We place very complex machines on the top of huge vertical structures, the
size of a 34 story tall building. We proceed to light these explosives and
the whole structure along with valuable contents are shut up so high they
end up in space or plant. We call these rocket launches and we
collectively species are from one of them around every two weeks and we
have been doing them for at least 40 years right now. At this very moment
, there are six humans just like you and me currently traveling at seven
kilometers per second. That is almost 16,000 MPH at 400 kilometers in
altitude inside a pressurized box. We call the International Space Station.
All of this is incredibly exciting, of course, but it is also incredibly
dangerous and crazy. Why would anybody do such a thing? We don't just
perform these activities for the sake of proving the limits of humanity.
But there's a fundamental benefit of why we're doing them being in space
gives you an unparalleled perspective that allows you to look back down to
your world in ways not achievable. Otherwise imagine being lost in a cord
. I don't know how we get into that position. But if you were able to know
what it looked like from above, everything would be so much easier. Well,
satellites provide a similar vantage point. They know what everything
looks like from the top because they're up there in space. Looking back
down to us all the time. This is very valuable information that allows us
to solve problems. They in fact make a lot of aspects of our modern lives.
For example, the GPS service you may have used to navigate here, the
weather forecast you may have seen this morning and the telecommunications.
We all love to use the internet, telephone radios. All of these things
depend in one way or another in by satellites machines we humans have sent
into space. Then there's science, scientific breakthroughs and discoveries
in physics, astronomy, even biology are very often oriented in spacecraft
like the Hubble space telescope in International Space Station, Space
Exploration, we today have high resolution images of the planets and the
moon of our solar system. We have even imaged planets on the habitable
suns of stars older than our own sun places where we might want to find
life. We have placed humans and robots too on the surfaces of the objects
of our solar system. Objects once considered to be God by the ancient
humans. Clearly, there's a fundamental benefit and advantage of being in
the space. This begs the question, why don't we go there? More often. Well
, it is stupidly expensive to go to space right now. That's why. And
there's multiple reasons why going to space is expensive. First, there's
the obvious one, like building a rocket, the size of a building, fill it
with explosives and cry generally cooling. It tends to be a bit expensive
and it certainly doesn't help at all that after we are done with the
launch, we let the thing crash into the ocean and sink so we can go keep
company to the Titanic.
But even though the whole whole rocket thing is expensive, this is not the
real reason why going to space is expensive after all, on average rocket
launches and the cost of that is only about a 10% of the total cost of a
space mission. So where is the rest of my money going? Space is expensive
because we're stuck in a vicious cycle and allow me to explain, we have a
starting point. We're designing, constructing and operating a space
mission is expensive now because the space is expensive. We can only
afford so many of them. And there's a low number of space missions because
it's a low number of space missions. When you get the opportunity to send
something to space, you really, really want to make sure it works. After
all, you may have been waiting for this opportunity for the last 20 years.
Something not unheard of in the industry. These proportionate resources
are spent into guaranteeing the success of these missions. Redundancy,
open redundancy, quality checks, background checks and additional harding
for all materials. All of these things cost money. They are up and in the
end end up being the majority of the cost of emissions leading us to more
expensive missions. And the cycle repeats itself expensive mission leads
to low number of whose success wants to be guaranteed no matter the cost
leading to more expensive missions and we're stuck, space is expensive
because failure is not an option. But what if it was? What if we embrace
the possibility of failure? What if we accepted and took risks? What if we
were to break the cycle by constructing smaller missions whose success is
not to be guaranteed? Now, I'm not trying to suggest we just build ha
hazardous missions that are prone to failure or that every mission should
have risk. There are of course some missions where we should go for a
higher cost to guarantee a lower risk, especially when humans, astronauts
are involved. But there's some cases where it is reasonable to take some
risk. Imagine you are a planetary scientist who is studying the circles of
Mars because you just love the rocks and the circles of Mars and that's ok.
There's people like that. Well, traditionally, you will build one very
expensive state of the art, beautiful robber that will go all the way to
Mars and perform wonderful science for you. But what if for the same
amount of money you were to go to. Now, this is not like an information
with some black magic. So obviously, you will need to cut corners
somewhere and the system may be more prompt to failure somewhere leading
to say a 75% chance of success. For each role, you still send the ball to
Mars and yes, one might fail, but you still got the other one. Maybe both
fail, then you're out of luck. But what if the most likely scenario occurs
and both can succeed? Then we have just performed double the amount of
science without a single 10 a increases in price, we can do more with less
if we accept some risk. This is specifically what we were doing with CUB
sets. Some engineers, a couple in 1999 they came together and disagreed
upon building very, very small satellites in the same form factor. They
introduced what we know today as a cub set standard and Cub sets come in
various sizes. A one U tube set is a 10 by 10 by 10 centimeter blocks
about the size of a tissue box. A two U is a 10 by 10 by 20 centimeter box
and a three U is a 10 by 10 by 30 centimeter box just about the size of a
loaf of bread. Here, I have a model of a three unit Gibson. This is the
actual size of the spacecraft, but just because you're born a box doesn't
mean you have to die a box. You can expand and deploy solar panels. These
satellites are remarkably small, especially when you consider the fact
that when we normally talk about satellites, we talk in terms of cars and
school buses, not loads of red tissue boxes. Satellites are not normally
something you call on stage while talking. So even though these satellites
are so small, we can fit a lot of useful electronics into them. This is
thanks to the fact that people want a smaller computer in a smaller iphone
every single year. The commercialization, the militarization of consumer
electronics have left us with very, very powerful computers on very very
small packages. So why not take the computer in your cellphone
and put it in a satellite? This is the point where a traditional aerospace
engineer would say stop right there. This is not gonna work, but I'm not a
traditional aerospace engineer. I can guarantee to you that utilizing this
iphone electronics in your satellite is much, much, much less expensive
than utilizing the redundant radiation hard and customized electronics of
normal satellites. There's some risk to utilize these electronics because
they're more prone to fill in space. But this allows us to build space
guard for a really low price and break the cycle. So I have built my space
, my little cub and I'm ready to send it to space. What do I do? Well, I
approach a lunch provider and say, hey, lunch provider send this to space
for me. The lunch provider will say, ok, I'll send this to space for you.
Just give me 100 and $65 million
as an undergrad student. We felt a little bit out of my budget. So what do
I do? I wait for another customer with more money to get a lunch and I
don't have to wait long because after all lunches happen every two weeks,
right? So then I just grab my little tips up and I strap it next to the
rocket engine belt or whatever I can make it fit. I ask him for permission.
First, of course,
for the rocket at 3 kg increment in mass due to the kids. That makes
absolutely no difference since it may already be carrying a five ton
satellite, the size of school. We are literally hitchhiking the way into
space as secondary pillars and we're just charging conveniently for it.
This fee may be in the order of a couple of $100,000 and I know it's still
expensive. It's not to the point where everybody is gonna go tonight,
build their kids and send it to space tomorrow. But this is a very
significant reduction in price. One that opens the doors of the previously
British Love Space Club. Two more players,
I'm talking about high risk science with the possibility of a high reward.
Now, imagine you are a lunar scientist who's studying the moon because
you just love the rocks on the surface of the moon. And that's ok. There's
people like that too. Well, we have orbiters right now orbiting the moon
just like this. This is the moon, this is the orbiter. They're doing,
they're doing fine science, really cool stuff. But if we were able to
orbit the moon really, really close to it on a really low altitude orbit,
we will be able to make some very astonishing measurements. But it doesn't
matter how much you love the moon and its rocks. No scientist or engineer
in their right mind is going to risk the spacecraft. It is such a low
orbit because it might crash into the moon and that's bad. But what if you
were using a cub set? Let's send it on to a 10, a five kilometer of it. I
don't care. We have 10 or 20 more around the moon at the same time. This
aspect of cub that has been utilized by a company called Planet Planet is
an earth imaging company founded in 2010 with one mission and one mission
only. They want to image the whole earth every single day and they're
doing it. And the resulting images are not only beautiful but they're
highly valuable for agriculture, space and defense and, and mapping. As a
result, they're making a good back out of selling these images. They have
transitioned from being headquartered in a garage. Seven years ago to
being a single entity with the most satellites are on our planet right now.
They have hundreds of three unit tubes that just like that one over here
on planet and they have hundreds more waiting for lunch. They recently
deployed at the record in 88 from a single launch. And yes, the
individuals had the spell at the time, but when you have hundreds more
waiting for lunch and how to do tomorrow. One of it, it doesn't matter.
Now, I have to admit to you, I have said a lot of good things about
satellites but about tips. That's specific, but they're not the solution
to every problem out there. We still need big space missions because we
cannot have uh we cannot share the Hubble space telescope um into the size
of a break with current technology. But cub sets are very useful for very
specific. So solving very specific problems. For example, scientists in
the city of Phoenix are trying to understand how the composition and the
structure of our cities affects the urban heat islands, human materials,
materials like concrete and asphalt. They tend to retain the heat of the
sun longer and far more than the surrounding natural materials like grass
, dirt and cactus. As a result, the air temperature and the surface
temperature of the cities is increased. This this is not good because
Phoenix is already hot enough. So
um this is a very valid scientific investigation. One to which many
scientists dedicated their whole lives about study. But for some reason or
another, this may not attract sufficient attention to single handedly
justify the construction of a large serving mission, but it can justify A
Q. And that is specifically what I'm working on right now together with a
team of around 60 other undergraduate students at Arizona State University.
I'm building such ac that we have named Phoenix. Phoenix will go to space
carry a thermal camera and images from over there. We wrote a proposal to
NASA two years ago and received $200,000 to build this mission. That may
seem like a large amount of money because it is, but it is a very change
compared to any other mission out there. That is not a keep set cub sets
like Phoenix allows us to train the scientists and engineers of the future.
It allows us to like us not just to learn how to design a spacecraft on
paper, but to actually build a real spacecraft that we will go into real
space. The same were at as well.
This is huge because it doesn't matter how much we as a species as a
society value education. Nobody is currently writing checks for
undergraduate students like me to go build satellites, but they're doing
so. For Q sets
in Phoenix or Qet, it's much more than use A Q set. It is an
interdisciplinary effort with students from the school of journalism
design in the arts, sustainability engineering. All of us getting valuable
, getting valuable experience that will make us better in the respective
fields. All of us working in unison towards our single common goal. We aim
to promote the importance of climate science. We aim to promote in terms
of the importance of climate science and produce meaningful scientific
information and share with anybody anywhere so they can do meaningful
scientific analysis if they sell this high. I and the rest of my team has
spent countless hours working on this mission. It is proof that our work
can have a meaningful impact on the world. And I love this. It's stick to
something as a small as a lo of red. Thank you.