1 00:00:01,220 --> 00:00:05,850 \h Announcer: Please welcome Philip Metzger, research, physicist and scientist engineer of 2 00:00:05,850 --> 00:00:08,740 \h the year for the NASA Kennedy Space Center. [ APPLAUSE ] 3 00:00:08,740 --> 00:00:14,790 \h Philip Metzger: I thank you very much. I'm going to talk to you today about the energy barrier at the end of the world. 4 00:00:14,790 --> 00:00:20,910 \h Some processes in nature are continuous, like walking up a hill would be a continuous process, but if there 5 00:00:20,910 --> 00:00:28,620 \h are a series of ravines that cut across the hillside, then you'd have to stop and leap over those barriers 6 00:00:28,620 --> 00:00:31,340 \h every so often and that would be a discontinue use process. 7 00:00:31,340 --> 00:00:35,970 \h I want to make the claim that the growth of civilization is like a discontinue use process. 8 00:00:35,970 --> 00:00:42,660 \h Mostly it grows continuously but certain barriers we run into, we've had the barriers in the past and when 9 00:00:42,660 --> 00:00:48,160 \h you get to one of these barriers it takes the bravest of us, the most creative and most innovative to get 10 00:00:48,160 --> 00:00:51,670 \h civilization over that hump to the next level. 11 00:00:51,670 --> 00:01:00,240 \h The Russian astronomer Kardishov was looking at how do we find signals from outer space as evidence of alien 12 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:04,460 \h civilizations and he wisely noted that we shouldn't make the assumption 13 00:01:04,460 --> 00:01:07,650 \h that every civilization is at the same level that we are. 14 00:01:07,650 --> 00:01:10,460 \h Some civilizations could possibly be vastly older than us and 15 00:01:10,460 --> 00:01:14,270 \h far ahead and so he came one this classification scheme. 16 00:01:14,270 --> 00:01:18,310 \h He said a type one civilization is one that is sort of like us, basically like us. 17 00:01:18,310 --> 00:01:26,490 \h It's grown to spread across the planet and utilizes essentially all the resources of its planet, 18 00:01:26,490 --> 00:01:32,750 \h whereas a type two would be a civilization that has gone beyond its home planet and it's using vastly more 19 00:01:32,750 --> 00:01:40,190 \h energy up to the energy of an entire star, a type three civilization would be one that has gone into 20 00:01:40,190 --> 00:01:46,620 \h interstellar space beyond a single star and it's using the energy of an entire galaxy, and he noted that if 21 00:01:46,620 --> 00:01:53,150 \h there are any type two or type three civilizations out there, their signals might not look the same as our own. 22 00:01:53,150 --> 00:01:56,510 \h Well, what I want to say is what about earlier categories? 23 00:01:56,510 --> 00:02:01,420 \h Let's think about where we've been already and what does that tell us about the growth of civilization. 24 00:02:01,420 --> 00:02:05,790 \h We could continue the numbering scheme backwards, so maybe a type zero would 25 00:02:05,790 --> 00:02:09,230 \h be a civilization that encompassed an entire continent. 26 00:02:09,230 --> 00:02:15,250 \h It hasn't yet developed the technology or the social structures to span the oceans, 27 00:02:15,250 --> 00:02:18,010 \h and to become a type one civilization. 28 00:02:18,010 --> 00:02:20,310 \h Spanning the oceans was quite a feat. 29 00:02:20,310 --> 00:02:25,610 \h It was only done about 500 years ago, and we often create the analogy to space flight. 30 00:02:25,610 --> 00:02:27,250 \h It's a good analogy. 31 00:02:27,250 --> 00:02:32,750 \h Going back even further we could say a type minus one would be a civilization that encompasses an entire 32 00:02:32,750 --> 00:02:40,460 \h river valley, the birthplace of civilization in four river valleys, the Nile, the Mesopotamia, 33 00:02:40,460 --> 00:02:43,410 \h the Indus River Valley and the Yellow River. 34 00:02:43,410 --> 00:02:53,320 \h When people figured out there was a vast quantity of energy that could be had in river valleys by using human, animals and labor to do irrigation, 35 00:02:53,320 --> 00:02:59,450 \h to grow crops in the rich soil from the flood plains you could have such a concentration of food energy that 36 00:02:59,450 --> 00:03:02,830 \h you could support a larger population than we've ever had in 37 00:03:02,830 --> 00:03:06,610 \h one place before and that was the birth of cities, of civilization. 38 00:03:06,610 --> 00:03:12,170 \h It was a big leap forward, but going back even further, let answer say a type minus two with the isolated 39 00:03:12,170 --> 00:03:19,260 \h enclaves when humans were pre-agricultural, doing hunting and gathering, find safe places to live. 40 00:03:19,260 --> 00:03:26,170 \h If you think about it, going from one type to the next is always involves a leap, first you have to leap 41 00:03:26,170 --> 00:03:30,930 \h beyond the limited energy in one area, and the safety of your enclave, 42 00:03:30,930 --> 00:03:34,580 \h set-up social institutions to enable large scale agricultural. 43 00:03:34,580 --> 00:03:39,470 \h Once they got the large scaling agriculture the cities rapidly filled out the flood plains, 44 00:03:39,470 --> 00:03:45,360 \h they didn't go beyond that because they didn't have the logistics, transportation or the armies to protect 45 00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:49,500 \h the logistics to send large quantities of food outside the river 46 00:03:49,500 --> 00:03:53,870 \h networks to support cities in the mountains or across the deserts, for example. 47 00:03:53,870 --> 00:04:02,350 \h Once they got global or continental size empires, then we could fill out the continents, but it was another 48 00:04:02,350 --> 00:04:06,340 \h leap to go to an entirely planetary global civilization. 49 00:04:06,340 --> 00:04:12,430 \h We've reached another one of these points now, where we are starting to feel the barrier, the next limit 50 00:04:12,430 --> 00:04:15,200 \h that we're pushing up against. We're already feeling it. 51 00:04:15,200 --> 00:04:21,450 \h I just want to point out that all of the global challenges we're facing are really symptoms of one problem, 52 00:04:21,450 --> 00:04:28,490 \h we've reached toward the limit of a type one civilization and hitting the barrier we've got to leap across. 53 00:04:28,490 --> 00:04:31,260 \h Here's some predictions, we are essentially type one right now. 54 00:04:31,260 --> 00:04:34,650 \h I don't think we'll get any closer to the technical definition of type 55 00:04:34,650 --> 00:04:38,220 \h one than we are today unless we can go beyond the planet. 56 00:04:38,220 --> 00:04:45,690 \h If we do go outside a single planet, it was within 50 to 100 years we would reach type two already or if we 57 00:04:45,690 --> 00:04:52,570 \h don't go outside the planet we might never achieve it ever because achieving sustainability where we don't 58 00:04:52,570 --> 00:04:56,330 \h use non-renewable resources anymore, people predicted the earth might support only 59 00:04:56,330 --> 00:04:59,700 \h 2 billion people and we're already way beyond that. 60 00:04:59,700 --> 00:05:08,220 \h If we can't replace the non-renewables, then going backwards is really painful, and I think the only ethical 61 00:05:08,220 --> 00:05:11,650 \h thing is to go forward, beyond a single planet towards type two. 62 00:05:11,650 --> 00:05:17,750 \h If we do achieve type two, the technologies indicate that leaping on to type three is no problem at all. 63 00:05:17,750 --> 00:05:23,520 \h The reason I say we're running up on to a barrier and I call it an energy barrier is because energy is 64 00:05:23,520 --> 00:05:29,310 \h really the key to everything, if you've got abundant energy, you can recycle and you can use resources that 65 00:05:29,310 --> 00:05:32,970 \h are not as valuable, it's really not a problem if you've got all the energy you want. 66 00:05:32,970 --> 00:05:38,870 \h All the indications are the nonrenewable energies, even with fracking can't possibly last another century. 67 00:05:38,870 --> 00:05:42,910 \h They say we have enough natural gas from fracking to last 100 years. 68 00:05:42,910 --> 00:05:48,110 \h It doesn't account for the fact that china is industrializing, now the number one energy user in the world, 69 00:05:48,110 --> 00:05:51,560 \h still one-fourth per capita of our energy usage. 70 00:05:51,560 --> 00:05:53,580 \h India is industrializing. 71 00:05:53,580 --> 00:06:01,030 \h If the entire world spends energy at the level of the U.S., we can't just replace the non-renewables. 72 00:06:01,030 --> 00:06:07,210 \h We need to replace them ten times over, even if we can reduce our energy usage by a factor of three, with 73 00:06:07,210 --> 00:06:12,110 \h fracking we only have 30 years' worth of energy if the world achieves a level, 74 00:06:12,110 --> 00:06:14,550 \h a standard of living that the west has. 75 00:06:14,550 --> 00:06:22,190 \h So the sense that we're starting to reach the limits of our planet it's being felt by everybody, 76 00:06:22,190 --> 00:06:27,630 \h even when you go to donate clothes you'll notice it doesn't say goodwill. It says planet aid. 77 00:06:27,630 --> 00:06:30,130 \h You donate your socks to save the planet. 78 00:06:30,130 --> 00:06:35,330 \h And there's a growing feeling, a growing sense that we really are at a point where everything we do is 79 00:06:35,330 --> 00:06:40,280 \h planetary, it's global, because we've reached the limit of a type one civilization. 80 00:06:40,280 --> 00:06:43,730 \h I want to say we really don't have a resource problem. 81 00:06:43,730 --> 00:06:49,780 \h What we have is an imagination problem. We live in a hugely rich part of the galaxy. 82 00:06:49,780 --> 00:06:54,200 \h We have a billion times more of everything in the solar system than what we have on earth. 83 00:06:54,200 --> 00:06:57,300 \h I didn't just say a billion because I made it up. 84 00:06:57,300 --> 00:07:00,490 \h We really have a billion times more accessible metal in the asteroid belt, 85 00:07:00,490 --> 00:07:03,980 \h 2 billion times more energy leaves the sun than what falls on the earth. 86 00:07:03,980 --> 00:07:10,920 \h There's a billion times more water in the moons of Jupiter than in the earth so the order of magnitude is billions. 87 00:07:10,920 --> 00:07:13,130 \h So there's really no resource problem. 88 00:07:13,130 --> 00:07:20,160 \h We just need to know how to go beyond this to type two. People say think globally, act locally. 89 00:07:20,160 --> 00:07:25,850 \h Thinking globally is the new way of thinking too small. That's the problem, not the solution. 90 00:07:25,850 --> 00:07:31,950 \h We have to think extra globally and people also say let's think outside the box, that's good but we can 91 00:07:31,950 --> 00:07:37,780 \h improve on it because it's not really a box that's our problem, it's the limitations of the sphere that we live on. 92 00:07:37,780 --> 00:07:42,960 \h We need to think outside the sphere and when you've expanded your civilization all around the two- 93 00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:47,800 \h dimensional surfaces of the globe and you've filled it out, there's no other dimension you can travel in 94 00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:52,370 \h except perpendicularly outward towards space. 95 00:07:52,370 --> 00:07:57,620 \h A lot of people think this is not really feasible, because it's such a paradigm shift to imagine 96 00:07:57,620 --> 00:08:01,660 \h transporting resources across the vastness of the solar system. 97 00:08:01,660 --> 00:08:07,290 \h Think what a paradigm shift it was for the people living in the pacific, when the European ships showed up. 98 00:08:07,290 --> 00:08:14,250 \h The people in Tahiti and Hawaii they could actually cross the ocean without any significant source of 99 00:08:14,250 --> 00:08:19,540 \h metals, which limited their technology capabilities, because they didn't have the resources that were 100 00:08:19,540 --> 00:08:26,350 \h available on some of the continents, but it was a heroic task to cross an ocean. 101 00:08:26,350 --> 00:08:29,060 \h Think about this little device here, this clicker. 102 00:08:29,060 --> 00:08:34,040 \h The materials that went into this include metal and plastic, metals came from Africa, 103 00:08:34,040 --> 00:08:37,110 \h the plastic came from petroleum from Arabia. 104 00:08:37,110 --> 00:08:40,160 \h The materials were processed in America, chips were made in America, 105 00:08:40,160 --> 00:08:44,490 \h it was assembled in china and it was shipped back here and sold in the U.S. 106 00:08:44,490 --> 00:08:50,250 \h There was at least four ocean crossings that went into little device that probably cost $15. 107 00:08:50,250 --> 00:08:56,530 \h The people in Tahiti just a few hundred years ago would not have believed you if you said those ships 108 00:08:56,530 --> 00:09:01,750 \h carrying resources were possible and economical, but here we're doing it. 109 00:09:01,750 --> 00:09:06,700 \h There's no reason we can't take the next leap to go to a type two civilization. 110 00:09:06,700 --> 00:09:10,660 \h We are a species that has a history of leaping over those barriers. 111 00:09:10,660 --> 00:09:14,360 \h We've done it so many times before. We can do the next one. 112 00:09:14,360 --> 00:09:21,230 \h So people have started to envision what it might be like to have industry in space, in the '60s through 113 00:09:21,230 --> 00:09:27,480 \h '90s, Gerard K. O'Neill led the charge talking about manufacturing outposts in space. 114 00:09:27,480 --> 00:09:33,430 \h In his scenario you would need 10,000 people living and working in habitats like this before it became 115 00:09:33,430 --> 00:09:39,280 \h economical, which unfortunately was a little too expensive for congress to fund so we didn't do it. 116 00:09:39,280 --> 00:09:49,870 \h In the 1980s, in 1980, the Ames Research Center hosted a summer study for self-replicating lunar factories 117 00:09:49,870 --> 00:09:55,370 \h and this was an advancement forward and they showed with just 100 tons of hardware on the moon you could set 118 00:09:55,370 --> 00:10:00,800 \h up one self-replicating node which would grow and produce this gigantic industrial power in space. 119 00:10:00,800 --> 00:10:07,340 \h It was an idea before its time. The technologies weren't ready yet and 100 tons is a lot to put on the moon, 120 00:10:07,340 --> 00:10:13,240 \h an expensive thing to pay for but there's been game changers recently. 121 00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:21,660 \h First of all, robotics has been leaping forward, and just go to YouTube and search for "learning robots" and 122 00:10:21,660 --> 00:10:25,420 \h see some of the things that are going on with robots nowadays. 123 00:10:25,420 --> 00:10:31,180 \h Computing speed, you need computers to have robots that can build things in space, 124 00:10:31,180 --> 00:10:35,020 \h Mohr's law continued without any signs of stopping. 125 00:10:35,020 --> 00:10:39,670 \h We're getting to the point where you could have a really smart robot on a small platform now. 126 00:10:39,670 --> 00:10:44,840 \h Manufacturing technology, a revolution going on right now 3-d printing. 127 00:10:44,840 --> 00:10:50,040 \h We have one of our collaborators here from the University of Southern California, Brock Kashenevicz, 128 00:10:50,040 --> 00:10:57,820 \h the inventor of 3-d printing of entire buildings so these are things that are made with 3-D printing. 129 00:10:57,820 --> 00:11:05,090 \h Another game changer is the discovery of ice on the moon, our co-worker, Tony muscatel said now there's 130 00:11:05,090 --> 00:11:10,860 \h nothing that can't be made on the moon because now we know the ice has nitrogen compounds and carbon 131 00:11:10,860 --> 00:11:17,340 \h compounds and carbon, nitrogen are fully abundant and everything we need for a fully healthy industry on the 132 00:11:17,340 --> 00:11:23,200 \h moon in earth orbit and we during constellation we used the funding to 133 00:11:23,200 --> 00:11:26,570 \h develop these technologies to test them and we've shown they work. 134 00:11:26,570 --> 00:11:28,260 \h We can use space resources. 135 00:11:28,260 --> 00:11:33,850 \h We can mine in space and build things in space and we've tested these things and reduced gravity lights. 136 00:11:33,850 --> 00:11:41,970 \h Van Townsend and Adam Ducose testing and removing soil out of the processes, lunar soil. 137 00:11:41,970 --> 00:11:48,390 \h We proposed a new approach. I also want to mention this is a part of my charts, the international space 138 00:11:48,390 --> 00:11:55,480 \h university just completed their 2012 study and they've come up with a concept called oasis, which shows how 139 00:11:55,480 --> 00:12:04,410 \h you can economically, every step of the way is economical to mining water in space, to producing propellants 140 00:12:04,410 --> 00:12:10,840 \h into selling them, to a low earth orbit space tug business that will carry satellites the rest of the way, 141 00:12:10,840 --> 00:12:15,090 \h the high earth orbit, and it will vastly reduce loss costs. 142 00:12:15,090 --> 00:12:18,410 \h They've shown the business cases there. You can make money doing this. 143 00:12:18,410 --> 00:12:23,040 \h There is a business case for people right now to mine the moon and begin doing 144 00:12:23,040 --> 00:12:26,900 \h industry and space economically without congress having to pay for it. 145 00:12:26,900 --> 00:12:30,680 \h The key idea is taking the next step beyond oasis, 146 00:12:30,680 --> 00:12:36,120 \h and we want to put industry on the moon so don't launch it, evolve it. 147 00:12:36,120 --> 00:12:42,280 \h When the colonists came to America from Europe they didn't put entire cities on ships and launch the cities. 148 00:12:42,280 --> 00:12:45,750 \h They just brought the tools. They brought its first generation of tools. 149 00:12:45,750 --> 00:12:50,200 \h The colonists had to build the second generation of tools which are typically more crude than the first 150 00:12:50,200 --> 00:12:53,810 \h generation and then they started working back upward from there. 151 00:12:53,810 --> 00:12:57,100 \h You use appropriate technology. It doesn't need to be high tech. 152 00:12:57,100 --> 00:13:02,350 \h It needs to be easy to make in space and we don't have to pay for all the technology. 153 00:13:02,350 --> 00:13:07,230 \h It's being paid for by this humongous technology engine that we have in our economy. 154 00:13:07,230 --> 00:13:12,670 \h We need to find them and spin them in, and finally, let's not forget that technologies are advancing 155 00:13:12,670 --> 00:13:16,700 \h exponentially, so let's answer not underpredict what's possible. 156 00:13:16,700 --> 00:13:21,960 \h An idea, a concept of appropriate technology look at housing in America 157 00:13:21,960 --> 00:13:26,600 \h in 1620 versus what the Europeans were living in, in 1620. 158 00:13:26,600 --> 00:13:32,490 \h We need to be prepared to build things on the moon with inferior materials, but make them so that they can 159 00:13:32,490 --> 00:13:36,850 \h work with those inferior materials. That's the way we need to be thinking. 160 00:13:36,850 --> 00:13:42,060 \h Appropriate technology water pumps, people found that if you deliver a high-tech water pump to an 161 00:13:42,060 --> 00:13:48,530 \h underdeveloped area, they can't maintain it, because they need to maintain it with local processes and local materials. 162 00:13:48,530 --> 00:13:54,560 \h So with these things in mind, we've laid out a strategy, one possible strategy of six generations of 163 00:13:54,560 --> 00:14:00,870 \h spiraling technology upward on the moon, and we've shown that for as little as 60 tons of hardware or even 164 00:14:00,870 --> 00:14:06,330 \h getting it down to 12 tons of hardware, you can get self-sustaining industry eventually within six 165 00:14:06,330 --> 00:14:12,070 \h generations to where you don't need to launch anything anymore, and then all you need to launch are the 166 00:14:12,070 --> 00:14:18,270 \h people to go out and enjoy what you're making, and utilize what you're making, so the industry can grow 167 00:14:18,270 --> 00:14:22,970 \h exponentially by the end of six generations, you could have 100,000 robots on 168 00:14:22,970 --> 00:14:27,860 \h the moon and 100,000 tons of manufactured hardware. 169 00:14:27,860 --> 00:14:31,340 \h This is detailed modeling where we've shown this is feasible using 170 00:14:31,340 --> 00:14:35,210 \h technologies not too advanced beyond what we can do right now. 171 00:14:35,210 --> 00:14:40,490 \h There needs to be technology advancement but it's not unbelievable technology advancement. 172 00:14:40,490 --> 00:14:48,460 \h Another 20 years beyond this you'll have a million times the industrial output of the entire united states, 173 00:14:48,460 --> 00:14:53,840 \h and by the way, the next step beyond the moon is the asteroid belt, that's where you really want industry to 174 00:14:53,840 --> 00:14:58,230 \h be, and then ten years beyond that, you've got a billion times 175 00:14:58,230 --> 00:15:01,350 \h the industrial capability of the entire united states. 176 00:15:01,350 --> 00:15:05,920 \h What could you do with a billion times the industrial capacity? 177 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:11,110 \h Well the question is really what can't you do with a billion times the industrial capacity? 178 00:15:11,110 --> 00:15:17,250 \h You could have a global relief effort. You could land manufactured goods, land resources. 179 00:15:17,250 --> 00:15:23,770 \h You can bring, beam energy down. You don't have to launch the energy generators. 180 00:15:23,770 --> 00:15:34,400 \h You can terraform planets and people can migrate to space, you can have a backup to civilization, the space 181 00:15:34,400 --> 00:15:40,650 \h endowment would fund things people do in space, there's also the negative side, if we don't do this, 182 00:15:40,650 --> 00:15:47,510 \h somebody is going to and we need to do it right, so in conclusion, we are near the limits of a type one 183 00:15:47,510 --> 00:15:52,830 \h world, and there is a barrier at the end of type one, and we're starting to feel it, and it's going to hurt 184 00:15:52,830 --> 00:15:57,950 \h and it's going to hurt worse if we don't jump over it, going to hurt worse if we try to move back and so we 185 00:15:57,950 --> 00:16:03,570 \h need to leap over that barrier, and it's going to take the creative innovators to do that, and we need you