Translator: Geoff Jensen Reviewer: Denise RQ
A lot of people want to change the world.
Me? I want to change space.
Specifically, I want to develop a better way
to build satellites and spacecraft to make it possible for mankind
to crawl out of our nest here on Earth,
climb past our current tenuous foothold in low-Earth orbit,
and expand out into the Solar System.
My motivation for that is, in part, a survivalist instinct.
I think we need to create backups of humankind elsewhere in the Solar System
so that at least some of us will have a chance of surviving
the next global catastrophe,
a catastrophe like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs,
or the runaway greenhouse effect that killed off most of life on Earth
some 200 million years ago.
But really a more fundamental motivation for me
is a fascination with the question
of how will becoming a space-faring people change us?
How will the rigors of living in space force us to evolve as a species?
And how will that boundless frontier
allow us to continue to grow and evolve as a society?
But before we can do that,
there are many technical challenges we need to address.
Getting into space is extremely hard and still very expensive.
So, while there are many grand designs being discussed for space,
such as ginormous rockets to take people to Mars,
or using lasers to blast tiny satellites out to the stars,
I'm focused on a somewhat more utilitarian task, and that is
trying to figure out a better way to build spacecraft.
To do that, I'm working to combine
advances in 3D printing, robotics, and recycling,
along with some lessons learned
from one of the oldest species here on Earth, the spider.
But before we get to that,
first we have to discuss the way we currently do space missions.
Over the past six decades of the Space Age,
our space program has done incredible things:
we've built giant rockets
which have lofted men and women into orbit,
we've sent men to the Moon, and we've built a space station.
But unfortunately, relying on that current way
of doing space missions is an evolutionary dead end.
Why is that?
Because our infrastructure for building space systems
is entirely Earth-bound.
That means we have to build everything here on Earth,
and then use a rocket to blast it up into space.
That means that the way we really build space systems
is more like this.
We spend many years and many billions of dollars
crafting a technical work of art, then we cram it into a rocket,
and then we shake the heck out of it getting it up into orbit.
That means that space systems are extremely expensive,
because we have to put a lot of energy and time
just into designing them and testing them
to make sure that they will survive that ten minutes of assault and battery.
More importantly, everything we put up into space has to fit inside a rocket,
and that constrains the size and the ambition
of what we can build in space.
For example, consider the Space Station.
It's the biggest thing we've built in space.
It's an incredible technical achievement.
But it was built by assembling a number of modules together,
and those modules had to be built on the ground,
so they had to fit inside the space shuttle.
That means the largest contiguous volume
that astronauts have to live in
is about the size of a FedEx truck.
That's fine for astronauts who are paid to live and work there
for a mission lasting a few months,
but can you imagine living your entire life
within the volume of a FedEx truck?
I can't; I'd go nuts.
So if we want to enable people to go out and live in space,
we're going to have to find a way to build them accommodations
that are more comfortable and expansive.
We're going to need a better way to build space systems.
So, consider the spider, and how the spider builds her home.
Does a spider build her web down on the ground,
and then toss it up into the trees?
No, the spider is much smarter than that.
She first climbs up into the trees,
up to her operational altitude,
and then she uses her spinnerets to 3D-print her home.
I think we should learn a lesson from the spider.
Let's shift our manufacturing of space systems
out of the Earth's gravity well and up into orbit.
Let's off-world our space manufacturing.
If we do that, we can build systems
that are unconstrained by what we can fit into a rocket,
and we can design them for the microgravity environment of space
not for the ten minutes of abuse they experience during launch;
so we can make them much less expensive.
How are we going to do that
if we don't yet have foundries and factories up on orbit?
We're going to develop that capability incrementally,
starting out by developing
self-assembling satellite systems or what I call a "satellite chrysalis,"
where key components of the satellite - such as solar arrays or antennas -
are launched in the form of raw material in a very compact and durable form
so they're very easy to launch along with the assembly instructions
- it's kind of the IKEA manual for how to put them together.
(Laughter)
And then a manufacturing capability - tools like 3D printers and extruders,
to turn that raw material into those key components
and assemble them together to make a functional spacecraft.
So, right now, I and a really awesome team of engineers and scientists
are working to develop robotic systems
that try to mimic the spider
and integrate what I call the '4 Ms' of in-space manufacturing.
Of course, the manufacturing capability, like the spider's spinnerets,
3D printers and extruders
to make large structural elements, surfaces, and other key components.
Then manipulation capability, grippers, and jigs
to take those pieces and assemble them together,
- like giant Tinkertoys in space - to make huge structures.
Then mobility capability, like robots legs or crawlers,
so this robot can scuttle around on this giant structure
and deliver material and components to where they need to go.
Then, of course, measurement capability, the eyes and the feelers,
so it can sense what it's building and adjust itself
so that it ends up with the shape and the performance that it requires.
This is an illustration of a SpiderFab robot
building a giant hoop structure intended to support a very large antenna;
an antenna that could be the size of a football stadium.
Once it's built up that structure, it can then lay out reflective membranes,
or solar cells, or other components to build large antennas,
large solar arrays, or even pressure vessels
in which people could live.
If it can learn how to build in space,
we can make systems that are much larger than we can currently contemplate;
for example a telescope, the mother of all telescopes,
the size of a football field,
able to snap pictures of planets orbiting other suns.
Think about that for a moment; some day, there may come a day
when a system like this actually captures a picture
of an Earth-like planet around another star,
and its instruments collect proof
that there is life on that other planet.
How is that going to affect our view
of our role in the universe
when we know that we're truly not alone?
How is it going to affect our religions
when we learn that ours is not the only Eden?
But the impacts of manufacturing in space aren't just for space.
We'll also be able to build fleets of small satellites,
each with a giant antenna built in space, as big as this auditorium,
able to beam Wi-Fi directly to your cell phone, anywhere on Earth.
There will be no more data roaming charges - imagine that!
(Laughter)
But looking back out into space,
imagine giant donut-shaped habitats spinning out beyond the Moon,
big enough to support cities' worth of people living, working, playing,
and building a society out beyond Earth.
Right now, that kind of idea is an idea.
It's science fiction; it's not possible.
But our team right now is working to develop
the component technologies necessary to start working towards that capability.
This is a video of a prototype device that we call the Trusselator
because it takes spools of carbon fiber material
and 3D prints it to make trusses
that can be as long as you want them to be.
This is test video of a low-cost industrial robot
that we upgraded with new vision-based software
to enable it to figure out where these trusses are
and grab them carefully, and then manipulate and position them
so it can assemble big structures.
Because it's so expensive to get material into space,
we need a better way to acquire
the material we need to build things in space.
The spider eats bugs, digests them, and turns them into silk.
We're not going to do that.
(Laughter)
But what we're going to do is recycle things.
This is an early prototype of a device that we call the Refabricator.
This is a payload we're putting together to send up to the Space Station in 2018,
and it combines a recycling system with a 3D printer.
So it will enable astronauts on the Space Station,
and hopefully, eventually, Mars missions,
to take plastic waste such as Ziploc bags or packing material
and melt it down and turn it into 3D printer filament,
and then use that 3D printer filament
to manufacture satellite components or tools and replacement parts they need
to keep their spacecraft functioning.
So we're going to be developing these technologies and integrating them
into these self-assembling satellite systems.
Once we have those capabilities proven,
we'll be able to start building a factory in space, an orbital shipyard.
That will enable us to build
the infrastructure that we need for a self-supporting economy in space
and build the spacecraft that we need to go out and conquer the Solar System.
But even when we have these technical advances,
it's still going to be very difficult to survive in space.
Space is a very harsh environment: there's intense radiation,
extreme temperature variations, there's vacuum, zero gravity,
and there's vast distances in between the places
where we can find the resources that we need to survive.
But those challenges are actually what excites me
about the possibility of getting mankind out into space,
because the rigors of living in space
are what's going to help continue to drive our evolution as a species,
and that boundless frontier is going to give us room
to continue to grow and evolve as a society.
For example, consider the radiation.
Scientists have recently discovered that there's this species
of tiny little critters called water bears.
They're really weird-looking; they actually look like aliens.
But their DNA protects them from radiation,
and they're actually able to survive in vacuum.
Maybe we'll take DNA from those creatures and splice it into our own
to genetically engineer humans who are adapted to the space environment.
What will those people look like?
Will they still be human?
Or will we splice neural taps into our brains
so that we can feel the sensor data from our spacecraft,
so we can better sense danger
or we can more easily find the resources that we need to survive?
Or imagine if you live here on Earth,
and your son or daughter gets a job out on Mars,
and you want to have a conversation with them,
and it takes 20 minutes round-trip
for what you say to get to them and their reply to get back to you.
How are we going to maintain an intimate bond with the people we love
over such vast distances?
Are we going to learn how to email virtual-reality simulations of ourselves
to carry out those conversations for us?
Or will we rediscover the lost art of the love letter?
The astronauts who visited the Moon often speak
of a transformational experience they had,
looking back on the orb of the Earth,
a tiny blue orb in this vast sea of dark,
and they gained a profound new appreciation
for how unique, precious, and fragile our Earth is.
How is our art, our music, our literature,
our relationship with nature going to change
when many more of us have the opportunity
to go out and confront the universe,
and have time to contemplate our role and our meaning within that infinity?
I don't have the answers to those questions,
but it's those possibilities that really excite me,
about the possibility of expanding our human experience
out into the Solar System.
So let's free our minds from the confines of what fits within a rocket.
We're going to follow the lesson of the spider
and shift our manufacturing off-world.
We're going to become makers in space,
so we can go out and build a robust and durable future
out in the great dark yonder.
Thank you.
(Applause)