Eric Hinterman: How going to Mars improves life on Earth | TED

Transcriber:

I am all in on sending humans to Mars.

There is nothing I want to achieve more in my career

than seeing humans step foot on that planet,

because I know it could be the start of humanity spreading into the cosmos.

I'd be happy to be that first person on Mars,

but my wife thinks that a three-year vacation to a deserted planet

with no oxygen, no real atmosphere,

nothing to eat or drink, freezing temperatures,

bone-depleting gravity and space radiation, is a bad idea,

for some reason.

So, I'll settle for sending someone else.

In fact, maybe some of you watching this could be the first to go to Mars.

OK, so I'm going to tell you why we should go to Mars

and why we should spread humanity into the rest of the Solar System.

I'll also show you that by setting out on the next great age of space exploration

we'll actually make Earth a much better place to live as well.

But before we do that,

I want to tell you about something that happened very recently,

that I am very excited about.

We made oxygen on Mars.

I work on the Mars 2020 rover.

Perseverance is what it's called, or Percy for short.

My role on the mission is to help one of the instruments on board,

called MOXIE,

make oxygen from the atmosphere on Mars.

I am fortunate to be part of the excellent team

that has made MOXIE a reality.

MOXIE stands for the Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment.

ISRU stands for In-Situ Resource Utilization.

Don't ask me why we chose to put an acronym within an acronym.

Sometimes we make bad decisions in life.

What this all means

is that MOXIE takes the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars

and converts it into oxygen.

It's kind of like a tree on Mars doing photosynthesis.

MOXIE is helpful for two reasons:

One is, you got to breathe.

But there’s actually a second reason

that requires way more oxygen than breathing.

And that's rocket propellant.

Rockets burn a lot of propellant,

so we have to make a lot of oxygen.

Without oxygen, we can't breathe,

we can't move, we can't explore.

I am in charge of sending commands to the rover to make oxygen on Mars.

We package up commands to tell Percy what to do the next day,

and Percy listens and does what we ask.

Well, most of the time, anyway.

I know this is going to be recorded,

and a lot of people will watch this after the fact,

but it's really exciting

because we actually just made oxygen for the first couple of times on Mars

in the past couple of months.

The first time we did, it was a pretty historic moment.

And now that we've made oxygen,

I can't wait to explore what's next.

OK, so why should you want to go to Mars

and explore the rest of the solar system?

And what are we going to do about all those "issues"

my wife pointed out about Mars?

It doesn't sound like a great place to go

and there's a million problems we could be solving here on Earth

with our time and money instead, right?

I want you to imagine in the past

a group of people that live on a South Pacific island.

They've been there, isolated, for over a thousand years,

living generation after generation.

They had no idea what was across the water,

and it was incredibly dangerous to try an expedition to go find out.

One day, the volcano that had formed the island initially,

erupted, and wiped out the entire civilization on the island.

In one day,

their 1,000-year-old culture vanished.

Some of us might think:

if only they had taken a leap and ventured out beyond their island

and gone to other places.

We might still know what their culture was

and know more about them as a people.

By the way, this has happened before.

The Bronze Age island of Thera erupted and erased the settlement

that had been there for multiple millennia.

Now this could be self-induced,

or it could be from any number of natural causes,

like an asteroid collision,

a gamma-ray burst or a magnetic pole reversal.

It really isn't a question of if the Earth will face one of these events

that threatens our species' survival,

it's a question of when.

I hope it doesn't happen, but I'm playing the odds.

Armed with this information,

don't you think we should want some sort of insurance,

some backups to preserve humanity's shout in the universe,

to not put all of our eggs in one basket?

If we had humans on another planet or on many planets, for example,

then the survival of our species is much more likely,

even if something happens to the Earth outside of our control.

Now, a lot of people don't necessarily like what I just said,

because it could sound like we're trying to abandon the Earth.

Run away from our problems instead of addressing them.

That's not it at all.

I mean, when you finish backing up your computer,

do you go to the nearest river and chuck your computer into it?

"Thanks for all the memories, computer, but I don't need you anymore,

I've got a backup now."

That defeats the whole purpose.

No, we want to take excellent care of the Earth

and go to space at the same time.

And here's the best part I haven't told you about yet:

going to space actually helps the Earth tremendously.

We have seen time and time again

that technologies developed for space missions

have greatly helped life on Earth.

Their applications are far-reaching and not limited to the space missions

to which they are designed.

To prove it to you,

here are some technologies that we use every day on Earth

that were originally developed for space missions:

cheaper and quieter artificial limbs,

smartphone cameras,

firefighting equipment,

baby formula, memory foam, advanced solar cells,

better LASIK surgery, water filters,

scratch-resistant lenses, air purifiers.

The list goes on and on.

These technologies help us fight climate change, pollution,

and save lives every day on Earth.

We invented these things because we decided to go to the Moon

and to explore space,

so we can't even imagine what we might invent

if we decide to go to Mars.

Why did I start out talking about Mars

when it's really my grand plan to explore and settle the entire solar system

that I want to tell you about?

Well, Mars is the first leap we should take in that journey.

If we can get humans set up on Mars,

it will serve as a stepping stone to enable further exploration

into the rest of the solar system.

This should be our target.

If we push ourselves towards establishing a human presence on Mars,

it will be a giant leap in becoming a truly spacefaring species

with all the benefits it brings.

Earth really is by far the best planet to live on

in the solar system.

But the solar system is still worth our time and energy.

As President Kennedy said,

we do these things not because they are easy

but because they are hard.

If we can start to move humanity into the solar system,

we can make those hard places more and more livable

while improving life here on Earth at the same time.

I want to put a quote up from someone who inspired a lot of people

to think more and more deeply about space exploration.

He said, "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.

But without it, we go nowhere."

10,000 years ago, people rarely ventured beyond their birthplace.

Today we travel all over the planet.

Well, at least when there's not a pandemic going on.

Those people from 10,000 years ago

would have their minds blown by how far and wide we travel today.

And people 1,000 years in the future will look back on us

and think the same thing:

that we would have our minds blown

by how far and wide they travel throughout the solar system.

Think about that.

We are the island in the vast ocean that is our galaxy.

I invite you to dream big with me.

We could populate hundreds of planets, travel between worlds,

make great new discoveries about our time and place in the universe.

You will even have an interstellar Mars address and a pen pal

in the neighboring star system.

Look, I want to go to Mars and see the Valles Marineris,

a canyon ten times the size of the Grand Canyon,

that might be an international park some day.

I want to journey to Saturn's moon, Titan,

and fly around in the low gravity with actual wings, like a bird.

I want to scuba dive on Europa

with Jupiter filling up most of the sky above me

and see if there's any life on the ocean floor.

I know I probably won't get to do any of those things in my lifetime,

but I want someone, maybe you or your kids,

to be able to do them.

I want humanity to spread out in the solar system

and eventually the universe,

and we are getting started on making that happen right now.

MOXIE is the first step.

Next on my to-do list is scaling up MOXIE

to support the first human mission to Mars.

That's what I'm working on right now.

We've gotten started on the list,

but there are a lot of problems facing us on this journey still,

and we could use all of your help in solving them.

Whether you can help from a scientific or engineering standpoint,

or simply spreading the message about the importance of space

and how it can impact the Earth in a positive way.

What I want you to take away from this talk,

is that this incredible vision of space exploration

will also pay enormous benefits

in making our home planet a healthier and better place to live --

all while improving the odds of survival for our species.

I think that's a dream worth pursuing.

Thank you.