A New Era for Deep Space Exploration & Development

A New Era A New Vision
 
Michael Laine Transcript:
"What were we going to do? We're going to build an Antarctica style research center on the moon. We're going to have robotics. We're going to have 3D printing. Of course, AI is going to help us along the way. We're going to build infrastructure for a larger future team. This stuff is straight out of science fiction. Except science fiction would not have been able to predict 3D printing as we have it now. I don't think that the computers in the enterprise were anywhere near as smart as the artificial intelligence programs we are developing now. We have stuff that was not envisioned by science fiction. We have surpassed much of the classic science fiction. So, I’m very excited about this pre-positioned logistics packages to build an Antarctica style research center. I actually looked it up. Okay. What does it mean to have a small Antarctic style station? 4,000 people spend the summer in Antarctica. 4,000 people! The International Space Station on a good day has seven or eight or nine people in kind of one of its best configurations. I think they've had 11 as their maximum. I’d have to look that up. But there's a limit. There are often three or four or five people up there. So, we've had 20 years of let's simplify and say six people at the Space Station. And now we're talking about potentially 4,000 people year-round on the moon. So, that fills me with joy. Most people don't overwinter at the Antarctic only about a thousand people stay there year-round. 4,000 people in the peak season summer and then a thousand in the winter. But still, I’ll take a thousand. I’ll take a thousand people permanently stationed on the moon! That would change civilization as we know it. I’m okay with that.
 
We already know. We talked a lot about commercial development. What are the commercial folks going to do? They're going to work on power, water, hydrogen, utilities, communications that sort of stuff. This document is an executive order from the president from a couple of months ago, goes into more detail on that. This document is worth looking at for a little bit more detail. There's not much detail in that document. So, don't have high expectations.
 
Transition to the private sector! We've talked about that a lot. The industrialization works keep coming up over and over again also.
 
Was it 18 months ago? About two years ago, the President and the Vice President claimed that we were going to go to the moon by 2024. Most professionals in the industry thought that was pretty unrealistic. It just four years from now looks really challenging. I’m going to bet pretty heavily on the commercial partners. When this was announced, there were no commercial partners. It was going to be exclusively the effort of NASA. No one in the industry had any confidence that NASA was going to be able to pull that off. Even some of the people at NASA weren't sure they could pull that off. With the advent and the invitation of commercial partners that seems possible. But I still think very unlikely. Instead of a zero percent chance, I might give it a 15 or 20 percent chance right now. But it's not zero so that's the progress I guess. I think this line about the next 2 or 3 years, Substantial increase in the capabilities that's absolutely accurate. There are many players in this field have not substantial progress. When we start talking about cargo back and forth on a routine basis again, that's very strong language. We haven’t ever had and talked in terms of cargo. We always talk about fragile payloads. Everything that we ship to space is easily breakable. This idea is of just cargo; Cargo’s industrial. I have the port of Tacoma behind me here. It moves tons of cargo every day. That's cargo when we are changing the language from payload to cargo is a substantial change in mindset and language in this case really matters. I am really excited to see that the symbols of that language.
 
We talk about pioneering efforts. We've known that it's kind of where we are for a long time. Proving ground, we've talked about that and resupply from the earth, all good things. This paragraph is kind of
a restatement of other things. But by restarting, it emphasizes local resources over and over again like Robotics, Pre-position, Resupply. As they keep hammering those points home, it becomes a higher and higher priority for the administration. The people read this document and act on this document whether they're at NASA, NOAA, Department of Defense FAA, FCC. They all get the same consistent message. When the National Science Foundation is issuing research grants, they all get the same message that Robotics, Pre-positioning. All of those things need to be a part of the eventual budgets of the United States. This language is repeated to emphasize and tell downstream policymakers to put money into In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU).
 
This gives them a kind of political cover for these decisions. So, who's going, when, and why we talked about this quite a bit on our last video. But I really want to emphasize that a lot of nations are going to the moon. America has 21 confirmed missions heading that direction. It's going to be interesting how this policy stuff unfolds. I think a document like this A New Era makes a big difference. I'd love to have any of your comments. We're going to put a bunch of links down below. There's going to be linked to this document and our other videos. But there's also going to be a couple of other links relating to the executive orders were mentioned. And some of the other programs are out there. Please read the description and follow whatever you're interested in. Okay, thanks!"