Angelo Vermeulen: How to go to space, without having to go to space

78,358 views ・ 2015-02-19

TED


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I am multidisciplinary.
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As a scientist, I've been a crew commander for a NASA Mars simulation last year,
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and as an artist, I create multicultural community art all over the planet.
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And recently, I've actually been combining both.
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But let me first talk a little more about that NASA mission.
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This is the HI-SEAS program.
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HI-SEAS is a NASA-funded planetary surface analogue
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on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii,
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and it's a research program that is specifically designed
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to study the effects of long-term isolation of small crews.
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I lived in this dome for four months with a crew of six,
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a very interesting experience, of course.
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We did all kinds of research.
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Our main research was actually a food study,
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but apart from that food study --
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developing a new food system for astronauts living in deep space --
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we also did all kinds of other research.
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We did extra-vehicular activities, as you can see here,
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wearing mock-up space suits,
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but we also had our chores and lots of other stuff to do,
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like questionnaires at the end of every day.
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Busy, busy work.
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Now, as you can imagine,
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it's quite challenging to live with just a small group of people
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in a small space for a long time.
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There's all kinds of psychological challenges:
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how to keep a team together in these circumstances;
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how to deal with the warping of time you start to sense
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when you're living in these circumstances;
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sleep problems that arise; etc.
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But also we learned a lot.
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I learned a lot about how individual crew members
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actually cope with a situation like this;
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how you can keep a crew productive and happy,
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for example, giving them a good deal of autonomy
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is a good trick to do that;
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and honestly, I learned a lot about leadership,
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because I was a crew commander.
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So doing this mission,
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I really started thinking more deeply about our future in outer space.
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We will venture into outer space, and we will start inhabiting outer space.
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I have no doubt about it.
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It might take 50 years or it might take 500 years,
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but it's going to happen nevertheless.
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So I came up with a new art project called Seeker.
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And the Seeker project is actually challenging communities all over the world
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to come up with starship prototypes
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that re-envision human habitation and survival.
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That's the core of the project.
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Now, one important thing:
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This is not a dystopian project.
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This is not about, "Oh my God, the world is going wrong
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and we have to escape because we need another future somewhere else."
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No, no.
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The project is basically inviting people
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to take a step away from earthbound constraints
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and, as such, reimagine our future.
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And it's really helpful, and it works really well,
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so that's really the important part of what we're doing.
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Now, in this project, I'm using a cocreation approach,
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which is a slightly different approach
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from what you would expect from many artists.
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I'm essentially dropping a basic idea into a group, into a community,
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people start gravitating to the idea,
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and together, we shape and build the artwork.
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It's a little bit like termites, really.
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We just work together,
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and even, for example, when architects visit what we're doing,
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sometimes they have a bit of a hard time understanding
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how we build without a master plan.
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We always come up with these fantastic large-scale scupltures
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that actually we can also inhabit.
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The first version was done in Belgium and Holland.
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It was built with a team of almost 50 people.
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This is the second iteration of that same project,
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but in Slovenia, in a different country,
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and the new group was like, we're going to do the architecture differently.
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So they took away the architecture, they kept the base of the artwork,
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and they built an entirely new,
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much more biomorphic architecture on top of that.
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And that's another crucial part of the project.
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It's an evolving artwork, evolving architecture.
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This was the last version that was just presented a few weeks ago in Holland,
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which was using caravans as modules to build a starship.
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We bought some second-hand caravans,
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cut them open,
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and reassembled them into a starship.
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Now, when we're thinking about starships,
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we're not just approaching it as a technological challenge.
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We're really looking at it as a combination of three systems:
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ecology, people and technology.
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So there's always a strong ecological component in the project.
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Here you can see aquaponic systems
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that are actually surrounding the astronauts,
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so they're constantly in contact with part of the food that they're eating.
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Now, a very typical thing for this project
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is that we run our own isolation missions inside these art and design projects.
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We actually lock ourselves up for multiple days on end,
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and test what we build.
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And this is, for example,
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on the right hand side you can see an isolation mission
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in the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana in Slovenia,
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where six artists and designers locked themselves up --
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I was part of that --
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for four days inside the museum.
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And, of course, obviously, this is a very performative
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and very strong experience for all of us.
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Now, the next version of the project is currently being developed
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together with Camilo Rodriguez-Beltran, who is also a TED Fellow,
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in the Atacama Desert in Chile, a magical place.
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First of all, it's really considered a Mars analogue.
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It really does look like Mars in certain locations
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and has been used by NASA to test equipment.
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And it has a long history of being connected to space
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through observations of the stars.
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It's now home to ALMA,
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the large telescope that's being developed there.
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But also, it's the driest location on the planet,
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and that makes it extremely interesting to build our project,
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because suddenly, sustainability is something we have to explore fully.
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We have no other option,
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so I'm very curious to see what's going to happen.
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Now, a specific thing for this particular version of the project
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is that I'm very interested to see
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how we can connect with the local population,
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the native population.
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These people have been living there for a very long time
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and can be considered experts in sustainability,
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and so I'm very interested to see what we can learn from them,
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and have an input of indigenous knowledge into space exploration.
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So we're trying to redefine how we look at our future in outer space
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by exploring integration, biology, technology and people;
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by using a cocreation approach;
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and by using and exploring local traditions
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and to see how we can learn from the past and integrate that into our deep future.
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Thank you.
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07:00
(Applause)
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