The Mars Generation Page #11

---

[Urban] The idea is the rocket takes off,

pings a spacecraft into space,

either into low Earth orbit

or towards Mars.

The rocket comes back

and lands vertically,

gets some maintenance, gets refueled.

Boom! Pings another thing out into space.

It can do this all day.

It can send 15 things out in a day,

one rocket.

[mission control] Liftoff!

[Kluger] While the U.S. plans

to get human beings to Mars

sometime vaguely in the 2030s,

he believes he can cut that time

by 10 years

and get them there in the mid 2020s.

It never pays to rule out Elon Musk.

But, also, it never pays to get so seduced

by the Tony Stark side of Elon Musk

that we think he can do anything.

He's gonna come up against

the same obstacles

every other rocketeer in history has.

[Jace] Private industry is willing

to take risks that NASA isn't.

This could be economically.

They could try to throw a lot of money

at something that might not work.

But if it does work, boom.

You have something amazing.

[mission control]

The first stage is returning to land.

The second stage powers

the Earth satellites into low Earth orbit.

[Urban] If rockets aren't reusable,

then humans don't go to Mars

this century or next century,

or maybe ever.

[excited chatter]

[mission control] That is the first stage.

Coming back down and landing!

[cheering]

[more cheering]

I was just...not shocked, because I knew

we had what it would take to do this,

we had come so close in the past.

But feeling all of these things

that we've been talking about,

all this effort, blood, sweat, and tears

that went into this to succeed,

it was now real.

It was there in front of us.

Being a part of that unique moment

in history was just mind-blowing for me.

[Urban] Elon's idea is not

to make the Mars thing happen by himself.

Elon is trying

to start this chain reaction,

he's trying to

start a forest fire with a match.

By solving this one giant problem,

the fact that you had to build

a new rocket for every launch in the past.

By doing that, he thinks he can ignite

an entire new era of space travel

where we become

a genuinely space-faring civilization.

[Lyons] The vision of building

a civilization on Mars,

it's such a big, huge endeavor.

It's not something

one single company can do alone.

You need another perfect storm,

you need some perfect storm of resources

and technology and the right people.

And it's exciting

that I think maybe we have that.

What SpaceX is trying to do

is create a situation

where all these industries and governments

suddenly start saying,

"Well, now this is an option

we want to get in the game."

And suddenly, all this money

pours into rocket innovation,

into Earth/Mars industries.

Then that's what empowers the big push

to get a million people there eventually.

[Nye] Now, you can only go to Mars

every 26 months.

The orbits have to be oriented.

You can't just fly over the Sun.

We don't have enough rocket fuel for that.

[Alyssa] Sometimes Mars

is really close to the Earth,

sometimes it's really far,

because planets orbit

in an elliptical path.

And we'll stay on Mars for about

a year or two, depending on its orbit.

We have to wait for Mars

to come all the way back around

to its closest point

for us to come back.

[Kluger] Once you're there,

you have to be prepared

to stay for an extended period of time.

And once you're prepared

to stay for an extended period of time,

and the first handful of people,

four people, six people, eight people,

learn to live off the land

to the extent that that can be done,

learn to make Mars their home

for more than a few days,

once you do that,

you've hammered your first piton

in the great mountain

of colonizing another planet.

If you establish first a cargo route

and then a human transportation route,

you have to imagine

that by a year like 2060,

you have a thriving civilization on Mars.

It's gonna be this normal part of life.

There'll be people

going there for college,

people are going to be

in long distance relationships.

There will be people born on Mars

who want to go to Earth for a stint

to see the Eiffel Tower in the flesh,

to see the Sphinx in the flesh.

[Victoria] If we could have a Mars colony,

that would just be so cool,

to put footprints on Mars

and now we are having life living there.

We can put people there.

We can have people live there.

We could even terraform it

if we really tried.

[Urban]

What we're talking about eventually

is a blue-green planet with maybe

7 billion of its own people on it.

And you could look at a picture

of a gorgeous green mountain

and a lake and not know

what planet you're looking at.

[deGrasse Tyson] It's a brand new planet,

who knows what future economies await us

on that planetary surface?

Even if you can't think of one now,

it doesn't mean there isn't one.

And especially given

the history of exploration and discovery,

there probably will be.

[Kluger] When you go somewhere else

and live in a wild, rustic life,

you've made the decision that

that kind of life,

the world you're building,

is more valuable to you

than the world that's already built.

Your motivation is to live here,

to settle here, to die here.

Because what you have in mind

is three, five,

a hundred generations beyond you,

and you've made the decision

that you're going to be

the first stake in the ground

of that new world.

[chatter]

[Jace] Tell Orion that you're gonna start

their primary ingress checklist

for Commander and Pilot

and DDP 1 and 2 and B 1 and 2.

[Colin]

All right, so...you first, Orion, on F1.

Primary ingress checklist

for Pilot and Commander...

All right, IDP CR22 power is on.

Major functions set to DNC.

We ordered that pizza 45 minutes ago.

It's been over 30 minutes. It's free now.

No it's not.

They stopped doing that anyway.

[Patrick] I want my free pizza!

-[Raj] All checklists are done.

-Yay! Ascent procedures.

[Raj] Everyone switch

to ascent procedures.

[all] Five, four, three, two, one...

[camper] Oh my goodness! That is amazing.

[Dr. Thomas] One thing that's

impressed me the most, of anything else,

is that kids today have that same drive,

that same interest, that same passion

for space exploration

that I had as a young boy watching

the first American launch into space.

-[camper] That's a lot of retro.

-[Raj] All right, listen up Orion.

Now we're done with launch so

start focusing on our checklist again.

Our engines are turned off.

We are good to unbuckle.

I'm floating around

in the most peculiar way.

Early this morning, the Space Launch

System launched from Cape Canaveral,

carrying along with it the Orion capsule

and six brave Americans

on their way to go boldly

where no man has ever gone before.

Let's do this!

[Kluger] Exploration is absolutely

embedded in our DNA.

If we are on this hill,

we want to know what's on the next hill.

We cannot help ourselves.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes