The Earth is Not Alone | Alien Planet

The earth is not alone in the last few yearsScientists have found that our planet is just one of billions out there in the Milky Way galaxyThere’s a really decent chance that there are more planets in the galaxy than there actually are stars.

We’re now scouring these planets for evidence of atmospheresliquid waterof life itselfWe are going to know where in the night sky you can point and find another earthWe have a scientific method to actually determine whether there is life on another planet anotherearthAlien life the truth is out there, but are we ready for it?The earth gives us the blueprint for life as we know it.

The Sun warms our oceans creating the perfect environment for all scales of lifeFrom the very smallest to the Giants that eat themMountainsplanesand forests teen with plants and animal species andIt’s all cocooned in a thick atmosphere that nurtures and protects for us. It’s paradise20 years ago a group of scientists decided to find out if there were other paradises out thereso-called exoplanets orbiting the stars that light up our night sky.

Just in the last decade we’ve had this explosion in the discovery of these exoplanetsWhich has revolutionized the whole field of astronomyThe early days of exoplanet hunting turned up enormous jupiter-sized planets by the boatloadThese hot gas, each iins proved easy to find but hostile to life as we know it.

Now though new telescopes and technologies have allowed astronomers to target smaller planetsEarth-sized ones and the stunning results have transformed the way we see our place in the universeWe now know something precious that our planet Earth is not unique.

It’s not even rare. There areTons hoards flocks if you will of other earth-like planets out there fluttering around the other starsSome stars probably have multiple earths orbiting them. That’s how common earth-like planets areWe owe this exoplanet explosion to a Space Telescope called Kepler the Kepler space telescope is an observatory in space that is staring at one spot in the sky.

It’s looking at roughly150,000 stars and it’s looking for the tell-tale sign of Planets orbiting those stars then every time the planet passes in front of the starit’ll block a little bit of that star light and if you plot the amount of light you get from the star it drops andThen goes back up as the planet passesIn just four years scientists have detected over a thousand exoplanets just from their shadowsBut Kepler has a problem.

It can’t tell if the shadow is made by a giant gassy planet hostile to lifeor a potentially habitable earth-like planetWhat we’re measuring when a when a planet passes in front of its host star is what is the area of the planetRelative to the area of the star that it’s passing in front of it’s a it’s a ratio basicallyBut Jupiter sized planets crossing giant stars full Kepler Because they block the same fraction of light as earth sized planets crossing smaller stars.

To prove a planet is earth sized you first need to measure the size of its star using the world’s biggest telescopesBut that’s time-consuming expensive and it creates a hugeexoplanet backlogBut astronomer Kavon Stassen has come up with an ingenious shortcut by turning the raw Kepler data into soundwhat the Kepler telescope directly measures and the data that we use issmall changes in brightness that a star produces due to the flickering Arising from the boiling and roiling motions of gas at its surfacewhat we can do then is take that light flickering data and Transform it in a sound studio for example into audio frequencies And so then we can represent with sound what we’re actually detecting with light.

The bigger the star the more its surface boils with activityMaking big stars flicker more powerfullyConverted to sound this boiling becomes a deafening hissWell, let’s listen to some stars, okay, can we hear the red giant star please? I’m gonna bring up the volume hereThis is a very large star very low densityand so that large amount of hiss is the result ofvigorous boiling and churning at the surface of this large red giant starCan we get the dwarf star, please?

On smaller stars sunspots dominate the sound profile creating a low-frequency droneActually sounds like a series of clicksBut below clicks lies the faint hiss Kavon needs to size the starUnderneath it at a very low level is a little bit of hissThat little bit of is actually the light flickering that we’re interested inBy accurately measuring the level of this background hiss Kavon can work out the size of the starIn this case, it’s around the same size as our star the Sun.

Cave-ins work could be the breakthroughexoplanet hunters have been hoping forIt’s cheap. The results are practically instantaneousAnd once you know the size of the starFiguring out the size of the planets casting shadows overIt is child’s play it it feels like a very privileged time to be a scientist to be an astronomerWorking in this area and contributing to the hunt for the next earth.

Here. We are actuallydiscovering these worlds by the hundreds and now on the cusp ofBeing able to identify the next earthAstronomers suspect there could be tens of billions of rocky earth-like planets in the Milky WayPlaces where perhaps life has gotten a foothold.

But life as we know it requires waterHow can scientists possibly find this miracle substance on planets?light-years awayWater divides our living world goes with it prosperThose bounts sufferRemarkably the water we drink today contains the same atoms as the water dinosaurs drank 100 million years agoIt’s the same water that formed clouds over the earlier4 billion years ago and every organism that has ever existed on earth Has used this single ration of water as the biochemical powerhouse that keeps it alive.

On earth all life requires liquid water to grow and reproduceIt’s the common ecological requirement for life liquid water is just so good for getting evolution goingMolecules can dissolve in the water actually interact with each other for more complex chains. It does it with chargeThere’s positive charges and negative charges separated between the hydrogen and the oxygen in h2oThose charges break apart the hydrocarbons the carbon-based molecules that persist everywhere in natureNow that’s very rare. Hardly.

Any other liquids do that?So liquid water is a natural starting place when you look out into the universe and say what planets could possibly have lifeTo understand how much liquid water is out there astronomers must first calculate how common water is in all its forms?Amazingly they find it everywhere they look.

Water is incredibly common in its gaseous form. We see water vapor filling the space between the starsWe see it in clouds of material that are actually forming new stars and planets right nowSince water is a fundamental building block of stars and planets exoplanet worlds must surely have it in abundanceBut if you’re looking for lifeYou need to find liquid water and plenty up to find it astronomers take their cue from a fairy tale.

Everybody knows the famous story of Goldilocks and the three bears and the the cup of porridge where one was too hot one was tooCold it was just rightWhen it comes to cooking up life like a porridge, you need to have an environment.

That’s not too hot not too coldjust right andTraditionally we look for that at a certain distance around a starAt first astronomers based this magical distance known as the Goldilocks zone on the Earth’s orbit around the SunBut as they found more and more exoplanets, they’ve had to re-evaluate the boundaries from liquid waterThere isn’t a single distance. It depends on the brightness of your parents a dim star.

You need to be closerHot star very bright need to be farther awayScientists have calculated just how many rocky planets may lie within the Goldilocks zone of their starsIt comes out to over 30 billionpotentially watery worldEven more remarkablyRecent discoveries have shown us. It’s not just planets that can bask in the warmth of the Goldilocks zoneThere may be moonspainted blue with oceans -Most of the planets were finding our big jupiter-sized planetsHowever, a lot of them were are orbiting roughly where the earth is orbiting the Sun.

So even if the planet that we’re finding can’t support lifeIt could have a moon a moon with an atmosphere that could support lifeAnd the biggest of these rocky moons they resemble our homeThere could be billions upon billions of XA means out there and even perhaps countless paradises teeming with life.

David kipping searches for exomoons by looking for double dips in the brightness of distant starsWe look for XA means in a very similar way to the way that we look for planetsby looking for them transit their host starNow if that planet had a moon then we should expect to have one big dipDue to the planet and then one smaller deputy to the left or to the right due to the newHabitable exomoons may play host to one of the most spectacular sights in the universeImagine a warm rocky world just like arrow with oceans mountainsBut in the sky a massive ringed planet with a fiery sister moon shooting hot magma into space.

Exoplanets, and now the vast potential ofexomoonsInt a galaxy filled with the possibilities for lifeBut a rocky surface and liquid oceans may not be enoughBiology needs the breath of lifeairBacklit by the Sun a halo appears around the earth apale blue ring of light our atmosphere andWe oh, it’s everythingThe Earth’s atmosphere provides the gases that fuel the biochemistry of advanced lifeBut it also protects the oceans from the full fury of the sun’s rayspreventing the water from boiling away into space.

Without an atmosphere there would be no wind. No rain. Nofresh water and probablyNo lifeAtmospheres are absolutely essential for lifeTake a look at the planet Earth and you realize that just like the skin of the Apple?The skin of the Apple preserves the Apple. Well the atmosphere of our planetPreserves the oceans and makes possible the presence of life as we know itScientists in search of living exoplanets. Hope to detect the thin gassy envelope that should surround these alien worldsTo do it.

They’re turning to the power rainbowsIn the same way that water splits Sun lights into a rainbowastronomers use instruments to split starlight into a band of colours called a spectrumIt’s one of the oldest tricks and scienceand one of the most revealingSeveral hundred years ago scientists first began to take something like a prism and put it in front of their telescopeSo he started taking the light from stars like the Sun and actually spreading it out into a spectrum.

And what they saw was kind of surprising. So instead of seeing andreen continuous rainbow of lightThey saw that rainbow but they saw these dark lines superimposed on topEach chemical elements of the star’s atmosphere absorbs different parts of the spectrumcreating signature dark bandsFor instance up at the top.

There’s a pair of lines in the yellow part of the spectrum which are due to sodiumLike a DNA profile for starsSpectral analysis has taught us almost everything we know about stars todayBut these same lines may hide a marvelous secretthe faint signal of alien atmospheres andperhaps alsoalien lifeso the challenge is that these planets are very small and very faint so we can’t actually go andDirectly measure the light emitted from the planet the same way that you go and measure this lovely spectrum for the Sun.

Instead we have to rely on more indirect methodsSo one indirect way of doing that is to wait until the planet passes in front of the starWhen the light of a star passes through an EXO atmosphereThe gases that surround the planet should stamp their own faint lines on the star’s spectrumSo as we watched the light from the star transmitted through that atmosphere its atmosphere is going to act like a little filterso a part of the star light is going to pass through that atmosphere and we’re gonna see thatIn printing extra lines on it, which are due to the planet’s atmosphere.

So that change in the spectrum tells us something about the properties the planet’s atmosphereThe one chemical astronomers most want to find is oxygenBecause only life can produce enough oxygen to be easily detectedIt’s a so-called bio signatureThe race is now on to find bio signatures in the atmospheres of rocky exoplanets.

And while some groups look for rainbowsIndirectly others are tackling the challenge head-onAll rightThen Oppenheimer is part of a team trying to take direct photographs of exoplanetsusing massive ground-based telescopesWe’re within minutes of taking our first long exposure and I hope it’s good.

The greatest challenge to imaging exoplanets is the blinding light of the parent starWhich shines tens of millions of times brighter than the planet itself?The trick is to stop the light of the star from entering the telescope sensors by blocking it using a series ofMasks and lenses called a coronagraphRight now we’re standing right?Underneath the telescope’s primary mirror and the light comes through a hole in the middle of the mirror and goes into thisCrazy box here, which is full of optics motorsSensors and electronics that all allow us to precisely control the star light that’s coming through the systemUsing state-of-the-art software they manipulate the coronagraph to black out the unwanted light under good conditions.

We can actually carveDark holes into this image of the star so that we can see really faint things in those regionscoronagraphs present an intriguing problem thougherrors within the optics produce tiny flares of starlight called speckles that look just likeExoplanets, but van has come up with an ingenious way to tell speckles from planetsSo we’ve developed a technique where we exploit an aspect of specklesWhich is that they change position in the image, depending on what color you take your image at?

So Ben takes the same image of the star through different color filters andRuns them like a movie the speckles appear to move across the screenBut the planets stay stuck still allowing Ben to easily pick them outAnd so I’d like to point out that there is a little thing right hereThat if you watch for you’re careful, you’ll notice that it doesn’t move and the speckles are washing over itThis stationary blob is a candidate exoplanetAnd below it and to the left is a second.

They both appear to orbit a star around 200 light-years from the earthJust a decade ago capturing an image like this through a telescope was unthinkableBut today thanks to the ingenuity of astronomers like Ben we have hundredsAnd by analyzing the light for these distant worlds scientists can work out their chemical compositionAnd potentially the fingerprints of life.

At this point we’re studying much larger planetsGaseous things like Jupiter that most likely don’t have any kind of lifeLike we know it but that’s a first step and we’re going to fainter and smaller and smallerPlanets as time goes on as we develop this technologyIn the not-too-distant futureScientists may be able to simply scan a star for earth-like planets and find the signature of life thereWe can look right at the light from a little planet around its distant star and that opens up a whole range of possibilitiesFor us to not just detect the planet but to study the planetI mean this all sounds like science fiction, but there is a reality to thisWe have a scientific method to actually determine whether there is life on another planet.

Life is one thingintelligent lifeanother all together that requiresBillions of years and a powerful force field like the one we owe our lives to every dayIf an alien astronomer were to file a report on our home solar system they might make a surprising observationBecause of all the eight planets that orbit the Sun they could easily conclude that – not one were suitable for lifeIt’s an easy mistake to make because the Sun has two planets within its Goldilocks zone the Earth and Mars.

Both planets have surfaces warm enough for liquid water to pool onBut while the earth is blessed with warm liquid oceansOurs is dry and deadThe one crucial difference between these two planets could be the key to finding truly habitable exoplanets amagnetic shield Our Sun is constantly hurling deadly radiation out towards usOnly our magnetic shield the magnetosphere saves usWithout it the solar wind would blow our atmosphere away and without an atmosphere liquid water could not exist on the surfaceIn order to have liquid water not only do you need the right temperature, but you need the right pressure.

You know if there were no atmosphere here right nowEven at the same temperature we are today all of the water would boil off into vapor immediatelySo where does the Earth’s magnetosphere come from and why does it Mars have one?Actually in the past both Earth and Mars had magnetospheresBut Mars lost its around 4 billion years ago and with it the potential for life.

Both the earth and Mars were born into a realm of violenceAsteroids smashed into their surfaces turning rock and metal into a molten massAs they started to cool a solid crust formed on the surface but the molten metal belowChurned as the planets turnInducing a magnetic field which rose high up above the surface of both planets.

At the same time active volcanoes pumped gas into the space around each planetProtected by the newly formed magnetic field these gases built up into thick atmospheresCreating the air pressure for liquid water to run on the surfaceFor over a hundred million years both Mars and Earth were warm wet paradises primed for life to take offThen quite suddenlyMars’s magnetic protection Disappeared the solar wind blew its atmosphere into space and its oceans boiled away leaving the dry Sterile, red rock we see today.

Mars is fundamental problem is is that it’s smaller than Earth and because it’s smaller the internal core of Mars cooled down andSolidified and once it becomes a solid metal. There’s no more magnetic field the magnetic field shuts off essentially andthe atmosphere therefore is vulnerable to both energy and radiation from the Sun and the rest of the galaxy andProbably just blew offWhatever life was on there, at least on the surface was now completely exposed.

All rocky planets will one day lose their magnetospheres as their cores cool and turn solidSo to know if an exoplanet is alive you need to work out if its magnetosphere is still active butMagnetospheres are tough to measure because they are unbelievably weakThe earth has a magnetic field of approximately half a GaussWhich when you think about it is actually really weak. Our fridge magnets are about a hundred Gauss.

They’re much strongerExcel planets are too far away for us to measure such weak magnetic fields directlyBut there is an indirect methodWhen electrons in the solar wind interacts with a planet’s magnetosphere they emit radio waves that beam out into spaceTurning the planet into a giant radio beaconAstronomers like of geniu hoped to use these signals to spot habitable exoplanets.

Not only that the frequency of the signal should also tell her how big the planet isIf we’re looking for the magnetic signature in radio waves of a giantplanet say a hot JupiterWe expect it to have a strong magnetic field and therefore it would have a high frequencyAnd around 100 megahertz kind of where the limit of this radio isHowever, a weaker field like Earth’s requires us to go down to lower and lower frequencies.

So instead of a hundred megahertz we go down to ten megahertzBut hunting for exoplanets at 10 megahertz presents a unique challengeBecause the Earth’s own magnetic sphere creates a deafening radio roar at that frequency.

So to find alien Earth’s using radio requires a dish in spaceWhen we want to look for magneto spheres of extrasolar planets, we really need to get outside of the earth-moon systemIn order to get away from all the radio frequencies that are bouncing around the earthWith a slew of new technologies and upcoming technologiesScientists are edging ever closer to the ultimate prize.

Finding a second earthI wouldn’t be surprised if we have that data about an earth and about life on it around another star in 10 or 15 yearsI’m hoping to see that soonUsing shadowsRainbows and now radio we finally have the tools to detect a planet just like our ownBut in the rush to find the Earth’s identical twin are we missing something big.

What if earth is an outlier a freakishly lucky place on the very fringes of habitabilityCould there be another kind of planet out there even better for life?For years astronomers have scanned the heavens for planets that could sustain lifeThey’ve faced their search on the earth seeking the exact same conditions an exact same size IThink right now there is a huge focus to finding earth-likePlanets now whether or not there actually is life there.

That is another question all togetherBut after 20 years of searching for an earth clone, the exoplanet hunters may be about to switch targetsRecent observations have revealed a brand new class of planet. It’s one that may eclipse our own homeWe’ve learned something in the last few years that really shocked us withThe Kepler space porn telescope we have found hordes of planets that are a little bigger than the earthWe never imagined that there would be such planets

In fact in our own solar systemThere are no planets between the size of the earth and the next largest planet that of Uranus and NeptuneAstronomers call these mysterious planets super EarthsSuper earths are about three to five times the mass of the earth, and there’s nothing like that hereWe don’t know what they’re like, it’s an entirely alien sort of planetIn just the last few years.

Astronomers have begun to imagine the conditions on this new class of planet and they’ve come to a startling conclusionsuper earths could besuper habitableThere are probably planets out there that are even more hospitable for lifePlanets that have even more chemicals necessary to create the organic materials that create lifeConditions that make it more likely to get life off the ground Imagine a rocky planet twice the size of the earth.

Dramatic volcanism on the surface betrays a vast heart of fire that beats within its coreWe expect that a heavier earth will be more geologically activethat the increased amount ofGeothermal heat within the super earth will lead to strongermotions of the magma underneath the crust.

Belching volcanoes dot the surface of this super earthTheir gases feed a super thick atmosphere and help to regulate a super stable climateMany times life on Earth was nearly extinguished for example once upon a time the earth was snowball earthcompletely covered in icemaybe in these other planets there are earth in whichSnowball earth never happened that the climate was always stable and temperateThe grip of gravity is three times stronger here than we’re used toIt pulls mountain ranges down to a third the height, they’d be on earth.

Gravity also flattens the ocean bed making shallower seas filled with volcanic island chains andThe nutrient-rich waters that surround these archipelagos provide the perfect conditions for lifeIn these other planets perhaps they have conditions which would make DNA get off the ground much earlier and flourish much more quickly.

Finally our super earth may be protected by a super magnetosphere theMagnetic field strength is a condition both of the mass of the planet as well as itsrotation speed and so it is quite likely that a planet that is a couple of times bigger than the earths wouldBe able to develop a stronger magnetic field may shield the planet even better than our magnetic field shields usHaving a stronger magnetosphere would be a distinct advantage for life on a super earth.

Surrounding the Milky Way’s most plentiful kind of star the M dwarf or red dwarf starRed dwarf habitable zones are much closer in than the earth is to the Sun because their host star is so dimit’s as if you took the terrestrial planets in our own solar system and zapped it with a shrink ray gun andShrunk them down to orbital periods that are less than about 30 days meaning that they’re very close to their starsSome astronomers believe these planets are at risk from solar activity such as deadly flaresBut a super-earth with a super protective magnetosphereMay well resist these deadly raysallowing life to flourish under a psychedelic sky full of swirling Aurora’sIf one was standing on a super-earth we would see the Aurora come down to lower latitudesMight get different colors.

If I had the opportunity to travel to one of these exoplanets, I would snap that up pretty quicklyMost intriguing of all if life does exist on a red dwarf super earth, it could be home to the longest-livedcivilizations in the entire universe theAdvantage of the M Dwarfs is that they last for much longer and if you had a super earth then keeping a strong magnetic fieldGoing for billions and billions of yearsEspecially now around a red dwarf that is going to exist for billions and billions of yearsYou might be in that perfect system where life can exist and evolve into even more complex beings than usWe’re getting so close.

Our local neighborhood of stars teens with red dwarfs bursting with the potential for advanced lifeBut they’re alsoCosmic killers out there lurking in our galaxy primed to wipe out life on a regular basisIs anywhere safe?The exoplanet revolution is in full swingthe Kepler space telescope has scanned our local neighborhood of stars for planets and it’s found them by thethousandsFor a long time we didn’t know if the other stars in our galaxy had planets and for thousands of years.

There was no way to answer that questionFinally now with modern technology we can do that and to our surprise we found they are extremely commonFrom Kepler’s small sample astronomers believe there could be tens of billions of rocky earth-likeplanets throughout the Milky Way where life may already be thrivingBut how many of these countless worlds has held on to this life long enough for intelligence to evolve.

The answer surprisingly may depend on a planet’s galactic zip codeThe universe is not a happy safe place the universe wants to kill usIt’s it’s incredibly violent out thereThere are solar flares and supernovae and black holes and colliding galaxies and all these really amazingly dangerous and violent eventsIt’s actually kind of amazing that we’re here at allIn order to developAdvanced intelligent life and exoplanets may have to avoid these cosmic killers for over three billion yearsIf we look at the history of the earth the first thing that happens.

That’s important is the origin of life right away very quickly, but then nothing for a long timeYou have nothing but microbes stopping on the earthFor the first two and a half billion years the earth was ruled bysingle-celled BeautyMulticellular life has only been around for a billion yearsfish for 500 millionmammals for 200 million andModern humans have only walked the earth for the last200,000 yearsThe lesson is clear it takes a long time to cook up intelligent life.

But most planets in the Milky Way don’t have that kind of timeAstronomers believe that a planet’s position within a galaxy may determine if it gets hit by global extinction eventsThere’s an idea of a habitable zone for a galaxy and it’s in analogy to the habitable zone around starsStars too close to the galactic center are in the firing line from their violent neighborsWhich frequently blast them with deadly high-energy radiation?

In the middle of a galaxy we have a lot ofBright stars and young stars and maybe even supernova going off. And so there’s a very harsh radiation field. That’s not good for lifeFired up by the supermassive black hole that sits at the center of the Milky Waythis cosmic Killzone stretches out around8,000 light years from the galactic center and extends out along the densely packed spiral arms.

Any planets that exist within this zone are likely to have their surfaces regularly scrubbed clean of lifeFortunately for us our home star the Sun sits in a relatively emptyquiet zone between two of the galaxy’s spiral armsSo there’s this idea that there’s a band in the middle of the galaxyThat’s the Galactic habitable zone where you don’t have too many stars going off. You don’t have it too many supernovaeSo it’s quiet in that way. Those might be great places for complex life.

These green zones are like the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxyThey’re sheltered from the worst of the galaxy’s radiationIt’s here that earth-like worlds will have the luxury of long uninterruptedperiods for life to take hold and develop into more complex forms and eventually perhapsintelligent life like usThe Galactic habitable zone is no more than a fledgling theoryBut if it’s true, it reduces the number of places where advanced life could flourish in the Milky Way.

The good news is those places should be near us and aliens more likely to be on our doorstep andWith our technology getting better every day. It surely won’t be long before we find themIThink in 20 years time I’m gonna be able to look up into the night sky and say there really isAnother place. I could stand like this and feel at homeSuddenly we humans will realize for the first time that there are other cultures other civilizations probably other religions.

Out there among the stars and we are just one member of a grand galactictribeto havecousins that we one day may communicate with seems to me to be potentially one of the greatest developments that humanity will ever everexperience andIf that isn’t worth doing I don’t know. What isAll systems are go for entry descent landing Jim, bye-byeAt the dawn of the 21st century space agencies in Europe and AmericaBegan, making plans to land the first humans on MarsBut manned missions to the red planet have been proposed beforeFor some Mars holds the answers to mankind’s future in spaceOthers say Mars is too far too dangerous and too expensive for humans to explore.

And in a world torn by troublesSome say there is no need or will for mankind to reach into space anymoreMore than 30 years after the last Apollo astronaut walked on the moonthe American manned space programSeems to have lost its wayUnable to reach beyond even in low-earth orbitWe’ve got a problem NASA has been literally going around in circles with its space program for the past 30 yearsAstronautica engineer, dr. Robert Zubrin Has been arguing for years that sending humans to Mars is the mission the space program needsIt’s time that we set goals for NASA that were worthy of the risks of human spaceflight.

Mars is the next logical step in our space programIt’s the challenge that’s been staring us in the face for the past 30 years. It’s the planet that’s most likely earthIt’s the planet that has on it. The resources needed to support life and therefore someday technological civilizationIt’s the planet that will provide us with the answer as to whether life isprevalent in the universe or exclusive to the earth and it’s the planet that will give us the critical test whether humanity.

Can break out of the planet of our birth and become a spacefaring speciesIn the early 1990s Zubrin was the head of the Mars direct program at Martin Marietta astronauticsHis team developed a mission to Mars that could be done at a fraction of NASA’s projected costsUsing only existing technology Zubrin argues that the first steps on Martian soil could be made within 10 years.

There is absolutely nothing in this that is beyond our technologyWe are not ready to send humans to Mars right now, we don’t know how to keep them aliveThere are people out there who say we can go to Mars tomorrowOne of my requirements one of NASA’s requirements is that if we send humans to Mars we bring them back alive.

For the past 15 yearsZubrin and his colleagues have waged a campaign to convince society and the political class that humans on MarsShould be the goal for NASA nowThis is the story of a cold neighboring planet and the debate over whether man’s fate is tied to the red worldIt’s the story of an engineer’s journey and the Battle of ideas over which direction in space will truly benefit mankindWe’re at a crossroads today.

We either muster the courage to go or we risk the possibility of stagnation in the caseThe victor in this debate could determine the fate of mankind?Will we become a spacefaring species?Will we live on more than one planetIn the winter of 2003 the Chinese put their first tycoon all in spaceThe Chinese space administration plans to begin a manned program of moon exploration by 2017The european space agency has outlined a plan for humans to the moon by 2024 and to mars by 2033.

And the Russians building on years of experience are conducting tests for long-duration Mars missionsIn America with the impending retirement of the shuttle fleet in the completion of the International Space StationThe brochure administration announced in 2004 the constellation programOn the moon a plan that would return Americans to the moon by 2020But the program was never fully funded was eventually cancelledIn 2010 the Obama administration announced its vision for NASA and human Mars exploration by the mid 2030s.

I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth andlanding on Mars will followAnd I expect to be around to see itWith a new timeline for humans to Mars sometime after 2035 and with administration’sChanging every four or eight years.

It is far from certain that such a plan will be realizedTwenty years earlier the first president Bush also proposed a long interview man exploration programunder great fanfareThe program quietly died in Congress a few years laterifYou want to go to Mars? You cannot do it in 30 years you can’t do in 20sYou’ve got to do it in ten years or less from program start or you’re more or less guaranteeingpolitical failureto date only the Apollo moon program Which was announced in 1961 and had men on the moon eight years later has succeeded in getting astronauts beyond low Earth orbit Was 5 when Sputnik flewand while to the adults Sputnik was a terrifying event to me as a child who was already reading science fictionit was exhilarating because it meant that this possibility of a spacefaring future was going to be real and I was 9 when he gave his speech committing us to the moon.

I Grew up During the 60s When it was mercury was Gemini Apollo?Every month NASA was doing something more impressive than in a month before we were gonna be on the moon by 1970Mars by 1980 Saturn by 1990 Alpha Centauri by the year2000 we were moving out and I wanted to be part of thatAnd so I got myself a scientific education, but then in the early 70s, it’s all collapsed.

We achieved the first part of that program moon by 1970 but the Nixon Administration shut down the rest and we did not move out into space and for a while. I accepted thatgrudgingly it became a science teacher but then in the early 80s something hit me and I said I’mNot going to accept myselfDoing less than what I had dreamed of doing when I was a boyZubin went back to graduate school getting advanced degrees in engineering into aerospaceHe then went on to work at Martin Marietta, which later became Lockheed Martin designing interplanetary missionsIt was here that zubrin’s obsession with the red planet began to take hold.

While at Martin in the 1990s Zubrin and his colleagues developed a plan for sending humans to MarsThat changed NASA’s thinking on the issueBut the plan has languished on the drawing boards ever sinceNow as president of the Mars Society Zubrin is at center stage in the debate over the future of manned spaceflightKnown as a smart visionary scientist.

He’s authored several books on exploring spaceAnd is the self-appointed spokesman for the possibility of colonizing Mars?Mars is where the futurist Mars is the closest planet to the earth that has honored all the resources needed to support life and thereforeTechnological civilization it has water it has carbon it has nitrogens. It has a 24-hour dayIt has a complex geological history that has created mineral org, it has sources of geothermal energyMars is a place we can settle.

One reason for such optimism over a frozen world like Mars isEvidence that two billion years ago Mars was a much warmer and wetter placeWe think that at one time in the ancient past Mars was very similar to the condition of early EarthThis Martian war mage lasted for over a billion years and could have been a suitable environment for the development of lifeIf we go to Mars and find evidence of a second Genesis on Mars, I think we can conclude thatThe universe is full of life.

We can probably conclude that on some planets that life evolves to more complex forms, and I think we’d be reasonable to conclude thatIntelligence could also emerge on some planets as well. It really does answer the question. Are we alone?That to me is a question that transcends science. It’s a philosophicalSocietal as well as scientific question to me. That’s the big prize. That’s what why Mars is interesting.

That’s why human exploration makes senseSpace programs are often criticized for the huge sums of money. They requirealthough the American space program is less than 1% of the federal budget aHuman mission to Mars may have to wait for better timesThere are those who say then we have many problems to deal with here on earth and we need to postpone venturesSuch as the human exploration on Mars until these problems are solvedwell, there are many problems in Spain in 1492 and there still areThere are problems that need to be dealt with here on earth and should be dealt with But we also have to think of the future.

We also have to think about opening up new volumes in human historyIBelieve that it’s essential for a positive human future that humanity expand into spaceThe greatest value that we got out of Apollo was the creation of intellectual capital through the inspiring ofMillions to go into science and engineering to be part of the great adventure of human expansion into spaceThere’s a phrase that happened with the Apollo programWhich was if we can go to the moon we canAnd then everybody’s filled in whatever they were interested in build mass transit cure cancer do this through thatThe point is it did give us a sense that we could accomplish great things.

It did bring out the best of usWe excited a generation of engineers and scientistsThe generation that built the computers and cell phones and all the technology everybody uses todayIt takes for granted if we send humans to Mars as our goal, we’ll get millions of new scientists that will create newinventions newIndustries. This is the enormous payback and we can get it if we set the kind of challenge that will inspire the newsTo Zubrin civilizations like people thrive on challengeDecay without it.

We have everything we have today because of our predecessorswho had the courage to leave the world of the known and go out into the wilderness and build new cities andIf we stop being people like thatThen we will hand down much less to our posterityThat our ancestors handed down to usSo there’s the choice in life one either grows or one decays grow or die I think we should growHistory proves that we have never lostby pressing the limits of our frontierIn the summer of 1989 the first president Bush announced the space exploration initiative Directing NASA to draw up long-term plans to get humans back to the moon and begin developing a program of manned Mars exploration.

At Martin Marietta Zubrin and his colleagues looked forward to moving NASA’s Space Programoutwards after two decades in low-earth orbit ofCourse, we were very excited when Bush made his call saying that he was making a national commitment to implement such a programNASA assembled a large team to take on the space initiativeIn 90 days the team developed a 30-year plan that required an enormous buildup of space infrastructure.

What the NASA bureaucracy?decided to do was basicallyDesign the most complex mission they possibly could in order to make sure that everyone’s pet technology would remain mission-criticalWhich is the exact opposite of the correct way to do engineeringFirst NASA would triple the size of the planned space station and add enormous hangars as well as free-floating fuel depots checkoutDocs and crew stations then on the moon.

They would construct more shipbuilding facilitiesbases and depotsNext the moon crew would construct the Mars ship a huge craft dubbed by its detractors as BattlestarGalactica this ship would carry everything to Mars over an 18-month flight. Once in Mars orbit, a small group would descend to the surface spend a few days then plant a flag in the ground and go home.

The plan became known as the 90-day reportto those of us at Martin who had been engaged in designing Mars missions when they saw the Monstrosity of complexity of the 90-day report we were dismayed and it was readily apparent to anyone with any insight that that program would failPolitically the plan was submitted to Congress the estimated cost450 billion the legislators went into sticker shock.

This would have been the single most expensive program for the United States since World War twoBy the end of 1990 Congress had refused all requests for sei fundingWhen the realization came the sei was doomed Zubrin wrote a memo to his colleagues at Martin Marietta outliningHis problems with the NASA plan and arguing for a more direct approach Zubrin favored launching a Mars mission directly from the surface of Earth using only existing rocket technolog.

This negated the need for a lunar base and avoided the complexity and cost of building ships in spacehe also objected to NASA’s plan for a short surface stay on Mars aMission that would amount to little more than a flag and footprints exerciseTo Zubrin we were going to Mars to explore and develop a new worldTo maximize surface time Zubrin proposed using a faster flight path known as a conjunction class mission.

This would mean a crew could arrive on Mars after only a six-month journeyThey would then remain on the Martian surface for a year and a halfThis would give the team time to explore a wide area and conduct detailed research about the planetThen as the earth returned window opens crew would launch from Mars the six-month trip homeZubrin was convinced that a simplified more robust and cost-effective mission could be designed using these principlesAlong with several like-minded colleagues Zubrin decided to ask management at Martin to allow them to design alternative Mars missions.

The management approvement andWe formed a teamWas known as the scenario development team of just 12 people from the whole very large Martin companyOne team member whose thinking was closely aligned with zubrin’s was David BakerI went off to my office and said alrighthow would I do a Mars mission if I had to pay for it, and I had to go on the ride andI said well it’s going to be simple. There’s gonna be no on-orbit assemblyI really tried to take everything out of the mission that didn’t absolutely need to be thereWhile the rest of the team focused on longer-term more traditional mission plans that required on-orbit assemblyZubrin and Baker decided to collaborate on a mission that could be done near-term.

We decided to do Mars the way Lewis and Clark did AmericaOkay, use local resources travel light live off the landZubrin and Baker were convinced that a Mars mission could be launched directly from the groundThe other team members felt this was impossible that the weight of the rocket fuel required for a round trip to MarsWas so enormous it would render the launch ship impossibly heavyTo solve this problem Zubrin was exploring a radical idea that had been kicked around the aerospace industry since the 1970s.

The idea was to produce a methane-oxygen rocket fuel directly from the Martian atmosphereIt was a relatively simple and robust Chemical Engineering procedure that was done commonly in the 1800s the air of the gas lifeIf the idea worked astronauts could land a relatively light ship with empty tanksThey wouldn’t have to ship all the fuel with them for their return tripThis would radically lower their size and weight.

The only problem was methane-oxygen fuel requires a hydrogen componentHydrogen exists on Mars in the form of h2o but water may be difficult or impossible to extract from the Martian environmentReally the hydrogen was only 5% of the total weight of the methane-oxygen propellantBeing manufactured so you just say, okayWe won’t be pure we all get all of the propellant from Oris will just get 95% of the propellant from Mars.

The other 5% of the hydrogen will just bring from EarthAnother fundamental resource that could be extracted from the Martian environment is oxygenSecond processing unit could separate oxygen molecules from the thin carbon dioxide atmosphereproviding breathable air for a Mars crewIf used intelligentlyThe same resources that make Mars interesting are preciselyWhat could make it attainable?Baker and Zubrin had greatly reduced their mission massBut they still found their ship was too heavy and would require two launches and assembly in spaceThen Zubrin hit on an idea.

One of the key Events of the Mars directive element was one morning Bob burst in my office and said I’ve got it the idea that I finally hitonIn 1989 was that we had split the mission up into two parts and we’d send the return vehicle out firstwith its own return propellant plantSo the propellant would be made on Mars before the first astronauts ever left herWith two separate direct Amar’s launches a human crew would have a fully fueled ship waiting for them on the surface of Marsbefore they ever left Earth.

So Zubrin and Baker had come up with a plan that seemed to accomplish all of their goals, it was relatively inexpensiveDevelopment time was short, they could use existing technology and it allowed for a long stay on the Martian surfaceThey dubbed their idea Mars directBoard and Ares rocket is the earth return vehicle or ERVNo one has aboard this shipIt will pave the way for the astronauts who years later. We’ll use the ERV to return to EarthOn its second day the ERV deploys a small nuclear power reactor.

The reactor powers a chemical plant inside the ERVThe plant will produce the methane-oxygen rocket fuel for the launch homeNearby a second robotic rover is guided to a pre-picked landing site for the human crewit places a radar transponder to help guide the astronauts in thelong journey to land a human being on Mars beginsThree two one engineCarrying the most skillfully assembled flight team in history four astronauts begin their two and a half year mission to the Red Planet.

This will be the first time a human has gone beyond the earth-moon system250 million miles farther than any person has ever beenTo counter the health problems of zero-gravity and to fully acclimate the astronauts to Mars the ship will deploy a weighted tetherattached to the last stage of the spent rocket boosterBy thrusting the ship into a rotational spin the counterweight of the rocket will create centrifugal force andThus artificial gravity.

The crew will be able to live with their feet planted firmly on the floor during their six-month transitBut the hab is not entirely alone on its journey just ahead of it is a second ERV identical to the firstLaunched just a few weeks prior to the Harpe. It will prepare the way for a second human crew that will follow two years. LaterIt can also function as a backup for the first mission if anything should go wrong.

On the sixth month of the flight the crew gaze upon an alien worldThis is the new frontierAfter days in orbit, unsatisfied with the landing conditions the crew will receive final word from Mission Control on earthIt will be a tense 40 minutes before people back on earth get the signal from Mars and know if everything has gone wellI thought forward downContact light okay in this stop.

For more than 500 days the astronauts will therefore Mars andEmbark on one of the greatest journeys of discoveryin the history of scienceWill they find life or the fossilized remains of past lifeSuch a discovery could tell us whether our solar system has seen more than one Genesis andAnswer the ultimate questionAre we alone?In any case these explorers will be learning how feasible the colonization of Mars really is and whether or not mankindHas a future among the stars.

Then when the time comes in the window for Earth return opens crew will climb into their earth return vehicle and headThey will arrive home heroesthe first to stretch the limit of man’s expanse from one planet to anothertheir names added to the list of great explorers of new worldsIn their footsteps others who followWhat began as a trickle is free to rise into a deluge of humankind sweeping over a once barren land andTransforming it into a viable new worldWhen Baker and Zubrin presented Mars direct to their bosses at Martin they expected the worst.

To their surprise management was excited about it. They liked the fact that everything needed was relatively simple and near-termAs time went on Martin Marietta embraced Mars direct as their creation andput Bob and I on an airplane to several NASA centers to present Mars direct and try to build some momentum forBaker and Zubrin flew to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

This had been one of the original design hubs for the Apollo moon landingsBut recently many of the engineers had become demoralized by the failure of NASA’s sei programtag-team style Baker and Zubrin presented their alternative mission architectureThe response was three the old-school Apollo crowd embraced itThis was a plan that actually made sense and was within reach Baker and I gave a number of briefingsThe first was at the Marshall Space Flight CenterNext was a chance.

These people were incredibly excitedOver the next few weeks Zubrin and Baker were flown around the country pitching to all branches of NASA and everywhereThey went the response was electric.

The plan was standing up to scrutiny and groups all over NASA were converting to Mars directtheir tour culminated in a public presentation to the National Space SocietyThe crowd gave the two aerospace engineers a standing ovationA week later. The story was in newspapers around the countryBut a counter-attack was beginning to form within NASA the space station teams and many in the advanced propulsion groups were against the idea.