The freemarket frontier explores what it would take to send humans to mars. Im going to start now i will start over. Good afternoon i will be speaking about mars in the future of space. When will we celebrate the first humans on mars . Research director at Heartland Institute and cato and heritage and other p places in very auspicious july 20th, 2019 with the human beings landing on the moon during that summer i was a internet Goddard Space Flight Center in maryland like a kid in a candy store. I got to watch the first moon landing from a major space this is the flight i still have my id badge i know how strict security was and that was enough to get me into the Space Flight Center and things coming around so to speak but then working at the Cato Institute that the space policy for him and then i got a book on space the freemarket frontier. Uzz buzz aldrin did a chapter in my book so i am a space geek from way back. So i asked the question why havent we landed on mars yet. I have five points were running a little bit late so i will go straight to the points so what made apollo possible because we talk about why we havent gone to mars you have to understand how we could go to thego moon. So technology had developed to appoint where we seriously think about the Science Fiction writers. The technology wasnt there is very imaginative and reach the point and the interesting thing about goddard in the twenties the New York Times told scurrilous stuff to go to the moon and half ha ha to launch the rockets. That was launched in 1926 and the New York Times it only went 44 feet. And then i publish an apology but then anyway there was a vision of the american thinking of doing great things and those who are thinking in the innovative way. They were not all harvard graduates who just loved engineering and tech and wanted to do something great and signing off. We have a free society i was mentioning that earlier that we had a situation if you look at how nasa ran at the tim time, basically the folks who were involved in this they would say how do you do this . Remember nobody has ever done this before. One big rocket that goes to the moon . Or this idea of lunar orbit and putting out a separate wenar vehicle that was very radical with a lot of internal discussion. Can we do that with the lunar orbit . But to be very imaginative people and most important to have the political will and focus. The soviet challenge was there with sputnik 1957 and then the first human in space 1961 that shook up the americans jfk and Linton Johnson and jfk was reluctant really it was Lyndon Johnson who i pretty much dont like on anything that pushed the Space Program and kennedy went ahead and signed onto it. Also the idea that the soviet union was getting the reputation if you want something done you have to be a communist country this is our way to say this is an open and capitalist system that can do better. By the way we had american industry at that time which is very important buck rogers was important and at the time we had Political Support to spend the big bucks necessary to get us to the moon. Finally nasa was not big bureaucracy at the time it just started to be cobbled together in the late 19 fifties by eisenhower with those various centers of language to gather. Sweat this point a lot of folks who knew each other to say this is the bureaucratic thing but lets go have a beer and talk thiset over. It is of the bureaucracy that you know now. So whats keeping us from mars . I wont start but talk about space so now i will go through this fairly quickly but i thank you will get the point i will give you a very t brief history of nasa and space policy from about the time of the moon landing through today. Know at the time of the moon landing thomasf paine and von braun had said we can be Permanent Moon base by the late seventies and work our way and go on too mars by 1981 or in the early eighties and of course that did not t happen. President nixon canceled the last three apollo flights. There should be 18 through 20 because they already built the hardware foror the mission. Then they said no lets do it so there was some savings but not a lot so there was some Public Interest that was drying up. So we took the saturn five and then to think we could do skylab that is cheaper. Then over a couple of decades saturn five is a great big rocket every piece is thrown away except for the final capsule coming back to earth certainly we could do things cheaper with a reusable shuttle so what happened is the shuttle once it was operational the first flight 1981 the real i inflationadjusted cost went up with the shuttle rather than down. By the way carter was nothing really big on the shuttle being built. Although he did have a regulation that said government payloads have to go on government carriers other private companies that we could get into this. So that was unfortunate. And then coming up with the idea of a space station. That something prick after all they gives the shuttle a place to fly to other than in circles so we will build a space station it will only cost a million it will be up there by the early 19 nineties. Isnt that great . It wasnt up there through the 2000s and probably cost 100 million. Bush senior 1989 the 20th anniversary of the first moon landing said nasa should commit itself to go to mars. We finally got mars on the agenda. He didnt ask in which it would cost they said 450 billion and this was 1989 and Congress Said no thanks. Mars did not go very g far. Some programs continued through but i remember this i was writing Public Policy at the time after the columbia disaster there was a whole thinking about what will we do with the future of space . We really should go ahead berkeley have done the space station station thing lets go back to the moon and we can prove we can do 50 years later. So that was the goal with a big constellation rocket and orion and it would be great but not so much. So lets try to see if we can do that again today and what happened with obama he said thats not such a good idea. But they kept the obrien capsule in a different form. Politics was involved. But the other thing is mining asteroids. And then they decided they wanted to get into that. So then of course obama canceled constellation and then trump came in and what did he do . He canceled asteroids but he said we really should go back to the moon and we should go on to mars. But he had this thing going back and forth about it and then said a tweet to basically say weve been to the moon lets go to the go to mars so can you verify a little bit and said yes we will go to the moon and then to mars to start the National Space cancel he does have a genuine interest in space and this is hot off the press that was july 19th. Meeting with buzz aldrin and mike collins who is the command and the return to the nasa administrator say can we go to mars directly . Part of the plan and then moved to the moon base first and then the space station but that makes no economic sense that just waste a lot of money 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 what politics does. Theres no way to get away from ite congressmans and peoe in their district with other priorities this is what happens when the government is involved. They command human on the moon they throw a lot of money at it but longterm they cannot commercialize anything includinger space. Now lets turn to aviation and space and look at the private sector this is a very interesting story. Whereas with space, with aircraft and airlines started a civilian operation like the right brothers and there was a government operation which was military stuff. The civilian operation was run by private people. The government helps for example it would carry the mail anyway instead of building these government planes they simply contracted out to providers. One of those was Charles Lindbergh who started by flying airmail so the government was involved in the civilian part of aviation, but in this kind of way and if they wanted to build a military plane they would say we want search and fuselage and build it to the specs so wasnt the government building it prizes were important but one guy who put a 25000 who could fly across the atlantic that it was this airmail fellow lindbergh. Prizes is the way civilian aviation was going. And then they came along making it viable but spaceoc and rockets started with Robert Goddard and his work was funded in the thirties but after World War Two for political reasons civilian operations or civilian space in military became part of the government sector. And that was one of the problems and also by the way one of them was that providers said in the 19 fifties and sixties we want to get involved to develop our own rockets but sorry thats the governments purview and in the early eighties the thnestoga rocket was a private rocket and they went through hell to get approval for a launch. That led to reforms later. So that was a different story through civil aviation. But we fortunately have had a state entrepreneurial Freedom Revolution over the last decade or two with a lot of deregulation and private prizes and deregulation by the way it was created earlier as it was moved to the faa the office of commercial space transportation. The idea of onestop shopping if you are private companies of going to the state department with International Treaties or spaceon treaty, and then to go around to all the Government Agencies you have a onestop shop for those who want to launch a rocket. You have a lot of private society that were advocating for space and to get the private sector involved. And then creating the x prize for the first spaceship that could fly above 50 miles into space carrying three people. The company was later taken over by Richard Branson who says in a couple of weeks or months he will be on his own private spaceship on the suborbital flights and i to have the private sector being involves the most of us know that the heavyweights let me mention the commercial orbital transportation basically nasa over the last decade has begun to contract out and work with private companies and so in the end that meant space x now carries cargo to the iss and then of course you have elon musk and then blue origin building rockets. Musk may be more of a celebrity type. Jeff is a little more working away with three rockets designed the first is the armstrong which is suborbital the second is putting people in orbit then the third is the armstrong something that is interplanetary to the moon and elsewhere. This is very exciting how many people know Robert Bigelow . Right appear in las vegas in north las vegas. And 2001 he invited a group of 15 or 20 space geeks me included here to las vegas and said he made a billion dollars in hotels and said i will spend half of that putting up private space stations. That i dont want regulators to screw things up. So they were talking about how to do that. So right up the road here is the those that have honeymoon suites or laboratories. So what is interesting he sets up in orbit for the modules that now a test module on the iss if you can to beat them, join them and to put this up on the stage its very exciting. But we want to talk about mars elon musk famously said i want to die on mars but not on landing there. [laughter] that is understandable. It is his vision to go to mars and he has been very innovative with his rockets and before it was actually the public he actually now has the rocket so you could send it up and put the satellite into iorbit and bring it down and reuse it again. And again that something he pioneered and he is looking at building big rockets. But to build something comparable that could be launched to a place like mars. And just by the way im not just saying the private sector but but the rocket has the color on the nozzles program one. He had a rocket but the engineer said there is little crack right at the bottom. So we would have to say we cannot launch we have to have a major study of the implication implications, run through every agency, this will take months of delay it will cost a lot of money. So what about that bottom of the 6inch ring and pull that off . And with that number crunching and because it was his money and seriously that is the point. Are not just using the words but the guy who puts up the many can basically call the shots and doesnt have to go through the beer crap he doesnt want his rockets to blow up but thats the whole point of private entrepreneurs and i can tell you more stories about that. So my prediction first of all at best it will be a publicprivate sort of thing where nasa is going to space x and they may do some moon stuff and will probably end up if nasa doesnt lead the way they will have to contract out to people like elon musk because now it is too bureaucratic to get things done in a nice clean way but otherwise letting these guys how to figure out how to do it is a better way. Also a Mission Design and then we will go to questions. What i like best is the founder of the mars society and the case for mars and also a case for space i urge you all to t read them and then to get interested in actual liscientist and when bush came out and said we would like to go to mars 450 billion but that cannot be right. You dont have to bill the battle star galactica to do that. Because nasa is so political we have to contract with everyone. There has got to be a better way. He came up with a Mission Design and then now costing between 20 and 30 billion. First of all one of the biggest expenses of flying in space is carrying your fuel. You have a spaceship and you need a rocket to get to the moon. Every time you add payload you have to add fuel. If you add more fuel you add more weight see have to add more fuel to carry the weight it goes up exponentially. That is the problem and others say you have a big battle with battle star galactica. They say why not live off the land . Carbon dioxide is in the Martian Atmosphere if anything takes off with some hydrogen and a Chemical Laboratory you can mix the atmosphere with the and i had to break it down to oxygen and hydrogen so then they ever get to mars to send the unmanned ship and then you create the return on the planet waiting for you before you even get there. So negative really cut down the cost of going to mars. And this is how you can do it. The first landing is unmanned and then manned and you rotate with the landings creating the fuel with the modules and the sequence. This is important. One of the big expenses depending on which design it is is that you go to mars and it takes six months to get there or maybe more you stay there for a week or two with the footprints in the flag and collect samples and then come back for six or seven months. Wait. Wait for the planets to come back into alignment if youre going to go all the way there stay for a year and wait for the planets to come back and do it that way. That will save a lot of money as well. After all youre going to explore. Thats why you were tos put unmanned items on the planet before the humans get there but instead of the model on the moon to go there or go back go there and do it like this. Mars can be tara formed the more we study it we can see 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 does the Scientific Study of how to live o mars habitat, health and safety it sponsors and arctic station that simulates a martian base with over 212 people that stay in that mock martian base one of the excuses to go back to the moon first with the orbiting space station is a gateway because we need to practice going there but thats being done right now in the arctic. They have to put on spacesuits they do everything except the gravity. And it will be easier we can transform ourselves potentially. And me could engineer human biology for the environment of mars. We are learning a lot about ainteresting things and some concerns genetic engineering that could possibly make us less susceptible to radiation with some experiments on that. And there are things you can put in your lungs that are rebreathers then basically you can run for an hour or two without ever getting winded. This is not Science Fiction anymore. Yes we want to terraform mars over a period of centuries and bio hacking is moving along very quickly and by that time we can engineer ourselves to be more compatible with planet b mars. I dont have a goodod prediction and a showed you the problems of the politics butoi with what has been going on with the private sector with the increased interest and so forth we could be seeing real trips to the planet mars. That is to inspire you. Thank you for your attention please come up to the microphone for questions. [applause] you did not include Richard Branson we gave him 250 million and nothings happened. You should not be giving government space. He can afford it. We have stadiums in Baltimore City and millions of dollars he can afford that himself. And to have more states like new mexico and Atlantic City once a spaceport and they all want their own Space Program. With capital falling to the community. And you see a danger in that as well . And by the way you see the same things you have the whole thing with amazon. And we do that all the time. To say it comes from amazon. [laughter] i tried to explain to them but if they trip over each other to save you just pay a ton of money or taxpayer money but it is not in reality stadiums are the same and look at the economics afterwards or the big money losers. I heard a great interview on the podcast which i recommend getting on android playstation. And by the way he calls himself an engineer. And with radiation problem. And those that are striven. And then with the asteroids and all of that. But that radiation problem transforming ourselves can you speak to that . Make it is a legitimate question. And how much radiation astronauts will absorb it with the statistics its not in the worst and with the interNational Space station and even remaining on mars for certain period of time. He still argues is not a big problem and i have looked at both sides. Im not proficient enough because mars does not have a Magnetic Field so he doesnt have the shield of the cosmic rays which is damaging. So i have seen experiments about tweaking jeans to make them less susceptible to radiation so you can imagine look at these creatures they are beautiful. When we do that maybe we can tweak those genes and also sentry or to project and that isnt so far out. The way to make sure we never go to mars is be involved. And in the late nineties with those discussions and to make sure that they never can fly and are denied licenses deliberately trying to kill the investor class to never invest in private spaceflight again so to back up a step why didnt we continue to go to the moon because it was a thumb in the eye of the soviet union and why we keep doing that. We need to have a commercially viable reason to go to mars so i suggest we film survivor or bachelor on mars im only partially joking. [laughter] a measure asking the taxpayer to do it for the unspecified part and that will not work nasa will find a way to shut it down. I want to agree with you. I said i thought what could come out of it is a joint thing that my preference is that they were competitors and do this ourselves that would be the preference and then the more likely that is we can go to mars so that is the reason what you are saying. And Robert Bigelow for those of you watching on tv is looking at how to monetize if you have a passion for that but to build infrastructure lets say you want to put something up you need to have your ownur batteries but what if they start constructing infrastructure . Now he create something he can monetize and those other people w who says we cannot do it because all of these reasons so we just have to put the plug in and do our thing. So you are right about that. Everybody saw the martian i assume which is a coolea flick. The national s conference with university of Southern California los angeles, my question you said you dont want to venture a prediction as to timee but will it be nasa or elon musk or another entity and will that be changed to allow humans to be on mars because currently we cannot even set foot on mars. So elon hopefully going there and not dying and frankly this book is a little day dated but there are some articles on the outer space treaty and the implications and then there is a debate what we have to do to put humansdo on mars because we dont want to disrupt those Little Critters of course there on that is nonsense if theres anything there its below the ground and then once it gets to that point, who will stop elon musk from doing that . Anybody see the movie destination moon cracks go get it. There is a script with libertarian going to the moon one of the first colored Science Fiction movies. One of the themes the government regulators are in their cars to stop the rocket from going to the moon they dont have the proper licenses and requirements running to the spaceship to launch ahead of the regulators. You have to see it. But think of the pr if you have the team that will go to mars to put a lot of money into this thing and then imagine a bunch of government officials to say we cant do it. That would be interesting certainly not the trumpet administration of matter what you think he wants to go to mar mars. Do you think he i will say there is lawyer geeks who said we cant step foot . From a can you imagine his tweet the next day . This young man right here. Come to the microphone. You havent said anything about china or india. Dont they have plans to do something on the moon quick. Actually had to cut my slides down. China landed on the far side and so whats interesting is jack schmidt he was on apollo 17 the actual geologist originally scheduled to do apollo 18 and argue that apollo 18 should land on the far side of the moon with the tecommunication satellite. And of course the chinese ended up doing it they wanted to dominate the moon. And to mention the israelis which is fascinating and the space agency did that tracking that was funded by entrepreneurs and unfortunately it crashed but it did get to the moon. And this is something i have to talk tod about that he advocates the idea and then the gravity swings back to the earth and then back to the moon and said that would be a cheaper way to set up a cycler then you just meet it and then he set up one for mars. That was a little more difficult to do but to use that concept that it started off with earths orbit and then finally when it got to the moon. There is is that big enough to push the government but that we dont want the government to. Jeff is more likely to go to the moon and set up the base and use the water. I think thats what he will do. I hope so. Study showed theres water not only at the polls but in the regular with the was taken at different times apart where you see a stream of mud and slush going down the crater it is clearly a liquid of some sort. Carbon dioxide cannot exist on the planet. So right now it looks as if that will be possible. We just dont know how much. That you figure out ways. A lot of that recycling but i suspect you find. By the way initially and not have billions of people he would probably have enough anyway. To terraform it will not be tropical but most studies i have seen which is nice about the mars society or mars direct is that they have every year real scientists doing. Exactly. I cannot live there. And then people go out because the pressure is okay but nobody transitions. And a couple more quick questions. People want to hearea you. So the issue was one holding a scale model o of mars . [laughter] these are not scale models. There we go. These are not to scale. So what is the gravity of the moon it is one sixth of the earth quick. Im trying to remember its about one third. So when mbs hot being around as much. We should have a human achievement today. Im curious why the United States patent visited, for 50 years let me finish real quick we should have a human achievement today july 20 would be a good day for that because of some of its one of the greatest achievements in history, going to the moon. I would love to see every student trying to understand everything that went into going in the moon. Those of you that are interest interested, the best is Charles Murray and Catherine Cox apollo the race to the moon and if any of you are interested in the individuals who put us there, it would be great to have a human achievement day where we celebrate how do we do that. For those of you watching on tv perhaps, we are in las vegas right now. Its 110 degrees outside. Im comfortable here because of the air conditioning. Where did that come from . There was this guy over 100 years ago. How did he invent it and why. There is a whole fascinating story about that. How did it go from being some use for a particular industrial use to every one has its now. I would like to see in this country celebrating human achievements like the moon landing so we can all appreciate it and have our own moon landing and our own great achievement in the future. Anyway, thank you all for coming and i appreciate you coming. [applause] good afternoon to welcome to the seventh annual san antonio book festival. How many have been here all day . Great festival
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