Today we are heading off planet Earth
and going to the Moon.
The Moon is back in vogue again,
whether it's the United States or China or billionaires,
lots of people seems to want to go there.
And we're gonna talk to a person named Jessy Kate Schingler.
She's worked at NASA Ames, she's worked at a rocket company,
and she is part of an organization called Open Lunar.
It's a non-profit, and they're doing something
that's really interesting, rethinking different ways
that we might govern and set up settlements on the Moon.
And maybe find a way to do things better
and at least differently on the Moon than we have on Earth.
With that, we are going to go to France
where Jessy Kate is spending a little COVID time.
Well, thanks for doing this with us.
For people who don't know about the Open Lunar Foundation,
can you tell us what the mission is?
Yeah, Open Lunar is interested in seeing a peaceful
and cooperative, sustained human presence on the Moon
and ensuring that that happens in a way that is open
and accessible and as soon as possible.
I'm not sure that unless you're,
if you're just a casual observer of all this stuff,
that people are fully aware
of how much reinvigorated interest
there is in the Moon right now.
Tell me, you know, if we think globally
what's going on between China and the US
and various factions trying to try to get to the Moon
in the next few years?
The United States has been, and continues to be,
one of the major players in the space industry.
It has a program called the Artemis Program
that is focused on getting humans back to the Moon
for the first time since the Apollo program.
During the Apollo program, Russia, of course,
was the major other player in the space world.
And that introduced a dynamic that was a Cold War dynamic
where Russia and the United States
were competing for getting to the moon first.
Today, what we see is something that has some analogs
to that between the United States and China,
who is the other major state actor in the space world.
China also has plans to go to the lunar surface with humans,
the taikonauts, and both the United States and China
have plans to set up a base of some kind
or an outpost on the lunar surface.
But of course, they're not the only ones interested
in going to the lunar surface.
There are a lot of other countries
who are developing capabilities either to collaborate
with those countries or to send their own missions.
And then there are private actors who are who are planning
to go to the lunar surface.
Of course, everybody's familiar with SpaceX
and Blue Origin at this point.
And they're companies that have leadership
with a very strong vision
for seeing a sustained human presence on the lunar surface.
And then, I mean, like, if you go back 10 years ago,
right when Space X was kind of starting to hit its stride
and Bezos was putting a lot of money into Blue Origin.
I mean, it seemed like Mars, Elon's very focused on Mars,
and Mars was like the talk.
And obviously there's things that you can do there
that you can't do on the Moon.
But it's kind of funny, I mean, the Moon, like,
just sort of came back in vogue very quickly,
it felt like to me.
Why do you think that is
if you do think that's what actually kind of happened?
Yeah, in the space community, of course,
we love to debate Moon versus Mars, and it's fun.
And they're very different places,
and there are a lot of reasons for us to go to Mars.
But the Moon is much closer
and it's somewhere that we can go and sort of learn
the ropes of having human presence
and extended human presence in outer space.
We can get our transportation systems in order,
we can get our human habitation systems in order,
our communication systems in order.
So, I think most folks with a kind of long term vision
for space exploration and settlement in general
would see them not as being in competition with one another.
But the Moon is being a stepping stone to Mars
and other kinds of activities
and just building on our presence on the moon.
Hopefully what we'll see is the development
of sustained human presence on the moon and going to Mars.
And I wanted to get into a little bit
about why you're so into the Moon and space in general.
You have a pretty interesting history
when it comes to all this.
Tell me a little bit about how you got into all of this.
Yeah, so I guess I'll say that I actually
wasn't your typical kid who was into space.
I never had this sort of grand vision of being an astronaut,
I wasn't a nerd about rockets.
And I actually ended up by accident in a meeting of folks
who were working on sort of space advocacy.
And as a result of this meeting,
I ended up attending this conference at the United Nations
where a number of young people were present.
And one of the outcomes of it was that we started
actually a young people's group
that was called the Space Generation Advisory Council.
And that group ended up having observer status
at the United Nations and sort of bringing together
the perspectives of young people from around the world
to provide input to the UN's process
on thinking about the role of space
and how it can help humanity.
So, this group of friends that you made
during this conference,
a lot of you stayed as very close friends.
And in fact, this is like what, it's like 20 years later.
I mean, a big chunk of you guys still live together, right?
Basically, we lived together in this hotel for,
it was only two weeks, but of course, when you're 18 or 20
or whatever, it was this extremely formative experience.
And it just so happened that that a year or two later
enough of us ended up actually living in DC for a while
that we ended up getting a house together.
And so, we would kind of host folks when they came to town,
so we had people staying with us.
And then being inspired from some of the ideas
about what the possibilities for society can be
and thinking about how could we kind of embody
some of those changes and sort of test them out
and in small ways, even just in our home.
And so over time we did that.
We have lived together in different cities
and really are like family at this point.
In San Francisco, there's a number of houses
that you've been, not just where you live,
but you've been influential in starting,
places like the Rainbow Mansion and the embassy,
they're known as these kind of communal houses,
these intentional communities where everybody's sharing
in the governance of the house and how it operates.
And it's living this life for the past 20 or so years
that has, in some ways, shaped your thinking about seeing
the Moon maybe as a place where we could have a bit
of a reset and rethink the way we might build
this next community off of our planet.
Is that fair?
I think I'll say yes and no.
In my opinion, what we want to do is learn
from what we've done on this planet
and think about how we can incorporate that knowledge
in order to do things bigger and better as we move forward,
both, of course, here as well as on the Moon.
I also think that the Moon,
because of the Outer Space Treaty,
as the predominant governing agreement
for the outer space domain,
because that treaty contains provisions
that require us to make space accessible to everyone
and not to appropriate territory in outer space,
there is a lot in common that the Moon has
and our governance of the Moon will have for challenges
like climate change here on Earth.
And so, in that sense, I think it's in particular something
that we really need to think about extending our lessons
learned here, but also looking at where we have failed
to learn lessons here
and use it to prototype new approaches.
Throughout all his history, right,
it's been like the who's gonna get to the Moon first,
the US or Russia?
And then it's been this very nation-driven thing.
And I know you guys wanted to see something more
of bringing a lot of countries together,
bringing a lot of different parties
to stop treating this like some place to be conquered
and divvied up and more like,
how can we kind of do this together?
Can we come with some open standards?
I remember some of the discussions.
It's just interesting that, like, it would come down
to even like what type of plug are we gonna have
on the lunar base?
Is it gonna be like, you know, sort of US standard
or European standard?
Tell me about what you would like to see.
What's your ideal vision for as we start to go to the Moon
and build settlements, what that should look like?
Yeah, so I think the example you gave of standards
is a really interesting one, because if you look even,
for example, to the International Space Station,
which I think is one of the most successful examples
of international collaboration,
and you still have outlets that are different
in the Russian section as in the American section.
So, you know, getting together and thinking about,
what are the things that we want to share
in these sorts of new environments,
and what are the things that actually can be different,
I think is also a really important question.
Okay, let's just assume that both China and the US
are going to the Moon
and possibly trying to set up settlements.
How do you expect this to play out?
And what do you see Open Luna's role being in the future?
It seems quite likely that what we will see
is in the next, say, 10 or 15 years,
at least two different outposts on the lunar surface,
run by two different governments
from terrestrial nation states.
And so I think that's gonna be really interesting
and that's where we're gonna start to really see the test
of what does it mean to not be able to exclude other actors
from any particular region of the surface of the Moon.
And that, to me, is where organizations like Open Lunar
can help out, because we're asking,
what are a number of different ways that we could approach
thinking about, for example,
property rights and resource management?
Jeff Bezos has talked a lot about wanting to set up
factories in space and industrializing space,
Elon's talked a lot about different ways to set up
way-stations, either in orbit
or maybe something on the moon to, like,
help get to Mars more easily.
I mean, we are kind of like at this point
where it might be one of these billionaires
that's like harvesting something on the Moon
before a country, because these guys,
especially Elon, move really fast.
So, what do you see as the role of the individual
or the corporation in all this?
Yeah, well, I think one approach would be to say,
well, we should slow down
so that we can think about this more carefully.
But I also think that there is a risk there
that if governments slow down to think about it
more carefully, that actually the private sector
will just get there first
and we'll get there with even less guidance.
And the private actors that are that are going to the Moon,
or anywhere in space,
those activities are being approved by state governments.
But what happens when you're sort of outside
the eyes and ears of those governments
once you're on the surface of another planet?
I think nobody knows at this point.
And it's gonna be important that we choose
a minimal set of things that we want to have consensus on
as an international community.
So, for example, when we talk about resources
on the surface of any planetary body,
I don't think they're all going to be governed
in the same way.
Some resources are scarce, some are not.
So, in space, if we set up specific regimes
that respond to the specific nature
of different kinds of resources,
we will get better input from different stakeholders
that will make our decision-making processes more effective.
And if people want to get like a better sense of,
dig in deeper to kind of what Open Lunar's about,
or what you've been thinking about,
I know you just gave a TED Talk recently and you guys have,
you've got a website, are those kind of like the best places
for people to go and what's on tap for you guys next year
as you pursue this?
So, pretty much everything is on our website,
and for our work in the next year or two,
I think, in my opinion, what we want to do
is have more consultation in the space community
from private actors, from civil society.
And we've been just starting to convene conversations
about near-term policy issues for lunar activity
that can inform what's gonna be happening on the Moon
in sort of 5 to 10-year timeframe.
The last question, I guess it's inevitable in many ways,
and maybe more realistic than it would have been
10 years ago or so, are you gonna take a trip?
Would you be like an active member of a lunar settlement
Oh.
Yeah, of course I would.
I mean, the way I see that playing out
is that I think we're gonna start to see,
like, longer and longer stays on the Moon.
You know, weeks and then months and then years,
and that process of starting to figure out what decisions
are made by sort of like console operators back on Earth
versus by those who are on the surface themselves
and how that relates to the resources they have
and sense of kind of fairness and justice
is gonna be really fascinating.