0:00
I'm Ariel Ekla. I did my PhD at MIT in
0:05
robotic self assembling space
0:07
structures. The idea basically being
0:10
like space legos that build themselves
0:13
in orbit so that you can ultimately have
0:15
infrastructure in space that is way
0:17
bigger than your biggest rocket payload
0:20
fairing. And something I like to call
0:21
out for people, especially here in New
0:23
York, if you're sitting in this room,
0:25
you are significantly closer to space
0:28
than you are to California. You're only
0:30
about 250 miles away from the
0:32
International Space Station. So
0:33
technically here we are closer to space
0:35
than Buffalo, New York. Uh which tends
0:38
to kind of surprise people because we
0:40
still think of space as very far away or
0:43
very hard. And so one of the messages
0:45
that I hope you all take away today,
0:47
particularly for this business audience,
0:49
is that space is no longer a sector that
0:52
may or may not be relevant for your
0:54
business. Space is a domain. It's a
0:56
physical emerging market. It's a layer,
1:00
particularly in low Earth orbit, that is
1:01
very close to Earth and now has amazing
1:04
potential to benefit people's day-to-day
1:06
lives in ways well beyond say GPS or
1:09
weather satellites, which we've all
1:11
become very familiar with. So today
1:13
we're going to talk about infrastructure
1:14
and architecture. You may be familiar
1:17
with space industry's love of Mars. Elon
1:20
Musk and SpaceX talk a lot about it. We
1:22
just had the amazing news about Artemis
1:24
2 historic mission. Astronauts went
1:27
farther out than we have ever sent
1:28
humans before, orbited around the moon
1:31
and came back. But what if we flipped
1:33
the script a little bit and said, "Okay,
1:35
it's lovely. It's really inspiring. It's
1:38
very important and motivational to have
1:40
these further out exploration
1:42
activities, but could we earn our right
1:45
to be a space fairing species by first
1:48
showing that we can take care of our
1:50
first planet? And so today's talk is
1:52
going to be about the infrastructure and
1:53
the opportunities in low Earth orbit
1:56
immediately relevant near-term
1:58
opportunities for building an industry
2:00
that would be profoundly beneficial for
2:02
our home planet and then hopefully be
2:04
the jumping off point for a lot of other
2:06
great infrastructure elsewhere in the
2:08
near neighborhood of our solar system.
2:10
So this is the current state of space
2:14
architecture. If you notice, it's all
2:16
essentially um aluminum tin cans. It's
2:19
pressure cylinders. And I always thought
2:21
that it was a little funny that you're
2:23
in space where you could grow your
2:25
architecture in any dimension and yet we
2:31
little coordinate planes for space
2:33
architecture which is a little funny. So
2:36
the alternative to this, how would we
2:39
change this paradigm? How could we learn
2:41
to build things that are not just
2:42
cylindrical because they don't have to
2:44
be squeezed into the tyranny of a rocket
2:47
tube of a rocket payload fairing? What
2:50
would it take to get to something like a
2:52
ring world, a much larger structure
2:55
often theorized in science fiction that
2:58
could actually encircle the Earth? Are
3:00
we that far away from this? It turns out
3:03
from a science perspective, no. We have
3:05
the material science. We have a lot of
3:07
the fundamental knowledge of physics,
3:09
orbital mechanics to be able to pull off
3:11
something like this. To be able to scale
3:14
to this kind of infrastructure though,
3:16
what we need is a different paradigm for
3:18
construction. and we need engineering
3:20
and funding progress.
3:22
So this is how the International Space
3:24
Station was originally constructed. This
3:26
is kind of a blowout model of the
3:28
current government space station up in
3:30
orbit. And the crazy thing is that many
3:33
of these pieces that you see in this
3:35
diagram were assembled like this
3:41
So, astronauts doing an incredibly risky
3:44
and courageous maneuver in what we call
3:46
EVA suits, extra vehicular activity
3:49
suits. We call them that because a space
3:51
suit is essentially an entire space
3:52
vehicle. It's just wrapped around your
3:54
body closely. Building some of the most
3:57
advanced technology known to humankind
3:59
by hand. And this is kind of crazy. It
4:02
was very impressive for the first few
4:04
decades of human space flight. But we
4:06
know that this is not going to scale for
4:08
speed or efficiency or cost or even for
4:10
safety. It is a little bit wild that
4:13
this is how we still build in space. And
4:15
so for my PhD at MIT, what I looked at
4:18
was other ideas or archetypes for how
4:21
can you construct in a more autonomous
4:23
fashion really interesting things. And
4:26
it turns out from nature we have a lot
4:28
of lessons about self assembly. So there
4:31
are examples of how DNA self assembles
4:34
uh protein and DNA self assembles in
4:36
your cells in your body all the way up
4:38
to ants and termites self assembling
4:41
into little bridges that can actually
4:43
span gaps that would be too big for a
4:45
single ant to be able to cross. And so
4:48
building on some of these different
4:49
lessons about pieces parts in nature
4:53
where the logic for the final assembly
4:56
is actually built into the constituent
4:58
parts. What I designed were these tiles,
5:01
self assembling. We call them lovingly
5:03
space Legos where there's intelligence
5:06
built into each unit that helps all of
5:09
the units come together in some type of
5:11
a predetermined shape that can also grow
5:14
and scale a lot like this plant that
5:16
you're seeing on the screen. So, I'm
5:18
going to play a video for you that is an
5:19
artist's render of the work behind this
5:22
concept to enable really massive scale
5:25
self assembly of space structures. and
5:27
then we'll get into the tech and some of
5:29
the investment opportunities and
5:30
business opportunities that we hope will
5:32
come out of this kind of innovation.
5:36
So, I'm going to talk over the video a
5:38
little bit as you guys see it. So, we're
5:40
situating ourselves here in orbit around
5:42
the Earth. You're going to see a rocket
5:44
take off. This was modeled on a Falcon
5:46
9. So, we can do this even before Space
5:49
X's Starship becomes operational.
5:52
This could stay in orbit around the
5:54
Earth. It could go to the moon. In this
5:56
case, you're going to see it go all the
5:57
way to Mars. It doesn't really matter.
5:59
We just want to be in orbit around a
6:02
celestial body. And that's because when
6:04
you're in orbit around a planet or a
6:07
moon, you're in freef fall. So, you feel
6:09
like you're floating, which is why you
6:11
see all those amazing videos of
6:12
astronauts playing with water and all
6:14
the physics feeling very different. So,
6:17
now that we've got to our orbit, you're
6:18
going to see these tiles that are
6:20
basically packed flat like Pringles in a
6:22
can or like Pez dispenser if people
6:24
remember those candies from like a
6:26
decade ago. These tiles pop out one by
6:30
one and they have very powerful magnets
6:33
on their edges. So what these magnets
6:36
allow them to do because there's
6:38
floating, there's no friction, they're
6:41
not being weighed down by gravity, the
6:44
magnets pull them together really
6:46
elegantly. There's no propulsion
6:48
required, which is useful in this case
6:50
because propulsion is non-renewable.
6:52
Once you've used up all your chemicals
6:54
that are on your particular propulsion
6:56
unit, you don't have anything left. And
6:58
so this structure allows us to passively
7:01
with just the power of the magnets bring
7:04
these tiles together. And once one ball
7:07
or bucky ball has formed, multiple balls
7:10
can form together for a future space
7:14
So if that was the artist's render, this
7:16
is all of the engineering that actually
7:18
makes it happen. So I've been working on
7:20
this since 2016, so about a decade now.
7:23
First at MIT and now at my spinout
7:25
Aurelia Institute. We have this
7:27
combination ecosystem. Aurelia Institute
7:30
is a incubator nonprofit where we do
7:33
really far future space research and
7:35
then we have Aurelia Foundry which is
7:37
our VC fund where we can invest in
7:40
technology that makes sense to spin out.
7:42
This is some technology that we have
7:44
spun out. I'll show you a little bit
7:45
more where it's headed after this but
7:47
these are the iterations of how we
7:48
actually test prototypes like this in
7:51
orbit. So we start on zero G flights.
7:54
Has anybody here been on a zero G flight
7:56
or familiar with it? Affectionately
7:59
known as the vomit comet.
8:01
So, this is a plane that does what you'd
8:03
want a plane never to do. The plane
8:06
pitches really steeply upwards at 45°,
8:09
noses over, points towards the ground at
8:12
45°. At the top of that arc, you get to
8:16
float. If the pilots are good, you get
8:18
about 20 to 30 seconds of true
8:21
weightlessness. It is incredibly
8:23
sublime. And then you do that arc 30 to
8:26
40 times in the sky. So it's like a
8:29
roller coaster in the sky. This is how
8:31
NASA trains astronauts. It's how we test
8:34
our work before we actually take it to
8:36
space proper. So this is an earth-based
8:38
simulation. You're basically in a short
8:40
period of freef fall inside of a plane.
8:43
So we do all kinds of testing on
8:45
platforms like these on Blue Origin's
8:47
New Shepard rocket. Yes, Katy Perry did
8:49
go up in that rocket. We went about 7
8:51
years earlier, but sadly not myself as a
8:53
human, just our research payload. Uh,
8:55
and then we have graduated now to
8:57
multiple tests inside of the
9:00
International Space Station. So, we take
9:03
these tiles and they're smaller than
9:05
what they would ultimately be as habitat
9:07
scale and we test them in miniature to
9:10
make sure that we get the algorithms
9:11
right and the code right and the
9:13
autonomous self assembly with the
9:15
magnets right as a precursor to now
9:17
preparing to really build at scale.
9:20
So, these are photos. Um, you're
9:22
actually looking down at Earth through
9:25
the Koopa window of the International
9:27
Space Station. Those tiles are about the
9:29
size of my palm and they self assembled
9:32
into this beautiful little fuette. You
9:34
might be wondering why is it a ball? So,
9:36
this is a subsection of the ball. It
9:39
turns out that to get stuff to space,
9:41
the part that's really expensive is the
9:43
exoskeleton. It's the surface area
9:45
that's going to encapsulate the
9:47
breathable air for the humans or the
9:48
satellites or whatever is going to be
9:50
stored inside of it. And a given for any
9:53
given surface area, you want to maximize
9:55
the volume that you get on the inside.
9:58
And a sphere is the perfect shape. But
10:00
it turns out it's kind of hard to
10:01
manufacture a sphere and pack that up in
10:04
bits in a rocket. So, a bucky ball or a
10:07
glorified soccer ball, which is the
10:09
shape of that ball that you saw in the
10:10
artist's render video, that is an
10:12
approximation of a sphere. And that's
10:14
why we're so interested in that
10:17
So, here's a video from the
10:19
International Space Station um from
10:21
years ago now. Actually, we've continued
10:23
to really progress through the hardware
10:26
and you'll get to see what it looks
10:27
like. So, this is an astronaut's hand or
10:30
two hands inside of a glove box while
10:32
they're floating in orbit.
10:35
You'll see the tiles be very gingerly
10:37
released. He's trying not to impart any
10:39
emotion to them. The field of the
10:42
magnets cause them to do this dance to
10:44
piouette and dock together. So if you
10:48
ever put your MacBook charger into your
10:50
Mac and you feel how it kind of seats
10:51
itself, that magnet seating, that's
10:54
exactly what you just witnessed live.
10:56
Now imagine that happening at the scale
10:58
of a tile that is as big as this stage
11:01
and then 32 of those tiles coming
11:03
together to form a really massive
11:05
structure and that is the engineering
11:07
work that we're now doing and that we're
11:09
scaling up to. So I mentioned before
11:11
that we have this combination ecosystem
11:13
Aurelia Institute and Aurelia Foundry.
11:16
So the nonprofit research org and the VC
11:18
fund. We have just spun out our first
11:21
company to take this self assembly work
11:23
forward. It's called Rendezvous
11:25
Robotics. My passion is really human
11:28
space flight and turning this technology
11:29
into habitats. What Rendevu Robotics is
11:32
going to focus on is near-term beach
11:35
head markets in the space industry that
11:38
need massive scale self assembly but are
11:41
not quite as complicated as habitats.
11:43
Turns out it is really hard to get
11:44
humans to be able to breathe in space,
11:46
do all of the environmental control and
11:48
life support systems that you need. So
11:50
rendevous is going to focus on things
11:51
like massive solar panel arrays in
11:55
orbit. You can get very efficient solar
11:57
power when you're up above the clouds.
11:59
Things like massive communication
12:01
antennas for the national security
12:03
applications for the US government. And
12:05
yes, maybe even AI data centers in
12:08
space. I think we can have a great uh
12:10
debate off the stage about the technical
12:12
pros and cons of this as a concept. But
12:15
because there is so much capital being
12:17
thrown at this industrialization of AI,
12:19
we would really like to be able to be
12:21
that partner that can support the
12:23
inspace construction at massive scale.
12:26
If you're trying to build something that
12:27
is three or four football fields in
12:30
size, you're not going to fold that up
12:32
like origami into a rocket. You're going
12:33
to have to learn how to do modular self
12:36
assembly in space. So we're really
12:38
excited for the future of rendevous
12:42
Taking this forward within Aurelia,
12:44
which is the incubator, we're thinking
12:46
about this technology roadmap. So, we've
12:49
built a 30foot habitat mockup. It's
12:52
actually up in an MIT lobby right now in
12:54
Boston if anybody would like to come and
12:55
see. And then this is a little bit of
12:57
our road map towards the other
12:58
structures that we'll be building in
13:02
The first application that we think
13:05
we're going to have for a habitable
13:07
version of this infrastructure in orbit
13:09
is going to be a replacement to the
13:11
International Space Station, but with a
13:13
very specific flavor. And so this is
13:15
kind of the next few minutes of the talk
13:17
is going to take you guys through what
13:19
is a near-term pragmatic, you know,
13:21
something that will have revenue that
13:23
could actually be generated in lower
13:24
Earth orbit based on this type of
13:26
habitat tech. So, one of the motivating
13:28
factors is that the International Space
13:30
Station, which we've been continuously
13:32
inhabiting since the early 2000s, is
13:35
about to get shut down. NASA has decided
13:37
that they're going to decommission it in
13:39
2030 or 2031. What decommissioning means
13:42
is carefully take everything out of it
13:44
and let it burn up completely. Let it
13:48
incinerate in the atmosphere basically
13:50
and be no more. Um, they're very good at
13:52
this. We know how to do it safely, but
13:54
it is a huge gap for the United States
13:57
to not have a commercial or in this case
14:00
originally a government space station in
14:02
orbit. There are some proposals to try
14:04
to extend its life. But what NASA has
14:07
been doing is taking a playbook that
14:09
they did very successfully with SpaceX
14:11
where they basically said, "Hey SpaceX,
14:13
we want you to get us to the
14:15
International Space Station. We don't
14:16
want to have to supply the
14:17
transportation anymore." and they built
14:20
up space as a success in being able to
14:22
do that. NASA is now saying, "Hey, we
14:25
think we've spent enough time as a
14:26
nation in low Earth orbit with
14:29
government money. This emerging market
14:31
is really finally starting to build out.
14:33
We're going to let commercial companies
14:36
build space stations in low Earth orbit.
14:39
And we NASA will go further out. We'll
14:42
build the moon base on the moon like
14:43
Jared Isacman, the new NASA
14:45
administrator, just announced. will go
14:47
look for life on Europa. So, there's
14:49
this moment right now that's about to
14:51
open up for the first ever commercial
14:54
space station operators. And there's
14:56
maybe six companies that are vying to be
14:59
the replacement to the ISS. It's really
15:01
urgent. We need to be able to replace
15:03
this infrastructure, but we should also
15:05
expand. We shouldn't build it in exactly
15:07
the same way the second time that we
15:09
built it the first time. And so what
15:10
Aurelia Institute is looking at is how
15:13
could we add a specific type of
15:16
capability here to a future space
15:19
station. So we would not be the entirety
15:21
of the space station. We would use the
15:23
tesseray self assembling tech that you
15:25
guys saw to self assemble a biotech
15:28
module. And this is why. So two trends
15:32
here to kind of call out and take away
15:33
from this talk. The first is just the
15:36
drop in cost to get to space. So 15
15:40
years ago under the Obama administration
15:42
with the kind of the end of the NASA
15:44
shuttle program, it was about $50,000 a
15:47
kilogram to get mass to orbit to get
15:50
cargo to orbit. Today is about $1,500 a
15:54
kilogram. And with SpaceX's Starship
15:56
coming online, it's anticipated to be
15:58
under $200 a kilogram, which is
16:02
remarkable. That's like FedEx. If you
16:05
can ship something around the earth,
16:07
cargo, not the humans, we're a little
16:09
bit more fragile, a little more
16:10
expensive, but if you can ship cargo
16:12
around the world, you can ship it to
16:15
space. It's really remarkable how much
16:17
reusable rockets have profoundly changed
16:19
the economics of space, which is why
16:21
it's plausible to have these massive
16:24
scale buildouts of say hundreds of
16:26
thousands of space Legos building
16:29
infrastructure in space because we can
16:30
finally afford to ship that mass up to
16:33
space. The second really interesting
16:35
driver is that we've had 20 years of
16:38
really beautiful, exquisite
16:40
biotechnology research that has been
16:42
done by the government and some academic
16:44
partners on the International Space
16:46
Station across a whole range of
16:48
different topics. And it's ironic now
16:50
that we're about to lose the
16:52
International Space Station, right? When
16:53
we could finally be scaling up cures for
16:55
cancer, organoids, tissue engineering,
16:58
all of these really interesting
16:59
applications that have been developed in
17:02
microgravity because it turns out when
17:04
you're floating, the science performs
17:07
really differently, particularly biology
17:10
because so much of our biology evolved
17:12
here, in fact, all of it evolved here on
17:14
Earth in a gravity-based environment.
17:16
So, with the rise of AI models, wanting
17:19
ever more data about biology, and the
17:22
opportunity now to build on all of these
17:24
NASA insights, and the drop in cost to
17:26
get to space, we think we're about to
17:28
see basically a little explosion of new
17:31
startups and new activity in this
17:35
So, these are a few specific trends to
17:37
watch at the intersection of biotech and
17:39
space. The first is tissue engineering.
17:42
So, a wonderful example here is things
17:44
like artificial retinas. These are super
17:48
delicate little structures that get
17:49
implanted by a surgeon in the back of
17:51
your eye. In the future, if this company
17:54
that we're working with, if they get FDA
17:55
approval, it would be able to restore
17:58
sight due to loss of sight from macular
18:01
degeneration or retinitis pigmentotosa.
18:03
So, basically, as you age, if your eyes
18:06
are giving out on you, this is an
18:08
opportunity to have a replacement of
18:09
your retina. The reason it works so well
18:12
is that when you're floating in a
18:14
gravity environment, the delicate little
18:16
layers of the retina, which take 200
18:18
layers of the super super thin layering,
18:21
they sag if you're on Earth. They don't
18:23
sag when you're floating. And so you can
18:25
get this incredible quality improvement.
18:27
It's like a manufacturing quality
18:29
improvement by taking some of these
18:31
processes to space. Second category is
18:35
drugs that are based on aging. So it
18:38
turns out in the zero G environment,
18:40
we've started testing these little
18:41
things called organoids. Has anybody
18:43
heard of organoids here? It's a model of
18:46
organs. So these are tiny little clumps
18:49
of cells that are artificial models of
18:52
bigger organs in your body. It's really
18:54
important because it allows scientists
18:56
to grow them artificially without having
18:58
to practice on real organs every time we
19:01
want to develop a new cure or a new
19:02
drug. And it looks like these little
19:05
balls of artificial organs, these little
19:07
things that we call organoids, they grow
19:10
better in zerog than they do on the
19:12
ground. They have better 3D shape to
19:15
them and they mature a little bit
19:17
faster, which means that that's a great
19:19
target to test cancer drugs and
19:22
Alzheimer's drugs on that tissue in
19:24
space. So really, really profound. And
19:27
then the most exciting example of the
19:29
three, which should be relevant to some
19:30
of you here if you're tracking um a drug
19:32
like Kruda. So Merc's current cancer
19:35
drug, $30 billion drug, like 30 billion
19:39
in revenue. Amazing drug for Merc. It's
19:42
a cancer drug. They took an early
19:44
formulation to space to figure out the
19:48
crystallizing the protein
19:49
crystallization in the drug and that
19:52
helped them take it from a IVbased drug
19:54
where you have to go into the hospital
19:56
to a shot that you can do as an
19:58
outpatient. Now what they used space for
20:01
was just to get the data to be able to
20:03
make this new formulation. They do not
20:05
have to manufacture every dose of Kruda
20:08
in space. So it's a huge unlock for
20:11
Merc. We're super excited to be working
20:13
with a slew now of different biotech
20:15
partners to explore this potential of
20:18
microgravity for science data that can
20:21
change your drug formulation and then
20:22
maybe eventually manufacturing of really
20:24
unique drug formulations in zero g.
20:29
So, if you're curious how all of this
20:30
works within a space station and within
20:33
this new model of space stations that
20:35
we're pioneering, these self assembling
20:37
ones, this is a little bit about what
20:39
the system architecture, what we like to
20:41
call in the space industry, the conops,
20:43
the concept of operations might look
20:45
like. So, you have this payload fairing
20:47
from the tip of a rocket spits out the
20:50
tiles very gingerly, one by one. They
20:53
self assemble into this bucky ball, this
20:55
glorified soccer ball. On the inside of
20:58
the soccer ball, we have outfitted it to
21:01
be a next generation biolab. This means
21:04
best-in-class robotics, uh, benchtops
21:07
for not just astronauts, but citizen
21:10
scientists. So, I usually say it about
21:12
this point in the talk, if you guys have
21:15
kids, your kids may very well commute to
21:18
space for work. And maybe not 9 to5
21:21
every day, but in the way that you would
21:22
go two weeks on to go do a study in
21:25
Spalbard in the Arctic and then come
21:26
home for two weeks or three weeks on an
21:29
oil rig and then you get two weeks off.
21:31
That potential is now coming for space
21:35
applications in orbit like this. And so
21:37
you could very well have your child or a
21:39
niece or a nephew be a scientist who
21:42
doesn't have to be a NASA astronaut
21:43
their entire career, but they get to go
21:45
to space to be part of this new wave of
21:47
industry. And so we are really
21:49
intentionally designing now because as
21:52
architects we have to think about this
21:53
20 years in the future. We are designing
21:56
the interiors of these bio facilities in
21:59
space to be more welcoming to a much
22:01
broader swath of humanity. And then you
22:04
see a little uh Dragon capsule. So this
22:06
is an example of a current delivery
22:08
vehicle that is part of the SpaceX
22:10
ecosystem that is able to dock with that
22:13
space station, bring up samples, bring
22:15
up supplies, and then take some of the
22:17
research back down, take some of the
22:19
samples or the produced activities back
22:23
So we're coming to the end of the talk
22:25
here and I just wanted to call out two
22:28
really big picture ideas that I think
22:30
you can take away from the field of
22:32
space architecture which feels very new
22:35
to many people. So the first is I just
22:37
shown you this example of an orbital
22:41
near-term a lot of capital being put
22:44
into this right now. But if we take a
22:46
step back, the reason that space is such
22:49
a special domain to build in is that you
22:52
can make things that you would never
22:53
have been able to make on Earth. And so
22:55
I just want to show you guys this
22:56
example as one of the two closing
22:57
thoughts. This was meant to be Newton's
23:02
scenet. So it was meant to be a memorial
23:04
to Isaac Newton. It was designed in the
23:07
mid to late 1800s. It's a 150 meter span
23:12
dome. And those tiny tiny little things
23:14
that you guys see on the screen at the
23:16
bottom, those are the humans for scale.
23:20
This could not be built at the time
23:22
because it would be near impossible to
23:24
build an arch of that span. But this is
23:27
the kind of monument to humanity. If we
23:30
have ambitions as a society and as a
23:33
space fairing species to go out and do
23:35
really big things, this is the kind of
23:37
thing you could uniquely build in space
23:40
because you don't have gravity. You're
23:42
going to have other forces. You're going
23:44
to have some air pressure trying to push
23:45
out against a vacuum. But this is the
23:48
kind of incredible monumental
23:50
architecture that we could be building
23:52
in space. And so I really like to
23:54
encourage people to think about space as
23:56
this domain that opens up not a blank
23:58
slate, but an incredible new series of
24:01
opportunities for humanity. And it's
24:04
worth also thinking about this in the
24:05
context of what I call the
24:06
anthropocsmos, which we need to do a
24:09
little bit of better branding on that.
24:10
We need a slightly less of a tongue
24:11
twister, but the idea is to call into
24:14
consideration this notion of the
24:16
anthroposine, which is the era of
24:18
Earth's history where we've now come to
24:20
accept that humanity has a really
24:22
dominant role on Earth for good and for
24:24
worse. If we're about to go into our
24:26
next era where we will have all of this
24:29
opportunity and potentially a big impact
24:31
as a species on the near neighborhood of
24:34
our solar system, that would be the era
24:37
And it comes with really amazing
24:39
opportunities but also a lot of
24:41
responsibilities. And so at Aurelia
24:43
Institute we try to think of the balance
24:44
of those different opportunities and
24:46
policy work about the responsibilities.
24:50
And then the final idea that I want to
24:52
leave you with today if Newton's scen is
24:55
an example of kind of looking outward
24:57
and looking up and into space about what
24:59
we could build. This is an idea to
25:01
anchor us back on earth like we started
25:04
at the beginning of the talk. So there's
25:06
this notion in science fiction about
25:09
off-worlding, not off-worlding the
25:11
humans, but off-worlding the heavy
25:13
industry. So get mining, get chemical
25:17
byproduct manufacturing that pollutes
25:19
our waterways. Try to eventually get
25:21
those industries off of Earth. You can
25:24
do them in space in some cases in a much
25:26
more responsible way. It's not like
25:28
we're just going from polluting Earth to
25:29
polluting space. When you're in the
25:31
vacuum, you don't have a water vapor
25:33
atmosphere that's trapping a lot of this
25:35
stuff in the way that we trap it down
25:37
here on Earth in our biosphere. So,
25:39
there's a really profound opportunity to
25:42
begin to think of space as a tool for
25:45
Earth. So, space exploration is not
25:47
about abandoning Earth. If you don't
25:49
want to go live and die on Mars with
25:51
Elon, that's okay. He's allowed to do
25:53
that, making incredible progress towards
25:55
it. But we can also use space
25:57
technologies as a lever to help Earth
26:01
and to try to treat Earth well and maybe
26:03
eventually let Earth recover as a garden
26:06
planet. And I think one of the maybe the
26:08
first applications of this is things
26:10
like AI deniseters in space. They're the
26:13
first new wave of industrialization that
26:16
hasn't really been built extensively on
26:18
Earth yet. Maybe it's a great
26:20
opportunity to move that natively into
26:22
space. begin thinking about offloading
26:25
off-worlding that carbon footprint
26:26
before we have a big scale out. So,
26:28
there's some really interesting
26:29
near-term opportunities with things like
26:34
And on that note, I just want to say I
26:35
think it's time to build. I hope I've
26:37
shown you a bunch of different ways that
26:38
we might be able to get there with self
26:39
assembly, future of orbital biotech in
26:42
space, and then also just these grand
26:44
ambitions that I think we can have as a
26:46
society, as a species around going out
26:49
to space and having great exploration
26:51
opportunities, but also thinking about
26:53
space as a tool for Earth. And let's put
26:56
space to work for Earth. Thank you so