It would be another 12 years before the Soviets would shock the world with the launching of Sputnik. It was a brilliant insight, but it's not at all clear that satellite communications as envisioned by Arthur C. Clarke would have been practical. The satellites he envisioned were huge affairs, with living quarters for a crew whose principal task was to replace vacuum tubes as they burned out. But just two years after he made his prediction, the transistor was invented. Arthur C. Clarke foresaw communications satellites, but not microelectronics.
Science is a wild card.
The further we try to project into the future, the more certain it is that some unforeseen, perhaps unforeseeable discovery will shuffle the deck before we get there. Even though science has made incredible progress in this century, plenty of wild cards remain uncovered. Sometimes, as in the case of microelectronics, science provides a future far beyond anything we could have imagined. But science is just as likely to impose limits on our dreams. In 1618, Robert Fludd, an English physician, dreamed of easing the burden on farmers.