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2028 timeline contents 2028
- The International Space Station is decommissioned | Printed electronics are
ubiquitous |
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2028 The
International Space Station is decommissioned Like its predecessor - Space Station Mir - it is ditched in the Pacific Ocean. Some modules of the Russian Orbital Segment are salvaged before the de-orbiting takes place. These are used as the basis for a new station, known as the Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex.*
Printed
electronics are ubiquitous Today, these have such low fabrication costs that they are ubiquitous, being present in countless everyday business and consumer applications. Many previously bulky and heavy devices can now be folded, stored or carried as easily as sheets of paper. This includes flexible TV displays that can be rolled or hung like posters, wearable mobile phones, electronic newspapers with moving pictures, disposable netbooks, "smart" packaging and labels with animated text, signage in retail outlets that can be updated shop-wide at the touch of a button.* Multimedia players with expandable, fold-out touchscreens are especially popular. Even low-end models are now the size and weight of credit cards and can easily fit inside a wallet. With petabytes of storage, gigapixels of screen resolution and superfast transfer speeds, they are millions of times more powerful than iPods of previous decades. They are also completely wireless – no cables or physical connections of any kind are required, and music can be enjoyed using wireless earphones.
The UK
population reaches 70 million The East End has been transformed in recent years, becoming almost a whole new city within London, and beginning to rival the West End. Vast areas of land have been redeveloped with hundreds of new residential developments, office towers, retail masterplans, green spaces and public areas - all built to the highest environmental standards.
Manned fighter planes are being phased out and replaced with UAVs By this date, the A-10 Thunderbolt II has been replaced completely by the F-35 Lightning II - which itself becomes one of the last remaining manned fighter planes in the US military. The F-35 will remain in operation until the 2040s, eventually being replaced by a new generation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) controlled by advanced AI.
Amputees can regrow lost limbs Drugs are becoming available that can stimulate human cells to regrow limbs.* By switching off a specific gene known as P21, adult mammalian cells can be induced to behave like regenerative embryonic stem cells.* Treatments are applied transiently during the healing process and only locally at the wound site, minimising any side effects.
Resurrection of several extinct species has been achieved In 2009, the Pyrenean Ibex became the first animal to ever be made "un-extinct", for seven minutes, when a cloned female was born alive before dying from lung defects.* This was followed by a woolly mammoth in 2015, using tissue samples from ancient permafrost.* By the late 2020s,* several other species have been resurrected (with varying degrees of success) including the famous Dodo – last sighted in 1662 – and the Wild Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, which went from being one of the most common birds in the world during the 19th century, to extinction in the early 20th. Three different approaches have been taken to restore lost animals and plants:
Ethical and legal issues are emerging, however, such as the effect of these "alien" species on modern ecosystems and the possibility of diseases. With genetics advancing at such a rapid rate, even hominids like neanderthals could soon be brought back. Further into the future, de-extinction of lost species will become a vital part of restoring the Earth's biosphere, as a global rewilding effort takes shape.
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References 1 International
Space Station, Wikipedia: 2 Can
the 'silver bullet' of printing revolutionize electronics?, CNN: 3 Microsoft Showcase: Retail Future Vision, Microsoft: 4 "We
may be only a decade or two away from a day when we can regenerate human
body parts." 5 Humans
could regrow body parts like some amphibians, The Daily Telegraph: 6 Extinct ibex is resurrected by cloning, The Telegraph: 7 See 2015. 8 "...within 15 years they will be able to revive some more recently extinct species, such as the dodo or the passenger pigeon."
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