Regardless of Covid (which sooner or later we will also archive), the 20s that have just begun could finally see the fulcrum of technology that will influence the entire century explode. Here are some technological leaps forward that we may see by the end of the decade.
Fully reusable rockets instead of planes
The spaceships SpaceX fully reusable will reduce the cost of accessing space by ten to a hundred times. There will be thousands of space carriers built by 2030. Each can cost less than $ 20 million, ten times less than a 767 cargo plane.
These rockets could carry 100 tons at mach 20. A 767 freighter moves at 0,8 mach and moves about 50 tons.
It is not impossible to think that these gadgets make technological leaps that are also used for commercial expeditions.
Millions of multi-gigabit internet satellites and Super GPS everywhere
SpaceX already has over 1300 satellites Starlink in orbit and are providing download speeds up to 400 megabits per second with 20 seconds of latency.
Super Heavy Starship will reduce the launch cost of Starlink from fifty to one hundred times. The launch cost drops ten to twenty times and the payload increases five times.
SpaceX has already launched 240 Starlink satellites in one month. It could accelerate to the launch of 24.000 Starlink satellites in one month. This would mean download speeds of ten gigabits per second anywhere on Earth with the ability to replace all cellular communications and the internet. And it would also mean centimeter-accurate GPS for robots positioned anywhere.
Self-driving cars, self-driving trucks and Robotaxi
This may be (like the invention of the automobile itself) one of the totally revolutionary technological leaps for this century.
Robotaxi and level 5 autonomous driving could arrive between 2022 and 2025. Cars built with the hardware for these systems are already on the road. There should be 4 million such cars in 2022, and more than 20 million self-driving cars could be built by 2025. Ten million robo-taxis could provide rides equal to 100 million human-driven cars.
AI will conquer autonomous driving and automate robots and everything else that moves.
Dojo
Tesla has created its own chips for the Dojo self-driving training supercomputer: it will use NPU (Neural Processing Unit) chips.
Today it takes 3 days to do an autonomous driving training session. The technological leaps that Dojo will make will allow for larger training sets and will reduce the training time to 7 hours. This will allow for three training sessions per day instead of two per week.
In summary, training and improvement of autonomous driving will increase tenfold and then accelerate even more with subsequent improvements.
The self-driving car and truck system will also be applicable for drones, airplanes and robot automation.
Hyper integration of cities with technological improvements
Many believe this and I periodically catch the signs. The post-pandemic boom and subsequent technological leaps could be greater than the post-WWII boom.
Self-driving transport would travel 23 hours a day: it would hold together metropolitan areas that are now distant.
The top 29 global megaregions now generate 28 trillion euros of GDP.
If connectivity were boosted with self-driving vehicles for a 25-30% increase in productivity for all mega-regions, this would be an additional 8-10 trillion global increase.
The future of solar and battery energy could reach 50% by 2030
A massive spending on infrastructure could increase solar, wind and battery storage to 40-50% of many states' total energy by 2031.
And on the rest of energy technologies, it goes without saying that those based on renewables are the real revolution for the planet.
Antiaging Warp Speed project well underway and results in progress
The most important of the technological leaps may be a very fast-developing program to provide a antiaging radical by 2035. And it could start by 2025.
There will be initial treatments that yield some anti-aging benefits as comprehensive combination treatment methods are developed.