more than 12 hours a day but does not actually my question. it's well-established that throughout history, technology and innovation have great more jobs and then destroyed. >> other including sleep. all of the other -- it's not -- >> if i interpreted the chart correctly. so these days more and more economists are saying that this

time it's different, including economist on the right. what is your view on what technology and innovation are doing now and what will they do over the next generation independent of government regulatory things? what's happening? is there a new trend or not? >> we think about the difference between let's say a bill gates and henry ford. henry ford employed hundreds of thousands less skilled americans. the innovators of the configuration that much less of that. many innovations have been particularly ones that employed highly skilled workers a variety of different forms. it's hard to think of really great examples, this one of going to come to, hard to think of that many great examples of tech entrepreneurs who move towards employing lots of less skilled workers. a subset i blame maybe perhaps the silicon valley, the impossible was built under --

anything under 5 million bucks. whawhatever it is, the bulk of e technology has moved in the wrong direction. we have a glaring counterexample right now which is uber recuperates exactly the opposite, a company that employs, provides employment come into what employment for lots of less skilled people and if you didn't face major distortions come it's hard not to think in the longer run more entrepreneurs will see that problem. people would like connections with labor force would like to find work and yet they are not able to. that's an opportunity. my point every underfoot person as a feeling of entrepreneur imagination. we've got a lot of entrepreneur imagination in this country. the last 40 years have been skewed towards highly skilled

workers and the bold of the height and entrepreneurship has been targeted towards higher skilled employees. bears nothing written in stone about that. when there are opportunities, like wind or underemployed workers comp smar smart people l forget how to take offense to that and that's exactly what uber did. as long as we don't regulate it in a way. [inaudible] i totally am amazed by your data and i think it's fantastic. because we work with disadvantaged people getting them jobs all the time. we see all the disincentives. want to do things you have not addressed which we see everyday is how much work socializes people. if you think of inner-city young people or people coming out of

prison, minorities have never worked, when you get him a job they suddenly talk differently. they walked differently. they dress differently. they engage in the broader world. that's so valuable. and some of the people on the far left who think the income support is just the best thing don't seek it, they've never talked to these people. so the last step ditch of socialization is actually work. because it's communities have broken down, churches a broken debt and schools have broken down. employment still provides that. i just wanted to ask you if you look at that? because to us that's one of the most valuable things. >> i think you are so right. i could not agree with you more strongly. the only thing i know, so much of capital a key militia was on the job. some of that -- most of it is

social come how to get along. the one thing i want to push you on is, it's true for the population but i think it's true for my own nephew as well. it's not just an issue people from broken homes. if any 21 year old in modern society is to put been told their brilliant for far too long -- last night and has been allowed to get away with stuff by loving parents in a bright a different forms, and the job is to first place they learn is you need to be more focus on the living service to people around them. it was true for me as well. yes, sir. >> we have an event coming up in november, and to the extent that you could discern your policies,

would you care to comment on how the two presumed presidential candidates might influence things you're talking about? [laughter] >> i'm going to keep on burying my head in the sand on this one and hope it goes away. it won't. i mean, i, i -- [laughter] this election reminds us why it is so important to the institutions like the manhattan institute to stand for reason and evidence, and we just need to be talking not the problems that matter and the right way to evidence-based policy responses to those problems. i am amazed by how much often a modest the grid is the one shown people who believe the evidence makes policy, like you to do so pleased that it's very far away from either candidate quickly and someplace on vastly more

comfortable with. i think the important point right now is just to keep on standing up for reason, for knowledge, for focusing on the problems that matter and providing for an america that is about being great, but also being sensible and been focus on skills and uplifting everyone. i promised santa. >> i was wondering -- >> got to wait for the mic. sorry. [inaudible] -- our roxbury encourages entrepreneurship? number two, a gentleman yesterday he was president of the newark city public commerce, and i was not aware how the commerce supports entrepreneurship and is hoping to talk about that.

number three,. [inaudible] does not give social welfare unless you work. what are your thoughts on that? >> well, it happens, i'll take the last one for the it happens i spent some time in jersey this year. my first "new york times" hester came there from either of guernsey making twice a family roots in these islands. there's a huge amount i think that, you know, obviously i think of writing of this program is sensible but there in a world in which they are so privileged in so many ways in jersey. the weather is fantastic. they have a set of rules. it makes it easy to be a financial the. it's hard to think that there could be a great example but they too many sensible things. the other thing to worry about in terms of jersey is the other dominated by a few large firms

anaction not gridlock up to bush up front at all. that's an issue. i remember having this conversation with a reporter and i think guernsey who said why would anybody be an entrepreneur why wouldn't they want to work for pricewaterhousecoopers for the next 20 years? there are people graduate from stanford today if you told them they would have twice the entrepreneur and 20th they would tell you that's vastly better than being a partner in pricewaterhousecoopers. which they thought implausible. i got caught on jersey. the first one was? >> roxbury. >> it starts with the social space dinosaurs with programming. there's an innovation person to person you guys make sure programs bring people in. the project is actually a well-designed program that works people through steps. it starts into things like selling things on ebay and

moves them into making things, then moves them along. it's a more clear thought out program. roxboro is in the process of a workout. based on the model on the waterfront which was sadly successful but not at all targeted, very much towards wealthy bostonians. hundred middle one was? >> had to do with -- >> so just, yes, so new york over the past 15 years has been a number of things to try and to encourage entrepreneurship. some of them like one of my favorite things, this great mass the premise you need to go through to get to being, to start a restaurant, starcher shot. was fabulous you could learn. the problem was there were 17 things you need to go through. they didn't solve the fact you needed 17 permits. they showed you needed to 17 permits. that was a step in the right direction. we hope for more going forward.

>> choose someone in the back. >> i think you. the problem is i agree with everything you say but what really upsets me is that we are preaching to the choir. i want to focus you on the union thing. use it sometimes unions play a good role. i have a problem with that. [laughter] unions are basically a restraint of trade, basically contrary to competition. i happen to live in a co-op and you can't get into the union 30 to be which is a non-skilled job we opened the door, you press the button for the elevator, and

these guys, some of them are working two shifts and there's a lot of, you know, people who can't even make the minimum wage would love those jobs. how do you justify any union if you believe in free competition and the free market? >> wait a minute. what i justified it any, i just like any free association for almost any free association of adults, the extent to which your form and social group of some form, i think i should be legal. i think the constitution protects a. do i think unions are force for increasing employment? now, by and large. i don't agree with that as a general point but i think they're also things you need to do around socializing people. they are not always terrible. i gave an example that of those construction workers. there are times when having the social connections on the worst thing in the world. i'm not deeply unfairly to what

you are saying but -- [inaudible] speed and the training and there's also vocational training but yes, i think, yes. i think it can be a significant problem. >> there was an article in the times, if i can mention that name come this week. he said that actually the countries in western europe that have more regulation than we do and higher minimum wages actually have less underemployment. number one, is that correct? number two, what do you make of it? >> you can look at it. there we are. we are looking pretty bad there it's certainly true. it is certainly true that sweden and germany are not completely free of regulation but they did

come we think regulations 15 years ago make the more sensib sensible. i think the right, if i would have a two factor model of this it would be about regulations this time entrepreneurship and that's bad. that's bad in europe. it's bad here. on the other set of skills. there's a push and look at the german education system and it does much better job at delivering skills. i think the right answer is not that germany has a better participation rate, that feels crazcrazy commits that it can vy better job of providing vocational training of giving less skilled people into the workforce. i think that's the right lesson to take we from this. not that we should be imposing more regulations on the american workers. >> if you think about what the trends are a are in innovation t seems like robotics as well as artificial intelligence are clear trends.

maybe exacerbated by minimum wage on the robotic side but eventually a lot of the low labor jobs will be taken over by machines and potential even services jobs taken over by machines. what are the applications for that and have you thought about that? >> again, this is related to the previous think i don't think any of this is in abdel. it's true the long run role of human production is unlikely to be in manufacturing. there's a small amount of stuff around edges but that's hardly going to be huge employment. it's service employment. there are lots of reasons why, a phrase i use why cities are not going away with all the telecommunication, innocent since there's no way have an electronically delivered subject will compare with having a good service experience. if you have an interaction with someone in a store or in a car, any were else the actual is charming and pleasant, it's a delight, and absolute delightful thing.

the question is whether or not the people out of the labor force can deliver this. this is why social skills are important to the beat of the people with the social skills to function well in the service industry it's a big problem. you will replace them all with machines. be a technological determine its is just wrong. it is the state technology do create challenge is unquestionably but they can be met by the need to be met with some combination of skills and having sensible regulations, sensible benefit programs. i can imagine a world which have a very heavy service sector to find people for jobs that are less skilled, and that does employ people. i don't see any reason why that can't happen. final question. great. i could go all night. i really don't want to end. >> i want to come back to the technology side. you gave a specific example

unintentionally perhaps to the question earlier about the tech guys. on the last guy to defend silicon valley by the way. debate as a consequence of course of what microsoft has done in creating the enterprise software that permits such things that we're using in roxbury. that's what odd omission brings but i would ask you -- >> you are right. it has some of the same structures as uber. you're absolutely right. >> there's a new book coming out, try one of everything. >> the reason i made a mistake as i did think of employees. >> which they are entrepreneurs. they are not employers% but come on the phone with the boston consulting group? boston study? they did last year on the correlation of the five country study on the correlation of our devotion and job formation with excesaccess of mobile technolog, specifically cell phones or

smartphones. it was exported interest in terms of the answer this question. you get job formation, faster creation, small jobs when you look at the penetration of smartphones. extraordinarily positive correlation and very encouraging, frankly. have you seen that? >> i haven't seen. it sounds sort of plausible and again it makes the point technology isn't doing anything. it's a question about issues. that's the central point. i just want to end on this point. this is not a rosy speech. this is not a happy speech. it's a profoundly upset speak. i'm deeply disturbed about a country and the policy debates around these problems like we're not having the right debates which is about how to perform these programs in a way to get people t to work and would not have a debate on how to unleash entrepreneurship and sensible fashion. but despite that, despite all the gloom i remain fundamentally

optimistic but, about this country, about the city. i remain optimistic because there is so much onto the towel because so much energy and there is so much just in this room of people who are smart and thoughtful and care about making america and new york a better place. i thank you for all you do for this country and the city, and thank you very much for your time here today. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> later this week it's the annual veterans day sermon at the tomb of the unknown soldier. we will be live from arlington national cemetery on friday starting at eliminate eastern on c-span. with donald trump elected as the next u.s. president a lot utah becomes our nation's second foreign-born first lady since louisa adams. learn more about the influence of america's presidential spouses from c-span's book first lady's. the book is a look into the personal lives and influence of every presidential spouse in american history. it's a continued to c-span's well-regarded biography tv series and features interviews

with 54 of the nations leading first lady's historians, biographies of 451st ladies, and archival photos from each of their lives. published by public affairs, available wherever you buy books and now available in paperback. >> more about the election later. right now we are from the director of the pension benefit guarantee corporation, the federal agency that insures the pensions of workers and retirees. he says multi-employer plans back by the agency with more than likely be canceled in 10 years unless congress and the white house take action. this is about 50 minutes your. [applause] >> thanks everybody. it's a pleasure to be here and my colleagues will verify the

fact that i'm more nervous than average about addressing actuaries because it is one of the groups, although it's extremely important, it is one of the groups were i am fairly confident that everybody on your everybody in the room knows more than i do. and that's a nervous task. but i also know that everybody in the room or nearly everybody in the room is either already totally prepared for their retirement, or on track to be so. so i am, what i talk about retirement security, i am really talking to the choir. pbgc is have a long relationship and want to continue to build on that relationship and the value

and benefit from your contributions to the pbgc in the form of detailed, clear comments on proposals, proposed regulations, the issue brief that tom just mentioned on the multi-employer system. there's lots of projects would work closely with the academy. and your members are among us, and we appreciate that very much. i think we may have a collection of the best actuaries in the world, but maybe that's just me bragging. in that regard i want to thank the academy for honoring joan with the robert morris public service award. she is truly a remarkable public

servant, and served the pbgc is chief a valuation actuary for nearly 20 years. she led our team of actuaries, and not only had to understand everything that you do in the private sector regarding pensions, i had to calculate the benefits under erisa, and was responsible for the single-employesingleemployer anr liabilities as report in our financial statements. that's no minor task, and i understand she met that responsibility with grace and skill, and worked with every pbgc director for marty to josh to meet the challenges that they face. she is and exemplifies the

public service that i have experienced at pbgc, and everywhere i go i hear about the quality of service that pbgc provides. and having, as tom explained earlier, i've worked in other agencies and we didn't have anywhere near that customer satisfaction that is documented and that i hear about all the time, that pbgc has. and i am particularly part of it. while i was going through the confirmation process of being director, many people ask me, many senators ask me, why would you want this job? and usually i thought they were asking it in just -- just, but every now and then i would respond with a lighthearted answer, and one time a very high

level center asked me now, why would you want this job? and he actually found it by saying, i'm not sure i want to vote for anybody who wants this job. [laughter] i didn't have a really great answer for that. i mean, most people in a job interview situation have can't answer questions like that. but once i understood his series decided never great answer. but i can tell you one reason i would want the job is if i didn't have the quality of professionals that we've got, like joan at the pbgc, and we're very proud of that tradition of service, and i can tell you whar kid i get when i hear people bashing public service. it's not justified and the folks

at pbgc are evidence of that fact. i've been director for little bit over a year. i have just celebrated my one year anniversary. and so i'm no longer on a honeymoon. so people are starting to expect me to know answers so i'm looking forward to hearing your questions. we can't do this job without interaction with groups like you, and so i'm looking forward to hearing the question should have and attending the answers. as many of you know i am a great fan of defined benefit plans. and in that role i feel a little bit like the black knight at the bridge in the monty python

movie, the holy grail. i'm here to say that i'm not dead yet. and the damage to defined benefit system is only a flesh wound. in all seriousness, i have to say that we are not blind to the economic trends and the risk management that cfos are undergoing on a daily basis. and the fact that they have competitive pressures on their company and that there is a trend to try to de- risk or transfer the risk of the defined benefit plan, or to terminate it. however, i do want to recognize that at no time in our history

has the majority of americans being covered by a defined benefit pension plan. so a lot of times people refer to the good old days when nobody had a plan, those good old days never existed. on the other side of the coin, there are still lots of employees who are actively accruing benefits and a defined benefit today. there's probably about 10 million of them. the employers of those 10 million folks often look to the defined benefit plan as in a positive way to attract and retain a quality workforce. and we can't turn our backs on those employers and those employees who have accrued those benefits. i think that the defined benefit

plan is still the best way to provide guaranteed lifetime income that you can't outspend and you can't outlive. a lot of folks have talked about leaving the defined benefit system, but a lot of folks are talking about it but deciding to stay in. and we at pbgc would like to do whatever we can to help out. if you've heard me speak before you've probably heard this reference before, but but i'm going to keep repeating it until everybody i ever talked to has heard it. and that is, i urge you to go google twilight zone and shelter. what you will come up with is an episode of the twilight zone which is you an idea where i come from, and what i grew up with. and it's a story about a family

who is invited some friends over for dinner, and they're enjoying dinner and it's a bit of a birthday celebration, and little johnny can join and write about dessert time and says that everyone should pay attention to the conrad station. if you are my age you know what that was. maybe still exist, i don't think so, but it's a station that comes on when something bad is going to happen. and sure enough it comes on us as there's a bomb coming and everyone should seek shelter. the host of the event has got a bomb shelter, but none of the guests have a bomb shelter. and the rest of the show talks about what, portrays what happens as the people with a

bomb shelter are trying to keep the people without the bomb shelter out. because they'll have enough room and food and supplies for themselves. and by the end of the show, i don't mind giving away the end, but by the end of the show, the people who don't have a bomb shelter have poured up the guys house and they have a battering ram to get into the shelter, and white about that time the tv comes on and says it's a false alarm. and the guys with the shelter come out of their shelter and say, do we want to live in this society where some of the people have shelters and some of the people don't? rod serling who did twilight zone, he was interviewed a few weeks after that show came out. it was one of the most popular, one of the most talked about episodes of the twilight zone.

but a few weeks later he was interviewed and he actually said that he was building a bomb shelter. in africa that episode of the twilight zone, he stopped building the bomb shelter. i think it's a good analogy for society where some of, some of us are prepared for retirement, and others are not. and we have to ask ourselves, do we really want to live any society where some people have enough for a dignified retirement and others don't? i don't think i have to talk too much about that industry because i think most of the people come especially to people, attention folks, are focused on getting people prepared for retirement. ..

>>

at all the deficit and it is more likely than not to be a system more likely than not to be insolvent within 10 years. and every time i say 10 years inwashington , those of you who are not from washington probably think 10 years is a very short period of time. in washington, 10 years is a geologic era. 10 years is five election cycles for the house and nearly 2 for the senate. more than two for the president. and congress is constantly dealing with tomorrow or this evening.

and when you tell them they have 10 years to fix a problem it's like telling them they have a longer vacation. they get a longer recess this year. however, i think most sensible folks who know anything about tensions and who know anything about the economy in general would recognize the fact that the longer you wait to fix a problem that's almost certain to happen, the longer and harder it is to fix it. and if the problemcosts money , fixing it the day before it runs out of money is going to be a lot more difficult than fixing it 10 years before it runs out of money. in fact, one of the reasons it's in a deficit situation is because premiums have been so low for so long and the

congress the multi employer format in 2014 and i think many congressmen think they took care of the problem. they only added about two years to the solvency of the multi employer program. and put simply, pbgc just doesn't have the assets or the incoming premiums to pay the financial systems at current level of guaranteed benefits and current level of guaranteed benefits on the multi employer system is, doesn't like the candle to the guarantees in a single employer. a guaranteed level on the multi employer system is not easy to recite but in summary, for a 30 year employee, somebody who's been in the program for 30 years, there guaranteed benefit is a

little under $13,000 a year. and that's not much of the guarantee. and if you are in a plan for 20 years or 10 years, the guarantee level is much lower than that. those guaranteed levels will go down close to zero, not completely to zero if the trust fund of the multi employer system goes to zero and that's likely to happen as i said within 10 years. more likely than not. there's about 1400 multi employer plans covering 10 million people as i mentioned. and so when i talk about the insolvency of the multi employer program, i don't want to talk about dire straits for everybody because most of the people in the multi employer system are in plans that are not likely to

run out of money. they are not likely to rely on the pbgc for the guarantee. most of the folks 85 to 90 percent of them are in plans that are more likely than not to stay solvent. but still, the ones that are going to be in plans or the ones that are in plans that will be insolvent that will be relying on the tv see, are 1 million to 1,000,000 and a half and that is not a population that americans normally want to turn their back on. those. all over the country and those are just the number of recipients and we are also talking about their families and their communities if their funds run short. and the effect of such in

insolvency has been illustrated in the recent situation with the states pension fund that attempted to reduce benefits not to the pbgc guarantee level but down to some amount higher than the pbgc guarantee level and it was something that many folks, many congressmen, many senators and lots of participants had a big problem with so if the pvcg becomes insolvent, and plans are relying on the pvcg for the guarantee level, it's going to be a lot worse. it's also important to note that thousands of employers or dissipate in multi employer plans and the poor funding level in multi employer plans represent a

difficult future cost to those employers, whether they continue in the plan or try to get out. so this is a concern for businesses, not just employees. the pvcg is, the administration has a proposal to address pbcg issues with multi employer plans and it focuses mostly on increasing premiums that are paid by multi employer plans with a pbcg. for several administrations, this is as far back as i've worked, i worked for three administrations in the treasury and all three of those administrations proposed that a pbcg be permitted to set its own premiums. and most insurance companies set their own premiums, it's

every now and then i talk to people who find out that the pbcg doesn't set its premiums and they are shocked. and they often say well, how can you guarantee a statutory level of benefits when you can't set the premiums? that's a good question. however, no congress has yet decided to give up its right to a premium to the pbcg or its board and having worked on capitol hill, i understand that it's not likely that it's ever going to happen. congress doesn't often say give up the powers that it has. and it's unfortunate. that the administration has to ask for premium increases that look like a tax

increase. and a lot of employers and plans use premiums as just tax and a lot of people, a lot of congressmen have a hard time voting for increased premiums. the administration's budget window with premiums by 15 billion over 10 years and that would greatly, virtually eliminate the probability that the pbgc's multi employer program became insolvent over 20 years. and the structure of the premium would have to be changed at a flat increase for everyone would be totally inappropriate . it would have to involve a variable premium, it would have to involve some form of exit premium and it would

have to involve some form of pbcg discretion or relief for plans that were unable to afford an increase premium, otherwise you could make the matter worse area if you levied the premiums in a way that didn't make the plan worse, you wouldn't have to levy as many premiums to make the pbcg solid. we are committed to working with congress and we will look forward to doing that in the coming year or two. pensions, as i know from experience are a bipartisan issue. most congressmen are dedicated to strengthening retirements and i don't think there's any congressmen, certainly they would say in public that they would like to see the pbcg go under.

multi employer plans are not well understood on capitol hill and often times when we talk about multi employer plans, folks on the hill, their eyes glaze over but it's definitely getting more and more attention, the concept of insolvency. nobody wants the florida system to become insolvent because of inaction. in september, the senate finance committee held the markup that would have, that would relieve pressures on a significant multi employer plan, the united mine workers and that bill passed out of the senate finance committee. it's got bipartisan support in both houses, it's a priority of the administration and we are very optimistic that it will

get passed in the lame-duck session. i've been asked to not refer to lame duck session as such. pretend i didn't say that. i heard of someone who went to their halloween party as a lame duck. they had a crutch and dressed like a duck. the house of representatives and education workforce held a hearing on a new proposal to allow a different type of multi employer plan. there is definitely room for creative ideas and we are working closely with staff of both houses to analyze your ideas in the multi employer

world and however, we need to make sure any new idea doesn't put existing legacy plans at further risk of insolvency. and so that's a lens that we are going to look at, look at any new proposal through. the problems facing multi employer plans are complex and they deserve adequate time for full consideration on an open process involving all interested parties. the single-employer system is as i mentioned much more, much less likely to run out of money and must less likely to become insolvent and one of the reasons is because of recent increases in the premiums.

some of those premiums increased for reasons other than, this is my editorial content here, other than pension policies. and having been on the hill, i understand and i think most people in washington understand that because the pbcg is on budget, that an increase in premiums is an increase in revenue and although those premiums come to the pbcg, they are shored as revenue increases that can justify spending somewhere else. and so conceptually, we pave highways and build missiles with pension premiums area not really, only

conceptually. and that's just the way scoring works on the hill. and in another way of looking at revenue through a mirror, sort of, funding relief is also a revenue raiser. if you allow employers to put less money into their pension plans, then the economists say, we lawyers often disagree but the economists say they will have more profit or they will give their employees more money. and more profits for employees, more money means higher taxes so pension relief, funding relief is revenue that can be used to pave highways and domiciles and people like to pave highways and so there's been

at least two highway bills that have been funded by funding relief and premium increase. it's difficult to take that off the table. it's difficult for congressmen to say okay, we're not going to do that anymore. however, i do believe congress has gotten the message and the administration has gotten the message that additional single-employer premiums are not necessary and in fact unwise at thispoint . and i suspect that's going to be the case for a long time or i hope it is and so i think the fear of future premium increases on the single-employer side is a little more than right now. the options to shore up the

defined-benefit system are not going to be easy. all of them involve some form of change. it's going to be premium increases, it's going to be benefit cuts. it's going to be higher contributions by employers or it's going to be some other kind of revenue from the government. none of those are things that congress likes to vote for. so we need to work with congress and figure out a way to shore up the programs with the least amount of pay.and i welcome to hear your suggestions and the issue brief that you issued is a great resource for us and a great resource for the hill and it outlines the issues and outlines the options very well and we appreciate that very much.

and i think we have some time , i hope i've said something that has promoted some controversy or some questions in your mind and i hope that someone will come forward with some questions. [applause] >> good morning, thanks for being with us and i appreciate your commentary. especially when we look at the way the highway bills have been funded by telling employers to put less in their pension funds to lower the deductions, bring in revenue. the premiums are a big topic and like you, i'm a big believer in pensions. i see trouble in where we are going, where we are leaving individuals which is a pool of money to find out how long they are going to live.

when i look at the amendments that increase the single-employer premiums, i say to my clients a lot, i compare it to car insurance. this fixed rate premium is just a baseline. a good driver is still going to have to pay something for insurance, a variable rate premium, the difference between a good driver and poor driver. we've seen both of those premiums going up 400 to 450 percent between 2012 and scheduled to 2019. what i wonder from your perspective it has congress missed the third piece which is the variable rate premium and the cat has only gone up 25 percent and to me, i'd say the cat is protecting the person who drives into a tree every weekend and so therefore, are we protecting by not increasing that

variable rate premium, are we protecting the most troubled of plans from paying their parent fair share of premiums? >> i don't know that i'm going to weigh in with a personal view as to where the cap should be but i agree with that sentiment. i don't think that congress ignored it but i do think that they constantly have to walk the line of making, whether or not they make the problem worse. and i think, i think if i were a dictator and i'm not, or if i was a magician, i'm neither a dictator or a magician, i'm working on the magic but if i could redesign the pension system, i would certainly do it in a way that encourages people to fund up

area because if everybody is well-funded, you don't need much of an insurance system. and that's certainly true in the multi employer system where there is no variable premium and there's much less incentive to fund up. so i do think, i know the administration is focused more on premium designs then encouraging people to fund up. if we view premiums as a tax, and i think a lot of people do, we should tax stuff that's good. we should not tax stuff it's good then we should tack stuff that we don't want. taxes, people leaving the system, tax underfunding. tax things, don't tax folks who are covering people in

active plans and they are well-funded. maybe those guys should pay the bare minimum like you mentioned in your analogy to car insurance but they shouldn't, if they're doing the right thing, they shouldn't have topay the variable rate premium that somebody who's running their car into a tree every weekend . >> thank you very much for this very interesting comment. one thought. most of the time we are hearing about any kind of general revenue, just with the pbcg, the argument is given that those people who never had a pension plan are being taxed to subsidize those people that do. has there any thought been given to having participants who are covered by the pbcg such as the multi employer system be taxed so the guarantee and benefits they receive because the benefit

is really to the participant, not to the plan so for example if you are covered by a multi employer pension plan whether you are an active retiree, you pay $10 a month to the pbcg for the privilege of having your benefit guarantee and that would generate over $1 billion a year revenue and would tax those people who are getting the benefits. >> revenue estimators on the spot. you're absolutely right. and there is thought about a participant premium and it is along the lines that you just expressed, not the amount, it's just the idea, that the reason is based on the reasons you justexpressed . i don't think it would be appropriate if i said where i heard the idea but i hear it often and in high places, both from advocates, had to

see groups as well as folks on the hill and as i mentioned earlier, anything that's going to involve some kind of pain, that wouldn't be painless but it may be appropriate and if you're talking about shared pain, that may be a way to do it. i think everyone would regard that as we pointed out in your issue brief as, everyone would regard that as a benefit cut. but it's $10 a month or something on the order you mentioned, is not a huge cut like has been discussed in other contexts and it may be appropriate, especially if the premium is based on the amount of benefits we get. there's some plans like the coal miners where the benefits are not very high at all and there are other plans

where the benefits are pretty significant and if a participant premium were based on the benefit they are going to receive, it might be more appropriate area and there's also a discussion, i know this was a big discussion when i was in the hill as to how far you could raise premiums either on participants or plans. >> >> high, there. first of all i want to your comments that we have some

really wonderful dedicated employees working at the agencies that are pretty devoted -- >> at the irs, to. >> yes. [laughter] i think particularly -- no, i'm just kidding. i do say that as a former employee, and to get a disappointed with a lack of appreciation so i appreciate you bringing that up. my question is, i'm looking at not just the system which i'm a big fan of the entire u.s. retirement system, i think it's quite challenged and we're heading into some unknown waters that are going to be very troubled as well but i want to know what, not just i as an actuary but we as the american academy of actuaries can do to better support you in your role and other people at the different agencies and on the hill to try to solve this problem and move us toward something that's going to actually work. >> i think you're actually already pretty involved, but i

do think that the education efforts of people like the academy in the value of lifetime benefits. i think, especially among montréal's, i think there's an increased -- millennials -- and increased appreciation for retirement security. the recent research on that issue and millennials have expressed an interest or a willingness for less cash compensation in favor of more retirement security but i don't know about people understand that retirement security needs more than just a pot of money when you retire. and it's very difficult for people to understand how much money is really necessary.

and there's a lot of people who retire with $200,000 thank they are very wealthy and they will be fine. but they don't have a lifetime stream of income. i think that, i'm experiencing this we did with parents and parents in law that you hit a certain age and i'm getting closer to it, but you have a certain age what is right difficult to manage that money. when i'm 85 i don't want to be thinking about where my money should be invested or how much i should be taking out of my defined contribution plan. so i'm looking forward to having some kind of an annuity that will last the rest of my life. i think to like a very promising area, and i think, they haven't taken off, but i think in the next 10 years i think you're going to see more activity in

that area. but if i didn't people at the pbgc don't have a real good understanding, young people at the pbgc don't have a real good understanding of what it means to have a lifetime income. there's a lot of people who say when you press them, you cross-examine and say what could have this tension that when you're 40 you're in a hurricane under roof blows off? shouldn't you be would get some of that? yes. you should be able to take some of that, take care of your rough. it's hard to argue with that. i do want to be too strong and arguer but that's what's happened to iris. i in retirement doesn't mean retirement that if something else. [laughter] the list of exceptions the things you can take your ira for is long and it's difficult for congress to turn them down. every year some new proposal of

things you can draw your ira down for, or your 401(k). it's hard when katrina wipes out new orleans, it's hard to say you can't touch your ira or you have to pay a penalty. so the list is long. i'm not sure how to get past that, but i do think that defined benefit plan does it. that's why i'm continuing to preach for defined benefit plans by also know we have to have some other vehicle. coming up with the other vehicle, osha soliciting, just now, where you get a defined, a plan that the employer and employee have some kind of a shared risk. we've talked a lot about de-risking but it's really risk

transferring. and i think if we could transfer a less risk to the employed and have some kind of a program where the employer and the bush of the risk, i think that's got a lot more promise than either employer, has all the risk or the employee has all the risk. >> we will have time for one more question. >> thank you for being you. we talked a lot about policies and premium in particular. obviously, you don't have the ability to set your own premium, so the question for you, the reports. to what extent can you influence your own policies including that of second premiums? number two, should they be enhanced? number three, how could it be enhanced given the complexities of capitol hill? >> well, and we mainly have a lot of input in setting the

administration's budget, and so we played a role in establishing the administration's budget with respect to pbgc issues and that includes premiums. however, congress very rarely takes their president's budget and just and ask it. -- and ask it. less than rarely. [laughter] it's pretty remote and i think, i think the biggest of in setting premiums is the tools that we have to measure the risks. especially the model that we use to evaluate the risk that we're going to run out of money. i think congress is getting more and more trust in that modeling

system, and they are, they now rely on it, congressional budget office and joint committee on taxation rely on our model in evaluating proposals on the hill. and i think that's the biggest to will we have to helping bloggers to realize the importance of premium setting. but i keep coming back to the fact that congress sees premiums like a candy jar. and it's difficult to take the candy jar away. as many parents now, having gone through halloween come a charge is okay, you earn all this candy and now i'm going to take it. so i don't, i don't have a lot

of promise for getting it. getting the power to set the premiums are although every time people complained about where the premiums are, i can say if we were setting them they wouldn't be where they are. of course, i'm not telling you where they would be. [laughter] they wouldn't be where they are. okay, thank you. [applause] >> later this week it's the annual veterans day sermon at the tomb of the unknown soldier your we will be live from arlington national cemetery on friday starting at 11 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> with the donald trump elected as the next u.s. president melania trump becomes our nation's second foreign-born

first lady since louisa catherine adams. learn more about the influence of america's presidential spouses from c-span's book first lady's. the book is a look into the personal lives and influence of every presidential spouse in american history. it's a continued to c-span's well-regarded biography tv series and features interviews with 54 other nations leading first lady so stories, biographies a 451st ladies and archival photos from each of their lives. "first ladies" published by public affairs is available wherever you buy books, now available in paperback. >> c-span's "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. thursday morning joining us is editor in chief for the hill on what's next legislative with a republican-controlled congress and donald trump as president.

>> we will have more about the election later. right now a look at the mission and discoveries of nasa's dawn spacecraft. it's the only spacecraft ever to reach an orbit of the dwarf planet and to reach any two extraterrestrial destinations. from the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena, california, this is about an hour and 45 minutes. >> all right everyone. my name is gay yee hill unwelcome to the lecture. this is an event to the public to learn more about our nation and also to get up close and personal with the scientists and engineers, the folks who do all the hard work and to get to speak to them personally. so before we can start a couple of things to let you know. please turn off your cell phones and silence them. number two, please wait until the end of the presentation before raising your hand for

questions. and if you do have a question, please go over to the microphone and address it there so that we can hear your question. we are also reporting this we want those questions on the tape, on the recording as well. so let's get started. tonight spotlight is on nasa's dawn mission and this is the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. now, this has been an incredibly successful mission. last month dawn was awarded the trophy, the most prestigious award in aviation and space. i'm sure you're very anxious to hear more about this nation, and who better to talk about it then the chief engineer and mission director, marc rayman. [applause]

>> thank you very much. welcome. i appreciate your coming, and to everybody was watching this at home, whether live or recorded, sorry you're not getting all the free money that is being given out to all the people here last night but thank you for your interest as well. i'm going to do about the dawn mission and as you know, this is run by jpl for nasa, caltech operates in every are at jpl. but there are many organizations around the country and, indeed, around the world involved in this project. [laughter] but before i start telling about the dawn mission, want to give you a little bit of context. so let's take a look at what astronomers knew about the solar system in 1800. here we are with the conventional view of the solar system looking down on the with the sun and the center. here are the orbits of the inner planets including the orbit of the earth, mars, jupiter, saturn and uranus. and apart from an occasional

comment in someone's, desperate much what astronomers knew about the source system in 1800. anti-infective and this is a very modern picture, because of uranus had only been discovered in 1781. so the signature could have been drawn 20 years earlier. the planets of course from mercury to saturn were not even to ancient astronomers. this was a modern view of the solar system in 1800. for fun, although this is the arrangement of the solar system or the contents of the solar system as they were known then, ma showing you the locations of the planet today, on this very day. so that's why did you imagine being here on earth, and earth rotating this way, then you can see just after the sun has gone down mercury and venus are near the sun and, in fact, maybe you can just barely catching a glimpse of them now, but in the

next few weeks that will be even easier. at you can also see jupiter, mars and saturn are all in the evening sky. when you leave this evening, in fact mars and saturn will be very nicely positioned with the moon between them. so mars will be just a little bit below and to the right of the moon, and saturn below and to the left and below saturn will be and carries. i hope you got and look at it for those of you watching a recorded version of this, the mission of the plans will not change that quickly and so you can continue to see it in coming days. effective and to more more than a both still be nicely positioned. anyway this is what astronomers knew in 1800. then came along this fellow, a mathematician and an astronomer. he got the new year off to a good start. he discovered a new planet. modern astronomers had only ever discovered one planet so this was quite a significant finding. i'm going to show you a hi resolution photograph of what he discovered and that's hear, she

is the roman goddess of agriculture and grain. and ceres is often depicted with her harvest bounty and her crown of grains. in this case the artist has chosen to depict her with a size. different artist use different from applets to communicate the message but it's the same idea. in fact, if you had cereal this morning, if you had cereal and you have at least an analogical connection with the good goddess you're so this is serious and here's the same chart i showed you a moment ago, the planets as they were known in 1800. here are the planets as they were known in 1801. so ceres fit very nicely into this gap between mars and jupiter and for two generations was considered to be a planet. so that makes a nice story, and it actually happens to be true.

and untamed as a fellow who was trained as a physician but was a fantastically productive astronomer. and he made many, many important contributions to astronomy which are valued even today. but the very next year, 1802, he discovered still another new body in that part of the solar system between mars and jupiter. but more important for the star of want to describe to you this evening, in 1807, he discovered still another new object between mars and jupiter what by then was the fourth new member of the solar system family. and i'll show you a hi resolution photograph of what the good doctor olbers discovered. she's here, the goddess of hearth, home and family. it's interesting, vesta is not as well understood as the other figures in classical mythology. the reason for that is she was worshiped privately in the home. so there are few the ashtray fewer surviving records of how exactly she figured into roman

mythology than the art of many of the other gods and goddesses. he perhaps a for other vestal virtue but i'm specifically referring to vesta the goddess or so. she's rarely depicted in art the when she is just as very stern look on her face. one of the things i hope to convince you of the seating is at the solar system body vesta is a much happier place. so that's what olbers discovered. here's the same picture i showed you earlier but i zoomed in so jupiter is the outermost planet and you can see vesta also like ceres fit nicely into this gap between mars and jupiter. and it also for around two generations was considered to be a planet. in fact, if you had, to the jpl lecture 200 years ago, adam how many of you did -- you can identify result yourself later - [laughter] there would've been two

different things about you. one is your home internet connection would'v would've beer and that would be especially problematic for the people were watching this on their laptops. but the other is you would've learned in school that vesta and ceres her plans because that's how they were known then. but science and technology advanced and by the middle of the 19th century, more and more and more bodies started to be discovered in this part of the solar system. until now it looks more like this. i will invite the people who are in the front row to confirm later on for those of you who are sitting in the back that i've added 10,320 individual dots to this chart. [laughter] to show you the location of that number of asteroids today. we know about many, many, many y more asteroids than that. emotional you the ones that are larger than about five miles or so across. if i showed you all of them this would be nothing but an uninterpretable yellowish green mass. but the point of this is to show

you that this part of the solar system, which we call the asteroid belt or the main asteroid belt is very different from the inner solar system which is largely devoid of these bodies. in fact, if we zoom out you can see more clearly there's something different about this part of the solar system now from the inner solar system and the outer solar system. that raises the question, why is that? why is this part of the solar system different? you are a good antecedents to a good audience for asking that. to answe enter to take you backn time a little bit before giuseppe piazzi's 18 '01 discovery of ceres. i have to take you back to the dawn of the solar system. gated? until you about the dawn mission. so this is the photograph from hubble space telescope of a large interstellar cloud of gas

and dust in the constellation sagittarius called -- if you're an amateur so you may well have seen this with your own telescope. you didn't have as good a view as hubble but this is something to can see. what's happening is off the top of the picture is a brilliant star. and the light of the star is so intense that as it shines down on this interstellar cloud of gas and dust, it sort of blowing this material away. it's almost as if it is evaporating it didn't interstellar space. however, right here there is a knot of material so dense that its blocking the light of the star and preventing it from blowing away the material behind it. that's why this material is sticking, out like a finger sticking out of the club essential to its in the shadow of this dense material. and deep inside, the material is growing so dense it's collapsing

under its own weight. and eventually it will collapse to form a star. that's how our star, the sun, formed 4.6 billion years ago. and once you form a star, you can begin to form planets. because now you have a swirling cloud of debris with material flying around. sometimes these particles will hit and break apart. other times, however, when they hit they will stick together. we can see that happening with these two particles here. anotheanother particle hits in t come and another particle and another particle and another particle. and gradually these grow larger and larger and larger. on the slide they grow larger to form words, but in space they grow larger to form iraq's. these rocks grow so large that they have enough gravity to pull him still more material, and in the form planets.

that's how the rocky planets of the inner solar system, would've which is right under our feet, formed about almost 4.6 billion years ago. however, when massive jupiter formed its gravity was so intense it interrupted this process and deprived the material nearby of the opportunity to continue growing to become full-sized planets. and so ceres and vesta is sometimes called protoplanetary remnants, or simply protoplanetary because they were going to become full-sized planets when jupiter cut their growth off. and dawn's mission is to plot out to the asteroid belt and study these objects. so let's summarize the scientific motivation. we want to explore ceres and vesta in order to get insight into physical conditions and processes that were acting at

the dawn of the solar system. because we believe these bodies retain retrievable records of what was going on as planets were building. these things almost made it to full-sized planet status. now, i think what most people think of asteroids they think of chips of rock, the sides like the building or the sides of mountains. but ceres and vesta are different. so we can put into context by looking at all of the asteroids that spacecraft have visited where to the dawn mission and two of them are so small that it had to put boxes around just to convince you that there's really something there. compared with vesta. when we introduce ceres you can see that ceres and vesta are an entirely different skill. the nothing at all like these little chips of rocks that are asteroids. so we can look at it differently where here again vesta with an equatorial diameter of

350 miles, and ceres nearly 600 miles in diameter, compared with two of the large lobbies that have been visited, the largest test with any spacecraft has visited, european space agency spacecraft flew by six years ago, and the largest asteroid be nested spacecraft have visited the in the interest of full disclosure i should tell you i've exaggerated the size of matilda because i needed to make a big enough for you to see. so that shows us that ceres and vesta are not at all like asteroids. rather they are closer to the scale up other solar system objects you are familiar with. and i'm sure you remember in 2006 when the international astronomical union created a new category of solar system bodies, dwarf planets, and oh, my goodness everybody thought how could this be such an interplanetary bully, and why were we so inconsiderate and why didn't we think about pluto's feeling in the matter, and no

could we be so insensitive? whatever you think of that decision, whatever you think of it, when that category was created, pluto was the second object to have been discovered that fit in that category. ceres was discovered 129 years earlier so it was the first object to be discovered that was a dwarf planet. what it shows me is once again ceres and vesta are not just chips of rocks. they are world. one of the things i think is so cool about this nasa mission is we are truly exploring uncharted worlds in the solar system. what could be cooler than that? these are the two largest prior to the dawn mission were the two largest unexplored worlds in the inner solar system. i just think that's really neat. but when you look at a picture like this and compare ceres and vesta with california, this is deceptive. because california is flat but these are round three

dimensional bodies have much more surface area than is suggested in a picture like this. even vesta has more than twice the area of california. so we can go into the third dimension and compare the surface area of ceres with that of the continental united states. and sure, ceres isn't as big as the ceres. ceres is a as big as birth bestw a big place but it's a 37% of the area of -- the contiguous united states. 37% of the area of the configured united states when you think about how vast and varied and beautiful the geography and topography and geology of our country are, it suggests there's an opportunity for a lot of diversity, a lot of different things to see on a place like this. i should also point out just in the interest of being clear, obviously this is not the correct color of the united states. this is what site is called false color because it encodes some other scientific information to the same thing for ceres.

this isn't the way it would appear but this is based on dawn's sensors showing the full surface of ceres so this rectangle is drawn to the same scale as of this. so that's a no indication of the size of ceres but now let's take a look at this mysterious alien world, that don has unveiled. left

i should also say a lot of people when they first saw this picture asked us if these could be the likes of an alien city and to tell you the truth i think people should be embarrassed to ask a question like that, really. this is serious work and that kind of thing i think betrays a naïveté because as we are suspending a spacecraft that could we know that they live in cities? they could live in rural communities. they could live in large states and they may live underground in which case they don't have lights. those kinds of questions don't respect the way that we advance our knowledge. so again i don't know how we see it in this depiction here but in addition to the complex shape of the distribution of this material i hope you can see there are many fractures in the surface here which i will come back to in a moment.

this picture we just got not long ago, and i will tell you a little bit more about what we now understand to be going on here. while i am, let's have running here for you other series and in each case i will add the diameter of what you were looking at and series being named for the roman goddess of agriculture, all of the features including a contour are named for deities of agriculture from around the world or associated with agriculture and you will see that in the captions i'm adding. so what we think is happened, 57 miles diameter, about 80 million years ago an asteroid slammed into the surface and excavated this crater. underground there was saltwater. think of this, on this alien

world saltwater underground, perhaps frozen, perhaps liquid that it made its way than to the surface in the cold vacuum of space. on the surface it would freeze ended sublimate, that is transformed from being a solid to a gas. the water molecules would escape in part that they would leave behind the salt that was dissolved in and that saltwater so the bright features in a contour and elsewhere on series including on this strange mountain that we are going to look at here these bright features are salt that's left over from the sublimation of the subsurface saltwater. one of the things that's intriguing about it is that salt shouldn't remain bright for 80 million years and so there still remains the question of how it can stay bright even recently, even to now.

so the suggestions of current active geological processes are occurring. this crater, 106 miles across but there are crater substantially larger than that and one of the things you could seem quickly as the variety of terrain inside. this one is relatively young crater that has fresh sharply defined features here which suggests it hasn't been exposed to the rain of interplanetary debris to the road it over time. still not the largest crater but look at these strange fractures in the surface, some going like this and come some going at right angles to it. we don't fully understand those yet but it's another indication of a lot of active geology and this crater dan to has many

fractures running around the interior which have yet to be fully explained. don is continuing to orbit series and take pictures and make a wide variety of other measurements in order to reveal the nature of this mysterious alien world and in fact right now ceres is orbiting -- don i should say is orbiting closer to the surface of ceres than the international space station is to earth so as long as there are been a tall trees there we will be okay. this is an illustration of the power that we have to be able to send this statecraft to a distant dwarf planet and get down to a type orbit and study the nature of this alien world. that's a quick overview of ceres. let's take a look at dawn other destination festa. if we look at the shape, follow

it starting here going around like this it looks pretty much plantlike. until you get down here and you would expect a smoother shape here near the south pole. obviously that's not what we see so when astronomers got these pictures at the end of the 1990s they concluded that what we are seeing is that they crater here, and impact crater with a mountain in the center and you have seen pictures elsewhere -- elsewhere of large craters with a mountainous center and maybe have seen them in the pictures i've shown you on large craters in ceres or perhaps other large solar system bodies. most bodies have craters and the reason for that is the way you make a crater you take a big piece of interplanetary debris, come screaming to the surface and hits it was so much energy that the surface essentially

melts and it flows away from the impact and then it sloshes back and asset sloshes back it solidifies and so the mountainous center looks to me like a snapshot of the process by which these craters are formed. so i want to show you an artist's concept of how the crater may have formed on vesta from an impact of interplanetary debris. here's the planetary debris. here is vesta before they impact and vesta after the impact. it sprayed a tremendous number of rocks into space and some of those rocks went on their own independent orbits around the sun. some of them made their way to the part of the solar system where you spend most of your time. if they did and got pulled into the atmosphere by our planet's gravity they could burn up and as you know when you're out on a nice start night and lucky enough to see a meteor is that

something from outer space burning in our atmosphere? if you have seen that you may actually have seen a piece of vesta from the impact burning up in the atmosphere. when i say that i'm not just being poetic or clever, but i am poetical and clever. i am being serious because we know from the dawn mission that 6%, think of this, one in every 60 meteorites seem to fall from earth came from that one impact of vesta at billion years ago. maybe you know we have meteorites from mars. maybe you also know we have meteorites from the moon but we have far, far, far more meteorites from vesta than we do from the moon or mars and those are the only three solar system bodies to which we have linked to specific meteorites. in fact we have more material on earth, identified on earth from

vesta than we do from the moon accounting for more than 800 material that apollo astronauts brought back from the moon. i took this picture myself in the museum. you can find these everywhere. in fact one of them landed in this box. so these are very common here on earth and i think that's really remarkable that we have so many samples of the alien world and we are able to confirm that with dawn's mission. that's a meteorites story but let's get back to vesta itself. here's our view of vesta prior to that dawn mission and this is what dawn revealed and of course we then got in much closer in revealed this alien world and all of this richly detailed intimate character. one of the first things we saw was this trip the crater which

you want the surprise we nicknamed the snowman and this is part of that crater in the south pole and i will show you another view of that in a little bit. this is the mountain there and to our great surprise there is this network of about 90 canyons near the equator some of which rival the grand canyon in size. these are now understood to be the result of this big impact here that almost destroys it. it's hit with so much energy do that energy reverberated inside vesta and broke up the ground hundreds of miles away. i think that's really remarkable. now we took 31,000 pictures of vesta. i requested permission to show all of them you tonight but they would not allocate me enough time. we could put this together and

do an animation to show you what it would look like if you were there in one of the first things you'll notice is that the northern hemisphere is much more densely cratered than the southern hemisphere and by the way there are some of those canyons and you'll see them elsewhere here on this part of the network as well. why is the southern hemisphere so lightly cratered compared to the northern hemisphere? that's because the impact of the south pole sprayed so much material but it resurfaced in the southern hemisphere and a record of cratering had to start all over again. so there are many fewer craters there. here is part of the wall of the south pole crater. part of it's been destroyed over the subsequent hundreds of millions of years by the continuous rain of in the -- other interplanetary debris does come down on it in here we are looking again at the wall of the crater. this crater is 300 miles, actually more than 300 miles in diameter. look at that, this is really

remarkable and the mountainous center, 110 miles across and it soars to more than 2.5 times the height of mt. everest. your planet doesn't have anything like this topography. so i think that's really remarkable. to be perfectly honest i include this because one of my favorite use of vesta. here again this the strip would have craters, the snowman and i don't know if you can see it but there's a lot of structure in here showing that there is complex geology on this world and here you can see the mort densely cratered northern hemisphere, the more widely cratered southern hemisphere and part of the network of chasms running in between us so this one view captures a lot of what is so cool about vesta. so that is a quick overview of vesta but let me tell you about the mission overall. so we started for from many

people's favorite planet, earth. we launched in september 2007 and we started out with a big rocket. i just threw that into help keep you awake and on the way out to the asteroid belt we flew by mars in order to get a gravity boost for a gravity assist. you have probably heard of that. we flyby of mars and rob some of the to orbital energy around the sun in order to fling the spacecraft even farther and as a fully responsible environmentally responsible and otherwise institution nasa and jpl believe very much in conserving energy so in order to speed up the spacecraft mars had to slow down. mars actually orbits the sun more slowly now because of dawn's flyby than it did beforehand so if you're keeping track following the february 2009 flyby, mars moves

more slowly by a rate of one inch per 180 million years. in july of 2011 don got to vesta it went into orbit around it and we spent 14 months there studying this unique body and then we left orbit and spent two and a half years more traveling through the solar system to get to ceres. the spacecraft is in orbit around ceres now and it will stay there essentially forever. we make a comprehensive set of measurements. we take many pictures. your visual creatures and we are visual creatures. so we have taken a lot of pictures and i shown you some of those. we also keep pictures in stereo at different angles in order to make a topographical map which is how i was able to show you ban amazed i showed you earlier of ceres was the acrid topography. that's also how is able to tell

you the height of the mountain on vesta. we also mapped the elemental composition, that is what kind of atoms are there to remember your high school chemistry or physics with the periodic table of the elements, which items on the periodic table were of geological interest. we also mapped the middle of the composition, that is what kind of rockets are there. that's also how they know that the material is sol. that's a mineralogy. we also measured a gravity field because that tells us about interior structure of this body, how are they organized inside. for example one of the things they learned about vesta inhabits dense iron nickel course turned by mansel surrounded by crust. through the architecture of earth the core of vesta is currently molten like part of earth's core is that once again

that illustrates not just the asteroidal chunks of rock. in fact in most ways of vesta is more closely related to the rocky planets in the inner solar system than it is typical asteroid. it's like a mini-terrestrial planet. we also searched for a moon because these objects were certainly large enough they could have them so as we flew in towards it vesta we used our cameras to look for men's orbiting them. interestingly we didn't find any and we don't know what the scientific implication of that is however i should say we do now know that ceres has a moon the same as dawn. so this raises some interesting points. dawn daily spacecraft ever to orbit an asteroid in the main asteroid belt and also the first spacecraft to reach a dawn

planet and the only one to orbit it but it's also the only spacecraft ever in more than 58 years of space at exclamation -- exploration. when you think about it it's really surprising thing. go someplace, spend enough time linger in orbit make detailed conference of measurements and then go someplace else and do the same thing and yet it had never had been tried prior to the dawn mission. it's not that nobody ever thought about it. it happens in science fiction all the time. go to a planet, beat somebody or or -- beat somebody up or make out what with a man due to another planet into the same thing. it'd never been tried before so that raises the question, why is that? why have we never tried it? the reason is because until recently engineers were confronted with a problem and

trying to do something with beyond their technological capability. it was just too hard with the technology that's available. here at jpl a number of years ago i got together with some colleagues and we asked the question how can we travel around the sun more easily and less expensively in our answer to that was i ran propulsion. if you are like me and i know some of you are, the first time you've heard of it was in science fiction. the first time i heard of it was in a "star trek" episode and there was good to use made of it in star wars with the high-fiber used to fight the members of the rebel alliance. in the star wars universe as it stands for twin ion engine. this is one of the most futuristic advanced technologies that george lucas could think of. to me one of those things is so rewarding about working on projects like this is the

opportunity to turn that science fiction into science fact. here's an artist concept of dawn using its ion engine thrusting with its ion engine is a ghost in orbit around this dwarf planet's ceres. this a photograph of an ion operating in a vacuum chamber. the above facility a few hundred yards from here up the hill and it really does produce a cool blue glow like science fiction movies. the reason for that is the propellant xenon which is like helium or neon but heavier. one of the heavier gases happens to glow blue like neon its chemical cousin happens to glow orange as you know from neon signs. ion propulsion is 10 times the efficiency chemical propulsion. it's like having your car get 300 miles per gallon and that's

really the key to what allows us to undertake a uniquely ambitious mission. without it, don would not be difficult, it would be truly impossible to orbit to distant extraterrestrial destinations. it's interesting although the ion -- is very sufficient it will only slow a small amount of xenon through the internet of time. the thrust is also very gentle and in fact i'm going to do an ion propulsion experiment here for you and this is. safe. you can do this yourself at home. that is the ion engine pushes on the spacecraft as hard as the single piece of paper pushes on my hand. and yet, in the zero gravity frictionless condition of spaceflight gradually the effect starts to build up.

so it would take dawn two weeks at full throttle, two weeks to expand one gallon of propellant. so that's why the thrust is so gentle. in fact it would take four days to go from zero to 60 miles per hour. it doesn't exactly evoke the concept of a drag racer but if you thrust for a week or a month or a year or as dawn has for more than 5.5 years she is fantastically high velocity. this is what i want to call acceleration with patience. if you are patient, and i'm a very patient guy, it's a great way to explore the solar system. this is really the key to what is allowed us to undertake this mission which once again would be impossible without it, without the ion propulsion.

now, ion propulsion has been around in science fiction. once again because of the constraints of time i can give you the entire history of ion propulsion but i can tell you that it goes back quite a long ways. let's focus just on ceres which you can see in an artist concept. the first thing you notice it's dominated by these huge solar arrays. when we launched dawn in september of 2007 the solar array wing span was the largest for a any interplanetary spacecraft nasa had ever launched. why? we need a large area of solar cells to capture enough of that faint sunlight to produce electrical power to operate all the systems in a particular that ion engine is power-hungry. it's alive with electrical energy to ionize and accelerate. the solar rays wing tip to wing

tip are 65 feet. thus the distance from a pitcher's mound to home plate on a professional baseball field and in fact the full-size spacecraft, we are here in the room with the solar array here at the front basically of the screen this would reach almost all the way to the back. it would reach just about to the people sitting at the back of the room so those of you who are watching this on your laptop, that's a long way. it is really a remarkably large spacecraft. this is our main antenna which is 5 feet in diameter and this is how we communicate with the spacecraft from across the solar system. this is one of our ion engines here. here's a second ion engine and what do you know, there's a third ion engine so we do this star wars tie fighters when better. here's a photograph of the spacecraft one is being built

here on earth. this is one of the solar array wings. here's another one and these are folded up because you can't fit a 65-foot wide spacecraft and rockets on the spacecraft gets into space when a rocket takes it into space after the nose cone releases and separates in the rocket releases it, the solar rays open up and to me it's like a big interplanetary dragonfly taking flight. i think that's pretty neat. here are some of the sensors were used for studying. this is one of our ion ion engines in this one foot diameter metal grid here has 50,000 little holes in it through which we shoot the xenon ions at speeds up to 90000 miles per hour. that is why the xenon ions to part with such high philosophy to give a relatively large push

back on the spacecraft and that's what makes it so efficient. because i mentioned zenon a few times, xenon is stored in a tank inside the main spacecraft structure and i will show you a picture of xenon, this is actually a picture, actually it's like a million xenon, my. million and because of his greenish bluish color here he has kind of a cosmetic affection for xenon and gets a kick out of being included in my public presentation. when i go home and tell him that not only did a bunch of people here in the pasadena area see him but people watching at home on their laptops, he's going to think that's pretty cool. back to the spacecraft, here's the main spacecraft structure here. here is that five-foot diameter antenna. here is tom and this is one of the two solar array wings. each individual wing is the

width of a single tennis court. this is a very large spacecraft and i don't know about you but i think spacecraft are neat things to look at. people here in the rim can't look at some historic and fastening spacecraft. it is cool and they are neat to look at but to me it's what spacecraft do. i'd like to spend a moment talking about what spacecraft to has reason to go far from home. this of course is home and to the accuracy i can do powerpoint, this is low earth orbit. it is space but it's not very far away. in fact from here to san diego is comparable to the distance from the surface of earth to the lower -- and somewhat lower than that. this is where many spacecraft including a spatial one was flying international space station and many others were. space is not very far away so let's zoom how and now at a

deuce what is called geosynchronous orbit. geosynchronous orbit the as i know some of you know a satellite takes 24 hours to go around the earth. if we have a satellite going around earth in 24 hours and earth itself rotating in 24 hours than the satellite is always over the same point on earth or from the point of view of earth, the satellite asides in the same place as the sky. that's why it's a very convenient location for weather satellite, communication satellite or other satellites to want to have either a fixed view of the surface of earth or from our perspective here on earth having a fixed location in size. he you don't always have to be repositioning your antenna here on the ground. and almost 22,000. her miles away geosynchronous orbit is a long way away. that's far even compared to the

diameter of our planet. and in the more than 58 years of sending spacecraft or satellites into space the overwhelming majority have gone somewhere between low earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit. so now with that context that we move the same set up down here and i would introduce the moon and put them in where along at the same scale. the moon is really far away. the moon is 10 times the distance of geosynchronous orbit. the moon is 30 times the diameter of our planet. the moon is the quarter from million miles away. that's really far away. and you may have heard legends, stories told by our ancestors long ago in the late 1960s and early 1970s, 24 men traveled the distance from the earth to the moon but people don't do that today. people don't do that.

people go farther than the distance from here to san diego but not as far as the distance from here to san diego. one time in the distant past people did. so what that tells me is this picture is of the scale of the entire range of first-hand personal human experience throughout all of human history. it it's all contained in a picture of about size. don passed the orbit of the men the day after launch. we launched it on september 27, 2007 and on september 28 we have the moon in our rearview mirror. so now let's introduce the next scale here which is earth's orbit around the sun and is earth goes around the sun of course it carries the moon with it. let's bring the sun into this picture now. this is the sun and to the correct scale this is the orbit of the moon and this is the size

of the earth all on the same scale. the sun is large even compared to the orbit of the moon. the sun is large compared to the entire range of first-hand personal human experience throughout all of human history. he could easily be contained inside the sun. the sun is 865,000 miles in diameter. the sun is 109 times the diameter of the earth. from this, we can conclude the sun is big. [laughter] okay, so at this context now let me get rid of some of that stuff and put the sun down in the lower right corner. and bring the orbit of the earth in here magnified for a moment to show you that little bluish thing. that's the orbit of the moon. earth is probably much too small

to show up on this scale. so the orbit of the earth here in the orbit of the moon, dawn was far way from the sun in 2010. this year it's four times as far with as far with the sun, more than 1500 times as far from earth as the moon, well in excess of a million times farther away than the international space station. and that to me is what is really cool. ..