[Music]
suppose that your grandfather died
several months ago and when they read
his will you discovered that he’d left
you two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars what would you do if two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars suddenly and
unexpectedly fell into your lap well one
thing you might do is buy that shiny
silver Lamborghini that you’ve been
dreaming about since you’re twenty five
and if you did that you might even have
enough left over to make the first
insurance payment another thing you
might do is pay off your daughter’s
medical school debt well most of it
anyway
and yet another thing you might do would
be to buy a ticket for a ride to
suborbital space I’m going to try to
make the case for you today as to why
you should choose that third option now
spaceport america is located in the
southern part of New Mexico and it’s a
leading center for suborbital space
activity it was developed by and is
owned and operated by the state of New
Mexico
so that makes every one of you here
today a part owner of that facility so
let’s talk a little bit about that space
experience so there are three compelling
elements of a suborbital space
experience the first one is an
opportunity to experience sustained
microgravity microgravity is also
sometimes called zero gravity or
weightlessness and if you’ve seen videos
of astronauts floating around the space
station or sometimes researchers and the
vomit comet aircraft doing somersaults
that’s they’re experiencing microgravity
so it’s it’s a more intense and a
longer-lasting version of the experience
you feel if you’re in a very fast
elevator as it begins to descend or
sometimes even if you’re in a car that
goes over a rise in the road and then
suddenly goes into a dip the second
compelling element is the ability the
opportunity to see things that can only
be seen from space the blackness of the
sky the curvature of the earth the thin
blue band of the atmosphere and finally
the third compelling element is the
opportunity to see the magnificence and
the enormity of the earth and to think
about that and many of the people who’ve
had that experience have actually
described that experiences life-changing
so to get to spaced to be a true space
experience you need to reach the
altitude of the Karman line the Karman
line is a hundred kilometers above the
surface of the earth or about 62 miles
so why is space define to begin at 62
miles the reason for that could be the
subject of a talk of itself but the
short answer is that as airplanes fly
higher and higher in the atmosphere the
air becomes thinner and thinner and
eventually they have to go so fast that
that they’re going at orbital speed
which is 17,500 miles per hour and that
happens in about 100 kilometers hence
that’s the threshold of space so if
space is only 62 miles that way
how do we get there well one way
potentially would be to travel at say 10
miles per hour
unlike orbit where you must reach a
speed of 17,500 miles per hour there is
no specific speed requirement to get to
Silver orbital space so you only need to
go up so you can go at 10 miles per hour
it’s going to take you about six minutes
to or six hours to get there but you’d
be burning lots and lots of fuel and
that just isn’t practical so the way we
normally do it is we burn a really
powerful rocket motor for 10 to 60
seconds and accelerate very quickly to
several times the speed of sound say
3,500 miles per hour and then Coast the
rest of the way all right so on the way
up very interesting things happen you
will want once you’re outside the
Earth’s atmosphere and your rocket
motors burned out and you’re not feeling
any drag from the atmosphere you will be
experiencing the condition that
physicists refer to as freefall and
that’s what causes microgravity and
during that time you’ll be able to do
all those things that you’ve seen those
videos of astronauts doing on the space
station you’ll be able to float around
your cabin you’ll be able to do those
really interesting experiments where you
lay out a line of mmm say and you lunge
out and eat them one by one all those
things will be possible but there’s one
big difference those astronauts on the
space station have days weeks even
to do that you’re only going to have a
few minutes so so you’re going to need
to take advantage of that time now on
the good side since you’re only going to
be there for a few minutes you’re not
going to need to to wash your hair okay
so while you’re floating around your
cabin I would hope that you would take a
few minutes to look out the window and
see those wonderful sights that black
sky the curved earth and all those
things and that you would take a little
bit of time and contemplate your
position on the earth and the Earth’s
position even though it’s enormous in
the much larger solar system in the
solar system’s position in the enormous
ly larger galaxy and our galaxy’s
position is one of billions out there in
the universe at large
again many people have described that
experience as life-changing in the
history of humans in space there have
been only about 600 people that have
been there we think that space tourism
has the potential to increase the number
of people that have the space experience
by orders of magnitude
so why would that be well one reason is
that the space vehicles that are being
developed for for space tourism are
reusable right now as you probably know
we throw away the hardware after every
launch of people to space so making it
reusable is going to help a lot another
reason is that these vehicles are only
going to go to speeds of say a
thirty-five hundred miles per hour and
they’re only going to go to altitudes of
perhaps 60 miles or seventy miles so the
design is simplified quite a bit and
another reason is because these these
missions are only going to last for a
few minutes and so consequently you
don’t have to take along large supplies
of life-support oxygen water or food
from the passengers perspective not only
that but but the rigors are being
accelerated only 3,500 miles per hour
meaning that a lot more people are going
to be able to do this and secondly
because you’ll be able to train for the
mission in just a short time maybe a few
days or a week and do your mission you
won’t you’ll be able to do this in sort
of a vacation
setting so the Dennis Tito who is widely
regarded as the world’s first space
tourist he spent many months training
with the Russians to fly to the space
station and he also spent two million
twenty million dollars of his own money
to do that okay so if space is life
changing we’d like to get more people
there but space has a problem right now
there’s what I call the space conundrum
space launches are very expensive
because they because the annual number
is very low but at the same time the
annual number is very low because
they’re so expensive so how can we break
that paradigm well perhaps we can take
an example from the computer industry do
some of you are old enough to remember
when computers were very expensive
because very few were sold and at the
same time very few computers were sold
because they were so expensive so the
computer industry needed a killer app to
break that paradigm and it turns out
that in my view at least computer gaming
was a significant factor in breaking
that paradigm there were a few invent
individuals who found computer gaming so
compelling that they were willing to
spend thousands and thousands of dollars
to buy a computer so that they could do
that so if you think about it look
around your house and how many computers
to do you see and how expensive were
they you can be thankful that in the
1980s there were people who were willing
to spend many thousands and thousands of
dollars for the for the ability to play
Dungeons and Dragons and Tetris some of
you remember those I’m sure okay so so
this life-changing experience that
you’ve had that you’re going to have on
your space ride will provide be a source
of tremendous personal fulfillment and
personal enjoyment but at the same time
that space mission is going you’re by
doing that you’re going to be helping to
ensure our future as a species in space
by helping to bring down the costs and
make space much more accessible ok so
you will be helping for example to make
humans
multi-planet species you’ll be helping
to make it possible in the future for
four generations of people to come to
generate much or most of their
electrical power requirements by putting
solar collectors in orbit around the
earth you’ll be making it possible for
us to derive much or most of our metals
requirements by mining asteroids rather
than mining the earth you’ll be making
it possible to make better materials in
space for example better crystalline
materials that will lead to even better
computers than we have today perhaps
better pure pharmaceuticals grandpa
would be proud
[Applause]
suppose that your grandfather died
several months ago and when they read
his will you discovered that he’d left
you two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars what would you do if two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars suddenly and
unexpectedly fell into your lap well one
thing you might do is buy that shiny
silver Lamborghini that you’ve been
dreaming about since you’re twenty five
and if you did that you might even have
enough left over to make the first
insurance payment another thing you
might do is pay off your daughter’s
medical school debt well most of it
anyway
and yet another thing you might do would
be to buy a ticket for a ride to
suborbital space I’m going to try to
make the case for you today as to why
you should choose that third option now
spaceport america is located in the
southern part of New Mexico and it’s a
leading center for suborbital space
activity it was developed by and is
owned and operated by the state of New
Mexico
so that makes every one of you here
today a part owner of that facility so
let’s talk a little bit about that space
experience so there are three compelling
elements of a suborbital space
experience the first one is an
opportunity to experience sustained
microgravity microgravity is also
sometimes called zero gravity or
weightlessness and if you’ve seen videos
of astronauts floating around the space
station or sometimes researchers and the
vomit comet aircraft doing somersaults
that’s they’re experiencing microgravity
so it’s it’s a more intense and a
longer-lasting version of the experience
you feel if you’re in a very fast
elevator as it begins to descend or
sometimes even if you’re in a car that
goes over a rise in the road and then
suddenly goes into a dip the second
compelling element is the ability the
opportunity to see things that can only
be seen from space the blackness of the
sky the curvature of the earth the thin
blue band of the atmosphere and finally
the third compelling element is the
opportunity to see the magnificence and
the enormity of the earth and to think
about that and many of the people who’ve
had that experience have actually
described that experiences life-changing
so to get to spaced to be a true space
experience you need to reach the
altitude of the Karman line the Karman
line is a hundred kilometers above the
surface of the earth or about 62 miles
so why is space define to begin at 62
miles the reason for that could be the
subject of a talk of itself but the
short answer is that as airplanes fly
higher and higher in the atmosphere the
air becomes thinner and thinner and
eventually they have to go so fast that
that they’re going at orbital speed
which is 17,500 miles per hour and that
happens in about 100 kilometers hence
that’s the threshold of space so if
space is only 62 miles that way
how do we get there well one way
potentially would be to travel at say 10
miles per hour
unlike orbit where you must reach a
speed of 17,500 miles per hour there is
no specific speed requirement to get to
Silver orbital space so you only need to
go up so you can go at 10 miles per hour
it’s going to take you about six minutes
to or six hours to get there but you’d
be burning lots and lots of fuel and
that just isn’t practical so the way we
normally do it is we burn a really
powerful rocket motor for 10 to 60
seconds and accelerate very quickly to
several times the speed of sound say
3,500 miles per hour and then Coast the
rest of the way all right so on the way
up very interesting things happen you
will want once you’re outside the
Earth’s atmosphere and your rocket
motors burned out and you’re not feeling
any drag from the atmosphere you will be
experiencing the condition that
physicists refer to as freefall and
that’s what causes microgravity and
during that time you’ll be able to do
all those things that you’ve seen those
videos of astronauts doing on the space
station you’ll be able to float around
your cabin you’ll be able to do those
really interesting experiments where you
lay out a line of mmm say and you lunge
out and eat them one by one all those
things will be possible but there’s one
big difference those astronauts on the
space station have days weeks even
to do that you’re only going to have a
few minutes so so you’re going to need
to take advantage of that time now on
the good side since you’re only going to
be there for a few minutes you’re not
going to need to to wash your hair okay
so while you’re floating around your
cabin I would hope that you would take a
few minutes to look out the window and
see those wonderful sights that black
sky the curved earth and all those
things and that you would take a little
bit of time and contemplate your
position on the earth and the Earth’s
position even though it’s enormous in
the much larger solar system in the
solar system’s position in the enormous
ly larger galaxy and our galaxy’s
position is one of billions out there in
the universe at large
again many people have described that
experience as life-changing in the
history of humans in space there have
been only about 600 people that have
been there we think that space tourism
has the potential to increase the number
of people that have the space experience
by orders of magnitude
so why would that be well one reason is
that the space vehicles that are being
developed for for space tourism are
reusable right now as you probably know
we throw away the hardware after every
launch of people to space so making it
reusable is going to help a lot another
reason is that these vehicles are only
going to go to speeds of say a
thirty-five hundred miles per hour and
they’re only going to go to altitudes of
perhaps 60 miles or seventy miles so the
design is simplified quite a bit and
another reason is because these these
missions are only going to last for a
few minutes and so consequently you
don’t have to take along large supplies
of life-support oxygen water or food
from the passengers perspective not only
that but but the rigors are being
accelerated only 3,500 miles per hour
meaning that a lot more people are going
to be able to do this and secondly
because you’ll be able to train for the
mission in just a short time maybe a few
days or a week and do your mission you
won’t you’ll be able to do this in sort
of a vacation
setting so the Dennis Tito who is widely
regarded as the world’s first space
tourist he spent many months training
with the Russians to fly to the space
station and he also spent two million
twenty million dollars of his own money
to do that okay so if space is life
changing we’d like to get more people
there but space has a problem right now
there’s what I call the space conundrum
space launches are very expensive
because they because the annual number
is very low but at the same time the
annual number is very low because
they’re so expensive so how can we break
that paradigm well perhaps we can take
an example from the computer industry do
some of you are old enough to remember
when computers were very expensive
because very few were sold and at the
same time very few computers were sold
because they were so expensive so the
computer industry needed a killer app to
break that paradigm and it turns out
that in my view at least computer gaming
was a significant factor in breaking
that paradigm there were a few invent
individuals who found computer gaming so
compelling that they were willing to
spend thousands and thousands of dollars
to buy a computer so that they could do
that so if you think about it look
around your house and how many computers
to do you see and how expensive were
they you can be thankful that in the
1980s there were people who were willing
to spend many thousands and thousands of
dollars for the for the ability to play
Dungeons and Dragons and Tetris some of
you remember those I’m sure okay so so
this life-changing experience that
you’ve had that you’re going to have on
your space ride will provide be a source
of tremendous personal fulfillment and
personal enjoyment but at the same time
that space mission is going you’re by
doing that you’re going to be helping to
ensure our future as a species in space
by helping to bring down the costs and
make space much more accessible ok so
you will be helping for example to make
humans
multi-planet species you’ll be helping
to make it possible in the future for
four generations of people to come to
generate much or most of their
electrical power requirements by putting
solar collectors in orbit around the
earth you’ll be making it possible for
us to derive much or most of our metals
requirements by mining asteroids rather
than mining the earth you’ll be making
it possible to make better materials in
space for example better crystalline
materials that will lead to even better
computers than we have today perhaps
better pure pharmaceuticals grandpa
would be proud
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: