Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you very much for the award,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's great to be before so many people
Speaker 1: who believe strongly in the in the establishment of life
Speaker 1: on Mars.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think my reasons for.
Speaker 1: Being interested in Mars and doing space X really that
Speaker 1: they come down to basically just two two things of
Speaker 1: one which the prior speaker was articulating, which is, there's
Speaker 1: the defensive reason in that if we are on more
Speaker 1: than one planet, the probable lifespan of human civilization and
Speaker 1: the line of consciousness as we know it is going
Speaker 1: to be far greater than if we are on one planet.
Speaker 1: So there's that that defensive reason, that life insurance reason.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's obviously a very important thing.
Speaker 1: And Earth's been around for four billion years, and civilization
Speaker 1: about ten thousand years, and it's only now that we
Speaker 1: have this the window has just cracked open where it's
Speaker 1: possible for life to extend beyond Earth. And and so
Speaker 1: I think it sort of seems sensible to to take
Speaker 1: advantage of that window while it's open. Hopefully it will
Speaker 1: be open for a long time, but it could be
Speaker 1: open for a short time. And so that's so we
Speaker 1: should take action and that's that's sort of the defensive reason.
Speaker 1: It's not actually the reason that I'm that gets me most.
Speaker 2: Fired up about about Mars.
Speaker 1: The thing that that actually gets me the most excited
Speaker 1: about it is that I just think it's the It's
Speaker 1: the grandest adventure I could possibly imagine. It's the most
Speaker 1: exciting thing. I couldn't think of anything more exciting and
Speaker 1: more fun and more inspiring for the future than to
Speaker 1: have a base on Mars.
Speaker 2: And it will be incredibly difficult, and they'll probably lets
Speaker 2: of people, will I.
Speaker 1: And you know, terrible and great things will happen along
Speaker 1: the way, just as happened in the formation of the
Speaker 1: United States. But it will be It'll be one of
Speaker 1: those things that is incredibly inspiring.
Speaker 2: And we must have inspiring things in the world.
Speaker 1: Life cannot just be about solving, you know, this problem
Speaker 1: or that problem. There must be things that when you
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, you're glad to be alive.
Speaker 2: And that I think is for me the.
Speaker 1: Most important reason why we should pursue the establishment of
Speaker 1: life on Mars. Now, of course I'm preaching to the
Speaker 1: advertt here.
Speaker 2: You know, I.
Speaker 1: Expect to hear a few objections from this audience. So
Speaker 1: I think, really what matters is finding a way to
Speaker 1: do it. In fact, i'll give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of background of my genesis of how I got into
Speaker 1: into space.
Speaker 2: Sort of started when I was in college.
Speaker 1: There were there were there were three areas that I
Speaker 1: thought would most affect the future of humanity and space exploration.
Speaker 1: The extension of life beyond Earth was one of those things,
Speaker 1: and I didn't ever expect to be involved in it
Speaker 1: because I thought it was the province of governments.
Speaker 2: And besides which, it sort of seemed, at least, you.
Speaker 1: Know, twenty one two years ago, that it was likely
Speaker 1: to occur because we went to the Moon, and then
Speaker 1: of course that people would go to Mars and we
Speaker 1: would establishing a base on the Moon, and they've been
Speaker 1: eventually based on Mars, and that sort of seemed like
Speaker 1: the natural progression of things.
Speaker 2: And then amazingly it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, well, well, it's it's about to happen.
Speaker 2: And again it just didn't. Didn't happen.
Speaker 1: There's mighty python skit about this. Suddenly nothing happened. Before
Speaker 1: you know it, nothing happened. So, in fact, in approximately
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, I saw a good friend of
Speaker 1: mine in college, my college housemate.
Speaker 2: Actually in New York, and he asked me what I
Speaker 2: was going to do after PayPal, and I said.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I've always been interested in space, but
Speaker 1: of course there's nothing that as an individual could do
Speaker 1: do about that. But the question got me curious is
Speaker 1: to sort of to find out, okay, well when are
Speaker 1: we sending people to Mars. So after I got back
Speaker 1: to my hotel room, I went to the NASA website
Speaker 1: to sort of look look, look up the schedule, because
Speaker 1: of course it had to be a schedule, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't find it.
Speaker 2: Thought I thought the.
Speaker 1: Problem was me, because you know, it's simply it must
Speaker 1: be here somewhere on this website, but it's just well hidden.
Speaker 1: And it turned out not it was another way side
Speaker 1: at all, so which was shogging.
Speaker 2: So then I thought, well, perhaps.
Speaker 1: The reason is that the American people have have led
Speaker 1: to have lost the will to explore or with you know,
Speaker 1: if if we just had more, if we've got people
Speaker 1: more interested in the subject, then then they would be
Speaker 1: inclined to want to do it. This turned out to
Speaker 1: be a false premise, by the way, but that was
Speaker 1: my initial My initial thought it was a mistake. So
Speaker 1: at first I thought, well, perhaps if we can do
Speaker 1: it a small philanthropic mission to Mars, something that would
Speaker 1: get the public excited, then then that would result in
Speaker 1: a bigger budget pronouncer and and then we could do
Speaker 1: exciting things and get the ball rolling again. And and
Speaker 1: that's about the time that I started talking to Robert
Speaker 1: Zuberin and a few other people. And so it's initially
Speaker 1: that the thought was to send a small greenhouse to
Speaker 1: the service of Mars with seasoned dehydrated new cent jail.
Speaker 1: They are hydrate upon landing, and then you'd have this
Speaker 1: little greenhouse on the surface of Mars. And the public
Speaker 1: tends to be, as they should, interested in things that
Speaker 1: are precedents and superlatives, so this would be the furthest
Speaker 1: that LIFs ever.
Speaker 2: Traveled the first life on Mars.
Speaker 1: And then you'd have this great money shot of green
Speaker 1: plants and a red background, so that that that would
Speaker 1: be that I thought, Okay, get people pretty exciting. They
Speaker 1: get pretty excited, and so I started investigating what that
Speaker 1: would take, and I was able to get the cost
Speaker 1: of the spacecraft down to sort of low single ADGIT
Speaker 1: millions and the cost of communications down and all, and
Speaker 1: and I was able to get everything compressed except for
Speaker 1: the cost of the rocket, and.
Speaker 2: And so the US rockets were way too expensive.
Speaker 1: Something like a Delta too would have cost sixty million dollars.
Speaker 2: And I figured I needed to do.
Speaker 1: To parallel, so two identical missions in case there was
Speaker 1: an equipment failure, because then it could be counterproductive. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like, look that fool you did that Mars mission.
Speaker 1: It didn't work, and now we definitely shouldn't do Mars.
Speaker 1: So so I figured we had to have redundant missions.
Speaker 1: And I just didn't actually have enough money from the
Speaker 1: sale of Payfal to from ice take in the sale
Speaker 1: of pay Fell to actually do that.
Speaker 2: So it didn't have enough money. So I went to.
Speaker 1: Russia in late two thousand and one, early two thousand
Speaker 1: and two to try to buy.
Speaker 2: ICBMs. Right, And that's as crazy as it sounds, you know,
Speaker 2: you so I guess about.
Speaker 1: Thirty thirty years old Internet guy arrives in Moscow.
Speaker 2: I wants to buy the biggest ICBM in the Russian
Speaker 2: rocket fleet.
Speaker 1: I said, I don't need the nuke, just need the rocket,
Speaker 1: and they thought I was crazy. But then they also
Speaker 1: thought I've always got money, so that's uh. So I
Speaker 1: was able to actually negotiate a deal to buy a
Speaker 1: couple of of dneppers.
Speaker 2: And now at the end of all that, I decided
Speaker 2: not to conclude the deal.
Speaker 1: So negotiated a price, but decided not to conclude the
Speaker 1: deal because after my third trip to Russia, that's about
Speaker 1: the time that I realized that my original premise was wrong.
Speaker 1: That it is, in fact, we do not lack full will,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States, perhaps the world as a whole,
Speaker 1: but particularly not the United States. It does not lack
Speaker 1: the will to explore, not in the least. In fact,
Speaker 1: the United States is a distillation of the human sport
Speaker 1: of exploration. Almost everyone came here from I mean, they
Speaker 1: came here from somewhere else. So you couldn't ask for
Speaker 1: a group of people that are more interested in exploring
Speaker 1: the frontier. And so, but if people do not think
Speaker 1: that there is any way to do it, if they
Speaker 1: don't think there's there's a means, then it's it's somewhat irrelevant.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not you're going to bash your head
Speaker 1: against a brick wall if you're confident that your head
Speaker 1: will break before.
Speaker 2: The wall will break. It's just not gonna happen.
Speaker 1: So so so that's when I started to start the
Speaker 1: Rocket Company because it was clear that that we've not
Speaker 1: made advancements in rocket technology. And that was the reason
Speaker 1: that that we hadn't made progress, that rocket technology was
Speaker 1: actually going worse. It was costing more and more to
Speaker 1: send things to space, uh than than in the past.
Speaker 1: So we had a negative technology curve, which is countertitive.
Speaker 2: Because we're so used to thinking in a consumer.
Speaker 1: Electronics realm and in everyday life improving, we sort of
Speaker 1: take it for granted like it's it's those things as
Speaker 1: those things automatically improve. They do not automatically improve. They
Speaker 1: only with lots of effort and resources. You saw the
Speaker 1: graph of the or the picture of the perramits there.
Speaker 1: Egyptian civilization got to the point where to create things
Speaker 1: like the great perimitive chips, but then lost that ability
Speaker 1: and never got back there, and or Roman civilization went
Speaker 1: went through a deep dop here. And it's not it's
Speaker 1: not a given that things improve. There has to be
Speaker 1: there has to be a forcing function. People have to
Speaker 1: do it. So anyway, so I started started, I started
Speaker 1: SpaceX and many people try to convince me not to
Speaker 1: start the company. That really tried their best, and many
Speaker 1: of my closest friends. I mean, if there was anything
Speaker 1: they could have done to stop me from starting the
Speaker 1: rock company, they would have done it. Want one, one
Speaker 1: good friend of mine compiled footage of rocket fail years
Speaker 1: and forced me to watch it. I said, I'd seen
Speaker 1: them all, so so it was certainly, but I think
Speaker 1: that perhaps missions to the premise, because when I started SpaceX,
Speaker 1: it was not with the expectation of success.
Speaker 2: I thought that the most likely outcome was failure.
Speaker 1: But given that the thing I was going to do previously,
Speaker 1: which was the the grim Mars Greenhouse mission, I expected
Speaker 1: that would have one hundred percent chance of a one
Speaker 1: hundred percent likelihood of losing all the money associated with it.
Speaker 1: So anything if a rocket company had less than one
Speaker 1: hundred percent chance of losing all the money associated with it,
Speaker 1: and therefore was actually quite a bit less risky than
Speaker 1: the thing I've been doing before. And anyway, so fortunately,
Speaker 1: I think things weren't resentally well with with with SpaceX,
Speaker 1: not in the beginning, because the first three launches of
Speaker 1: the Falcon one rocket that we did failed and and
Speaker 1: as what we were saying.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not a good day when the rocket fails.
Speaker 1: The first rockets failed only I mean it impacted sixty
Speaker 1: sixty seconds after.
Speaker 2: Liftoff, not not far from the launch site.
Speaker 1: So me and the rest of the team spent all
Speaker 1: of that day picking up pieces of the rocket, which
Speaker 1: is a very sad thing, but we picked them up
Speaker 1: to sort of see if we could, if would help
Speaker 1: figure out what went wrong. Fortunately, the fourth launch we
Speaker 1: were able to reach orbit. That's a good thing. It's
Speaker 1: a good thing we were able to do that because
Speaker 1: I had no more money left. So it's to Lula,
Speaker 1: my wife father. She's witness to the third and then
Speaker 1: the fourth launch. So yeah, so stressed out of the
Speaker 1: fourth launch, I didn't even actually feel elation.
Speaker 2: I just felt relief. But so it was a very
Speaker 2: very close call.
Speaker 1: But fortunately the fourth launch worked, and then since then
Speaker 1: all of the launches have worked.
Speaker 2: I hoped they continue to work.
Speaker 1: And SpaceX has gotten a lot stronger, and we've actually
Speaker 1: been slightly profitable for the last four years approximately and
Speaker 1: should be again this year. And the rockets now are
Speaker 1: much bigger, and we've we've got a Falcon nine which
Speaker 1: is about a million pound thrust rocket, and we've got
Speaker 1: an upgraded version of Falconine it's gonna launch next year,
Speaker 1: which will be almost one and a half million pounds
Speaker 1: at thrust, and then the Falcon Heavy, which will be
Speaker 1: over four million pounds at thrust, which is about sixty
Speaker 1: percent out of Saturn five impact. With two Falcon Heavy launchers,
Speaker 1: you could actually send people back to the surface of
Speaker 1: the Moon. And most people probably aren't quite aware of
Speaker 1: the scale of the rocket that we're building in Falcon Heavy.
Speaker 2: Should launch probably around the end of next.
Speaker 1: Year or certainly by early twenty fourteen at the latest,
Speaker 1: and and that I think will represent.
Speaker 2: A significant im provement in rocket technology.
Speaker 1: And then and then very importantly, we're also working on
Speaker 1: reusability because if you really boil it down to the
Speaker 1: various the crux of why don't we have a base
Speaker 1: on Mars, As I mentioned, there's rocket technology, but what
Speaker 1: really needs to be developed. The key invention that's necessary
Speaker 1: is a rapidly and completely reusable rocket. And this is
Speaker 1: a very difficult thing to do on Earth because because
Speaker 1: grath gravity is quite quite high, it's right on cusp
Speaker 1: of impossibility for such a thing.
Speaker 2: For a chemical rocket. So if you take an expandable rocket.
Speaker 1: Even after people a lot of smart people, using advanced
Speaker 1: materials and uh and and really approaching the limits of
Speaker 1: engine efficiency and everything, you'll typically get two to three
Speaker 1: percent of your lift off mass to orbit.
Speaker 2: That's where expandable rocket.
Speaker 1: Now, if you say, well, we want to make it reusable,
Speaker 1: we want to bring it back to the launch site,
Speaker 1: it's going to survive the rigors of a re entry,
Speaker 1: it's going to all the systems have to be capable
Speaker 1: of surviving multiple firings and film or fatigue, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's really you add a lot of mass when
Speaker 1: when it happens. And previously when people have tried to
Speaker 1: make a reusable system, they found that that they would
Speaker 1: get some portion of the way and then conclude that
Speaker 1: success was not one of the possible outcomes. In government programs,
Speaker 1: of course, that the program which will continue for quite time.
Speaker 2: It's funny but true. And so the real trick then.
Speaker 1: Is to say, can you create a rocket that is
Speaker 1: efficient enough that in an expandable form you can push
Speaker 1: that what would normally be two to three percent of
Speaker 1: master orbit up to maybe four percent of master orbit
Speaker 1: and then if you can get really good about the
Speaker 1: reusable elements, maybe that can only be cost you two
Speaker 1: of those four points, so on net you would still
Speaker 1: get two percent roughly of.
Speaker 2: Your lift off master orbit. That's the thing that needs
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: In order for that to happen, you have to really
Speaker 1: get kind of strade a pluses across the board in
Speaker 1: all elements of the rocket design, every little tiny thing,
Speaker 1: the engine efficiency, thrust a weight, the engine, the tank mass,
Speaker 1: the pressure mass.
Speaker 2: At the secondary structure of the wiring.
Speaker 1: Even that, the weight of the computers, and every everything
Speaker 1: matters immensely, and and and but if you do all
Speaker 1: those things right, then then this.
Speaker 2: It is possible to make this work.
Speaker 1: And this is what it has given me hope recently
Speaker 1: in the last few years, because I wasn't sure whether
Speaker 1: it was possible, But in the last few years I've.
Speaker 2: Become convinced that it is. It is possible. Of course,
Speaker 2: just because something is possible does not mean it will occur.
Speaker 1: But but I think I think it can occur, which
Speaker 1: is like I said, you know, success being one of
Speaker 1: the possible outcomes is very important. So that that's that's
Speaker 1: that's that's the breakthrough that space sex is really trying
Speaker 1: to achieve because the stuff we've done last far, I
Speaker 1: think is is good. I think it's it's but it's evolutionary,
Speaker 1: it's not revolutionary, and we really need the revolutionary thing
Speaker 1: to work.
Speaker 2: So so I think over the next few years.
Speaker 1: We'll see if if we're going to be able to
Speaker 1: do that to rapid a complete reusability thing.
Speaker 2: But but I'm actually if.
Speaker 1: A place it makes I probably should sound more optimistic
Speaker 1: than I. I am actually quite optimistic that this word code,
Speaker 1: so I.
Speaker 2: Don't want to leave any doubt. It feels my are
Speaker 2: quite optistic at OCO.
Speaker 1: And and and then going beyond that that that's for
Speaker 1: Earth orbit, but not to establish life on Mars. I
Speaker 1: think you really ultimately need to care be able to
Speaker 1: carry millions of people there and millions of tons of cargo.
Speaker 2: So you really need a fully.
Speaker 1: Reusable Mars transportation system, which is yet a more difficult
Speaker 1: step than creating a fully reusable Earth system. And then
Speaker 1: I I was was really worried that would not be possible,
Speaker 1: But year I became convinced that it actually is possible,
Speaker 1: which was maybe be very happy. Actually, in fact, I
Speaker 1: think it was there when I was pacing around the
Speaker 1: bedroom late at night trying to.
Speaker 2: See if this would work, and yeah, so yeah, so
Speaker 2: that's that's good news.
Speaker 1: Now I could be deluded, but I'm pretty Unless I'm deluded,
Speaker 1: I think, I think, I think, I think we've we've
Speaker 1: got uh something in mind, which which would be a
Speaker 1: good Which would it be a solution that would work?
Speaker 1: And then it comes to sort of the threshold of
Speaker 1: what it really comes down to a cost?
Speaker 2: What what's the what cost does it?
Speaker 1: Does a trip to Mars have to be in order
Speaker 1: for it to be a self sustaining reaction?
Speaker 2: And I think it's got You've got to roughly get
Speaker 2: to the to the I think around half a million dollars.
Speaker 1: If if if if you have pay half a million
Speaker 1: dollars to move to Mars, sell all this stuff on
Speaker 1: Earth because you don't need it obviously, uh, then then
Speaker 1: you could remove Mars.
Speaker 2: Then I think that that would work, because.
Speaker 1: You know, that's basically the net worth of of sort
Speaker 1: of a roughly middle income earning person after about twenty
Speaker 1: five years in the United States is roughly half a
Speaker 1: million dollars. So in fact, it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: buy a house in southern California for you know, half
Speaker 1: million dollars and in a lot of neighborhoods. So so,
Speaker 1: but I think at a roughly that level is where
Speaker 1: it would be, is where it works.
Speaker 2: That's what we're going to get to.
Speaker 1: And my calculations show that it should be possible that
Speaker 1: that in fact, it is possible according to me. H
Speaker 1: and and then so so that but there's a great
Speaker 1: deal of work that has to occur and then and
Speaker 1: then to.
Speaker 2: Make to make it a reality. So that that I
Speaker 2: think is.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe, yeah, I think I think that's that
Speaker 1: should be really good reason to feel good about the
Speaker 1: the possibility of of life on Mars.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so I think that's that's what probably what
Speaker 2: I'd like to leave you with. And uh and then
Speaker 2: then in the ensuing years, we will.
Speaker 1: I fail more and more about what we're going to do,
Speaker 1: and there'll probably be some ups and downs along the way,
Speaker 1: but uhh, but but I can finally see a path
Speaker 1: to to that objective. Like I said, as long as
Speaker 1: I'm not delusional, I haven't made some significant error, then
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 2: That will hopefully come as good news to people in
Speaker 2: this room. Thank you,