This is 50 minutes. There we go. Im going to start over. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the next session. Im going to be speaking about mars and the future of space. When will we celebrate the first human on mars. And Research Director at the Heartland Institute and worked at cato and heritage and other places. We are having this discussion on a very auspicious date. July 20, 2019. This is the 50th anniversary of the landing of human beings on the moon. One of the great human achievements. To give you more of my background during the summe december 1969 i put the High School Intern at the space center out in maryland, so i was like a kid in a candy store. I got to watch the first moon landing from a major space center i sat and watched the launch in the control room. This is the flight plan from the first moon landing. Everybody had one and i kept mine. I still have my little badge and you know how strict security is these days but it was just a little Plastic Thing for a High School Kid that was enough to get me into the space flight center. A little bit of things coming around so to speak. Some years later when i was at the Cato Institute raided a space policy for him to go for him and then the freemarket frontier and they managed to get buzz aldrin to do a chapter in my book, the first human being to land on the moon and there is a chapter here in my book. Iacs geek from way back and i asked the question a when are we going to land on mars and why havent we landed on mars yet. But im going to do in this ta talk, i have fivepoint and im going to go straight to the point since we are running a little bit late. I want to say a few things about putting it up although possible because we are talking about why we havent gone to mars yet and you have to understand how we were actually able to get to the moon. First of all, the technology to think about if you look at the Science Fiction writers that technology really wasnt there. It was very imaginative. For this stuff about how it says we can go to the moon is first launched right there in 1926 and it only went 44 feet, what a crackpot. And by the way, when apollo was going to the moon they published an apology and posted around the space flight center, but anyway, there was a fishing and achievement. The head of the Human Capital at that time as well and people who were thinking of the innovative way and by the way, they were not all harvard graduates. They were people from more reachable schools of engineering and loved tech and wanted to do something in various places. We have a free open society i was mentioning that some of you earlier. Basically the folks who were involved in this plot question and say how do you do this. Theres one big rockets that goes to the moon or do you have the whole idea of lunar orbit and putting out a separate vehicle. That was radical and there was a lot of internal discussion. We cant be given t rendezvous r orbit, can we. Have these very innovative and open imaginative people, and of course most importantly, you have the political will and focus. The soviet challenge was there with sputnik in 1957 and the first human in space in 1961 really shook up the americans. Jfk and Lyndon Johnson who was by the way reluctant. It was really Linda Johnson who i dont like on anything but Lyndon Johnson pushed the Space Program at kennedy went ahead and signed onto it. The idea was also the soviet union was getting the reputation of you want this done youve got to become a communist country. We had in American History at the time and that was very important. The notion was important that we have at least at the time Political Support to spend. Bringing the centers together many who knew each other since this is the bureaucratic thing but lets have a beer and talk this over. I want to go through this very quickly but i think that you will get the point. You wilyoull get a very brief y of the space policy about the time of the moon landing through to today. Thomas paine had those folks saying we can have a Permanent Moon base by the 1970s and worked our way and go on to mars by 1981 or in the early 80s. Theyve already built the hardware. Its not a humongous round and usually the Public Interest was kind of drying up. Surely we can do things quicker if we get a reusable shuttle and what happened in fact once it was operational was 1981 and it was putting the Space Shuttle rather than down with the shuttle then there was the question of jimmy carter that continued to be built. They have to go on the government carriers because theres a lot of private company saying it a. D. We can get into this and they can go to the government carriers. So that was unfortunate. After all, it gives them a place to fly to rather than playing around circles that there so we will build a space station. And heres the thing. Its only going to cost 8 billion its going to be up there by the 90s. So it will be there by the 2,000 standard costing 100 billion. Bush senior in 1989, the 20th anniversary of the first moon landing said you know what, they should commit itself to go to mars. We finally got mars on the agenda. Asked how much it would cost and davithey would say 450 billion. This was they didnt go very far. Clinton, nothing drastic. Bush junior was interesting. Iran because i was writing Public Policy at the time and after the columbia disaster, there was a whole thinking about what are we going to do in terms of the future of space. We should be doing this theyve been going around in circles for years. They dont weaken ourselves to going back because after all we can prove that we can do 50 years later when we did 50 years ago so that was our goal and we are going to have a big constellation rocket and capsule and its going to be great. Into that business as well. Said of course obama canceled cancel 81 constellation and alright and then trump came and what did he do . He canceled asteroids by the way but said we should go back to the moon. We should do that and go to mars but he had this thing he would go back and forth he made one statement saying we should go to the moon then to mars and then said basically we have been to the moon lets go to mars. Then nasa administrator said can we clarify . He said yes i guess we will go to the moon and then mars. He restarted the National Space council that obama canceled he does have a genuine interest in space. This is hot off the press this is yesterday very on yesterday july 19 he met with buzz aldrin who walk the moon and mike collins he was in the command module and during that little ceremony he turned to the nasa administrator and said is there any way we can go to mars directly . Because part of the plan of going back to the moon we will do the moon base and a lunar gateway that is a space station like a gas station to mars which makes no economic sense you dont really need to add that waste a lot of money so heres the point. He wants to go to mars. Why havent we gone to mars . Because since the first moon landing this is how government bureaucracies work and this is what politics does. Congressman and stuff in their district and other priorities this is what happens when the government is involved they can land a human on the moon if they throw a lot of money at it the long term they cannot commercialize anything. So now lets turn to aviation and space in the private sector because this is a very interesting story. Whereas space, let me do this. Aircraft and airlines started as a civilian operation with the Wright Brothers and a government operation which was military. But the civilian operation was run by the people. The government helped and was going to carry the mail anyway so they contracted air meal instead of getting government planes to fly the mail one of the private providers was Charles Lindbergh who started by flying air meal. So with the government involved in Civil Aviation but in this way or if they wanted to build a military plane they would put out a bid and say we want to certain fuselage we will pay this much for the specs. Wasnt the government building it but they would contract out. Private prizes were important not just for the government but putting up 25000 for the first person to fly across the atlantic and it happened to be Charles Lindbergh one of the ways civilian aviation was growing and then in the late 1930s to make it commercially viable. Space and rocket started private with robert goddard. Lindbergh was one of the ones that funded his later works but after world war ii socalled civilian space and civilian operations with the government sector that was one of the problems and also by the way private providers said in the 19 fifties and sixties we want to be involved that is the governments purview and calistoga services as a private rocket and they went through hell to get approval for a launch. And led to reforms later. So that was a different story for Civil Aviation compared to rockets in space. But fortunately we had a space revolution over the last decade or two. Private prizes deregulation created earlier it was moved to the faa office of commercial space transportation and the idea was onestop shopping if you are private Rocket Company instead of the state department with International Treaty on treaties in the space treaty go to the Government Agencies with a onestop shop for those to launch a rocket. A lot of private Society Members that were advocating for space and getting the private sector involved. Creating the x prize for the first spaceship to glide above 50 miles into space to be capable of carrying three people. They won the prize and the company was taken over later by Richard Branson who said he will be on his own private spaceship on the suborbital flight here in a couple months now these privatesector firms are very interested. But most of us know the two heavyweights i will mention the commercial Orbital Transportation Services basically nasa over the last decade has begun to contract out work much closer with private companies and of course in the end that means space x. Now they carry cargo to the iss. Then you have elon musk and space x building rockets and jeff is a little more working the way he has three rocket designs the first is the armstrong which is suborbital the other one puts people in orbit than the armstrong which is something you can carry interplanetary. This is very exciting. How many know Robert Bigelow . Right here in North Las Vegas and 2001 he invited a group of 15 or 20 space geeks here to las vegas and said he made a billion dollars in his hotels and said i want to spend half of that on the private space station to make sure i dont run afoul of regulators who will screw things up. Said basically talked about how to do that and of course what he came up with are these inflatable modules which he hopes to use as orbiting hotels or honey me one honeymoon suites or a laboratory whats interesting is he sets up the orbit to one third of the size of the modules and no they test on the iss so you cant beat them join them nasa now contracts with bigelow to put this up on the station. Very exciting. So now talking to mars elon musk famously said i want to die on mars but not while landing their. [laughter] very understandable. It is his vision to go to mars. He has been very innovative with the rockets before it was public the grasshopper it actually does a soft land to put up that satellite bring it down and reuse it again. That was something he pioneered. And is looking at building big rockets. But to do something very comparable to the saturn five to go to mars so by the way not just the private sector but consider some years back , a rocket has the colons on the bottom with the ignition and at one point he had a rocket to test and they said sir there is a little crack about 6 inches right at the bottom. What do you want to do . They said they cannot launch it now we have to have a major study to see the implications, run it through every agency they could take months of delay. Cost a lot of money or they said what if we just cut it off . Without effect getting the rocket up there quick so they did some number crunching and said probably not. It was his money he said do that. So thats the point so privatesector is not just voodoo but it means the guy who puts up the money and owns it can call the shots and make the decisions and doesnt have to go through the bureaucracy. He was to do Due Diligence but thats the whole point i could tell you more stories about that. So my prediction to get to mars at best maybe a publicprivate sort of thing where nasa goes to space x or go to pazos to do some stuff but nasa will be the way they will have to contract out to people like elon musk because nasa is too bureaucratic to get things done in a nice clean way but if they contract out and let these guys figure out how to do it. Also about a mission in the one i like best the founder of the mars society in the book the case for mars and also a new one a case for space which updates the case for mars material. As an actual scientist so wedbush said we like to go to mars and nasa said it will cost 450 million he said that cant be right you dont have to build battle star galactica to do that but nasa says we have to contract with everyone. There has to be a better way. He came up with a Mission Design using the calculations nasa used back in the early nineties maybe 20 billion a set of 450 billion. But here is the design. First of all one of the biggest expenses to fly in space is to carry your fuel. You have a spaceship you need a rocket to get it to mars. Every time you add payload you have to add more fuel but if you add more fuel you add more weight you have to add more fuel it goes up exponentially. So thats the big problem to build a spaceship to get it to mars and have enough fuel to do that becomes very expensive most people say build up battle star galactica. He said look live off the land. You have Carbon Dioxide in the Martian Atmosphere if you send up in the unmanned lander before the human being takes off with hydrogen i forget how many tons of it and with a Chemical Laboratory you can convert the Carbon Dioxide with hydrogen to produce methane which can be used as rocket fuel then you get water break that down to oxygen and hydrogen again you could have methane and oxygen rocket fuel that means before you even get to mars you sent to the unmanned ship Laboratory Create your return fuel sitting there on the planet waiting for you before you even get there. So now you cut down your cost going to mars. Next by the way this is just a little thing how you can do tha that. Go to the first landing and you rotate with the landings to create the fuel put the module down. This is another important thing you will stay for one year or more. One of the big expenses using the nasa design you go to mars and it takes six months to get there, you stay there for a week or two you do the flag and the footprints and then you rush back for another six months. Weight. Why not wait for the planet to go to alignment . Just a for one year and then wait for the planets to come back and do it that way that will save a lot of money as well. After all you are going there to explore thats what you want to put unmanned modules on the planet before humans get their. But you see the point instead of the model you go there of the model of the moon go there and do it like this. Next, mars can be tara formed and we can see that there is water available. There has been a lot of work done by the mars society and a couple of other organizations that not only do the scientific studies the health and safety that you need but they have an arctic station similar to a martian base over 212 teams stay for a month and that base in the arctic. One of the excuses for going back to the moon before mars is why we need to practice going there so we can practice on the moon but think about right now with the mars society they do that in the arctic and the teams come out of the habitat they have to put on spacesuits they do everything to simulate mars except low gravity but it is not as low as the moon so it will be a little easier. Finally, this is mind blowing. We could transport ourselves potentially to engineer the environment to make it suitable for human biology or engineer human biology to make it suitable for the environment of mars. We are learning about bio hacking and some cuttingedge stuff concerns genetic engineering that can make us less susceptible to radiation that has been experiments on that. And the things you put in your mouth that are rebreather so you put them in your lungs you could run for an hour or two without ever getting winded. This is not Science Fiction anymore. So what struck me was yes we want to terraform mars over a period of centuries with the atmosphere so human beings can breathe but maybe as bio hacking moves along very quickly and by that time we could actually engineer ourselves to be more compatible with the planet mars. Anyway, i dont have a good prediction about getting to mars because i showed you the problems with the politics but going this with the private sector increased interest and so forth it is possible in the future or perhaps in the next decade or so we could see real trips to the planet mars i hope these will be the first womens on the planet. I thank you for your attention. Please come up to the microphone for your questions. So to speak out on the taxpayers of new mexico you did not mention and Richard Branson we gave him 250 million and nothing has happened in 15 year years. They should not be Building Government space stations. We knew that was stadiums in baltimore city. Millions of dollars to build them. My concern is with nasa we see more states like new mexico get in line like georgia atlantic city. Its almost as if states are starting to launch their own Space ProgramLike Washington is not bad enough. We have a lot of capital flowing to those communities and the first truly private space port in new zealand do you see a danger in that as well . Now states flowing into space. Absolutely i have done work and a lot of regulatory areas when the states are competing is just like amazon. I love amazon. I use it all the time when i say where does this come from cracks it comes from amazon. [laughter] but states have done this for decades to trip over each other just pay a ton of money to of taxpayer money if you build it they will come. But is not based in reality and thats the problem that you see stadiums are the same thing look at the economics afterwards to see they are big money losers. I heard a great interview on a podcast which i recommend and he calls himself an engineer not a scientist. So the question i have is the radiation problem. You implied that but also by the way his admissions are purpose driven the first is colonization just for a place for people to go. I think the radiation problem if we dont transform ourselves or transforming the environment is a problem for colonization so can you speak to that quick. It is a legitimate question. For example there are arguments how much radiation astronauts will absorb going to mars and he does have good statistics to show its no worse or it is less than spending a year on the interNational Space station. To go and even remain there for a certain period of time. He still argues its not a big problem. Im not proficient enough to say hes absolutely right because mars does not have a Magnetic Field like the earth so you dont have the shield that would be very damaging for us. It is a legitimate problem but he says it is not and that is a longer discussion. But i have seen experiments over the last eight years tweaking genes to make them less susceptible to radiation. So you can imagine the next time we produce these creatures maybe we could tweak the gene so they are not as susceptible. Remember talking about terraform a also a century or two project you cant tweak the gene is not so far out. Working for the evil empire of nasa i was there during the commercial flourishing of private spaceflight in the light nineties and also those discussions how they were forced to make sure that they never can fly and they were denied licenses. They were deliberately trying to kill the investor class to make sure they would never invest again but the billionaires did not care. But to back up why didnt we continue to go to the moon because it was in the eye of the soviet union. We need to have a commercially viable reason to go to mars so i suggest we fill survivor or the bachelor on mars. Im only partial the joking but you have to find a way to monetize otherwise you ask the taxpayer to do it for the unspecified whatever and that will not work nasa will find a way to suck the lifeblood out of it. I agree. I said maybe one of the things is joint but my preference is certainly that musk and those a get together and say do this ourselves but the more likely it is we can go to mars for exactly those reasons you are saying by the way Robert Bigelow was looking at how you monetize the staff. If you have a passion for it but part of what he wants to do is build infrastructure in orbit so you have to have your own batteries but what if he starts constructing infrastructure so you can plug into the grid . Now you can monetize and others may say we cannot go there but they have the infrastructure. So you are right about that. Everybody saw the mercian i assume which is a cool movie. The mars society at the National Conference in Los Angeles California if anybody wants to learn more. But my question is you said you dont want to venture a prediction on time but word you venture if it is nasa or elon musk or another entity . With a planetary protection regime be changed to allow humans to be on mars because currently they are not even allowed to set foot on mars. First i would bet on elon musk going there on the landing. And frankly i think in my book this is a little decade its almost two decades old but the outerspace treaty and what it means and the implications and there is a big debate what we have to do to put humans on mars because we dont want to disrupt the critters if there are microbes if theres anything there it would be below the ground anyway that when we get to that point who will stop elon musk from doing that . Is anybody seen the movie destination moon . Rent it. There was the script it is a libertarian done in 19 fifties one of the first colored to Science Fiction movies and one of the scenes the government regulators are in their cars going out to the launch pad to stop the rocket from going to the moon because they dont have the proper licenses and requirements they are trying to get in there to launch it ahead of the government regulators. You have to see destination moon but think of the pr if you have elon musk or jeff bezos or a team of them who go to mars and then imagine a bunch of Government Official saying you cant do this. That would be very interesting which administration. Certainly not the Trump Administration about it what you think of him he wants to go to marsh to think he will say theres a bunch of lawyer geeks to say we cannot . Can you imagine his tweet on that . [laughter] you havent said anything about china or india and do they have plans to do something on the moon . Thank you for the question i had to cut down my slides because i put too much in and i would Say Something about china and india. China landed on the far side at no technical feet and jack schmidt he was on apollo 17 an actual geologist who taught the other astronauts was supposed to be on apollo 18 which was canceled and he argues apollo 18 should land on the far side of the moon and put up the Communication Satellite modules arguing that in 1969 and then the chinese ended up doing it. They want to dominate the moon and i was going to mention the israeli probe which is fascinating it was privately funded Israeli Space agency did provide some tracking that was funded by entrepreneurs built by a private company unfortunately it crashed on the moon but it did get to the moon. What is interesting, if i can get buzz aldrin who has a chapter, he advocates the idea that you basically have a spaceship that goes out to the moon then gravity swings back to the earth and it stops that would be a cheaper way to set up a cycler then you just go up and meet it he set up one for mars also i think that was a little more difficult to do but the israeli one use that concept to start off in earth orbit and then goes out like this and finally slows down into the orbit. There is a lot of innovative stuff is real dead. It becomes an International Thing and we will have competitors i dont know if china will be big enough to push the government but we dont want the government but jeff bezos is more likely to go to the moon to set up the base at the south pole and use the water. I think thats where hes going. With life on earth there is water. Is there enough water on mars . Very good question. All the studies continue to show there is water not only at the polls and of course it evaporates during the seasons but you may have seen some of the great photos taken from different times apart when you look at a creator you can see a stream it is probably mud and slush but it goes down the crater that is clearly a liquid of some sort. Carbon dioxide cannot exist as a liquid but water can. So right now it looks like that will be possible we just dont know how much is there and i would also add one of the cool things about technology is that you figure out ways to use scarce resources better. So i suspect you will see a lot of the recycling stuff is a boondoggle and a waste but you could find some really good ways to recycle water on the planet mars. By the way you wont have billions of people on mars he would have enough anyway. Will there be enough heat with a terraforming . Yes. It will not be tropical but most of the studies that i have seen this is nice about the mars society every year at their conference real scientist doing studies of this and the one that i have seen indicates may be a cooler climate and a couple hundred years but it will be survivable. They have to build up the pressure and build up enough oxygen in the atmosphere so you can breathe so there will be a transition where people can probably go out maybe they would have to have a mask but they could go out without the full space suit and it would be a transition over time for that. So the picture of your daughters was one holding the scale model of mars . They are not scale models. No. They are not to scale. So what is the gravity on the moon . Its one third. It wouldnt be as much as we saw buzz aldrin. I will end with this. This is the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing and i have argued for some years you have earth day we should have a human achievement day. Im curious why they havent visited the moon for 50 years. That is part of my talk because of politics and the cost. So i will finish we should have a human achievement day juh would be a good day for that because celebrating one of the greatest human achievements in history of going to the moon. I would love to see students but imagine i would love to see every student trying to understand everything that went into going to the moon and if you are interested the best book is Charles Murray apollo, the race to the moon and i encourage all of you who are interested as individuals to read that book. It would be great to have a human achievement day where we celebrate this and ask how did we do it . And watching on tv we are in las vegas right now it is 110 degrees outside. Im very comfortable here because of air conditioning. Where did that come from . There is a guy named carrier over 100 years ago how or why did he invented that . There is a fascinating story about that how did it go from using it for the industrial use to know everybody has it . All love to see a holiday celebrating human achievement like the moon landing so we can all appreciate it and have her own moon landing. Thank you for coming. We appreciate your attention. [applause] [inaudible conversations] all of the authors could push through to read openly and honestly about their struggles it is such a raw and honest account and it also reflects the state of the arab world today it is such an uplifting book. The reality is if i have to arm them not simply with a set of skills and intellectual tools to allow them to flourish and ethics and values but also to make sense of what they encounter every day for people whose responsibility is to treat them as community members. All modicum of decency they call him far worse things than what they are attempting to do that they accuse him. They have no right