Translator: Claudia Di Lorenzo Reviewer: Muriel de Meo
This is a true story.
I was invited some time ago to join a literary café in the Dolomites.
Each year a surgeon invites. a figure from a specific sector.
That year they talked space, and I was invited.
That had been a thriving year,
because our Mars Express satellite
had found liquid, saline water on Mars, with the aid of an Italian radar.
Saline liquid water on Mars, from a scientific point of view
is a landmark discovery,
because it leads to think, life on Mars is likely to exist.
At the end of the event,
I was still surrounded by tourists
who wanted to know more about our new missions,
about our new technologies,
and I've been faced by a man who asked me to look at this picture.
I want to read it with you:
I think there's no need for me
to focus on the tragic nature of the picture.
Let me just read with you the sentence attached to it:
"Humanity can't afford to extract water in drylands.
But they can afford to look for water on Mars.
The question is: is there intelligent life on Earth?"
This is a situation space experts are often exposed to.
So I decided to answer,
with that calm, sobering approach that science taught me,
and I want to do this with you right now.
I will begin with probably the most iconic mission
of all space exploration missions:
the man on the Moon.
That mission screamed to the world: "We can do it."
And even more, "We can conceive it."
We are the only species of this planet who actually did it,
that actually left its planet, went on its satellite,
and then came back.
The only species.
Moreover, this mission left us with something more:
135,000 patents.
135,000 patents means new products, new companies, new jobs.
It means economic progress as well as scientific,
Shortly, it means wealth.
But one could still argue,
we didn't answer the question of the kid yet.
So let's see them: first, the CT scan.
The CT scan was used to seek flaws
in the structures and materials of the Apollo ships.
Nowadays we find CT scans in hospitals all over the world
to make diagnoses and help surgery.
The water filters we used to distillate water for astronauts,
are now used worldwide wherever there's lack of water,
to allow those children
to drink polluted pond water, contaminated with viruses and bacteria,
because now we even made them portable.
The microprocessor:
processors were already in place.
But who does my job knows
that whatever is shipped to space
must be extremely light, and extremely small.
Thus, the processor
had to be forcibly squeezed into a microprocessor.
Now tell me, is there a car on Earth today
without a microprocessor on board?
I mean, everything -
from the car to your phone,
to medical devices, water detecting devices - everything.
Plus, an endless breed of technical products:
clothing for extreme cold and extreme heat,
even for the flames:
fireproof suits for firemen without asbestos,
portable oxygen masks,
thermal blankets, now sadly used by migrants.
Freeze-dried food:
we took water out of food to ship it into space.
Today it can be easily carried all over the world,
thanks to this technology.
But this happened 50 years ago: what are we doing today?
Nowadays, the Earth is our priority.
We are living a time of great changes from a global point of view.
But we have the opportunity to observe them, understand them
and intervene to modify them,
by watching them from space.
So we ran a series of missions,
European Space Agency's Sentinels,
which allow us to do that:
first, we can detect in the air all the noxious substances,
and also the amount of carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide has a secondary effect,
it raises the temperature of this planet:
so we measure ice melting.
The North Pole has lost ten "Italys" of ice.
As a consequence, we measure rising water levels.
60% of the global population lives within 100 km from the coast,
then this information is extremely important.
And we also do another thing.
Not only do we find water for that kid,
we also find humidity,
so we find potential areas where water can be found,
even where it's extremely difficult.
Moreover, as we find humidity,
we can provide a better agriculture:
so not only we supply water to that kid,
we also feed him.
The interesting part is,
the same radar that allows us to find water today
is an evolution of the same category -
a synthetic-aperture radar -
it's the evolution of the very radar that allowed us to find water on Mars.
With its interferometric function,
this radar allows us to measure millimetric shifts
of all human structures on Earth.
For example, structural solidity of our children's schools,
dams, bridges.
Who has a phone?
(Laughter)
Who has the Internet on the phone?
Who has GPS on the phone?
All these services that you take for granted,
are provided from space,
by the European Space Agency.
But observing Earth from space allowed us to do something more:
we understood how fragile Earth is,
how exposed it is to threats like this:
Five mass extinctions -
all five, according to the scientific consensus,
were caused by the collision with an asteroid
larger than one kilometer.
Today we could do nothing about it,
not one space agency in the world could.
I don't want to ruin your Sunday, don't worry.
The ESA and the NASA are working on this mission:
DART and HERA.
This is Didymos, a one kilometer wide asteroid,
Don't worry, it won't smash on Earth:
but it's a fine object for tests.
We want to hit its moon with a missile,
and by changing the speed of the moon,
we will deflect Didymos' trajectory
of about 6,000 km.
Earth is 12,000 km far, Didymos will never collide with us.
Through our engeneering, our competences
we build ourselves this chance of survival:
dinosaurs could not, and so they got extinct.
But we care about the man in space,
If during the Moon mission in '69 man stayed in space just a few days,
by now we have flied 90 crews on this object:
the International Space Station.
They were heterogeneous groups, males and females,
and we left there for a longer period, at least six months.
This allowed us to discover many aspects:
first, man is not meant to fly into space.
We have many problems: osteoporosis, muscle loss,
cardiovascular system thinning,
problems with radiations.
Not only did these missions allowed us to know all of this,
they also allowed us to develop drugs against these symptoms,
and now we find the same drugs back here on Earth.
But the station was something more, it was a political experiment.
Five countries teamed up to build it:
Europe, USA, Russia, Canada and Japan.
And it showed that space is such a honorable mission,
that even those countries that were quarreling on Earth back then,
found an agreement, suspended hostilities to achieve this mission.
Therefore,
the problem of food and water is technical in the first place:
we need to find it, we need to extract it.
But then there is a distribution problem.
There's no such thing as space missions to help international diplomacy,
and consequently a fairer distribution of resources.
In addition to this,
that mission allowed us to discover many technologies:
we repaired DNA for the first time in the history of the mankind,
damaged by radiation exposure.
The orbital station is a close system,
water on board is limited;
therefore - and this might disgust you a little bit -
we have closed-loop systems for urine purification.
Astronauts' urine and sweat are endlessly redrank.
All these technologies can be used on Earth
where water is lacking.
We developed algae that are highly nutritional,
and supply nourishment where it's most lacking on Earth:
for example, in Central Africa and South America.
Watch what it's like to do a cardiac massage on the Station.
As you can see, it's a rather complex sequence:
that's the reason why we tweaked the defibrillator
and made it portable.
This allows you to find it everywhere,
Not only in sports facilities, but also in public streets and squares.
And it saves lives.
But we want to do more, we want to achieve this:
we want to put on a drone the defibrillator.
You will have an app on your phone,
you tap the app,
and the drone gets right to you.
It gets there thanks to a GPS signal, that's also provided by us,
so, it's very precise.
(Applause)
That drone lands before you,
talks to people passing by:
"This person doesn't feel well: put me on his chest, I'll do the rest",
and saves a life.
Meet Simon, now.
It's the first robot with AI.
It has a face recognition software
so, not only it does recognize the face of commanders,
Alexander Gerst in this case,
but he's able to recognize his feelings,
then it addresses him with tones and manners,
"tuned" to his emotional status in that moment.
For long term missions, like going on Mars,
this technology is fundamental,
as it allows to ease the workload
and understand the dynamics within the crew.
Brought back to Earth, it can be used in many ways.
For example, in polar exploration missions,
where people are isolated.
Ships that sail the sea for more than six months,
or elderly people.
It's never going to be human, that's for sure,
but it's still far better than a speechless machine.
The station allowed us to change another paradigm.
This is Skylon, the future of aviation.
Skylon has a hybrid engine:
a part of the engine is commercial, it's the same used on contemporary planes,
and the other part is a rocket engine.
Skylon gain a certain altitude with the commercial engine,
then rockets are turned on,
and it flies at 28,000 km/h,
it's like New York - Sydney in just three hours.
So less pollution is spitted, because the flight lasts less;
and it's outside the atmosphere,
hence we don't pollute Earth.
But we want to do more, we want to do this.
This is a gateway to deep space.
It is a new spacecraft, a new orbital station -
around the Moon this time, not the Earth.
It will be ten times cheaper than the Space Station -
we also learned to optimize our processes -
and it will allows us to do a few things:
first, it will support Moon surface missions;
second, it will support Mars missions.
Mind you: astronauts on board in 2024, first woman on the moon in 2024.
And it will also allow us to fulfill another dream:
to build a station on the moon.
Because that's our aim: we want to go back to the moon,
and not just to pay a visit this time:
we will get there to stay.
The moon is rich in platinum, titanium,
and there's Helium-3 too,
which allows the production of nuclear power without toxic wastes.
It's also a scientific opportunity,
as we could observe space without the aberration of the atmosphere.
So we could have radio telescopes not filtered by atmosphere,
and it's an opportunity to field-test all the technologies
that we will use later on in the much more complex flight to Mars.
But the moon is, let's say, this new challenge
allows us to develop technologies.
First, building the Moon station.
We're not going to build it as if we were on Earth.
Tools, material:
think about what it means to build a house on Earth.
We won't do that:
we won't launch all the stuff to the Moon.
It can't work like this.
We'll do it totally differently.
A 3D printer will be launched, that will be fed with the Moon powder,
using the Sun as the only energy source,
and we will build the station through a fully automatic system.
Now bring this technology back to Earth: what does that entail?
It implies the possibility of building houses
after earthquakes or tsunamis in difficult environments.
But astronauts won't only need a station,
they will also need tools and equipment:
some of these tools will be launched,
others will be assembled on-site.
So we're going to need plastic and metals.
What's obviously the source of plastic and metal on the Moon?
The stuff we already brought there: the Landers.
After the landing, Landers get useless.
Hence, we will cannibalize all plastic and metal
and recycle them with 3D printers,
printing useful tools for this mission stage.
Recycling will be fundamental, if we want to preserve Earth.
This is Shackleton crater, in the south of the Moon.
The red marks you see are water.
Water means life, it means water to drink
it means oxygen and hydrogen.
Oxygen to breath,
oxygen and hydrogen as fuels to support the station.
But not only this water is freezed, it's also mixed with mould.
That means we need technologies to extract water,
and those same technologies will be very useful for that kid.
We're already testing all this.
We are testing it here, in the Zermatt glacier.
Eleven European universities, including the Politecnico di Milano,
are all testing these technologies in a Moon-ish environment.
And then we have robotics.
Our commander Luca Parmitano will control this robot from the station,
as if he was on the moon.
Telerobotics becomes telemedecin on Earth.
It means that a surgeon in New York can perform surgery on a patient in Milan.
Morover, this robotic arm
lays the foundation of microsurgery on Earth.
But we want to do more, we want to go to Mars.
There'll be astronauts on Mars within the end of 2030,
and to do that we will need this:
Mars is two years away from us.
For a number of astrodynamic reasons
we cannot interrupt the mission, so we have to go all the way around.
Which means, we have to fix astronauts:
skin, human bones, stem cells powered 3D printers,
human organs.
It means transplanting without waiting for donors,
testing drugs directly on the organ you want to treat,
painless for both humans and animals.
But why going to Mars?
The reason is this:
Earth doesn't grow, but we keep growing in numbers,
hence we have a problem of space and resources,
we have a problem of pollution.
So, we go to Mars to acquire new spaces and resources,
but don't worry,
we are not going to Mars because we think Earth is doomed,
and so we leave.
Actually,
this is the reason why we go to Mars:
Mars was like Earth.
We don't know why,
but it turned into the ice desert it still is today,
with greenhouse effect that is totally out of control.
We go to Mars to understand what happened there,
and to avoid that it'll happen to us.
And we go to Mars in peace and reverence.
We have an office called Planetary Protection,
it will prevent us from making the same mistake we did on Earth.
We are becoming a multi-planetary species.
It means we have the opportunity, for the first time,
to bring our lives, our ideals, our culture, to another planet.
But in order to do that, we need all of you,
not just engineers like me.
We will need biologists, doctors, psychologists, philosophers.
It's all happening now.
Space is inspirational, thus we attract the best minds,
confront them with challenges like these
and produce science and technology for the protection of our Earth,
and ultimately our lives.
I was just missing -
this costs you the price of one movie ticket per year.
Now, I have my answer to this question,
and it's the same answer that inspires my whole life,
and gives meaning to my experience:
because I think we can do something practical for that kid.
Naturally, I give you the freedom to answer it yourselves.
Thank you.
(Applause)