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Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures | Lex Fridman Podcast #271


small model | large model

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We think that self assembly,
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this modular reconfigurable algorithm
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for constructing space structures in orbit
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is gonna give us this promise of space architecture
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that's actually worth living in.
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You see, you do believe we might one day
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become intergalactic civilization.
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I have a hope, yeah.
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The following is a conversation with Ariel Ekblah,
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Director of MIT Space Exploration Initiative.
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She's especially interested in autonomously
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self assembling space architectures.
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Basically, giant space structures
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that can sustain human life
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and that assemble themselves out in space
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and then orbit Earth, Moon, Mars, and other planets.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Ariel Ekblah.
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When did you first fall in love with space exploration
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and space in general?
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My parents are both ex Air Force.
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So my dad's an A10 fighter pilot
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and my mom trained and had qualified to be a fighter pilot,
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but it was early enough
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that women were not allowed in combat at that time.
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And so I grew up with these two pilots
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and although they themselves did not become astronauts,
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there's a really rich legacy of Air Force pilots
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becoming astronauts and this loomed large in my childhood.
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What does it mean to be courageous, to be an explorer,
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to be at the vanguard of something hard and challenging?
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And to couple with that,
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my dad was a huge fan of science fiction.
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And so I, as a kid, read Heinlein and Isaac Asimov,
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all these different classics of science fiction
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that he had introduced me to.
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And that just started a love affair with space exploration
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and really thinking about
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civilization scale space exploration.
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So did they themselves dream about going to the stars
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as opposed to flying here in Earth's atmosphere,
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just looking up?
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Yeah, my dad always said he was absolutely convinced
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because he was a child of the Apollo years
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that he would get to go in his lifetime,
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really thought it was gonna happen.
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And so it was a challenge and sad for many people
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when to their view on the outside,
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space exploration slowed down for a period of time.
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In reality, we were just catching up.
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I think we leapt so far ahead with Apollo,
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more than the rest of society was ready for.
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And now we're coming back to this moment
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for space exploration where we actually have an economy
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and we have the other accoutrement that society needs
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to be able to make space exploration more real.
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And my dad's thrilled because finally,
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not nearly, I hope not anywhere near the end of his life,
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but as he's an older man,
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he now can see still within his lifetime,
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people really getting a chance
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to build a sustainable lunar settlement on the moon
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or maybe even go to Mars.
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So settlement, civilizations and other planets,
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that's the cool thing to dream about in the future.
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It certainly is.
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What was the favorite sci fi authors when you were growing up?
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Pabé Eszeg Asimov Foundation Trilogy.
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This is an amazing story of Harry Seldon,
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this foundation that he forms at different ends of the,
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well, according to the story,
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different ends of the universe
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and has this interesting focus on society.
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So it's not just space exploration
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for the sake of space exploration or novel technology,
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which is a lot of what I work on day to day at MIT,
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but how do you structure a society
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across those vast expanses of distance and time?
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And so I'd say absolutely a favorite.
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Now though, my favorite is Neal Stephenson and Seveneves.
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It's a book that inspired my own PhD research
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and some ongoing work that we're doing with NASA now
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for the future of swarm robotics for spacecraft.
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We were saying offline about Neal Stephenson
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because I just recently had a conversation with him.
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And I said that not until I was doing the research for him
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that I realized he also had a role to play in Blue Origin.
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So it's like sci fi actually having a role to play
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in the design, engineering,
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just the implementation of ideas
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that kind of percolate up from the sci fi world
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and actually become reality.
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It's kind of a fascinating figure in that way.
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So do you also think about him
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beyond just his work in science fiction,
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but his role in coming up with wild, crazy ideas
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that actually become reality?
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Yes, I think it's a great example of this cycle
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between authors and scientists and engineers
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that we can be inspired in one generation
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by what authors dream up.
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We build it, we make it a reality.
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And then that inspires another generation
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of really wild and crazy thought for science fiction.
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I think Neal Stephenson does a beautiful job
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of being what we'd call a hard science fiction author.
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So it's really grounded in a lot of science,
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which makes it very compelling for me
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as a scientist and engineer to read
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and then be challenged to make that vision a reality.
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The other community that Neal's involved with
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and some of my other mentors are involved with
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that we are thinking about more and more in the work
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that we do at MIT is the Long Now Foundation.
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And this focus on what does society need to take
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in terms of steps at this juncture,
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this particular inflection point in human history
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to make sure that we're setting ourselves up
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for a long and prosperous horizon,
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for humanity's horizons.
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There's a lot of examples
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of what the Long Now Foundation does and thinks about.
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But when I think about this in my own work,
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it's what does it take to scale humanity's presence
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in orbit?
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We are seeing some additional investment
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in commercial space habitats.
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So it'll no longer be just NASA
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running the International Space Station,
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but to really democratize access to space,
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like Bezos wants to have millions of people living
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and working in space,
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you need architecture that's bigger and grander
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and can actually scale.
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That means you need to be thinking about
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how can you construct things for long time horizons
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that are really sustainable in orbit
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or on a surface of a celestial body
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that are bigger than the biggest rocket payload fairing
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that we currently have available.
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And that what led me to self assembly
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and other models of in space construction.
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Okay, every time you speak,
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I get like a million tangent ideas.
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You can cut me off.
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No, no, no, no, no, no, please keep talking.
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This is amazing.
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I just, there's like a million of ideas.
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So one sort of on the dark side, let me ask,
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do you think about the threats to human civilization
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that kind of motivate the scaling of the expansion
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of humans in space and on other planets?
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What are you worried about?
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Nuclear war, pandemics,
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super intelligent, artificial intelligence systems,
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more not existential crises,
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but ones that have significant,
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potentially significant detrimental effects on society,
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like climate change, those kinds of things.
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And then there's of course the fun S story
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coming out from the darkness and hitting all earth.
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There's been a few movies on that.
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Anyway, is there something that you think about
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that threatens us in this century?
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I mean, as an ex military family,
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we used to talk about all of this.
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We would say that luck favors the prepared.
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And so growing up, we had a plan, actually a family plan
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for what we would do in a pandemic.
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Didn't think we were gonna have to put that
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and plan into place and here we are.
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We do, certainly among my own family and my friends
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and then our work at MIT,
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we do think about existential threats and risks to humanity
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and what role does space exploration
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and getting humans off world have to play
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in a resilient future for humanity.
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But what I actually find more compelling recently
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is instead of thinking about a need to ever abandon earth
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through a path of space exploration or space foraging
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is to see how we can use space technology
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to keep earth livable.
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The obvious direct ways of doing this would be,
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satellite technology that's helping us learn more
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about climate change or emitters or CO2.
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But there's also a future for geo engineering
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that might be space based.
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A lot of questions that would have to be answered
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around that, but these are examples of pivoting our focus
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away from maybe the Hollywood vision of,
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oh, an asteroid's gonna come,
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we're all gonna have to escape earth
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to let's use our considerable technology prowess
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and use space technology to save earth
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and be very much focused on how we can have
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a worthwhile life for earth citizens.
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Even if some of us wanna go out and further venturing.
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Right, just the desire to explore the mysterious, yes.
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But also it does seem that by placing us
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in harsh conditions, the harsh conditions of space,
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the harsh conditions of planets,
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and the biology, the chemistry, the engineering,
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the robotics, the materials, all of that,
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that's just a nice way to come up with cool new things.
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Great forcing function, yeah.
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Yeah, exactly, it's a forcing function like survival.
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You don't get this right, you die.
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So, and that you can bring back to earth
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and it will improve, like figuring out food in space
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will make you figure out how to eat,
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live healthier lives here on earth.
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So true, I mean, some of the technologies
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that we're directly looking at right now
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for space habitats, it's hard to keep humans alive
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in this really fragile little pocket against the vacuum
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and all of the dangers that the space environment presents.
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Some of the technologies we are gonna have to figure out
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is energy efficient cooling and air conditioning,
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air filtration, scrubbing CO2 from the air,
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being able to have habitats that are themselves resilient
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to extremes of space weather and radiation.
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And some of these are direct translational opportunities
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for areas turned by natural disasters.
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People in California a decade ago would never have had
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to think about having an airtight house.
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But now with wildfires, maybe you do want something close
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to an airtight house, how do you manage that?
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There's a lot of technologies
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from the space habitation world
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that we are hoping we can actually bring back down
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to benefit life on earth as well
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in these extreme environment contexts.
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Okay, so you mentioned to go back to swarm.
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Yeah.
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So that was interesting to you,
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first of all, in your own work,
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but also I believe you said something
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that was inspiring from Niel Stevenson as well.
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So when you say swarm, are you thinking about
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architectures or are you thinking about
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artificial intelligence like robotics
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or are those kind of intermixed?
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I think the future that we're seeing
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is that they're going to be intermixed,
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which is really exciting.
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So the future of space habitats
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are one of intelligent structures,
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maybe not all the way to Hal
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and the 2001 Space Odyssey reference that scares people
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about the habitat having a mind of its own.
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But certainly we're building systems now
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where the habitat has sensing technology
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that allows it to communicate its basic functions,
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maintaining life support for the astronauts,
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but could also communicate in symbiosis
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with these swarm robots
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that would be on the outside of the spacecraft,
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whether it's in a microgravity orbiting environment
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or on the surface.
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And these little robots,
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they crawl just a la Niel Stevenson in seven eves,
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they crawl along the outside of the spacecraft
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looking for micrometeorite punctures
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or gas leaks or other faults and defects.
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And right now we're just working on the diagnosis.
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So can the swarm with its collective intelligence
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act in symbiosis with the spacecraft and detect things?
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But in the future we'd also love
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for these little micro robots to repair in situ
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and really be like ants living in a tree
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altogether connected to the spacecraft.
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Do you envision the system to be fully distributed
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and just like an ant colony,
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if one of them is damaged or whatever,
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loses control and all those kinds of things
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that doesn't affect the performance of the complete system
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or doesn't need to be centralized?
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This is more like almost like a technical question.
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Do you think we can?
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Good architecture question.
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Right, from the ground up,
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it's so scary to go fully distributed.
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Yes.
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But it's also exceptionally powerful, right?
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Robust, resilient to the harsh conditions of space.
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What do you, if you look into the next 10, 20, 100 years,
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starting from scratch,
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do you think we should be doing
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architecture wise distributed systems?
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For space, yes, because it gives you this redundancy
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and safety profile that's really critical.
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So whether it's small swarm robots
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where it doesn't matter if you lose a few of them,
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to habitats that instead of having a central monolithic habitat,
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you might actually be able to have
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a decentralized node of a space station
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so that you can kind of right out of Star Wars,
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you can shut a blast door if there's a fire
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or if there's a conflict in a certain area
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and you can move the humans and the crew
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into another decentralized node of the spacecraft.
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There's another idea out of Neal Stephenson's Seven Eves
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actually where these arclets,
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which were decentralized spacecraft that could form
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and dock little temporary space stations with each other
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and then separate and go off on their way
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and have a decentralized approach to living in space.
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So the self assembly component of that too,
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so this is your PhD work and beyond,
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you explored autonomously self assembling space architecture
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for future space, tourists, habitats,
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and space stations in orbit around Earth, Moon, and Mars.
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There's few things I personally find sexier
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than autonomously self assembling space architecture.
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In general, it doesn't even need to be space.
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The idea of self assembling architectures
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is really interesting, like building a bridge
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or something like that through self assembling materials.
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It feels like an incredibly efficient way to do it
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because optimization is built in.
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So you can build the most optimal structures
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given dynamic, uncertain, changing conditions.
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So maybe can you talk about your PhD work,
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about this work, about Tesserae, what is it in general?
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Any cool stuff, because this is super cool.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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So Tesserae is my PhD research.
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It's this idea that we could take tiles
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that construct a large structure like a bucky ball.
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Yeah, this is exactly what we're looking at here,
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which is the tiles that are packed flat in a rocket.
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They're released to float in microgravity.
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Magnets, pretty powerful, electropermanent magnets
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on their edges draw them together for autonomous docking.
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So there's no human in the loop here,
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and there's no central agent coordinating
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saying tile one, go to tile two.
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It's completely decentralized system.
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They find each other on their own.
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What we don't show in this video
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00:14:56.060
is what happens if there's an error, right?
link |
00:14:58.220
So what happens if they bond incorrectly?
link |
00:15:00.140
The tiles have sensing, so proximity sensing,
link |
00:15:02.620
magnetometer, other sensors that allow them
link |
00:15:04.780
to detect a good bond versus a bad bond
link |
00:15:07.900
and pulse off and self correct,
link |
00:15:10.020
which anybody who works in the field of self assembly
link |
00:15:12.700
will tell you that error detection and correction,
link |
00:15:15.780
just like error detection in a DNA sequence
link |
00:15:19.020
or protein folding is really important part of the system
link |
00:15:21.900
for that robustness.
link |
00:15:23.140
And so we've done a lot of work to engineer that ability
link |
00:15:26.380
for the tiles to be self determining.
link |
00:15:29.300
They know whether they're forming the structure
link |
00:15:30.820
that they're supposed to form or not.
link |
00:15:32.180
They know if they're in a toxic relationship
link |
00:15:34.340
and they need to get out.
link |
00:15:35.780
Right, right, if they need to separate, exactly, yeah.
link |
00:15:38.700
All right, this is like so amazing.
link |
00:15:40.500
And for people who are just listening to this,
link |
00:15:41.980
yeah, there's, I mean, how large are these tiles?
link |
00:15:45.180
So the size that we use in the lab,
link |
00:15:47.780
they can really be any size
link |
00:15:49.140
because we can scale them down to do testing
link |
00:15:51.020
in microgravity.
link |
00:15:51.860
So we sent tiles that were about three inches wide
link |
00:15:55.020
to the International Space Station a couple years ago
link |
00:15:57.100
to test the code, test the state machine,
link |
00:16:00.100
test the algorithm of self assembly.
link |
00:16:02.260
But now we're actually building
link |
00:16:03.500
our first ever human scale tiles.
link |
00:16:05.660
They're me human size.
link |
00:16:06.860
So a little smaller than maybe your average human,
link |
00:16:09.660
but they're 2.5 feet on edge length.
link |
00:16:13.980
The larger scale that we would love to build in the future
link |
00:16:16.700
would actually be tiles that are big enough
link |
00:16:18.700
to form a bucky ball, big open spherical volume,
link |
00:16:21.900
spherical approximation volume,
link |
00:16:23.580
that'd be about 10 meters in diameter.
link |
00:16:25.660
So 30 feet, which is much bigger and grander
link |
00:16:29.100
in terms of open space than any current module on the ISS.
link |
00:16:32.540
And one of the goals of this project was to say,
link |
00:16:35.140
what's the purpose of next generation space architecture?
link |
00:16:38.780
Should it be something that really inspires
link |
00:16:41.660
and delights people when you float into that space?
link |
00:16:44.780
Can you get goosebumps in the way that you do
link |
00:16:46.700
when you walk into a really stunning piece
link |
00:16:48.740
of architecture on earth?
link |
00:16:50.180
And so we think that self assembly,
link |
00:16:52.260
this modular reconfigurable algorithm
link |
00:16:55.300
for constructing space structures in orbit
link |
00:16:58.060
is gonna give us this promise of space architecture
link |
00:17:01.300
that's actually worth living in.
link |
00:17:03.460
Living in, oh, I thought you also meant
link |
00:17:05.340
from like outside artistic perspective,
link |
00:17:07.340
when you see the whole thing is just.
link |
00:17:09.660
With the aesthetics of it, absolutely.
link |
00:17:11.460
You know, when you like go like into Vegas,
link |
00:17:14.460
whenever you go into a city
link |
00:17:16.460
and it like over the hill appears in front of you.
link |
00:17:19.340
And I mean, there's something majestic about seeing like,
link |
00:17:23.380
wow, humans created that.
link |
00:17:25.300
It gives you like hope about like,
link |
00:17:26.820
if these a bunch of ants were able to figure out
link |
00:17:28.780
how to build skyscrapers that light up.
link |
00:17:31.420
And in general, the design of these tiles
link |
00:17:33.980
in the way you envision it are pretty scalable.
link |
00:17:36.460
Yes, and they're inspired by exactly
link |
00:17:38.460
what you mentioned a moment ago,
link |
00:17:39.540
which is we have these patterns of self assembly on earth.
link |
00:17:42.980
And there's a lot of fantastic MIT research
link |
00:17:45.020
that we're building this concept on.
link |
00:17:46.500
So like Daniela Ruse at CSAIL and Pebbles,
link |
00:17:49.380
taking the power of magnets to create units
link |
00:17:53.860
that are themselves interchangeable,
link |
00:17:56.180
this notion of programmable matter.
link |
00:17:58.620
And so we're interested in going really big with it
link |
00:18:01.580
to build big scale space structures with programmable tiles.
link |
00:18:05.340
But there's also a really fascinating,
link |
00:18:07.340
you know, end of that on the other side of the spectrum,
link |
00:18:08.940
which is how small can you go with matter
link |
00:18:11.380
that's programmable and stacks and builds itself
link |
00:18:13.780
and creates a bridge or something in the future.
link |
00:18:16.860
What do you envision the thing would look like?
link |
00:18:19.540
Like when you imagine a thing far into the future
link |
00:18:22.300
where there's, so we're not even thinking about
link |
00:18:25.900
like small space, well, let's not call them small,
link |
00:18:28.980
but our currently sized space stations,
link |
00:18:30.780
but like something gigantic, what do you envision?
link |
00:18:34.260
Is this something with symmetry
link |
00:18:36.620
or is this something we can't even come up with yet?
link |
00:18:38.860
Is there beautiful structures that you imagine in your mind?
link |
00:18:42.900
I've got three candidates that I would love to build.
link |
00:18:45.740
If we're talking about monumental space architecture,
link |
00:18:48.700
one is what does a space cathedral look like?
link |
00:18:51.740
It can be a secular cathedral,
link |
00:18:52.860
doesn't necessarily have to be about religion,
link |
00:18:54.460
but that notion of long sight lines,
link |
00:18:57.980
inspiring, stunning architecture when you go in.
link |
00:19:01.260
And you can imagine floating instead of, you know,
link |
00:19:03.860
being on the ground and only looking up in space,
link |
00:19:07.300
you could be in a central node
link |
00:19:08.740
and each direction you look at,
link |
00:19:10.740
all the cardinal directions are spires going off
link |
00:19:14.100
in a really large and long way.
link |
00:19:15.420
So that's concept number one.
link |
00:19:17.180
Number two would be something more organic
link |
00:19:19.980
that's not just geometric.
link |
00:19:21.780
So here, one of the ideas that we're working on at MIT
link |
00:19:24.420
in my lab is to say, could you,
link |
00:19:27.580
instead of the tesserae model, right,
link |
00:19:29.260
which is self assembling a shell,
link |
00:19:31.900
could you define a module that's a node,
link |
00:19:34.980
a small node that someone can live in
link |
00:19:36.940
and you self assemble a lot of those together,
link |
00:19:39.660
they're called plesiohedrons like space filling solids
link |
00:19:43.620
and you dock a bunch of them together
link |
00:19:45.580
and you can create a really organic structure out of that.
link |
00:19:49.820
So this is the same way that muscles accrete to appear,
link |
00:19:53.460
you can have these nodes that dock together
link |
00:19:55.580
and one shape that I would love to form out of this
link |
00:19:57.660
is something like a nautilus, a seashell,
link |
00:20:00.460
that beautiful, you know, fibonacci spiral sequence
link |
00:20:03.500
that you get in that shape,
link |
00:20:04.940
which I think would be a stunning
link |
00:20:06.180
and fabulous aggregated space station.
link |
00:20:10.300
You said so many cool words, plesiohedron.
link |
00:20:14.180
Yeah, plesiohedron.
link |
00:20:15.020
So that's a space filling.
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00:20:18.220
Solid, the simplest thing to think of is like a cube.
link |
00:20:20.980
Oh, cube. A cube, right?
link |
00:20:21.980
So you can stack cubes together
link |
00:20:23.620
and if you had an infinite number of cubes,
link |
00:20:25.380
you'd fill all that space,
link |
00:20:27.140
there's no gaps in between the cubes,
link |
00:20:28.900
they stack and fill space.
link |
00:20:31.340
Another plesiohedron is a truncated octahedron
link |
00:20:34.660
and that's actually one of the candidate structures
link |
00:20:36.420
that we think would be great for space stations.
link |
00:20:38.660
What's the truncated part?
link |
00:20:40.020
Ah, so you cut off,
link |
00:20:41.820
an octahedron actually has little pointy areas,
link |
00:20:44.540
you truncate certain sections of it
link |
00:20:46.260
and you get surfaces that are on the structure
link |
00:20:50.020
that are cubes and I think hexagons,
link |
00:20:52.820
I have to remind myself exactly what the faces are.
link |
00:20:55.540
But overall, a truncated octahedron can be bonded
link |
00:20:59.180
to other truncated octahedrons
link |
00:21:00.700
and just like a cube, it fills all the gaps
link |
00:21:03.500
as you build it out.
link |
00:21:04.820
So you can imagine two truncated octahedrons,
link |
00:21:07.700
they come together at an airlock,
link |
00:21:09.180
which is what we space people call doors in space
link |
00:21:12.260
and you dock them on all sides
link |
00:21:14.180
and you've basically created this decentralized network
link |
00:21:18.060
of space nodes that make a big space station
link |
00:21:21.980
and once you have enough of them
link |
00:21:23.620
and you're growing with enough big units,
link |
00:21:25.460
you can do it in any macro shape you want.
link |
00:21:28.020
That's where the Nautilus comes in,
link |
00:21:29.300
is could we design an organically inspired shape
link |
00:21:32.940
for a space station?
link |
00:21:34.220
Can I just say how awesome it is to hear you say,
link |
00:21:36.820
we space people.
link |
00:21:38.700
I know you meant people that are doing research
link |
00:21:41.220
on space exploration, space technology,
link |
00:21:43.820
but it also made me think of a future.
link |
00:21:45.940
There's earth people and there's those space people.
link |
00:21:50.580
And then there's the Mars people.
link |
00:21:51.420
I'd love to unite those too.
link |
00:21:52.380
Yeah, no, no, for sure, for sure.
link |
00:21:54.140
But like, it's like New Yorkers and like Texans
link |
00:21:58.620
or something like that.
link |
00:22:00.500
Yeah, of course you live for a time in New York
link |
00:22:03.540
and then you go up to Boston
link |
00:22:05.140
but for a time you're the space people.
link |
00:22:07.100
Oh, I know those space people.
link |
00:22:09.300
They're kind of wild up there.
link |
00:22:11.140
We'll see how that dynamic evolves.
link |
00:22:12.500
Yeah, exactly.
link |
00:22:13.340
There's that culture, culture forms.
link |
00:22:14.660
And I would love to see what kind of culture,
link |
00:22:17.020
once you have sort of more and more civilians.
link |
00:22:21.100
I mean, there's a human,
link |
00:22:22.500
I mean, I love psychology and sociology
link |
00:22:24.420
and I'll maybe ask you about that too,
link |
00:22:27.540
which is like the dynamic between humans.
link |
00:22:29.580
You have to kind of start considering that
link |
00:22:31.700
and you start spending more and more time up in space
link |
00:22:34.660
and start sending civilians, start sending bigger
link |
00:22:37.660
and bigger groups of people.
link |
00:22:39.140
And then of course the beautiful and the ugly emerges
link |
00:22:42.900
from the human nature that we haven't been able
link |
00:22:47.380
to escape up to this point.
link |
00:22:49.020
But when you say the plesiohedrons, these kinds of shapes,
link |
00:22:53.060
are they multifunctional?
link |
00:22:54.500
Like is the idea you'd be able to,
link |
00:22:58.620
humans can occupy them safely in some of them
link |
00:23:02.220
and some others have some other purposes?
link |
00:23:04.820
Exactly.
link |
00:23:05.660
One could be sleeping quarters.
link |
00:23:07.300
One could be a greenhouse or an agricultural unit.
link |
00:23:10.380
One could be a storage depot.
link |
00:23:13.740
Essentially all of the different rooms
link |
00:23:15.660
or functions that you might need in a space station
link |
00:23:17.860
could be subdivided into these nodes
link |
00:23:19.940
and then stacked together.
link |
00:23:22.220
And one of the promises of both Tesseray,
link |
00:23:24.460
my original PhD research, which is these shells,
link |
00:23:26.940
and then this follow on node concept,
link |
00:23:29.540
is that right now we build space stations
link |
00:23:32.100
and once they're built, they're done.
link |
00:23:33.780
You can't really change them profoundly.
link |
00:23:36.260
But the benefit of a modular self assembling system
link |
00:23:38.940
is you can disassemble it.
link |
00:23:40.940
You can completely reconfigure it.
link |
00:23:42.780
So if your mission changes or the number of people
link |
00:23:45.140
in space that you wanna host,
link |
00:23:46.340
if you have a space conference happening
link |
00:23:47.740
like South by Southwest.
link |
00:23:48.860
I was thinking space party,
link |
00:23:50.100
but space conference is good too.
link |
00:23:52.460
Then maybe all of a sudden you want to change out
link |
00:23:55.660
what were window tiles yesterday, cupola tiles,
link |
00:23:58.700
and make them into a birthing port
link |
00:24:00.460
so that you can welcome five new spaceships
link |
00:24:02.540
to come and join you in space.
link |
00:24:04.260
That's what this promise of reconfigurable space architecture
link |
00:24:07.260
might allow us to explore.
link |
00:24:09.060
I've been hanging out with Grimes recently
link |
00:24:10.660
and I just feel like she belongs up in space.
link |
00:24:13.180
This is like designed for artists essentially.
link |
00:24:15.460
Like imagine, I mean, this is what South by
link |
00:24:18.140
keeps introducing me to is there's like
link |
00:24:20.220
the weird and the beautiful people and like the artists.
link |
00:24:23.420
And it feels like there's a lot of opportunities
link |
00:24:26.300
for art and design.
link |
00:24:28.660
100%.
link |
00:24:29.500
It's like space is a combination of arts, design,
link |
00:24:32.540
and great engineering.
link |
00:24:36.820
It's safety critical with like the highest of stakes.
link |
00:24:39.780
So don't, you can't mess it up.
link |
00:24:41.740
And is this, is there, first of all,
link |
00:24:43.220
you're talking about tiling.
link |
00:24:44.660
So Neil Stephenson is obsessed about tile.
link |
00:24:46.620
I don't know if it's related to any of this,
link |
00:24:48.780
but he seems to be obsessed with like,
link |
00:24:50.620
how do you tile a space?
link |
00:24:51.660
That's like a mathematical, geometric notion.
link |
00:24:54.060
Like the tessellation.
link |
00:24:55.060
And it's, I mean, it's a beautiful idea for architecture
link |
00:24:59.540
that you can self assemble these different shapes
link |
00:25:03.380
and you can have probably some centralized guidance
link |
00:25:07.460
of the kind of thing you want to build.
link |
00:25:09.700
But they also kind of figure stuff out themselves
link |
00:25:12.020
in terms of the low level details,
link |
00:25:13.540
in terms of the figuring out when the,
link |
00:25:15.980
when everything fits just right for the OCD people,
link |
00:25:19.700
like what's that subreddit?
link |
00:25:23.060
Pleasantly, it's like really fun.
link |
00:25:25.660
Everything, they have like videos of everything
link |
00:25:27.380
is just pleasant when everything just fits perfectly.
link |
00:25:29.580
Very pleasing.
link |
00:25:30.420
All the tolerances come together well, yeah.
link |
00:25:32.540
So they figure that out on themselves
link |
00:25:34.420
and the local robotics problem.
link |
00:25:36.340
But by the way, what's the Pebbles Project?
link |
00:25:39.340
The Pebbles Project are little cubes
link |
00:25:41.540
that have EPMs in them, electropermanent magnets,
link |
00:25:44.260
and they can self disassemble.
link |
00:25:46.140
So they'll turn off.
link |
00:25:47.100
And so you'll have this little structure
link |
00:25:48.340
that all of a sudden can flip the little pebbles over
link |
00:25:51.660
and essentially just disaggregate.
link |
00:25:54.540
They have to make some pleasing sounds.
link |
00:25:56.620
Yes, they do.
link |
00:25:57.460
And that's gonna, so I'm supposed to talk to Danielle,
link |
00:26:01.380
so I'll probably spend an hour
link |
00:26:02.900
just discussing the sounds on the pebbles.
link |
00:26:04.980
Okay, what were we talking about?
link |
00:26:07.540
So that's, because you mentioned two, I think.
link |
00:26:10.940
Right, my third one.
link |
00:26:12.060
Yeah, is there a third one?
link |
00:26:13.220
My third one is The Ringworld,
link |
00:26:14.580
just because every science fiction book ever
link |
00:26:17.300
that's worth anything has A Ringworld in it.
link |
00:26:19.820
Is it like a donut?
link |
00:26:21.860
A donut, yeah, it's a really big torus
link |
00:26:24.460
that could encircle a planet
link |
00:26:27.620
or encircle another celestial body,
link |
00:26:29.580
maybe an asteroid or a small moon.
link |
00:26:32.100
And the promise here is just the beauty
link |
00:26:36.060
of being able to have that geometry in orbit
link |
00:26:39.900
and all that surface area for solar panels and docking
link |
00:26:43.140
and essentially just all of what that enables
link |
00:26:46.540
to have a ring world at that scale in orbit.
link |
00:26:48.940
By the way, for the viewers, we're looking at Figure 11.
link |
00:26:51.540
What paper is this from?
link |
00:26:52.580
This is a hexagonal tiling
link |
00:26:54.820
of a torus generated in Mathematica
link |
00:26:57.340
referencing code and approach from two citations.
link |
00:27:01.060
So we're looking at a tiled donut, and I'm now hungry.
link |
00:27:04.220
So this is the, is this from your thesis or no?
link |
00:27:06.940
This is probably, I mean, this is in my thesis.
link |
00:27:08.740
This looks like it was one of my earlier papers.
link |
00:27:10.580
This was an approach to say, great,
link |
00:27:13.260
we've come up with this tessellation approach
link |
00:27:15.460
for a buckyball, and we picked the buckyball
link |
00:27:18.120
because it is the most efficient surface area
link |
00:27:21.340
to volume shape and what's expensive in space,
link |
00:27:23.940
the surface area shipping up all that material.
link |
00:27:26.340
So we wanted something that would maximize the volume.
link |
00:27:28.780
But if we think about ring worlds and other shapes,
link |
00:27:30.820
we wanted to look at how do you tile a torus?
link |
00:27:34.060
And this is one example with hexagons
link |
00:27:36.420
to be able to say, could we take this same tesserae approach
link |
00:27:39.120
of self assembling tiles and create other geometries?
link |
00:27:42.180
This is so freaking cool.
link |
00:27:43.540
That's awesome.
link |
00:27:44.360
So you mentioned microgravity, and I saw,
link |
00:27:48.420
I believe that there's a picture
link |
00:27:50.180
of you floating in microgravity.
link |
00:27:52.020
When did you get to experience that?
link |
00:27:53.740
What was that like?
link |
00:27:54.580
Ah, so I've flown nine times
link |
00:27:56.920
on the affectionately known as the Vomit Comet.
link |
00:27:59.980
It's the parabolic flight, and essentially,
link |
00:28:02.500
it does what you'd want a plane never to do.
link |
00:28:04.300
It pitches really steeply upwards at 45 degrees.
link |
00:28:07.060
Oh, that's a picture of you.
link |
00:28:07.900
Yeah, yeah, that's tesserae.
link |
00:28:09.540
That's super early in my PhD,
link |
00:28:11.300
some of just the passive tiles
link |
00:28:12.800
before we even put electronics in.
link |
00:28:14.260
We were just testing the magnet polarity
link |
00:28:17.100
and the, essentially, is it an energy favorable structure
link |
00:28:20.900
to self assemble on its own?
link |
00:28:22.260
So we tweaked a lot of things between.
link |
00:28:23.900
Are we looking at a couple of them?
link |
00:28:25.940
Yeah, you're looking at a bunch of them there.
link |
00:28:27.260
Oh, oh, I see.
link |
00:28:28.100
Almost 32 of them, yeah.
link |
00:28:29.260
Cool.
link |
00:28:30.100
They're clumping, they're clumping, yeah.
link |
00:28:31.660
Can you comment on what's the difference
link |
00:28:33.140
between microgravity and zero gravity?
link |
00:28:35.900
Yes, so there is, is that an important difference?
link |
00:28:37.980
It's an important difference.
link |
00:28:38.820
There is no zero gravity.
link |
00:28:41.580
There's no nothing, there's, in the universe,
link |
00:28:43.740
there is no such thing as zero gravity.
link |
00:28:46.000
So Newton's law of gravity tells us
link |
00:28:48.180
that there's always gravity attraction
link |
00:28:50.280
between any two objects.
link |
00:28:51.300
So zero G is a shorthand that some of us fall into using,
link |
00:28:54.240
where it's a little easier to communicate to the public.
link |
00:28:56.420
The accurate term is microgravity,
link |
00:28:59.420
where you are essentially floating, you're weightless,
link |
00:29:02.040
but generally in free fall.
link |
00:29:04.220
So on the parabolic flights, the vomit comet,
link |
00:29:06.580
you're in free fall at the end of the parabola.
link |
00:29:09.260
And in orbit around the Earth when you're floating,
link |
00:29:12.380
you're also in free fall.
link |
00:29:14.340
So that's microgravity.
link |
00:29:15.900
So affectionately called vomit comet,
link |
00:29:17.660
I'm sure there's a reason why it's called affectionately.
link |
00:29:19.780
So what's it like?
link |
00:29:21.040
What's your first time?
link |
00:29:23.560
So both philosophically, spiritually, and biologically,
link |
00:29:27.940
what's it like?
link |
00:29:28.860
It's profound.
link |
00:29:30.300
It is unlike anything else you will experience on Earth
link |
00:29:35.120
because it is this true feeling of weightlessness
link |
00:29:38.660
with no drag.
link |
00:29:40.000
So the closest experience you can think of
link |
00:29:41.660
would be floating in a pool,
link |
00:29:43.020
but you move slowly when you float in a pool
link |
00:29:44.860
and your motion is restricted.
link |
00:29:46.540
When you're floating, it's just you and your body flying,
link |
00:29:49.940
like in a dream.
link |
00:29:52.160
It takes the littlest amount of energy,
link |
00:29:54.260
like a finger tap against the wall of the plane
link |
00:29:56.440
to shoot all the way across the fuselage.
link |
00:29:58.760
And you can move at full speed.
link |
00:30:01.100
You can move your arms.
link |
00:30:02.680
Exactly.
link |
00:30:03.520
So your muscles work.
link |
00:30:04.340
There's no resistance.
link |
00:30:05.180
There's no resistance.
link |
00:30:06.800
They actually tell you to make a memory
link |
00:30:09.940
when you're on the plane
link |
00:30:11.440
because it's such a fleeting experience for your body
link |
00:30:13.900
that even a few days later,
link |
00:30:14.940
you've already forgotten exactly what it felt like.
link |
00:30:17.780
It's so foreign to the human experience.
link |
00:30:20.140
They kind of suggest that you explicitly try
link |
00:30:22.500
to really form this into a memory
link |
00:30:24.380
and then you can do the replay.
link |
00:30:25.700
Is that for training?
link |
00:30:26.540
Cognitively freeze it.
link |
00:30:27.700
Yeah.
link |
00:30:28.540
Cognitively.
link |
00:30:29.380
Yeah.
link |
00:30:30.200
Save.
link |
00:30:31.040
Right.
link |
00:30:31.880
When we have Neuralink, we can replay that memory.
link |
00:30:34.980
So in terms of how much stress it has on your body,
link |
00:30:38.200
is it biologically stressful?
link |
00:30:41.180
You do feel a 2G pullout, right?
link |
00:30:43.580
So the cost of getting those micro G parabolas
link |
00:30:46.460
is you then have a 2G pullout and that's hard.
link |
00:30:48.900
You have to train for it.
link |
00:30:50.180
If you move your neck too quickly in that 2G pullout,
link |
00:30:52.620
you can strain muscles.
link |
00:30:54.780
But I wouldn't say that it's actually
link |
00:30:56.800
a profound tough thing on the body.
link |
00:31:00.180
It's really just an incredibly novel experience.
link |
00:31:02.940
And when you're in orbit
link |
00:31:04.500
and you're not having to go through the ups and downs
link |
00:31:06.620
of the parabolic plane,
link |
00:31:07.840
there's a real grace and elegance.
link |
00:31:09.900
And you see the astronauts learn to operate
link |
00:31:12.460
in this completely new environment.
link |
00:31:14.980
What are some interesting differences
link |
00:31:16.380
between the parabolic plane
link |
00:31:17.800
and when you're actually going up into orbit?
link |
00:31:20.180
Is it that with orbit you can look out
link |
00:31:22.900
and see that blue little planet of ours?
link |
00:31:26.180
You can see the blue marble, the stunning overview effect,
link |
00:31:28.800
which is something I hope to see one day.
link |
00:31:31.940
What's also really different is if you're in orbit
link |
00:31:34.180
for any significant period of time,
link |
00:31:36.060
there's gonna be a lot more physiological changes
link |
00:31:38.180
to your body than if you just did an afternoon flight
link |
00:31:41.500
on the Vomit Comet.
link |
00:31:42.860
Everything from your bones, your muscles,
link |
00:31:44.940
your eyeballs change shape.
link |
00:31:47.500
There's a lot of different things that happen
link |
00:31:49.020
for long duration space flight.
link |
00:31:51.120
And we still have to, as scientists,
link |
00:31:52.520
we still have to solve a lot of these interesting challenges
link |
00:31:54.500
to be able to keep humans thriving in microgravity
link |
00:31:58.400
or deep duration space missions.
link |
00:32:01.000
Deep duration space missions.
link |
00:32:03.580
Okay, let's talk about this.
link |
00:32:05.080
I was just gonna ask a bunch of dumb questions.
link |
00:32:08.220
So approximately how long does it take to travel to Mars?
link |
00:32:11.660
Asking for a friend.
link |
00:32:12.620
Asking for a friend, as we all do.
link |
00:32:14.820
About three years for a round trip.
link |
00:32:17.780
And that's not that it actually takes that long.
link |
00:32:19.180
Why the round trip, is that?
link |
00:32:20.940
Well, you're just asking about the one way trip.
link |
00:32:23.780
Got it, got it, got it.
link |
00:32:25.020
It's okay, cool.
link |
00:32:25.860
So for just like literally flying to Mars in a round,
link |
00:32:29.460
it takes three years.
link |
00:32:30.740
There's some interstitial time there
link |
00:32:32.540
because you really can only go between Earth and Mars
link |
00:32:35.460
at certain points in their orbits
link |
00:32:37.540
where it's favorable to make that journey.
link |
00:32:39.420
And so part of that three years
link |
00:32:40.860
is you take the journey to Mars,
link |
00:32:42.900
a few months, six to nine months.
link |
00:32:45.000
You're there for a period of time
link |
00:32:46.400
until the orbits find a favorable alignment again.
link |
00:32:49.860
And then you come back another six to nine months.
link |
00:32:51.900
So one way travel, six to nine months.
link |
00:32:54.140
They hang out there on vacation and come back.
link |
00:32:56.420
Forced vacation.
link |
00:32:57.260
Forced vacation.
link |
00:32:58.080
You come back.
link |
00:32:58.920
Well, me who loves working all the time,
link |
00:33:00.940
all vacation is forced vacation.
link |
00:33:03.260
All right.
link |
00:33:04.660
So okay, so that gives us a sense of duration.
link |
00:33:07.780
And we can maybe also talk about longer
link |
00:33:10.260
and longer and longer duration as well.
link |
00:33:13.580
What are the hardest aspects of living in space
link |
00:33:18.700
for many days, for let's say 100 days, 200 days?
link |
00:33:23.320
Maybe there's a threshold when it gets really tough.
link |
00:33:25.900
What are some stupid little things or big things
link |
00:33:29.780
that are very difficult for human beings to go through?
link |
00:33:32.340
It's one big thing and one little thing.
link |
00:33:33.860
And there are these two classic problems
link |
00:33:35.460
that we're trying to solve in the space industry.
link |
00:33:37.260
One is radiation.
link |
00:33:38.820
It's not as much of a problem for us right now
link |
00:33:40.940
on the International Space Station
link |
00:33:42.280
because we're still protected
link |
00:33:44.100
by part of Earth's magnetosphere.
link |
00:33:46.140
But as soon as you get farther out into space
link |
00:33:47.980
and you don't have that protection
link |
00:33:49.340
once you leave the Van Allen belt area of the Earth
link |
00:33:52.700
and the cocoon around the Earth,
link |
00:33:55.380
we have really serious concerns about radiation
link |
00:33:57.940
and the effect on human health longterm.
link |
00:33:59.940
That's the big one.
link |
00:34:01.360
The small one, and I say it's small
link |
00:34:02.960
because it seems mundane,
link |
00:34:04.340
but it actually is really big in its own way,
link |
00:34:06.020
is mental health and how to keep people happy and balanced.
link |
00:34:09.100
And you were alluding to some of the psychological
link |
00:34:10.820
challenges of having humans together on missions
link |
00:34:13.980
and especially as we try to scale the number of humans
link |
00:34:16.180
in orbit or in space.
link |
00:34:18.180
So that's another big challenge is how to keep people happy
link |
00:34:20.520
and balanced and cooperating.
link |
00:34:24.140
That's not an issue on Earth at all.
link |
00:34:25.940
At all.
link |
00:34:27.220
Okay, so we'll talk about each of those
link |
00:34:29.460
in a bit more detail,
link |
00:34:31.140
but let me continue on the chain of dumb questions.
link |
00:34:34.460
What about food?
link |
00:34:35.700
What's a good source for food in space?
link |
00:34:38.660
And what are some sort of standard go to meals, menus?
link |
00:34:42.700
Right now your go to menu is gonna be mostly freeze dried.
link |
00:34:46.060
Every so often NASA will arrange for a fun stunt
link |
00:34:50.380
or fresh food to get up to station.
link |
00:34:51.900
So they did bake DoubleTree cookies with Hilton
link |
00:34:54.540
a couple of years ago, as I recall,
link |
00:34:55.800
I think sometime before the pandemic.
link |
00:34:57.820
But there's work actually in our lab at MIT,
link |
00:35:00.140
Maggie Koblans, one of my staff researchers
link |
00:35:02.140
is looking at the future of fermentation.
link |
00:35:04.580
Everybody loves beer, right?
link |
00:35:06.120
Beer and wine and kimchi and miso,
link |
00:35:08.700
these foods that have just been really important
link |
00:35:11.880
to human cultures for eons because we love the umami
link |
00:35:15.100
and the better flavor in them.
link |
00:35:16.540
But it turns out they also have a good shelf life
link |
00:35:18.420
if done properly.
link |
00:35:19.740
And they also have a additional health benefit
link |
00:35:22.460
for the microbiome, for probiotics and prebiotics.
link |
00:35:25.660
So we're trying to work with NASA and convince them
link |
00:35:28.180
to be more open minded to fermented food
link |
00:35:30.980
for long duration deep space missions.
link |
00:35:33.120
That we think is one of the future elements
link |
00:35:35.180
in addition to in situ growing your own food.
link |
00:35:38.580
Okay, this is essential for the space party
link |
00:35:41.420
is the space beer.
link |
00:35:43.300
Yes, it's the fermented product, yes.
link |
00:35:45.780
Okay, cool.
link |
00:35:46.740
In terms of water, what's a good source of drinkable water?
link |
00:35:49.700
Like where do you get water?
link |
00:35:50.660
Do you have to always bring it on board with you?
link |
00:35:52.900
And is there a compressed efficient way of storing it?
link |
00:35:56.700
So to steal a line from Charlie Bolden,
link |
00:35:58.860
who's the former administrator of NASA,
link |
00:36:01.420
this morning's fresh water is yesterday's coffee.
link |
00:36:04.640
So if you think about what that means,
link |
00:36:06.420
you drank the coffee yesterday.
link |
00:36:08.100
Right, as it travels, it goes fully through the body.
link |
00:36:10.780
Fully through the body as the recycling system.
link |
00:36:13.100
And then you drink what you peed out
link |
00:36:15.420
as clarified, refined fresh water the next day.
link |
00:36:20.420
That is one source of water.
link |
00:36:22.340
Another source of water in the near neighborhood
link |
00:36:24.460
of our solar system would be on the moon.
link |
00:36:26.180
So water ice deposits, there's also water on Mars.
link |
00:36:29.100
This is one of the big things that's bringing people
link |
00:36:31.740
to want to develop infrastructure on the moon
link |
00:36:34.260
is once you've gotten out of the gravity well of Earth,
link |
00:36:36.780
if you can find water on the moon and refine it,
link |
00:36:39.340
you can either make it into propellant
link |
00:36:40.900
or drinkable water for humans.
link |
00:36:43.180
And so that's really valuable as a potential gateway
link |
00:36:46.100
out into the rest of the solar system
link |
00:36:47.660
to be able to get propellant
link |
00:36:48.860
without always having to ship it up from Earth.
link |
00:36:52.300
So how much water is there on Mars?
link |
00:36:55.220
That's a great question.
link |
00:36:56.060
I do not know.
link |
00:36:56.900
We don't know this yet, right?
link |
00:36:57.740
I know there's water at the caps.
link |
00:36:58.900
I suspect NASA from all of the satellite studies
link |
00:37:03.340
that they've done at Mars have a decent idea
link |
00:37:05.780
of what the water deposits look like,
link |
00:37:07.620
but I don't know to what degree
link |
00:37:08.660
they have characterized those.
link |
00:37:10.540
I really hope there's life or traces
link |
00:37:13.100
of previous life on Mars.
link |
00:37:15.780
This is a special spot in my heart
link |
00:37:17.660
because I got to work on SHERLOC,
link |
00:37:20.020
which is the astrobiology experiment
link |
00:37:22.260
that's on Mars right now,
link |
00:37:23.660
searching for what they would say
link |
00:37:25.540
in a very cautious way is signs of past habitability.
link |
00:37:30.060
They wanna be careful not to get people overly excited
link |
00:37:32.260
and say we're searching for signs of life.
link |
00:37:34.180
They're searching to see if there would have been organics
link |
00:37:37.460
on the surface of Mars or water in certain areas
link |
00:37:39.820
that would have allowed for life to flourish.
link |
00:37:42.660
And I really love this prospect.
link |
00:37:44.620
I do think within our lifetimes
link |
00:37:46.500
we'll get a better answer about finding life
link |
00:37:49.420
in our solar system if it's there.
link |
00:37:51.420
If not on Mars, maybe Europa, one of the icy worlds.
link |
00:37:54.980
So you like astrobiology.
link |
00:37:58.300
I do.
link |
00:37:59.140
This is part of the, it's not just about human biology.
link |
00:38:02.620
It's also other extraterrestrial alien biology.
link |
00:38:05.740
Search for life in the universe.
link |
00:38:07.540
Okay.
link |
00:38:08.380
Does that scare you or excite you?
link |
00:38:09.580
It excites me, profoundly excites me.
link |
00:38:11.220
That there's other alien civilizations
link |
00:38:13.580
potentially very different than our own?
link |
00:38:16.100
I think there's gotta be some humility there.
link |
00:38:18.020
And certainly from science fiction
link |
00:38:19.300
we have plenty of reasons to fear that outcome as well.
link |
00:38:22.660
But I do think as a scientist
link |
00:38:24.020
it would be profoundly exciting if we were to find life
link |
00:38:26.660
especially in the near neighborhood of our solar system.
link |
00:38:29.540
Right now we would expect it to be most likely microbial life
link |
00:38:32.580
but we have a real serious challenge in astrobiology
link |
00:38:34.860
which is it may not even be carbon based life.
link |
00:38:37.860
And all of our detectors,
link |
00:38:39.180
we only know to look for DNA or RNA.
link |
00:38:42.100
How would you even build a detector
link |
00:38:43.820
to look for silicon based life
link |
00:38:47.260
or different molecules than what we know
link |
00:38:49.140
to be the fundamental molecules for life?
link |
00:38:51.380
And then you mentioned offline Sarah Walker.
link |
00:38:53.380
I mean she, her, the question that she's obsessed with
link |
00:38:56.380
is even just defining life.
link |
00:38:58.300
What is life?
link |
00:38:59.460
To look outside the carbon base.
link |
00:39:02.020
I mean to look outside of basically anything
link |
00:39:04.380
we can even imagine chemically.
link |
00:39:06.740
To look outside of any kind of notions
link |
00:39:08.300
that we think of as biology.
link |
00:39:10.260
Yeah, it's really weird.
link |
00:39:11.740
So you now get into this land of like complexity
link |
00:39:14.420
of a measuring of like how many assembly steps
link |
00:39:20.540
it takes to build that thing.
link |
00:39:22.580
Right.
link |
00:39:23.420
And maybe dynamic movement or some maintenance
link |
00:39:27.660
of some kind of membrane structures.
link |
00:39:29.700
We don't even know like which properties life should have.
link |
00:39:33.500
Right.
link |
00:39:34.340
Whether it should be able to reproduce
link |
00:39:36.220
and all those kinds of things or pass information,
link |
00:39:39.180
genetic type of information.
link |
00:39:41.180
We don't know.
link |
00:39:42.420
And it's like, it's so humbling.
link |
00:39:45.140
I mean I tend to believe that there could be
link |
00:39:48.540
something like alien life here on Earth
link |
00:39:51.060
and we're just too human, biology obsessed
link |
00:39:54.620
to even recognize it.
link |
00:39:55.980
The shadow biosphere, I remember you and Sarah
link |
00:39:57.940
were talking about.
link |
00:39:58.940
I mean that's like, speaking of beer,
link |
00:40:02.220
I mean that's something I wanted to make sure
link |
00:40:04.380
in all of science to shake ourselves out of like,
link |
00:40:07.240
remind ourselves constantly how little we know.
link |
00:40:10.140
Because it might be right in front of our nose.
link |
00:40:13.100
Like I wouldn't be surprised if like trees
link |
00:40:15.900
are like orders of magnitude more intelligent than humans.
link |
00:40:18.860
They're just operating at a much slower scale
link |
00:40:21.300
and they're like talking shit about us the whole time.
link |
00:40:23.820
Like about silly humans that take everything seriously
link |
00:40:26.580
and we start all kinds of nuclear wars
link |
00:40:28.640
and we quarrel and we tweet about it and then,
link |
00:40:31.900
but the trees are always there just watching us silly humans.
link |
00:40:35.180
Like the Ents in Lord of the Rings.
link |
00:40:37.020
Exactly.
link |
00:40:37.860
So I mean, I don't know, I mean, obviously I'm joking
link |
00:40:40.940
on that one, but there could be stuff like that.
link |
00:40:44.140
Well, let me ask you the Drake equation,
link |
00:40:46.700
the big question, how many, like obviously nobody knows,
link |
00:40:51.060
but what's your gut, what's your hope as a scientist,
link |
00:40:54.180
as a human, how many alien civilizations are out there?
link |
00:40:58.540
As a ex physicist, I'm now much more
link |
00:41:01.260
on the aerospace engineering side for space architecture,
link |
00:41:03.500
but as an ex physicist, I hope it is prolific.
link |
00:41:08.660
I think the challenge is if it's as prolific
link |
00:41:10.660
as we would hope, if there are many, many, many
link |
00:41:12.900
civilizations, then the question is, where are they?
link |
00:41:16.940
Why haven't we heard from them?
link |
00:41:18.740
And the Fermi paradox, is there some great filter
link |
00:41:21.820
that life only gets to some level of sophistication
link |
00:41:25.540
and then kills itself off through war or through famine
link |
00:41:29.220
or through different challenges that filter
link |
00:41:30.860
that society out of existence?
link |
00:41:33.820
And it would be an interesting question to try
link |
00:41:35.140
to understand if the universe was teeming with life,
link |
00:41:38.100
why haven't we found it or heard from it yet,
link |
00:41:41.080
to our knowledge?
link |
00:41:41.920
Yeah, I personally believe that it's teeming with life,
link |
00:41:44.900
and you're right, I think that's a really useful,
link |
00:41:46.920
productive engineering scientific question
link |
00:41:49.460
of what kind of great filter can just be destroying
link |
00:41:53.540
all of that life or preventing it from just constantly
link |
00:41:57.380
talking to us, silly descendants of apes.
link |
00:42:01.540
That's a really nice question, like what are the ways
link |
00:42:05.380
civilizations can destroy themselves?
link |
00:42:09.020
There's too many, sadly.
link |
00:42:10.660
Well, I don't think we've come up with most of them yet.
link |
00:42:13.620
That's also probably true.
link |
00:42:15.580
That's the thing, it's, I mean, and if you look
link |
00:42:18.920
at nuclear war, some of it is physics,
link |
00:42:21.860
but some of it is game theory, it's human nature,
link |
00:42:26.180
it's how societies built themselves, how they interact,
link |
00:42:29.260
how we create and resolve conflict,
link |
00:42:32.540
and it gets back to the human question
link |
00:42:34.640
on when you're doing long term space travel,
link |
00:42:37.120
how do you maintain this dynamical system
link |
00:42:40.320
of flawed, irrational humans such that it persists
link |
00:42:46.580
throughout time, and not just maintain the biological body,
link |
00:42:50.140
but get people from not murdering each other,
link |
00:42:52.660
like like each other sufficiently to where you kinda
link |
00:42:56.700
fit well, but I think if songs or poetry or books
link |
00:43:01.900
taught me anything, if you like each other a little too much,
link |
00:43:05.800
I mean, the problems arise, because then there's always
link |
00:43:07.860
a third person who also likes, and then there's the drama,
link |
00:43:10.180
it's like, I can't believe you did that last night,
link |
00:43:12.820
whatever, so, and then there's beer.
link |
00:43:14.780
Gets complicated quickly. Gets complicated quickly.
link |
00:43:17.180
Okay, anyway, back to the dumb questions,
link |
00:43:20.220
because you answered this, there's an interview
link |
00:43:22.900
where you answer a bunch of cool little questions
link |
00:43:24.500
from young students and so on, about like space.
link |
00:43:29.540
One of them was playing music in space.
link |
00:43:32.340
Yeah.
link |
00:43:33.220
And you mentioned something about what kind of instruments
link |
00:43:37.060
you could use to play music in space.
link |
00:43:39.460
Could you mention about like the Spotify work in space,
link |
00:43:43.120
and if I wanted to do a live performance,
link |
00:43:45.060
what kind of instruments would I need?
link |
00:43:47.780
Yeah, I mean, you referenced culture before,
link |
00:43:50.300
and I think this is one of the most exciting things
link |
00:43:51.960
that we have at our fingertips, which is to define
link |
00:43:55.380
a new culture for space exploration.
link |
00:43:57.780
We don't just have to import cultural artifacts from Earth
link |
00:44:01.620
to make life worth living in space,
link |
00:44:03.460
and this musical instrument that you referenced
link |
00:44:05.140
was a design of an object that could only be performed
link |
00:44:08.180
in microgravity.
link |
00:44:09.460
Oh, cool.
link |
00:44:10.300
So it doesn't sound the same way when it's,
link |
00:44:13.140
it's a percussive instrument when it's rattled
link |
00:44:15.140
or moved in a gravity environment, it is unique.
link |
00:44:17.500
Can we look it up?
link |
00:44:18.340
It's called the Telematron.
link |
00:44:19.500
Yeah, it's created by.
link |
00:44:20.340
Of course it's called the Telematron.
link |
00:44:21.900
Telematron.
link |
00:44:22.720
That is so awesome.
link |
00:44:23.560
Created by Sands Fish and Nicole Boulier,
link |
00:44:25.780
two amazing graduate students and staff researchers
link |
00:44:28.540
on my team.
link |
00:44:29.460
What does it look like?
link |
00:44:30.300
It looks steampunk, actually.
link |
00:44:33.300
That's awesome.
link |
00:44:34.140
Yeah, it's a pretty cool design.
link |
00:44:35.100
It looks like it's a geometric solid
link |
00:44:37.300
that has these interesting artifacts on the inside,
link |
00:44:39.860
and it has a lot of sensors, actually,
link |
00:44:41.260
additionally on the inside,
link |
00:44:42.220
like IMU's inertial measurement sensors
link |
00:44:44.980
that allow it to detect when it's floating
link |
00:44:47.780
and when it's not floating,
link |
00:44:49.140
and provides this really kind of ethereal,
link |
00:44:52.500
they later sonify it.
link |
00:44:53.580
So they use electronic music to turn it into a symphony
link |
00:44:56.220
or turn it into a piece.
link |
00:44:57.620
And yeah, this is the object, the Telematron.
link |
00:44:59.580
How does the human interact with it?
link |
00:45:01.380
By tossing it.
link |
00:45:02.220
So it's an interactive musical instrument.
link |
00:45:04.020
It actually requires another partner.
link |
00:45:06.420
So the idea was that it's something like a dance
link |
00:45:09.420
or just like something like a choreography in space.
link |
00:45:12.020
Got it.
link |
00:45:12.860
Speaking of which, you also talked about sports,
link |
00:45:15.820
and like ball sports, like playing soccer.
link |
00:45:18.340
So you mentioned that,
link |
00:45:20.220
so your muscles can move at full speed,
link |
00:45:23.780
and then if you push off the wall lightly,
link |
00:45:26.460
you fly across, zoom across.
link |
00:45:28.660
So how does the physics of that work?
link |
00:45:31.340
Can you still play soccer, for example, in space?
link |
00:45:34.420
You can, but one of the most intuitive things
link |
00:45:37.220
that we all learn as babies, right,
link |
00:45:39.140
is whenever you throw something,
link |
00:45:40.620
if I was gonna toss something to you,
link |
00:45:41.940
I'd toss it up,
link |
00:45:42.980
because I know that it has to compensate
link |
00:45:44.660
for the fact that that Keplerian arc is gonna draw it down,
link |
00:45:47.620
the equations of motion are gonna draw it down.
link |
00:45:50.860
I would, in space,
link |
00:45:51.900
I would just shoot something directly towards you,
link |
00:45:54.420
so like straight in line of sight.
link |
00:45:56.260
And so that would be very different
link |
00:45:57.380
for any type of ball sport,
link |
00:45:58.580
is to retrain your human mind
link |
00:46:00.420
to have that as your intuitive arc of motion
link |
00:46:03.380
or lack of arc.
link |
00:46:04.300
From your experience,
link |
00:46:05.460
from understanding how astronauts
link |
00:46:07.180
get adjusted to this stuff,
link |
00:46:08.460
how long does it take to adjust to the physics
link |
00:46:10.340
of this world, this other world?
link |
00:46:12.980
So even after one or two parabolic flights,
link |
00:46:15.420
you can gain a certain facility
link |
00:46:18.620
with moving in that environment.
link |
00:46:20.660
I think most astronauts would say
link |
00:46:22.180
maybe several days on station
link |
00:46:23.820
or a week on station,
link |
00:46:25.020
and their brain flips.
link |
00:46:26.740
It's amazing the plasticity of the human brain
link |
00:46:28.940
and how quickly they are able to adapt.
link |
00:46:31.140
And so pretty quickly,
link |
00:46:32.060
they become creatures of this new environment.
link |
00:46:36.100
Okay, so that's cool.
link |
00:46:36.940
It's creating a little bit of an experience.
link |
00:46:38.980
What about if you go for more than 100 days
link |
00:46:42.420
for one year, for two years, for three years?
link |
00:46:46.100
What challenges start to emerge in that case?
link |
00:46:49.100
So Scott Kelly wrote this amazing book
link |
00:46:50.940
after he spent a year in space,
link |
00:46:52.580
and he's a twin.
link |
00:46:53.460
It's absolutely fantastic
link |
00:46:54.780
that NASA got to do a twin study.
link |
00:46:57.140
It's perfect.
link |
00:46:58.540
So he wrote a lot about his experience
link |
00:47:00.740
on the health side of what changed,
link |
00:47:02.980
things like bone density, muscle atrophy,
link |
00:47:06.900
eyesight changing
link |
00:47:08.140
because the shape of your eyeball changes,
link |
00:47:10.060
which changes your lens,
link |
00:47:11.180
which changes how you see.
link |
00:47:12.900
If we're then thinking about the challenges
link |
00:47:14.620
between a year and three years,
link |
00:47:16.500
especially if we're doing that three year trip to Mars
link |
00:47:18.500
for your friend who asked earlier,
link |
00:47:20.340
then you have to think about nutrition.
link |
00:47:23.940
And so how are you keeping
link |
00:47:25.620
all of these different needs for your body alive?
link |
00:47:28.060
How are you protecting astronauts against radiation?
link |
00:47:30.620
Either having some type of a shell on the spacecraft,
link |
00:47:33.100
which is expensive because it's heavy.
link |
00:47:35.540
If it's something like lead,
link |
00:47:36.420
a really effective radiation shell,
link |
00:47:37.980
it's gonna be a lot of mass.
link |
00:47:39.660
Or is there a pill that could be taken
link |
00:47:42.060
to try to make you less in danger
link |
00:47:46.500
of some of the radiation effects?
link |
00:47:49.300
A lot of this has not yet been answered,
link |
00:47:51.060
but radiation is a really significant challenge
link |
00:47:53.420
for that three year journey.
link |
00:47:55.540
And what are the negative effects of radiation
link |
00:47:57.460
on the human body out in space?
link |
00:47:59.140
A higher likelihood to develop cancer at a younger age.
link |
00:48:03.300
So you'd probably be able to get there and get back,
link |
00:48:05.260
but you'd find yourself in the same way
link |
00:48:08.100
of if you were exposed to significant radiation on Earth,
link |
00:48:10.740
you'd find significant bad health effects as you age.
link |
00:48:14.380
What do you think about like decades?
link |
00:48:16.980
Do you think about decades?
link |
00:48:19.100
Or is this like an entire?
link |
00:48:21.220
I think about centuries for MySpace.
link |
00:48:23.980
But yeah, for decades,
link |
00:48:25.820
I think as soon as we get past the three year mark,
link |
00:48:28.340
we'll absolutely want,
link |
00:48:29.580
somewhere between three years and a decade,
link |
00:48:31.100
we'll want artificial gravity.
link |
00:48:33.620
And we know how to do that, actually.
link |
00:48:35.300
The engineering questions still need to be tweaked
link |
00:48:37.380
for how we'd really implement it,
link |
00:48:38.460
but the science is there to know
link |
00:48:39.700
how we would spin habitats in orbit and generate that force.
link |
00:48:44.100
So even if the entire habitat's not spinning,
link |
00:48:46.380
you at least have a treadmill part of the space station
link |
00:48:49.060
that is spinning,
link |
00:48:50.180
and you can spend some fraction of your day
link |
00:48:52.340
in a near to 1G environment and keep your body healthy.
link |
00:48:56.780
Wait, literally from just spinning?
link |
00:48:58.420
From spinning, yes, centripetal force.
link |
00:49:00.140
That's fascinating. So you generate this force.
link |
00:49:01.500
If you've ever been in those carnival rides,
link |
00:49:03.500
the gravitrons that spin you up around the side,
link |
00:49:06.060
that's the concept.
link |
00:49:07.300
And this is actually one of the reasons
link |
00:49:08.900
why we are spinning out a new company
link |
00:49:12.140
from my MIT lab. Spinning out, ha.
link |
00:49:13.860
Spinning out, ha.
link |
00:49:14.700
That was accidental, but well noted space pun.
link |
00:49:18.020
It's like impossible to avoid. Dad jokes, all right.
link |
00:49:20.660
But yeah, we're spinning out a new company
link |
00:49:23.820
to look at next generation space architecture,
link |
00:49:27.820
and how do we actually scale humanity's access to space?
link |
00:49:30.540
And one of the areas that we wanna look at
link |
00:49:32.540
is artificial gravity.
link |
00:49:34.060
Is there a name yet?
link |
00:49:34.940
Yep, there's a name. We are brand new.
link |
00:49:36.540
We are just exiting stealth mode.
link |
00:49:38.780
So your podcast listeners will literally be among
link |
00:49:40.940
some of the first to hear about it.
link |
00:49:42.540
It's called Aurelia Institute.
link |
00:49:45.220
Aurelia is an old English word for chrysalis.
link |
00:49:48.260
And the idea with this is that we, humanity collectively,
link |
00:49:51.940
are at this next stage of our metamorphosis,
link |
00:49:55.620
like a chrysalis, into a spacefaring species.
link |
00:49:58.660
And so we felt that this was a good time,
link |
00:50:00.860
a necessary time, to think about
link |
00:50:04.340
next generation space architecture,
link |
00:50:06.100
but also Starfleet Academy,
link |
00:50:08.100
if you know that reference from Star Trek.
link |
00:50:12.300
Yes, so let me ask a silly sounding, ridiculous sounding,
link |
00:50:17.220
but probably extremely important question.
link |
00:50:19.900
Sex and space, including intercourse, conception,
link |
00:50:23.220
procreation, birth, like being a parent,
link |
00:50:27.820
like raising the baby.
link |
00:50:29.180
So basically from birth, well, from the before birth part,
link |
00:50:33.420
like the birds and the bees and stuff,
link |
00:50:34.780
and then the whole thing.
link |
00:50:37.020
How complicated is that?
link |
00:50:38.500
I remember looking at the, thank you.
link |
00:50:43.300
I remember looking at this exact Wikipedia page actually,
link |
00:50:46.020
and I remember being, the Wikipedia page is sex and space,
link |
00:50:50.180
and fascinating how difficult of an engineering problem
link |
00:50:52.660
the whole thing is.
link |
00:50:53.740
Is that something you think about too,
link |
00:50:55.340
how to have generations of humans?
link |
00:50:58.900
Self, self replicating organizations.
link |
00:51:03.100
Yeah, societies essentially.
link |
00:51:04.740
I mean, I guess with micro,
link |
00:51:05.820
like if you solve the gravity problem,
link |
00:51:07.500
you solve a lot of these problems.
link |
00:51:09.020
That's the hope, yeah.
link |
00:51:09.980
It's like the central challenge of microgravity
link |
00:51:12.140
to human reproduction.
link |
00:51:13.660
But we do host a workshop every year at Beyond the Cradle,
link |
00:51:16.660
which is the space event that we run at MIT.
link |
00:51:18.820
And we always do one on pregnancy in space,
link |
00:51:21.580
or motherhood, or raising children in space,
link |
00:51:24.420
because there are huge questions.
link |
00:51:26.740
There've been a few mammal studies
link |
00:51:29.060
that have looked at reproduction in space,
link |
00:51:31.060
but there are still really major questions
link |
00:51:32.500
about how does it work?
link |
00:51:33.820
How does the fetus evolve in microgravity
link |
00:51:36.100
if you were pregnant in space?
link |
00:51:37.460
And I think the near term answer is just gonna be,
link |
00:51:39.540
we need to be able to give humans a 1G environment
link |
00:51:43.940
for that phase of our development.
link |
00:51:45.220
Yeah, so there's some studies on mice in microgravity.
link |
00:51:49.220
And it's interesting, I think the mice,
link |
00:51:51.180
like one of them, the mice weren't able to walk,
link |
00:51:53.180
or their understanding of physics, I guess,
link |
00:51:55.380
is off or something like that.
link |
00:51:56.580
Yeah, the mental model when you're really young
link |
00:51:59.940
and you're kind of getting your mental model of physics,
link |
00:52:03.460
we do think that that would change kids abilities
link |
00:52:07.020
to if they were born in microgravity,
link |
00:52:09.020
their ability to have that intuition
link |
00:52:11.100
around an Earth based 1G environment might be missing,
link |
00:52:13.860
because a lot of that is really crystallized
link |
00:52:15.340
in early development, early childhood development.
link |
00:52:17.820
So that makes sense that they would see that in mice, yeah.
link |
00:52:20.060
So what about life when we choose to park our vehicles
link |
00:52:27.180
on another planet, on the moon, but let's go to Mars?
link |
00:52:30.500
First of all, is that excite you, humans going to Mars,
link |
00:52:35.660
like stepping foot on Mars?
link |
00:52:37.460
And when do you think it'll happen?
link |
00:52:38.820
It does excite me.
link |
00:52:39.860
I think visionaries like Elon are working
link |
00:52:42.420
to make that happen in terms of building the road to space.
link |
00:52:45.860
We are really excited about building out
link |
00:52:48.460
the human lived experience of space once you get there.
link |
00:52:51.420
So how are you going to grow your food?
link |
00:52:53.180
What is your habitat going to look like?
link |
00:52:55.220
I think it's profoundly exciting,
link |
00:52:56.620
but I do think that there's a little bit
link |
00:52:57.980
of a misunderstanding of Mars anywhere in the near future
link |
00:53:02.420
being anything like a replacement for Earth.
link |
00:53:04.980
So it is good for humanity to have these other pockets
link |
00:53:07.300
of our civilization that can expand out beyond Earth,
link |
00:53:10.020
but Mars is not in its current state,
link |
00:53:13.620
a good home for humanity.
link |
00:53:15.780
Too many perchlorates in the soil,
link |
00:53:17.420
you can't use that soil to grow crops.
link |
00:53:19.580
Atmosphere is too thin, certainly can't breathe it,
link |
00:53:21.820
but it's also just really thin compared to our atmosphere.
link |
00:53:25.420
A lot of different challenges that would have
link |
00:53:26.780
to be fundamentally changed on that planet
link |
00:53:29.700
to make it a good home for a large human civilization.
link |
00:53:33.380
How does a large civilization of humans get built on Mars?
link |
00:53:37.940
And where do you think it starts being difficult?
link |
00:53:42.540
So can you have a small base of like 10 people,
link |
00:53:44.980
essentially, kind of like the International Space Station
link |
00:53:47.820
kind of situation, and then can you get it to 100,
link |
00:53:51.380
to 1,000, to a million?
link |
00:53:53.220
Are there some interesting challenges there
link |
00:53:55.620
that worry you, saying that Mars is just not a good backup
link |
00:53:58.900
at this time for Earth?
link |
00:54:00.980
I think small outposts, absolutely, like McMurdo, right?
link |
00:54:04.060
So we have these models of really extreme environments
link |
00:54:06.540
on Earth in Antarctica, for example,
link |
00:54:08.740
where humans have been able to go
link |
00:54:10.360
and make a sustainable settlement.
link |
00:54:13.460
McMurdo style life on Mars, probably feasible in the 2030s.
link |
00:54:18.760
So we want to send the first human missions to Mars
link |
00:54:21.100
and maybe as early as the end of this decade,
link |
00:54:22.660
more likely early 2030s.
link |
00:54:24.780
Moving anywhere beyond that in terms of a place
link |
00:54:28.060
where like an entire human life would be lived,
link |
00:54:31.060
where it's not just you go for a three month deployment
link |
00:54:33.460
and you come back, that is actually the big challenge line,
link |
00:54:36.820
is just saying, is there enough technological sophistication
link |
00:54:41.420
that can be brought that far out into space?
link |
00:54:44.540
If you imagine your electronics break,
link |
00:54:46.540
there's no RadioShack, this dates me a little bit
link |
00:54:48.860
that my mind jumps to RadioShack,
link |
00:54:50.340
but there's no supply chains on Mars
link |
00:54:54.140
that can supply the level of technological sophistication
link |
00:54:58.100
for all the products that we rely on, on day to day life.
link |
00:55:01.100
So you'd be going back to actually a very simple existence,
link |
00:55:03.940
more like pioneer life out West,
link |
00:55:06.000
in the story of the US, for example.
link |
00:55:08.700
And I think that the future of larger scale gatherings
link |
00:55:13.140
of humans in orbit, or sorry, in space,
link |
00:55:15.180
is actually gonna be in microgravity,
link |
00:55:17.660
floating space cities, not so much trying
link |
00:55:21.260
to establish settlements on the surface.
link |
00:55:25.600
So you think sort of a significant engineering investment
link |
00:55:29.500
in terms of our efforts and money
link |
00:55:31.420
should be on large spaceships,
link |
00:55:34.420
that perhaps are doing this kind of self assembly,
link |
00:55:40.040
all these kinds of things, and doing it in orbit,
link |
00:55:41.960
maybe building a giant donut around the planet over time.
link |
00:55:45.480
Yeah, that is the goal.
link |
00:55:46.320
And I think the current political climate
link |
00:55:48.240
is such that you can't get the trillion dollar investment
link |
00:55:52.340
to start from scratch and build the sci fi megastructure.
link |
00:55:56.760
But if you can build it in fits and starts,
link |
00:55:58.960
in little different pieces,
link |
00:56:00.000
which is another advantage of self assembly,
link |
00:56:02.000
it's much more like how nature works.
link |
00:56:04.160
So it's biomimicry inspired way for humanity
link |
00:56:07.600
to scale out in space.
link |
00:56:09.760
And whether it's out in space or on Mars,
link |
00:56:12.720
the idea that sort of two people fall in love,
link |
00:56:16.240
they have sex, a child is born,
link |
00:56:21.560
and then that couple has to teach that child
link |
00:56:25.000
that they came from Earth.
link |
00:56:27.600
I just love the idea that somebody is born on Mars
link |
00:56:30.560
or out in space, and you have to be like,
link |
00:56:33.400
this is not actually like the original home.
link |
00:56:36.400
Just them looking at Earth and being like,
link |
00:56:38.940
this is where we came from.
link |
00:56:40.240
I don't know, that's really inspiring to me.
link |
00:56:42.040
And the child being really confused
link |
00:56:43.640
and then wanting to go back to TikTok,
link |
00:56:45.800
or whatever they do.
link |
00:56:47.520
Whatever they do in that area.
link |
00:56:49.120
I mean, there's great sci fi, right,
link |
00:56:50.520
about people being born on Mars.
link |
00:56:52.960
And because it's a lower gravity environment,
link |
00:56:55.000
they're taller, they're more gangly,
link |
00:56:56.800
if they were actually able to develop there.
link |
00:56:58.240
And then they come back to Earth
link |
00:56:59.360
and they're like second class citizens
link |
00:57:01.400
because they can't function here in the same way
link |
00:57:04.080
because the gravity's too strong for them.
link |
00:57:06.080
You see this in series like The Expanse
link |
00:57:07.800
with the Belters and these different societies
link |
00:57:10.120
that if we were to succeed in having human societies
link |
00:57:13.840
grow up in different pockets,
link |
00:57:14.960
it's not necessarily going to be easy for them
link |
00:57:17.880
to always come back to Earth as their home.
link |
00:57:20.360
Yeah, different cultures form,
link |
00:57:21.800
which is the positive way of phrasing it.
link |
00:57:23.440
But it's also, this human history teaches us
link |
00:57:26.700
that we like to form the other.
link |
00:57:29.360
So there's this kind of conflict
link |
00:57:30.760
that naturally emerges.
link |
00:57:33.080
Let me ask another sort of dark question.
link |
00:57:35.280
What do you think about coming from a military family?
link |
00:57:38.880
There's still sadly wars in the world.
link |
00:57:43.360
Do you think wars, military conflicts
link |
00:57:46.440
will follow us into space, wars between nations?
link |
00:57:51.340
Like from my perspective currently,
link |
00:57:54.040
it just seems like space is a place
link |
00:57:56.280
for scientists and engineers to explore ideas.
link |
00:58:00.120
But the more and more progress you make,
link |
00:58:02.720
does it worry you that nations start to step in
link |
00:58:05.960
and form, that go out and fall out military conflict,
link |
00:58:11.640
whether it's in cyberspace, in space,
link |
00:58:15.620
or actual hot war?
link |
00:58:18.400
I am really concerned about that.
link |
00:58:19.920
And I do think for decades,
link |
00:58:22.040
the scientific community in space
link |
00:58:23.600
has hung on to this notion
link |
00:58:24.920
from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty,
link |
00:58:28.000
which is space is the province of all humankind,
link |
00:58:30.400
peaceful uses of outer space only.
link |
00:58:32.800
But I do think the rise in tensions
link |
00:58:35.000
and the geopolitical scene that we're seeing,
link |
00:58:38.400
I do harbor a lot of concern about hot wars
link |
00:58:42.080
following humanity out into space.
link |
00:58:44.880
And it's worth trying to tie nations together
link |
00:58:49.340
with more collaboration to avoid that happening.
link |
00:58:51.960
The International Space Station is a great example.
link |
00:58:53.760
I think it's something like 18 countries
link |
00:58:55.500
are party to this treaty.
link |
00:58:57.040
It might be less, it might be more.
link |
00:58:59.360
And then of course, there's a smaller number of countries
link |
00:59:01.120
that actually send astronauts.
link |
00:59:02.640
But even at the fall of the Soviet Union
link |
00:59:05.640
and through some tense times with Russia,
link |
00:59:07.920
the ISS had been a place where the US and Russia
link |
00:59:10.720
were actually able to collaborate between Mir and ISS.
link |
00:59:13.960
I think it'd be really important right now in particular
link |
00:59:17.080
to find other platforms where these hegemonic powers
link |
00:59:20.600
in the world and developing world nations
link |
00:59:23.480
can come and collaborate on the future of space
link |
00:59:26.560
and purposefully intertwine our success
link |
00:59:29.520
so that there's a danger to multiple parties
link |
00:59:31.280
if somebody is a bad actor.
link |
00:59:32.880
So we're now talking as there's a war in Ukraine
link |
00:59:36.480
and I haven't been sleeping much.
link |
00:59:37.840
I have family, friends, colleagues in both countries.
link |
00:59:43.120
And I'm just talking to a lot of people,
link |
00:59:45.480
many of whom are crying, refugees.
link |
00:59:48.720
And there's a basic human compassion
link |
00:59:52.640
and love for each other that I believe technology
link |
00:59:55.760
can help catalyze and accelerate.
link |
00:59:59.120
But there's also science.
link |
01:00:00.440
There's something about rockets.
link |
01:00:02.160
There's something about, and I mean like space exploration
link |
01:00:05.800
that inspires the world about the positive possibilities
link |
01:00:13.800
of the human species.
link |
01:00:15.600
So in terms of Ukraine and Russia and China and India
link |
01:00:18.760
and the United States and Europe and everywhere else,
link |
01:00:22.840
it seems like collaborating on giant space projects
link |
01:00:27.920
is one way to escape these wars,
link |
01:00:31.160
to escape these sort of geopolitical conflicts.
link |
01:00:33.720
I mean, there's something,
link |
01:00:34.560
there's so much camaraderie to the whole thing.
link |
01:00:37.440
And even in this little period of human history
link |
01:00:42.840
we're living through, it seems like that's essential.
link |
01:00:45.480
Even through this pandemic,
link |
01:00:47.720
there's something so inspiring about those
link |
01:00:49.720
like SpaceX rockets going up, for example.
link |
01:00:52.280
This reinvigoration of the space exploration efforts
link |
01:00:57.080
by the commercial sector, I don't know.
link |
01:00:59.520
That was, as many of us have,
link |
01:01:03.120
sort of some dark times during this pandemic,
link |
01:01:06.360
just like loneliness and sometimes emotion and anger
link |
01:01:10.120
and just hopelessness and politics.
link |
01:01:13.640
And then you look at those rockets going up
link |
01:01:15.680
and it just gives you hope.
link |
01:01:17.120
So I think that's an understated sort of value
link |
01:01:21.360
of space exploration,
link |
01:01:22.920
is the thing that unites us and gives us hope.
link |
01:01:26.320
Obviously also inspires young generations
link |
01:01:29.120
and young minds to also contribute
link |
01:01:31.480
in not necessarily in space exploration
link |
01:01:33.000
but in all of science and literature and poetry.
link |
01:01:35.400
There's something about when you look up to the stars
link |
01:01:38.120
that makes you dream.
link |
01:01:39.760
Very true.
link |
01:01:40.600
And so that's a really good reason
link |
01:01:43.560
to sort of invest in this,
link |
01:01:45.040
whether it's building giant megastructure,
link |
01:01:47.120
which is so freaking cool,
link |
01:01:48.400
but also colonizing Mars.
link |
01:01:52.680
Yeah, it's something to look forward to.
link |
01:01:55.960
Something that, and not make it a domain of war,
link |
01:02:02.080
but a domain of human collaboration
link |
01:02:04.520
and human compassion, I think.
link |
01:02:06.800
You're the founder and director
link |
01:02:09.240
of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.
link |
01:02:12.240
It includes a ton of projects.
link |
01:02:14.440
So I just wanted to, they're focused, I guess, on life in space
link |
01:02:18.520
from astrobiology, like we talked about, to habitats.
link |
01:02:22.160
Are there some other interesting projects,
link |
01:02:23.800
part of this initiative that pop to mind
link |
01:02:27.440
that you find particularly cool?
link |
01:02:29.280
Absolutely.
link |
01:02:30.280
One is the future of in space manufacturing.
link |
01:02:33.320
So if we're gonna build large scale space structures,
link |
01:02:35.720
yes, it's great to ship them up from Earth
link |
01:02:37.760
and self assemble them.
link |
01:02:39.200
But what about extrusion in orbit?
link |
01:02:41.880
It's one of the best technologies
link |
01:02:43.760
to leverage in microgravity
link |
01:02:45.240
because you can extrude a particularly long beam
link |
01:02:48.440
that would sag in a normal gravity environment,
link |
01:02:51.000
but might be able to become the basis of a truss
link |
01:02:53.560
or a large scale space structure.
link |
01:02:55.080
So we're doing miniature tests of extrusion
link |
01:02:57.920
and are excited to fly this
link |
01:02:59.280
on the International Space Station in a few months.
link |
01:03:01.840
We are working on swarm robots.
link |
01:03:04.280
We have just announced actually MIT's return to the moon.
link |
01:03:08.840
So my organization is leading this mission for MIT,
link |
01:03:11.480
going back to the surface of the moon
link |
01:03:12.920
as early as the end of this year, 2022,
link |
01:03:15.480
maybe early 2023,
link |
01:03:17.440
and trying to take data from our research payloads
link |
01:03:21.640
at this historic South Pole site
link |
01:03:24.440
where NASA is supposed to send the first humans back
link |
01:03:27.120
on the Artemis III mission.
link |
01:03:28.200
So our hope is to directly support that human mission
link |
01:03:30.720
with our data.
link |
01:03:32.120
How does that connect to the swarm aspects?
link |
01:03:34.400
Does it connect?
link |
01:03:35.680
Yeah, so we're actually gonna fly
link |
01:03:37.000
one of the little astro ants.
link |
01:03:38.400
That's the current plan.
link |
01:03:39.840
One of the little swarm robots on the top of a rover.
link |
01:03:42.800
That's part of the mission.
link |
01:03:44.320
Ants riding a rover?
link |
01:03:45.640
Yes, exactly, an ant riding a rover.
link |
01:03:48.160
That rover gets packed in a lander.
link |
01:03:49.840
That lander gets packed in a SpaceX rocket.
link |
01:03:52.000
So it's a whole nesting dolls situation
link |
01:03:53.880
to get to the moon.
link |
01:03:55.440
Mother of robot dragons.
link |
01:03:57.200
Yes, exactly.
link |
01:03:58.640
So this one, a swarm of one?
link |
01:04:01.560
Swarm of one, exactly.
link |
01:04:02.720
We're testing out.
link |
01:04:03.720
It's a tech demonstration mission,
link |
01:04:05.480
not a true swarm.
link |
01:04:06.840
Yeah, there they are.
link |
01:04:07.680
Those are the astro ants.
link |
01:04:09.200
Wow, and this was a distributed system,
link |
01:04:11.600
and in theory, you could have a ton of these.
link |
01:04:14.200
Yes, these could also be centralized.
link |
01:04:15.880
So they have wireless technology
link |
01:04:17.400
that could also talk to a central base station
link |
01:04:19.840
and will be assessing kind of case by case
link |
01:04:22.520
whether it makes sense to operate them
link |
01:04:23.880
in a decentralized swarm
link |
01:04:25.120
or to command them in a centralized swarm.
link |
01:04:29.120
Each robot is equipped with four magnetic wheels
link |
01:04:32.200
which enable the robot to attach to any magnetic surface
link |
01:04:35.680
so you can operate basically in any environment.
link |
01:04:37.760
He tested the, we tested the mobility of all robots
link |
01:04:41.000
on different materials in a microgravity environment.
link |
01:04:44.840
On the vomit comet prior to going to the moon.
link |
01:04:46.960
That must look so cool.
link |
01:04:48.360
So they're basically moving along different
link |
01:04:50.720
like metallic surfaces.
link |
01:04:52.120
Yeah, exactly.
link |
01:04:54.200
It's interesting when you, just a minute ago
link |
01:04:56.480
talking about the reflection of
link |
01:04:59.320
how space can be so aspirational and so uniting.
link |
01:05:01.920
There's a great quote from Bill Anders
link |
01:05:03.720
from the Apollo 8 mission to the moon,
link |
01:05:05.320
which is he, it's the Earthrise photo that was taken
link |
01:05:08.280
where you see the Earth coming up
link |
01:05:09.720
over the horizon of the moon.
link |
01:05:11.080
And the quote is something along the lines of
link |
01:05:12.840
we came all the way to discover the moon
link |
01:05:15.200
and what we really discovered was the Earth.
link |
01:05:17.880
This really powerful image looking back.
link |
01:05:20.080
And so we're also trying to think for our lunar mission
link |
01:05:22.360
we realized we're a very privileged group at MIT
link |
01:05:24.560
to get the opportunity to do this.
link |
01:05:26.280
How could we bring humanity along with us?
link |
01:05:29.000
And so one of the things we're still testing out
link |
01:05:31.080
I don't know if we're gonna be able to swing it
link |
01:05:32.760
would be to do something like a Twitch plays Pokemon
link |
01:05:35.560
but with the robot.
link |
01:05:36.880
So let a lot of people on earth actually control the robot
link |
01:05:39.560
or at least benefit from the data that we're gathering
link |
01:05:42.000
and try to release the data openly.
link |
01:05:44.040
So we're exploring a couple of different ideas
link |
01:05:45.560
for how do we engage more people in this mission.
link |
01:05:48.360
That would be surreal to be able to interact
link |
01:05:51.440
in some way with the thing that's out there.
link |
01:05:53.920
Exactly.
link |
01:05:54.760
On another surface.
link |
01:05:55.600
Direct connection.
link |
01:05:56.600
Direct connection.
link |
01:05:59.040
I think about artificial intelligence in that same way
link |
01:06:01.320
which is like building robots
link |
01:06:04.840
puts a mirror to us humans.
link |
01:06:07.360
It makes us like wonder about like
link |
01:06:09.320
what is intelligence?
link |
01:06:10.520
What is consciousness?
link |
01:06:11.640
And what is actually valuable about human beings?
link |
01:06:14.560
When AI system learns to play chess better than humans
link |
01:06:18.320
you start to let go of this idea
link |
01:06:19.760
that humans are special because of intelligence.
link |
01:06:22.800
It's something else.
link |
01:06:26.280
It's maybe the flame of human consciousness.
link |
01:06:29.160
It's the capacity to feel deeply
link |
01:06:32.680
to sort of to both suffer and to love all those things.
link |
01:06:36.360
And that somehow AI to me sort of puts a mirror to that.
link |
01:06:39.800
You mentioned HAL 9000.
link |
01:06:41.880
You have to bring it up with these swarm bots
link |
01:06:46.400
crawling on the surface of your cocoon in space.
link |
01:06:50.840
I mean, all right.
link |
01:06:52.440
Let me steel man the HAL 9000 perspective here.
link |
01:06:56.680
Okay.
link |
01:06:58.920
The poor guy just wanted to maintain the mission
link |
01:07:02.120
and the astronauts were,
link |
01:07:03.200
I mean, I don't know if people often talk about that
link |
01:07:05.680
but like doctors have to make difficult decisions too.
link |
01:07:10.080
When there's limited resources
link |
01:07:11.600
you actually do have to sacrifice human life often
link |
01:07:14.040
because you have to make decisions.
link |
01:07:16.680
And I think HAL is probably making that kind of decision
link |
01:07:20.120
about what's more important,
link |
01:07:22.800
the lives of individual astronauts or the mission.
link |
01:07:26.640
And I feel like AI and other humans
link |
01:07:30.200
will need to make these decisions.
link |
01:07:33.000
And it also feels like AI systems will need to help
link |
01:07:37.160
make those decisions.
link |
01:07:38.920
I don't know.
link |
01:07:40.200
I guess my question is about
link |
01:07:42.680
greater and greater collective intelligence by systems.
link |
01:07:49.320
Do you worry about that?
link |
01:07:51.560
What is the right way to sort of solve this problem
link |
01:07:54.720
keeping a human in the loop?
link |
01:07:56.000
Do you think about this kind of stuff
link |
01:07:57.480
or are they sufficiently dumb now the robots
link |
01:08:00.040
that that's not yet on the horizon to think about?
link |
01:08:03.480
I think it should be on the horizon.
link |
01:08:04.840
It's always good to think about these things early
link |
01:08:06.560
because we make a lot of technical design decisions
link |
01:08:09.280
at this phase working with swarm robots
link |
01:08:11.160
that it would be better to have thought
link |
01:08:12.600
about some of these questions early
link |
01:08:13.920
in the life cycle of a project.
link |
01:08:16.320
There is a real interest in NASA right now
link |
01:08:18.600
thinking about the future of human robot interaction, HRI,
link |
01:08:21.640
and what is the right synergy
link |
01:08:22.920
in terms of level of control for the human
link |
01:08:25.800
versus level of dependence or control for the robot.
link |
01:08:29.120
And we're beginning to test out more of these scenarios.
link |
01:08:33.560
For example, the Gateway Space Station,
link |
01:08:36.080
which is meant to be in orbit around the moon
link |
01:08:37.920
as a staging base for the surface operations,
link |
01:08:40.680
is meant to be able to function autonomously
link |
01:08:43.640
with no humans in it for months at a time
link |
01:08:46.360
because they think it's gonna be seasonal.
link |
01:08:47.800
They think we might not be constantly staffing it.
link |
01:08:50.160
So this will be a really great test of,
link |
01:08:51.800
I don't know that anybody's yet worried
link |
01:08:53.480
about HAL 9000 evolving,
link |
01:08:55.280
but certainly just the robustness of some of these AI systems
link |
01:08:58.800
that might be asked to autonomously maintain the station
link |
01:09:01.840
while the humans are away or detection algorithms
link |
01:09:06.080
that are gonna say, if you had a human pilot,
link |
01:09:07.960
they might see debris in orbit and steer around it.
link |
01:09:09.920
There'll be a lot of autonomous navigation
link |
01:09:11.280
that has to happen.
link |
01:09:12.800
That'll be one of the early test beds
link |
01:09:14.160
where we'll start to get a little bit closer to that future.
link |
01:09:16.640
Well, the HRI component is really interesting to me,
link |
01:09:20.880
especially when the I includes like almost friendship
link |
01:09:24.760
because people don't realize this, I think,
link |
01:09:27.560
that we humans long for connection.
link |
01:09:29.840
And when you have even a basic interaction
link |
01:09:32.320
that's just like supposed to be just like serving you
link |
01:09:35.280
or something, you still project,
link |
01:09:37.680
it's still a source of meaning and connection.
link |
01:09:45.320
And so you do have to think about that.
link |
01:09:47.040
I mean, HAL 9000, the movie maybe doesn't portray it
link |
01:09:51.520
that way, but I'm sure there's a relationship there
link |
01:09:53.800
between the astronauts and the robot,
link |
01:09:56.240
especially when you have greater and greater level
link |
01:09:57.800
of intelligence.
link |
01:09:58.720
And maybe that addresses the happiness question too.
link |
01:10:02.960
Yeah, I think there's a great book by Kate Darling,
link |
01:10:06.320
who's one of my colleagues at MIT.
link |
01:10:08.200
Yeah, she's amazing.
link |
01:10:09.480
She's already been on this podcast,
link |
01:10:11.520
but we talk all the time and we're supposed to talk
link |
01:10:14.760
and we've been missing each other
link |
01:10:16.200
and we're gonna make it happen soon.
link |
01:10:18.000
Yeah.
link |
01:10:18.840
Come down to Texas, Kate.
link |
01:10:20.520
All right, anyway, yeah, she's amazing.
link |
01:10:22.320
She has this book, her whole work is about this.
link |
01:10:25.160
Connection with robots, yeah.
link |
01:10:26.520
This beautiful connection that we have with robots,
link |
01:10:28.440
but I think it's greater and greater importance
link |
01:10:30.600
when it's out in space,
link |
01:10:32.240
because it could help alleviate some of the loneliness.
link |
01:10:34.920
Right.
link |
01:10:35.760
One of the projects in the book that I gave you,
link |
01:10:37.360
which is this catalog of the projects
link |
01:10:39.040
that we've worked on over the last five years,
link |
01:10:40.760
is this social robot that was developed at the Media Lab.
link |
01:10:43.960
And we, one of the first years in 2017
link |
01:10:46.320
that we flew a zero G flight,
link |
01:10:47.920
we took the social robot along
link |
01:10:49.680
and tried to do a little bit
link |
01:10:50.760
of a very scaled down human study
link |
01:10:53.000
to look at these questions,
link |
01:10:54.080
because you do imagine that we would form a bond,
link |
01:10:56.880
a real bond with the social robots
link |
01:10:58.840
that might be not just serving us on a mission,
link |
01:11:01.600
but really be our teammates on a future mission.
link |
01:11:04.480
And I do think that that could have a powerful role
link |
01:11:06.640
in the mental health and just the stability of a crew
link |
01:11:08.680
is to have some other robot friends come along.
link |
01:11:10.880
What do you, by the way, the book you mentioned
link |
01:11:13.320
is into the Anthropocosmos,
link |
01:11:18.320
a whole space catalog from the space catalog.
link |
01:11:22.000
Get that reference.
link |
01:11:22.840
Yeah, so call out to Earth catalog,
link |
01:11:25.240
a whole space catalog
link |
01:11:26.320
from the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.
link |
01:11:30.440
What about the happiness?
link |
01:11:31.880
You said that that's one of the problems
link |
01:11:33.920
of when you're out in space.
link |
01:11:35.880
How do you keep humans happy?
link |
01:11:37.480
Again, asking for a friend.
link |
01:11:38.760
Yes, I mean, one of the big challenges
link |
01:11:40.920
is you can't just open a window
link |
01:11:43.440
or walk out a door and blow off steam, right?
link |
01:11:45.920
You can't just go somewhere to clear your head.
link |
01:11:49.280
And in that sense, you need to build habitats
link |
01:11:52.760
that are homes that really care for the humans inside them
link |
01:11:56.920
and have, whether it's biophilia
link |
01:11:59.240
and a place where you can go and feel like you're in nature
link |
01:12:02.040
or a VR headset, which for some people is a poor simulacrum
link |
01:12:06.920
but is maybe better than nothing.
link |
01:12:09.200
You need to be thinking
link |
01:12:10.280
about these technological interventions
link |
01:12:12.920
that are gonna have to be part of your home
link |
01:12:14.960
and be part of your maybe day to day ritual
link |
01:12:17.720
to keep you steady and balanced and happy
link |
01:12:20.760
or feeling fulfilled.
link |
01:12:22.840
What about other humans, relationship with other humans?
link |
01:12:25.600
Do those get weird
link |
01:12:28.000
when you get past a certain number of humans?
link |
01:12:30.360
I'm not an expert in this area
link |
01:12:31.600
but an anecdote that I'll share.
link |
01:12:33.040
My understanding is that NASA has still not decided
link |
01:12:36.240
whether it's better to send married couples
link |
01:12:38.400
or single crew members in terms of,
link |
01:12:41.040
you want some level of stability,
link |
01:12:43.040
you don't wanna have the drama of romantic relationships
link |
01:12:45.560
like you're alluding to before,
link |
01:12:47.600
but they can't decide because married couples also fight
link |
01:12:50.600
and have a really tough dynamic.
link |
01:12:52.080
And so there's a lot of open questions still to answer
link |
01:12:54.400
about what is the ideal psychological makeup of a crew?
link |
01:12:57.520
And we're starting to test some of these things
link |
01:12:59.800
with the civilian crews that are growing up
link |
01:13:01.720
with Inspiration4, like last fall with SpaceX
link |
01:13:04.120
and Axe One that's gonna fly in a few days here in March.
link |
01:13:07.360
As we begin to lengthen the time of those civilian crews,
link |
01:13:10.920
I think we'll start to learn a little bit more
link |
01:13:12.440
about just average everyday human to human dynamics
link |
01:13:15.800
and not the astronauts that are themselves selected
link |
01:13:18.280
to be perfect human specimens, very good to work with,
link |
01:13:21.600
easy to get along with.
link |
01:13:23.040
I wish you collected more data about this pandemic
link |
01:13:26.360
because I feel like it's a good rough simulation
link |
01:13:29.240
of what it'd be like out in space.
link |
01:13:30.440
A lot of people are locked down, some married couples,
link |
01:13:33.520
I think a lot of marriages broke up,
link |
01:13:35.360
a lot of marriages got closer together.
link |
01:13:38.400
So it's like, and then the single people,
link |
01:13:41.120
some of them went off the cliff
link |
01:13:43.120
and some of them discovered their new happiness
link |
01:13:45.680
and meaning and so on.
link |
01:13:46.840
It's a beautiful little experiment, a painful one.
link |
01:13:50.080
Is there a thorough way to really test that?
link |
01:13:54.840
Because it's such a costly experiment
link |
01:13:58.560
to send humans up there,
link |
01:13:59.800
but I guess you can always return back to Earth
link |
01:14:01.560
if it's not working out.
link |
01:14:02.760
That's what we hope, that's what you hope.
link |
01:14:04.600
You don't have like a Apollo 13 situation
link |
01:14:06.960
that doesn't quite make it back.
link |
01:14:08.040
But yeah, this is also why Mars is such a challenge.
link |
01:14:11.920
The moon is only three days away.
link |
01:14:13.560
That's a lot quicker to recover from
link |
01:14:15.280
if there's a psychological problem with the crew
link |
01:14:17.040
or any type of maintenance problem, anything.
link |
01:14:19.400
Three years is such a challenge
link |
01:14:23.680
compared to these other domains
link |
01:14:25.020
that we've been getting more used to
link |
01:14:26.240
in terms of human spaceflight.
link |
01:14:27.960
So this is a question that we will need to have explored more
link |
01:14:30.760
before we start really sending crews to Mars.
link |
01:14:33.000
So you're a young scientist, do you think in your lifetime
link |
01:14:39.760
you will go out into orbit,
link |
01:14:43.480
you will go out beyond into deep space
link |
01:14:47.360
and potentially step, you,
link |
01:14:50.380
I don't know if you can call yourself a civilian.
link |
01:14:53.320
I don't know if that's what you count as,
link |
01:14:54.740
but you as a curious ant from MIT land step on Mars.
link |
01:15:03.660
Yes.
link |
01:15:06.240
That's a firm, that's a firm.
link |
01:15:07.080
Are you coming back?
link |
01:15:07.920
Firm, yes, yeah, I'm coming back.
link |
01:15:08.980
I don't want that one way mission, I want the two way mission.
link |
01:15:12.080
But yes, I mean, I think we're already talking
link |
01:15:14.220
about a pretty near term opportunity
link |
01:15:16.240
where I could send graduate students
link |
01:15:17.900
to the International Space Station.
link |
01:15:19.140
Yeah, not a sacrifice, but send graduate students.
link |
01:15:25.000
For the experience.
link |
01:15:25.840
For the experience.
link |
01:15:26.960
Send graduate students to the ISS to do their research.
link |
01:15:29.440
I do think you and I both would have an opportunity
link |
01:15:31.720
to go to a lunar base of some sort within our lifetime.
link |
01:15:35.640
And there's a good chance if we really wanted to,
link |
01:15:39.620
we might have to really advocate for it,
link |
01:15:41.760
apply to an astronaut program.
link |
01:15:43.280
There will be some avenues for humans
link |
01:15:45.120
in our lifetime to go to Mars.
link |
01:15:46.800
What's the bar for like health?
link |
01:15:51.080
Do you think that bar will keep getting lower and lower
link |
01:15:53.380
in terms of how healthy, how athletic,
link |
01:15:55.320
like how the psychological profile,
link |
01:15:57.880
all those kinds of things?
link |
01:15:59.000
Yeah, for one, we're gonna build more robust habitats
link |
01:16:01.600
that don't depend on astronauts
link |
01:16:03.360
being so impeccably well trained.
link |
01:16:05.320
So we're gonna make it better for inclusion
link |
01:16:08.280
and just opening access to space.
link |
01:16:10.480
But there's a fantastic group called Astro Access
link |
01:16:12.800
that is already helping disabled space flyers
link |
01:16:15.480
do zero G flights and potentially get access to the ISS.
link |
01:16:18.480
And some of the things that we think of
link |
01:16:19.840
as disabilities on earth are hyper abilities in space.
link |
01:16:24.800
You don't need really powerful legs in space.
link |
01:16:27.520
What you'd really benefit from having is a third arm,
link |
01:16:30.760
more ways to kind of move yourself around
link |
01:16:32.360
and grip and interact.
link |
01:16:33.640
So we are already seeing a much more open minded approach
link |
01:16:38.040
to who gets to go to space and Astro Access
link |
01:16:40.840
is a wonderful organization doing some of that work.
link |
01:16:43.440
I'm hoping introversion will also be a superpower in space.
link |
01:16:47.640
Okay, well, first I'd love to get your opinion
link |
01:16:50.000
on commercial space flight, what SpaceX,
link |
01:16:52.640
what Blue Origin are doing.
link |
01:16:54.200
And also another question on top of that is,
link |
01:16:58.680
because you've worked with a lot of different kinds
link |
01:17:01.360
of people, culturally, what's the difference
link |
01:17:03.240
between SpaceX or commercial type of efforts
link |
01:17:07.960
NASA and MIT?
link |
01:17:10.800
And academia.
link |
01:17:11.760
Academia.
link |
01:17:12.720
Yeah, so the first part of your question,
link |
01:17:14.440
I am thrilled by all of the commercial activity in space.
link |
01:17:18.360
It has really empowered our program.
link |
01:17:20.000
So instead of me waiting for five years to get a grant
link |
01:17:23.480
and get the money from the grant
link |
01:17:24.600
and only then can you send a project to space,
link |
01:17:26.920
I go out and I fundraise a lot like a startup founder
link |
01:17:29.640
and I directly buy access to space
link |
01:17:32.440
on the International Space Station
link |
01:17:33.600
through SpaceX or NanoRacks, same with Blue Origin
link |
01:17:36.160
and their suborbital craft, same with Axiom now.
link |
01:17:38.720
Axiom's making plans for their own commercial space station.
link |
01:17:42.480
It's not out of the realm of possibility,
link |
01:17:44.200
but in a few years, I will rent lab space in orbit.
link |
01:17:48.360
I will rent a module from the Axiom space station
link |
01:17:50.920
or the orbital reef, which is the Blue Origin space station
link |
01:17:54.000
or NanoRacks is thinking about Starlab Oasis.
link |
01:17:56.840
There's probably some other companies
link |
01:17:58.000
that I'm not even aware of yet
link |
01:17:59.040
that are doing commercial space habitats.
link |
01:18:00.880
So I think that's fabulous
link |
01:18:02.800
and really empowering for our research.
link |
01:18:04.800
Is it affordable?
link |
01:18:06.320
So like loosely speaking, does it become affordable
link |
01:18:09.800
for like MIT type of research lab?
link |
01:18:13.800
Does it, or does it need to be a multi university
link |
01:18:18.200
like a gigantic effort, a consortium thing?
link |
01:18:20.800
One of the reasons we're spinning out Aurelia
link |
01:18:22.800
is we actually realized it's cheap enough.
link |
01:18:24.640
It doesn't even have to be MIT.
link |
01:18:26.640
And we wanted to start democratizing access
link |
01:18:29.640
to these spaceflight opportunities
link |
01:18:30.960
to a much broader swath of humanity.
link |
01:18:33.040
Could you take a Khan Academy educational course
link |
01:18:36.640
about, hey, students around the world,
link |
01:18:38.800
this is how you get ready for a zero G flight.
link |
01:18:40.720
And by the way, come fly with us next year,
link |
01:18:43.280
which is something we're gonna do with Aurelius.
link |
01:18:44.800
We're gonna bring much more just kind of day to day folks
link |
01:18:48.120
on zero G flights and get them access
link |
01:18:50.280
to engaging in the space industry.
link |
01:18:52.600
So it's become cheap enough
link |
01:18:54.720
and the prices have dropped enough to consider even that.
link |
01:18:57.000
So that's amazing.
link |
01:18:57.960
It definitely doesn't have to be a consortium
link |
01:18:59.360
of universities anymore.
link |
01:19:00.880
Depends on what you wanna fly.
link |
01:19:02.040
If you wanna fly James Webb,
link |
01:19:03.440
a huge telescope that's decades in the making,
link |
01:19:05.880
sure, you need a NASA allocation budget.
link |
01:19:08.920
You need billions.
link |
01:19:10.520
But for a lot of the stuff in the book
link |
01:19:12.480
and our research portfolio,
link |
01:19:13.600
it's actually becoming far more accessible.
link |
01:19:16.000
So that's a commercial.
link |
01:19:17.520
What about NASA and MIT academia?
link |
01:19:21.200
Yeah, I think people have been worried about NASA
link |
01:19:25.720
the last few years because in some people's minds,
link |
01:19:28.400
they are ceding ground to these commercial efforts,
link |
01:19:31.600
but that's really not what's happening.
link |
01:19:34.360
NASA empowered these commercial efforts
link |
01:19:37.560
because they wanna free themselves up to go to Mars
link |
01:19:40.080
and go to Europa and continue being
link |
01:19:43.000
that really aspirational force for humanity
link |
01:19:46.000
of pushing the boundary, always pushing the boundary.
link |
01:19:48.760
And if they were anchored in low earth orbit,
link |
01:19:50.840
maintaining a space station indefinitely,
link |
01:19:53.200
that's so much a part of their budget
link |
01:19:54.800
that it was keeping them from being able to do more.
link |
01:19:57.120
So it actually is really fantastic for NASA
link |
01:19:59.000
to have grown this commercial ecosystem
link |
01:20:00.920
and then that frees NASA up to go further.
link |
01:20:03.040
And in academia, we like to think that we will be able
link |
01:20:05.400
to do the provocative next generation research
link |
01:20:09.480
that is going to unlock things at that frontier.
link |
01:20:13.120
And we can partner with NASA.
link |
01:20:14.920
We can go through a program
link |
01:20:15.960
if we wanna send a probe out really far,
link |
01:20:18.160
but we can also partner with SpaceX
link |
01:20:19.560
and see what human life in a SpaceX Mars settlement
link |
01:20:22.720
might look like and how we could design for that.
link |
01:20:24.880
Speaking of projects, maybe are there other projects
link |
01:20:27.600
that pop to mind from the Space Exploration Initiative
link |
01:20:30.120
or maybe stuff from the book that you can mention?
link |
01:20:32.800
Something super cool.
link |
01:20:34.280
I mean, everything we've been talking about is cool,
link |
01:20:35.800
but just something that pops to mind again.
link |
01:20:37.800
Yeah, so we talked about life in space
link |
01:20:40.520
and you might need more arms than legs.
link |
01:20:42.680
One of the projects by Valentina Sumini
link |
01:20:44.800
was a air powered robotics tail.
link |
01:20:48.680
So it's a soft robotics tail
link |
01:20:50.400
that essentially has a little camera on the back end of it,
link |
01:20:53.000
can do computer vision and knows where to grapple.
link |
01:20:55.680
So it's behind you.
link |
01:20:56.840
It grapples onto something and holds you in space
link |
01:20:59.320
and then you can actually free up
link |
01:21:00.440
both of your hands to work.
link |
01:21:02.080
So we're already starting to think about
link |
01:21:03.400
the design of bionic humans or prosthetics
link |
01:21:07.040
or things that would make you kind of like a cyborg
link |
01:21:09.240
to augment your capabilities
link |
01:21:11.600
when you're in a space environment.
link |
01:21:13.160
How would you control something like that?
link |
01:21:14.600
So it's kind of like a, I mean, you can't call it a leg,
link |
01:21:17.960
but whatever, it's a. An additional appendage.
link |
01:21:20.280
Appendage, so how would you,
link |
01:21:21.760
what are ideas for controlling something like that?
link |
01:21:23.840
Yeah, so right now it's super, yeah, there you go.
link |
01:21:26.560
That's cool.
link |
01:21:27.400
Right now it's super manual.
link |
01:21:29.720
It's basically just like a kind of a set pattern
link |
01:21:32.400
of inflating as we're testing it.
link |
01:21:34.160
But in the future, if we had a Neuralink,
link |
01:21:35.960
I mean, this is something that you could imagine
link |
01:21:38.000
directly controlling,
link |
01:21:39.000
just thinking thoughts and controlling it.
link |
01:21:41.360
That's a ways away.
link |
01:21:42.560
Yeah, so we talked about on the biology side,
link |
01:21:45.360
astrobiology, there's probably agriculture stuff.
link |
01:21:48.720
Is there other things that kind of feed the ecosystem
link |
01:21:51.240
of out in space for survival
link |
01:21:53.160
or the robotics architectures, the self assembly stuff?
link |
01:21:56.200
So kind of combining something we were talking about,
link |
01:21:59.000
you can form these relationships with objects
link |
01:22:01.040
and anthropomorphize.
link |
01:22:02.640
One of the things that we're thinking about for agriculture
link |
01:22:04.840
created by Manwe and Somu, so two students at MIT,
link |
01:22:08.720
was this little, it looks like a planet,
link |
01:22:10.880
but it's inspired by, I think, a Mandala
link |
01:22:13.160
or Nepalese spinning wheel.
link |
01:22:15.000
And you plant plants on the inside
link |
01:22:16.680
and the astronaut has to spin it every day
link |
01:22:19.160
to help the plants survive.
link |
01:22:20.920
So it's a way to give the astronauts
link |
01:22:22.520
something to care about,
link |
01:22:23.960
something that they are responsible for keeping alive
link |
01:22:26.400
and can really invest themselves in.
link |
01:22:29.120
And it's not necessary, right?
link |
01:22:30.600
We have other ways to grow in orbit,
link |
01:22:33.560
hydroponics, liquid medium,
link |
01:22:35.120
trying to keep the liquid around the plant roots is hard
link |
01:22:37.480
because there's no gravity to pull it down
link |
01:22:39.080
in a particular direction.
link |
01:22:40.440
But what I loved about this project was they said,
link |
01:22:42.680
sure, we have ways that the plants could grow on their own,
link |
01:22:45.600
but the astronauts might want to care for it
link |
01:22:48.040
in the same way that we have little plants
link |
01:22:49.680
that come to be important to us, little plant friends.
link |
01:22:52.680
So there's AgriFuge, that's an early model
link |
01:22:54.480
of this manually spinning plant habitat.
link |
01:22:58.040
I guess this is the best of academic research
link |
01:23:01.520
is you can do these kinds of wild ideas.
link |
01:23:03.520
Wild ideas, yeah.
link |
01:23:04.520
Well, I get to spend quite a bit of time
link |
01:23:07.240
with Mr. Elon Musk and he's very stressed,
link |
01:23:12.000
especially about Starship
link |
01:23:14.520
and all those kinds of engineering efforts.
link |
01:23:17.800
What do you think about how damn hard it is
link |
01:23:20.600
to get out of space?
link |
01:23:23.520
Like, are we humans gonna be able to do this?
link |
01:23:26.920
I don't know, I think it feels like
link |
01:23:28.880
it's an engineering problem, it's a scientific problem,
link |
01:23:31.400
but it's also just a motivation problem
link |
01:23:33.400
for the entire human species.
link |
01:23:35.400
And you also need to have superstar researchers
link |
01:23:39.520
and engineers working on it.
link |
01:23:40.800
So you have to get like the best people in the world,
link |
01:23:42.920
inspire them and starting from a young age and kind of.
link |
01:23:47.200
Almost inculcating us into why we do it.
link |
01:23:48.920
I mean, I guess that's why it's exciting.
link |
01:23:50.360
You don't know if we're gonna be able to pull this off.
link |
01:23:52.480
Like, we could like fail miserably.
link |
01:23:56.280
And that, I suppose, I mean,
link |
01:23:57.760
that's where the best of engineering is done
link |
01:23:59.960
is like success is not guaranteed.
link |
01:24:02.880
And even if it happens, it might be very painful.
link |
01:24:06.320
I think that's what's so special
link |
01:24:07.200
about what Elon is doing with SpaceX
link |
01:24:08.920
is he takes these risks and he tests iteratively
link |
01:24:12.000
and he'll, we'll see the spectacular failures
link |
01:24:14.880
on the path to a successful Starship.
link |
01:24:17.480
It's something that, you know, people have said,
link |
01:24:18.720
why isn't NASA doing that?
link |
01:24:19.960
Well, that's cause NASA is doing that with taxpayer dollars
link |
01:24:22.440
and we would all revolt if we saw NASA failing
link |
01:24:25.120
at all these different stages.
link |
01:24:26.200
But that level of, you know,
link |
01:24:27.600
spiral engineering theory of development
link |
01:24:30.200
isn't super impressive.
link |
01:24:31.560
And it's a really interesting approach
link |
01:24:32.760
that SpaceX has taken.
link |
01:24:34.360
And I think between people like Elon and Jeff Bezos
link |
01:24:37.920
and Firefly and NASA and ESO, we are gonna get there.
link |
01:24:41.520
They're building the road to space.
link |
01:24:43.160
These trailblazers are doing it.
link |
01:24:45.000
And now part of the challenge is to get the rest
link |
01:24:47.760
of the public to understand that it's happening, right?
link |
01:24:52.000
A lot of people don't know that we're going back
link |
01:24:53.600
to the moon, that we're gonna send the first woman
link |
01:24:55.400
to the moon within a few years.
link |
01:24:57.720
A lot of people don't know
link |
01:24:58.640
that there are commercial space stations in orbit,
link |
01:25:00.680
that it's not just NASA that does space stuff.
link |
01:25:03.320
So we have a big challenge to get more of humanity excited
link |
01:25:07.040
and educated and involved again,
link |
01:25:08.480
kind of like in the Apollo era
link |
01:25:09.840
where it was a big deal for everybody.
link |
01:25:12.360
Well, a lot of that is also one of the big impressive things
link |
01:25:15.120
that Elon does, I think, extremely well
link |
01:25:18.560
is the social media, is the getting people excited.
link |
01:25:21.280
And I think that actually, he's helped NASA
link |
01:25:24.200
step their game up in terms of social media.
link |
01:25:26.520
There's something about, yeah, the storytelling,
link |
01:25:28.680
but also not like, you know, like authentic
link |
01:25:34.000
and just real and raw engineering.
link |
01:25:36.200
There's a lot of excitement for that humor and fun also.
link |
01:25:40.520
All of those things you realize,
link |
01:25:42.560
the thing that make up the virality of the meme
link |
01:25:46.080
is beautiful, you have to kind of embrace that.
link |
01:25:48.680
And to me, this kind of,
link |
01:25:53.520
I criticize a lot of companies based on this.
link |
01:25:56.200
I talked to a bunch of CEOs and so on,
link |
01:25:59.320
and it's just like, there's a caution,
link |
01:26:01.000
like let us do this like press conference thing
link |
01:26:04.600
where when the final product is ready
link |
01:26:06.760
and it's overproduced,
link |
01:26:08.160
as opposed to the raw, the gritty just showed off.
link |
01:26:11.520
I mean, something that I think MIT is very good at doing
link |
01:26:14.000
is just showing the raw, by nature, the mess of it.
link |
01:26:17.560
And the mess of it is beautiful
link |
01:26:18.920
and people get really excited and failure is really exciting.
link |
01:26:21.760
When the thing blows up and you're like, oh shit,
link |
01:26:23.920
that makes it even more exciting when it doesn't blow up.
link |
01:26:27.080
And doing all of that on social media
link |
01:26:29.040
and showing also the humans behind it,
link |
01:26:31.680
the individual young researchers or the engineers
link |
01:26:35.240
or the leaders where everything's at stake.
link |
01:26:38.480
I don't know, I think I'm really excited about that.
link |
01:26:40.840
I do want MIT to do that more for students
link |
01:26:43.840
to show off their stuff and not be pressured
link |
01:26:47.240
to do this kind of generic official presentation,
link |
01:26:51.080
but show their, become a YouTuber also.
link |
01:26:54.480
Like show off your raw research
link |
01:26:55.960
as you're working on it in the early days.
link |
01:26:58.120
I hope that's the future.
link |
01:26:59.480
Things like, I was teasing about TikTok earlier,
link |
01:27:02.280
but these kinds of things I think inspire young people
link |
01:27:07.280
to show off their stuff, to show their true self,
link |
01:27:11.240
the rawness of it,
link |
01:27:12.080
because I think that's where engineering is best.
link |
01:27:13.880
And I think that will inspire people
link |
01:27:16.120
about all the cool stuff we could do out in space.
link |
01:27:18.920
I should say, I couldn't agree more.
link |
01:27:20.240
And I actually think that this is why we need
link |
01:27:21.920
a real life Starfleet Academy right now.
link |
01:27:24.680
It was the place where the space cadets got to go
link |
01:27:27.080
to learn about how to engage in a future of life in space.
link |
01:27:31.360
And we can do it in a much better way.
link |
01:27:33.840
There are a bunch of groups that traditionally
link |
01:27:35.120
haven't thought that they could engage in aerospace,
link |
01:27:37.840
whether it's because you were told
link |
01:27:38.920
you had to be into math and science.
link |
01:27:40.680
Now we need space lawyers,
link |
01:27:42.160
we need space artists like Grimes, right?
link |
01:27:44.240
We need really creative, profoundly interesting people
link |
01:27:48.120
to wanna see themselves in that future.
link |
01:27:51.560
And I think it's a big challenge to us
link |
01:27:53.200
in the space industry to also do some more diversity,
link |
01:27:55.440
equity and inclusion,
link |
01:27:56.520
and show a broader swath of society
link |
01:27:58.920
that there's a future for them
link |
01:28:00.360
in this space exploration vision.
link |
01:28:01.960
Let me push back on one thing.
link |
01:28:03.160
We don't need space lawyers.
link |
01:28:04.480
I'm just kidding.
link |
01:28:05.320
Okay, it's a joke.
link |
01:28:06.680
We do, we do, we do.
link |
01:28:07.760
Okay, we do.
link |
01:28:09.400
The lawyers are great, I love them.
link |
01:28:11.400
Okay, let me ask a big, ridiculous question.
link |
01:28:13.840
What is the most beautiful idea to you
link |
01:28:17.120
about space exploration?
link |
01:28:19.200
Whether it's the engineering, the astrobiology,
link |
01:28:22.560
the science, the inspiration, the human happiness,
link |
01:28:28.800
or aliens, I don't know.
link |
01:28:30.200
What do you, like, inspires you every day
link |
01:28:35.400
in terms of its beauty, in terms of its awe?
link |
01:28:39.560
As a ex physicist, what I've always found so profound
link |
01:28:44.280
is just that at really, really small scales,
link |
01:28:47.080
like particle physics,
link |
01:28:48.320
and really, really big scales, like astrophysics,
link |
01:28:51.520
there are similarities in the way
link |
01:28:53.360
that those systems behave and look,
link |
01:28:55.560
and there's a certain beautiful symmetry in the universe
link |
01:28:59.440
that's just kind of waiting for us
link |
01:29:01.120
to tie together the physics and really understand it.
link |
01:29:04.280
That is something that just really captivates me,
link |
01:29:07.760
and I would love to,
link |
01:29:08.880
even though I'm now much more
link |
01:29:09.920
on the applied space exploration side,
link |
01:29:12.480
I really try to keep up with what's happening
link |
01:29:14.240
in those physics areas,
link |
01:29:15.160
because I think that will be a huge answer for humanity
link |
01:29:18.360
along the lines of, are we alone in the universe?
link |
01:29:22.560
One of the fascinating things about you
link |
01:29:24.200
is you have a degree in physics, mathematics,
link |
01:29:28.120
and philosophy, and now, I don't know,
link |
01:29:31.360
would you call it aerospace engineering maybe kind of thing?
link |
01:29:34.280
So you have at a foot in all of these worlds,
link |
01:29:36.940
the theoretic, the beauty of that world,
link |
01:29:42.160
and the philosophy somehow is in there,
link |
01:29:44.680
and now the very practical, pragmatic implementation
link |
01:29:48.380
of all these wild ideas,
link |
01:29:50.880
plus your incredible communicator, all of those things.
link |
01:29:53.320
What did you pick up from those different disciplines?
link |
01:29:56.120
Or maybe I'm just romanticizing
link |
01:29:57.540
all those different disciplines,
link |
01:29:59.400
but what did you pick up from the variety
link |
01:30:02.760
of that physics, mathematics, philosophy?
link |
01:30:06.200
What I loved about having this chance
link |
01:30:07.880
to do a liberal arts education
link |
01:30:10.120
was trying to understand the human condition,
link |
01:30:13.400
and I think more designers for space exploration
link |
01:30:16.440
should be thinking about that,
link |
01:30:17.720
because there's so much depth of,
link |
01:30:19.800
like we were talking about,
link |
01:30:21.200
issues and opportunities around human connection,
link |
01:30:24.420
human life, meaning in life.
link |
01:30:27.060
How do you find fulfillment or happiness?
link |
01:30:29.400
And I think if you approach these questions
link |
01:30:31.160
just purely from the standpoint of an engineer
link |
01:30:33.240
or a scientist, you'll miss some of what
link |
01:30:35.360
makes it a life worth living.
link |
01:30:38.240
And so I love being able to combine
link |
01:30:40.360
some of this notion of philosophy
link |
01:30:41.760
and the human condition with my work,
link |
01:30:43.660
but I'm also a pragmatist,
link |
01:30:45.240
and I didn't want to stay just purely
link |
01:30:47.140
in these big picture questions about the universe.
link |
01:30:49.920
I wanted to have an impact on society,
link |
01:30:52.280
and I also felt like I had such a wonderful childhood
link |
01:30:55.940
and a really fantastic setup that I owe society some work
link |
01:31:01.360
to really make a positive impact
link |
01:31:04.400
for a broader swath of citizens.
link |
01:31:05.640
And so that kind of led me from the physics domain
link |
01:31:07.820
to thinking about engineering and practical questions
link |
01:31:10.340
for life in space.
link |
01:31:11.240
In physics, was there a dream?
link |
01:31:13.960
Are you also captivated by this search
link |
01:31:16.120
for the theory of everything that kind of unlocks
link |
01:31:19.400
the deeper and deeper, in the simple, elegant way,
link |
01:31:23.580
the function of our universe?
link |
01:31:25.300
Do you think that'll be useful for us
link |
01:31:28.360
for the actual practical engineering things
link |
01:31:30.360
that you're working on now?
link |
01:31:31.520
It could be.
link |
01:31:32.360
I mean, I worked at CERN for two summers in undergrad,
link |
01:31:35.200
and we were looking for supersymmetry,
link |
01:31:37.560
which was one of these alternatives to the standard model.
link |
01:31:40.040
And it was sad because my professors
link |
01:31:41.640
were getting sadder and sadder
link |
01:31:43.200
because they weren't finding it.
link |
01:31:44.520
They were excluding what we would call this parameter space
link |
01:31:47.080
of finding these supersymmetric particles.
link |
01:31:50.000
But the search for what that theory of everything could be,
link |
01:31:53.120
or a grand unified theory that kind of answers
link |
01:31:55.480
some of the holes within the standard model of physics
link |
01:31:58.360
would presumably kind of unlock a better understanding
link |
01:32:02.320
of certain fundamental physical laws
link |
01:32:05.480
that we should be able to build a better understanding
link |
01:32:08.000
of engineering and day to day services from that.
link |
01:32:10.760
It might not be an immediately obvious thing.
link |
01:32:13.140
When we discovered the Higgs boson,
link |
01:32:15.160
I was there at CERN that day.
link |
01:32:16.600
It was July 4th, 2012 that it was announced.
link |
01:32:19.840
We all waited like nerds overnight in line
link |
01:32:22.240
to get into the announcement chamber.
link |
01:32:23.800
I'd never waited for even like a Harry Potter premiere
link |
01:32:25.760
in my life, but we waited for this announcement
link |
01:32:27.760
of the Higgs boson to get into the chamber overnight.
link |
01:32:30.840
But did that immediately translate
link |
01:32:33.840
to technology for engineering?
link |
01:32:35.680
No, but it's still a really important part
link |
01:32:39.200
of our understanding of these fundamental laws of physics.
link |
01:32:41.560
And so I don't know that it's always immediate,
link |
01:32:43.160
but I think it is really critical knowledge
link |
01:32:44.660
for humanity to seek.
link |
01:32:46.880
It might just shake up understanding of the world.
link |
01:32:50.680
What scares me is it might help us create
link |
01:32:52.880
more dangerous weapons.
link |
01:32:54.160
So, and then we'll figure out that great filter situation.
link |
01:32:57.680
And I still believe that human compassion and love
link |
01:33:02.120
is actually the way to defend against all these greater
link |
01:33:04.280
and greater and more impressive weapons.
link |
01:33:07.740
Let me ask a weird question in terms
link |
01:33:10.600
of you disagreeing with others.
link |
01:33:12.520
What important idea do you believe is true
link |
01:33:15.640
that many others don't agree with you on?
link |
01:33:20.400
Maybe, it's a tough question.
link |
01:33:22.160
You might have to think about that one,
link |
01:33:23.800
but whether it's very specific,
link |
01:33:26.320
like which material to use or something
link |
01:33:28.800
about a particular project,
link |
01:33:30.680
or it could be grand priorities on missions.
link |
01:33:35.200
I think one you actually mentioned is interesting
link |
01:33:36.920
is like the thing we should be looking for
link |
01:33:40.640
is like colonization of space
link |
01:33:43.000
versus colonization of planets.
link |
01:33:45.040
Meaning like.
link |
01:33:45.880
Yes, it's probably my best hot take
link |
01:33:47.540
that people would disagree with me on
link |
01:33:49.080
is life in floating cities
link |
01:33:51.840
as opposed to life on the surface.
link |
01:33:54.840
How do you envision that like spread of humans?
link |
01:33:58.320
Cause you said at the beginning of the conversation,
link |
01:34:00.720
something about like scale, increasing the scale
link |
01:34:03.760
of basically humans in space.
link |
01:34:05.560
Are they just like in, they're in orbit
link |
01:34:09.480
and then they get a little farther and farther out.
link |
01:34:11.640
Like, do you see this kind of floating cities
link |
01:34:15.760
just getting farther and farther from earth?
link |
01:34:17.460
They can always kind of return,
link |
01:34:18.960
but like if you look a few centuries from now,
link |
01:34:22.000
do you just see us, all these like floating cities.
link |
01:34:24.240
Like Amoeba.
link |
01:34:25.080
Yeah.
link |
01:34:25.900
And it just kind of envelops the space around us
link |
01:34:30.640
in these like neighborhoods.
link |
01:34:31.920
Yeah, in these neighborhoods.
link |
01:34:32.760
It's like rural and there's like giant structures
link |
01:34:36.760
and there's small pirate structures
link |
01:34:38.960
and that kind of stuff.
link |
01:34:39.800
Pirate structures, yeah.
link |
01:34:40.620
I think low earth orbit might come to look like that.
link |
01:34:43.400
And it's a really interesting regulatory challenge
link |
01:34:45.680
to make sure that there's some cross purposes.
link |
01:34:49.200
So the more cool space cities we have in orbit,
link |
01:34:51.620
the more shiny objects in the night sky,
link |
01:34:53.800
the worse it is for astronomers
link |
01:34:55.320
in a really kind of overly simplified case.
link |
01:34:58.080
So there's some pushback to this like Amoebaing
link |
01:35:00.840
where we just grow kind of incongruously
link |
01:35:05.080
or indiscriminately as an Amoeba in low earth orbit.
link |
01:35:08.000
Beyond that though, I think we'll grow in pockets
link |
01:35:10.640
where there are resources.
link |
01:35:12.200
So we won't just expand around the gravity well of earth.
link |
01:35:15.840
We'll do some development around the moon,
link |
01:35:18.600
some development around asteroids,
link |
01:35:20.200
some development around Mars,
link |
01:35:21.760
because there'll always be purposes
link |
01:35:23.300
for which we wanna go down to a physical object
link |
01:35:25.480
and study it or extract something or learn from it.
link |
01:35:28.460
But I think we'll grow in fits and starts in pockets.
link |
01:35:32.000
Some of the coolest pockets are the gravity balanced pockets
link |
01:35:35.140
like the Lagrange points, which is where we just sent,
link |
01:35:37.800
we not me personally, but NASA just sent James Webb,
link |
01:35:41.440
the big telescope, I think it's at L2.
link |
01:35:44.000
So.
link |
01:35:44.840
What's the nice feature about those pockets?
link |
01:35:46.480
So it's a stable orbit.
link |
01:35:48.480
There are several different Lagrange points.
link |
01:35:50.520
And so it just requires less energy
link |
01:35:52.400
to stay where you're trying to stay.
link |
01:35:55.200
Yeah, that's fascinating.
link |
01:35:57.480
What's also fascinating is the interaction
link |
01:35:59.840
between nations on that regard.
link |
01:36:04.440
Like who owns that?
link |
01:36:06.480
Would you say in those floating cities,
link |
01:36:09.200
do you envision independent governments?
link |
01:36:13.080
That was gonna be my next answer to you,
link |
01:36:14.520
which pushed me harder for a more provocative question
link |
01:36:17.480
where I might disagree with other people.
link |
01:36:19.320
I don't yet have my own opinions fully formed on this,
link |
01:36:22.720
but we are trying to figure out right now
link |
01:36:24.280
what happens to the moon
link |
01:36:25.840
with all of these first come first served actors
link |
01:36:29.820
just arriving and setting precedents
link |
01:36:32.360
that might really affect future access.
link |
01:36:34.480
And one example is property rights.
link |
01:36:37.260
We do want companies that have the expertise
link |
01:36:40.080
to go to the moon and mine stuff
link |
01:36:41.880
that will help us develop a human settlement there
link |
01:36:45.960
or a gateway, but companies need to know generally
link |
01:36:49.200
that they have rights to a certain area
link |
01:36:50.800
or that they have some legal right to sell things
link |
01:36:52.900
that they're getting.
link |
01:36:53.740
Does that mean we're gonna grant property rights
link |
01:36:55.760
on the moon to companies who has the right
link |
01:36:58.760
to give that right away?
link |
01:37:00.720
So there's a bunch of really kind of gnarly questions
link |
01:37:02.760
that we have to think about,
link |
01:37:03.580
which is why I think we need space lawyers.
link |
01:37:04.920
Maybe that's the true provocative answers.
link |
01:37:07.600
I think we need space lawyers.
link |
01:37:09.040
I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, but those questions,
link |
01:37:12.020
again, as you said eloquently,
link |
01:37:14.580
will help us answer questions about here on Earth.
link |
01:37:17.120
We hope so, yeah.
link |
01:37:18.240
It is a little strange.
link |
01:37:20.920
I mean, it's obvious, but it's also strange
link |
01:37:23.100
if you look at the big picture of it all
link |
01:37:25.640
that we draw these like borders around geographical areas
link |
01:37:28.940
and we say, this is mine, like,
link |
01:37:32.120
and then we fight wars over what's mine
link |
01:37:34.160
and not, it seems like there's possible alternatives,
link |
01:37:39.200
but also it seems like there needs to be a public ownership
link |
01:37:42.920
of some parts, like, what is it?
link |
01:37:45.880
Central Park in New York.
link |
01:37:47.280
Is there something like preserving?
link |
01:37:51.440
The commons.
link |
01:37:52.400
Yeah, the commons.
link |
01:37:53.240
The commons.
link |
01:37:54.080
That's why we titled the book Into the Anthropocosmos.
link |
01:37:57.320
We know it's a long and kind of a mouthful,
link |
01:37:59.680
but this notion of the Anthropocene,
link |
01:38:02.360
we have a lot of commons problems in humanity.
link |
01:38:04.900
How are we treating the Earth, global climate change?
link |
01:38:07.000
How are we gonna treat and behave in space?
link |
01:38:09.180
How can we be responsible stewards of the space commons?
link |
01:38:12.880
And I would love to see an approach to the moon
link |
01:38:15.120
that is commons based, but it's hard to know
link |
01:38:18.340
who would be the protector or the enforcer of that.
link |
01:38:21.960
And if it's, which it will be probably in the early days,
link |
01:38:25.120
a lot of companies sort of working on the moon,
link |
01:38:28.080
working on Mars, working out in space,
link |
01:38:30.840
it feels like there still needs to be
link |
01:38:33.080
a civilian representation of like the greater effort
link |
01:38:37.400
or something like that.
link |
01:38:38.680
Like where there should be a president,
link |
01:38:40.160
there should be a democracy of some kind
link |
01:38:42.840
where people can vote.
link |
01:38:43.880
Some representative government.
link |
01:38:45.320
Those are all, again, the same human questions.
link |
01:38:49.200
What advice would you give to a young person today
link |
01:38:54.000
thinking about what they wanna do with their life, career?
link |
01:38:57.840
So somebody in high school, somebody in college,
link |
01:39:01.540
maybe somebody that looks up to the stars
link |
01:39:03.300
and dreams to one day, take a one way ticket to Mars
link |
01:39:07.120
or to contribute something to the effort.
link |
01:39:09.900
I'd say you should feel empowered
link |
01:39:12.800
because it's really the first time in human history
link |
01:39:16.080
that we're at this cusp of interplanetary civilization.
link |
01:39:19.940
And I don't think we're gonna lapse back from it.
link |
01:39:22.240
So the future is incredibly bright for young people
link |
01:39:25.200
that even younger than you and I,
link |
01:39:26.680
who will actually really get a chance to go to Mars
link |
01:39:28.560
for certain.
link |
01:39:30.280
The other thing I would say is be open minded
link |
01:39:32.800
about what your own interests are.
link |
01:39:34.360
I don't think you anymore have to be shoehorned
link |
01:39:36.480
into a particular career to be welcomed
link |
01:39:39.200
into the future of space exploration.
link |
01:39:41.320
If you are an artist and that is your passion,
link |
01:39:43.800
but you would love to do space art or if not space art,
link |
01:39:47.400
use your artistry to communicate a feeling
link |
01:39:49.920
or a message about space.
link |
01:39:51.880
That's a role that we desperately need
link |
01:39:54.400
just as much as we need space scientists
link |
01:39:56.080
and space engineers, so.
link |
01:39:57.880
Well, when you look at your own life,
link |
01:40:00.200
you're an incredibly accomplished scientist,
link |
01:40:02.800
young scientist, but you know,
link |
01:40:05.000
and you hopped around from physics to aerospace.
link |
01:40:08.960
So going from the biggest theoretical ideas
link |
01:40:11.640
to the biggest practical ideas.
link |
01:40:14.280
Is there something from your own journey
link |
01:40:15.760
you can give advice to,
link |
01:40:17.720
like how to end up doing incredible research at MIT?
link |
01:40:22.320
Maybe the role of the university and college
link |
01:40:26.680
and education and learning, all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:40:29.440
I'd say one piece of advice is find really good teammates
link |
01:40:33.120
because I get to be the one that's talking to you,
link |
01:40:35.280
but there are 50 graduate students, staff and faculty
link |
01:40:38.920
that are part of my organization back at MIT.
link |
01:40:41.640
And I'm actually, you guys can't see it on camera,
link |
01:40:43.160
but I'm sitting here with my co founder and COO,
link |
01:40:45.560
Danielle DeLotte, and that is really what makes
link |
01:40:48.920
these large scale challenges for humanity possible
link |
01:40:52.560
is really fantastic teams working together
link |
01:40:55.120
to scale more than what I could do alone.
link |
01:40:57.360
So I think that that's an important model
link |
01:40:58.600
that we don't talk about enough in academia.
link |
01:41:00.360
There's a big push for this like lone wolf genius figure
link |
01:41:03.680
in academia, but that's certainly not been the case
link |
01:41:06.000
in my life.
link |
01:41:06.840
I've had wonderful collaborators and people
link |
01:41:09.440
that I work with along the team.
link |
01:41:10.680
Also cross disciplinary.
link |
01:41:12.560
Absolutely, yeah.
link |
01:41:13.680
Cross disciplinary, interdisciplinary,
link |
01:41:15.320
whatever you wanna call it, but.
link |
01:41:17.240
Artists, where do artists come in?
link |
01:41:19.280
Do you work with artists?
link |
01:41:20.200
We do.
link |
01:41:21.040
We have an arts curator
link |
01:41:22.120
on the space exploration initiative side.
link |
01:41:24.160
She helps make sure partly around that communication
link |
01:41:26.560
challenge that we talked about,
link |
01:41:27.600
that we're not just doing zero G flights
link |
01:41:29.560
and space missions, but that we take our artifacts
link |
01:41:32.720
of this sci fi space future to museums
link |
01:41:35.440
and galleries and exhibits.
link |
01:41:38.000
She pushed me to make sure her name is Shinglu.
link |
01:41:41.760
She pushed me for our first ISS mission.
link |
01:41:44.440
I was just gathering all the engineering payloads
link |
01:41:46.720
that I wanted to support for the students to fly,
link |
01:41:48.600
including my own work.
link |
01:41:49.800
And she said, you know what?
link |
01:41:50.640
We should do an open call internationally
link |
01:41:52.920
for artists to send something to the ISS.
link |
01:41:55.920
And we found out it was the first time.
link |
01:41:57.760
We were the first ever international open call
link |
01:42:00.120
for art to go to the ISS.
link |
01:42:01.840
And that was thanks to Shing, an artist bringing
link |
01:42:04.080
a perspective that I might not have thought
link |
01:42:05.520
about prioritizing, so.
link |
01:42:08.000
Yeah, that's awesome.
link |
01:42:09.040
So when you look out there,
link |
01:42:11.080
it's the flame of human consciousness.
link |
01:42:12.920
There does seem to be something quite special
link |
01:42:15.040
about us humans.
link |
01:42:16.760
Well, first of all, what do you think it is?
link |
01:42:21.760
What's consciousness?
link |
01:42:23.000
What are we trying to preserve here?
link |
01:42:27.080
What is it about humans that should be preserved
link |
01:42:32.120
or life here on earth?
link |
01:42:34.920
What gives you hope to try to expand it out
link |
01:42:37.880
farther and farther?
link |
01:42:38.960
Like, what makes you sad if it was all gone?
link |
01:42:43.140
I think we're a remarkable species
link |
01:42:46.180
that we are aware of our own thoughts.
link |
01:42:49.820
We are meta aware of our own thoughts
link |
01:42:52.060
and of ourselves.
link |
01:42:52.900
And we're able to speak on a podcast
link |
01:42:54.580
about our meta awareness, about our own thoughts.
link |
01:42:56.940
About our own thoughts, yeah.
link |
01:42:58.020
Turtles all the way down.
link |
01:43:00.900
I think that that is a really special gift
link |
01:43:03.140
that we have been given as a species
link |
01:43:04.740
and that there's a worth to expanding
link |
01:43:07.660
our circles of awareness.
link |
01:43:09.540
So we're very aware of, as an earth based species,
link |
01:43:12.140
we've become a little bit more aware
link |
01:43:13.700
of the fragility of earth and how special a place it is
link |
01:43:15.980
when we go to the moon and we look back.
link |
01:43:18.100
What would it mean for us to have a presence
link |
01:43:21.940
and our purpose in life as a inter solar system species
link |
01:43:26.180
or eventually an intergalactic species?
link |
01:43:28.540
I think it's a really profound opportunity
link |
01:43:30.160
for exploration, for the sake of exploration.
link |
01:43:34.500
A real gift for the human mind.
link |
01:43:36.300
Yeah, for anything, we're curious creatures.
link |
01:43:41.020
You see, you do believe we might one day
link |
01:43:43.220
become intergalactic civilizations.
link |
01:43:46.340
Long, long time from now.
link |
01:43:47.700
We have a lot of propulsion challenges
link |
01:43:49.980
to answer to get that far.
link |
01:43:51.500
So you have a hope for this.
link |
01:43:53.140
Yeah.
link |
01:43:54.740
Another big ridiculous question building on top of that.
link |
01:43:57.580
What do you think is the meaning of life?
link |
01:44:00.220
This individual life of ours, your life,
link |
01:44:03.820
that unfortunately has to come to an end
link |
01:44:06.300
as far as we know for now.
link |
01:44:08.060
Yeah.
link |
01:44:09.180
And our life here together, is there a why?
link |
01:44:13.900
Or do we just kinda like let our curiosity carry us away?
link |
01:44:20.740
Oh, interesting.
link |
01:44:21.580
Is there a single kind of driving purpose why
link |
01:44:25.380
or can it just be curiosity based?
link |
01:44:28.020
I certainly feel, and this is not the scientist
link |
01:44:30.700
in me talking, but just more of like a human soul talking.
link |
01:44:34.080
I certainly feel some sense of purpose
link |
01:44:38.420
and meaning in my life.
link |
01:44:39.580
And there's a version of that
link |
01:44:40.580
that's a very local level within my family,
link |
01:44:43.340
which is funny because this whole conversation
link |
01:44:44.860
has been big, grand space exploration themes.
link |
01:44:47.060
But you asked me this question
link |
01:44:48.140
and my first thought is what really matters to me,
link |
01:44:50.060
my family, my biological reproducing unit.
link |
01:44:53.480
But then there's also another purpose,
link |
01:44:57.900
like another version of the meaning in my life
link |
01:44:59.780
that is trying to do good things for humanity.
link |
01:45:02.420
So that sense that we can be individual humans
link |
01:45:04.980
and have our local meaning,
link |
01:45:06.740
and we can also be global humans.
link |
01:45:08.620
Maybe someday like the Star Trek utopia
link |
01:45:10.500
will all be global citizens.
link |
01:45:12.460
I don't wanna sound too naive.
link |
01:45:15.480
But there is I think that beauty to a meaning
link |
01:45:17.260
and a purpose of your life that's bigger than yourself,
link |
01:45:20.100
working on something that's bigger and grander
link |
01:45:21.960
than just yourself.
link |
01:45:23.640
The deepest meaning is from
link |
01:45:25.140
the local biological reproduction unit.
link |
01:45:28.020
And then it goes to the engineering scientific,
link |
01:45:32.140
what is it, corporate like company unit
link |
01:45:35.240
that can actually produce and compete
link |
01:45:37.380
and interact with the world.
link |
01:45:38.620
And then there's the giant human unit
link |
01:45:41.340
that's struggling with pandemics.
link |
01:45:43.980
And commons.
link |
01:45:45.180
And together struggling against the forces of nature
link |
01:45:49.220
that keeps wanting to kill us.
link |
01:45:50.820
Yeah, there'd be nothing like an alien invasion
link |
01:45:52.920
to unite the planet, we think.
link |
01:45:54.980
I can't wait, bring it on aliens.
link |
01:45:57.980
Listen, your work, you're an incredible communicator,
link |
01:46:00.660
incredible young scientist there.
link |
01:46:01.900
It's huge honor that you would spend your time with me.
link |
01:46:04.860
I can't wait what you do in the future.
link |
01:46:07.740
And thank you for representing MIT so beautifully,
link |
01:46:10.980
so masterfully.
link |
01:46:11.820
You're an incredible person.
link |
01:46:12.800
Thank you for talking to me.
link |
01:46:13.640
Thank you so much for having me.
link |
01:46:14.660
It's been an absolute pleasure.
link |
01:46:15.660
It's a great conversation.
link |
01:46:17.620
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
01:46:19.140
with Ariel Ekblah.
link |
01:46:20.700
To support this podcast,
link |
01:46:21.940
please check out our sponsors in the description.
link |
01:46:25.260
And now let me leave you with some words from Seneca,
link |
01:46:29.280
the Roman stoic philosopher.
link |
01:46:31.200
There is no easy way from earth to the stars.
link |
01:46:36.200
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.