The Mars Generation Page #5

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[Raj] I understand things

are being done by NASA right now.

But I feel like after the '60s,

the acceleration of the program

just declined to a sad point.

[mission control] And liftoff

of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

[CAPCOM] Roger roll, Endeavour.

[deGrasse Tyson] We are no longer

advancing a space frontier.

A space frontier is:

how far have you gone lately?

Where are our farthest astronauts?

They're 250 miles above our head,

driving around the block,

boldly going

where hundreds have gone before.

That is not advancing space frontiers.

[Urban] Low Earth orbit is about putting

stuff in space to look back down on Earth.

It's about support for Earth industries.

The Space Shuttle

sounds like this big exciting thing.

The Space Shuttle! We're exploring!

But actually what the Space Shuttle was

was kind of a cargo delivery vehicle.

It would bring astronauts and equipment,

back and forth from low Earth orbit.

[Kluger] The Shuttle drained

NASA's resources.

It was a financial sinkhole, essentially,

from 1975 up through 2011.

Any dreams of going to Mars

during the Shuttle era were impossible

because all of the money

was going to the Shuttle.

[Josh] NASA is kind of at a holdup.

We haven't gone places.

So don't go to space.

But what you can send to Mars

are non-humans and non-living things,

like robots.

[instructor] Before you leave this table,

I need you to figure out what

your robot's primary task is going to be.

You can't just send all of them in there

and have all four of them

try and do the same task.

That's not going to be productive.

[Aurora] All right, guys,

we got everything up here, so...

Is that everything?

-[Aurora] Yes, it is.

-Can we get a picture?

[Jace] We do robotics at Space Camp

because robotics is

a huge part of the space program.

Exploration done today

isn't done by humans.

It's done by robots.

[Kluger] NASA's unmanned

exploration of the solar system

is the great unappreciated crown jewel

of the space agency.

[newscaster] It began here at

the Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Viking 1 and Viking 2 were readied

for their separate journeys to Mars.

[Patrick] A robot is important

for forerunner exploration,

where we send a robot first.

It lets us know

it's OK for us to go there.

The planet Mars right now

is entirely populated by robots,

which is an interesting thing

to think about.

[Bobak Ferdowsi] Curiosity's designed

specifically to look at

past habitability

and present habitability of Mars.

That's really taking the step of where

we understood there was once water on Mars

to whether that water

could have supported life on Mars,

or maybe even still support life on Mars.

[mission control]

And liftoff of the Atlas 5 with Curiosity,

seeking clues to the planetary puzzle

about life on Mars.

[Ferdowsi] The thing that makes

Mars so incredible

is that it's this sister planet of ours,

and the possibility that life could have

arisen there some time in the past,

that maybe life is more prevalent

than we thought in the past.

[mission control] At 10.13 local time

we'll initiate

the descent stage thermal batteries,

and from that point on

EDL ops will take over.

[Ferdowsi] I'm a little partial

to the Curiosity rover.

[mission control]

We're down to 90 meters per second

at an altitude of 6.5 kilometers

and descending.

I worked on that mission

for almost 10 years.

[mission control] UHF is good.

Touchdown confirmed.

We're safe on Mars!

[cheering]

[mission control whoops via radio]

[Ferdowsi] I think the longer you spend

working on them,

the more attached you are to them.

They become kind of like kids.

We are going to need a button pusher.

-I can do that.

-Jace!

Jace, just a heads up,

that's priority numero uno!

Jace is a good programmer.

We can't afford not to--

-Jace, are you programming right now?

-Yes.

[Jace]

With these robots, you have to learn

how to program them to work

without a human being at the controls.

Can Bucky hold

one side of the yellow doors?

Which side do you want?

I can program for both.

Jace is so good at programming.

He just went right to it!

He's got a ton of patience

when it comes to testing that robot.

A lot of times in retrieval,

the things are

in a very specific place every time.

So we can make a rough program,

go out, figure out what happened wrong...

...then just make it more and more

and more and more precise

so we can perfectly execute that

when the mission comes.

Activate COMS.

Right now I'm learning

how to code in Python.

I'm new to it. I'll admit,

I can't make something really complicated.

I can make a game of Pong work!

That's about it.

But I'm learning.

A little nervous. It should work.

I programmed it for a long time.

[Ferdowsi] With Curiosity,

what was amazing

was that the first drill hole we drilled

we found evidence of past water on Mars

and that that water

was kind of relatively fresh

and could have supported certain types

of life as we know them on Earth.

The next questions are really

of whether life could exist on Mars.

Future missions can go

and actually look for evidence of life.

And maybe the best way to do that

is with humans,

where they can bring samples back,

like the Apollo missions did.

[Kluger] When we put a robot on Mars

and we give it a name called "Curiosity",

and we have it send down automatic Tweets,

and we love it and we call it names

like "plucky" and "tough".

[Raj] We're on the ground.

Just don't move yet!

We gotta wait for Jace.

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

[instructor] Begin!

[general chatter]

[Kluger] We humanize robots

because it's the next best thing.

But in the case of explorers

on other planets,

humanizing, anthropomorphizing

our machines

are because we don't have

real people to get there.

[cries of disappointment]

[Raj] All right, lost a wheel.

[Ferdowsi] Humans can do in a day

what it takes a robot months

or sometimes years to accomplish.

Curiosity's been on the surface

for a little more than three years now,

and we guess that a human could do that

within a week.

All the science that we've done

so far in that three years,

a human could walk around, chisel rocks,

look at them, investigate them.

Don't move that. Don't move that.

Patrick, don't move it!

Patrick, don't move it!

I can get it.

Just kind of disappointed that our bot

didn't function how we wanted it to.

It was only able to complete

two or three tasks,

rather than the about six

that we had planned for.

[camper] Oh no!

[laughter]

[camper] It's broken. Oh no!

[deGrasse Tyson] I've yet to see

a ticker tape parade for robots.

Or a high school named after a robot.

So, there's the vicarious value

that one of us experiences that

and comes back to talk about it.

You can touch that person.

And that person carried out

the dreams of a civilization.

-[camper] No!

-[Raj] Yo, man. Just keep going!

-[camper] Ten seconds!

-[instructor] Nine, eight, seven, six...

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