The Mars Generation Page #10

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There could be a war.

There could be a plague.

It is possible for humanity

to be wiped out.

[Dr. Kaku] On a scale of decades,

we also have climate change.

If you take a look at all the signs,

all the signs point up,

in terms of temperature.

[Nye] Our space assets

monitor carbon dioxide,

they monitor the thickness of glaciers.

And we can see that humankind

is changing the climate.

[Kyle] We're not dumping a lot

into alternative energy.

We're cutting down rainforests,

we're using up a lot of natural habitats.

A lot of problems

with climate change are alarming

because we're finding

these things are not reversible.

So, by exploring space,

we can either find somewhere to go,

or we can develop technologies

that will help us repair

what damage we've done.

[mission control]

T minus ten, nine, eight, seven,

six, five, four,

three, two, one.

It's not clear

that the Space Launch System

is still on schedule and still on budget,

and this is a concern for everybody.

The SLS, it's an interesting machine,

to say the least.

Almost all of its technologies

are derived from the Space Shuttle.

Its engine's the RS25,

the same engine that we were running

for 30 years on the Space Shuttle.

I'm a little bit disappointed that no

new technology really went into making it.

[Kluger] The SLS can get us to Mars.

The SLS most assuredly can get us to Mars.

But the problem with the SLS,

the Space Launch System,

the 21st century Saturn 5

and Orion,

which is the 21st century Apollo program,

is that there simply isn't the money

to get them built and tested and flying

in any kind of near term timeframe.

[deGrasse Tyson] NASA can say

that Mars is in our portfolio.

We're gonna send astronauts there

in the 2030s.

OK, show me the money.

Talk is cheap.

So we can talk about going to Mars,

but until I see the launch pad with

the spaceship equipped to accomplish that,

I'm not gonna run around saying

"Yeah, we are the Mars people."

No we're not. Not until that happens.

[Donald Trump] Go ahead.

In my industry one of our biggest

victories was putting a man on the Moon.

-Yeah.

-What do you think about humans on Mars?

Honestly, I think it's wonderful.

I want to rebuild

our infrastructure first, OK?

I think it's wonderful.

[cheering and applause]

Go ahead.

NASA's not in charge,

it's at the whim of government.

So every time

there's a change in presidents,

there's a lot of changes at NASA,

automatically.

[reporters all ask questions]

Thank you, everybody!

We're not, we are not going to be

taking any questions.

Thank you, guys!

[Patrick] We are building the SLS,

but at the rate we're going right now,

it won't be done until I'm like 40 or 50.

They keep saying my generation

is the Mars Generation,

but we're not at this rate.

We could be if we gave them the same

support we showed the Apollo program.

[Nye] During the Apollo era, everybody,

NASA was funded

at 4% of the federal budget.

Today, it's 0.4%,

almost exactly a tenth of what it was

during the Apollo era.

And that's not gonna change.

That's the way it is right now.

[Urban] NASA is handcuffed

to the U.S. budget.

The U.S. budget has a thousand claws on it

trying to get the money.

For NASA to innovate, for NASA to do

amazing things that it would like to do,

it needs an insane budget.

It needs a far different budget

than the other kind of agencies.

[Jace] NASA, all of the money

they have ever received

from the government combined,

is still less

than the yearly budget of the D.O.D.

Which is kind of appalling to me.

[Urban] SLS and Orion are cool.

I mean, if you like rockets,

they're gonna be awesome.

They're gonna have

immense amount of thrust.

But they haven't done

the important innovation,

which is that they're still

super crazy expensive.

If every time you flew in an airplane,

you landed, the passengers got out,

and the plane was thrown away

cause planes flew once,

well, it would cost a million

and a half dollars for a coach seat.

No one would fly.

It would be a zero industry.

It would be for crazy billionaires only.

That's the current state

of our aerospace industry.

[Dr. Kaku] There is a nasty four-letter

word that has haunted the space program.

It's the "C" word.

"Cost".

Imagine your body made out of solid gold.

That's what it costs

to put you up in outer space.

That's why we have to drive down the cost.

[Urban] You can improve incrementally

when it comes to getting off of Earth

with cheaper rockets

and maybe better fuel.

But what was needed

was like a giant leap forward

in the cost of space travel.

And there really was one way to do that.

And it was the fact

that every rocket was used once.

There's a debate as to whether private

enterprise or the federal government

can create innovation.

[Jace] Privatization of space.

This is a very interesting subject,

to say the least.

[Raj] The private space industry

is a direct result

of NASA not being able to fund

everything it wants to do.

I don't think it's a bad thing,

it's a good thing.

[Urban] NASA has a lot of leadership

potential and a lot of budget potential.

And it can use it

to partner with these companies.

Rather than fight against these companies

and make its own rocket,

let the private companies

fight for who has the best rocket,

and then NASA will use that best rocket

to do its business in space and in Mars.

[newscaster] Welcome to the live webcast

of the SpaceX launch of the ORBCOM mission

from Launch Complex 40

out of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

[Nye] Elon Musk of SpaceX,

he asked, "What is it

we need to do to go to Mars?"

And people told him,

these are experts told him,

"We need to lower the cost

of getting into low Earth orbit."

[Urban]

Elon thinks of Earth as a hard drive,

and he thinks of humanity as

a very important file on that hard drive,

and Elon looks at the history

of mass extinction events

and sees the hard drive

has a tendency to crash.

Some people think it's fine,

just stay on Earth forever.

And some people don't.

Creating a self-sustained

civilization on Mars

to provide insurance for life

as a whole,

a future where we are

a space-faring civilization

and out there among the stars

is infinitely more exciting and inspiring

than one where we are not.

The goal of SpaceX is really

to build the transport system.

It's like building

the Union Pacific Railroad.

[Urban] What SpaceX is trying to do

is to build the first reliable

interplanetary railroad.

[Lauren Lyons]

Using today's standard technologies,

it would cost about $10 billion per person

to get to Mars and to live there.

That's pretty absurd. Not many people

on this planet that can afford that.

And if we're going to build

a real civilization there

where we have thousands,

if not millions, of people

living, working and thriving on Mars,

we're gonna have to

get that cost down significantly.

[mission control] T minus one minute.

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