Tim DraperFounder and Managing Partne, Draper Associate · I back the ideas that look crazy first

In 2022 over 10 million people died from cancer 😳

29 Jan 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:11

In this monologue, the speaker—who has lost loved ones to cancer—explains why they are turning to space for cancer research. They claim that cancer cells grow roughly 100 times faster in microgravity, and that the lack of gravity allows cells to assume a spherical shape that more closely mimics in‑body conditions, unlike the flattened cells cultured on Earth. The speaker critiques past International Space Station (ISS) experiments that relied on astronauts, noting that prolonged spaceflight can impair astronauts' cognitive abilities, leading to experimental errors. To overcome these human‑factor limitations, they propose developing an automated machine capable of conducting cancer experiments autonomously in space, aiming to improve data quality and accelerate discoveries.

Chapters

Everybody in our company has lost someone due to cancer. Cancer specifically grows almost 100 times faster in space. I always was passionate about the environment. I'm a bit jaded now, so that's why I'm looking to space. When you're doing research on Earth, gravity is pushing down on that cell. It kind of flattens it out. And so they're doing testing in a cell that doesn't really replicate what the cell looks like in your human body. However, in space, Because everyone's falling, the cells are spherical. We're actually testing on something that is very similar to how it looks in the human body. Over the past 30 years, the International Space Station has been used to do science. But the problem was that many of the experiments required astronauts. And astronauts are incredibly intelligent humans, but after they live in space for a few weeks, their cognitive abilities lessen. And so they tend to make a lot of mistakes. This created a tremendous amount of problems throughout decades of experiments. So the first thing we needed to do was to develop an automated machine that would conduct all of those activities themselves.