8 Mind-Blowing Bits Of Sci-Fi Tech That You Will Live To See

7. Off-World Mining Colonies

It's aways a great plot device to get people off-world in sci-fi. A mining colony on another planet is equal parts cool and dangerous and you can fill it with tough, hero types. European and Russian space agencies have both made some tentative steps towards putting a mining base on the moon in the next decade, perhaps with a view to establishing a permanent moon base. The prize for returning to the moon? A rare helium isotope, helium-3, which is extremely hard to come by on Earth. Rare enough to perhaps justify the $4 billion shipping costs, apparently. H-3 has medical and industrial applications (including cryogenics, hello, The Future), and can be used in nuclear fusion reactions which may go some way to easing the energy crisis It would seem that a few scientists haven't seen much sci-fi and are skeptical about the whole thing. Namely, the fact that it is a lot of time, money and resources to invest in a non-renewable energy source when we should be spending it on windfarms. We could also see mining colonies popping up on Mars in our lifetimes, perhaps the next 25 years. Who knows, perhaps one day you'll be telling your fellow Mars miners all about when you read about this stuff back in the day, thinking it was just some futuristic dream.