DOI: 10.33917/es-6.164.2019.6-17

On February 19, 2019, a round table on the topic “Key Challenges of the Modern World: Known and Unknown” was held at the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation. It was organized jointly with the expert-discussion club NGO “Analytica” Association” and the International Research Institute for Advanced Systems. A presentation on the topic “Key challenges of the modern world: known and unknown” was made by Ernst Ulrich Weizsacker, co-chairman of the Rome Club (2012–2018), co-author of the anniversary report of the Rome Club “Come On! Capitalism, myopia, population and destruction of the planet”, which caused a real stir in 2018 by its appeal to the world community to give up such familiar things as, for example, using GDP as an indicator of economic growth or animal breeding, which the report authors considered to be the source of the greatest damage to ecology

The author studies the global development scenario up to the XXV century, when the population will reach 50 billion people. He considers the option, when the population is located in areas favorable for living and all manufacturing is transferred into the space. This will allow to minimize radically chemical, biological and thermal load on the planet. For realizing scenario there is a necessity for key technologies that provide space cargo flow, labor globalization technologies, as well as 3D-construction technologies. The article provides a description of these technologies. It is shown that the main obstacle to expansion into space is rocket technology, which is fundamentally unsuitable for providing space cargo traffic at the level of several billion tons a year. The author considers possibilities of promising technology for bringing out goods into space via stratospheric spaceports. Three groups of future technologies, crucial for development of civilization, are being actively developed. Soon they will become mass technologies, providing a solution to major global challenges.