The Next Great Frontier How Space Exploration Benefits Humanity on Earth
Transcriber: Alexis Young
Reviewer: Helen Chang
I am all in on sending humans to Mars.
There is nothing I want
to achieve more in my career
than seeing humans
step foot on that planet,
because I know it could be the start
of humanity spreading into the cosmos.
I’d be happy to be
that first person on Mars.
But my wife thinks
that a three-year vacation
to a deserted planet
with no oxygen, no real atmosphere,
nothing to eat or drink,
freezing temperatures,
bone-depleting gravity
and space radiation
is a bad idea,
for some reason.
So I’ll settle for sending someone else.
In fact, maybe some of you watching this
could be the first to go to Mars.
OK, so I’m going to tell you
why we should go to Mars
and why we should spread humanity
into the rest of the solar system.
I’ll also show you
that by setting out on the next great age
of space exploration,
we’ll actually make Earth
a much better place to live as well.
But before we do that,
I want to tell you about something
that happened very recently
that I am very excited about:
We made oxygen on Mars.
I work on the Mars 2020 rover.
“Perseverance” is what it’s called,
or “Persy” for short.
My role on the mission is to help
one of the instruments on board,
called “MOXIE,”
make oxygen from the atmosphere on Mars.
I am fortunate to be
part of the excellent team
that has made MOXIE a reality.
MOXIE stands for
the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment.
ISRU stands for
In-situ Resource Utilization.
Don’t ask me why we chose
to put an acronym within an acronym.
Sometimes we make bad decisions in life.
What this all means
is that MOXIE takes the carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere of Mars
and converts it into oxygen.
It’s kind of like a tree on Mars
doing photosynthesis.
MOXIE is helpful for two reasons.
One is you’ve got to breathe.
But there’s actually a second reason
that requires way more oxygen
than breathing,
and that’s rocket propellant.
Rockets burn a lot of propellant,
so we have to make a lot of oxygen.
Without oxygen, we can’t breathe,
we can’t move, we can’t explore.
I am in charge of sending commands
to the rover to make oxygen on Mars.
We package up commands
to tell Percy what to do the next day,
and Percy listens and does what we ask,
well, most of the time, anyway.
I know this is going to be recorded,
and a lot of people
will watch this after the fact.
But it’s really exciting
because we actually just made oxygen
for the first couple of times on Mars
in the past couple of months.
The first time we did it
was a pretty historic moment.
And now that we’ve made oxygen,
I can’t wait to explore what’s next.
OK, so why should you want to go to Mars
and explore the rest of the solar system?
And what are we going to do
about all those “issues”
my wife pointed out about Mars?
It doesn’t sound like a great place to go.
And there’s a million problems
we could be solving here on Earth
with our time and money instead, right?
I want you to imagine in the past,
a group of people that live
on a South Pacific island.
They’ve been there, isolated,
for over a thousand years,
living generation after generation.
They had no idea
what was across the water.
And it was incredibly dangerous
to try an expedition to go find out.
One day, the volcano
that had formed the island initially
erupted and wiped out
the entire civilization on the islands.
In one day,
the 1,000-year-old culture vanished.
Some of us might think,
If only they had taken a leap
and ventured out beyond their island
and gone to other places,
we might still know what their culture was
and know more about them as a people.
By the way, this has happened before.
The Bronze Age island of Thera erupted
and erased the settlement
that had been there
for multiple millennia.
We are that island right now.
This is our galaxy,
and there’s us on our island.
At some point, whether we like it or not,
the earth will undergo a catastrophe,
and humans will face an extinction event,
just as the volcano threatened
the entire civilization on that island.
Now, this could be self-induced,
or it could be from any number
of natural causes,
like an asteroid collision,
a gamma ray burst
or a magnetic pole reversal.
It really isn’t a question of if the earth
will face one of these events
that threatens our species’ survival.
It’s a question of when.
I hope it doesn’t happen,
but I’m playing the odds.
Armed with this information,
don’t you think we should want
some sort of insurance,
some backups to preserve
humanity’s shout in the universe,
to not put all of our eggs in one basket?
If we had humans on another planet
or on many planets, for example,
then the survival of our species
is much more likely
even if something happens to the Earth
outside of our control.
Now, a lot of people
don’t necessarily like what I just said,
because it could sound like
we’re trying to abandon the Earth -
run away from our problems
instead of addressing them.
That’s not it at all.
I mean, when you finish
backing up your computer,
do you go to the nearest river
and chuck your computer into it?
“Thanks for all the memories, computer,
but I don’t need you anymore.
I’ve got a backup now.”
That defeats the whole purpose.
No, we want to take
excellent care of the Earth
and go to space at the same time.
And here’s the best part
I haven’t told you about yet.
Going to space actually
helps the Earth tremendously.
We have seen time and time again
that technologies developed
for space missions
have greatly helped life on Earth.
Their applications are far reaching
and not limited to the space missions
to which they were designed.
To prove it to you,
here are some technologies
that we use every day on Earth
that were originally developed
for space missions:
cheaper and quieter artificial limbs,
smartphone cameras,
firefighting equipment, baby formula,
memory foam, advanced solar cells,
better LASIK surgery, water filters,
scratch resistant lenses, air purifiers.
The list goes on and on.
These technologies help us
fight climate change, pollution
and save lives every day on Earth.
We invented these things
because we decided to go to the moon
and to explore space.
So we can’t even imagine
what we might invent
if we decide to go to Mars.
Why did I start out talking about Mars
when it’s really my grand plan
to explore and settle
the entire solar system
that I want to tell you about?
Well, Mars is the first leap
we should take in that journey.
If we can get humans set up on Mars,
it will serve as a stepping stone
to enable further exploration
into the rest of the solar system.
This should be our target.
If we push ourselves towards establishing
a human presence on Mars,
it will be a giant leap
in becoming a truly space faring species
with all the benefits it brings.
Earth really is by far the best planet
to live on in the solar system.
But the solar system
is still worth our time and energy.
As President Kennedy said,
we do these things
not because they are easy,
but because they are hard.
If we can start to move humanity
into the solar system,
we can make those hard places
more and more livable
while improving life here on Earth
at the same time.
I want to put a quote up
from someone who inspired a lot of people
to think more and more deeply
about space exploration.
He said, “Imagination will often carry us
to worlds that never work,
but without it, we go nowhere.”
Ten thousand years ago,
people rarely ventured
beyond their birthplace.
Today, we travel all over the planet,
well, at least when there’s
not a pandemic going on.
Those people from 10,000 years ago
would have their minds blown
by how far and wide we travel today.
And people 1,000 years in the future
will look back on us
and think the same thing,
that we would have our minds blown
by how far and wide they travel
throughout the solar system.
Think about that.
We are the island
in the vast ocean that is our galaxy.
I invite you to dream big with me.
We could populate hundreds of planets,
travel between worlds,
make great new discoveries
about our time and place in the universe.
You would even have
an interstellar Mars address
and a pen pal in
the neighboring star system.
Look, I want to go to Mars
and see the Valles Marineris,
a canyon 10 times the size
of the Grand Canyon
that might be an international
park someday.
I want to journey to Saturn’s moon, Titan,
and fly around in the low gravity
with actual wings like a bird.
I want to scuba dive on Europa
with Jupiter filling up
most of the sky above me
and see if there’s any life
on the ocean floor.
I know I probably won’t get to do
any of those things in my lifetime,
but I want someone,
maybe you or your kids,
to be able to do them.
I want humanity to spread out
in the solar system
and eventually, the universe.
And we are getting started
on making that happen right now.
MOXIE is the first step.
Next on my to-do list is scaling up MOXIE
to support the first
human mission to Mars.
That’s what I’m working on right now.
We’ve gotten started on the list,
but there are a lot of problems
facing us on this journey still.
And we could use all
of your help in solving them.
Whether you can help from a scientific
or engineering standpoint
or simply spreading the message
about the importance of space
and how it can impact the Earth
in a positive way.
What I want you to take away
from this talk
is that this incredible vision
of space exploration
will also pay enormous benefits
in making our home planet
a healthier and better place to live,
all while improving
the odds of survival for our species.
I think that’s a dream worth pursuing.
Thank you.