Transcript

Let's Go To Mars! | Aprille Ericsson | TEDxBaltimore

[Music] so I'm not only going to take you to Mars we're going to come back because that's the challenge so let me start off with that little girl from Brooklyn New York yeah in 1969 a parent brought a television into school little black and white and US little first graders crowded around that TV to watch the Apollo 12 mission I mean think about that it was so impactful it brought in my horizons as a little girl growing up in New York in the Brooklyn hood and it helped to plant that seed for thinking about space travel now of course there are lots of other influences right you guys are familiar the Jetson flash G and I remember coming home in the afternoon and running to see Lost in Space Warning Will Robinson remember that robot yeah and Dr Smith of course and then later as a pre-teen I got my first taste of Star Wars I remember running out the theater like this oh my gosh avoiding Tie fighters right I was not going to the dark side and so I really think that those influences help to inspire things that I did in research at MIT and later at Howard University and an opportunity to train me as an aerospace engineer rocket scientist um it fueled my desire to explore space and for me it's always been not a question of if we would go to Mars but when would we go to Mars so me personally I was ecstatic when our President Obama said by 2030s we're going to go not only go to Mars with humans but come back I mean that declaration is so powerful I just want you to realize though that although he made that proclamation in the last couple of years this Journey to Mars did not just start with that Proclamation historically people have been engaged in wanting to go to Mars for so long and in the 1950s we had that great challenge you know everybody J for position to be the first to get to the space in our case you can see the rich history of our experiences as a United States in the 60s we had various Apollo and Gemini missions we had um in the 70s Viking and then we had sky laab and in the 90s we had our opportunity to send out little Rovers to space and of course we've been all along using the space shuttle from the 80s straight TR through and then the International Space Station in 2000 I mean awesome chances to really be engaged but one of the things that I must point out is that space travel and science Communications and um uh sat spacecrafts and satellites that we launch have been almost routine and so people don't pay as much attention it's just knitted into the fiber of our everyday life but in actuality it isn't that easy and I'm always remembered by that famous statement by President Kennedy who said we choose to go to the moon in this decade not because it's easy but because it is hard it's not only hard it's dangerous and so I want to walk you through a little bit about why it's so hard and what it's like to think about as we plan for our Journey to Mars so NASA is coming up with this great integrated plan to capture the interest of the nation and the world and so they have three different phases as you can see it's Earth Alliant we're dependent upon the right in the earth's Shadow we're going to go ahead and further do our science and learn to travel a little bit closer and you can get back in a few days I mean a few hours and then we have this proven C ground where we're going to validate the capabilities and we're going to move into deeper space and the trip will take maybe several days to return and then that last phase where we're now Earth independent we'll build up on the International Space Station as an outpost potentially a launching pad and then travel though would could take maybe several months to return we've been doing some of these capabilities and preparing for Missions back to the moon and to to Mars as you can see in Paulo not much resolution will instruments like the Lola instrument which I worked on actually is now able to create mapping in such detail higher resolution down to 3 cm that we actually know where we're going to land with very much a lot of confidence these laser lar systems are fairly robust and we're using this kind of technology and science on a regular basis then we need to go back to some of the things that we've been doing in the past of using Rovers and we're going to be dependent upon Rovers in many ways one because of safety it's always safer to send a Rover but we also want to be able to use these autonomous robots to actually build upon the capabilities use them for science astronaut assistance which will be a little bit different than we've done in the past and potentially manufacturing these missions the robotic precursive initiative is so important just like in the Apollo days where we used Ranger and surveyor we were actually able bble to collect science on the surface of the Moon to assist us for the Apollo missions stuff that we could only do right there on the surface well similarly we'll be doing that with our robotic precursor initiative in the 2020s to get the science and things and details that we need on the surface of Mars these missions are going to prove to be so critical in our future as well as the president's vision of getting humans to Mars in the 23 30s so let's consider if I want to travel to Mars really how long does that take so if you get the shortest distance between the two planets that happens about every 26 months it actually is about a 9mon trap well you need to stay for a little while because if you want to catch that short trip back it comes about three to four months later so 993 21 months to to get to Mars and back in a fair amount of time then if you look at our particular current technology you really aren't going to get there much faster I mean it's just the state of the way it is but I want to dig a little bit deeper so how are we going to get there and what are those challenges for the space launch system and our future crew vehicle Orion you're going to have to pack for two years what is does that mean look I'm not just talking about going to San Francisco right you've got to take water food you've got to take medical supplies you've got to be prepared for just about anything and you're going to need some science instruments maybe some manufacturing and Engineering tools then you also need to think about radiation shielding because you use dense materials and it's pretty heavy so all in all if we consider a six-man crew you're talking about three 3 million pounds of supplies I said that right you heard that 3 million P pounds of supplies for a 2-year trip well if you look there you can see the shuttle only averaged about 54,000 pounds of launch capability and to achieve that to get 60 M you know this this this 3 million pounds it's going to take us about 60 trips we only averaged about 10 trips per year so you're talking about six years years to get all of our supplies into low earth orbit that's only 220 mil above the Earth so once you do that I I think it's going to be a little stale by the time we get back up there right so what we could do is actually build a better launch system but we're probably not going to be able to do it in one trip so we're still going to have to have a capability to build in space build in orbit okay so we get there well to get out to Mars we're still going to need a lot of fuel okay so how much fuel am I talking about well for low earth orbit which is where the International Space Station is that's 220 miles as I said and we need about 4.4 million pounds for the shuttle that's how much it weighs when it launches 3 million pounds of that believe it or not is fuel yep 3 million pounds and then if you want to do a similar Tech comparison that's like a small car with a 1000lb tank on top I don't know I don't want to drive in a car like that not but that's the way it is for the space shuttle now if you want to travel to the Moon we actually use a larger vehicle called the Saturn 5 and it has capabilities to travel to the Moon and it need you know it'll carry about 100,000 pounds of payload to the moon now the thing about it is it requires 65 million pounds when it takes off and 6 million pounds of that is fuel 90% can you imagine well yeah that's a big deal fuel costs money it it also weighs a lot but that's what it's going to take and guess what we realize that we don't really have the capabilities to really get us to Mars with humans in that duration so we're going to need something else and So the plan is actually the new vehicle called the space launch system and it will actually first take us to the Moon we'll prove it out and then we'll take us to Mars we also are developing a Future Crew vehicle called the Orion and this Orion believe it or not it's just a a little bit larger than Apollo's missions because we need some more space for a longer flight right I wouldn't want to be all cramped up like this um so we've been able to test it and it just done its first major Mar um launch capabilities where it was launched orbited around the earth twice and then splashed back down that was done in December of 2014 so we're continue to progress one of the other things is we need to think about safety many people don't realize the effects of the body from space radiation plays a role no gravity during that trip so your muscles your bones your heart get weaker during the trip trip you might get there and not even be able to stand in that gravitational environment again so we have to have worry about those concerns and then as you think about radiation we realize that not only is the radiation bad in space but it's actually not that great on the Mars surface as well so oh and I want to throw one other thing out there you need to be concerned about safety the huge dust storms on the Martian surface tough tough so we contining to use the International Space Station to learn about that and fill those gaps that we have in those in those particular areas then we have this really cool mission called an asteroid redirect and so we're going to grab an asteroid and move it into a different spot so that's going to prove our capabilities of actually moving large objects and building and doing Evas and proving our Eva's extra vehicular activities is when the astronauts move around yeah I'm throwing out some buzzword there but we'll be able to do something that's dangerous but prove it out in a lower aair so to do all of this traveling space is hard and it's dangerous but we'll need people who dream who dare who are committed we will go to Mars think about the International Space Station it took so many people to achieve this goal the International Space Station has had someone on it since 2000 and took a partnership of 17 different countries I say hey bringing in different people with different ideas is a great thing I believe that when diverse ideas Collide they spark Innovation to solve hard problems like getting to Earth I mean getting to Mars many times the astronauts have looked back at the Earth and they've said they see no boundaries they see no borders they see no walls I want you to reach inside yourself and remove those boundaries I want you to think about how to embrace the differences and the capabilities of each and every other person around you if you look at this picture of the Star Trek C notice the diversity that was Jean roddenbery's vision of diversity if we want people to move forward now and in the future like our children we've got to embrace diversity I'm going to leave you with this thought my favorite saying is shoot for the moon or Mars and even if you miss you'll still be Among the Stars I always say peace I believe in peace positive energy activates continuous elevation but I'm going to throw this in there too for our trekkies in the a live long and prosper thank you for having me today