What then of man has space exploration? The government, recently announce plans to return to the moon by 2024. The successful conclusion of that mission or result in frequent visitation of the moon by small number of government scientist and pilots it will leave us no further along in the general expansion of humanity in the space than we were 50 years ago. Something fundamental has to change if we are to a see common access to space in our lifetime.
I am going to show you next to a couple of controversial ideas and I hope you are bare with me and have some faith that there is credibility behind what we are going to say here. There are three Underpinnings of working in space privately. One of them is the requirement for economical earth’s to space transport. For both with hands in Richard Branson’s, to this world have got this in our sites and I salute them. Go. Go. Go.
The next thing we need a place that stays on orbit. Orbital hotels to start with at workshops for the rest of this later on. The final missing piece, the real paradine buster is this. A gas station on orbit, it is not going to look like that.
[Laughs]
If it existed it would change all future space craft design and space mission planning. Now to give you a chance to understand why there is power in that statement. I have got to give you the basic of space 101and the first thing is everything you do in space, you pay by the kilogram. Anybody drink one of this here, this week. You pay $10,000.00 for that in orbit. That is when you pay for it, pay for it to Ted if Google drop their sponsorship.
[Laughs]
The second is more than 90% of the weight of a vehicle is un-propellant thus every time you do not want to do anything in space. You are literally blowing away enormous of sums of money. Every time you hit the accelerator. Not even the guys at test that can fight that physics. So what if you can get your gas to the 10th price. There is a place where you can and in fact you can get it better. You can get it 14 times lower if you can find propellant on the moon. There was a little known mission that was launch by the pentagon 13 years ago. Now it called Clementine and the most amazing thing that came out of that mission was a strong hydrogen signature a Shackleton Crater on the south pole of the moon. That signal was so strong. It could only have been produce by 10 Trillion tons of water buried in the sediment.
Collected over millions and billions of years by the impact of asteroids and common material, if we want to get that and make that gas station possible. We have to figure out ways to move large volumes of pay lords to a space. We cannot do that right now, the way you normally build a system right now is you have a tube stock that it has to be launch from the ground and resist to all kinds of very dynamic forces. We have to beat that. We can do it because in space there are no aero dynamics. We can go and use inflatable systems for almost everything. This is an idea and at again it came out a little more back in 1989 with Dr. Wally Wood’s group and we can extend that now to just about everything. Bob Bigelow currently had a test article in the orbit. We can go much further. We can build space tags orbiting platform for holding cryogens and water.
There is another thing, when you are coming back from the moon you have to deal with orbital mechanics. It says you are moving 10,000 feet per second faster than you really want to be. Can get back to your gas station, you got two choices. You can burn luck in able to get there or you can do something really incredible. You can buy them to the stratosphere and precisely dissipate that velocity and come back out to the space station. It is never been done. It is risky and it is going to be one hell of a ride. Better than Disney.
The traditional approach to space exploration has been can carry all the fuel you need to get everybody back incase of an emergency. If you try to do that for the moon you are going to burn a billion dollars in fuel alone and something who out there. But if you send the mining team there without the return propellant first.
[Laughs]
Did any of you guys hears the story of Cortez?
[Laughs]
This is not like that I am much more like Scotty, I like this equipment and I really value it so I am going to burn the gear. But if you are surely bold you could get it there. Manufacture it and it would be the most dramatic demonstration that you could do something worthwhile of this planet that has ever been done. There is a myth that you cannot do anything in space for a less than a trillion dollars in 20 years that is not true. In seven years we could pull off an industrial mission to Shackleton and demonstrate that you could provide a commercial reality out of this north orbit.
We are living in one of the most exciting times in history. We are at a magical confluence were a private wealth and imagination there driving the demand for access to space. Durable refilling stations I have just described could create an entirely new industry and provide the final key for opening space to general exploration. It bust the paradine erratically different approach is needed. We can do it by jump starting with an industrial Lewis and Clarke expedition to Shackleton Crater to mine the moon for resources and demonstrate they can form the basis for a profitable business on orbit.
Talk about space, all we seems to be hung on ambiguity is a purpose and timing. What if like I close here by putting a stake in the sand at Ted, I am tend to leave that expedition.
[Clapping of Audience]
It can be done seven years with the right backing. Those who joined and making it happened will become a part of history and joined other bold individuals from time past who had it been here today would a partly approved. There once a time when people did bold things to open the frontier, we have collectively forgotten that lesson. Now we are at a time when boldness is required to move forward. 100 years after assuring at Shackleton wrote this words, “I in tend to plan an industrial flag on the moon and complete the final piece that will open the space frontier in our time for all of us.” Thank you.
[Clapping of Audience]
[Music Playing]
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services