- We think of Mother Nature
as being warm and cuddly,
and for the most part, she is.
But sometimes,
the savagery of Mother Nature is revealed.
On the Earth,
99.9% of all species eventually go extinct.
Extinction is the norm.
And the laws of physics
also doom the entire planet Earth.
Because the Earth is in the middle
of a shooting gallery of asteroids
and comets and meteors,
it's inevitable that we will be hit
with a 'planet-buster.'
Something like what hit the dinosaurs
65 million years ago.
We need an insurance policy.
Given the fact that Mother Nature
and the laws of physics
have a death warrant for humanity,
we have to make sure that humans
become a two-planet species,
because ultimately,
our destiny will be in outer space.
We have no rocket capable of reaching deep space
at the present time with human passengers.
In other words, if we're faced with yet
another rock from outer space,
we are basically sitting ducks.
However, we're entering now a new golden age
of space exploration.
Now we have the infusion of funds
from Silicon Valley billionaires.
We have new strategies
to go back into outer space.
And things have changed.
Costs have dropped.
With the introduction of reusable rockets,
we're now talking about opening up the heavens
to perhaps a whole new economic landscape,
'cause we're now talking about
dropping the cost by a factor of 10.
Instead of $10,000/lb,
SpaceX wants to bring it down to $1,000/lb,
opening up the heavens.
We also have a new vision emerging:
For Elon Musk of SpaceX,
it's to create a multi-planet species.
However, for Jeff Bezos of Amazon,
he wants to make Earth into a park,
so that all the heavy industries,
all the pollution goes into outer space
to make Earth a paradise.
And Jeff Bezos wants to set
an Amazon-type delivery system
connecting the Earth to the moon.
We're talking about a whole new political
and technological landscape.
Sometime in the 2030s, we will be on Mars.
The question is,
if we're entering a new golden age
of space exploration,
'What is the main bottleneck that we face?'
The main bottleneck has to do
with life support and the human.
You see, we've already sent robots to Mars.
But now, we're talking about humans,
which require a whole support network.
Humans have to live in an environment
where there's radiation.
Where there's loneliness.
Where the journey can take two years.
Where temperatures are below freezing.
Where the atmospheric pressure is only 1%.
And eventually, we wanna create a base
on Mars that could support people.
That means it has to be self-sustaining.
It has to be done in several steps:
The first step would be to create
a base on Mars with power;
solar power could provide the energy.
And then once you have the base set up,
you have to begin the process of creating
a self-sustaining agriculture there.
And this means genetic engineering;
creating genetically-modified algae
and plants that can consume
the rich, carbon dioxide atmosphere,
live in a very cold environment and thrive.
Then we have to create mining operations
so that we have the materials to build cities,
oxygen to breathe, water to drink,
and hydrogen for rocket fuel.
Then the last step in the process,
and this'll take maybe another hundred years,
is to send satellites orbiting around Mars
to begin the process
of melting the polar ice caps.
Now, once you raise the temperature of Mars
by about six degrees, it becomes self-feeding,
because the more heat you have on Mars,
the more carbon dioxide
you loft into the atmosphere,
which creates more greenhouse effect,
which allows you to melt even more ice
to raise the temperature even more.
So you have a positive feedback loop,
and we can begin the process
of terraforming Mars.
A lot of it's still theoretical.
We don't know for sure
what it would take to go to the stars.
Now, this means, of course, starships.
We've been brainwashed
into thinking by Hollywood
that a starship has to be huge
and gigantic, the size of the 'Enterprise.'
However, the laws of physics
make possible sending postage stamp-sized chips
to the nearby stars.
So think of a chip,
perhaps this big, on a parachute,
and have thousands of them sent into outer space,
energized by perhaps
800 megawatts of laser power.
By shooting this gigantic bank
of laser energy into outer space,
by energizing all these mini parachutes,
you could then begin to accelerate them
to about 20% the speed of light.
This is with doable technology today.
That means Proxima Centauri b,
an Earth-like planet
that circles around
the closest to star to the planet Earth,
could be within the range of such a device.
What a coincidence.
So it means that we've already staked out
our first destination for visitation
by an interstellar starship.
Some of these technologies won't be available
till the next 100 years.
But remember, we're talking about
the future of humanity-
and the future of humanity, I think,
could be in outer space.