2020 has started where according to a dazzling number of technology lovers predict that it’s going to be one heck of a year. Here, we take a look at some of the wonders that are in the store. “It’s not any more particularly interesting, in my opinion than 2019 or 2021,” says Mike Liebhold, a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future, and an all-around technology expert as well.

• Japan will build a robotic moon base

  

  JAXA

  There’s no reason technologically why Japan wouldn’t be able to make it with its ambitious plan to build a robotic lunar outpost by 2020 — built by robots, for robots. Even there’s really no nation better for the job in terms of technological matter than them. The Institute for the Future’s Mike Liebhold says, “There are private launch vehicles that are probably capable of doing that, and I think the robotics by that point are going to be quite robust.”

   

PopSci Predicts: Technologically it is possible, but economics can be the deciding factor.

• China will connect Beijing to London via high-speed rail

Courtesy of Popular Science

China’s plan is to link the East and West with a high-speed rail line. However, it’s not linking the Eastern with the Western parts of China — they’re talking about linking the Eastern world with the Western world here. China would pay for and build the infrastructure for this in exchange for the rights to natural resources such as minerals, timber and oil from the nations that would benefit from being linked in to the trans-Asian/European corridor here.

PopSci Predicts: Possible but unlikely to happen soon.

• Cars will drive themselves

Courtesy of Popular Science

It’s long been a dream of everyone for utter safety and ease of transport thanks to self-driving cars. There’s a movement being made, but the first hurdle is to clear the big one: Getting all these heterogeneous cars to speak to one another as well as the wireless infrastructure is not there like globally speaking, to link all our cars with all our traffic tech.

PopSci Predicts: It  can certainly be done but not by 2020

• Biofuels will be cost-competitive with fossil fuels

U.S. Navy

The U.S. military has requested to get half of its energy from renewable resources by 2020, and the Navy hopes it can turn to 50 percent biofuels by then. However, this will be a major bump in the competitiveness of biofuels in the market.

PopSci Predicts: Possible.

• Commercial space will take us to the moon and asteroids (and we’ll be mining them)

SpaceX

A two-parter: commercial trips to the moon and mining extraterrestrial bodies. That last part seems less popular as we haven’t yet figured out what long-term effect space travel would do to the human body.

PopSci Predicts: Commercial space travel is the real thing, but beyond orbital flights, things become huge difficult.