Everybody.

Must try that again you guys know me
better now by now good evening everybody.

There you go thank you thank you all for
braving the weather and being here

not to wet I hope we're here
to hear more here today to.

Hear about a fascinating topic and
we're very fortunate

to have an exceptional speaker
with us to present that topic.

You know and in my line of business.

In the aerospace community for
close to thirty years

I've had the good fortune of meeting
a lot of very good people and

our speaker tonight Jim Crocker
is an exceptional person.

An exceptional person in the industry but
also just.

An exceptional person in his heart
Jim is presently vice president and

general manager of the international
line of business for

the Space Systems Company
at Lockheed Martin.

Prior to that he was vice president and

general manager of the civil space line
also at Lockheed Martin space systems

in that capacity he had executive
responsibility for a broad portfolio.

Of space missions including those
involving human spaceflight

space science missions in
the planetary solar astrophysics and

earth earth science realm pretty
much all of the major activities

going on at Lockheed Martin space systems
in Denver and elsewhere that relate to

our nation's civil space programs
he actually began his career

maybe this talk is come full circle but
he began his career as an engineer

in human space flight working on
the ladder Apollo missions and

on the Skylab programs but what he's
known for actually are his contre.

Hugh sions to astrophysics.

He's been a part of a number of
significant international astrophysics

missions most notably he's known for
conceiving the idea and leading the team

that developed the solution to the flawed
optics on the Hubble Space Telescope and

I know that most of you if not all of you
know about that solution it's something

that you know we learn about in high
school actually because it was so

significant to our country and
frankly to the world.

He's also played a major role in
the design and construction of

the Very Large Telescope Array in northern
Chile and served as project manager for

the construction of
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey perhaps most

important of all he started everything
here at Georgia Tech here and

his bachelor's degree in electrical
engineering from Georgia Tech and a Master

of Science in engineering from University
of Alabama Huntsville and a master.

Science in management from Johns Hopkins
University he's very well known in

the aerospace community he's an associate
fellow of the way the American Institute

for aeronautics and
astronautics He's a fellow of

the American Astronomical Society he's
received two public service medals for

NASA from NASA for his work on the
Hubble Space Telescope he recently gave

the Von Karman lectureship that AI
devil a puts out every year and

received an astronomical
award in that capacity.

He's an elected member of the
International Academy of astronautics and

so you know in our community in this
country and and actually in the aerospace

community worldwide Jim
is a very well known and

respected individual.

Just you know free to note he's also

very active in the local community in
Denver he's a member and the past.

Chair of the board of trustees for the
Denver Museum of Nature and of Sciences.

And as I said he you know he has a bit
of a Georgia Tech background and

I think a little bit of Georgia Tech love
in his heart to brave the weather and come

here with us tonight and so please join
me and given Jim Crocker a warm welcome.

To

the.

Well thanks Bobbie and thanks to everyone
for braving the weather to come out here

tonight I'm going to do a talk
tonight without any equations and.

Actually it's a talk
that I've developed and

a message that I've developed over
a number of years because of something

that really happened to me very early in
my career and that was this I showed up

here on campus a child of
Sputnik Basically I wanted to go and

explore space and
it never dawned on me to ask why well and

progressed in my career as I've done more
and more things I've discovered that there

are actually people who write really big
checks to do some of the things that I

just find amazingly interesting
amazingly complicated

amazingly philosophically
interesting to do and

sometimes you have to explain to
people who write the checks why they

should write the checks so tonight after
thinking about it as a matter fact

I was over in Jerusalem just
a couple of weeks ago at the.

International Academy of
astronautics meeting and

we had a young professional group there
and somebody actually asked this question

How can I explain to the people
who basically are my friends and

neighbors about why we should spend
this money doing space exploration and

I thought I think I have an answer for
that I'm.

Been thinking about it for a long time and
I'd like to share that with you tonight

and see if you agree
with these thoughts so

first of all when I ask why we
should explore I should ask you and

the reason is we're sent standing and
sitting with some of the greatest

explorers to ever walk the face of
the planet did you know that in this room

tonight are some of the greatest explorers
ever in the history of the planet.

Look at the person next to you sitting
next to you that's the Explorer I'm

talking about and you're saying what
I'm not an explorer I've never been to

the moon I've never been to Antarctica
Well that's not exactly true a few years

ago my son who's also a Georgia Tech grad
actually he got his master's here too so

that makes him a double Georgia Tech
grad gave me something from

the National Geographic Genome Project
where basically you swab your cheek

you basically you send it in and they've
done something pretty amazing with big

data they look at genetic
mutations that occur and

basically they've been able to
track the history of how we

humans basically migrated and
it's amazing.

If you look on the National Geographic
genomics website you'll see that a couple

hundred thousand years ago all of us
sitting in the room today descended from

an event and an atom.

And for a hundred and

fifty two hundred thousand years we
kind of wandered around in Africa.

And then about fifty sixty thousand
years ago give or take a few a few

tens of thousands of years a small band of
people actually walked out of Africa and

basically within a very
short period of time.

Populated the entire planet.

First into the Middle East
the cradle of civilization down in.

Asia very quickly down into
Australia they had to wait for

the climate to change to actually get
across to fifteen twenty thousand years

ago into the Americas but
basically we're all explorers in a very

short period of time after humans could
we basically explored the entire planet

now you have to ask yourself what took us
so long to get out of Africa I mean for

goodness sakes we were there for
a couple hundred thousand years and

then boom all of a sudden we are out of
there OK we've actually now ended up.

Going beyond the planet and actually
stepping on to the surface of the moon and

we've done that in the really short period
of time so matter of fact if you look at

Africa from from a satellite you get
this picture and what you'll discover is

the reason why it took us so long to get
out of Africa and that's the Sahara desert

basically we don't realize how big Africa
is the Sahara Desert is actually about

one point one percent one one hundred one
percent the size the United States so

when you see the desert there that's
actually crossing the entire United States

as a desert and that's what we had to do
to get out of Africa so if you don't think

we're determined to explore crossing
the Sahara Desert to get out and

then quickly to populate the world and
end up as we have today not only on every

island every habitable surface of
the planet in Antarctica sailing across to

the North Pole and as we saw earlier
standing on the surface of the moon and

to do that in geological time speaking
in the blink of the guy says that every

one of you sitting here in the room
has the genes to explore we do it

naturally I don't know that
we can say why we do it but

we do it we explore we explore things and
we have shown a propensity

to to do that and Africa and
getting out of Africa is a great example.

Now that's thousands of miles to
get across so why in the world.

Would it take us so long to get to space
when all we have to cross is this little

blue line this little blue line is the
space station is only two hundred forty

nine miles it's almost exactly the same
distance from Houston to Dallas Fort Worth

as it is from the surface of the earth
to the International Space Station and

yet this this fraction of
the distance that we covered to get

out of to get out of
Africa on the cross is so

hard desert well and as many of you in air
space know it's the rocket equation I mean

gravity is really hard right but what's
really amazing when you think about it for

a second is what we've done in the brief
period of time that the technologies

actually existed to do this is the same
thing true when you go back and

you look at the history of of exploration
every time we get a new technology we're

very very quick to be able to exploit it
if you go back and look at the history of

the of the genomic migrations you're
basically discover that once people got to

the the islands in the Pacific that
were very close in those that you could

actually either see from
one island to the next or

actually that you could sail to and back
in a day we stopped and we stopped for

several thousand years to a new technology
came along which was a double hauled

double sail sailing vehicle that
actually allowed people to sell from for

vast distances probably came out
of Korea is the best guest and

basically within a few hundred years we

had then populated much of the Pacific and
within five or six hundred

years the almost all of the islands there
had been populated so when technology

comes along that it Vance's we take
advantage of it to push the boundaries

off and of course with rocketry that
came about in two thousand and six with.

Robert Goddard and those of you in
aerospace all know that one thousand nine

hundred sixty built the first liquid fuel
rocket and this was really the first

technology that was really able to be
extensible although you can go back and

you can look at the Chinese with gunpowder
and rockets that technology at the time

was not extensible as quickly as the
liquid fuel rocket said Goddard could do

was and so basically this in a very short
period of time basically opened up that

narrow two hundred fifty mile Little Blue
Bland band to allow us to get into and

explore space and that's exactly
what was done to have think most of

you know that after World War two
in the development of the German V.

two rockets those rockets were actually
brought back to the United States and

actually used for scientific
research this particular interesting

picture I found very interesting because
this is a payload that Lyman Spitzer

who was the Princeton astro physicist
who was a major force behind

the Hubble Space Telescope actually
flew and it was even then in the fifty's

when Spitzer recognized that if we
could get a telescope above the earth's

atmosphere we could
revolutionize astronomy

he was on a multi decade twenty five year.

Path to basically open up
exploration by exploiting

rocket technology to get
telescopes into space.

You know we explore we think
that the Space Age started with

the launch of Sputnik in the fifty's but
actually it didn't

I think you can trace our beginnings
of space exploration back to

sixteen ten with Galileo and
his use of the telescope.

I think most people now recognize that
Galileo didn't invent the telescope

as a matter of fact what he
really did was two things one he

improved the telescope where it
became more than a parlor toy

where it became a very useful piece
of scientific equipment the second.

Thing that he did was he basically
coupled his very very very sharp mind

to understanding what he saw with only
a few months of observations he basically

realize that our whole understanding of
the cosmos our whole understanding of what

this place was beyond the earth was wrong.

And basically he did something that
really hadn't been done before and

he in essence use what today
we would call the Internet

to spread his ideas while in those days
in the sixteen hundred the Internet

was actually the printing press and
basically he

took his research his ideas things that
he saw looking through the telescope and

he put them in a publication called
The Starry Messenger and he printed

a number of volumes and he sold them and
they were so popular that they printed

that they basically were out of print he
had to print more he had to print more and

this thing went all over Europe because
just like the Hubble Space Telescope.

It had something really interesting
to common people who maybe

couldn't do the math and that was.

That was.

Pictures basically Galileo drew pictures
just like the Hubble space telescope that

we see today he drew pictures of
what he saw through the telescope so

that people whether they had a physics
background or at the time would have

been called a philosophy background or
not could really understand.

By looking at the moon it became obvious
that our understanding of the cosmos was

wrong basically what Galileo said was the
moon is another world it has mountains I

can calculate the height of the mountains
by looking at the shadow of the sun

onto the planes out a certain angle and
I can tell how high they were and

how you got it wrong with the C C
thought that the the planes that were.

No today which are or lava flows or are
Mara as are called basically aren't C.S.

but there are vast plains but he got it
right in that the moon wasn't some magical

crystal sphere that was in some
unreachable place of the heavens it was

another world and so
in sixteen tan there was

in sixteen ten there was actually
a letter from read this letter this

is a translation of a letter from Kepler
to Galileo in sixteen thousand that said

who would have once thought that
the crossing of wide oceans was calmer and

safer than that of the near
a narrow Adriatic Sea Baltic Sea or

the English Channel given ships or
sails adopted to the breeze of heaven

there will be those who will not shirk
even from this vast heavenly expanse so

Kepler and Galileo were saying
hey you know what we now know and

this was a this was a paradigm change
a paradigm change from the heavens

we're someplace that you can't ever go to
one of hey that's another world out there

we can develop the technology just like
we did with ships figure out how to sail

these oceans we can go there so
the letters exchanged back and

forth I think was really the beginning
of our exploration of space

was really when the telescope allowed
us to look and to see space and

it's a matter of fact this been part of
our exploration of space ever since then.

So the first way we started to
explore space in sixteen ten was with

the telescope and the second thing
that happened was we started to

develop rocket technology with Goddard
in the twenty's in von Braun and

his team developing the B.
two in the later but

then pretty soon in the fifty's we
came along with the ability not yet

to put humans in space not yet to say
all those distant ships like Kepler and

Galileo talked about but
we're able to put robots into space.

Pretty soon.

After that of course we put.

Touchy it's.

Pretty soon after that we put humans
in space so now we've been able to take

telescopes and observe space we've
been able to put robots into space and

now we can put humans in space this
is a famous picture of my friend

Bruce McCandless basically who said I'm
now become the first human satellite

because basically I'm flying untethered
with a with the man maneuvering unit and

flying in space so.

My excitement was when you
do all three when you put

a telescope in space that's a robot and

also you have humans and that's of course
it's called the Hubble Space Telescope I

mean what could be cooler than putting all
three of those things together basically

a telescope robots and
humans working together to do an amazing

thing that none of the three of
them could ever do individually and

that's the Hubble Space Telescope you know
the Hubble Space Telescope spin pretty

amazing I started working on Hubble and
eighty two and

then on and off in my career even at
Lockheed Martin had responsibility for

operation of Hubble and Hubble to me
with its combination of humans and

robots and telescopes working together
is really kind of the epitome of kind of

cross discipline working
together to do amazing things and

just like Galileo
the ability to understand.

At a very deep level things that
are going on in the cosmos without having

to do differential equations and
to be able to see it yourself and

understand the depths of why we
explore through looking at visuals

is the same thing that happened in
sixteen ten when Galileo first put his

eye onto a few little pieces of metal and
glass and changed our understanding the.

Cosmos and of why we do things you know.

Lyman Spitzer said it very well and one
of the problems that we as engineers and

scientists have is communicating to other
people why they should do something and

Lyman used this analogy Avalos used it and
I thought it's really good he said you

know trying to study stars from
the bottom of the atmosphere

is like trying to study birds from
the bottom of a pond basically when you

look up through the atmosphere and
the sloshing a swatch stars twinkle and

Lyman Spitzer knew from his
experiments with the captured V.

two rockets and modifications that we made
in instruments that were launched in space

in the fifty's that if we could ever
get even a modest sized telescope

in space we could fundamentally
revolutionize astronomy and

that's what was done with Hubble.

And that's why we get the kind of images
that we see here this is two interacting

galaxies This is two galaxies each of
which have one hundred billion stars and

they're dancing with each other one
galaxy is actually orbiting the other and

it's starting to be gravitationally
to form images like the Hubble

images that show us the nature of
the universe are really amazing and

they're also beautiful and
it's things that people can

understand because they can see them and
understand them visually.

But there's another thing about
the Hubble Space Telescope

the end about humans in space and

about robots in space this not intuitively
obvious to the casual observer.

And that is and up until really up until
Hubble most of the instruments that we had

launched into space would take
ten sometimes more years to

actually come to fruition and by the time
the technology got up there it would be

kind of old and would only last for a few
years and have to build something new.

The Hubble Space Telescope the cameras
in the instrument were designed

basically in the seventy's they
were built near early eighty's and

they were it was launched after the.

After the problem with the space shuttle
it was delayed another few years and so

it didn't get on the orbit until
nine hundred ninety Can you imagine.

Many of you have a cell phone with
a camera on it actually don't raise your

hand if you don't because everybody
today has a camera with a cell phone.

What would the pictures from this camera
on your cell phone look like five years

ago how about ten years ago
how about fifteen years

ago up while we didn't have cameras
with cell phones fifteen years ago or

twenty years ago that's what we were
flying with science instruments that went

through these long development processes
and that could not be serviced on orbit.

Hubble Space Telescope just had
its twenty fifth anniversary and

it is this powerful it is more
powerful today by orders and

orders of magnitude that it was on the day
it was launched and it was because of this

picture this is the Advanced Camera for
Surveys that Holland Ford and

Johns Hopkins and I designed and
that was installed on the space

tell on the space telescope on a servicing
mission and the beauty of this and

the shuttle and the humans in the picture
is that basically we can take that new

technology that's developed we
can put it into a telescope and

we can make the telescope one hundred
thousand are in this case with A.C.S.

ten thousand times more powerful than
the instrument that it replaced so

the ability of humans working with
robots basically to upgrade and

to put new technology on Hubble is at
the heart of the power of the telescope

if we had a telescope if we had Hubble and
it was twenty five years old.

Old quite frankly radiation damage and

in the case of the early instruments the
cathode ray tube type detectors would have

long ago ceased to function the telescope
would have been useless and yet

today because every time we serviced
top all we put new instruments in it

became more and more powerful the physics
of telescopes really the first order

hasn't changed since sixteen ten Newton
would have would have immediately been

able to see the Hubble Space Telescope and
totally understand the optical design he

would have been clueless about
the depths of technology involved in

the cameras in the C C D's and and the
devices the spectrograph that basically

the electronics behind this that
really gives Hubble its power and

its ability to continue to do what it
does you know as an aside or trying

to tell you I hope I hope I can tell you
three things tonight you didn't know and

one of those is the optical design for
this Advanced Camera for Surveys actually

comes from one of the designs that we
threw away when we were looking for

designs to fix the flaw in the Hubble
optics basically this is the design

of the optics here is we use something
called plate theory where you can

basically take any three if you can take
three optical surfaces you can correct any

aberration up a collaboration with
a wide field we we had looked

at correcting hobbles operate
optics with this design but

we couldn't figure out how to package it
and how to do it and so we set that aside

but when Holland Ford now we're trying to
figure out how to build a camera that you

could put off axis not in the prime
spot of the observatory Holland and

I said hey one year this design so
never throw away

an idea you can always find a really great
price to use it in the optical design for

the Advanced Camera really came
about from a discarded design.

For the optical fix to
the Hubble Space Telescope.

But in all of my career whether it's

many of the things I've been involved
with one thing has stood out and

that's a picture an image that
the Advanced Camera for Surveys took.

And I think it's the most part
I have I'm biased of course but

I think it's the most profound picture
that humans have ever taken and

I hope when you leave here tonight
you might agree with that.

Because it's this image doesn't look
like much some blobs and some dots and

some smears but let me tell you what it
is and I think it might change your mind.

Every dot every smear every blob in
this image is a galaxy is not a star and

each one of those blobs has about
one hundred million stars in.

I'll tell you something else about this
image this interesting and that is if you

went out tonight and you picked up a
course grain of sand about a millimeter so

course a grain of sand and you held
it out in arm's length from the sky.

It would cover the sandwich.

Which means that every place that
you hold a grain of sky all grain

of sand on the sky in every
place you look at is a least

ten thousand galaxies each with
one hundred million stars in it.

Someone asked me one time so
how many stars is that and the answer

is a really big number as a matter fact
of some friends who are astronomers who

also live in Hawaii and so not only
did I know a lot about astronomy and

I know a lot about sand so they took it
on themselves to try and do a calculation

to see if they could kind of come up with
a way that you could represent how many

stars there are in the visible universe
and they did this calculation and

several people have checked it in
a lot of people think it's right and.

That is this think about standing on a
beach and looking as far as you can in one

direction at the sand and looking as far
in the other direction issues as you can

that's a lot of sand right now stand
on every be on every continent on

every place in the world
that's a lot of sand.

Remember the picture of the Sahara desert
that's the size of the United States.

There's also a desert in
China of this that large and

there's more deserts around the world
pile all of that sand up and

there's more stars in the visible
universe than there are grains of sand

on the entire planet.

The universe is really
a very interesting place and

not only does
the Hubble Space Telescope combine.

Telescopes and robots and humans.

Basically combine something else is the
time machine it's a time machine because

all of us know just like sound light
takes a finite amount of time and so

the images that we're looking at with
the Hubble Space Telescope are basically

from a about ten billion years ago so
they're And

some of the some of the images here of
them of the reddish ones go back almost to

within a few hundred thousand years
of actually the big bang itself so

here with the instrument of
exploration that's humans and

robots in space we're basically
able to look back in time

to see the universe as it was born
as it was created shortly after

the Riyadh ization period which before
of which we couldn't see anything at all

because the universe was so dense it that
the light couldn't even travel through it

without being without being absorbed sort
of like the universe is so dense it would

be like being in a solid You actually
can't can't see because you're in.

A solid so only after the time
that the universe expanded and

dropped below a certain level of this city
was we're free protons able to exist in

the travel and we get this instrument this
picture taken by the Advanced Camera and

since that time we've actually taken more
images and added them up with some of

the new cameras the white or planetary
three which looks into the infrared

the the Advanced Camera goes all wired
to the ultraviolet we basically this is

over a million second exposure that
was taken to take this image and

imagine that with a telescope
in space looking at the pristine

darkness looking out of place that
with all the telescopes that we had at

the time on the ground in space
would have been completely dark.

Exposed for a million seconds and
you see galaxies when they were young and

you see galaxies like we've
never seen them before.

What's that worth.

You know at the time somebody
does some rhythm a tick and

they said you know the entire human
spaceflight program everything that NASA

did was about two cents out of a dollar of
of taxes I tried to do the math on this

is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction
of a fraction of a penny What's that image

worth to you it's basically a paradigm
change is not unlike what Galileo saw when

in sixteen can he look through that
telescope but basically I think

that's a really really interesting image.

When you think about those stars and
you think about stars like grains

of sand on every beach of the world
every desert every ocean.

You think I wonder if the stars have
planets Well basically when I was at

Johns Hopkins at the Space Telescope
Science Institute everybody knew that

stars had planets but
no one had ever seen one technique.

Ology at the time even with Hubble we
thought was not going to be able to

do that well like you say you give some
smart people instruments and tools and

we were able actually show
with Hubble that basically for

the first time in this is only been
within the last fifteen years or

so that actually there
are planets around other stars.

Was kind of interesting because
the Kepler space telescope

was one of the first ways we were
actually able to do that and

to start collecting real good data on
planets that are small There's some ways

to do it from the ground where you
can detect Jupiter sized planets but

trying to detect Earth like planets
that's a little harder and so

Kepler did something I think
is absolutely amazing and

that is it basically looked at once when
a planet would transit transit a star

basically the light output
of that star drops and

you see the light curve Depp as
the planet transitions in from the star

now of course also there's not going to be
a situation where all planets are aligned

directly with us planets and stars are
going to have some that are you know never

cross some that cross a little bit but
when you look at hundreds of thousands of

stars basically you're able to see a few
where the planets actually cross in

front of it it's an A I did some math and
basically I think the way to

explain this is think about a street
light that's about five miles away and

have a fleet crawl across the street lamp
that's about the amount of light this them

and when the when the star passes in front
of the planet but if you are in space and

basically is not like here where
the atmosphere is basically sloshing

around is perfectly pristine universe very
accurate for time and or you can actually

measure planets in front of stars well
that's kind of interesting because

with this technology we can also look
at planets that basically are smaller.

Not Jupiter's but Earth like planets and
also that have a very interesting feature

and that is their habitable world so
this is just some of the.

Habitable worlds and
I'll tell you what that means in a second

that have been discovered on these or
course artist's rendition So

they're there you know they're
taking a tree analysis and

converting it to what a habitable
world might look like but

habitable worlds really have to have one
thing that we know today at least is true

from from our experience here and that
is they have to be in what's the called

the habitable zone in the habitable zone
it's really quite simple it's the place

where liquid water could exist on
the surface if you're at Venus it's

too hot all the water boils it becomes
clouds if you're out beyond the orbit of

Mars it's too cold water is although we're
discovering with some of the moons that

of Jupiter that maybe there is some
tidal forces you can do that but

in general on the surface of the planet
if you can be in a place where liquid

water flows then you can
potentially have life so

wouldn't it be really cool if we could
get in our starship and we could fly.

Thousands of light years out to some of
these planets that we've been discovered

and maybe find one that was
in the habitable zone where

liquid water flew Wouldn't that be
something that all of you would be kind

of interested in seeing at least
a probe go to find Earth one point

would be cool I got a really good
surprise for you and that is

we have one that's not that far away so
matter of fact it's only nine months away.

And it's Mars basically Mars is at
the edge of the habitable zone and

surprise even though we sent probes
like mariner in the sixty's and

in Viking in the seventy's we
thought Mars was a dead war.

It was centrally airless one one
hundredth the atmosphere how could

liquid water possibly exist
on the surface of Mars.

Well I've learned something from being
around some very famous scientists and

reading a lot of the philosophy of
scientists I've learned something and

that is your Reka is not always
the most important thing that

a scientist says it's that's funny.

And in fact that's what happened when
we flew the Mars Global Surveyor

people started looking at features on the
surface of Mars and they were changing and

geologists said That's
funny that looks like water

roading down the the side
of this crater that can't

be it's too cold for liquid water and
where would this I mean liquid water

should have evaporated it should've
effervescent it should be gone but

sure enough that was kind of interesting
there was a program at NASA I think

Ed Weiler Dr Weiner was one of
the people who pushes forward and

he said follow the water
because if this is water and

if we can find water we know that every
place on earth where there is liquid water

there's life it doesn't matter if it's an
arctic doesn't matter if it's hot salted

Springs in a place we find water
in liquid form we find life.

So we flew a mission called two
thousand and one Odyssey and

basically this had something on
board you can see it here it was on

a extended will boom it was called a gamma
ray spectrometer in the way a gamma ray

spectrometer works is gamma rays come
down and hit the surface of a planet or

hit a spacecraft which is why you have
to put the instrument far away and

the secondary particles that are generated
are detected by this instrument and

it can tell what kind of element is there
whether it's aluminum if it happened.

Hit the spacecraft which is why you put
the boom out or if you see the surface

of Mars it found large
quantities of hydrogen.

Didn't know what form it was in but

the blue here particularly is is
correlated and all the blue that you see

even in the center in the image is
correlated with hydrogen Well those of all

of us who've had enough chemistry to know
if you see something like this is probably

not in the gaseous form it's
probably in water or water ice so

that was the speculation that all of
a sudden there are very very large

quantities of water ice on Mars but
still we're not quite to

you quite sure we you know where
the scientists want to prove

it the engineers have to build a system we
have to fly in there and land it and so

we flew a mission called Phoenix the
Phoenix lander which actually flew to what

would have on earth be the equivalent of
prove obey basically it was in the Arctic

because as you see here as you get further
north this this hydrogen signature

comes closer and closer to the surface
people do some calculations they said you

know if we get to kind of the Arctic
level if this ice is really ice and

it's really there it should be no more
than six eight inches below the surface we

should be able to reach out with an arm
and actually dig it up well as it

turned out we didn't have to do that
the the Phoenix lander landed and

the rocket propulsion itself
when we looked under and

when we looked under with the camera
just checking out on the arm to see how

the system had landed we noticed
that gee we blew the dust

off of what turns out to
be a frozen Martian ocean

basically the entire northern cap

of Mars is basically the remnants of a of
a frozen ocean on Mars so what happened.

To the water you know this is
an interesting picture taken by

the Mars Global Surveyor where you can
see ice in the bottom of a crater and

you think about that for a second it kind
of looks like it was at one time liquid

water which then froze and
you start to say ha that's funny.

And then you go on and basically today we
have a mission that's in orbit around Mars

called maven and the MAVEN mission
that we launched just a few years ago.

Is looking for what happened
to the atmosphere of Mars and

trying to run it backwards and so I'll
tell you what it appears to best guess and

people are trying to run the math and
do physics and work it back but

Mars at one time had oceans it had
a thick atmosphere and it wasn't that

many millions of years ago what appears
to have happen is Mars had a bad day

it lost its magnetic field
its dynamo froze up so

the reason probably is that Mars
is smaller than the Earth and so

the heat transfer coming out basically
finally got to the point where the liquid

iron core of Mars basically solidified and
when that happened it lost its magnetic

field it was a bad day because now
the solar wind which on the earth

basically is deflected around by this
magnetic field started to strip away atom

by atom the atmosphere of Mars and
it's that happened the atmosphere pressure

started to drop and at some point as we
know when you get low enough in pressure

basically the oceans start to boil it get
However it got cold at some time too and

so a lot of the oceans and and I saw
Mars appear to have froze in place in or

there today there's there's certainly
more water on Mars than in Phoenix and

in Denver I can tell you that having to
having had living in a high desert but

basically that asked the question
if in fact Mars at one.

Time looked like this and

this is not totally
fictitious rendition because.

Geologists can actually see shorelines
on Mars we can actually see where

ancient oceans basically outline
themselves on the planet and so

basically Mars looked like this.

Was there ever life there.

There's life does life arise
when you have liquid water and

you have the different elements
that you have on the earth are and

does it exist there today.

If you go if you go into a gold mine in
South Africa and you go down lower and

lower and lower we know it is hot in fact
miners have a very difficult time working

at the depths of South African gold miners
just because the heat of the earth gets

hotter and hotter she go down and Mars
that's the same thing if you go down and

down into the into the surface of
Mars the temperature will go up and

it's some point there will be a point
where where water is always liquid and

we know today from recent pictures that we
took with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

that actually liquid water today even
flows on the surface of Mars was a very

recent discovery only a couple of months
ago paper was published in basically

the same way I got here today basically we
had fourteen inches of snow in Denver but

the roads were clear because
they were covered with salt.

Mars is covered with
magnesium perchlorate and

the perchlorates basically allow
the water on Mars to stay liquid

even it temperatures that are.

Far far below the freezing point of
water on Earth of thirty two degrees and

what you would expect so what appears
to happen is the sun actually saw

shines on the walls of some of these
craters remember the first one I showed.

That showed what appeared
to be rivulets it come down

basically when the sun shines and
warms those up because there's so

much salt in them basically the water
then flows down the valley and

before it's able to pool or paddle it
been about it and then effervesce is or

evaporates but
Mars at one time looked like this.

So from space exploration just
like beginning with Galileo

we've changed the paradigm about how we
think of the universe and our place in it.

Why was it worth for Galileo to be
able to look through his telescope and

understand that the cosmos was
not the way people thought but

actually inaccessible place that
one day like today we could

send humans like we have to the moon and
later to Mars.

And understand the universe in a much
more deeper way what was it worth for

the Hubble Space Telescope to be able to
take that picture of the early galaxies

and formation of the universe and really
understand the vastness in a way that we

can comprehend from a very simple
image of how many stars and

galaxies there are in the universe and
then to be able to find out that there

are hundreds of billions of habitable
whirls if you define habitable

worlds as a place where liquid water flows
on the surface that maybe there is life

there is an Arthur C. Clarke quote that I
love at the Denver Museum of Nature and

Science that as you walk into the Odyssey
Space Odyssey exhibit it says something to

the effect of you know either there's
intelligent life beyond the beyond

the Earth in the universe
are there is not.

I find either of those to be
in the standing situation.

That's what we're looking at and
so why go to Mars.

Well we just took the first steps in
December December fifth of last year

we launched the Arayan spacecraft
that's the America's next spacecraft is

America's first deep space spacecraft
to take us beyond the moon system and

eventually to Mars was launched on a Delta
four heavy it's got to build a bigger

rocket to get to Mars we're not going
to get there on the Delta four but

the Arayan capsule is is the first
first piece of that step and

NASA is now building the space launch
system which is basically a Saturn five

class rocket and
beyond to take us on that step and

basically flew that spacecraft
to check out the systems and

then there's a another unmanned
flight with that lined up to go and

then beyond that they'll be would be the
first human flight which will probably be

just a trans trans navigation
in the moon think about that for

a second flying around the moon we
yawn today at flying around the moon

right I mean Been there done that.

But just like Galileo.

And Kaplan are talked about learning to
say all our ships in the vastness of space

is not unlike those Polynesians who you
know at first they can only go from island

to island that they could see on
the horizon but as they learn to navigate.

I say brought new technology
of dual hauled ships and

sails that they could actually trim and
set learned to say all

the vast distances of the Pacific
we're learning to say all the vast

distances of interplanetary space and
the fact.

The fact that there is potentially
what was and maybe is today

a habitable world only nine months away.

I think we have to go there and
check it out myself.

You know Arayans not enough
by itself basically to get.

To even System lunar space you need
a habitat but you need something more

important than that one of
the reasons I took the job that.

Bobbie was talking about of
internationally is this is not going to be

a mission that one company one nation
can do by themselves it's going

to take an international community to do
that it's going to take the Europeans it's

going to take the Japanese it it
will I think take China working

together with the United States it will
take India I just got back from Dubai and

in Dubai the U.A.E. just formed their
own space agency in the first mission

that they're doing is a mission called
Hope to Mars I encourage you to go out and

look at their website the woman
who's the chief scientist I think

Salaam says it better then
anybody else she said you know

if a small Arab nation can
launch a satellite and

put it around Mars and put it in orbit and

share that data with the rest
of the world we can do anything.

Working together with
the international community we can go

explore Mars and it's not I think
that this exploration will be

more like the Hubble Space Telescope
more like a place where robots and

humans quite frankly working together in
ways that we can't quite understand yet

well basically allow us to explore Mars in
the depth that will help us to understand

if life ever existed there in the past and
if life perhaps exists there today and

then what does that tell us about
the probability of life in the rest of our

galaxy and of the rest of the universe.

We have left tracks on Mars.

You may not think that that's awesome but
when I came.

Here to go to school in the late
sixty's being able to leave robot

rover tracks on Mars was
something of science fiction.

It's not today.

And I tell you something else
when the first crew gets to Mars.

And when they step out on the surface.

And the commander when she puts her
boot on to the surface of Mars and

humans have finally left
this one planet system but

continued that voyage of discovery.

That we started when we left Africa
fifty sixty thousand years ago.

It will be the first time that we really
are in the in the step of not becoming

a species that lives on every nook and
cranny Island

every habitable place on the surface
of the earth but when we moved off and

become an interstellar species
first interplanetary species and

then someday someone's going to figure
out the propulsion necessary to say

all this see you know planetary space
this well we've already done that in

a way and
that is with the Hubble Space Telescope.

We can actually look into star
forming regions and see planets and

stars as they form we can see like
this image of a hot young U.V.

admitting stars where basically star as
a star nursery stars are being formed and

we can actually look into clouds of dust
and actually see the ultraviolet light

blowing away the dust around
newly formed solar systems.

So why do we explore.

Well when I was a sophomore here.

On Benoit's to me.

There was a member of
the German Now Hans for Von Braun.

Rocket team.

And they got one of the.

One of the engineers Dr Ernst lingere
got a letter from a nun in Africa.

And she basically was
wondering how he could justify

all of the money that was being spent on
space exploration when there were children

in Zambia Africa who were starving and
who were hungry.

And so moved by her sincere sincere
letter in question he wrote a letter

back to her and I want to read you just
just it was a very very well done letter

several a couple pages long but I want to
read you a little story that he told her

he said Dear Sister Mary you need to he
said Your letter is one of many which is

reach me but it has touch me more deeply
than all the others because it came so

much from the death of a searching mine in
a compassionate heart I'll try to answer

your question as best I can first let me
express my great admiration for you and

for all of the great sisters because of
your dedication that you've made of your

lives to the noblest cause helping
our fellow man who are in need.

You ask in your letter how I could suggest
the expenditures of billions of dollars

for a voyage to march at a time when there
are children on earth who are hungry and

starving I don't know what you
expected me to say but let me tell you

a story about a village in Germany it
was about four hundred years ago and

there lived a count in a small town there
and he gave a large part of his income to

the poor in that town this was very much
appreciated because poverty was abundant

during medieval times there were epidemics
of plagues which ravaged the country

frequently One day the count met
a strange man and he had a workbench and

a little laboratory in his house and
he labored hard during the daytime so

that he could afford a few hours every
evening to work in his laboratory

he ground small insist from pieces of
glass and he mounted them in a tube and.

Use this gadget to look at very small
objects the count was particularly

fascinated by the tiny creatures that
could be observed with the strong

magnification and he had never seen this
before he invited the man to move into his

castle with his laboratory and become
a member of the Count's household and

he devoted henceforth all of
his time to do development and

perfection of the optical gadget.

The talents before ever became very angry
when they realized that the count was

wasting his money as they thought
on a stunt with no purpose were

suffering from this plague they said
while he was paying the man for

this useless hobby but
the count remained firm he said give us

much as I can afford to the poor he said
but I'm also going to support this man's

work because I know that some day
something will come out of it.

As we know to day the microscope
has probably done more to eradicate

disease it's done more to help us
understand crops and how to feed the world

then that counts money could have
ever done in a million lifetimes

what do we get because we explore.

The secrets of the universe.

Thanks.

The.

Of the.

Before we close tonight I have
something for Georgia Tech and for

Bobby.

You know I mentioned that on December
fourth of last year should have

been forth but there was if you ever if
you ever go into a launchers a thing.

The fourth we had a boat in a box and
this was somebody.

Who should or
read we got a launch tomorrow and

stay out of the you know the impact
zone somebody didn't read it so

we didn't get to launch that day but
on the fifth of December just last year

we flew the Arayan spacecraft and
it was the first test flight of that and

on that we flew something for Georgia Tech
we flew a patch and a flag that was

flown on that very first inaugural
flight of the Orion spacecraft and

I would like to present that tonight
to Georgia Tech and to Bobby Braun.

Of the of the.

Of the.

Want to do.

You know anybody have questions for him.

Yes.

Yes.

I'm I'm sorry.

How can it Point interest good question so
basically.

Yeah you have you have reached on
reached into what one of the very it's.

So basically how do you perceive
sleep point a telescope so

that basically you can get seven million
arcseconds point zero zero seven seven

million arcseconds appointing perception
and basically you probably have

already done the math you can't do
it with your IRA scopes you can't.

Hold it that close and so
how do you how do you do that and so

essence is a very interesting question
basically the way you do that is by using

the telescope itself as the guide or
persuasion pointer so

basically what we do is around the the
annulus of the field of view we have these

little pick off mirrors that we can drive
around and we find three stars and so

basically looking through the Hubble space
telescope will find three what are called

guide stars and so with those guide stars
will will take these little mirrors

in the well run him in the three stars
into an interferometer and Indiana for

ometer closes the can basically locks
on to the peak of those stars and

then closes the control loop so
in essence you're using the telescope

to look at the star to basically then.

Lock the control loop and that's how
you get seven million arc seconds point

resolution those if you aren't control
theorist basically that's roughly

the equivalent of from New York to the top
of the Washington Monument putting

a quarter on top of the Washington
Monument holding a laser in from New York

to the quarter keeping it within that to
give you seven million arc seconds but

it's from looking through the telescope
at three stars to lock roll pitch.

Basically close the control loop OK

yes.

Yes.

Or.

No.

Yeah.

You know as Barrino is actually came.

With the idea for this cord fall the idea

everybody before was actually trying
to launch telescopes and and try and

launch them with the basically the optical
axis and we came up with this idea for

how to fold a different way and or
gammy problem to get it and but

there was a debate from day one about
the serviceability of the telescope and

whether we should make it serviceable or
not I was a proponent of serviceability of

the telescope really for two reasons one
I thought that is the right thing to do

I thought that the Hubble had
proven that once you go to all.

The launching stuff is directly related
to the mass the cost of launching

stuff history like directly related to
the mass of the thing a telescope is a big

mass we've shown with Hubble that you
can put you know new C C D's on it and

it can last decades we're going
to build the James Webb and

then basically we're not going to be able
to update the cameras they can be subject

to radiation damage and if you have a
problem with the telescope you know you're

going to have to search you can't
service it so the second thing was

when you're sailing on new oceans
you really need a reason to sail and

basically having an observatory handle a
grosh point which is about a million miles

or so beyond the orbit of the moon would
be a really good reason to actually go out

you wouldn't have to stay there so like
Hubble you'd only go out there and service

it when you were when there was a problem
or you wanted to upgrade the instruments

the argument the other way was cost it was
a horrible cost so much because we made it

serviceable I think up so
we shot a picture Bruce McCandless earlier

actually Bruce was very very heavily
involved in the development of Hubble and

it serviceability what you
had to do with hand holes and

this sort of thing
McCandless always argued

that we didn't need to spin that much
money on making things serviceable and.

We proved with Hubble a really
smart guy like John Grunsfeld and

a flashlight and a screwdriver can just
about change everything what you're really

got to think about is the hand holes and
placements in the ability to have

the human actually get there to do the
work and Bruce argued I think correctly

that the cost a lot of the money that
we spent we didn't need to spend

because if you just make it so
that humans can make it accessible

to do that they'll figure out a way
to fix it and so so we'll see but

the decision was made as a matter of
fact there were the arguments were so

heated that they wouldn't even put a
grappling fixture on the the telescope so

that even could be docked with but
anyway so

we'll see what the what the right
outcome what will who knows

if it's a.

Good thing.

Why.

What are the areas.

For.

Me.

So.

I'll tell you my opinion on that and
if I knew the right answer to that

the rich right down to my opinion
on that things that are like five

years out those are easy because they're
in the lab now you can go you know we'll

get Bobby's lab or different places and
and you can say hey you know this this is

this is going to happen with a fairly
high degree of probability and

you can kind of do that ten years.

If you're right ten percent of
the time you're really good and

beyond that I don't know that it's
possible there was Bob you know.

We're talking about this earlier there's.

Anybody here know what crisper
technology you know so so basically.

For some personal reasons
some interest in in.

In synthetic biology and
the ability to actually go in and

edit D.N.A. which crisper does
you can actually go in and

you can find a sequence you can
cut it you can change the code

the ability to do that
kind of in this timeframe.

You know I read a lot and I don't think
that ten years ago anybody would have

dreamed at this point in technology
we would be able to do that so

at kind of the ten year level.

I don't know and the other thing too
is I think that in reading a lot about

you know when I was here at Tech I didn't
I didn't I thought history was like

boring it was kind of like you know kings
and queens and battles and dates and and

it's like news hurt my head so I memorize
stuff and I passed the test but what I've

discovered now is I really love to read
about history particularly the history

of ideas in science and technology is a
really good book I'm reading called spooky

action at a distance which really talks
about a lot of the philosophy and and

the different interpretations
of quantum mechanics and so.

I think not only is it it's not just
the technology it's just ideas kind of

lay around for a long time until the in
the system dry to accept them and

so and it's kind of seems to be in
that can a ten year county issue

frame you just don't know who
would who would have envisioned.

Name it fifteen things kind of ten years
out and I don't know how you do that so

if anybody knows I mean
we'll get rich together yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

I know I mean.

I know so that's the short answer and
it's a matter of fact it's one of

the kind of hidden problems that I think
a lot of people don't want to talk about

deep space exploration is like how we're
going to solve the radiation problem and

really it is a radiation problem and when
you look at life support when you look at

all the other problems there's there's
really two things that stand out to me one

although you know we get different answers
from different people but if you read all

the literature basically it's really two
problems the radiation problem number one

the second one is really just zero G.
and we're discovering more and

more that you know we fix one
problem you know some John Grunsfeld

again being one of our friends says
hey we can just solve the zero G.

problem with diet and exercise right and
we have come a long way basically

when astronauts come back to the ground
now they're in pretty good shape but

now we're discovering some problems with
the optic nerve that that have basically

carbon shown up there is a really
easy problem to fix a problem and

you know I know how to do this is just
like you know you you put a cable and

you rotate things and what we don't know
and the create artificial gravity and so

what we don't know is maybe a tenth of
a G. is like all you need to solve that

problem and so there's not been any work
done to try and understand what that is we

really need figured out because you know
Mars Mars is not I'm thinking it might

be something like Mars gravity because
basically if you could if you could get.

Get something on the order of a Mars
gravity then you're going to be there for

a while and and when you when
you when you when you do it but

the radiation problem is
interesting about six feet away.

Water could basically if you do the math
that counter you know had six feet

down on the water it's people keep
trying to figure out how to solve this

electromechanical electromagnetically but
it's sort of like fusion you can't

find a way to kind of hold
the feeling kind of close it.

But for early exploration
the answer that I have for

that really comes down to the movie
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

you remember the scene from Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid where they

were being chased by the painter to
how many people know the movie but.

So they're being chased by the Pinkerton
guards and they're going who are these

guys they don't know who it is and
basically they get trapped and they're

basically down looking at it like a four
hundred foot drop down into the water and

they said OK we got a job so butch turns
to Sundance Sundance turns about she said

I can't jump he says we're going to
jump they're going to kill us and

we have to jump he says I can't
jump he says Why I can't swim and

he says the false gonna kill you.

So here we are we're going to strap
ourselves to a huge rocket we're going to

fly off in interplanetary space and
basically land on another planet and

explore and then come back home and we're
worried about increasing the lifetime

risk of radiation by maybe three
percent I don't think that for

early exploration if you go talk to people
who want to go to Mars that that's that's

an issue now do you think when we get to
Mars we've got to rethink about how we're

going to if we're going to stay there for
long periods of time basically you have

same problem at Mars where you have half
the problem because basically you've

got Mars doing one hundred eighty behind
you we're basically you've got one hundred

eighty degrees so you're only
cutting the radiation down by one so

I think that rather than build you know
elaborate habitats we're probably going to

go underground Mars so that would be and
that that solves it why.

And there are so
you still got the transit factor but

it's it's for
early exploration I think it's

it's not the problem that sometimes we
make it out to be doing exploration

safe you know trying to have
the same limits of exposure for

you know workers at nuclear power plants
this problem is probably not practical

in the early exploration period.

But just my opinion if they ask the other
thing I really love this one they so

want you old astronauts if you fly
all over that I really like this idea

if you fly all the astronauts
then your probability of

developing cancer from radiation is much
lurkers you're not going to live that long

sort of like Butch Cassidy in the Sundance
Kid right if ball's going to kill you so

anyway just just my thought.

Yes.

So this is a really good point so

what we're talking about here is basically
Hubble's an optical telescope optical U.V.

and so consequently Hubble's images
are really sharp compared to ground

based telescopes particularly James
waves an infrared telescope and

even though it's you know it's six and
six and a half meters and

much larger than the telescope because it
often writes in the infrared the images

won't be any sharper than Hubble and some
an effect of probably because of the size

of the detectors and other things
probably be not quite as good but

the advantage of that is you'll be able to
see much earlier in into the universe and

it's a really early universe machine
it's really trying to see even

deeper in the Hubble Deep Field trying
to see what's called the Dark Ages

is the period of time from when the
universe actually became transparent this.

Interesting is kind of biblical you know
first there was darkness and light so

basically the universe was dark and then
when it dropped below a certain threshold

free electrons free photons could actually
travel and so that's the period has that

earliest formation of stars and galaxies
that James Webb trying to get at but

it won't be kind of revolutionary.

Orders of magnitude sharper picture and
so that as you point out that

that will perhaps disappoint
some people when they see it.

Won't disappoint the scientists but

could yes.

So you want.

Yeah yeah so yes so I think you're you're
I think I understand your problem.

So yeah so and I think I know how to
explain it but it's very interesting

you basically in any direction that you
look at you see that image the universe

appears to be as you would think
homogeneous an isotropic to first order so

so basically everywhere you look you see
the universe as it was in your going home

how does that happen right so
think of it this way this is this is a.

Toot this is a three dimensional analog
of a four dimensional problem but

if you were on a balloon and
you blew the balloon up basically and

the balloon got bigger and bigger and
you're standing at one point on

the balloon you basically see the horizon
of the balloon in any direction you

look you're not looking at the center of
the balloon and you're not looking out and

so space time because it's space
time basically is expanding so

that's a that's a three dimensional
analog of a four dimensional

expanding universe and it's hard to
get your head wrapped around but but

that's kind of why you see the same thing.

In every direction and that and

it is the observable universe because
the universe is curved and so you know OK.

Yeah.

So if you gave me a billion dollars
tomorrow I'm not sure that's what I would

do with it but.

But if you said specifically that
that's what I had to do with it.

I might well actually I do know what I'd
do with it I would I would probably invest

it in some fundamental
hypersonic research.

I think that the.

Just like crisper I think there's
a technology change coming

that will dramatically lower
the price of access to space I

don't know if it's going to be ten years
from now or twenty years from now or

like nuclear fusion which is
always thirty years from now but

if some point we're going to figure out
a way to not get around gravity but

maybe get around the rocket equation and
one way to do that

is basically to have an air breather.

Of some sort hypersonic flight there's
actually three companies that I know of

currently who are really doing some some
really interesting research on how to do

that which could develop a single stage to
orbit reusable spacecraft that would allow

us to then fundamentally change the von
Braun paradigm in the Von Braun paradigm

of course is you know you build a big
rocket you basically build a space station

use a rocket to get stuff up the space and
then from there maybe used electric

propulsion although Von Braun talked about
using nuclear electric propulsion was his

idea of going to Mars and so that's one
way if you can build us if you can build.

Reusable single stage to orbit
hypersonic air breathing vehicle so

that instead of you know whether it's
whoever's number you believe for

a what's the lowest price to build a
rocket is it's not ten million dollars And

you know it's not half a billion dollars
it's still hundreds of billions of you

know still eighty to one hundred billion
dollars You just can't build a space

infrastructure with those kind of cost and
so you know I would be looking to solve

the propulsion problem so if you gave me
a billion dollars and I wanted to have my

gran great grandchildren basically
able to you know do human exploration

in some affordable form I'd be that's
the problem I'd be trying to solve.

Do you do propulsion on your own yeah so

just the thought.

Of.