This morning we've heard a number of talks about extremely exciting devevelopments going on in various fields, data,
telecommunications, bio-technology. I'm going to talk about space technology and

the

unfortunately

to give a truthful presentation that's space technology right now one cannot give a descriptive presentation in which
one

talks all sorts of great exciting developments there rapidly moving forward because they're not.
And

So

Rather than attempt to do that, I'm going to talk a little about why this space progam has been essentially stagnant for
the past , thirty years. And what is needed to to create an age of rapid progress in this area.

If you look at the American space program. It had two fundamental modes of operation during
its lifetime which I call the Apollo mode and the shuttle era mode.

The Apollo mode prevailing roughly in the period from say 1961 to 1973 and the shuttle era
afterwards. In the Apollo mode the way things worked was you had clear direction from
the political class of an objective a driving objective for NASA in that case you
ubits to the moon. And then NASA was charged to do this to accomplish this objective within finite
span of time and before they went off and designed an efficient plan to accomplish that goal, they went and designed a
coherent set of hardware elements to implement that plan. They built the hardware and they flew the plan.
That's a Apollo. In the shuttle era mode, lacking any direction rather what NASA chose to do was simply poll
its constituents which is to say it's major field centers and aerospace organizations and corporations as to
what they would like to do. They then would be lobbied with an essentially a random set of
constituently driven projects that are proposed to them. A certain subset of those would be approved and then
would be built and you would get a random set of projects implemented that did not fit together and did not
leave lead anywhere. And that is why.

A lot people think for example that the reason why NASA's program, the American space program,
has been going so much slower since Apollo is that the budget has been radically smaller and in fact that's false.
NASA's budget this year 16 billion dollars NASA's average budget during the Apollo era in today's
money was seventeen billion dollars the money's been the same. NASA since 1988, has been funded
essentially at Apollo era levels. There was a decline funding in the late '70s and so forth carter.

But basically the late Reagan period, we been funded at Apollo levels and we've achieved nothing.

Because they had no goal. Once again I have to emphasize this point because it's the key point.

If you want to compare the Apollo mode to the shuttle mode, think of two couples that both want to build their own dream
house. Couple number one has an idea their dream house. They hire an architect to design a house in accord with that
notion. He comes up with a plan. They approve the plan. They buy components. They build the house. That's the Apollol
mode. Couple number two polls their neigbors what house parts they might have for sale

and buys those that are most convincingly market to them. So they get you know a spiral staircase, some door columns
some aluminium siding, a Statue of Napoleon in the center of a fountain.

and they pile it up in their backyard and then when the in-laws come and ask them why do you have all this junk
piled in your back yard? ok, they say this is parts of the house we're going to build and pa-in-law says I'd
like to see the plans for this house. So they out an hire an architect to design a house
instructing him tol design it that it will use all of these parts.

So he designs a house with door columns, spiral staircase, aluminium siding and a statue of Napoleon
in a fountain. and no one can build that house but never the less serves the purpose of creating an appearance that these purchases
are rational. And that's what's been going on. Now.

and that's why we have achieved nothing in human space flight program. In the robotic program there have been
some achievements but is because the robotic missions are small enough in scope and scale they can be
defined as coherent self contained projects in which a mission can be designed end to end built in flow.

But if we talk about the human space flight program, we have nothing but chaos. The, now, after the failure of
of the Columbia mission, there was much soul-searching. The political class started paying attention to NASA. They
said what the hell are you doing?

the, why are doing this? What's your goal? What's your objective? because the Columbia mission for example
had no meaningful scientific objectives and aside from the fact that the shuttle's was lost and seven
people were killed even putting that aside, they spent a billion dollars on a mission without any real reason to
do it.

So and the Gamin, Admiral Gamin did the investigation on the Columbia failure and he expanded his pervue
beyond looking into the particulars of the cause of the accident and the foam failure and what have you and
he basically came back to report that in addition to identifying the specific failures, identified a more global failure, the one which I was alludng to,
and he said look, if you're going to take the cost of risk of human space flight, you have to have goals that are worthy
to those costs and risks. So responding to this criticism the administration ran off and they conducted a big study
in the fall of 2003 as to how to create a goal for NASA. To create a destination driven space
program and that notion, by the way, was opposed by the then current NASA administrator, Mr. Shaun O'keefe,
sort of the Mike Brown of space.

who said NASA should not be a destination driven space agency. He has since left NASA for the University of
Louisiana and thereby significantly raised the IQ of both organizations.

But the. Anyway, they conducted this study on how to have a destination drivin thing and they came back with
a report which President Bush released in January 2004, which was called the vision for
space explorations. The big national security document associated with this and I could go into in-depth
critique of this policy but basically it said NASA should have a goal and so forth and so on and they said
that first they wanted to go to the moon and then spend some time there than go on to Mars. However,

the way this thing the program was written was actually a compromise between those who did want to have a
destination program and those who did not and so it basically said is were going to have business as usual until
2010 i.e. until well after the termination of the Bush administration even assuming a second term,
and then after that we will shutdown the shuttles and stop building the space station and then we'll
start a new Mars program. So to paraphrase St. Augustine what

they were basically saying is Lord, let me have a destination driven space station program but not yet.

And the and there it is. That remains the case right now. However,

so we are still in the mire here. We have not had a commitment of, you know, the Bush committment to the moon and Mars is
as if John F. Kennedy has stood up in 1961 and said I believe that Americans should go to the
moon and I hope that the administration elected in 1972 begins such a program. So there are.
We still need a program. Now, what should the goal be? In my view, okay NASA needs a driving goal. The goal needs to be
humans to Mars and there's three reasons for that. Basically its Mars is where the science is. Mars is where the challenge is
and Mars is where the future is. Mars is the rosetta stone for letting us know where the life is a general phenomenon
in the universe and unique to earth and whether life as we know it on earth is the pattern for all life everywhere or where
there is just one particular example of a much faster tapestry of possibilities . It's with challenges. It's the challenge that has
that's been staring our space program in the face for the past thiry years and it is where the future is. it's the planet that has the
resources to support life. It's the planet that, therefore, has the potential resources to support a new branch of
new civilization. and therefore Mars if the critical test for us as to whether we can break out of the bonds
of a single planet and become a multi planet space bearing species. Now, okay. Look, a lot of people
talk about how much money it would cost to do a humans to Mars program, and so forth and so on. Now, it's quite
true that it could cost a principal an infinite amount of money to do a humans to mars program by the same
logic as that to connect to post, it could take an infinite amount of rope. On the other hand, if
you pull the rope tight, the amount of rope required to connect to post is the distance between
the posts. That, once again, is the logic of the Apollo program as opposed to the rope sale.

Now, next chart. All right. Look. You don't need to go to the moon to go to mars. ok it's bunk and
in fact it serves no purpose to go to the moon to go to Mars. In his speech announcing the new space
inititiative Dr. Bush said we're going to launch space craft to go to Mars from the moon because
moon has much lower gravity then the earth and it's easier to fly off of the moon then the earth.
That's true but before the spaceship departs from the moon, it has to get to the moon and if you just look
at the amount of prepulsion requirements required to go to the lunar service from lower orbit are actually
greater than those to go to mars from lower orbit. but even if we had a lunar base right now which had
vast refueling facilities available and was giving away rocket fuel for free to anyone who stopped by
it would still not make sense to go to the moon on your way to mars because it takes more propellent
to get there then to go to mars.

Another thing, this was a great favourite of Shaun O'Keefe. He used to talk about using a nuclear
electric spaceships to go to mars. Before we go to mars, according to Mr. O'keefe, you had to have,
you know, the depth star here, you could see that this is rather a large spacecraft. Mars is in the corner for
scale and this sort of thing is heavily favored by those who don't want to go to Mars because if you say
this is what you need to go to Mars, then you're not going to Mars. But in fact, this kind of stuff is
not needed. This is technology playground. It can be said another rope sale the reason why you have to
go to the moon is to practice for Mars missions on the moon. Yes you can practice for Mars mission on
the moon but you can do it for 1/1000th of the cost in the Arctic. That by the way, is the Mars society
Mars space that we've built in the Arctic for about a million dollars. It's a lot less costly than a lunar
initiative. The, and anything you could do to practice on the moon, you could do in the Arctic and
in fact better because it is more geological phenomonon. To investigate.

All right, look, we don't need depth star spaceships to fly to Mars. The idea of going to Mars is
within our technology. To do units to Mars is not about building depth star spaceships and it's not
about building Cape Canavrel's on the moon, it's about sending payloads from the surface of the earth
to the surface of mars capable of supporting a small group of people or sending either that or a
comparable payload back. So we need a heavy lift booster that can send payloads on the order
of 30 tonnes from earth to mars. That would a saturn 5 class vehicle. If you wanted to re-engineer
the saturn 5 you could. Otherwise you could make a saturn 5 equivalent vehicle out of shuttle technology.
just by losing the orbiter and replacing it with a hydrogen ozygen upper stage. This is 1960's rocket
science. If you have such a vehicle this is actually how you do a humans mars mission. In a given year,
I call it year 1, it's your first operational year, you launch one of these boosters off the cape and you use
it to throw an unmanned payload to mars with a masse on the order of 40 metric tonnes, the payload
flies out to mars, it takes 8 months to get there. It arrow breaks to capture it in tomorrow's orbit and you
landed on the surface of mars. What is the payload? It consists of a number of things. The main thing
is earth return vehicle. As I said there is no one in it now but it has accommodations for a crew or
4 to do a 6 month transit from earth to mars later. It's got two unfueled methane oxygen rocket propulsion
stages which, however, the lower stage contains around 6 tonnes of liquid hydogen and then slung below
the vehicle, not shown in this diagram, you have a light truck, like a little pickup truck and in the back of
the truck you have a small nuclear reactor with power of about 100 kilowatts. The truck is tele-robotically
driven a few hundred yards away, unwinding the cable off the windless as you go. The reactor's
placed on the ground to turn it on. Now you've got power at the ship. You run a pump. You suck in
the Martian air. Mars has air. It's carbon dioxide. You can react carbon dioxide with the hydrogen you
brought from earth to produce methane and water. Methane is excellent rocket fuel. The water you
electrolize to produce hydrogen oxygen. The oxygen that you oxidized, the hydrogen is recycled
and to get additional oxygen which you need to get the right mixture ratio for your propellent, you run
a third reactor in which you breakdown CO2 into carbon monoxide and oxygen. The oxygen you keep
and the carbon monoxide you vent as waste. You can do that on mars. There's no EPA there.
So, when you're all done, you turn 6 tonnes of hydrogen from earth to 108 tonnes of methane oxygen
on Mars. This is 19th century chemical engineering. Even I have done it. So, now you have a
fully fueled earth return vehicle sitting waiting for you on mars. Then at your next launch window, you
launch two more boosters off the cape. One shoots out of another earth return vehicle and the other
shoots out of habitat with a crew of 4 astronauts in it. Because we have a return ride waiting for us
on the surface of mars, we don't need to fly to mars in a giant death star spaceship. We don't even
need to fly to mars in a comparitively modest millenium falcon. No, we can fly to mars in a
tuna can and that's quite fortunate because we know how to build them and they are excellent for
packaging purposes. That's been proven in the tuna industry. Now, our can's a little larger than the
chicken of the sea model. It's about 16 feet tall and 27 feet in diameter. so you've got two decks with
about 8 feet of head room. Upstairs is where they live and downstairs is where the cargo and workshop
and some other things are. There's a diagram of the hab. Accommodation for 4 astronauts and public
areas and in the center a solar flare storm shelter which you can shield with your provisions. You don't
need to bring any extra dead weight. Lead or something for solar flare protection. You have enough
provisions per force on a even mars mission to shield a small area of the ship against solar flares.

The, on your way out to mars, you tether off the upper stage of the booster that threw you to mars
and you can rotate this assembly. You create artificial gravity in the hamp. This avoids the dilletory
effects of long duration exposure to zero gravity that we've observed in the zero gravity facilities in the
space station and on mir and that's why we don't need another 30 years of Nazi doctor research on
the space station. Making precise measurements of bone deterioation on astronauts under zero gravity
conditions. Because we don't need to endure zero gravity conditions for interplanetory flight. That is
a very perverse field of research.

okay, So. You're flying out tomorrow. It takes 6 months to get to Mars with current propulsion. six
months. not 2 years. Okay, the round trip mission is 2 and a half years, 6 months out, 1yr and a half on
mars, and 6 months back, but we don't need nuclear electric propulsion or antimatter or anything like
that to get to mars in 6 months time. In fact, the mars odyssey space craft was launched in
April, 2001, and it arrived in October, 2001, on mars with chemical propulsion. So, 6 months, we
fly to mars. We get to Mars. We fire a piro bolt that cuts the tether. The upper stage goes away
into deplanetory space. With arrow braking we land at site number 1 where the fully fueled earth
return vehicle is waiting for us. The second earth return vehicle is following us out to mars. It's our
back up but if we don't need it we land it somewhere else site number 2, where it starts making propellent
which it will use to support the next human mission which will fly there 2 years later along with another
earth return vehicle which is their backup which otherwise opens up site number 3. So the idea here
is that every 2 years you're launching two boosters off the cape. One to open up a new site. One to
exploit the previously opened site. Two boosters every two years is an average of 1 per year. Now,
when we're flying shuttles in this country, we can fly about 6 a year. So we're talking about using 1/6th
of our heavy lift capability to support a continuous program of human exploration of mars. And I for one
believe that as long as we have a space program, it's perfectly legitimate that we ask to use 1/6th of
its capabilities to actually explore space. So, this is something that this country can afford to do.

This is an actual photograph of the Mars space. You can see here, there's the earth return vehicles,
the conical vehicle on the one side, the reactors and the crater in the background. The tuna can hab
up front. Some photo volcanic panels to supply back up power if you have to return the reactor off.
you have a couple of exploration vehicles you probably see the pressurized rover right next to the tuna
can hab, that's for long distance exploration. Probably maybe having some difficulty seeing the
unpressurized rover that was previously used to deploy the reactor sitting in the shadow of the
earth return vehicle. that's a backup car for the first and they can both provide backup power for
the base. In the foreground, there's an inflatable greenhouse. That's not a mission critical element.
That's an experiment of learning how to grow crops on mars, with martian water, martian gravity,
martian sunlight, martian soil, etc. but for the benefit of future missions and future basis. You'll be on
mars for a year and a half because that's how the planets kind of move around to give you your launch
window back to earth. What we a going to do on mars in a year and a half, we're going to explore, okay,
and there's two main things we need to explore for. First is the question of life. Mars poses the issues
of life in the universe there are lots of places on mars where life could have been. These are images taken
by viking in 76. You can see networks of dried up riverbeds on mars. No canals on mars but there really
are dry riverbeds on mars. There's dry lakes. There is a dried up ocean on mars. The recent NER rovers
actually found the saline deposits on the shores of that ocean and there was liquid water on mars
for a longer period of time then it took life to appear in the fossil record on earth after there was
liquid water here. So if the conjector's correct, that life is a natural development out of chemistry wherever
you have appropriate physcial and chemical conditions, then why should've it appeared on mars
even if is subsequently one extinct after conditions on the surface of the planet deteriorated. the, and
if we could go to mars and actually explore that surface and find fossils, we have found that the origin
of life from chemistry is a general phenonmon on the universe. And since we now know that planets are
are a general phenonmon on the universe, we've discovered over 200 extra solar planetary systems.
We have ver good reason to believe right now that planets around starts are the rule rather than the
exception. If life can appear wherever it has a decent planet, and every start has an appropriate distance
from it, where you have the right temperature for liquid water, near or far depending on the brightness
of the star. If life can appear wherever you have appropriate physical conditions, then life is everywhere
and since the entire history of life on earth is one of development, from simple forms to more complex
forms, generally manifesting greater degrees of capacity for activity and intelligence and ever more
rapid evolution, then if life is everywhere then intelligence is everywhere which means we're not alone.
That's worth finding out. On the other hand, we go to mars and we explore all these kinds of places,
where there is water, rich sediments and all this, we find that there is no evidence to the development of
life, that could mean we're an example of something that emerged from miraculous chance, the incredible
incogination, from 10th to the minus 140th power of all the molecules coming together to form
the DNA somehow, this and that. And that's also worth finding out.

Now, if we could go to mars and set up drilling rigs though and drill down a kilometer or so, where
there is liquid water on mars today, because there is, we know that because we have found places on
mars where there are flood channels that have broken out of the side of craters within the past million
years which is basically geologically today. If we could drill down and reach that water and bring it up,
a kilometer is within the range of our technology, and we sample that water, that's where microbes
could live on mars right now. We could culture that. We could see if what grows in there is life
as we know it on earth because all earth life is the same at the biochemical level. Oak trees, people,
bacteria, rhinosauruses, mushrooms, you guys are all alike. You all use the same RNA and DNA,
it's all the same stuff. The bricks are put together in different ways and different organisms but it is the
same kind of brick. We'd be able to find out if that kind of brick is what all life has to be made of
or if you could also build out of marble or wood or metal or whatever that is whether the possibilities
of life are much greater then we see evidenced on earth. And that's worth finding out.

So, alright, then eventually what we really want to find out is if we could make it on mars, whether or not
in fact, we could colonize, whether we could develop the capacity to use martian resources to develop the
craft that allows human beings to be self sufficient on mars so that humans can in fact begin to settle
this new world. AS, you know, here's something to think about. In a very real sense, humans are not
native to the earth. We're native to Kenya. That's our natural habitat. We are tropical animals. That's
why we have these long thin arms with no fur on them. We lived, homosapiens originates almost
200,000 years ago. For 150,000 years we stayed in East Africa in our natural habitat. Then somehow
we break out of there into Ice Age Europe and Asia, to a much more challenging environment, where you
have to invent, okay, technology. I live in Colorado. 7000 feet. No one could survive a single winter night
without technology such as houses, clothing, fire, the ability to acquire food in the winter time.

Mars seems hostile right now but I submit to you that it is no more fundamentally hostile and I
think considerably less so, then the non tropical world was to our distant ancestors and by going
forth from our natural habitat, okay, of Kenya, we transformed ourselves from a local species to a
global species of 100 or whatever it is, 200, a hundreds of cultures, languages, each with our own
history, literature, various ones making different contributions to technologies, inventions, social
thought, you name it. The whole human experience has become vastly greater as a result of that.

So, what I'm saying here is this. This is the first step out of Africa for us. This opens up a new
chapter of human history as profound as our ancestors first leaving Kenya. Such that, if we can do this,
then 2000 years ago there will not only be new branches of human civilization on mars but on
thousands of planets orbiting stars in this reach of the galaxy and with a vast multitude of new culture,
languages, societies, you name it, and an experience as vastly richer than ours in its complexity
in every other way, as ours is to what we would have been had we remained in Kenya. And so, I believe
we can do this and therefore that we should.

Thank you.

One last comment, I had to run through this plan very fast because of time limits. I have written a
book which describes this whole thing in detail and I have some copies here. At the point that the
session breaks for lunch, those of you who do want to find out more about this and how we could
do this, you come up, you buy it, I'll sign them, and there'll be a win win situation.