RedPlanetLive -- Dr. Robert Zubrin
Welcome to Red Planet live I'm your host Ashton Zeth I'm elated to be hosting the Mars societies podcast and leading the conversation about human exploration of the universe and the future settlement of Mars as a long time Space enthusiast I am passionate about stem education and making Humanity an interplanetary species thank you so much for joining us today and supporting Red Planet live today's episode is very special for a few reasons first today's guest is an integral member of the Mars Society crew and really essentially the reason that we are all here today none other than Mars Society president and founder Dr Zubrin here we go oh there we go one second hi Dr Zubrin thank you for being here today hello thanks for inviting me good to meet you Ashton pleasure I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today uh this I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite a while uh so I want to get everybody else up to speed about really who you are and why this is so important so in addition to being the Mars society's fearless leader Dr zubrin is also president of pioneer astronautics formerly a staff engineer at Lockheed Martin astronautics in Denver he holds a master's degree in Aeronautics and astronautics and a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Washington Zubin has also authored several books including a case for Mars and it's best known for his advocacy of the manned exploration of Mars he is the driving force behind Mars direct a proposal intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission disappointed with the lack of interest from government in Mars exploration zubrin established the Mars Society in 1998 which works to educate the public the media and the government on the benefits of exploring Mars and creating a permanent human presence on the red planet again thank you so much for being here today I'm really excited about this uh you're most welcome I do want to correct one thing that he said yes which is that I founded Pioneer astronautics and led it for 27 years but in March of this year I sold it off and uh so now I'm going to be free to devote more time to the Mars society and especially to the initiative that we're going to talk about here today I love it that's that's amazing thank you for correcting me I think that's integral to today's conversation um but before we kick off the conversation station just have a couple quick Mars Society reminders again as we've already talked about before the Mars Society convention is happening October 5th through 8th that's just a couple months away at Arizona State University in Tempe now don't fret for those that are unable to attend in person there is a virtual option you just need to become a mar Society member to access the convention online regular membership is only 50 annually students interested in participating do receive a discounted rate just need to use your student email address to sign up and lastly any ASU students will get free access to the Mars Society convention there is a special link for ASU students which can be found right there all right so Dr Zubrin on Red Planet live I do a segment called question of the day it's really just meant to be an icebreaker no right or wrong answers but I know that you're knowledgeable on this topic so I'm very curious to hear your answer so today's question of the day is which Space movie do you think is most realistic in terms of the scientific portrayal well uh Apollo 13 uh is the most realistic uh it is realistic uh now for talk but Apollo 13 is not science fiction if you it's history um but uh if you want to talk about science fiction then of things that haven't happened yet the future in space and so forth I would say it's the Martian um there are some technical errors in the Martian for sure uh the the Windstorm is much too powerful uh though even though you can have high winds on Mars the air is very thin and you wouldn't be have wind blowing everything down as they show um but uh the spirit of it is is realism not fantasy uh my my main objection to the Martian where where it falls short uh is that while it is a can-do movie just like Apollo 13 it shows that we can take on the challenge of the unknown challenge of space and that's very positive um the thing that's missing is that the math game gaming character is not interested in Mars he's not interested in the question of whether there's Life on Mars uh or the question of the human future on Mars he's just somebody in a tough spot who needs to use his wits and grit to figure out how to get home now actually if people are interested I've written a novel called First Landing it was actually written in the late 90s published in 2001 you can get it on Amazon but it's the crew of five that also get into a jam and they have to use their wits to figure out how to get out of it but the difference is is that several people in the crew have some understanding of the importance of Mars so I think that could be the basis of the great Mars movie so if you're into movies making movies out there contact me we'll see what we can do I like it I love it okay this is the next book that's going on my Amazon you know cart uh I keep adding you know books faster to my my carton starting them before I can can finish them but I know the next thing I'm going to put on that list so thank you uh you know one of my favorite movies a space movie specifically and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts is contact uh from the 90s with Matthew McConaughey Jody Foster do you think that that is all even possible could we you know through through the um the satellites get some sort of communication from extraterrestrial life and then interpret that data and build a ship and then be traveling somewhere into the the far-off galaxies um I kind of doubt it um because broadcasting uh plans to your most advanced technology is not adaptive Behavior Uh the um so I don't think that aliens would be broadcasting plans on how to build Starships um and uh I do have questions whether they'd be broadcasting at all on the kind of radio frequencies that we use now um the the contact is based well the Jody Foster character is based on Jill Tarter who's a close associate of Frank Drake and she's still prominent at the city Institute uh and Drake and um another fellow came up with this idea in 1960 of using radio to detect extraterrestrials but the frequency that they specified uh what's known as L band which was the state of the art for space communication in 1960 is obsolescent now uh virtually obsolete uh things like expanding Ka band that we use now will probably be obsolescent in 20 years um or I mean expanders already becoming obsolescent and the the the the the so uh the looking for extraterrestrials with this kind of signals is almost in the same class as looking for them by the uh lights of their gas lights that is uh the the radio we use now is probably a transitory technology uh so maybe laser communication so well there are people already looking for that um to look for light signals that are coherent instead of what comes from Stars uh I personally think that our best chance first of all I do think we will detect extraterrestrial biospheres um possibly within the next 10 years possibly with web or the um I think wfirst is now called the Rubin telescope by detecting oxygen Spectra in extraterrestrial planets that will let you know that there's a biosphere there because Earth did not have free oxygen until we had plants to put it there because you see oxygen wants to react with hydrogen it wants to react with carbon and once react silicon wants to react with iron it wants to react with aluminum there's all sorts of stuff out there that will take down free oxygen and combine it and so you don't have free oxygen in any quantity anywhere unless there's something fighting against chemical equilibrium which is to say life okay so if we detect a large amount of free oxygen in an exoplanet we'll know there's a biosphere there now the extraterrestrials could have detected our biosphere using the same technique for at least the past 500 million years so they could have broadcasted to us in in the Carboniferous or the Mesozoic or you know the the the the eocene or anytime and nobody would be answering back so they could get kind of bored with that um now um while I think we will detect extraterrestrial biospheres uh to detect extraterrestrial technological civilizations I think we'd be better off looking for high energy activities like Interstellar travel or artificial Suns or things of this kind that are really loud that do not require conventions you know that is to to decode a radio signal you have to understand the language you have to understand the the conventions of the transmission uh whereas to detect um you know a Fusion Energy torch drive or something like that um there are certain specific things about it that would make it distinguishable from a natural star and um or even an artificial Singularity that is to say an artificial black hole that would be generating energy by things falling into it there are things like this that we could look for that would give us a better chance technological signatures sure okay exactly the answer that I was looking for that that gave me all the details that I was hoping uh in in that exact uh question with with in regards to contact um so earlier I mentioned that today's episode is special for a few reasons obviously the first being Dr Zubrin joining the second reason is that Dr Zubrin has a very special announcement to share with the world uh Dr Zubrin can you share the incredible news yeah the Mars Society is uh right now uh launching a Mars technology Institute whose purpose will be to develop the Technologies needed to settle Mars okay that is we have ongoing right now uh entrepreneurial Space Race the leading element to SpaceX but there are others that are on their heels both here and in other countries and as a result of this um you know the SpaceX has already brought down the cost of space launch by a factor of five by introducing partial reusability if Starship is successful and I believe it will ultimately be successful although there may be several more failures before it's successful um but um then it will be possible for people to go to Mars and do exploration missions to Mars but there are things that are needed to settle Mars that are not being developed by anyone and need to be if we're going to make Humanity multi-planetary um and um you know um in a number of places for example the case for Mars or I have a new book coming out next year called the new world on Mars what can we create on the red planet and we can talk a little bit more about that later in the show I've made it clear what I think the major export of Mars will be which is to say inventions that is a Mars city-state will be a group of technologically Adept people in a frontier environment which challenges them to innovate which forces them to innovate and which they are free to innovate in radical ways and um so that they will make lots of inventions and those inventions will be necessary for the success of their settlements but they can also be licensed on Earth as IP and generate the income that Mars will need to pay for imports okay so that's the business model of a Mars colony export IP okay well someone might say to me and they have um well if you think that an inventor's Colony uh could be a profitable Enterprise why not just start one on earth right now uh now there's some answers to that that is uh the Mars settlers will be far more driven you know if someone uh they can't just quit if they get a better offer from Google and higher pay and sharing this or that uh that they're going to be uh totally committed uh by their circumstances and also frankly by their selection if you're someone willing to take on the risks and discomforts associated with challenging Mars you're going to be somebody who's serious who's not just looking for a nice lifestyle you're looking to do something Grand with your life okay so all that is true uh yeah we can't do that now but we can do a Mars inventors Colony on earth now and so that while uh we won't have those advantages we will have the advantages of much lower costs and point in fact we can actually do it now so we're doing it now um and that's what the Mars uh technology Institute is going to be now um there's a number of critical areas actually there's quite a few but uh there's three that come right to the top of the list if we talk about settling Mars and these have to do uh with food energy and the labor shortage that Mars will experience okay the last one is something that Mars actually has in common with uh early America where we had a severe labor shortage which forced Americans to become virtuosos in labor-saving uh uh technology we keep gadgeters Nation to gadgeteers and that multiplied the power of our labor and therefore multiplied the average wage and that was one of the major encouragements of people to come here um and uh now if you update that to today's technological Horizon labor-saving Machinery continues to include labor-savering machinery and automation but also Robotics and artificial intelligence are all ways to to attempt to deal with a labor shortage so the Martians are going to be heavy Innovative in those areas another is energy and no fossil fuels on Mars Other than those that you can make using some other energy source solar energy exists but it's quite weak and unreliable wind is too thin uh we need Advanced forms of nuclear energy tree and while we can get by on Earth quite nicely actually um from engineering point of view with nuclear reactors like the pressurized water reactors which are totally dominant in the nuclear industry today which only use about one percent of the energy in the uranium um that's has discouraged the development of breeder reactors also the extremely hostile regulatory environment who wants to even dare try to do something new when it's hard enough getting a reactor license which is exactly the same as things we've been building since 1954. um okay but on Mars uh we're going to want to get the full amount or 90 of the energy out of the uranium or as well as thorium which is more common than uranium and ultimately moves to Fusion but then finally and this is actually The Upfront show stopper for a Mars colony and that is food um the now food is not a major consideration for doing a Mars exploration Mission you can bring your food you send four six eight people to Mars you can bring the food and um it'll be about the fourth biggest item on the mass list Mass manifest or the mission that is it's not exactly in the noise but it's really not something that that determines the mission but you can't import the food to support uh a hundred thousand person Mars town let alone a million person Metropolis like right okay I mean uh a hundred thousand people use um a hundred thousand kilograms of food a day um which is a hundred tons a day which is a Starship landing on Mars every day to bring in food so that's Unthinkable yeah I gotta grow it well looking at growing food on Earth where there's been tremendous progress in the 20th century eradicated hunger from most of the world um still take not an average farm and a developing sector let's take Iowa cornfield which is incredibly productive Iowa last year produced as much corn as the whole United States did in 1947 and we were already in agricultural superpowers then even so it's producing 12 tons of corn per hectare per year hectare is 100 meters by 100 meter plot about two and a half acres um the the okay that means per day uh 30 kilograms so if you were feeding people on nothing but corn you could feed 30 people with a hectare of of of Iowa cornfield but of course you wouldn't want people to eat nothing but corn you don't want to introduce some variety of fruits vegetables meat perhaps so maybe 20 people okay so now you add a hundred thousand people that means 5 000 hectares okay um 5 000 hectares uh which is uh huge uh and uh and and that's assuming by the way that you could grow food in natural sunlight on Mars even though I mean you know you could grow it but that it would be as productive as Iowa even though the light level is half as much you could grow food I mean normally they grow food and that's about Martian light but it's not as productive okay but let's just say you could 5 000 hectares but if it goes with the light intensity it's more like 10 000 hectares and if you try to provide artificial light at uh say even 200 watts per square meter okay uh an average sunlight at noon in Iowa is a thousand watts per square meter 200 watts per square meter you're talking about uh uh at 10 gigawatts uh which is to say about a third of the amount of power that Australia uses just to support a town of uh a hundred thousand people not a particularly large city uh so and and the problem here is that while photosynthesis at the cellular level is about four percent efficient at the cornfield level that is if you calculate the energy hitting a cornfield um and you so that's the energy in and you look at the energy that the corn itself represents coming out it's about 0.2 percent efficient okay so we're going to have to create forms of food production that transcend ordinary agriculture as it's currently practiced on Earth and I believe that we can do this with biotech I I I I believe that we can do the first couple of steps in the food chain using uh the first uh physical chemical means of an actual bio tech mean to example turn say methanol which you can make with physical chemical techniques into protein and then you make those protein crackers well you don't feed them to people you feed them to tilapia or something in uh aquaponic situation and I'm just giving you sort of an example option yeah okay and now you've got something that someone would actually want to eat um all going to be developed at MTI the right so and in fact our initial focus will be in the Biotech area that's great I'm so excited by this and I know that we're going to talk more about it um we're going to get some specific questions about MTI which leads us to our next point the third reason today's episode is special because we have another guest who's gonna be joining the conversation Alan Boyle is an award-winning science writer space reporter and contributing editor at GeekWire Allen say that once more and a great guy and a great guy absolutely uh Alan is The Mastermind behind Cosmic log uh former science editor at MSNBC and the author of the case for Pluto how a little planet made a big difference uh here we go welcome Alex thanks for the good word to both of you and Ashton you forgot one little thing from my resume that I grew up on a farm in Iowa so I'm quite uh familiar with how the corn grows got to be knee-high by the Fourth of July so thank you for having me absolutely thank you so much for being here now now I'm going to hand it over to you Alan and I know that you have some questions for Dr Zubrin so I'll let you take that over okay Robert it's great to see you and and you're a nice guy too so uh there you go we're we're the perfect pair here uh you've talked about what the Mars technology Institute would do I'm interested in a few of the details of how it would be structured I can imagine someone at Nasa saying hey well research about Mars that's something that that we do and investors saying well why should as you mentioned why should I be paying to set up this institute when there are a lot of people working on this and and uh and uh you know we'll we'll figure out how to do what needs to be done by the time we get there okay um all right those are excellent questions uh NASA is not doing this okay uh NASA has some interest in in situ uh uh resource utilization as they call it um I prefer to call it local resource creation because I don't believe there is any such thing as a natural resource there's only natural raw materials it's human creativity that turns materials into resources and I could expand on that but in any case they have some that but it's all oriented towards the first exploration missions so for instance one area where NASA is interested is making for pellet on Mars for the return trip and when I was at Pioneer we did a lot of work for NASA and demonstrating systems that could make for instance methane and oxygen out of Martian CO2 and water and this has now been demonstrated and um this of course is the basis of both my Mars direct plan and Elon musk's plan for sending Starships to Mars the Starship uses methane oxygen because we can make the return propellant on Mars but as I mentioned earlier uh food is not really an issue for NASA in terms of it's not as easy as planting a Potato Patch no it's first of all okay the you can just bring the food uh with you on a human Mission to Mars I mean if you've got a crew of five and they're using a kilogram of food a day and it's a thousand day Mission that's five tons of of material that you're bringing and and you can do better if you bring dehydrated food and take water which you can recycle you can cut that down by you know a factor of four or so so now it's one ton or somewhere between one and five depending and that's a lot less mass than say the structure of the spacecraft it doesn't dominate the mission um so sure you you can bring MREs or TV dinners or spaghetti and and the and cook okay now the NASA does have some interest in creating bio regenerative life support which produces a small amount of food which would be good for the morale of a mission to have some fresh lettuce instead of just all preserved foods and so forth but if we're looking at producing food at scale uh for a settlement we need something entirely different uh entirely different from conventional field agriculture entirely different from conventional Greenhouse agriculture um and you see the the the the now if you look at the Biotech Industry okay so they're okay they are into biotech of course uh but they're looking for things first and foremost with uh High cash value such as Pharmaceuticals okay that's very good glad Biotech Industry is making novel Pharmaceuticals uh they are looking at boosting the uh vitamin content of various conventional crops things like golden rice that have vitamin A in it but it still needs the rice padding um the the idea of of doing this uh of really solving the problem of producing food in bulk with very limited acreage with two orders of magnitude less acreage than is readily available to a terrestrial farmer um this is it's a different kind of Biotech and once again we're interested in creating conventional foods and once again on Earth even if if you're doing something like aquaponics the base of the food chain is photosynthesis and you can do that because you have uh huge amounts of land or Pond or whatever it is you've got uh relative to what the Martians will have so in Earth they don't have the same driving constraints okay I get it I get it and I suppose the same is for uh Robotics and uh and uh also for Power Nuclear Power I know you've talked a lot about nuclear power in the past as being the Key Energy Source on Mars uh so NASA is doing some things around the edges and all those things but you are optimizing this for Mars and why is it that private investors would want to sign on for this all right now here's the thing okay we believe that dealing with these Technologies these are not flight Technologies these are settlement Technologies we will be developing Technologies in large part that have major potential terrestrial application so first it's cheap food all right uh and the the um and so what we're going to do is uh license these Technologies either by licensing the patents or creating spin-off companies around the various patents that are generated in the Mars technology Institute will have some equity in those companies return for licensing the um intellectual property so we aim to create essentially an Empire of spinoff companies using our inventions and collecting revenue from them and by so doing see we're not just going to develop the technology we're going to do two other things one is we're going to make money so that the Mars technology Institute isn't just going to be an engine of invention it's also going to become an engine of Finance for not only financing further research but ultimately if we're fully successful financing the settlement of Mars okay that's the next thing we're going to do uh that is becoming engine of finance and then the third thing we're going to do is in the process of doing this we're essentially demonstrating the business model of an action actual Mars colony okay that is rather than go to investors and say fundamars colony and we'll set up an inventors uh Colony there and that will generate IP and you'll get your money we're going to say first funded inventors Colony on Earth and we'll show that an inventor's Colony focusing on the issues that Mars brings to the fore can make money and then um we will both have money to finance the settlement of Mars and will have proven the viability of such a model to investors to also get involved in that and in fact uh I I see that people are already loving the reference to an Empire of spin-off companies and in fact as I understand it the structure of the Institute uh allows for non-profit uh activities as well as for-profit activities maybe you could talk a little bit about the Mars technology lab right okay so the Mars technology Institute which we uh have founded and which is the 501c3 tax deductible you can donate to it it's tax deductible um it funds research okay now we're also in the process of setting up a C Corp called the Mars technology lab whose initial Equity will be entirely owned by the Mars technology Institute okay however that is an entity that is open to investment so the idea is that if people uh and this is only for qualified investors okay and this is a high risk investment and it's a long-term investment we're not interested in investors that are looking at uh you know what's the easiest way to make the next Buck we're interested in investors who want to use their money to change the world and I mean look this was musk's attitude with SpaceX and uh Tesla okay he could have made more money easily by setting up some more.coms and stuff like that okay or a Facebook game that's what he once told me is
I could have made more money by doing a Farmville game all right we so we're not but we are looking at people you know who who want to do that and who um once they put the money to work in that and understand that it's a long-term investment but that it could potentially pay off very large um both for Mars for Humanity and to them uh that they can do well by doing good um and so we're going to set up such a vehicle there's a number of uh formal steps that need to be taken in order to set that up but that um is in the cards as well and then we will set up additional C Corps around specific technologies that are spun out I understand that there's a QR code up on the screen right now if if people are interested in donating uh that QR code facilitates your donation and you can also go to the marsociety.org website I I suppose there will be information there as well about donating but how much uh is going to be required to get this thing off the ground well we can start uh uh relatively small with a couple of million dollars uh to begin a research program I prefer more um the the and the idea here is that um we're going to do research that generates IP that may uh that generates income uh also there's actually going to be uh about six ways that the Mars technology Institute will assemble funds the first is donations okay second is through investment in the Mars technology lab the third is through licensing income and then also dividends from spin-off companies that we have equity in uh and then um both the Mars technology lab and the Mars technology Institute the first is a for-profit corporation the other is a non-profit Corporation there are various opportunities that NASA and other government agencies the National Science Foundation offers to bid on contracts that are devoted to one or the other of these kinds of entities um you know my own company pioneer astronautics my former company uh we funded for um 27 years winning over 70 NASA contracts uh we we never needed investors we never needed loans uh we had income from that we generated some IP which helped in the ultimate sale of the company uh and the uh so uh the Mars technology lab and Mars technology Institute will be able to engage in that game as well um the um so in other words contract income um from NASA and also uh from private corporations um so there's quite a few uh uh different routes for uh assembling the cash that is needed to uh do the job do you have a time frame in mind like when do you want to see the Mars technology Institute open its doors I'd like to do it by uh the first of the year um the um you know we are um you know going out with this right now telling people about it uh you should know uh we've gotten a pretty good response so far uh although we've only just put our our little toe in the water uh you may know that I was recently in Ukraine and um on the way back I stopped off in Poland to crack out and I gave a talk at the University there and the and it was a talk about you know the entrepreneurial Space Race stuff like this basically my book the Case for space and uh in the question period someone in the audience asked me a question uh he said so what's next for the Mars society and I mentioned a few things that we're starting a marsh technology Institute well at the end of the talk somebody this is in Poland walks right up to the podium and slams down 500 American dollars and says I want to donate this to the Marshall technology Institute and then just a couple of weeks ago someone else who had heard about it through the rumor mill sent us two thousand dollars um and I I think you know because I think there's going to be a lot of enthusiasm for this because you know it's one thing to support the Mars Society help us send um spread the word help us defend you know the Mars rover mission we helped save the Curiosity Mission which was going to be canceled um you know things like that or and the stations in the desert where we're researching how to explore on Mars but none of these things in themselves represent a path to actually putting humans on Mars and what we're doing here the plan here is to create not only the technology but the finances that will enable the settlement of Mars we don't want to have to I mean if you rely on NASA we will never settle Mars um it's possible that musk might launch a Mars settlement but uh I don't have to count on that um and have you talked with Elon Musk about this already uh I've run the idea by him uh he he's not getting involved at this point uh but that's fine because um you know uh Frederick Douglass uh once said uh he who would be free must himself Strike the Blood okay uh and another place he said you know he was a a black abolitionist you know uh emancipation would not be worth half as much if it was done by the efforts of white people alone okay uh and uh I think that the people who want to see Marsh settled who want to who have uh ideas on how to create a more humanistic Society on Mars and I think the most successful Mars Society will be the ones that offer people um greater chances to exercise their human potential because those are going to be the ones that actually attract immigrants um the the we need to be able to do this ourselves and not uh be um dominated by uh massive corporations or government a lot of potential models for an Institute it could be a virtual Institute here at the University of Washington there's a virtual Institute for astrobiology but there's also a physical Institute uh the Allen Institute that started out just being for brain science but now they've taken in cell science and Immunology how do you see the Institute being structured is there going to be a physical campus eventually yes um that's that's our goal uh now um we may start out um with only a a rather small lab of our own and Outsource a lot of research to existing uh uh the biotech companies uh in ours we would pay them to do certain parts of the research and they would get the work and they could get some equity in the patent but we would have majority equity in the pen um the um we're also going to do something that is extremely on but but the idea is to grow this thing both grow the the central company itself um and also grow its income potential through its IP um and through Investments which will come in as we develop IP um the the the to the point where we eventually have a central campus although we might continue to do some distributed products and projects and these could occur uh internationally by the way not just in the United States uh but in addition to that we're going to do something which is uh truly unique and it builds on the heritage of the Mars Society you know the Mars Society okay we've built the Arctic station and the desert station and we have the university Rover Challenge and also the European Rover challenge which by the way is coming up uh next week in Poland I'm actually going to be there um um the uh and the amazing thing about these projects is that um we've had tens of millions of dollars worth of work done for us without paying for it that as we've paid for the materials okay we paid for the materials uh to build you know for instance the desert station but we didn't pay anybody to build it we built it uh and there's Crews that go out to the desert station and do refits and there are Crews that go to the desert station and the Arctic station to do the research that we do there and we don't pay them they pay us um and uh and the the Rover challenge you you have a amazing amount of work done creating Advanced Rovers by uh the the the university teams themselves who nobody is paying and but also the people that uh Kevin Sloan and and his staff who actually operate the Rover challenge in the desert nobody's paying them and these are um very high quality people who if you paid them you'd have to pay them a lot so so this is our volunteer on you and what we're going to do um uh once again the volume of this will depend upon our funding uh but we are going to ask for proposals for certain kind of work for example initially in biotech where people say look I've got a lab or here I'm a high school teacher and I've got a bunch of students and we're willing to do this here's our our experimental program we're willing to do this we just need you to pay for the materials and if it's a meritorious proposal and the team is credible uh we'll fund it and uh so that we will create an enormous volume of research work at the cost down at least a factor of 10 below what it costs because like you run an r d company like 90 of the cost is salaries and benefits um and um materials rent stuff like that is small so and in this case we don't even have to pay rent so um the the um so we're gonna fund this so that this will amplify our r d effort we will pay for the materials we will own the IP that they generate but if you think about for example say high school students knowing that they are researching a biotech technology that could enable the human settlement to Mars how exciting that is to them and that they're doing something real that they're part of something Grand this is an enormously powerful stem initiative on its own terms okay I imagine some students are already asking where do I sign up because the school term is going to be is is pretty much started already is that something you plan to roll out sooner rather than later it depends on funding but at the latest it will be rolled out next school year and uh where is it going to be uh if if you didn't does that determine is that determined by who is going to be at the funder for example if Jeff Bezos were to say okay I'll give you a couple of million dollars and and let's put the institute in Kent Washington uh how do you determine where you would have a physical campus well that would certainly be a talk um but the but actually the Pacific Northwest is one of our favorite areas to put this another is is perhaps here in Colorado uh those are are the two top of the list Pacific Northwest would be excellent at very high quality of life and while costs are very large in Seattle and Bellevue if you go a little bit further out uh to you know Everett or Kent or places like that the cost can become reasonable and not too different from uh American norms and um and you've got a tremendously intellectual population you've got the University of Washington which is a tremendous University uh that's actually where I got my PhD um and um very strong in well biotech in Aerospace and in artificial intelligence yes and there's um of course in the Seattle area there's a lot of money generated by people who either graduated from UW or who simply migrated to the area uh there's been Aerospace there for a long time including um uh uh well initially Boeing of course but more recently blue and and whenever you have large companies like Boeing and blue you always get large numbers of people who work there for a few years and then Branch off and start their own small businesses that's for instance I'm an example of that Pioneer and many other people who once worked at Lockheed Martin started a small aerospace companies here so there's a lot of that in Seattle there of course is software money and internet money and this kind of thing of course the most famous being Microsoft but many others um software and internet related information technology companies which are now branching into artificial intelligence and virtual reality and all these sorts of things and then yes there's a lot of Biotech there so Pacific Northwest uh is is one of our uh uh uh um is perhaps the top of the list and um Colorado is an alternative costs here are lower um and um there's a you know we have some very strong universities here as well um but those two uh lead the selection um there are other space institutes I I think one of the one of our people in the audience has mentioned the Space Studies Institute uh there's the Lunar and Planetary Institute uh is there a possibility of partnering with these or is this something that you really want to have as your own thing well there's certainly possible Aerospace people team with each other all the time uh and if it makes sense to team if uh if there's a certain part of the process that requires elaborate facilities and someone already has them um and furthermore if they're um the kind of people that we want to work with then sure we team up with them and uh so uh teaming arrangements are possible for both self-funded research projects and and Equity could be divided in various ways depending upon who's bringing what to the table uh also teaming on proposals to NASA for example um the uh that well that's done all the time as you know if you look at uh various uh teams that bid on things like the human Landing system or other stuff right um it's always teams now uh you mentioned NASA have you talked with anyone at Nasa about this or are they hearing about this for the first time along with everybody else and also uh I assume that you have some advisors like a board of scientific advisors maybe you could talk about the sorts of people who have signed on to this perhaps that other folks would recognize as people in the space community okay well uh we have uh some people who um just recently retired from NASA from uh uh um two from NASA Ames one is Bill Clancy is very strong in uh artificial intelligence uh very strong and uh also uh Larry Lemke who's a very original thinker from NASA Ames and uh Tony Muscatello uh I was a chemical engineer uh and nuclear engineer from Kennedy Space Center um so there's some of them we've got people that are very strong in the biotech area um Steve Benner who is actually the first person to synthesize that Janine is on our Board of advisors uh Shannon Nangle who's a brilliant uh young woman who's founded a biotech company of her own called Circe she's advising us um we have um other people who are into aquaponics um because that could be in other words that process might involve physical chemical step uh something that is clearly biotech as it's currently defined and then things that are sort of unconventional agriculture uh you know you might combine all three of those to create an end-to-end process um we have nuclear people um uh Tom please who goes way back to the first breeder reactor efforts in the United States in Idaho and he was now involved in the thorium uh reactor company uh David Poston who uh created the killer power initiative is on our Board of advisors um the um we also have people with a very strong business backgrounds um Eric Bethke who uh created this game Millions on Mars and Starfleet games and many other internet games that he's he's also a person with well a knows a lot about programming and B knows a lot about business um and uh other people that are very sharp in the business world so we have people who have uh strengths in in those areas you've mentioned some of the other things that this Mars Society has done over the years including the challenges and the research stations in Utah and Canadian Arctic how important is this to you is this kind of the big bet for your organization is the Mars Society going to rise or fall depending on how this campaign goes well the Mars Society uh has existed without this for a quarter century and could continue to exist at its current level and doing a lot of good uh you know I mean we we've been spreading the word I mean SpaceX would not exist if there wasn't a Mars Society because uh we helped it wasn't just us that's for sure but we helped recruit him to making uh space his calling making humans to Mars his calling and many other people um not only at SpaceX but throughout the entrepreneurial space industry and and uh old-fashioned space industry uh have been rallied to want to make this their life's work by by our Outreach um you know uh the we as I mentioned we've defended a number of key missions that would have been canceled if not for us and those include Mars Express in Europe uh it include uh curiosity uh here um and um which the NASA science administrator at the time wanted to cancel because it was overrunning its budget um and we came out very strongly that Hubble actually um the uh we took a stand for Hubble uh and it was very useful because the only other people that were defending Hubble were the Hubble scientists and people said well that's them seeking their self-interest we you know um you know O'Keefe wanted to kill Hubble and said what are you worried about Hubble we're going to the Moon in Mars and I said if if you're afraid to send a rescue mission to Hubble nobody's going to the Moon Mars okay and um so we came out strong and don't desert Hubble and I'm proud to say we helped run O'Keefe out of his job and got someone in there Mike Griffin who um was prepared to save Hubble and did uh the the um and then there's the stations so we could do all this kind of stuff but uh and and regardless of the fate of this initiative we are going to continue to do all these sorts of activities that we have become known for but I want to up the gain here I want to get people to Mars and um the you know I I have to say um look I was born in 1952. okay and my father and all my uncles served in the war and um you know they came back and they had set the world right okay we not only had won the war we had won the peace we give them the Germans the Japanese better governments than they had ever created for themselves we created a better world and then and and the US government did that and um the the American people together with the government did that and then they did other things they did the interstate highway system they did Atoms for Peace they did Apollo and this is what I saw growing up and that was the government that I knew and so when I wrote the case for Mars I figured look what we have here is an aberration we've had you know this happened with Nixon and this happened with Carter and this with this one and that when that one but it we can get this thing straightened out and we can have humans to Mars because look here's the plan if we had the kind of determination that we had in Apollo could have humans on Mars in 10 years okay and but it it didn't come together we we've had a governmental senility and now we have governmental chaos and the um I mean it's incredible what is going on right now with the government and and and the toxic nature of the political discourse that would make any great project extremely difficult for the government uh to uh manage so okay we've had okay something else let's come in which has been very productive say well in view of the fact that the government hasn't been it's no longer credible as as the people that could open up Mars we've had this entrepreneurial uh thing going on but you know uh and and what musk has done is uh extremely impressive he's shown that it's possible for a well-led entrepreneurial team to do things that previously thought that only the government's a superpowers could do and not only that do it in one third at the time at one tenth the cost and even do things that they had deemed impossible altogether but he's also showing that it's possible for such entrepreneurs to become diverted in their priorities and uh so I don't have to count on uh the the space entrepreneurs to do with for him I I am willing to actually count upon the space entrepreneurs to create ever cheaper space flight Technologies because The Virtuous cycle has been Unleashed by spacex's accomplishments cheaper space launch means more launches means launches get even cheaper and the components of spacecraft become cheaper and the designers of spacecraft uh can become less conservative because the launch is cheaper all this is good stuff so we're going to have a lot more space activity but to actually get humans on Mars takes a vision that is sustained and that goes beyond how do we make the most profit doing you know an orbital research lab I think has gone to the orbital research Labs things like this um are going to become a credible business plans in the very near future um in fact we're seeing several private space stations uh right right okay but the but humans to Mars takes a leap beyond that and so basically if this is going to happen we have to create an institution that is dedicated to this purpose and which can acquire the means to execute this purpose uh and that's the purpose of the Mars technology Institute so so I have to turn things back over to Ashton but I had one last question uh I know you've been to Ukraine you've been to Poland I follow you on social media and so you're very aware of what the political situation is and and the climate Challenge and and you've spoken up quite a bit uh for using nuclear power as part of that mix it's got to be part of the solution there are a lot of challenges facing this world so why would someone spend you know a significant amount of money on Mars research rather than fixing the problems that we see here on Earth okay that's an excellent question it's because of this that the while I do believe that global warming is real I do not believe it's the greatest threat facing Humanity today not by a long shot uh uh I do not believe that resource depletion is real there are people that believe that there are people that believe overpopulation is realize I do not agree with that um resources are a function of technology and the more people the more inventors and that's why we actually have much more resources per person than we did a hundred years ago let alone a thousand years ago uh and but there is something that threatens Humanity um severely and that is bad ideas and in particular one bad idea uh it's the same bad idea that caused the catastrophes of the 20th centuries and it's threatening us now and this idea came in a variety of forms but it boils down to is there isn't enough for everyone and so we need to fight it out with them in order to get what there is or at least to protect what we have from them who they're coming for it okay and and of course this idea that there that we aren't a zero-sum world is promoted by tyrants because the ultimate justification for tyranny is the putative necessity for war that there has to be Central directive leadership this is the justification of the Putin crowd um the the it was the justification for Hitler in his day as well and the various militarists in Japan and and what have you um and now as I said um I don't believe that the resources of Earth are limited but they seem to be okay to try to prove to someone that the resources of the Earth are Unlimited it's like trying to prove to a mathematically illiterate person that uh a one-inch line segment can have an infinite number of points in it it seems counter-intuitive no it's one inch long it doesn't have an infinite number of points in it okay on the other hand if you can show a line that extends infinitely in both directions anyone could perceive that that has uh infinite number of points in it okay and so similarly if we can show that it's this vision of the future that people have if people can understand that by working together we cannot open the planets there's no point killing each other over provinces okay and so if if you want to save Humanity this is the thing to do to make it clear that we have available to us this unlimited future and it's this unlimited future that undermines all those whose rule depends upon the putative necessity for war okay you know Hitler he said this idea of Perpetual Prosperity through scientific invention he said as a Jewish plot to undermine people's belief in the necessity for war now it's not a Jewish plot but it does undermine people's belief in the necessity for war and I believe that we have to undermine people's belief in the necessity for War and the the greatest way we can do it is by showing that there's an infinite future that is available to us wow purple excellent well I think this was a very informative thank you Alan so much for hopping in and helping with this conversation today we got some great information about MTI I'm really excited for that so we're going to let Alan go and we're gonna shift gears and start to take some audience questions there we go yeah oh spur baby good to see you Robert all right good seeing you Alan [Music] all right so I know we've got a ton of questions from audience members so let's kick it off uh the first question that I have for you Dr zubrin is you've been interested in science and space exploration since you were a young student at what point did the idea of humans to Mars become one of your primary goals um I would say in the 60s uh I was five when Sputnik flew uh and it's actually the first major world event that I can remember in terms of my own personal experience I can remember Sputnik I remember you could look up you could see it uh and the now while the adults may have been uh alarmed twice but Nick I was delighted um and because I was an early reader and I was already reading science fiction and what's it said to me it was these stories about space travel were going to be true and I wanted to be part of it now it took a little longer for me to have a broader understanding of what is real in space and what isn't but by the early 60s I had read enough um of young adult science books I mean real science books but for people my age uh to know Mars was the interesting place that Mars was the place that was most likely to have life and it was the place that was the most promising to sin so it was from that point on I'd say about the time I was 10 or so uh and you know in the 60s we're going to be on the Moon by 1970 and Mars by 1980 or to be more exact 1981. um and and you know Saturn by 1990 in Alpha Centauri by the year 2000 I wanted to be part of that and that's why I learned all the science I could um now of course the only part of that program that was actually realized was we did make it to the Moon by 1970 right but then Nixon aborted the thing uh Nixon aborted NASA's plans to have humans on Mars by 1981. if they hadn't okay then the first children born on Mar probably would be graduating high school on Mars right about now but um but you know here's the thing even though what Nixon did was an amazingly stupid decision is kind of like Ferdinand and Isabella telling Columbus after he discovered the new world uh get lost we're not interested um the the okay if he hadn't made that mistake it would have been made by Carter or the one after that or the one after that in other words uh Apollo could have gone further it could have gone all the way to Mars okay had it not been aborted but the idea the settlement of space being supported by this kind of determination uh sooner or later that was going to fail and um and I have to think that while this entrepreneurial space revolution has been uh created in significant part by people inspired by the vision of Mars I don't think by itself it can be counted on to get us to Mars it can be counted on to create a lot of useful technology to goes to Marshall I think ultimately it's the idea itself that you know Victor Hugo said nothing could stop an idea whose time has come and that is provided that the idea has Messengers that can recruit to its banners that people prepared to make it prevail and um and that's what we're doing I mean this is the idea that is moving me uh it's the idea that moves the Mars society and I think that if we create this Mars technology Institute um the word can be made flesh absolutely yeah it moves me and all of our listeners and all the marsh Society members and everybody that's that's tuning in today uh great answer here uh another question is with recent findings we can sustain life on the Moon making oxygen does the same prove true for Mars well uh you can make oxygen on the moon uh in many places on the moon out of uh breaking up iron oxide the the technology to do that exists it's a somewhat difficult process but it's it's doable for sure and then of course at the South Pole there may be water which is easier to get oxygen out of on Mars it's still easier because there's plenty of water on Mars uh there are glaciers on Mars as far south as 38 North which is the latitude of San Francisco on Earth glaciers that are pure water ice and they have as much water in them as the great lakes and then there's a carbon dioxide atmosphere and either carbon dioxide or water or both can you can get oxygen out of either by physical chemical means or of course biotechnology that's how plants make oxygen um the so that can be done so and you know my Mars mission plans are based on the idea of doing such things in particular to make the returned repellent which has enormous leverage for enabling the Mars mission but if we're going to settle Mars we need to go beyond making propellant uh we're gonna have to make all the different kinds of things that people need or a large number of them and um and the top of the list is food and and and here's one other thing by the way I didn't mention this with Alan by taking on the challenge of cheap mass-produced food okay we're going to completely refute the Canard that space people don't care about the needs of the poor on Earth okay we're gonna flush that down the toilet bowl to history we're going to prove that we can do more good for Earth than all these other people who are always criticizing us sure sure uh speaking of maybe some criticisms here uh do you believe Artemis will be able to send the first man to the Moon by 2025 is that realistic or wishful thinking I think it could be done but it's not going to be done uh I don't think that Artemis is being approached with the kind of seriousness and resolution required to do that uh you know I mean look Trump started Artemis in 2017. now here we are six years later you know six years uh after
Kennedy launched Apollo's 1967 the Saturn V had flown and every all the vehicles were very far in development you know I have friends in Houston and uh they go by Johnson Space Center frequentl
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