we will talk about my latest research
which is dealing with as you just heard
with deep space what you see here is the
first patented spaceship in history it
was designed and as you can see in 1901
by Frederick Thompson it was actually an
electrically powered mechanical bark
right which was developed for the
pan-american Exhibition in Buffalo New
York
it was a multimedia moon simulation a
trip to the moon people would enter a
large building they would take place in
this spaceship that was actually built
and then through all kinds of devices
for example flapping wings earth was
painted on a canvas and then with using
pulleys the earth would receive the
spaceship would leave earth would fly
through space and would actually land on
the moon then the visitors would be
allowed to get up the spaceship they
would enter a paper mache moon landscape
they would be welcomed by dwarf actors
with witness a show by the man on the
moon and then the whole attraction would
be over it was very successful actually
400,000 people visited this it was a
huge ship and the designers actually
after the exhibition moved it to Coney
Island where they called it where it
became part of the Luna Park because the
spaceship was called Luna and that’s
actually where the name Luna Park comes
from why we’re talking about this why
I’m introducing my talk about
interstellar space with some
construction from the 19th century well
if you look at the design of this
particular spaceship it’s very clear how
difficult it is for our imagination to
think in the future the design of this
particular spaceship is very deeply
rooted into its own time it reflects
technologies from the day such as
ornithopters airships and if we move
further we can see that even in these
examples are always deeply rooted in
their own time you can see on the
left-hand side the USS Enterprise Star
Trek which is a typical symbol of the
Space Age aerodynamic
except you don’t really need
aerodynamics and outer space it’s kind
of vacuum there and then you have the
beautiful star war designs and they’re
very typically seventies angular designs
now when we’re talking about going into
interstellar space
there is one particularly defining
feature of a trip through deep space
through interstellar space the space
between stars it’s unpredictable this is
in big contrast with what you can see
here this is an image scheduled of the
Apollo program this was taken care of in
a very different way basically what they
did is they they got closer and closer
to the moon step-by-step charting and
trying to understand all the different
things that could go wrong kind of
mapping all the contingencies and then
finally they made a trip all the way
down to the surface of the Moon that’s
how most space exploration missions are
being designed now when you go into deep
space you cannot use this trick anymore
it’s too far away far out and you can’t
just go into deep space and then come
back and tune a few things so you need a
different approach there to Bay two ways
you can handle this the first one is
redundancy and redundancy is something
that is used in this fantastic
initiative which is called breakthrough
starshot it was announced last year in
April with the support of Mark
Zuckerberg Stephen Hawking it’s the
first interstellar mission that mankind
is currently developing the very tiny
spacecraft it’s an unmanned mission of
obviously we’re not ready to send people
to different stars they’re very the
concept here is to send very tiny
spacecraft probes to a different star
using light sails and then beaming a
very powerful laser from earth onto the
sails accelerating the craft with a very
to a very high speed let’s say 20% of
the speed of light and then with this
speed those craft could reach the
nearest star in about 20 years which is
not bad and the idea would be that when
the craft passes the star it would be
back photos to earth with the light of
speech so basically in about 25 years we
could have first images of a different
star all the technologies are not in
place yet but like I said they’re
working on it and it’s an example of
redundancy because what they’re planning
to do is they planning to send out a
swar
of these many of these and hopefully one
will arrive now there is another
approach and the other approach is
something that was that came up to me
when I was looking at this this is a
robot without a particular fixed body
foam bought from developed at University
of Pennsylvania a few years ago and what
you can see here is actually a robot
that actually when it’s encountering a
particular physical challenges challenge
it calculates the physical body it needs
to overcome that challenge it will
distribute that its joints that hat it
has at its disposal on the floor it will
connect a joint using Bully urethane
foam to create a body on the fly it will
then calculate a movement scheme to move
the body and it will overcome the
obstacle which I thought it was
incredibly cool this is not even a
polymorphic robot you know like
transformers robots which have a few
configurations this is really a robot I
can take any shape and this gave me the
idea to start thinking about developing
starships that actually evolved over
time that can reshape themselves or code
during the journey a code according to
the different needs of of what’s
happening around them and also the
different things that are changing
inside the spaceship which I will
explain in a bit I’m actually not an
aerospace engineer I’m a biologist as
you as you could just hear and only
recently I’ve jumped into the field of
space systems and my original biological
research was deformities of the teeth of
larvae of non-biting midges our Upton is
for six years very interesting actually
got a PhD in this go figure no wonder I
moved on to other things the thing is it
is really useful because now I’m
actually applying my developmental
biology background into aerospace now
thinking about some of developing space
systems is nothing new for example this
is a very nice example of a proposal
that NASA brought out in the 80s of a
self-replicating lunar Factory it’s
basically an autonomous factory in which
machines would build a system a factory
for example infrastructure and the
machines which self replicates to keep
on produce
seeing more of the infrastructure using
lunar soil now today with all the new
technologies around an especially 3d
printing suddenly the idea of building
things on in space on the fly have
become much more realistic and actually
right now in the international space
station there is a 3d printer created by
made in space that is actually used to
run experiments and I believe that 3d
printing could be a real game-changer in
the future of space travel now when
we’re thinking about a spacecraft the
starship that develops itself over time
it’s traveling at a very high speed
where did the resources come from the
thing is it can’t really stop to find
some stuff and I move on it’s travelling
way too fast it takes too long to to
decelerate so basically what you need to
do is you need to take all your raw
materials on board there’s basically a
bit like this like an embryo like a
chick egg you know the the yolk is
basically the raw material it’s all
self-contained and the raw material over
time develops into this complex thing
which is a small chick so this is the
core concept of what I’m proposing here
took me years to come up with this three
squares anyhow you have a spaceship
which is like an active component there
is raw materials and then there is
constant bootstrapping of growth and
evolution and the groove then you have
lose the growth and evolution are
basically stimulated because in part
because of environmental change is the
interstellar medium in the open space
between stars is not constant they’re
different kinds of challenges such as
radiation impacts of micro meteorites
etc and there’s of course also internal
G changes your populations might grow
and might need more space now what kind
of materials are you going to take on
board shipping materials from Earth and
moving them into space is really
expensive so we came up with the idea
because I’m working on this with many
different people at my university and I
left with all student team we came up
with the idea of using asteroids and
clicking a protostar ship to an asteroid
and then gradually over time during the
journey use the asteroids for resources
and the asteroid could be used for
resources both to develop the ecosystem
and to develop the architecture because
it’s known that asteroids contain both
organic material water
and different types of metals now there
is a difference between growth and
evolution and I need to make the
distinction here growth is the way in
which you’re developing our model is a
repetition of the same systems a
particular system works and then you
don’t need to need to change it
evolution is something else
evolution is like really changing the
morphology of the whole system and this
is how we look at it the spaceship the
starship is traveling and has a sensing
horizon which is a term or a consider
comes from robotics it can sense what’s
coming up if what’s coming up is very
similar to what was already happening
it’ll grow if it’s very different it’ll
start to evolve and this is a kind of
concept that we’ve been developing now
this is all very well but we can’t
really build any starships yet so what
are we going to do with these ideas and
is this a beautiful study of series of
studies done by carl sims in the 90s
that showed me how they could be
explored and what Carl Sims did was he
evolved virtual creatures these are
computer simulations in which virtual
creatures are evolving a body morphology
over time using genetic algorithms it’s
like Darwinism and mathematics
completely combined with each other and
you see an evolution that otherwise you
would never be able to predict and it is
a very interesting technique and so
we’re basically using a very similar
technique and this is the model we’re
currently developing we’re not done yet
take an asteroid we like I said we click
on the protostar ship we move the Astro
to the front it becomes this shield
so it’s an ablative shield if there’s
any impacts in the front you lose a bit
of your asteroid but your starship is
safe and then we define a typology of
modules for our architecture we have
processing we have manufactured we have
storage we have habitation and we have
life-support and there are certain rules
in which these modules can grow and this
is the kind of architectural model that
we’re currently developing and we’re
really interested to see what will
happen if we predefined a particular
interstellar trip with all kinds of
challenges and then to throw one of our
designs into that simulation and see
what happens during the journey it’s
like self developing architecture now
it’s always interesting when you talk
about space too
see how much you can learn from that
exercise for Earth and I think when
we’re dealing with uncertain futures it
makes no sense to regress to static
solutions from the past on the contrary
I really believe we should embrace
ongoing change uncertainty and we should
really try to increase adaptability and
nurture it and in the end I think we
should let evolution be what it always
has been best at an endless stream of
ongoing change thank you [Applause]