What if you lived in the 1500s
and you knew there was a guy named Sir Jeffrey Bezos and Sir Elon Musk
and you knew they were building what they were going to call Mayflowers.
These Mayflowers were going to be able to take people to new worlds.
How would you prepare the people who were going to ride in those boats
so they could survive and thrive on the other end?
Within 20 years, we believe, somebody is going to step off of a space ship
onto the surface of a world
and that that person is going to go there to stay.
We want that person to be you.
This is the stuff right here, right?
When you see this stuff, what do you think?
What do I think?
Yeah.
I think I wish I had done that.
This is Rick Tumlinson.
A self described space activist and one of congresses go to guys for space related matters.
He recently put on the New World Conference, and event for the people who he believes
will be the next generation of pioneers.
What we're doing is an experiment.
At the core of what we're doing is a serious discussion on the technologies, the engineering,
policies, things like that that we are going to need to settle space.
Then, we are wrapping that in a larger cultural overlay that includes art and music and philosophy.
It's not about the machines.
It's not about engineering.
It's about people.
How are you doing man?
What do you got going on man?
Well, just showing a...
Really smart people have been having serious conversations about colonizing space for a long time.
It all started with this guy named Gerard K. O'Neill
who wrote a landmark book called 'The High Frontier.'
That was the book that changed everything because Dr. O'Neill said in that book,
"You don't have to be NASA to be involved in space."
He said, "You can go out into space, use the principles of free enterprise,
harvest the resources of space and create a new frontier.
You can do it."
He did just write a book about it and then, go, "I wrote the book."
He formed an organization and he started having conferences to bring people together
to share that dream and inspire each other as a group.
When it comes to this conference, I want to create a vision in people's minds
of a credible future in which they can live out their hopes, their dreams, their desires.
If you open the frontier, it becomes all about possibility,
an infinite array of possible futures that we get to choose.
In some ways New Worlds is like your average conference.
You got your key note addresses, your expert panels, your networking events
but there are two things that make New Worlds really unique.
The first is a sort of weird science rave, which we'll come back to.
The second, is an emphasis on kids.
So-- just don't look at the camera.
Okay, so I'm Ferris Whitney and I love doing sorts of programming things
and I started programming a couple years ago when I got a raspberry pi, it's just a little computer.
The premise of the institute is that within 20 years the first human beings
are going to be stepping on the Moon or Mars or into a colony in space with the intention of living there.
If you are looking at a 20 year window, these kids are going to be the people doing it.
What I did here in this presentation, I basically just created a movie.
What I did is I built this 3D model in Minecraft, so it's showing a 3D model of the space station
or thing that we ... I don't know what you'd call it... A free space colony.
I'll just take this off... These two right here are your apartment buildings.
Here's the farm.
We use hydroponics with gel and we would get the fertilizer, which we make on earth,
and just have it delivered there first.
The main focus for me was the artificial gravity and transportation.
See the different floors from the space station
And that's just a little rocket that would go off and get supplies and come back.
and that's basically the agriculture area where you are growing trees, and plants, and crops and food and stuff.
Do you think at this conference you could have the next Magellan, Columbus, or Neil Armstrong,
or is that too grand?
No not at all, but I would rather have the first person who's name we don't remember,
that built a cabin and started a farm.
The ones who don't get named.
The ones who actually build the communities.
We call them settlers.
They could be here?
I think they probably are.
To prepare for a space themed show we get the proper props.
We brought a lot of fans that look like fire and star ... Like, fans with stars on it and stuff.
We are using our LED hoops.
Okay, so now on to the rave that I told you about.
Yes, those are tesla coils shooting electricity at dancers in a cage.
Yes, that is Rick getting his groove on.
It's not just that he loves dancing and giant tesla coils,
he's actually got a pretty interesting reason for the concert.
What we're talking about here is not just technology and engineering.
We are talking about creating a new culture.
It has to be a culture that celebrates the future,
it has to be a culture that celebrates that we are taking on the impossible and we're going to make it possible.
Every major cultural movement in history has had its tribal dances, has had its celebration,
has had its ability to just let its hair down and go crazy.
You dance around the fire at night after you've fought dragons through the day.
So I get, all this new world stuff sounds a little bit crazy but maybe they're on to something.
I'm sure Jobs and Wozniak looked a little bit crazy building computers in their garage.
Could Rick and these kids and these dancers be people who end up changing the world?
It only takes a few people to change the future.
There were only few people on those first ships that came to the new worlds over here.
There are only a few people that ever change anything.
It's never the mass that changes the future.
It's always a small group of people that identifies and trail blazes new ideas, new philosophies,
and new approaches to tomorrow.
What if, in the future, a child could grow up in a world,
and look up in the sky and see these little dots of light going out
and be apart of a civilization who's goal is to expand life to worlds that are now dead
What I want to see is humanity beginning to
reach the capabilities and possibilities that we all know in our heart we can.
That's powerful.