TRIGGERnometry - November 10, 2022


＂Mars is Our Future＂ - Dr Robert Zubrin

Topics
space exploration living quarters radiation shielding going to Mars life support on Mars space freight
Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Guests
Dr Robert Zubrin
Mentioned
Robert Zubrin Elon Musk Malthus Hitler Arthur C. Clarke Robert Zubin Sputnik EasyDNS SpaceX Nixon John F. Kennedy Interacte Transfer Lockheed Martin Charles Dickens Boris Johnsons Alpha Centauri Sweet Caroline Prince Andrew Yuri Gagarin Isaac Asimov and 12 more
The Forgotten History of WW2 Evacuees with Dominic Frisby 8 Times TRIGGERnometry Predicted the Future

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 11 minutes

Words per minute

146.76

Word count

10,503

Sentence count

754

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Dr. Robert Zubrin is an aerospace engineer, author, and an advocate for human exploration of Mars. In this episode, he talks to us about his journey through life that leads him to space, and the many other things we re going to talk about.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30.500 Why Mars? What's so magical about Mars? Because Mars is the closest planet that has on it all the
00:00:38.040 materials needed to support life and technological civilization. On Mars, there are glaciers on Mars
00:00:45.780 that have more water than the American Great Lakes. There are continent-sized regions that are 60% water
00:00:52.520 by weight in the soil. Mars has got a carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere. Carbon is fundamental
00:00:57.880 to life. There's no carbon on the moon at all. The nitrogen exists on Mars. It doesn't exist on
00:01:02.860 the moon. So these are the fundamental things for life. And Mars is a 24-hour day, which is what
00:01:08.620 plants want. We can set up greenhouses and grow food. The Martian atmosphere, as soon as this,
00:01:15.340 can mask out solar flares. I really like Musk's approach to engineering, which is you build a lot
00:01:21.340 of them. You fly them, you crash them, you fix the next one, try again. They're going to look at this
00:01:25.760 and say, well, this guy wants to go to Mars if we got together with him and developed all the rest
00:01:31.380 of the stuff that's needed. I think we can have people walking around on Mars 10 years from now,
00:01:36.540 and I think we can have very substantial bases on Mars starting to develop this technology and maybe
00:01:42.620 even the first children born on Mars 20 years from now. You know, for our generation, Mars is the new world.
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00:03:24.480 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.
00:03:29.340 I'm Constantine Kissin.
00:03:30.480 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:03:36.340 Our brilliant guest today is an aerospace engineer, author, and an advocate for the human exploration
00:03:41.820 of Mars. Dr. Robert Zubrin, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:03:45.120 Thanks for inviting me.
00:03:46.720 Oh, it's such a pleasure to have you on. We have got a ton of questions for you, both from us and
00:03:51.080 from our audience. Before we get to all of those, tell everybody who are you, how are you, where you
00:03:56.060 are, what has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us about
00:04:00.100 space exploration and many other things we're going to talk about.
00:04:02.900 Okay. Well, I'm kind of a time traveler. Here's an artifact. My period. I was born in 52 and my
00:04:17.400 first memory of any major world event in terms of direct experience was Sputnik. I was five and
00:04:23.740 I was already a reader reading science fiction. And while the adults may have been terrified of
00:04:30.540 Sputnik, I was delighted with it. It meant that space travel was going to be real. I wanted to be
00:04:35.700 part of that. And my parents encouraged my interest. So, you know, my father got me a telescope and I
00:04:45.540 did drawings of the moon through the eyepiece and I launched rockets and did all that stuff. And,
00:04:51.080 you know, in the 60s, I was all in, you know, we were going to the moon by 1970, Mars by 1980,
00:04:59.280 Saturn by 1990, Alpha Centauri by the year 2000. And I wanted to be part of that.
00:05:04.860 Um, now, uh, we did achieve the first milestone in that program. We did make it to the moon before
00:05:12.580 1970. Um, but the rest of it was put aside. Um, and, uh, at least the next step in it was in fact
00:05:21.260 achievable. NASA actually had plans to send humans to Mars by 1981, the Nixon administration canceled
00:05:28.200 them. And, uh, so at the same time that, uh, you know, Nixon was enjoying celebrating the Apollo
00:05:36.520 achievements and riding in the ticker tape parades with astronauts, they were actually shutting down,
00:05:41.720 uh, the assembly lines, uh, wrecking it. It was as if Columbus had come back from the new world
00:05:47.920 the first time and Ferdinand and Isabella had said, so what, let's burn the ship. Um, and, um,
00:05:55.040 so the thing went aground and, um, so I, by then was in college and, uh, the real world got to me
00:06:06.360 that in the real world, you know, people don't grow up to be space explorers. That's the television
00:06:11.420 people. That is the people on the other side of the TV screen who live in that world. Uh, and in fact,
00:06:17.800 not many of them were going to be going to the moon either. And, uh, so got to get real. And so I
00:06:23.980 became a science teacher and because I had a science education, I could do that. It's a noble
00:06:29.740 profession. I, I, I'm the kind of person that I, I have to understand a purpose to what I'm doing.
00:06:37.300 Uh, and so that does fulfill that. Uh, but you know, around a decade later, you know, I'm living in
00:06:47.180 Northern Manhattan and teaching in Brooklyn and riding the subway an hour each way every day and reading
00:06:52.760 novels by Herman Neville Melville about sailing the South seas and saying, you know, what am I doing
00:06:58.300 here? And, um, and so I decided to go back to graduate school and become an engineer and I did.
00:07:08.380 And, um, and then I heard about these people of my own generation who were members of this thing
00:07:15.740 called the Mars underground who were trying to push for a visionary space program. NASA by this time
00:07:22.240 had embraced the idea of a space program as shuttles, putting satellites in earth orbit, because
00:07:27.300 you know, that's practical going to planets. That's the dreams of youth. Forget it. Uh, and they said,
00:07:32.800 no, that's what we should be doing. And so I got connected with them, became a member of the Mars
00:07:39.320 underground myself. Then I managed to get hired at an aerospace company, Martin Marietta, which is now
00:07:44.700 Lockheed Martin, um, and, uh, started making my mark at, uh, planetary mission design. And, uh, and then I,
00:07:54.900 I became very well known when I was one of the two principal authors of, of a new way of approaching
00:08:02.680 human Mars missions called the Mars direct plan. Um, and, um, which basically was sort of a travel light
00:08:10.680 and live off the land approach to sending humans to Mars. And it got away from trying to build giant
00:08:15.840 spaceships and earth orbit at giant space stations, which would not exist until the 22nd century or
00:08:21.560 any of that stuff. And, uh, well, uh, became well known, um, got contacted by a literary agent when
00:08:31.040 there was an article about me in Newsweek. And, uh, she said, have you ever thought about writing a book
00:08:39.040 about this? I said, well, you know, I wrote a book once before and I couldn't get it published. And
00:08:43.720 she said, what kind of book was it? I said, spy novel. She said, were you ever a spy? I said, no.
00:08:49.540 Uh, you know, uh, did you have a literary agent? Nope. Uh, well, you are an astronautical engineer and
00:08:56.240 I am a literary agent. And if you write this book, I will get it published. And that is what happened.
00:09:01.160 And I wrote the case for Mars and she got it published and it became a, well, not exactly a
00:09:08.860 bestseller, but a very high seller internationally. And, um, I got thousands of letters from people who
00:09:16.440 read it and I got together with other Mars underground types. And I said, look, if we could
00:09:22.220 pull these people together, we'd have a force. We'd have something that could actually make this vision
00:09:27.740 happen because the, the, the, the diversity of people who had contacted us, which included not
00:09:33.200 only engineers at JPL and astronauts and people like this, but you know, firemen in Saskatoon and
00:09:38.160 12 year old kids in, uh, Poland and the director of the Metropolitan Opera in, I forget, New York
00:09:46.260 and a banker in Paris. It was incredible. And the, the, you know, pull them together. We could do
00:09:52.660 something. So we founded the Mars Society and, uh, that was in 98. It was covered in the New York
00:09:58.880 Times, the BBC, all over the place. We came out of it with chapters in about 25 countries, including
00:10:06.880 most of the major countries and a few ones you wouldn't expect. Um, and, um, you know, we're still
00:10:15.040 here. So there I am. There you are, Robert. Well, let me ask you the question that you've kind of
00:10:21.400 alluded to when you were talking about your childhood, because, uh, my father was born in
00:10:25.920 the Soviet Union about 10 years after you, uh, the year after Yuri Gagarin became the first man to go
00:10:32.520 into space. Uh, and then 20 years later, 20 years later, when I was born, you know, my generation,
00:10:38.400 we read Isaac Asimov and all of this stuff about space and robots and, uh, all of that. Um, and,
00:10:46.520 uh, this was a moment of excitement when I think we looked out into space with a sense of that almost
00:10:54.840 being our destination to, to go out and to explore the universe. But in, in the last 20 years, it doesn't
00:11:01.860 feel like we've been having that conversation to me. We've been very focused internally, even when we
00:11:08.000 talk about things like the destruction of the earth that some people would be keen to talk about.
00:11:13.640 We never, other than Elon Musk, I've never really heard anyone talking in public about the idea that
00:11:18.460 even with that, the solution might be to ensure the resilience of, of human, human species by going
00:11:25.880 beyond earth. So what happened? Why did we lose our excitement, our zeal for, for, for going out into
00:11:32.700 space and exploring it? Well, uh, as I mentioned, there was an enormous failure in leadership on the part
00:11:39.240 of governments in terms of abandoning the program at the point of success. And then the quality of
00:11:46.020 political leadership in, um, most governments deteriorated markedly in the following period so
00:11:53.320 that they were not able to resume any such project. Um, and, uh, you know, if I compare either Trump or
00:12:02.060 Biden to John F. Kennedy, I mean, really, um, it, it, it's a joke or, uh, compare recent, uh,
00:12:09.060 British leadership to Winston Churchill or the Mehran to Charles de Gaulle. I mean, it's ridiculous. 0.91
00:12:15.940 Uh, the, the, the, the, however, um, precisely because the political classes dropped the ball, 0.56
00:12:26.620 there's a new group that has stepped forward and that's the entrepreneurial, um, uh, leaders. I mean,
00:12:33.040 in the sixties, no one would have looked for an entrepreneurial leader to, to save the day from a
00:12:39.680 failing NASA. NASA wasn't failing. Um, but, uh, you know, starting in the seventies, the eighties,
00:12:48.460 nineties, uh, you know, for a while, I mean, I certainly hope that NASA would, you know, just sort
00:12:55.040 of recover. And, and, and that was certainly my outlook, uh, and, uh, was skeptical of the people
00:13:04.580 who said that they would save the day with the private companies. Um, but as time went on and
00:13:11.280 the government continued to underperform and the private companies in particular, SpaceX overperformed,
00:13:17.640 I've altered my view. Uh, and now it's a real possibility again, but I'd like to come back to
00:13:23.160 something more fundamental that you alluded to, which is, um, this more pessimistic view of the future.
00:13:34.580 Um, I think that that is the greatest threat facing humanity. Um, the, um,
00:13:44.300 we're not destroying the earth. Uh, I don't think we're capable of destroying the earth. We're damaging
00:13:52.080 certain places, the rainforest. We're also improving certain places. Uh, but we are in danger of
00:13:59.440 destroying each other. Um, and the thing that will drive us to destroy each other is the same thing
00:14:06.780 that caused the mega disasters of the 20th century, which is the belief that there isn't enough for
00:14:13.060 everyone. This belief that there's only so much here to go around. And so we have to kill them to
00:14:19.680 get it. Okay. You know, 1912, Friedrich von Bernhardi, the chief intellectual, the German general 1.00
00:14:26.900 staff wrote a book, became an international bestseller and English titles, Germany in the
00:14:31.480 next war. It's still available. Uh, it's a Kindle book. Um, in which he said, look, you know, here's
00:14:38.940 Eurasia. Who's going to get it? It's either going to be us Germans or the Russians. We're going to have 0.98
00:14:42.260 to have it out with them. Should it be sooner or later? Well, clearly sooner because we can take
00:14:46.720 them down now because they haven't industrialized yet. And then, you know, a quarter century later,
00:14:52.800 Hitler, even more hysterically, you know, Germany needs living space. The laws of existence require 1.00
00:14:58.260 uninterrupted killing so that the better may live. This was all nonsense. Germany never needed living 1.00
00:15:05.440 space. Germany today is smaller than the third Reich has a larger population and a vastly higher standard
00:15:10.280 of living. And how did they achieve that? Not by invading other countries and murdering people and
00:15:15.520 killing and stealing their cows. Okay. Uh, they were openly unsuccessful in that program. Uh, and had 0.77
00:15:22.400 they succeeded in that program, it would not have made them any richer at all. Uh, the Germany today 0.94
00:15:27.680 is vastly richer than it was in the 1930s because of the advance of science and technology, which is
00:15:33.520 a global human project to which Germans have contributed certainly, uh, but so have numerous other
00:15:40.080 peoples, including those they were trying to exterminate. And the, the, the, um, and, and so it's not true
00:15:48.060 that the human condition is one of, of, um, antagonistic races in the struggle for existence over limited
00:15:55.740 resources. Um, rather the truth is that we are a somewhat disorderly family of nations, a very disorderly
00:16:05.580 family of nations to be sure, but nonetheless, a family engaged in a joint project to create new
00:16:10.920 possibilities through new technologies. And, and, you know, inventions made anywhere sooner or later
00:16:16.120 become used everywhere. Um, so, I mean, is America the enemy of China? Well, China is, uh, uh, is enormously
00:16:24.460 advanced its, its standard of living over the past 30 years because of inventions like electricity and,
00:16:29.300 and iPhones and everything that were created in the West. But the West itself had its renaissance
00:16:34.380 of inventions like paper and printing that were made in China. And the, the, the, so, but nevertheless,
00:16:41.220 if we have this zero sum point of view, we could end up killing each other. And we're fundamentally in
00:16:48.860 a pre-war situation right now because of this point of view. Okay. For Putin, war is inevitable. And so
00:16:56.160 he must acquire Ukraine in order to strengthen his strategic position. And, you know, and that's exactly
00:17:03.020 why he must be denying Ukraine actually, aside from the fact that Ukrainians don't want to get killed,
00:17:09.260 uh, as far as everybody else is concerned, that's it. And the, the, the, but this is all insanity.
00:17:18.960 There is no reason for war. Human race, human race today, it's the largest population and the highest
00:17:26.100 standard of living by far than it has ever had in human history. But, you know, that was also true in 1914.
00:17:35.860 Robert, I mean, it's, it's a very powerful thing that you're saying here. The question that I would like to ask is,
00:17:43.060 why is space exploration so important? Because there will be people who go, why are we going out there when we've got
00:17:50.420 poverty, you know, addiction, all of these different things, these huge problems that we haven't managed
00:17:57.700 to solve in our own countries? Why are we investing so much in space?
00:18:02.580 Well, we're not really investing so much in space. Okay. The, the NASA budget is less than one half.
00:18:08.180 Why should we, I guess? Why should we invest any money?
00:18:10.740 NASA budget is less than one half of one percent of the federal budget. Okay. So, uh, I am not suggesting that
00:18:18.420 we should shut down the public school system so we could devote that money into space exploration.
00:18:23.060 Um, but you know, um, the fact that there are people hungry today is not a reason to eat the seed corn.
00:18:32.740 Um, and, uh, in fact, that's a very bad move. Uh, now there are three reasons here. Okay. Going to space is,
00:18:44.420 um, going to get us a lot of knowledge. And by the way, there's nothing more valuable than knowledge.
00:18:50.500 Uh, the, you know, frankly, the reason why people live better today than they did a hundred years ago
00:18:56.580 or a thousand years ago is because of knowledge. Um, it's not so, Robert, sorry to interrupt.
00:19:02.420 What knowledge will we get from going out into space that could then come and enrich life on earth?
00:19:07.540 Oh, any amount. I mean, uh, for instance, um, most of what we know about physics, we gained through
00:19:14.340 astronomy. Uh, Newton's laws, uh, a lot of electromagnetism, relativity, nuclear fusion,
00:19:22.100 all came to astronomy. And there's a reason why, because the universe is the biggest and best lab there
00:19:28.260 is. And you can discover phenomena there that you hadn't suspected existed before. And the, the,
00:19:34.420 the, the, and believe me, our knowledge of physics today is not complete. It is not complete. In fact,
00:19:41.780 it makes no sense. Uh, I mean, it's useful. I'm an engineer. I use it all the time. But if,
00:19:48.020 for instance, you take the most basic law of physics, matter cannot be created or destroyed.
00:19:53.220 Well, then tell me, how was this created? Here it is. Okay. You've got a law of physics that's in
00:20:00.820 direct defiance, uh, uh, of, of not only some data, but all the data. Uh, and the, the, the, the,
00:20:08.660 you know, so if we could discover a greater degree of truth about the true laws of physics,
00:20:17.140 it would have enormous applications. The laws of biology are very incompletely known. All life on
00:20:24.500 earth uses the same biochemical system, DNA, RNA. It's one system for recording, uh, and using
00:20:32.420 bio, uh, logical information. And now look, we speak English. Okay. Uh, and we use the Latin alphabet.
00:20:40.980 So do the French, the Spanish Germans, even the Poles. Okay. So if you travel around in our parts
00:20:46.580 of the world, you might think that that's what an alphabet is. But of course, in Russian,
00:20:51.540 they use a somewhat different alphabet, although it works on the same set of principles.
00:20:57.460 In Israel or Arab countries, they use an even more difficult, different alphabet,
00:21:02.900 although it still works on the same set of principles, because they're all have a common
00:21:07.540 origin in the Phoenician alphabet. But the Chinese alphabet is totally different. It, it, it,
00:21:13.380 not only is it different characters, it is, works on a completely different set of principles,
00:21:18.660 and yet it does the same thing. You can write books in it. Okay. And
00:21:25.460 so here's the thing, biology and bioengineering is going to be one of the great technological
00:21:32.660 sciences of the 21st century. And yet we only know about one system, one information system. It's like
00:21:39.940 only knowing about PCs and not understanding there could be things like Macs. Okay. Let alone
00:21:46.020 DNA computers or other kinds of computers or human minds. So if we can discover alternative types of
00:21:53.460 biology, our capabilities in the bioengineering area can be enormously expanded. And, um,
00:22:01.620 the, the, the, because right now we're just like linguists who are only acquainted with one language
00:22:06.340 and are unaware of the existence of other languages. They don't know what language is. They only know
00:22:10.420 what English is. Um, and, and so the games could be phenomenal. So that being the case,
00:22:20.420 so you've made a case for space exploration very well. Why Mars? What's so magical about Mars? What,
00:22:26.820 what, why does, why is Mars so important to you? Because Mars is the closest planet that has on it
00:22:34.580 all the materials needed, um, to support life and technological civilization. Um, it's vastly richer
00:22:44.100 and useful materials than, uh, the moon, for example. Um, the moon, uh, most of the moon is so bereft in
00:22:54.260 water that if they found concrete on the moon, they would mine it for its water. Um, that, that,
00:22:59.940 that, that, that there is potentially some water in permanently shadowed craters near the south pole
00:23:05.540 of the moon. Um, but under extremely ultra, you know, 40 Kelvin conditions on Mars. There are glaciers
00:23:15.220 on Mars that have, uh, uh, more water than the American great lakes. There are continent-sized regions
00:23:21.300 that are 60% water by weight in the soil that, that, that, that Mars has got a carbon dioxide
00:23:26.660 dominated atmosphere. Carbon is fundamental to life. There's no carbon on the moon at all.
00:23:30.900 That nitrogen exists on Mars. It doesn't exist on the moon. So these are the fundamental things for
00:23:36.340 life. They don't exist on the moon. They exist on Mars. And then about half the elements needed by
00:23:41.940 industry don't exist on the moon, whereas they do all exist on Mars. And furthermore, Mars has had
00:23:47.860 a complex geological history, which is necessary for differentiating elements into useful ores,
00:23:53.620 and the moon hasn't had that. Um, and Mars has a 24 hour day, which is what plants want. If
00:24:01.940 the Martian atmosphere as soon as this can mask out solar flares, uh, you know, for our generation,
00:24:09.620 uh, Mars is the new world.
00:24:11.460 Hey Francis, do you want to protect kids?
00:24:15.300 I was a teacher for 12 years, so no, I will never forget what those little
00:24:20.180 *** put me through.
00:24:21.300 Francis, what did your therapist say about moving on with your life?
00:24:25.140 They ruined me. I was filled with joy and goodness until those little *** took my dreams 0.99
00:24:30.260 and shredded them.
00:24:31.220 Francis, remember what the lawyer said about not discussing the allegations in public?
00:24:35.700 I was found not guilty on all charges.
00:24:37.780 Not guilty is not the same as innocent. Anyway, going online without using expressvp…
00:24:50.500 Not guilty is not the same as innocent. Anyway, going online without using expressvp…
00:24:58.660 Anyway, going online without using expressvp is like leaving your kids in a public toilet.
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00:25:58.180 That's expressvpn.com slash trigger for three extra months for free.
00:26:03.060 I'm going to use it right now to find Francis a new therapist. 0.98
00:26:06.340 I f***ing hate them! 0.65
00:26:07.540 And you talk about some of the things that make Mars an appealing place to go to. 0.98
00:26:15.620 How far or how close are we from having the technology we have to go?
00:26:20.900 Because from my very layman understanding, the problem isn't just being able to get there.
00:26:25.860 Obviously, you need to be able to get back.
00:26:27.780 The problem is, can you have people travel that far without physical problems?
00:26:35.860 Do you have the technology for people to be able to survive on Mars, et cetera, et cetera?
00:26:42.340 How far are we from being, actually being, if like, if we said today, we want to go and we're prepared to use whatever resources and money that we have,
00:26:52.020 how far away are we from actually being able to go to Mars or send some people to Mars more likely?
00:26:57.300 Well, if you pose it that way, I would say five years.
00:27:01.940 If you're asking more for a prediction, I would say 10.
00:27:11.780 There's all sorts of hardware that needs to be developed, but we're not talking about Los Alamos 1943 here.
00:27:17.060 We're not talking about venturing into new realms of physics.
00:27:21.060 We're talking about engineering.
00:27:23.620 We're talking about creating things, doing it right, not making mistakes.
00:27:29.060 People make mistakes, and so, you know, this is why I really like Musk's approach to engineering,
00:27:35.540 which is you build a lot of them, you fly them, you crash them, you fix the next one, try again.
00:27:43.940 Because, yeah, we make mistakes.
00:27:46.260 But if you push through that, you get it right.
00:27:48.500 And I think, you know, Starship, if it's not blocked by bureaucrats, it'll probably reach orbit next year and be reaching orbit frequently in 2024.
00:28:02.740 And if that's the reality that we have in the year 2024, you know, we're going to have a president elected here then.
00:28:13.860 And if, you know, we've got these ships going to orbit with 100-ton payloads comparable to a Saturn V moon rocket, but 1% the cost because they're reusable instead of expendable.
00:28:22.860 So they're going to look at this and say, well, this guy wants to go to Mars.
00:28:27.660 If we got together with him and developed all the rest of the stuff that's needed, could we get there by the end of my second term?
00:28:34.280 The answer is going to be yes.
00:28:35.760 Well, is it going to cost a trillion dollars?
00:28:38.000 No.
00:28:38.780 We can probably do it within NASA's existing budget because he's already developed the flight system.
00:28:44.560 Well, then why aren't we doing this?
00:28:46.480 In other words, by making it practical, Musk is going to make it sellable.
00:28:50.120 Now, if Musk skates off the edge of the ice, which could happen because he's a risk taker, it'll take somewhat longer.
00:28:59.620 But I think if SpaceX should fail, other entrepreneurial companies will step up and pick up the flag because he's already proven that these entrepreneurial approach can work and work great.
00:29:12.980 And so regardless of his own particular circumstances, he's already basically proven the point.
00:29:21.100 At the essential point.
00:29:22.940 And what would the first voyage to Mars look like?
00:29:26.460 Is it a moon landing type of thing where you get off, you collect some samples, you plant a flag in the ground and you get out of there?
00:29:34.300 Or are you looking more to establish some kind of permanent presence there?
00:29:39.560 Even if it's just robotic to start?
00:29:41.240 Well, there are different visions associated with this.
00:29:43.460 But if you ask for mine, I believe that, first of all, that is not the right approach.
00:29:51.900 We do not want to do a flags and footprints Mars mission.
00:29:54.740 That's not why you go to Mars.
00:29:55.900 I think we need a purpose-driven program.
00:29:58.420 And the purpose of early Mars missions is exploration and then later settlement.
00:30:05.180 But let's take the first thing first.
00:30:07.680 Exploration requires time on the surface.
00:30:11.600 So there's actually two different trajectories you can take to Mars.
00:30:17.580 One is one that fits in with the flags and footprints approach, which involves spending about two years in transit and one month on the surface.
00:30:26.120 It's two years in two unequal legs, totaling two years, and a month on the surface.
00:30:31.960 That's known as the opposition class mission.
00:30:35.240 The other is known as the conjunction class mission, which is the one that I support, which involves a total of two and a half years for the mission.
00:30:43.620 But a year to a year and a half of it is on the surface and the remainder is spent in transit.
00:30:49.480 So, for instance, six months out, six months back, a year and a half on the surface.
00:30:53.020 And so instead of sending 5% of the mission time on Mars, you spend 60% of the mission time on Mars.
00:31:00.900 And you do a comprehensive program of regional field exploration while you're there.
00:31:06.520 That's the right way to do it.
00:31:09.000 Now, Musk wants to move directly to settlement.
00:31:15.040 But I believe that we need a certain amount of exploration to choose the best place to put the settlement.
00:31:21.000 And what would it look like, Robert, in your eyes, to have a colony on Mars or to live on Mars?
00:31:29.960 Because it's going to be fundamentally different to life on Earth, isn't it?
00:31:36.160 Well, sure.
00:31:39.020 I mean, we're going someplace new.
00:31:40.700 Now, I get asked this question a lot.
00:31:46.140 What's going to be the political system? 0.53
00:31:48.080 What's going to be the social mores and so forth?
00:31:52.120 We're just thinking practically at this point.
00:31:54.360 Like, physically, what is it going to look like?
00:31:56.320 Are you going to have to walk around in a suit and all of that?
00:31:59.160 Live in a biodome?
00:32:00.260 Okay, you can make domes, but with present-day materials, they would have to be of limited size, not more than 100 meters in diameter, because otherwise the pressure in them would blow them up.
00:32:15.240 But you could have a lot of 100-meter domes and link them together with tunnels and stuff like this.
00:32:19.960 You could have domes and then have more extended living quarters underneath them.
00:32:28.000 Imagine, you know, systems like the underground, you know, subway system, as it were, but designed as living quarters.
00:32:36.980 Okay, essentially things that are kind of like shopping malls, but you could put housing in them and all that.
00:32:43.220 The purpose of doing that would be, first of all, you have a lot more housing space within a given dome, but also people would spend most of their time underground, which means shielded from cosmic radiation completely.
00:32:57.820 Now, the radiation dose on the Martian surface is essentially the same as that at the International Space Station.
00:33:06.600 And people go there, they go there routinely for six months at a time, and I think the longest one's about a year and a half.
00:33:11.860 And we haven't seen any radiological effects.
00:33:15.320 But if you did want to limit the dose more than that, you could spend the majority of your time within living quarters that are underground and only come up into the dome to walk around and enjoy the orchards and, you know, play baseball.
00:33:34.400 Well, you probably wouldn't play baseball.
00:33:35.600 You probably want Martian sports that are more economical in terms of the use of space.
00:33:42.100 Volleyball, basketball, these kinds of things.
00:33:49.740 But, I mean, how much of your time do you spend outside right now?
00:33:54.620 Except for farmers, most people spend less than 10% of their time outdoors.
00:33:59.700 So, if you spend 10% of your time in the dome and the rest of it underground, then your radiation dose would be one-tenth of that of the ISS.
00:34:17.200 So, that would solve that problem.
00:34:22.020 I think that Martian cities need to be designed to be functional and beautiful.
00:34:33.460 Why?
00:34:36.460 Clearly functional.
00:34:37.740 Why beautiful?
00:34:38.980 Because the Martian cities that grow will be the ones that attract the most immigrants. 0.99
00:34:44.880 And no one's going to want to live in, you know, an environment like that of the city in total recall.
00:34:53.520 You know, they wouldn't want to go there.
00:34:56.520 Similarly, I don't think Martian cities can be tyrannies because no one would emigrate to one of them.
00:35:00.640 So, Martian cities will be experiments and the winners will be those that attract the most immigrants. 1.00
00:35:12.920 And so, that's also my answer to the social system as well.
00:35:16.120 The one that people find the most attractive.
00:35:19.720 You know, at the time of the American Revolution, Caribbean islands had a bigger economy than the 13 colonies.
00:35:25.440 Okay, that's why the Battle of Yorktown, the British fleet didn't come to rescue Cornwallis because they were busy stealing islands in the Caribbean from the French.
00:35:34.420 Because they were worth a lot more in dollars or pounds.
00:35:38.760 But in the time after that, the United States so outpaced Caribbean as well as Latin America in European immigration because it was a much more attractive place for people to move to for any number of reasons.
00:35:57.900 And thus, it became, you know, an economic and political superpower while the Caribbean islands, you know, a pretty minor affair in global calculations today.
00:36:13.820 And so, that's what's going to determine it, that the noble experiments on Mars, different political systems, different physical architectures, different mores, different customs, the ones that prevail will be the ones that people find the most attractive.
00:36:35.360 And what would the Martian economy or economies be based around?
00:36:40.740 Because obviously, there's a huge initial investment, not only to get human beings there, but to build even the first dome, I imagine, would be a very costly affair.
00:36:50.060 Is there an economic rationale to all of this?
00:36:53.740 Yeah, I think there could be.
00:36:56.100 Now, of course, this is a tricky business.
00:36:57.940 The projectors that advocated colonization in North America in the Elizabethan age, you know, looked for items that weren't there, like gold or a passage to India.
00:37:17.120 The – some – when they discovered they could grow tobacco, that started to work.
00:37:23.900 There were fisheries that could be supported out of New England that started to work.
00:37:29.300 Timber for the Navy that started – but in other words, a lot of these things that they looked for were wrong.
00:37:37.640 Some of them guessed right.
00:37:39.680 But actually, the biggest economic thing that Europe got out of America wasn't timber for the Royal Navy.
00:37:46.840 It was steamboats, telegraphs, electrical whiteboats, airplanes, nuclear power, the internet.
00:37:57.100 That is, the way in which America has benefited Europe and the world has been as an engine of invention and not a particular product.
00:38:10.280 And the – I think Mars will be a terrific engine of invention.
00:38:17.700 Many of the same things that drove America to be a very inventive culture will exist on Mars, but to orders of magnitude higher degree.
00:38:28.040 That is, for instance, the labor shortage, which drove us to gadgeteering and labor-saving machinery.
00:38:34.280 It would be much more intense on Mars.
00:38:39.800 So I think the Martians are going to be virtuosos, not only in labor-saving machinery and automation and robotics and artificial intelligence.
00:38:49.240 All these things that they will need to compensate for their labor shortage will have tremendous benefits to the Earth.
00:38:56.640 And they'll be licensable here as patents, and that is one way they'll get income.
00:39:01.480 I think also they're going to be driven to want to create ultra-productive greenhouse agriculture because of limited acreage.
00:39:09.680 And once again, and so they're going to be virtuosos at GMO bioengineering and so forth.
00:39:19.300 And once again, these will have enormous benefits to the Earth.
00:39:24.300 Fusion power.
00:39:25.320 You know, okay, there's some people working at fusion power right now on Earth, but there isn't really a sense of urgency there.
00:39:32.400 We have lots of other ways you can make electricity.
00:39:34.760 You can burn oil or gas or coal.
00:39:37.220 You can have waterfalls or windmills.
00:39:40.760 You know, you can have nuclear fission reactors.
00:39:43.040 But most of that does not exist on Mars.
00:39:48.240 And while you could use nuclear fission reactors on Mars, the fuel for them requires a great industrial base to refine uranium ore, which won't exist on Mars.
00:39:59.120 But Mars, deuterium, which is the heavy isotope of hydrogen, is five times as common on Mars as it is on Earth.
00:40:08.900 And that's the fuel for fusion reactors. 0.68
00:40:13.260 And, you know, British invented the steam engine.
00:40:20.520 Early America invented the steamboat.
00:40:24.560 Okay.
00:40:25.740 Why?
00:40:26.540 Because the only real highways we had were rivers.
00:40:32.920 Sailboats really don't do that well in transportation in rivers because the current can be too strong.
00:40:39.260 You need powered boats.
00:40:41.100 And we figured out a way to put the steam engine to use.
00:40:44.260 And in order to make steam engines compact and efficient enough to power steamboats, we had to go to higher pressure and more efficient engines, which then made possible railroads, which, okay, Brits invented.
00:41:01.660 But this is how this thing went.
00:41:03.920 And the, but then railroad systems of great expanse were pioneered here.
00:41:15.120 And I think that, you know, just as steam engines were really only made efficient when they were forced to be disciplined to meet the requirements of a steamboat.
00:41:29.180 And then even more efficient for a railroad and nuclear reactors, frankly, the first practical nuclear reactors were on submarines.
00:41:37.940 And that remains the one place where they are unchallenged.
00:41:43.500 Because their capabilities for submarine propulsion are unique, whereas for electricity generation, there are competing technologies.
00:41:50.700 But the fusion may very well be developed by Mars because they will have the necessity for it.
00:41:59.620 And then, of course, it may be advanced considerably when it is made more compact to drive spacecraft.
00:42:07.340 And, Robert, what are going to be the challenges of going to Mars and starting a new colony on a new planet?
00:42:13.480 And what are also going to be the dangers?
00:42:15.940 Because, I mean, I'm an absolute layman when it comes to this.
00:42:19.960 To me, the dangers are multiple, aren't they, really?
00:42:23.160 No.
00:42:24.540 There's dangers here, too.
00:42:27.980 No, there's going to be dangers.
00:42:30.280 Look, if a person's values are that the good life is one of comfort and security, they should probably not choose being a first-generation Mars colonist.
00:42:48.300 If a person's idea of the good life is one of doing deeds of great significance, then they might want to consider it.
00:43:05.140 That is it.
00:43:06.540 Okay, those are two different ideas of the good life.
00:43:10.560 And, you know, now, I'm obviously more in sympathy to the second point of view, but different strokes for different folks.
00:43:24.940 I'm not asking everybody to move to Mars.
00:43:28.880 Only those people should move to Mars who want to create a new branch of human civilization,
00:43:37.360 who want to open up a new kind of human future.
00:43:43.340 Now, if you look at the three most remarkable and counterintuitive colonization episodes of recent history,
00:43:59.580 I would list the pilgrims going to Massachusetts, the Mormons going to Utah, and the Jews going to Palestine. 0.86
00:44:06.020 You know, I mean, look, Massachusetts was much colder than England, and the pilgrims were doing just fine in Holland.
00:44:21.780 In fact, they left because the Dutch were too nice, and they were assimilating them. 1.00
00:44:25.600 They wanted to have their own world, and half of them died in the first winter in New England,
00:44:30.160 because it was much colder than England or Holland.
00:44:34.600 You're not selling it to me, Robert.
00:44:38.060 What?
00:44:38.840 I said, you're not selling it to me. I was joking.
00:44:41.160 Well, no, but what I'm telling you is this, is that these people did these things going to unfavorable places so they could have their own world.
00:44:50.560 Yes.
00:44:51.300 Got you.
00:44:51.680 Okay, and in all three examples, they were motivated by transcendent ideas, ideas that went beyond economics,
00:45:03.100 the religious ideas, and things that went along with that in terms of being able to make their own world,
00:45:10.680 which is a fundamental kind of freedom, and so they did it.
00:45:18.420 Now, I think that people who, the initial Martian colonists will need to have comparable zeal,
00:45:28.420 because, in other words, they're going to have to have a sense of mission,
00:45:33.500 an understanding that what they're doing is important in order to take on the hardships and risks associated with this.
00:45:41.540 But, you know, there's no free lunch. You stay here, you're going to die here, okay?
00:45:48.220 You know, so the question is, what do you do with your life?
00:45:54.680 And I believe there'll be people that'll be up for it.
00:45:57.840 No, I'm sure. I guess what Francis was more coming at it, it's not like we're trying to dissuade people from going to Mars.
00:46:03.320 I think I'm actually really inspired by what you're saying in many ways.
00:46:07.940 Whether I myself would go, I don't know.
00:46:10.580 But I suppose we're just curious about the technical difficulties.
00:46:16.300 Obviously, the colonizations that you've talked about, there would have been the local climate would have been a challenge.
00:46:23.320 The sometimes hostile native population would have been a challenge. 1.00
00:46:27.660 Distance from the original point of departure would have been a big challenge in terms of getting manufactured goods and things like that initially.
00:46:37.000 So what are going to be the biggest, you know, technological challenges in terms of going to Mars and eventually having a colony on Mars?
00:46:44.060 Okay, if I want to stick strictly, okay, first of all, there's the transportation system.
00:46:48.780 And this is being worked on both by SpaceX and by a number of other entrepreneurial companies, as well as at a much slower pace by official space agencies.
00:47:03.460 You know, this is a solvable problem.
00:47:06.380 Then, in terms of life support, we basically have it, as far as the transit is concerned, you know, the space station recycles some materials, others are just replaced.
00:47:23.860 But if you made a space station-like life support system for the Mars transit vehicle and made it sufficiently redundant to be robust against failure, you can do this.
00:47:41.880 You know, the routine stay on the space station is six months, which is how long it takes to fly from Earth to Mars with chemical propulsion today.
00:47:51.400 Okay, the, the, a number of our recent Mars probes went to Earth to Mars in that amount of time.
00:48:01.520 So it's not futuristic.
00:48:04.460 The, okay, life support.
00:48:10.080 Landing, well, we land things on Mars.
00:48:12.640 It is a challenging thing to do, but it can be done.
00:48:16.840 And, you know, I think if we're sending starships or something like this to Mars,
00:48:20.900 we're going to send the first five or six with no one in them, and we'll probably crash the first three.
00:48:26.020 And then we'll get it right and, and be able to land them routinely.
00:48:32.080 In other words, we'll exercise the technology before we commit people to it.
00:48:36.520 The, okay, then life support on Mars is actually easier than life support in space because Mars has got water, it's got carbon dioxide, there's materials there to, to, to work with.
00:48:52.180 We can set up greenhouses and grow food.
00:48:54.780 Now, part of the trick of this will be to do greenhouse agriculture with a minimum of human labor.
00:49:03.520 Okay, because there's a lot of other things to do on Mars, both by necessity and by choice.
00:49:10.580 And you don't want to commit the large majority or even a significant fraction of your time to growing the plants.
00:49:18.900 You're going to have to devote some because I don't think any totally automated system will do the job.
00:49:24.500 But I think you can greatly reduce the amount of, of actual time in the greenhouse.
00:49:31.140 And once there are children on Mars, I think that's a place where they can help out.
00:49:36.700 And, and I, I think that'll be useful actually, not, not just to the colony, but to them.
00:49:44.860 The, what are some of the other issues?
00:49:49.580 Some things that are overblown are dust storms.
00:49:53.600 You don't want to land during the dust storm because the winds can be high.
00:49:58.340 And if you're coming down as an aerodynamic dominated object, they could take you and crash you.
00:50:06.100 But once you're on the surface, they're not really a problem other than impairing visibility and solar power.
00:50:13.040 Because the, in other words, the thing they have in the movie, The Martian, where the windstorm is blowing over the base is, is fiction.
00:50:19.340 The air is too thin for the, the wind to have much force.
00:50:22.720 The, you know, but we're going to have to develop technologies to make the, the base as self-sufficient as possible, in particular with bulk materials.
00:50:40.940 That includes food, water, oxygen.
00:50:42.780 It also includes things like plastic, steel, aluminum, glass.
00:50:49.260 And now, I think that can all be done.
00:50:52.740 The materials are there.
00:50:53.880 The technologies are fairly straightforward, although they have to be repackaged.
00:50:58.220 Now, to make something like this is more complicated.
00:51:02.140 Okay.
00:51:02.280 So, I think for some time, Mars is going to have to import high-tech objects.
00:51:08.740 But even this thing here, most of the weight of this is like the glass cover and the metal back.
00:51:18.480 And, you know, the guts of this, that is actually high-tech, is maybe 20% of its mass.
00:51:24.900 So, this is maybe 200 grams, maybe 40 grams of this is actually something you can't make on Mars.
00:51:31.860 Now, that's the most expensive part.
00:51:34.100 But as things are shippable by advanced transportation to the extent they have a high value per mass.
00:51:49.920 In other words, you don't ship coal by effort.
00:51:52.040 Okay.
00:51:54.260 Because the cost of air freight is much higher than the value per kilogram of coal.
00:52:00.360 Okay.
00:52:00.640 Shipping this by air freight is no problem at all.
00:52:05.440 Now, space freight is the same fundamental issue.
00:52:08.560 We're not going to want to ship food and steel to Mars, except at the very initiation of the base.
00:52:14.860 Okay.
00:52:15.160 So, you want to build greenhouses on Mars.
00:52:17.480 So, you can make the steel frame.
00:52:19.180 You can make the glass, okay, on Mars.
00:52:22.440 Okay.
00:52:22.620 Those are the heaviest stuff.
00:52:23.480 You can probably make the motors that power the pumps and fans for the greenhouse on Mars, too.
00:52:29.460 But the computers that control the motors and fans, you probably want to import from Earth.
00:52:35.940 So, you see what I'm saying.
00:52:41.120 Now, as Mars becomes more populated and has a greater division of labor, more sophisticated objects will be makeable there.
00:52:50.280 But that's going to be a progressive thing.
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00:53:59.020 It's really interesting the way that you're speaking about this, Robert, because to most people, this sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel or a sci-fi movie.
00:54:10.180 But the way you're talking about it shows that it is achievable.
00:54:16.200 It is achievable, and it's going to be in the realms of possibility.
00:54:19.740 So do you think that these kind of – how long do you think it's going to take before we set up these kind of civilizations, this type of technology on Mars?
00:54:30.320 Do you think it's going to be 100 years, or could it be less than that?
00:54:33.480 I think it could be a lot less than that.
00:54:34.780 Let me tell you a story about this, okay?
00:54:37.400 It's an interesting story.
00:54:39.440 In 1970, Apollo astronauts visited the crater Aristarchus on the moon.
00:54:47.660 And the crater Aristarchus is the scene where Arthur Clarke set one of his most famous novels called Earthlight.
00:54:58.500 Okay?
00:54:59.140 And the Apollo astronauts were aware of this novel.
00:55:01.760 And so landing in the crater, one of them proudly proclaimed, you know, we are here in the crater Aristarchus, the scene of Arthur Clarke's great novel, Earthlight.
00:55:14.380 And wouldn't he be proud to know that we're here if he was alive today?
00:55:21.960 Okay.
00:55:22.360 Now, of course, Arthur Clarke was alive in 1970.
00:55:25.320 And he heard this remark, and so he commented on it publicly.
00:55:30.260 He said, well, you know, I actually – I am alive, and I am very proud of this.
00:55:33.780 But I wrote that novel in 1940 while I was manning a radar station in England during the Blitz.
00:55:43.020 Okay?
00:55:43.320 And this is how he was spending the boredom between attacks, writing Earthlight.
00:55:49.780 And he said, and if anybody had told me then that 30 years later there would be people walking around in that crater, I would have thought it was the wildest poppycock imaginable.
00:56:03.680 It's only 30 years that separate the Blitz from walking on the moon.
00:56:09.460 30 years.
00:56:10.100 Wow.
00:56:10.900 Okay?
00:56:13.180 And things can happen much faster than we anticipate.
00:56:17.480 I think we can have people walking around on Mars 10 years from now, and I think we can have very substantial bases on Mars starting to develop this technology and maybe even the first children born on Mars 20 years from now.
00:56:32.740 I think that that future is entirely possible.
00:56:35.880 But it's not destiny.
00:56:38.900 There's no such thing as destiny.
00:56:40.260 The future is what we make it.
00:56:43.040 Robert, that's a really fascinating way to talk about it.
00:56:46.360 I have to thank you for kind of recapturing the spirit of curiosity in terms of exploring space that I certainly remember from my childhood that I haven't felt for a very long time.
00:56:57.980 So thank you for that.
00:56:59.600 I really appreciate it.
00:57:00.980 We've got about 10, 15 minutes left, and I wanted to talk.
00:57:03.740 Did you want to say something about Mars?
00:57:04.620 It's not just about Mars.
00:57:07.040 It's something I have to ask, and I would kick myself if I didn't, and it's going to sound like a ridiculous question, but here we go.
00:57:14.480 Robert, what is your opinion of alien life forms?
00:57:18.580 Do you think that they exist?
00:57:20.080 Do you think that there is intelligent alien life form out there?
00:57:22.960 Yes, I am pretty certain that there is intelligent alien life forms out there.
00:57:36.460 I think we're living in a living universe.
00:57:40.140 Now, that's a question of belief because you don't have the data that proves that at the moment, except that here's what we know.
00:57:49.400 We know from the Kepler Space Telescope that planets around stars are the rule, not the exception.
00:57:59.280 Okay, and that 20% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy have Earth-sized planets orbiting stars in their habitable zone.
00:58:13.820 That is the right distance from the star where you get the reasonable temperatures where water is liquid and not all frozen or all gaseous or something like that.
00:58:22.740 So the potential homes for life are innumerable.
00:58:35.560 There's no reason to believe that the processes that led to the origin of life from chemistry are unique to the Earth.
00:58:42.660 The Roman philosopher, I believe, said, you know, is it reasonable to assume that an entire field, only one blade of grass, should grow?
00:59:00.140 Well, no, it's not.
00:59:01.840 Okay, and furthermore, even if life didn't originate in multiple places, it can travel across space.
00:59:09.180 We get rocks from Mars landing on Earth all the time, 500 kilograms of them a year.
00:59:15.200 And examination of them has shown that in the process of their ejection from Mars, which is by meteor impact, flight through space and reentry and landing on Earth,
00:59:23.540 there are large fractions of those rocks that were never raised above 40 centigrade, which means that if there were microbes in them, they could survive the trip.
00:59:30.940 And the rocks are going the other way, too.
00:59:32.840 And, you know, when the Earth was impacted, say, at the time of the dinosaur extinction, it spread rocks containing microbes out into space, not just to Mars, but into interstellar space.
00:59:46.540 And all other planets that might have life are doing this, too.
00:59:51.500 So any planet that has life is spreading life.
00:59:56.720 Now, okay, that's microbes.
00:59:58.700 But then we know about evolution.
01:00:00.760 And we know that life continually has evolved.
01:00:04.220 And while it's not true that life evolves in a directed way towards higher and higher forms,
01:00:14.260 it evolves in all directions, okay, which includes towards higher and higher forms, okay?
01:00:21.720 You know, people say, well, only humans are intelligent.
01:00:24.340 We have intelligence as a unique human thing.
01:00:27.460 Well, intelligence is really shades of gray.
01:00:30.820 You know, if you look at the array of life on Earth, say, as it was 30 million years ago, long before there were people, but it was diverse mammals,
01:00:42.400 vastly more intelligent than the animals were 300 million years ago.
01:00:46.160 And they, in turn, were vastly more intelligent than the life forms that were here 3 billion years ago.
01:00:53.260 So, yes, there is progress that occurs in biology.
01:00:57.820 It doesn't occur in just one direction.
01:00:59.780 Okay, we got new viruses being mutated too.
01:01:02.740 But the idea that intelligence, which is one form of adaptation that is useful, would not evolve elsewhere, makes no sense.
01:01:13.680 Intelligence, capacity for intelligence, adaptability, communicative and cognitive abilities,
01:01:21.580 all have been increasing on Earth more or less continually for the past 3 billion years.
01:01:28.240 And so, if life's everywhere, I think it means intelligence is quite widespread as well.
01:01:36.660 Very interesting.
01:01:37.560 Well, I'm glad Francis asked you that question, because the question I was going to ask you is about matters back here on Earth,
01:01:42.820 which you alluded to somewhat right at the beginning of the interview, which is, I feel like the conversation we've just had is all about expanding humanity beyond the remits of Earth
01:01:55.880 and, you know, growing the impact of human civilization on the universe and reaching further and grasping for more.
01:02:04.940 But there is a tendency, particularly in modern society, which is, I would argue, quite anti-humanist, that sees human beings as a plague that is unleashed on this planet.
01:02:18.380 You know, even the mere mention of colonization obviously has its negative connotations for a good reason, historically speaking.
01:02:25.800 But I think underneath that, there is a kind of anti-humanism more broadly, which is the idea that, you know, having children is bad, that human beings are inherently bad.
01:02:36.920 The impact that we have on the world is defined by its negative impact on the world and so on.
01:02:43.780 Where does that come from, in your opinion?
01:02:46.080 Why have we, some people, embraced this as much as they have?
01:02:50.320 Well, this is fundamentally the Malthusian point of view.
01:02:55.800 That there's only so much to go around and so the more people, the worse.
01:03:02.580 And therefore, human numbers, activities, and liberties must be severely constrained.
01:03:07.480 Now, the corollary to this is there must be someone to do the constraining.
01:03:11.740 And so, this worldview is fundamentally a justification for tyranny.
01:03:17.320 And therefore, intellectuals that espouse it will never lack for sponsors, which was the case with Malthus himself, who was an employee of the East India Company.
01:03:27.240 And, you know, first of all, the Malthus theory is completely false.
01:03:35.980 Actually, it's been false through all of human history, and it was spectacularly false in Malthus' own time and more recently, as the population has soared, standard of living has soared.
01:03:45.160 Because what is standard of living?
01:03:48.320 Crudely speaking, it's product divided by the number of people.
01:03:51.880 Okay?
01:03:52.700 What determines the product available per person equals, on average, the product produced per person.
01:04:01.420 Which means, and what is product produced per person?
01:04:04.340 That is technology.
01:04:05.280 That is, new technologies multiply what each person can produce.
01:04:11.080 Okay?
01:04:11.820 And where do inventions come from?
01:04:14.060 They come from inventors.
01:04:15.120 The more people, the more inventors.
01:04:16.500 The more inventors, the more inventions.
01:04:18.560 And inventions are cumulative.
01:04:20.520 And this is why, as the number of people has gone up, the standard of living has gone up and not down.
01:04:26.580 I mean, you know, in Malthus' time, the world had one billion people.
01:04:30.160 And the average income per person per year was about $200, about 50, 60 cents a day in today's money.
01:04:45.080 This is the world described in the novels of Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, in which there are starving people in London and Paris, the two most advanced cities in the world.
01:04:55.680 Okay?
01:04:55.860 Today, the world average is $10,000 per person.
01:05:01.480 Okay?
01:05:01.680 Now, it's higher in advanced countries, but that's the average.
01:05:05.420 Okay?
01:05:05.540 That's like Brazil.
01:05:07.220 Okay?
01:05:09.040 10,000 is 50 times as much as 200.
01:05:13.480 So, the world population has increased sevenfold.
01:05:16.860 The product per capita has increased 50-fold, which is like seven squared, which means the total product has increased as the population cubed.
01:05:29.260 So, Malthusianism could not be more counterfactual.
01:05:32.600 Okay?
01:05:34.720 And one could go on along these lines.
01:05:38.800 But these ideas are promoted.
01:05:44.120 You know, Hitler. 0.87
01:05:46.160 Hitler said he took the opposite point of view.
01:05:49.420 And, in fact, he particularly singled out this idea that science, scientific progress, could produce more per person than population growth.
01:06:04.880 He called it a Jewish plot to dissuade people from understanding the necessity for war.
01:06:12.800 That's what he said.
01:06:15.840 He said, in other words, this idea that human creativity, science, okay, can overcome resource limitations is undermining people's belief in the necessity for war, which he wanted people to believe in.
01:06:34.800 Okay?
01:06:37.120 And, okay, Jews have contributed to the advance of science and technology, certainly.
01:06:43.000 But certainly the idea that science and technology can alleviate scarcity is not a Jewish plot.
01:06:49.660 It's simply true. 1.00
01:06:51.960 And as history proves, history proves that wars for Levenstram are unnecessary and stupid. 0.96
01:07:01.800 And the – but that won't stop them from happening because there are people who need this bad idea. 0.97
01:07:14.380 Okay?
01:07:15.340 And it is fundamental to their power.
01:07:20.180 In other words, it is the justification for tyranny, including totalitarian forms of tyranny.
01:07:26.260 The – and frankly, this is why I think going to Mars is important.
01:07:35.060 It's not – we're not going to get oil from Mars, okay, to alleviate the oil shortage.
01:07:40.660 We may – I think we will – get inventions from Mars, which will help us a lot.
01:07:46.480 But the main thing we're going to get from Mars is the truth.
01:07:49.960 That it's not true that there's only so much to go around here on Earth because the Earth comes with an infinite sky.
01:07:56.660 And if we work together, we can throw it wide open.
01:07:59.300 And there's no reason killing each other, fighting over provinces, if by working together we can open planets.
01:08:04.780 What a beautiful way to wrap it up, Robert.
01:08:09.040 I'll say for myself that I absolutely loved speaking with you.
01:08:13.440 I'm so glad we got to tap into what I said earlier, which is part of the excitement and optimism about the future of human civilization, frankly, that we don't often come across nowadays.
01:08:25.600 And I really appreciate the time you've given us.
01:08:28.700 We're going to ask you a couple of questions from our audience that only they will get to see for our locals.
01:08:34.200 But before we do, we've got one final question for you, as always.
01:08:37.860 Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?
01:08:42.080 Well, you should be talking about my books.
01:08:47.520 Okay.
01:08:48.020 There's enough of them to go around.
01:08:49.440 Yeah.
01:08:49.980 I've got a number of books.
01:08:53.460 I mean, if you've got time for one, it's the case for Mars.
01:08:56.260 I mean, it's published it in 96, updated it in 2011, 2021.
01:09:04.260 The most recent edition has an endorsement by Elon Musk on the cover.
01:09:08.180 But if you've got time for one of my books, that's the one.
01:09:11.840 Okay.
01:09:12.040 I have a more recent book.
01:09:13.420 It's called The Case for Space.
01:09:15.100 It's also out there.
01:09:15.960 And a book that is on the flip side of this, which is called Merchants of Despair, which is my attack on this anti-humanist concept and showing how, not only it's wrong, but how it has been responsible for almost all the major human-caused disasters in the past 200 years.
01:09:40.660 And so, you know, if you're up for that, also, if you're not technical and just more into history and stuff, that's the book, Merchants of Despair.
01:09:52.100 And they're all available on Amazon.
01:09:54.440 Well, I can't wait.
01:09:55.460 I'm going to start.
01:09:56.180 I haven't had a chance to read any of them yet, but I'm definitely going to start with The Case for Mars.
01:09:59.760 And I really, really look forward to that.
01:10:02.480 Okay.
01:10:03.140 Robert Zubin, thank you so much for coming on the show.
01:10:06.040 If people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that?
01:10:09.960 Well, I'm president of the Mars Society.
01:10:12.640 We have a website, which is at marssociety.org.
01:10:16.620 That's fantastic.
01:10:17.520 Thank you so much.
01:10:18.600 Don't go anywhere because we're going to ask you a couple of questions.
01:10:21.680 But for now, Dr. Robert Zubin, thank you so much for coming on.
01:10:24.520 And thank you for watching and listening.
01:10:26.680 We'll see you with another brilliant episode like this one or also.
01:10:30.680 All of them go out at 7 p.m. UK time.
01:10:32.560 And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast.
01:10:38.460 Take care and see you soon, guys.
01:10:42.560 Any life form that goes to a new environment is going to re-optimize for that environment.
01:10:47.840 And a taller and more lightly built might very well be the way that Martians evolved. 0.87
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