Using Space to Help Earth | Christianna Taylor

Now, the question, though, is what's actually up there? So you guys may or may not know how many satellites there are. There's 1,419 satellites. That is low. In my opinion, it's low. Now, to put it into perspective, there's 4,000 nonworking satellites out there. So that kind of gives you an idea of, like, what we have. But what's actually up there? Because all this started literally, I think it's October 4th or 6th, 60 years ago. And we got a beeper. Dear Russia, with love from Russia, thank you. We got a beeper. And that's what kicked off the space race. All of a sudden, nah, nah, nah, we can't have all that. We literally had this surge in space. And then you keep going. You have your first weather satellites. You have your— the West The Westford Needles, excuse me, that MIT put up. And that's literally what this stamp is. We put a man on the moon. We put people in space just because we wanted to see if we could. We didn't even know what we could utilize it for just yet. We were still not really trusting airplanes. You want to put us in space? Think about this. We had to have international treaties, space treaties. changed the game in the globalization front. It changed the game as to how small we are, but how big the universe is. Keep on going. You have a space station. You have liability. You have ESA. You have space agencies forming. Yes, we have NASA. But before we have NASA, we have NACA. I will not call it NACA because they get very upset if you call it NACA. NASA. Which worked on aircraft before it worked on spacecraft. We keep moving. Every— I'm sorry, not every. Excuse me. There's 268, I believe, countries in the world. Only about 106 of them actually have space agencies. But so many people get into it because we want to be able to utilize space. We want to be in the game. We want to explore. But we also have some tragedies. We literally have our accidents. We have GPS. We get together. We create space stations. We create TV. Remember DirecTV back in the day when you had the little satellite and it was kind of like, wow, wow, you're literally the next step up. Color TV was a thing. Weather information. You didn't have to just go by almanacs. Now, yes, you should. If you're a farmer, you should probably look at your almanacs as well. However, we can supplement that information. We can get it to you daily now. Well, I won't say daily. We'll say weekly. But still, you have an idea whether or not it's going to rain today. You know how cold it's going to be in San Francisco versus down in Palo Alto. All that's due to space. But like I said, sometimes we miss the mark. You have Columbia exploding. We lose lives along the way. We have wars along the way. And even with our wars, even with the conflicts we have in the world, space is one of those unifying things because we realize how big it is. Where's it going? I won't say anyone can make a spacecraft, but with things getting cheaper, faster, stronger, you can literally have a 3U CubeSat. And a 3U CubeSat When we say a U, it's basically the size of a softball. So that's 10 centimeters by 10— 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters. A 3U is 30 by 10 by 10. You can literally take a 3U satellite and give you better information than some of the satellites we had back in the '60s. So it's getting cheaper and faster for us to actually build spacecraft. Now, it is still really hard to launch. It is really hard to launch. Like, I don't know if you ever— I don't know if you actually saw the Rocket Labs launch out of New Zealand. Just to give you some perspective here, New Zealand almost created a space agency to help them have a rocket launch. Not only that, when Rocket Labs actually launched, they almost made it. Now, to give you perspective, We didn't almost make it the first time we launched. We didn't almost make it the second, the third, the fourth, and a couple other times we, we almost launched. The fact that they didn't blow up immediately is amazing. It is hard to launch something into space. It is cheaper and faster for us to make smaller spacecraft so we can iterate, we can make experiments, but it is hard to get them to space. So that launch vehicle providers, SpaceX is changing the game. Reusability is changing the game. I saw the last shuttle launch. Amazing spectacle. But it was too expensive because we thought we'd have these buses to space by then. And unfortunately, we've missed the mark. And that's where commercial is stepping in. And I'm excited to see what happens. I'm excited. Yes. Launch vehicles. It's definitely a vertical. But it's really hard to do. Human spaceflight. Right now, we have the International Space Station. In theory, it is being decommissioned in 2020 with very good engineering sound reasoning behind it. However, what happens after that? We have the Google Lunar X Prize. We have Amazon saying that they want to— SpaceX. Was it Amazon? No, excuse me. They have SpaceX saying they want to send space tourism to the moon next year, I want to say. We have Amazon saying, you know what, this would be great. Not Amazon, excuse me. Jeff Bezos owns Amazon as well as Blue Origin. Blue Origin is saying that they actually want to see space tourism. I mean, I don't know if you guys all remember, but the original X PRIZE, the Ansari X PRIZE, I remember watching that as a junior saying, wow, I want to do that. Because for the first time, we have this idea that we could be a commercial astronaut. that doesn't have to go through the NASA, the Canadian, the JAXA, the Roscosmos, the ESA process. For the first time, we are changing it that we can actually go. And you can be a part of it. Microgravity. Microgravity. My hero is Mae Jemison. When I met Mae Jemison, I cried like a fangirl. And I am not ashamed to admit it because she is exactly who I wanted to be. But one of— but I remember seeing a documentary on her, how one of— she did a microgravity research experiment. And mind you, I don't do anything biological. If I can't blow it up, I'm probably not the person you want around that. But we do some amazing things. So, if we can literally solve the bone density problem in space, we can help people on Earth with osteoporosis. That's all microgravity research and all information that we can get from space. They can come back down and help us here on Earth. Exploration. In-space servicing. Now, that's where I fall in. In-space servicing is what I'm really and truly interested in. Space resources. I'm sorry. I missed one. I'll go back to microgravity very quickly. Made In Space. Made In Space is a company that went to Singularity— went through Singularity University. And they're a really amazing company down in NASA Ames. They literally do 3D printing on the ISS. Now, I want you to think about this. I don't know if we have any Star Trek fans in here. Remember how the computer's like, computer. Oh, great. Hot. And he gives you tea, right? Made in Space can send a file to the ISS and basically have a tool created for you, probably the next day. It probably takes longer than they want just because you want to have a lot of safety information. But still, you can send a file up. We can do data transfer and have things created in space. To me, that is mind-blowing. And that changes the game as to how we think of space, what we can do in space, how we operate in space. And that's what I think is so cool personally. Space resources. We have planetary resources. We have deep space industries. We have different people that are looking at mining minerals off of asteroids, mining minerals off the moon. How do you 3D print entire space stations, entire research stations? research stations from— excuse me— from afar. These are all vertical. These are all potential markets. And there's so many other things we can think of. I remember— I want to say early 2000s. I want to say it was Hilton. One of the hotels was actually thinking, how can we actually make sure that the first hotel on the moon is a Hilton-branded hotel? So who knows who's actually going to partner with these people when it comes to space? There's so many interesting things out there. Thank you.