AI and creative images

 Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making quick inroads into photography and, specifically, in creative image making. As I am involved, as an amateur, in that field, I need to think about where this may be leading to. I welcome any assistance I may get from AI but do not want it to overpower my creativity. (I am sure those in the other creative fields will think similarly.

So, here are my thoughts. 

 

First, for the sake of convenience, I am dividing this type of creativity into four buckets:

 

1. Creative capturing of a photograph,

2. Creative post processing to enhances a photograph, 

3. Creative non-realistic image from photograph(s), and

4. Creative image purely from software.

 

Second, let me elaborate each one and insert my thinking of how AI could impact it.

 

1. Creative capturing of a photograph 

 

This is where one needs to find the right subject, compose it correctly, make sure the lighting is good and capture it. No post processing is required in expressing this type of creativity. The image stands by itself. 

 

AI can suggest subjects within the camera’s viewfinder.  Once approved by the user, it can then provide guidance through composition and lighting. This way, an average photographer can start making better images, both for keeping record (people, places), and for creative purposes.

 

This is my favorite bucket and a common compliment I have heard is that “I have an eye for photography.” Hopefully, I will continue to learn, through AI, and keep producing even more pleasing images.

 

2. Creative post processing to enhances a photograph

 

Although, sometimes I am happy to stop after just capturing the image, I often use tools such as Lightroom and Photoshop to post process the photograph I have taken. These are not easy software tools to master, and my camera club spends a good deal of time explaining what can be done using these, and other, similar packages. The resulting image is superior to the one captured. Distractions are removed, there is more contrast, and the image is better cropped, among other improvements.

 

This is where AI can provide a big help. As my cousin, who is an AI expert, points out the benefits of AI packages, such as ChatGPT for this type of creativity. Instead of learning the intricacies of Photoshop, just saying (or typing) “make this image darker” to will do the trick. This certainly looks quite attractive. Now of course, AI may have a different interpretation of what looks good compared to mine, but that is a learnable difference to overcome. 

 

If you enter your images thus created into a competition, there may be an issue. Depending on who is running the competition, and the category of competition, the use of AI may be restricted. Generally, the most open category is “Creative” where AI can be used without any issues, but that is not the case for the more restrictive categories, such as “Nature”.

 

3. Creative non-realistic image from photograph(s),

 

Now we are truly venturing into the creative field. What comes out does not have to represent reality but rather an artistic expression that stimulates the mind of an observer. The intent is not to record something but to create an artwork. 

 

This is the area I hope to master, and my tools are Lightroom to some extent, and Photoshop to a great extent. I can apply filters to radically change the photograph(s) I have taken and use layers to create a composite. I can, for example, insert an image of a polar bear in an unlikely situation, or use a distort filter to create an abstract image. I can radically alter color and saturation so that the image is a work of art (at least in my mind) and not a realistic representation anymore. I imagine and then I strive to produce.

 

The way in which AI can provides assistance in this area  is to make suggestions on how abstract images can be created from a photograph I have taken, or how could different photos from my library can be combined to develop likable composites. 

 

4. Creative image purely from software

 

AI makes it possible to create an image, say of a spaceship on an alien plant, purely from prompts given by the creator. No photographs are required. However, now we are invading the space that an artist with a brush and paint occupies, not a traditional photographer. However, AI can also be asked to create a photorealistic image of a scene, based purely on prompts, such as “create a picture of a lake in the mountains”. 

 

Now, I am not involved with this type of creativity, but I admire the imagination of creators and ability of AI software to produce some fabulous images. This is clearly an area where AI will make a huge impact because its very existence depends on it. Someday, I can see myself becoming good at creating images this way. 

 

My fear has always been that AI will replace me and my creativity will drop down to just writing the appropriate prompts.  Now I feel that AI will help me get better, and in some ways give me opportunities in areas that did not exist in the past. I can thus spend more time in imagining and less time producing.

 

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Experiences, not number of countries

 Recently, someone wrote on FB that she is trying to get to 130 countries in ten years. An admirable goal, but one that is perhaps it is not the right one to set. Here are some reasons, based on my experience (and I have travelled a lot):

1. Some of the countries you need to visit to get to such a high number may not be interesting to visit. 

 

In my youth, I had set up a similar goal. There is, in fact, Traveler’s Century Club, an organization which helps you track the countries you visit and when you reach 100, you get some sort of certificate. Some of the “countries” they identify are territories, and so this goal can be achieved more quickly than you expect. I have been to 66 countries but 92 territories. 

 

I gave up on getting to 100 (although I am close), because the continent rich in remaining countries is Africa and I am not too keen to go through many countries in that continent, besides the five I have been to. It is a personal choice, I know.

 

2. Some countries may deserve more than one trip.

 

It is hard to go to one place in a country like India, US, or Italy and say that you have seen these countries. They have such a variety in terms of experiences you can gain, that multiple visits are required to enjoy them, even though your country count will not go up. 

 

3. There are so many experiences in countries where you live.

 

We live in United States and it is a country full of variations; in terms of geography, people, history and weather. I can imagine spending all my time in this one country and not get all the experiences it offers. I am sure a similar claim can be made by people living in many other countries.

 

4. Some countries are dangerous to visit.

 

Yes! I had to curtail my list of fascinating places to visit because of all the political turmoil going on. This list includes Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and so on. I hope that someday peace will prevail and I am able to get to these places, however, I am not holding my breath. 

 

5. Some countries may provide similar experience to the ones you already had.

 

Once you have been to many places, this becomes an important factor. We have not been to New Zealand, because we believe that scenery there is similar to that in Patagonia, which we have been to.  Similarly, the scenery in countries such as Kyrgyzstan seems so similar to what we have seen in our own Utah or Arizona. Some of the pacific island countries cannot be much different than Hawaii. I agree that the cultural aspects are different in these places than those we have been to, but the scenery is one major reason to visit.  

 

So, I suggest not setting a travel goal based on the number of countries you visit. Base it on the experience you will likely get. 

Serenity

 Through my previous Posts, you might be familiar with my six-cell matrix for leading a well-balanced retired life. 

 

(See : https://medium.com/@aboghani/the-next-phase-of-retired-life-3e9bb2a799fa or https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5874035607402295489/957915496350662353 )

 

I recommended performing activities in each of the six cells on a regular basis, as I try to do, in order to achieve a meaningful retired life. 

 

I have now added one more box, based on my experience and that of others I have observed. The new matrix is as follows:

The new box, Serenity activities, contains what you do, or should do to achieve serenity, as the name suggests. This could include, for example, meditation, spiritual or religious activities, depending on your preferences. One of the objectives of these activities is to achieve inner calmness and acceptance of the way things are. These are important at any phase of life but when you are retired, they become even more acute. You ask yourself what is the purpose of life; and fret about things that are so insignificant that they should not matter. This is when meditation or religious activities become important. As they say, “grant me courage to change things I can, serenity to accept what I cannot and wisdom to know the difference”. Without serenity, this does not work.

 

Now, there are activities such as enjoying natural surrounding or taking a walk, that may provide serenity. In other words, the activities in each cell can serve multiple purposes. That is true for any of the cells, for example, a socializing activity may be a right brain activity as well.

 

When I hear the term ‘time-pass’ activity, I cringe a little bit. During many years that I have retired there has never been a day when I had to do something just to pass time. I do not know what the future will bring; and when my ability to walk, travel or hike declines. 

 

At the moment, I feel reasonably confident that I will find a meaningful activity to pursue even then.  

AI and human beings

 One of the organizations I belong to in Los Angeles provides very low-cost consulting (among other things) to non-profits in this area. They do so by recruiting and training mostly retired executives who are able to provide consulting or coaching at no cost. 

They recently put together a seminar on how we can use AI in our work. This three-hour training included a brief description of what AI is all about, and how to prompt Chatbots to come out with useful information, such as questionnaires to be used or job descriptions for various positions in the organization. In other words, the type of stuff we would need to do for the assignments. 

 

One question I asked to the staff involved in teaching was what would be the role of us human beings in such a consulting world? There were no clear answers. So, I decided to continue my quest. 

 

Interestingly, the same evening, while going for my walk, I heard a very informative Podcast on the subject. This is called “Asking for a friend…which jobs are safe from AI” on Planet Money. Of the two people they used as subjects, one is deciding to study for law but wondering if the expense he goes through will be recovered once he gets his degree but find himself outcompeted by AI. The other is a designer who is wondering if she should take up jobs like welding or plumbing which are likely to survive the AI onslaught. 

 

To answer these questions, the Podcast discussed work done by Daniel Rock, an AI researcher, who came out with what would be the Exposure to AI for some one thousand jobs. He did that by identifying tasks done in each job and then assigning an exposure index. If AI can do the task in half the time, it got score E1, if it cannot, the score would be E0, and for an in between situation, the task will get E2. This was done for some 20,000 tasks involved with the 1000 jobs. 

 

At the bottom (very little chance of AI intrusion) are jobs such as wellhead thumper operator, metal casters, athletes, dancers and coaches. At the highest level are knowledge workers and public relations jobs. Dan cautions that even at the highest levels, AI will not replace the jobs but will change them drastically. AI could become a general-purpose technology, like electricity and it will make vast changes in the economy. His list is indicative but not definitive in terms of jobs that will disappear. 

 

However, for the jobs that are highly exposed, it will be good and if you could productively use AI. In the end, if demand is elastic, such increase in productivity would be great. If it is inelastic, there will be job losses. 

 

Roberto Rigobon at MIT has approached the problem from a different angle: He asks: “What are Humans good for?” He then looked at each task in a job and scored them along for the following five parameters that require a human being.

 

Empathy (E), Presence (P), Opinion (O), Creativity (C), and Hope (H). Higher the EPOCH score is, more likely it is that the humans are needed. 

 

At the top of the list are jobs like Emergency Management Director, IT Project Manager, and such. Even Construction Workers scored high on Empathy. The clerical jobs, insurance appraisers, tax preparers, and such scored less.

 

In the end, the question is whether AI will automate or augment a job. If a job requires tasks that are connected, AI will augment the job even if some tasks are exposed as AI replacement. For example, AI can prepare the slides but a human is needed to deliver a lecture. There. AI augments but does not replace a human being. 

 

So, for the two people who were asking questions about AI, the response for the person who is deciding to go to the law school: Do join the school and become a lawyer. Get good at delivering a judgement and not performing clerical tasks. Learn how to think and imagine. Then you won’t be replaced. 

 

To the designer thinking about learning how to be a plumber: What if everyone decides to do that? There will be too many plumbers and the wages will drop. 

 

In the end, there is not list of jobs that are immune to AI encroachment. We are in for a weird ride, according to this Podcast. 

Automated transportation

One of the areas I worked on during my professional career was automation of transportation systems. In the 80s, the possibilities of introducing electronics in cars to provide situation awareness and communication were increasing. Cell phones were making it possible for connecting car drivers to the rest of the world. The Global Positioning Satellite System (GPS) developed by the military was finally available for civilian use. That allowed cars to know their locations with respect to an electronic map. Pretty soon, routing algorithms were introduced to take one from point A to point B. Heady times.

 

We predicted that the days of self-driving cars were just around the corner. Now, finally, many decades later that is becoming true. A ride in a self-driving car such as Waymo demonstrates that you don’t need a driver to navigate through streets of a city, even as complex as Los Angeles. If this technology gets widely used, the impact on individual transportation will be tremendous. 

 

One can imagine a world where private ownership of cars become history. There will be no need for parking lots and the efficiency of the overall transportation system would increase a great deal. There will be no need to have a vehicle sitting in your driveway or a parking lot for most of the day if a ride is available anytime from anywhere.

 

I mentioned this in an earlier Blog Post ((Confluence of tipping points, 1 August 2023). Although the availability of vehicles like Waymo will increase people’s confidence in self-driving cars, there will be still some barriers that will need to be overcome. 

 

One barrier is the prestige that some people assign to owning expensive cars. Cars have been status symbols for a long time. There will be fewer reasons to own a prestigious vehicle if it is not used to make people take notice and envy your wealth. Unlike a house (another way of making people jealous), a car goes everywhere, and can be seen by others. People seeing you alighting from an automated Waymo just does not create the same impact. 

 

Another argument people use for having your own car is that of flexibility. --- you to drive away at any time. This argument not sound right. Even Ubers are available within five minutes or so. If the cost differential between ownership and cost of rides is substantial, as it is likely to be, a few minutes delay will be acceptable by most people.

 

A more complicated situation arises when you want to go on a road trip. You can always rent a Waymo to take you wherever you want. However, that would mean a longer-term rental than a few minutes for within city travel. Depending on pricing, there may end up having rental non-self-driving cars available, for affordable price and perhaps fewer features. 

 

Some folks will tell you that these self-driving cars are dangerous and cite an incidence that demonstrates their fear. They neglect to tell you that human driven cars are even more dangerous. Also, these are just the early days of driverless cars. They will improve as the experience base expands and AI make a big difference. 

 

There is also fear that once self-driving cars become the norm, people will forget how to drive. This is similar to what is already happening thanks to technologies such as Google Translate and auto correction. People will slowly stop learning other languages or spell correctly. A bigger storm, called AI, is about to make humans taking pictures, writing stories, diagnose ailments, or compose music a thing of the past. Ability to drive a car will join the list. If you still insist on keeping your ability to drive intact, maybe there will be rental cars available, just as they would be for people undertaking road trips.

 

Surely, auto manufacturers and parking lot owners might resist. However, if their customers display their preference for not owning their own cars, they may eventually capitulate.

 

Like cars becoming automated, an equally game changing event would be trucks becoming driverless. Just imagine tucks thundering by, safely and efficiently, but having no drivers. This is already happening and a company called Kodiak has self-driving trucks on the road. The technology is about the same as driverless cars. When this becomes more popular, the impact would be felt most acutely by the truck drivers. The trucking companies will reduce their operating costs but the human impact would be severe at least in the short term.

 

There will be a liability issue and also that of public perception. A driverless truck having a major collision will attract news media and litigators. It is only after some time that the experience base will be sufficiently significant to quieten things down. 

 

One final transportation system that can be more fully automated is airplanes. Even now, autopilot systems are so well developed, the pilots do not have to do much, especially during the cruising phase of a flight. I agree that during take-off and landing, pilots are required but I cannot imagine that the same situation will apply in the future. 

 

Pilots are required primarily to provide comfort to the passenger. It will be many years before passengers accept that flying in a pilotless airplane is completely safe. They would point out, once again, to a situation where a pilotless airplane crashed, and forget that airplanes with pilots crash as well, many times because of pilot errors. Sometimes even because of a suicidal pilot flying the airplane. It is hard to imagine a suicidal autopilot. 

 

I think that for the for seeable future, there will be at least one pilot in the cabin, just to provide comfort factor. 

 

So, to summarize, driverless cars are already here. They will become an increasing presence in the coming future. Also around are self-driving trucks and, eventually, pilotless airplanes.

  

Proto

 One of my favorite subjects is the migration of homo sapiens from their ancestral home to the rest of the world. It is a remarkable story, and as I understand it, the number that left Africa some 60,000 years ago was small, and yet almost everyone on earth can claim lineage to that group. 

 

Equally fascinating is the story of languages spoken by human beings. A recent book I finished reading, Proto: How one ancient language went global, by Laura Spinney, satisfied my curiosity about many aspects of what most of us speak. This is a summary of that fascinating book. 

 

The speakers of Proto-Indo-European, the mother (or is it father) of almost all the languages spoken by half of humanity, were only a few dozen to begin with. They lived between Europe and Asia in the region of the Black Sea. However, their language exploded out of Black Sea cradle, spreading east and west, fragmenting as it went. Within a thousand years, its offspring could be heard from Ireland to India. It is easily the most important event of the last five thousand years. 

 

It took another three and half thousand years and the invention of ocean-going ship, but after 1492, some of these languages implanted themselves in the new world and expanded again. 

Plenty of Indo-European languages have lived and died, but over 400 are still spoken today.

 

Eight billion humans speak around seven thousand languages that fall into one hundred and forty families. Most of us, however, speak languages that belong to just five of them: Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, and Austronesian. Of these, the two behemoths are the first two. Every second person on earth speaks the languages in the first family, and Mandarin (which has more native speakers than English) being the major Sino-Tibetan language. 

 

1n 1786, a British judge, Sir William Jones, asserted that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek had sprung from some common source, which perhaps no longer exists. He added that Germanic, Celtic, and Iranian might have sprung from the same source. Since my mother tongue, Gujarati, is an offspring of Sanskrit, this is of a great deal of importance to me. 

 

There are twelve main branches of the Indo-European Language: Anatolian, Tocharian, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Indic, and Iranic. Anatolian, a dead language, was spoken on the Turkish peninsula, and Tocharian, another dead language, was spoken in the Silk Road in North-west China. The Dravidian languages of South India, as well as Uralic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian), and Basque, do not belong to the Indo-European family. 

 

The Indo-European Languages (source: Proto, by Laura Spinney)

 

 

Genetics has determined the scale and in some case speed of migrations that archeologists had only observed in freeze frames. They have confirmed beyond reasonable doubt the huge role that migration has played in the story of humanity and its languages. 

 

As we speak, we have multiple ways in which we can peer back at how human beings spread. Three most important ones are: Genetics, archeology, and linguists. However, according to Laura, they don’t speak the same language (no pun intended). Archeologists think in terms of cultures, recurring patterns of objects that define group’s identity in some way. Cultures rise and fall, albeit with dilutions and concentrations, so geneticists have a different concept of identity. Languages change through both descent and contact, but they are less intimately tied up with who we are. 

 

Fewer than hundred people may have spoken the dialect that gave rise to all extant Indo-European languages. They are called Yamnaya. Scientists even claim that the oldest sites, from where the oldest Yamnaya genomes have come from, are located between the lower reaches of the river Dnieper and Don, in the east of Ukraine. Yamnaya were typically brown haired and brown eyed, with a complexion between fair and dark. They were very tall, some six feet in case of men. 

 

Archeologists are fairly certain that the Yamnaya hunted horses but are divided over whether they rode them---and whether this is how the early Indo-European languages expanded so far, so fast. 

 

Why do experts feel that Yamnaya spoke Proto-Indo-European? It is because the language mirror’s speaker’s world. From the broken reflection of that world that the linguists have pieced together, archeologists and geneticists can tell which prehistoric people were most likely to inhabit it. 

 

Proto-Indo-European has been reconstructed based on a comparison of its offspring, an exercise that has revealed the Indo-European sound laws—those shifts in pronunciations that transformed the mother tongue into its daughters. No other proto language has received so much scholarly attention. 

 

From such analysis, the scholars believe that the speakers of Proto-Indo-European knew wheeled transportation. In 3500 BCE, according to archeologists, only the steppe dwellers who herded horses, cattle and sheep lived to the west of the Urals. Most European men alive today, and millions of their counterparts in Central and South Asia, carry Y chromosomes that came from the steppe. Recent DNA analysis shows that a group of Yamnaya had travelled the length of the Eurasian steppes in a few decades, perhaps less. 

 

When Yamnaya arrived in Hungary, the population of Europe was estimated to be seven million. The migrants might have numbered in the tens of thousands, yet within a thousand years, languages descended from theirs were spoken across the continent. The Indo-Europeans may simply have been good at having children and keeping them alive. If they kept it up over generations, steppe ancestry would have spread through the population, and Indo-European languages with it. 

 

The people in the region first became bilingual. Then they stopped speaking the old language to their children. The parents calculated that it would be better if the next generation was fluent in the language of power and wealth, or teenagers appraising the world decided this for themselves. 

 

There is another interesting fact described in the book, particularly for those born in northern India where Sanskrit (the mother of almost all north Indian languages) was spoken at one time. 

 

In the middle of the Russian steppe, at a settlement called Sintashta, the archeologists wondered if they were looking at the origin of Ashvamedha, a ritual described in the ancient Indian texts. If so, there could be links with the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch is the largest in terms of both the number of speakers and the geographical range. If people of Sintashta performed rituals that their descendants carried to India and Iran then the Aryans (the name by which ancient Indians and Iranians identified themselves) must have crosse the steppe. Thirty years on, the linguists and geneticists have added their contribution to those of the archeologists, but the Aryan chapter of the Indo-European story remains the most politicized and contentious, as mentioned before.

 

The Rig Veda, the oldest Indic text, was written in the foothills of the Hindu Kush in Punjab region that straddles between India and Pakistan. Most likely it was written between 1500 and 1200 BCE. By 1600 BCE, steppe ancestry was in Pakistan’s Swat valley and from there it diffused through the entire subcontinent. This assertion remains contentious as mentioned above. Some people in India assert that the idea of Sanskrit coming from outside of India is not correct. 

 

So, there are two possibilities, either Sanskrit came to India from outside or India is the homeland of the entire family. Proponents of this latter theory have made very little effort to explain how the other Indo-European languages ended up where they did. 

 

The Indo-European speaking Aryans were not the first people to arrive in India. The archeologists have long discovered the Indus Valley Civilization, populated by the Harrapans. They, however, had no genetic connection to the steppe; for eons they had been indigenous to the subcontinent. 

 

Also, the Harrapans most likely invented agriculture independently of the development in the Near East. So, farmers and farming did not come with the speakers of the Indo-European language. Some of the mysteries can be solved if someone is able to decipher the Harrapan script. That has not been the case. It is believed that the Harrapan civilization died slowly as the monsoon failed and not due to any invasion from the Aryans. 

 

Many of the offspring of the first Indo-European language died. The ones that survived proved adaptable in their turn. They did not stay the same, nor did their languages. That was the secret of their success. 

 

The human compulsion to communication is overwhelming. It was there even before sapiens. Some argue that without language there will be no reasoning, others that there is no consciousness. People change language just by using them. Accumulation of conscious and unconscious changes causes language to split. 

 

Languages do erode. Of the roughly seven thousand languages that are spoken in the world today, nearly half are considered endangered. Keeping endangered languages alive seems to be a good thing. However, the solution isn’t simply to put ever more resources into teaching. First, they have to work out why people are abandoning the languages, then they have to address the inequalities that are causing them to do so. Language is a tool, and it lives as long as it is useful in opening doors for its speakers and improving their lives. 

 

People are moving around the Black Sea today for the same reasons they did six thousand years ago: trade, war, and climate change. The climate crisis is real and its effects are already being felt. Whatever way the crisis unfolds, the world is unlikely to stay the same, linguistically speaking. The Indo-European languages came to dominate mainly as a result of the small, temporary movement of people over time---the kind of displacements that would happen as the climate change intensifies. 

 

The new tools of archeology and genetics have opened our eyes to our past. Migration has been constant, ‘indigenous’ is relative. Ten thousand years of human displacement have shrunk the genetic distance between populations to the point where ethnic divisions are losing meaning. The desire to belong is as strong as ever, and it is harder to see the differences between ‘them and ‘us. Linguistic and cultural boundaries are being guarded more jealously. Language is becoming a battleground in the identity wars, and preserving our linguistic ‘purity’ is used as justification by those who want to raise walls. Unfortunately for them, the most successful language the world ever knew was a hybrid trafficked by migrants. 

 

It changed as it went, and when it stopped changing, it died. 

The future of space exploration

 I grew up just when space exploration was about to start. The Soviet Union sent the first satellite in the orbit around 1957, when I was still a young boy. The space race between the Soviets and the Americans then began in full earnest. First dog in space, first human, first woman, first multiple people, first space-walk, and so on. The human exploration of space reached its height with the Moon landings, some 50 years ago. 

During the last 50 years, we have had fantastic unmanned probes, the latest being the one heading to Europa to check out if conditions exist for life developing there. However, it feels like human space exploration has slowed down. Yes, we had Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, but the excitement of forming a colony on Moon or exploring planets continues to be Elusive. 

 

That may be changing. Finally, I feel that human space exploration is going to restart again. One recent course on Great Courses Plus provided me with some basis for feeling optimistic. 

 

The teacher of this twelve-part course is an American woman, Ariel Ekblaw, who founded the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT’s Media Lab in 2016. Now, she is also CEO and co-founder of a space habitat-oriented firm called Aurelia Institute.

 

She starts the course by responding to the basic question---why do we want to go to space anyway? She mentions several reasons.

 

·      Curiosity. This is along the line of the answer that a British Mountaineer gave to someone who asked him why he wanted to climb Mt Everest? “Because it is there,” was his short answer.

·      Preserve civilization. This has become even more important in the age of Climate Change. Even if Earth remains habitable, it is wise to develop alternatives—as science fiction has long postulated.

·      Expand circle of awareness. This is like going up a hill to get a sense of perspective on where you are. Perhaps an unmanned probe can do that as well, but nothing beats physically being up there. 

·      Technology applicability to earth. This argument was often used by NASA to justify billions of dollars it was spending. It still is one of the reasons why we explore space, but not the primary one.

 

In general, space exploration has been done by the government agencies, like NASA and its counterparts in the world, and by the military. Lately, commercial entities have joined this elite group. Ariel cites several commercial firms in that category:

 

·      Blue Origin (space station, landing system)

·      Space X (super heavy rockets, landing system)

·      Virgin Galactic

·      Axiom Space (space station)

·      Voyager Space

·      United Launch Alliance

·      Zero G

 

Most of us are familiar with the first three, founded by billionaires.  Space X has been particularly active, having taken astronauts to and from the space station, and launching hundreds of satellites in the near-earth orbit to create and support an international communication system called Starlink. Elon Musk, the founder, has expressed a vision for his firm playing a key role in human exploration of Mars. 

 

The advantage of having commercial firms enter space exploration is that it allows meeting the economic challenges posed by this endeavor. Now, through public-private partnerships, commercial capital can be tapped. Aided by government, industry can now take much more responsibility and the pace can become faster. This is especially important as we move beyond space exploration. 

 

There will indeed be a need to public sector money in this public-private partnership. For those who object to spending tax-payers’ money on these endeavors, I would suggest to take a look at how we are wasting money in the Defense Department. In the age of drones becoming a major fighting force, why are we spending money on expensive hardware designed for fighting the war of the past? Also, if a massive cyberattack can bring a country to its knees, what good is it to spend money on military hardware? A small fraction of this waste can easily fund any public sector involvement in space exploration, and take humanity to the next level.

 

What is beyond space exploration? Ariel lists four futures:

 

1. Exploration (where we are right now)

2. Experience

3. Exploitation

4. Expansion

 

Experience refers to a larger segment of people getting to explore what going to space or living there feels like. Currently, very few, mostly the billionaires and their family/friends, have had a chance to experience space, and that too mostly flights up and down. This has caused some concern about the billionaires taking a ride while there are lots of starving children. Fair, but the problem of starving children won’t be solved by a few people not spending their own money on what to many people looks like a waste. I believe that this is their return for making investments, and we want to have them invest as we shift to a commercial phase of space exploration.

Currently, only a select few civilians have experienced orbital flights.  However, as the cost of sending someone up there reduces (e.g., through reusable rockets) and large orbiting structures are built to rotate around the earth, additional folks will experience what travelling to space feels like. There is also, obviously, a chance for the commercial firms to make some money and get return on their investments.

 

Additional ways in which investment can provide a pay-off is when we start exploiting space. One such prospect is to mine for water on the moon. It does exist, especially in the lunar polar regions. Water thus mined will serve not only the lunar colony, when it comes into existence, but also make space travel to Mars more affordable. Acting as the way station, a lunar fill-up station will avoid bringing water from earth, which is expensive, given the gravity of our planet. It is not only water but also its constituents, Oxygen and Hydrogen, that will play key roles in space travel. Oxygen is necessary to support life, and Hydrogen can be used as fuel. 

 

Mars will be the second step (after moon) for the last phase of future space travel: Expansion. Maybe at some time point (hundred years from now?), one can envision some humans living elsewhere in our solar system. At the moment it is a science fiction territory, but so were smart phones and Internet, just a few years back. 

 

In the course on the Future of Space Exploration, Ariel describes what is being done on many technological fronts that need to be addressed as we continue of journey. For example, she talks about:

 

·      Going back to the moon: Economic and scientific potential of long-term lunar bases

·      Going to Mars: Risks involved in the mission, building structures on Mars.

·      Future habitable villages orbiting earth: Next generation of structures including those that are able to assemble themselves.

·      Next generation space suit design: Those that provide radiation protection, as well as life support systems.

·      Food in space: Beyond providing basic nutrition, food that is flavorful and supports mental well-being and social bonding.

·      Thriving in space (not just surviving): how to fight disorientation, vertigo, and nausea caused by weightlessness. 

·      Space tourism: Orbiting resorts offering sports, cuisines and entertainment that are unique to zero g. 

·      Commercial ways to benefit to life on earth: “Off worlding” opportunities to mine the moon and asteroids, generate power in space and develop material and biotechnologies possible only in microgravity.

·      Finding life in the universe: Determine habitability and signs of life on promising planets (e.g., Mars), moons of planets (e.g., Europa) and thousands of exoplanets discovered so far. 

·      Ethical problems of space: Not taking our bad habits with us, or disturbing the pristine nature of space objects we explore. 

 

Given what Ariel says (and she is from my alma mater…MIT), I feel confident that space exploration is about to take off (pun intended), and get into space experience, space exploitation, and in the future, human expansion in space.

 

It is too late for me, but my grandchildren, or even their grandchildren will become explorers themselves and will have no hesitation taking a vacation on the Moon.