion and range will turn future zeppelins into fuel-efficient, stable and highly maneuverable platforms for lucrative government work -- such as aerial surveillance flights for military or homeland security missions that would benefit from an airship's ability to "loiter" for long periods over fixed points. Heavy-lift cargo assignments, especially in areas without significant infrastructure, were another possibility Hall mentioned. And the same long-distance, long-duration capabilities required for those assignments also could lead to grander travel possibilities, such as the trans-oceanic passenger flights that ended with the Hindenburg disaster of 1937.

One way that Airship Ventures is trying to demonstrate the potential of current and future zeppelins is by leasing out the Eureka for scientific work -- like the kind of atmospheric research done by NASA. Conveniently the aerospace agency's Ames Research Center is the landlord for Eureka's Moffett Field hanger. And a few weeks ago, researchers from NASA's Earth Science Division at Ames hired out the airship for eight hours to test its uses as an experimental observation platform.

Hall also told me he was talking to researchers from other scientific institutions about ways to take advantage of Eureka's ability to unobtrusively study whales and other marine life. A stunning overhead photograph of a blue whale recently posted on Airship Venture's Web site may help make that case.

Hall said earlier airship start-ups led by entrepreneurs with similar goals and visions foundered over the years because they tried to do too much too fast. In contrast, Hall said his company was slowly cultivating the technology, know-how and market for innovative new lighter-than-air craft. "We're building a foundation," he said.

As Hall and I finished our interview, I rejoined the handful of other passengers, taking in views of Malibu and the passing coastline out the port-side windows of Eureka's 30-foot gondola. A short time later, we soared over Santa Monica Pier and into the heart of Los Angeles. We watched jumbo jets land below us as we passed over busy LAX. And a few of us took turns snapping pictures of each other sticking our heads out one of the windows -- not something you can do on many other aircraft these days.

As we neared Long Beach, one of our two pilots -- Fritz Guenther, on loan from the airship's manufacturer -- provided some last-minute instructions to the passengers about the arrival procedures. We applauded -- perhaps prematurely. "We're not done yet," Guenther reminded us. "We have to land." But after that flight, it was hard not to be a little enthusiastic.

Reality is for the earthbound.

(Photos by the author. Click into the gallery for captions.)

Putting the 'Public' in Public Media

What's the public's role in PUBLIC media's future, particularly in shaping and contributing content? That's the subject of a two-day "unconference" that began this morning on the campus of American University in Washington, D.C.

What the heck is an unconference? An increasingly popular form of informal build-your-own-agenda event, also called a "BarCamp". As veteran "camp" councilor Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs explained to the crowd of several hundred attendees at the start of the day, "Why isn't there a sign for where the bathroom is? Because you didn't put it up."

Public Media Camp was organized by NPR, PBS and A.U.'s Center for Social Media to kickoff an initiative to "strengthen the relationship that public broadcasters have with their communities through the creation of collaborative projects." The meeting attracted a diverse group from across the country -- executives and journalists, technologists and designers, fund-raisers and funders, students, professors, "citizen journalists," and many independent content creators and freelancers, both on-air and online. There's no shortage of laptops and iPhones, so the discussions are easy to follow at #pubcamp on Twitter.

Camp convened this rainy morning with about an hour of introductions. Each attendee was supposed to very briefly introduce themselves -- although few stuck to three three-word limit. As I did at Government 2.0 Camp, a similar event for public sector types that I attended in March, I tried to jot down a few three-word introductions that captured the spirit of this gathering. A dozen or so that resonated with me...

"digital immigrant party-crasher"
"oldest laptop here"
"old socialized anarchist"
"veteran, strategy, unemployed"
"geeky journalism student"
"social media skeptic"
"community, widgets, caffeinated"
"content, convergence, management"
"content, content, content"
"open development, sharing"
"more system collaboration"
"drive web traffic"
"it's cold outside"

And my favorite: "AOL, Friendster, future" -- care of Andrew Phelps from WBUR.org. "My point," he explains "...is that platforms come and go but community is forever." (Andrew also may be the funniest person at Pubcamp.)

My own three words: "public media newbie," having moved to NPR just 12 weeks ago after a couple of decades working on the editorial and business sides at traditional, for-profit news organizations, mostly trying to help print journalism find its way online. Much to learn still, even after 13 years in this not-so-new media business -- especially when it comes to how we engage our audience. But one thing I know: There's no way to be interactive without interacting.

Quotes From the Future: Ted Kennedy's Political Force

"We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on in the future we make."

-- Edward M. Kennedy, quoted in this morning's New York Times obituary for the Massachusetts senator. The line comes from a speech Kennedy delivered when he received an honorary degree at Harvard last December.

In nearly two decades of Washington journalism, I have never come anywhere near as close to stumping a lawmaker as I did when I was a 12-year-old volunteer on Ted Kennedy's 1980 presidential bid.

My volunteer work on Kennedy's campaign for the Democratic nomination had nothing to do with politics. My sixth-grade political views were embryonic, at best. But the campaign staff conveniently located their D.C. headquarters in an abandoned Cadillac dealership on 22nd Street NW, just a couple of blocks from my mother's office. Having nothing better to do with her pesky son when school was out, she took me to work with her and then dispatched me to the Kennedy HQ down the street. And the campaign staff kept me plenty busy: I worked in the mail room; I photocopied donor checks and FEC documents; I fed audio clips to local radio stations over the phone; I couriered packages across town; I helped set up chairs for a fund-raiser on the lawn at the senator's McLean home. It was like a wonky summer camp.

As the Democratic primaries wound down in early June, Kennedy came by the office to thank the troops. This was my opportunity to get the candidate to sign one of the black-and-white photos that I had signed in his name for many supporters when I worked in the mail room.

When my turn came to shake the senator's hand, the only thing I could think to say perfectly captured my lifelong geekiness:

"May the Force be with you, Senator."

What else would a 12-year-old say in 1980? "The Empire Strikes Back" had just come out in theaters.

Kennedy was baffled. "Uh, thank you -- very much," he said in that distinctive "Kennedy accent." Then he signed his picture and moved on.

His brother John may have charted humanity's path to the Moon, but Senator Kennedy clearly was wondering how his campaign had been infiltrated by a little alien from a galaxy very far away.

The Very Model of a Modern Mobile Admiral

Admiral Thad W. Allen is a Webby guy. The commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard is on Facebook. He blogs, he tweets, he podcasts. And he carries around a coffee mug.

The admiral explained how and why online communications is changing the seafaring business in a recent interview with gCaptain, a Web site for maritime professionals. While much of the discussion was technical, given the audience, Allen also made broader points about why shipping may have been a late-adopter compared to other, less tradition-bound transportation sectors.

Here's an except from gCaptain editor John Konrad's interview with Allen:

"...What I try to do is compare and contrast the aviation community with the sea-going community. The aviation industry is a product of the 20th century. Because there was such a premium placed on safety, with many passenger and cargo flight incidents early on, our air traffic control system is now one of the safest and most transparent operations that you will see anywhere. Pilots are used to being given commands to go from point A to point B and cleared for a specific altitude, then cleared for final and cleared to land. That type of control in the maritime environment is something no one has ever seen and will probably take some getting use to.

"For a thousand years we have operated on the water where anonymity was a proprietary advantage, you didn't want anyone to know where you were going based on what goods you were carrying or what the markets were doing. The fact is that modern economics is driving us in a direction, not solely because of safety and security, but as a profit motive for visibility of the supply chain. Business managers want to know, anywhere in the world, the location of a container and this information is not possible without knowing the location of the vessel carrying it.

"So I think we are being pressed this way for economics but on the safety and security side the automation of our vessels and its sensors makes it possible to be anywhere on the ship and understand the entire operation. The days of wipers, oilers and engineering officers making rounds is rapidly disappearing. For example, I've made the comment that our new national security cutter, the Bertholf, is really a computer with a ship attached.

"I am not sure it's a matter of everyone having to change. I think it's a new environment and operators have to realize this or be overtaken."

(Coast Guard photo above by Petty Officer 1st Class Thomas McKenzie.)

Quotes From the Future: 'No Bucks, No Buck Rogers'

"It would be like your mom saying to you when you were a teenager, 'Here's your lunch money and, by the way, I want you to buy yourself a car, so you can't borrow ours.' And you'd say, 'Well, mom, I've only got lunch money.' 'Well, I don't care. You go get a car.'"

-- Apollo 12 Astronaut Alan Bean, on the July 17 episode of NPR's Science Friday, explaining why he thinks NASA's budget is inadequate to pay for the agency's current plans to return to the Moon by 2020.

(The NASA photograph of Alan Bean shown here was taken by Apollo 12 mission commander Charles "Pete" Conrad during their November 1969 mission to the moon's surface. If you click to enlarge that image you'll see Conrad's reflection in Bean's visor.)