Science 1899 premonitory speculations unlocking the advent of satellites?

[Soheil_Esy]

Epistemology

Probably among the first pictures published a century ago, defining key elements of future space probes!:idea::crystalball2::crystalball:

S☫heil_Esy

How did our ancestors imagine the 21st Century? Sputnik published a set of postcards issued by French artists in 1899-1910 depicting people’s expectations of the 21 century. Did we meet them?

26.09.2015

Notice the reconnaissance use with the small telescope and the shape and size of the capsule

Industrial scale accelerated "electric" learning

http://sputniknews.com/photo/20150926/1027570280/21-century-expectations-photos.html

 

[boogabooga]

Seems to me that the technology that futurists never seem to take into consideration is material science.

For all the grandiose things, they are still envisioning a wood, wicker, and cast iron society.

 

[kamaz]

Seems to me that the technology that futurists never seem to take into consideration is material science.

For all the grandiose things, they are still envisioning a wood, wicker, and cast iron society.

But they were getting it right on a conceptual level.

If you go back to 1950s - early 1960s sci-fi, then it features computers using "memory crystals". The idea is of course based on contemporary news of development of solid state-devices, which are, technically speaking, crystals. Problem is, when you see the word "crystal" in the story it involves a much different (cooler) imagery than that of a plastic packaging you see on memory chips. But hey, nobody told the authors that you can't take a bare die in your hand without destroying it

Another paradox, but the better the technology is, the less volume a device takes, so the less visible it becomes -- and so it appears more magical. Take Google for example: it is everywhere, invisible, and knows everything. These are the characteristics which were traditionally attributed to God.

Or, imagine that you have a swarm of invisible nanobots following you. You can give them commands by a wii-like device with accelerometers in it. The end result will look like that:

It's conceivable that a future highly advanced society will look like the world of Warcraft: a rural setting (why go to work if you can telecommute, and besides, robots do everything anyway?) with "magical" spells instantly available to solve all your problems.

 

[N_Molson]

There definitively were precursors in the 19th century, that probably made conceptually possible the achievements of the 20th :

The rocketry innovators Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth are all known to have taken their inspiration from Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders, the astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission, were similarly inspired, with Borman commenting "In a very real sense, Jules Verne is one of the pioneers of the space age".

Fiction writers like Jules Verne definitively inspired scientists and engineers, and what said Borman is really interesting in this regard.

And I'd add that more recent authors like Georges Orwell (1984) continue to raise very accurate questions on tomorrow's society (information control by rulers, freedom vs security dilemma, etc...).

 

[Andy44]

The big one missed by mid-20th Century writers is miniaturized electronics. Heinlein in particular, but also Clark and Asimov, failed to foresee how small and powerful computers and electronics would get, and how this would basically kill manned spaceflight by rendering it unnecessary. No need for a communication relay station in GEO when a small robotic satellite will do for way less money. Ditto for first-look exploration of the solar system. New Horizons to Pluto, as a manned mission, would be almost impossible.