One in a series of excerpts from Michio Kaku’s amazing new book, PHYSICS OF THE FUTURE.
Moore’s law simply says that computer power doubles every eighteen months. First stated in 1965 by Gordon Moore, one of the founders of the Intel Corporation, this simple law has helped to revolutionize the world economy, generated fabulous new wealth, and irreversibly altered our way of life. When you plot the plunging price of computer chips and their rapid advancements in speed, processing power, and memory, you find a remarkably straight line going back fifty years. (This is plotted on a logarithmic curve. In fact, if you extend the graph, so that it includes vacuum tube technology and even mechanical hand-crank adding machines, the line can be extended over 100 years into the past.)
Exponential growth is often hard to grasp, since our minds think linearly. It often starts deceptively slowly. It is so gradual that you sometimes cannot experience the change at all. But over decades, it can completely alter everything around us.
According to Moore’s Law, every Christmas your computer games are almost twice as powerful (in terms of memory and processing speed) as they were the previous year. Furthermore, as the years pass, this incremental gain becomes truly monumental. For example, when you receive a birthday card in the mail, it often has a chip which sings “Happy Birthday” to you. Remarkably, that chip has more computer power than all the Allied Forces of 1945. Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt might have killed to get that chip. But what do we do with it? After the birthday, we throw the card and chip away. Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969 when it sent two astronauts to the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3D situations, use more computer power than main frame computers of the previous decade. The Sony Playstation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.
That’s interesting since about 4 years ago when G.W. wanted to go to the moon they said it would take more than a decade to reach it again. Sure the moon landing was not faked.
Oh please! Not that again! It would take 10 years because none of the ships, landers, or other infrastructure is still around and would need to be rebuilt at enormous cost. Your laptop PC has more power than the Space Shuttle had on it’s first launch, but that does not mean it did not fly and we were all just watching a hologram. It is a matter of cost and will. If humanity’s survival depended upon reaching the moon or even Mars we could do it in a lot less than 10 years.
I’m just saying if it would take longer now then it did in the 60’s someone is drinking the kool-aid.
I am all for going back to the moon, and even Mars. But hopefully it WILL take longer to get there this time, since we’re hopefully a bit more cost-consciouse than we were back then. In the 60’s, we were hell-bent on getting astronauts to the moon before the Soviets because of this thing with a catchy name called the “Space Race”. The Soviets had already one-upped the U.S. twice in the space race: first with an orbiting satellite, and again with an orbiting human.
If we go back to the moon, hopefully we’ll do it with a more cost-effective, reasonable & sustainable long-term plan this time. As Ron says, if humanity’s survival did depend on it (or even if just the survival of the U.S. depended on it), we would definitely be able to get there much sooner, in the same way that if the survival of the U.S. depended on us producing ten aircraft carriers in a single year for WWIII, we would definitely rise to that challenge.
They had a blank check for the lunar project in the 60’s. That is why it could not be done quicker today.
Ok I understand, it was easier to build the space program literally from the ground up quicker in the 60’s than to use all the advancements, knowledge and space platforms including private dollars available today. I mean with US residents paying what 68 million a piece to just go to “outer space” with the Russian Space Program, sure we do not have the money or the will. Keep drinking the kool aid.
The Apollo program cost $25B which is about $193 Billion in today’s dollars. http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/nexgen/Nexgen_Downloads/Butts_NASA’s_Joint_Cost-Schedule_Paradox_-_A_History_of_Denial.pdf
NASA budget in 2010 is about $17B representing 0.6% of the federal budget. During the Apollo buildup NASA budget varied between 2.5% – 4.3% of federal budget.
No kool aid needed, it’s extremely simple. Unless there’s a reason to believe that Al-Qaeda is going to beat us to the moon, there is literally a zero chance of getting that kind of spending approved.
The fact that we haven’t been back to the moon is proof the lunar landing wasn’t faked. We know that the moon is dead and void of resources. No reason to go back.
How is it that in the 1960s the US was able to pour money into the space race, fight a full scale war in Vietnam, and enact “Great Society” anti-poverty legislation all at the same time? How come we’re not able to do anything anymore? The cold facts are that even with all of our computing power, we’re still not able to get to the moon, control our borders, educate our children, or pay our bills.
to Joseph Dolin…I find it interesting that you are willing to believe and trust what Dr. Kaku and the rest of the scientific community has to say about computing power, but not that we landed on the moon. Why is that? You seem to be hand-picking what facts you want to believe – only those that support your insane theory that we never went to the moon.
Do you really think the US gov’t (or any gov’t) is able to keep a secret that involves, literally, many hundreds of thousands of people to agree to it for 40+ years, including our enemies (Chinese, Soviets, etc) and people of both political parties? Why is it possible to believe we’ve been able to do what we’ve done in space as far as the space shuttle, int’l space station, etc but not the moon?
Machines with computing power has no bearing on whether or not the moon landing was real. Anything that would be done on a computer today would have been entirely doable with pen and paper back then. Who do you think makes and programs computers? People.
Funny thing is, Joseph, YOU are the one who has “drunken the kool-aide”. You choose to side with the kooks who don’t believe we went to the moon, and that thousands in multiple countries have kept it secret for us all this time. You choose not to believe the reflector readings, you choose not to believe the moon orbiter photos, you choose to believe the Russians and others have helped us keep our “lies” secret. Nobody said it can’t be done today. In the 60’s our President wanted to go to the Moon and our government put all resources to it. Now-adays not enough people care to go back. It’s that simple.