The Future of Colonizing Space- Neil deGrasse Tyson- WGS 2018

My talk title was advertised as colonizing space and that word colonization carries such baggage over the past couple of centuries that I think we it's time to just call them space settlements in fact I think it's even a little more accurate I want to offer what I call a rational assessment of people's ambitions and dreams of settling space and I let me just lead off by saying predicting space Predicting the future is hard and I'm going to show you something I have three postcards from the year 1900 that the illustrator was asked to predict what

life might be like in the year 2000 I just wanted to show you these postcards okay here's one they that steamships would also have railroad wheels on them because steam ships were big and the railroad was big so of course in a hundred years you would combine the two of them and you would just drive right Off the ocean onto the land here's another one of course everyone would just be floating on the water because of course that's what we want to do in the future is my favorite remember this is 1900 powered airplanes began

in 1903 but of course people wanted to fly and so here people are just flying not imagining that if any of those fell out of the sky you would just be dead so predicting the future is often an exercise in extending What you already know but not inventing something completely new out of left field and out of the ether so it's possible to predict the future within 10 years maybe 20 because often that is an extension of what you know but beyond 30 or 40 years 50 years it's an almost hopeless exercise given the pace

of technology that we have given the rate at which technology converges in ways that are not obvious and could not have been Extrapolated at the time you engage in that exercise I'll I also want to offer you some whatever call embarrassing quotes space quotes often people look in the literature and they find they find futurists and they picked the one or two predictions they made to say look they knew the future well I did the opposite of that I collected quotes from important people that were just plain wrong they're often just forgotten because We'd like

to remember the hits and not the misses here we are remembering the misses from 1900 the Brooklyn daily eagle in New York City newspaper but is scarcely possible that the 20th century will witness improvements in transportation that will be as great as were those in the 19th century that has got to be the most boneheaded comment ever printed in a newspaper editorial again they were riding high on steamships and the internal combustion Engine car was a recent invention the country was crossed by railroads and they're saying oh my gosh nothing can top this and in

three years we have an airplane sixty-six years after that we've landed on the moon so this exercise in predicting the future is rife with embarrassing moments how about this one man did not fly for 50 years who said that Wilbur Wright to his brother Orville in 1901 two years before they both flew You think if the two guys who invented airplanes can't get it right what hope do the rest of us have here's another one no flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris this is a trend that will continue up until 1957

the trend is there is some advanced and people constrain that advance so this quote came out after we knew how to fly now they're saying will never fly to Paris who said this Orville Wright 1908 how about this one Landing and moving around on the moon offers so many serious problems for human beings that may take science another 200 years to lick them science digest august 1948 it did not take 200 years after this it took how long 20 years 21 years so these are people who should know better this is a magazine that thinks

about science technology was surely advanced then so what was missing let's keep going man will never reach the moon regardless of all future Scientific advances radio pioneer lead to forests what's significant about this is that it's on February 1957 this is six seven months before Sputnik nine months before Sputnik launched October 4th 1957 the moment that happened the instant that happened all of this changed all of a sudden the technology became real the ambitions became real and that people went back into the future predicting business but then they began to over predict will happen Basically

overnight a manned lunar base will be in existence by 1986 who says that the futurist 1967 the Apollo program is already in progress so we know if spaces within access to our technologies but we're assuming that we'll continue with that rate sorry I didn't finish the quotes on the other side we assumed that what was in progress would continue unabated and that assumption was based deeply false premises let me not use the Word false I'll be more severe and say deeply delusional premises the premise that I will attempt half of this talk to convince you

of how about this I'm convinced that before the year 2000 and over is over the first child will have been born on the moon who said that Wernher von Braun the guy who invented the Saturn 5 rocket so people again thinking that the pace that had been put into play was something natural for the human spirit the human DNA what else Will be predicting for the year 2000 by the year 2000 50,000 people will be living and working in space 50,000 I checked in the year 2000 there were 3 people living and working in space

on the International Space Station mixed in with this is also some foggy memory tically on my side of the ocean ok we in America we think of ourselves as space pioneers it's easy to think that because we landed on the moon it's easy to think that we were driven by a Certain sort of intrinsic patriotism an intrinsic pride but if you unpack it that's not what shows up here's a quote I'm not that interested in space John Kennedy said that to the head of NASA in 1962 John the man who we all associate with launching

the Apollo program this came out of his mouth this is whether we like her to not erase everything we do ought to be tied to getting to the moon ahead of the Russians John Kennedy to James Webb this is not oh it's explore Exploration isn't it beautiful it is there was no such dialogue here's a bust of President Kennedy in Kennedy Space Center Florida and shizzle than the granite I believe this nation should commit itself before the decade is out to put him in on the moon return him safely to earth we all can hear

those words they're stirring what they left out is the speech where that quote comes from was to a joint session of Congress Six weeks after Yuri Gagarin came out of orbit the United States did not have a rocket that wouldn't explode on takeoff a human rated rocket so we freaked out is that translate in the translators freaked out I don't know how else to say that there's no that's the word we freaked out so what he says before this is if we are to show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny

then we need if the events of recent weeks wouldn't even mention your yahrens name If the events of recent weeks are any indication of this the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere then we need to show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny it was a war driver that was in the same speech where this quote was uttered why did we put that in the in the granite plenty of space to chisel in beat the Russians that's left out well yes we went to the moon yes yes

yes we did this driven by Cold War fear so all the People who are not thinking called war fear thinking that going to the moon was just the thing people do when we stopped going to the moon people cry foul people said we just need the charisma that Kennedy had and that'll fix everything we just need the political will like we used to have no what we needed is Russians who want to go to the moon ahead of us there was a side benefit this photo Apollo 8 this is the 50th anniversary This year of

that photo December Apollo 8 goes to the moon orbits a dozen time 15 times does not land it is the first time we leave Earth for another destination ever in some ways this is more significant than Apollo 11 no one had left earth before yeah we go into orbit people like to think of that as leaving Earth but not really in a schoolroom globe this International Space Station is orbiting half a centimeter above the globe and we've all Sort of bought in to the idea that that space to an astrophysicist that's just driving around the

block after this photo was taken here's what happened something unexpected we went to the moon to explore the moon and we discovered earth for the first time no one had seen this before spaceship earth earth as nature intends you to view it not with color-coded countries as in your schoolroom but with just oceans and Land and clouds this was the beginning of the modern environmental movement what happens between 1968 and 1973 what happens 1970 Earth Day is established why didn't we stablish that in 1960 or 1950 we were going to the moon when Earth Day

was established DDT was banned in 1973 leaded gasoline was banned in the United States many other countries followed soon thereafter comprehensive Clean Air Act Clean Water Act the organization Doctors Without Borders was founded that was founded in Switzerland they probably would have formed anyway but would they have called themself Without Borders I don't think so where do you even get that State of Mind unless you saw Earth from space so you can ask what is the cost benefit of going into space this one I think was unimaginably Shepard its future so now you have to

ask what's your budget for space exploration a series of talks at This conference talk about weather satellites missions to Mars this sort of thing you should know this if your monies are established by a tax base funded by an electorate research with unknown returns on investment in fields not yet fully understood by the public this is really hard to get money for but you know what it's not hard to get money for it I'll tell you here it is I was invited to Rite Aid make chapter for the Columbia history of the 20th century on

Exploration and I hemmed in hard and I finally agreed I was going to make a grid of all the most expensive things civilization has engaged in and look at how much it cost and what they did to get that thing paid for and I thought to myself if we're gonna send people to Mars I find that on the grid and find out what motivated the people to pay that and then we could learn from the history of civilization when I did this exercise I arrived at Only three drivers that enabled a nation to commit large

sums of money one is obvious war people will spend almost any amount of money to not die and so what kind of projects come under war and defense the apollo program initiated out of fear of the russians the manhattan project huge diversion of funds in the middle of the second world war by the united states with an international team of scientists the Great Wall of China a huge undertaking the interstate system In the United States it's just roads of course however the interstate system in roads built to a specification established by Eisenhower after he saw

the autobahn in Germany in the Second World War the Autobahn did not wash out in the rain it supported troop movements and tanks he said I want one of those in came the interstate system one hundred billion dollars in fact the interstate system cost the same as the Apollo program motivated by not Wanting to die moving material and personnel around what's number two this is not as common today used to become in praise of deity or royalty from that you get the pyramids and you get Versailles you get like Cathedral building in Europe as an

activity huge investments and financial and and and and in physical capital today royalty is not as powerful over nations as it was three hundred four hundred five hundred years ago so you don't see this today so much The third and another obvious one but it's a total of three promise of economic there you get Columbus and Magellan and Lewis and Clark there's no end of this list so what this comes down to is I don't want to die and I don't want to die poor that will invest in practically anything notice on this list is

not let's just let's explore let's do this for science let's do this cuz it's in our DNA you Could make that argument and you could fund below a certain radar level a project depending on the wealth of your nation a billion here a billion there depending on the wealth of your nation you could do projects that where this is not relevant but once the price starts getting higher you're up against people's personal rejection of what might look like the activity of others for their own gain whereas everybody benefits if the nation sees an economic Return

or if you don't die so these three forces war royalty economics are powerful so I've used this to judge whether anything will ever happen are we going to put humans on Mars only if somebody judges that you have to do it otherwise you would die Kings are not going to do it anymore or somebody's gonna make a buck that's my cynicism that I'm bringing to this conference based on the history of human conduct predicting the future another example of How hard it is to predict the future Colliers magazine had a famous now famous series of

articles on our future in space this is early this is before Sputnik before anybody launched anything but we had the science we had some of the engineering and we had the artists in a series of conferences at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City a series of articles came out and people were delight the world's first space suit how and where we'll use it this is a Level of enthusiasm that is building and there's a whole discussion about the physiology of going into space and the challenges and it's on the right-hand-side meteorites cosmic rays weightlessness

glare disorientation boredom irritability and fatigue those last three would affect us even if we're not in space I don't know why they put it up there that's just that why they would list that as a priority so uh here's one that will matter if you want To have settlements that's thinking about this who owns the universe who owns it you're gonna settle you got a pitched tent does anybody own it why would you have unlimited access on the surface of another planet when you don't have unlimited access on this planet on this planet we're all

human yet you have to show papers to cross an artificial border established by politics that's how we conduct our affairs on this earth any reason to Think that's gonna be different in space what else do we have here can we survive in space people have to think this through let's keep going man we'll conquer space soon we're getting closer okay we're not just a spacesuit now top scientists tell how in startling it's startling paint here we go what are we waiting for so the engineering is in place they just don't have money for it yet

so the waiting for the money they don't know That the money will only come if someone finds diamonds on the moon or if we're at war in some technological composition with an adversary they don't know this upon writing this article they have no idea here's another one man on the moon let's take a look inside this is a supply ship the fuel canisters are the spheres there's other supplies on the central zone and you can look at this is inside the moonship this is highly ambitious there's like 30 people There how do you get I

don't know and I'm like it's got this little antenna sticking out the side you know you'd have to build this launch it get it to the moon and have that is anyone asking why would you do this they're they're enchanted by the capacity to think it through more than they are the reality of whether anyone will actually do it then we go beyond one how about Mars can we get to Mars is there life on Mars Mars Mars we knew Mars has an atmosphere So you can have an airplane but it's a much thinner atmosphere

so you need huge wingspan relative to the fuselage so that you can get the lift that you need now these look like really heavy tanks I don't know how they got these tanks to Mars that's not really discussed it's just there again why are you on Mars you want to live there okay what's motivating what's paying for it here's the problem you might say private enterprise will do it no my read of History tells me no let me repeat that no not cuz I don't want it to be so I'm just a realist about this

let me tell you how much of a realist I am I published a book a couple of years ago it's called space chronicles facing the ultimate frontier that's not the title I submitted it with to the publisher the title I submitted it with was to launch the dreams and delusions of space enthusiasts and the publisher said no you can't we can't have that title It's it's got the word failure in it and they were spooked by the language of the title so it had a much more pleasant sounding space Chronicles here's why it's not going

to happen there is no capital market valuation of the space frontier it's expensive here's how that meeting will go I run a company and I want to send people to Mars no one has done it before I invite in the investors that's how capitalism works you have investors And they ask questions they say how much will it cost a lot what will be the return on this investment I don't know probably nothing well is it dangerous yes well people get hurt they'll probably die that is a three minute meeting with the venture capitalists the history

of this exercise is that governments lead governments have long term interests in the success of Technology over a longer period of time that any corporate entity could Possibly justify corporations have quarterly reports annual reports shareholders a government can say we will do this and it'll pay back in ten or twenty years and just do it as government's have been doing throughout the history of this exercise the first Europeans to the new world was not the Dutch East India Trading Company it was Columbus sent by the Queen of Spain Italy wouldn't even send him they were

busy building cathedrals That's why the new world does not speak Italian the speak Spanish in all of South America almost all of South America you want to talk about the reach of a country what is what is her motivation a little bit of hegemony but it's primarily economics can be a short route to India he thought he found India hence the native people in North America were called Indians I'm just amazed that stuck to this day I don't know who made That stick as a name for the Native Americans before we had railroads Lewis and

Clark mapped the whole West western frontier of the United States space shuttle cargo why was NASA bringing cargo to the space station like why if NASA is going to be a frontier agency you bring in corporations to do the routine things what they can do efficiently and effectively that's what SpaceX has been doing recently SpaceX brought up some supplies to the space station banner headlines new era in space it what it will happen next will private enterprise lead they just took cargo to the space station cargo that actually should have been happening decades ago anytime

anything happens that's routine by a government it should then be farmed out to private enterprise paid by the government the government could have whatever reasons it needs geopolitical for security reasons Whatever is the reason economic with a long term goal let's take a look at Mars as a modern object of our affection first before we go to Mars let's first talk about Antarctica Antarctica is warmer and wetter than any place on Mars I don't see people lined up sorry I don't see that gee I wanna have condos in Antarctica doesn't stop people but then I

will never stop someone with ambition because the ambition here could Lead to other things here even if this higher goal is not achieved so I'll never stand in anybody's way unless you ask me my opinion well got a lot of attention in the last few years was Mars one announced by Badlands drop to me what was intriguing about this is the Dutch were explorers from way back mostly with economic interests as in on the earth in the age of the great experience of exploration and so we have a Dutch person doing the same thing now

With Mars he wants to create a permanent healing colony of four people beginning in 2032 so he's at he's he's got investors okay how is he gonna pay for it he's going to televise it like the Olympics now there takes nine months to get there that's a lot of television time to fill but okay it's a it's a plan what distinguishes Mars one is that when you go there are no plans to bring you back so the one in Mars one also stands for one way I had to ask him he was on my television

show Startalk this is bas Lansdorp this is my office that's an actual Saturn five rocket off his left shoulder well I mean a model of the Saturn five here this is two minutes just watch this who are these you want to take don't like it here on earth venture types are the people who want to die young what is who are these people I think that but what we see first of all is that it's a It's everyone all kinds of people it's men and women old and young its engineers or scientists but also politicians

lawyers soldiers it's all kinds of people and I think it's actually very comparable to the kinds of people that explored at the earth which could also have been anyone anyone could step on a ship and sail across the ocean anyone could decide to leave their village or new opportunities I was looking up some numbers back then five Hundred years ago in the great age raishin most of her crew would not return a lot look at Magellan's crew how many he went out with how many back why I mean some cases you most of you that's

just here on earth and breathe the air food was there waiting for you landed so are there any projections of survival rate the design of our mission is not detailed enough yet to give percentages I am certain that it's not going to be a safe mission to Mars because there's no Such thing as a safe mission Mars I think it will be more risky than climbing Mount Everest which as a two and a half percent of not returning alive and hopefully best dangerous than climbing k2 which has a 25% exploration has always been dangerous and

what's important for Mars one is that we identify the risks make sure that everybody knows that not just our candidates or for them it's the most important but also our investors our Media partners the audience and then if something doesn't is wrong just like with the Apollo program understand that's it's what something happen you know guarantee survival that's inherent being on the frontier all of our candidates know that this is a risky mission and they know that they are going on a mission that that has these kinds of dangers sorry about that commercial at the

end there and the audio so I on that very program I invited on someone who had signed up for the Mars one mission and I had him on video link and he was a young he was 20-something and I said what does your are you married he said yes yes and I said well what what does your wife say about this and she said he said oh she she encouraged me to go just saying one point about colonization is that it may be self-limiting and I'll explain that in a moment the the Fermi paradox is

a well-known question asked by Enrico Fermi he said you can actually create a civilization on a planet send out spaceships let's say two spaceships go just discover two planets build resources in situ and then have each of those ghosts discover two more planets and two and so this doubles up every sort of generation you can actually completely populate every planet in the entire galaxy on a time scale short compared with evolution like a hundred million years or some Relic it's not billions so he's saying if this was done at all this should be aliens on

every planet so where are they I don't see them this was the question posed so we have to ask what are the solutions to the Fermi paradox maybe the aliens have come and as Michio Kaku said this morning they looked at earth and notice there's no sign of intelligent life and kept going that's one possibility another possibility which relates to Whether colonization could be solved limiting is that if you have the DNA to colonise that's a certain kind of I can't stay here I have to go there I want that planet so you do this

but so does the other person who goes to that planet and you rapidly reach a point where you start wanting planets that have already been taken and you end up imploding with violence because your colonization urge is left unsatisfied as the galaxy starts Running out of planets so one of the solutions to the Fermi paradox is that any civilization with the urge to colonize that badly will self-destruct by killing themselves trying to colonize that's a relatively new concept in how to resolve this paradox but one thing I think is clear whether or not we pitch

tent on Mars and live there which I'm skeptical of what will certainly attract people is tourism no question about it I would give up years of vacation time and Money to go on one trip to Mars this is portrayed for the moon but Mart either tourism cannot be under recognized as a economic driving force you don't want it to be a military reason and Kings are not gonna do it anymore so it's got to be economic but if you want to go and not live in a hab module which is earth on the moon or

earth on Mars you want to actually be on another planet you have to terraform my favorite word over the last 20 years Turn Mars into Earth seed the soils the atmosphere introduce microbes that it's that release oxygen such as what happened in the early Earth now we we don't have this power yet if we did we could just make any planet we want it just moved it then you don't have to come back because you can breathe the air when you get there Columbus could breathe people are saying oh this was like the era of

the great explorers no it's not Columbus could breathe the air when he got off his ship he could fix his ship because the trees in the new world were made out of wood just as they were in Europe on Mars you can't do that so I'm thinking if we're gonna colonize and be and do something other than live in a habitat module you'll want to do this there people say we need to be a two-planet species in case an asteroid comes and renders us extinct as it did with the dinosaurs my Stephen Hawking Feels strongly

about this I have a rebuttal to that it's whatever effort it takes to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there it's probably less effort to deflect the asteroid I'm thinking a little less effort so for me I care about practical solutions that people will actually enact rather than the dream states that concern people most when they're thinking on the frontier the same with AI people where we're going to make a robot that's gonna Sort of take over the world no we're gonna create AI that like serves our various needs this self-driving car is not

going to be tasked with making your coffee or with flying the airplane there's very tuned AI that we have plenty of places for that to go in our society in practice who's going to make the one thing that does everything when you can make a hundred things that do each thing perfectly I think it practice it's not Going to happen even though it occupies the fear of so many people what you want to do is reduce the cost to space no matter what by the way how much money is being spent on space you should

emblazon this in your head here we go this is the pie chart 330 billion dollars a year is spent on space equal parts in commercial infrastructure and products and services this includes businesses that run on GPS it includes Direct TV weather satellite reporting The United States is the 44 billion in the upper corner we spend about half again as much on space as the entire rest of the world but each of those two small segments are small compared with the total business of space so there is money to be made in space by the way

the government's went to space first just let's remember that they took the risks they absorb the risks commercial space follows we all saw the Falcon Heavy launch I'd like to show it again do you What do you want to see it again yeah okay I trimmed it down to the last 30 seconds 45 seconds here we go [Music] a couple of things I want you to notice there's will be water getting poured onto the launch pad t-minus 30 seconds which absorbs vibrations from the engines wants to see the water pouring down SpaceX Falcon Heavy he

goes along on the left so when on ignition all that Water movie is considered evaporates you might as fifteen stand by for terror account so that's most of the cloud that you see everything clears the cloud rate no more service your mission at six [Applause] he's lost 30 the cheering Chesley [Applause] you've heard the call-out vehicle is supersonic Slide boosters [Applause] past max-q the period of maximum loaves on the vehicle next up we'll be waiting for the side boosters to begin to throttle down prior to booster engine cutoff at separation two and a half minutes

into flight [Applause] GNC trajectory looks good on the heavy so it's still accelerating as you Can see in kilometers per hour reports show that the and one of the engine performances nominal let's be done side vistas have began to throttle down in preparation for the FN and shut down in two seconds so what's most amazing about this launch is not the launch itself but the fact that he's reusing mazes of the Florence [Applause] surveys golf site It's going through just another minute successful separation you're now high enough so that the bearing no longer needs to

be enclosing the payload so no need to carry that weight any further to just drop the faring that happens in a few seconds set the chorus audience for toilet facility [Applause] that's the fairing around the park just Separated [Applause] [Music] yeah that was a pretty American thing to do you have the most powerful rocket in the world and what do you do you send a car into space so it's a dummy payload I mean it's a real car but a joke that I wonder whose is that a real body in there you're trying to how

do you get rid of a body that's the Falcon Heavy has half the Thrust of the Saturn 5 rocket that's why they kept qualifying it saying it's the most powerful rocket in the world today the Saturn 5 was twice that power at three hundred eight thousand pounds of thrust sorry we still use pounds there is a live feed of the space man driving this car and it's surreal because things move slowly but they move so this is actual footage of this car in a transfer orbit to Mars around the Sun and the position of this

payload is slowly Changing relative to the Sun and to earth so if you put it on your computer it's just kind like I said see that it's Earth coming into vehicles it's like okay yeah I'm pretty sure all the flat earthers it's really just a ploy so that they can get a free trip into space to be convinced of this it's on an orbit from Earth that'll go out and meet Mars and so if you're gonna send anything to Mars this is a minimum energy transfer and that's kind of what you need to do And

you need heavy transport to bring people supplies and the like the you've got to see this minutes later it's truncated but it's very cool so the two boosters come back and when you take the Emirates 380 Airbus and you land in the airport they don't throw it away and bring out another one they reuse it this cuts your call so this is precisely there they are the motivation those are the two boosters kind of man like meteors real real fast Gonna do a final burn here in just a moment this is a amateur video of

it there is final burn one and two light travels faster than shadows coming down [Music] double sonic booth our coast so at minimum an energy transfer you get to the moon in three days Mars and nine months Jupiter ten years or so Saturn 20 Alpha Centauri the nearest star system to Earth seventy thousand years so whoever wants to say let's colonize planets of other stars there's a problem with the human physiology relative to the time that it takes to get there if you're lucky you live a hundred years that is one seven hundredths of this

time so I seems to me we'd have to learn something new about the space-time continuum with a wormhole of some kind before we consider colonizing planets around other stars we duper and Saturn Don't have surfaces they have moons with hard surfaces possibly we can think about that would you spend twenty years to do that to live on a place that's not earth to live permanently that's a question because you can do it does that mean that you will here's something that is not fully expressed space the first trillionaires will be those who mine asteroids asteroids

the resources of the solar system while you're mining it maybe we there's an asteroid out there That has our name on it we ask you could you please deflect that for us and the governments get together and pay for the company that's already mining it - deflected water in space cost $10,000 a pound sorry I said pounds to put into orbit if you get it from a comet for 5000 dollars a pound or 1000 dollars a pound that's a business model surely vacations Mars moves at the moon and beyond again I don't see settlements so

much there are companies ready to do This Planetary Resources this is their landing page on the internet and you scroll down to sustain life in space so if you do set up a digital and on Mars you have to need supplies so would you bring supplies from Earth not if you can get supplies from space and go from space to space that's cheaper than launching something from Earth so they want to control resources in space they're gonna have the first Trillionaires if they pull this off so sixteen thousand near-earth asteroids rich and resources two trillion

tons of order ninety five percent reduction in cost if you go space to space they've already thought this through it has a board you know what else is on asteroids rare earth metals alright these are the full range of rare earth metals off the periodic table rare earth metals are not so rare on earth except they're hard to get to and they're not everywhere so if You get an asteroid that has plentiful supplies of these our modern technology needs these to function these are key components of our batteries our cellphones our communication devices not only

those asteroids have precious metals gold silver platinum group elements and of course they have order plus we've been to them before governments paid missions to visit asteroids this is asteroid Ida this is Galileo Approaching Ida it did not collide that's actual footage as it got closer it's not just a zoom in this is Ida we've been to asteroids we understand them we've even landed on comets but perhaps the most important motivation let's get back to the war motivation defense I don't want war to be a reason for anything so listen we think that maybe there's

a security problem that we face as a world body let me remind you that The universe there are many ways earth wants to kill you earthquakes tsunamis this sort of thing the universe wants to kill you too this there these are these will happen but they're not as common you know you want to avoid black holes at all cost yes solar storms are bad but what's much more real or impacts and we have had extinction-level impacts in the past so you could colonize other planets to Mitigate this but again you have humans on two planets

and one is about to go extinct you're just going to sit there say goodbye glad we're not there no you're going to deflect it especially if you already have people who know how to mind them so that's not worried about but there could be one you didn't want to be on earth when that happened this is a real crater in Arizona it's a kilometer across one and a half kilometers across It can sink a 60-story building in the middle we've been hit before we will be hit again you want a space program and you want

to fund it say we don't want to die we don't wanna go extinct how's that for a defense program one evidence that this is real anyone here from Russia any Russians in the room Russia tell you Binks a town February 15 2013 forward-facing dashboard camera do you see a little dot of light in the middle watch this That's full video and sound in the car now I had always been told that the Russians are a stoic people if I were driving that car the car would have at least and I know what I'm looking at

right I would I would have at least reacted in some way just to show you that we're in a shooting gallery 17 meter 10,000 tons 40,000 miles per hour the energy of 25 Hiroshima bombs but it exploded 20 miles up again apologized for the miles 30 Kilometers up so a lot of the energy was diluted and but what it did peep no one died but the blast wave collapsed wall shatter windows the injuries were glass shattered glass and there's a time delay that's how so many people got injured they're sitting there eating breakfast a bright

light comes through the window and so I wonder what that light is and then they walk over to the window look out the window then the blast wave hits the time delay Between the light and the sound here's an example of video in the town of China based so that that's the smoke they want to just past above them so here it is amateur video after it passed over years ago Deltona that's the shockwave but there's a couple more we can laugh cuz no one died but this is a compile a ssin of the blast

videos and this is 17 meter asteroid that's all 17 B size of the stage [Music] where'd he come from right a warehouse structures are not reinforced typically so they were their most susceptible to this blast wave [Music] so I like about this as the kids didn't run out of the room it was like oh gee what was that let me keep looking let me end with just a reflection on the value of even saying you want to go into space and doing so Even if the projects are not expensive or you're not colonizing yet because

doing so can have effect and effect on culture first let me say that space is a gateway subject into the sciences all of these physics planetary geology biology chemistry medicine all of this matters when you go into space so it is the ideal driver of STEM fields science technology engineering and math and STEM fields are the engines of tomorrow's economy so if you're in a sleepy country And you want to become an innovation nation engage in some space projects and all of a sudden people rise up out of the out of the pavement saying I

want to do that I want to think that way I want to invent something for that enterprise and I go back to the 1960s in the United States a time of technological hope by the way here is the GDP per capita of the United States decade by decade in the decade we were going to the moon it was the highest that it has been since Percent change of 30 34 percent between 1960 and 1970 it's been dropping ever since I'm old enough to remember this it was all about the future just the feeling that that

was I wasn't even I didn't even know I wanted to be an astrophysicist yet but I was being imprinted this is the the Unisphere in World's Fair in New York City with three rings around it evocative of the three orbits of John Glenn it was all about the future then we Started acting on this with the movies 2001 a Space Odyssey of rotating space station we started thinking of tomorrow what will tomorrow look like and looking at some of these tall buildings on the right hand side this is all nationalities migrating to this city of

the future and I'm looking at that city of the future and say some of those buildings look like what you got outside here in Dubai I'm thinking you already made the city of the future so this is The 1960s when we're thinking about this it wasn't just the drugs that people took that made them think this way it was a real surge of enthusiasm for what a future would bring in everybody new science and technology would deliver this you don't get this by just hoping you do turn hope into reality you go now to the

2020s there'd I swear that building is in the other drawing I swear so are all these buildings this is already the city of the future and You're gonna have an expo just as I experienced in New York City in 1964 you've got this right here in this country just the feeling and by the way you're also going to Mars you got it all but it's all there everything is in place to bring a force of nature onto the ambitions of a next generation of people I know what that is I know what that feels like

I experienced that it's an experience that's kind of faded across the ocean for me and I'm Delighted to see a surgeons of that here in the Middle East elsewhere in the Far East so and by the way this is drawing on what is already a legacy from the Golden Age a thousand years ago you're not pulling this out of nothing it's got a precedent to lead the world in science technology engineering and math every time I have an occasion back in the United States I tell people what do we call our numerals Arabic numerals of

course a thousand years ago They were called Hindu numerals did you know that in the Arabian peninsular they called me because they came from there but those numerals were fully developed in a full system of arithmetic and algebra algebra algorithm these are Arabic words I remind everyone back in the United States from an era where people thought about the future and thought about what role science and technology would play so whether or not you colonize the very fact that space is On your agenda will transform your present and the future ambitions of everyone who participates

and this is a future I can't wait to see thank you so I'm glad you brought up the UAE at the end because today we have some government officials here we have the Minister of State for advanced sciences here we have the chief innovation officer VOA Space Agency so and you did mention previously that the UAE reminds you of the 60s in the u.s. so what Advice would you give them to sustain that to learn from previous experiences that other other countries have and to sustain this so doesn't die out okay I have I have

an answer for you okay so again it's by analogy to what we experienced in the United States through the 1960s every next mission from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo went from one astronauts two to three every next mission was more ambitious than the previous one it went a little farther it Stayed a little longer they brought more cargo they did more things this kept an interest level of the press and of the public they could talk about new things each time okay after we stopped going to the moon and then we introduced the shuttle program

which from my view was boldly going where hundreds have gone before each next mission was not more ambitious than the previous one so the public had nothing to look forward to and if the shuttle launch preempted your Daily soap operas you would complain to the TV station so you want to avoid stagnation if you're actually advancing a space frontier make that the natural state of everything you do don't say oh we got to the moon we're done let's just keep going to the moon and don't do anything more well that gets old fast believe it

or not so whatever are your ambitions always have something more ambitious than that that will stimulate Evermore innovation and and creativity in the people who support it so your excellency no pressure moving on to the next question so I'm glad you brought the role of media and I wanted to ask you as you know the host of cosmos and star talk what role does media play in preparing and exposing the next generation to advancements of science and technology instead of reality shows oh well yeah I Mean it's everything it's a good coverage of a something

that's never been done before we'll get very high percentage of eyeballs focused on it so and we know this from the Olympics you know billions of billions of people watch the Olympics this is the model could you up yeah I think it so bad launch drops plan is to sell advertising time during the broadcast of this trip in the model of the Olympics and he costed out the Olympics got a sense of What it is figured that we can get more money going to Mars than watching someone on the luge so he that's his business

model and it's an interesting one I don't think you can sustain that maybe you can get the first couple of people there but the tenth colony that heads out there I don't know that he could sell it that same way okay so that's my longer-term concern about that that ambition okay and my last question is that I heard you say this because We're running out of time okay but I mean Cass later on but my last question is so you talked about you know a lot of people ask why are we going to Mars why

are we why should we care about gravitational waves come from from faraway galaxies and and what does it benefit me here on earth so I want you to reiterate that that's very selfish of you oh well you want the discover gravity ways to benefit you I guess so So as you may have known in the last couple of years we discovered gravity waves predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago and very sensitive equipment necessary to do so we detected the collision of two black holes and their signal that ripple in the fabric of space and

time that has been traveling for 1.3 billion years this event occurred 1.3 billion light years away so it's been discovered a Nobel Prize has been awarded for just this past fall and How does it benefit you we have no idea now if we have this conversation in the 1920s there was a spate of Nobel Prizes given to physicists who discovered the quantum and you would say how does that benefit me and the only answer I give is I have no idea but we have the benefit of hindsight and I can tell you that it would

take 40 years at most 50 but the quantum would become the foundation of the modern IT revolution there is no creation storage and retrieval of Information of digital information without an exploitation of quantum physics so all everything we take for granted today in fact I've ran the numbers approximately one-third of the world's GDP is traceable to information technology itself only enabled by what physicists were doing in the 1920s and if you had asked them how does it benefit me they would have no answer for you and then you pull the budget from them because you

wanted it to help you That day and I'm saying when you're doing frontier research you cannot require it to assist you that day or even in the fore side of what anybody has in that moment in 1917 in 1916 Einstein wrote down an equation for the stimulated emission of light a minor branch of his total work of his total output and there it laid there with other quantum physics discoveries and what who cares forty years later it is the Foundation of the laser the laser is invented based on that equation the laser was Einstein thinking

barcodes yeah that's what I want to do with this a cosmetic skin peel yes this is these are not his thoughts the lasers arguably one of the most potent tools in the laboratory arsenal with so many applications you cannot require that anybody knows how it would apply in that moment okay and that takes foresight that takes courage as a leader As a politician to say I will make sure we fund this because this is the R&D of our country a corporation is not going to fund it because it has no it can't add to the

quarterly report or the annual report and maybe not even the decadal report if such a thing existed so the country has to say one day this will create industries and we will get the tax benefit of those industries that's what has to happen and so you need that foresight as any good well-run Corporation no matter what and no matter the urge will allocate that percentage that they agreed upon to R&D is it 5% 6% 10% I'd like to see a future where although all the countries of the world and no matter how poor or wealthy

you are you say 10% is going to research 10 whatever I pick a number but pick a number and let that be the number then it doesn't fluctuate every year depending on the political winds of who gets elected or Who was in power then the research community can have a constant figure on which to base their planning and by the way if the country gets wealthier that's 7% of a bigger pot so it's self driven because the wealth will be driven by that technology innovations in tomorrow's technology so innovations in today's technology drives tomorrow's economies

period those are where the growth economies are coming from you want to be a part of that value science Technology engineering and math without it you'll just receive the goods of others and you'll be trailing behind that's a you could do that but not based on the energy I see coming through this conference and the enthusiasm and the the the steps actual steps to just to see what India is doing now Oh Mike this is this is I'm loving every minute of it every minute and I guarantee I can't guarantee this I will say with

high confidence that the fact that India is Going to Mars people in the street will be proud of that they might want to do something different with their lives realizing this country is doing something as a as a mission statement there you have it ladies and gentlemen and in the back right all right one question what huh what's the question I'll do quick I brought it all right did you have Oh father sir yes louder policy yes so how can policies expedite expedite Project good act excellent question what we found kind of by accident but

my reference is the United States so allow me what we found kind of by accident is in the 1990s there were certain questions we wanted answered in astrophysics that we realized we didn't have the intellectual breadth to address and so how do you do this so we got NASA to create a funding umbrella that was not stove-piped into a specific scientific discipline and it's called The origins program notice that's not chemistry math it's just origins and you say okay what is the ARA gin of the oceans of Earth well did it come from volcanoes maybe

did it come from comets maybe some combination of the two I have to talk to a geologist we get together now I'm looking for life in extreme environments in space there's extreme environments on earth where life thrives Lake Vostok in in Antarctica is a completely sealed volume of water that's Been under ice for tens of thousands of years there may be life forms there that have no counterpart anyplace else in a very specific environment that could be analogized to the subsurface oceans of Europa a moon of Jupiter that's frozen on the outside liquid on the

inside I gotta find a biologist to talk about this so you know what happened beginning in the 1990s journals started rising the Journal of astrogeology Of what's the one with extra Journal of astrobiology you started stapling together Astro with other routes from other sciences actually that began a little earlier in the 80s when we had astral particle physics these are astrophysicists worried about the particle accelerator conditions of the Big Bang so we're talking to particle physicists with our astrophysics so once you start cross pollinating disciplines whole other Areas of discovery unfold so in terms of

policy not only should funding enable this not only enable it but promote it with these kinds of funding umbrellas you create a Center for something that connects two departments at a university normally you don't see each other but now you got to come to this building where the two have to come together I see you over coffee that's how I was just thinking about this planet what do you think well the electrical field and The life in there is and we have a new conversation yes in addition what you need in what you want is

a way to transfer scientific discovery to technology my physics professor in college discovered nuclear magnetic resonance is a physicist this is where the nucleus of an atom can be made to resonate in the presence of an electromagnetic field it sounds obscure and it was at the time by the way he's interested in molecules In space that's his interest he figures this out gets a Nobel Prize for it later on a medical technologist said wait a minute if you can distinguish this nucleus from that nucleus that means you can tell this atom from that atom if

you design a cavity to make this happen they then invent the MRI the magnetic resonance image bait left out the end because that's it's the n-word the other bad hand were the nuclear people don't want to go into A device that has the word nuclear on it the magnetic resonance imager is nuclear magnetic resonance arguably the most potent machine in the arsenal of the medical doctor to diagnose your body without cutting you open and it separates atoms by their mass so you need a way for that to happen and that way the frontier of science

can become product that then enhances our lives if you do that oh my gosh invite that might invite me for the party all right thank You [Music]