going to the vicinity, but landing on the surface. >> depending on how you get there and how long you stay. we got to take the steps to be able to get that in place. that's going to take time to get a reliable system in place. the landings we mentioned, woo ke land on the surface of mars. we know that's about the size of the mini cooper car. that's to get the challenges you

need to get this. >> again, if we talk about it with the breakthroughs. >> what we know now today, just expand it. we have life support on the station. we need to push it to where it's reliable and doesn't require so much maintenance. we need to look at the parks to do repair. we are doing that on board. i don't consider those big breakthroughs. i have to get comfortable. it's the maturity level that we use for the nation they positively have to work. that's the way i look at the challenges. >> the operation and the proving ground that charlie and bill had mentioned. we have to take systems and days and months and weeks. we need the time and the capability to do that.

>> we will talk about this. >> i was going to add that i think we can make sure that every piece of technology we work on, it's ex-tensible to mars. that's the judge of the technology that we are working on. can we use it in that vision. i don't want to do demonstrations just for demonstrations's sake, but be putting systems that we can use for mars. the example is the redirect mission and the spacecraft. i have given that as a design condition. that is the most basic architecture you can use to transport cargo to mars. we are looking at missions built on using that as a key piece. how do they fit into the mars mission. they look at everything they are doing. we do the next life support system for stations. it will be the next we planned to put into the lodge with the ghost of mars. we bring it out and we will go.

it's not a demonstration and let's test this to see how it works. let's take those to space and see how they work. >> what do you see as you work on problems. this can change, but right now as you look at it, what's the hardest problems sn radiation or something else sn. >> again, i think radiation exposure needs understanding. not much we can do with the background of radiation. we are approaching it several different ways and went to the institute of medicine and asked them to take the standards and the limits on astronauts. they said could we push those limits a little bit. is it acceptable to change the limits that we carry for mortality caused by space radiation to the crews. can we change and alter those and they gave us considerations to talk about. not only the technology, but the

requirements and is today's. >> the restrictions themselves might be too restrictive. >> astronauts might accept that risk. >> yes. we have now basic guidelines from the institute of medicine of what considerations go into the discussion. >> that solves a lot of problems. >> we have got the framework, but again the point is we are not looking at a single solution or breakthrough. the question is we are looking at all aspects of the problem to try to figure out a solution that gets us to where we want to go. >> let's talk about this for a moment. iss is a ground and on the one hand that sounds good. a lot of people say it's a drain on the budget and it's a problem. does iss give you more than it takes sn. >> i believe it does. it forces you to make decisions like the life support system. if we make that the support

system, i got a test system i could never test. we could test and what we learned is we thought we had the greatest removal system in the world. we get it on orbit and find out all this moves out of the bed and it goes into the valves and clogs everything up. we found out on the water system that the tubing is permeable to carbon dioxide that goes into the system and creates a nutrient-rich environment and had biofilm all over. we tested extensively underground and saw none of those problems. by going to the environment of pace and being in the closed loop environment with the c02 levels, that pushed the problems. i think station can give you that chance to really dry run and test the equipment on orbit. you don't use station as an ancillary or piece. you pick those that are necessary and you use the advantage of the station to do

that. some are better tested underground. you make a smart decision about what you want to do. the most cost-effective way to keep moving towards mars. >> if you didn't have the station, would you be looking to make a station or a capability like that sn. >> you would be spending resources to get a platform to operate in to get to the station also. don't forget the transportation and a means to get to space to demonstrate technologies. the station provides a research platform that is supplies that has crews and propulsion. what we found on the demonstrations is the focus on the money and the technology that tries to leverage what else is out there as opposed to spending money time and time again for operation into space. >> another piece on station is the one we will do with the crew members next year in 2015. we are very experienced looking out to six months. we don't see anything that looks problemat problematic, but even though it is only one data point that said hey, is there anything that

starts occurring beyond the six-month period. they are flowing many years and several year long missions. i think it's time we now look at it with the tools we got today to see if there is anything that changes over the six-month period to see if something continues to degrade in terms of human degradation. >> how important is it to simulate the mission and orbit that way. how close do you have to make it to a mars mission to be a value sn do you build in the communication delay and block the windows and don't get the look at earth. how do you design something like that sn. >> it's interesting. we have talked about that and we do things now and we do a lot of procedures now in the station that are autonomous where the crews do the operation without ground involvement. that was geared towards the environment with the time delay that doesn't allow the team to interact with the crew.

we talked about taking away the windows and communication time. it's interesting to say go to mars. that's an interesting dynamic already. how many marathons do you have to run before you are really ready to goa to a marathon or are you good enough running 10 or 18 miles and do the marathon when it comes time sn the trick is to not do so much. >> i don't know whose office it is, i didn't see the psychological issues as one of

the issues. that is more of that. the mars 500 experience. they tried to definitely into this. there big challenges. >> we have good studies again on the behavioral aspect. if you look at the crew, between the human and where you are, you have pictures from the rovers looking back at the earth and this is one star among many. that's a different psychological push. that's important too in the way we talk about this. we talk about moving humans into deep space. we talk about it and think about it, going and investigating and coming back. that really starts changing the

dima'amic. the investment in mars is so much, you don't top the do this as a one-time mission. you want to have the infrastructure and think about this as moving human presence off the earth into the solar system. >> i think they said it very well. building the capabilities that are extensive as we go to mars. >> i always think about history and being a history major. you think about magellan and captain cooke or whatever. somebody going to mars is going to have more contact with earth and the home port, if you will. >> do you use the parallels as you inform your decisions about how to handle this sn. >> i think again historically we ought to discuss the differences when you do terrestrial voyages, you still have oxygen to breathe and you still have water you can breathe. you can bring food with you. you can grow plants.

they started breaking the tight back to the planet. that's a different dimension. you have to carry with you or have assurances and the environment of mars to generate oxygen. can you get water out of the environment. you have to prove that some of those things and terrestrial exploration will be different. it wasn't quite the level of what we are doing here. we put a human in an environment that they cannot live on its own. we have to carry with it enough to keep the human alive and functioning. >> how much of that ability and by the way, if you have questions, feel free to come to the microphones. how much of the ability to live off the martian land do we have to prove before we put people on the surface sn. >> there has been a number of studies that show if you can

institute resource utilization to get your water and get your oxygen -- you can get water and fuel and air to breathe. that shows a lot of mass problems. how much do you have to take with you and how much can you rely on when you get there. >> if we are going rely on the system, you want it to be there ahead of time. you want it to be reliable and be able to store the oxygen that you know is there. that would be the most proven step to go do. we are taking the first step here. >> that are would be advanced missions and multiple landings. the autonomous vehicles that you create or prove it if not create a story. >> maybe we compared ahead of time that the other earlier explorers didn't have the capability. the environment is so harsh and so extreme. >> again, the ideas that when you put the vehicles there, they

ought to be generating resources to use when the mission follows. this constrained environment, we have to make sure everything we do is on to the next step. let's do a demonstration with oxygen out of the martian atmosphere. you might want to build enough to use to play forward. as you paint that picture and i think you have done a nice job pulling together in a way that provides a cohesive narrative and i hope that plays well as you try to sell the program. what's interesting about it, we all think of success with the deadline and if you don't set a date that is a failure. building the interstate system,

there is infrastructure and it doesn't have the same headline capability if you will, that the space had, but what it offers is sustainability. i guess it's a long way to say the story. how can we convey the story. people who are less dialled into what nasa is doing right now. or is that my job sn. >> that's your job. >> it's really all of our jobs. we need to look at this and describe it in a way that makes sense. look at this thing called veggie. it will grow plants in space. we brought a bunch of plants before. this is the first time we grew plants to eat. this is not for a science experiment to see how the plants will grow. food to augment the diet.

this is the beginning of starting to push us off of the earth into space to do things. it's a small thing, but it could be a big thing. >> if you can 3d print a pizza. >> it's roughage. >> i think you really did hit the nail on the head in terms of that. i get the excitement too. i want to get one mission and you can go. i don't know if we have the luxury to do that right now with budgets and forecast and where we are. we still can get there. we have to take successes in the steps along the way. whether it's growing plants, solar electric propulsion and better suits and a ride and better entry, descent and landing systems. you will have to paint it in the right context with the few power

point charts we can. that's the key. >> huh three tries. one of the tries that is five charts in one. you get the sense that if you talk about it long enough and you can be a reality and the fundamental issue of dollars and cents here. if you take that vision, that narrative and you jive it with what the money is right now, when do we get to mars? size somebody said last night, it will be 20 to 30 years and we have been saying it will be 20 to 30 years. if you do the math, i'm sure we will never get there. how do you reconcile that vision with what congress and the american people have put on the table for nasa sn. >> again the way i lay it out and talked to them about it last week, we cannot do it at the

same budget level we are at today. this is not going to work. and the current budgele the neat more than that. there is a modest increase and they need to show folks if we get the funding. here's the advances and the pieces and show how they are not just doing a demonstration. if we make that, maybe we can continue to break that paradigm and get that funding to move forward. they are interested in doing this activity. there is tremendous capability and prove on the station, but can we start extending or expanding into the domain and do the kinds of things with the industry. >> perhaps you see the mission

director and work going to mars that is feeding forward. along with the broader community, feeding into the missions. on our side, on the technology pieces that feed into it, that feed into it, that's the key. >> the cost of that is a larger

number. i don't get the current mission and the science director doesn't get the science mission. we are advancing the humans into the solar system. we have to figure out a way we don't get it. we look at a way that holestically we do this. the challenge is big enough and won't be solved by a mission director. it has to be the whole of the agency and the whole of the international community. >> getting to mars will be bigger than getting the nasa aas to work together. is that accurate sn. >> go ahead. say who you are, please. >> thanks. steve brodie from isu international space university.

they help you along and one thing was the infusion of the significant private resources from individuals with deep pockets. hopefully that will continue with the commercial prove. do you see any other -- through conversations you have already had or sense what's out there. a major contribution from either individuals and companies and whatever that will really get that principal and give you more than what you got now.

they just signed a space act agreement with the imagine and work down. they have been looking at engine work. so that has been the domain of the government and work on the new engine capabilities and some has been working on the private sector money. we did entering things that takes carbon dioxide from the removal system and combines it and comes off of the ex-elect roll sis of water and makes more as a waste gas. instead of buying that, we didn't care for the and generated by the device.

we will pay for the water generated on station. you don't get any pay. you will get paid for this period of time. are there other models and find things they want that might benefit us. don't assume it has to be the government. >> sisimilar story and we see interest in high power solo electric propulsion not only for a targo tug and future expiration or moving the asteroid, but we see an interest in the spacecraft. interest is good, but we think we can. laser conference and usa orbit. for other government agencies

and we won't speak about here. it has interest in the walk later. they can get the content up to the satellites. we think we can. >> what's the right mix on that sn can we get to mars leveraging private sector ingenuity sn it will never be a business case for it. to what extent do you have to say hey, we have a need sn to what extent are they coming to need sn. >> yes on some things. the replacement that we are dealing with. other areas, maybe not. perhaps it's to the agency of landing on mars. . >> i don't envision another space station. i see the private sector picking up the next picking up the next generation of space

station and lower orbit. they will do that to generate the commercial products they learn and got to experiment with. our space station today is a chance for them to experiment with what might be helpful in the pharmaceutical world and the drug world and biological world and materials world. they can see hey, there is something here that the microgravity environment gives me a different insight. we have been able to get transportation and it's not cost prohibitive. they are talking about building laboratories in space and maybe a single purpose laboratory is a research environment. that is creating now a private sector infrastructure we can use and don't have to replicate any of that. i'm hoping that you use the station to be the next piece. the station gives us a fighting chance to expose a broughture

community beyond aerospace to the advantages of doing research. >> having another years of station. is it enough time for you sn you are talking about the time frame for what you want to accomplish. years from now, you don't have the station and you will be wishing you had it there. >> you use what you can. >> i will use what i can, but it changed the environment for the commercial sector. 2020. we couldn't think at all. the focus was too short. the stability was not there. just that change, four more years in 20 to 24, that changed the perception of what space is and how they can use space and the fact that we are doing the cargo flights. they can go and get private services to take cargo up and we will have the crew. they are saying this is not a foreign environment. we are willing to invest.

when that going back to the question that was asked, when that tipping point changes, the private sector doesn't see this as something that was risky that only governments can do, they turn profit and lower the orbit and use resources in space, we start seeing a much broader base to build the kind of things we need. >> it was hard to regain confidence and the academic world too after all that happened at the end of the program. >> and they were slowly i think getting that back again. again, they are skeptical and it's the stability thing. as you talked about being sustainable and building plants and processes that can take the storms that come when we have the sequester and the program falls apart. we don't get a revector and start all over again. we have a plan that is making measurable progress and that's how we ultimately get to mars. >> we have a question over here.

>> thank you. my question has to do with the slide that has been shown twice with the proving ground missions. those are beyond the orbit and ascend 1 to 12 months. i am interested in the side of things. is there a plan in place for a proving ground mission of 6 to 12 months and if so, what does that plan entail sn. >> we are thinking about again in the lunar space around the vicinity around the moon, a crew capability and habitation. i don't see that as a module per se that they attended, but that would be the module we would use on a mars class mission. the idea is to take this system that we work on the space station and put it into a space station. there is a lot of interest in the community about doing lunar

surface activities and it is a base to do the activities. you can get view times of the south and north pole and do a lot of fellows and we have driven rovers in space station in california that look at how we deploy on the far side of the skmoon you can do that with the facility in deep space. the other thing if you think about it is prepositioning hardware around mars. you will launch the component with support system and it spends a year to get out there in a harsh environment and doesn't get activated for another year. it has to come up and operate immediately. sometimes the systems are not so good. this proving ground lets us go ahead and put a laboratory around the moon and where we visit every couple of months, it looks at how we shut that system down and how to reactivate it. it's being judged by how it helps to get ready for mars. >> if you had to get others in a

perfect world with unlimited money, would it help to land on the moon or would it be a detour that would suck resources and time sn. >> it doesn't have much of an atmosphere so it doesn't play out. the lunar landing would be chemical. i'm not sure. >> after as pekt anyway. >> been there, done that sn. >> not quite so much, but when charlie talks, somebody asked him about partial gravity. that's the advantage you get of the moon. by being on the surface of the moon, you get to see the human body. we live here with 1 g or 0 g. you can get to mars and they would like to get data there. we canceled the space station and we have small centrifuges on station where we can look at the cellular or the small plant level. that will give us an indication of is there a problem in this

intermediate gravity level. i don't think it's worth the expense of going to the moon to get that partial gravity condition. we can get that unless this research on the stagds points to us seeing a huge problem. learning to live on the surface and there is private partnerships that are also interested. there ways to partner to do that. >> if the international partners want to go to the surface of the moon, great. using lunar materials for this activity. we should be aware of the environment we are in. that helps us get in. >> should we figure out a way to partner with the chinese sn.

>> i think the chinese will be a key player. i can't imagine at some point we don't. how about you. if i offer any real answers. >> glen, question. >> my name is greg and i'm a former space schultz worker and now a little school science teacher in florida. my question is that constellation was set up by the bush administration to take us to the moon and mars and beyond. when the new administration came in, that was canceled. my greatest fear is now that you have an idea of what you want to do and have a road map set up, if we have a new administration come in in 2016 or 2017, we have

everything scratched again. you get to say a test flight at the end of this year and that will look at the heat shield performance. that's a big plus. the actual first dome for the expiration mission one. that manufactured down in new orleans. you can touch and see and it's not mission destination specific. what we are doing by going into space is deciding they top the do lunar activity.

it's focused towards mars. they try to make that point to the group. they create enough flexibility and we can change the vision a little bit and we don't lose the goal of where we are going.am critical. >> how much metal do you have to bend, how much congressionally linked jobs do you have to have before you you have enough inertia for a program that it sustains itself? what does it take? >> if i could answer that, i would have a ph.d.. >> there's your thesis right there. >> there's my thesis. >> i have one. i can't answer that either. >> why can't we do space. >> we also do ourselves a big disservice, right? because we kind of argue with ourselves about the perfect plan.

right? at some point that's not helping us. >> the enemy of the good. >> the problem is that the outside world sees these supposed smart people all arguing so there must be something that isn't right and then they go, well, we don't want to go do that. we have to make sure we don't get so caught up in trying to find the absolute perfect plan that meets everything that is -- that doesn't sustain itself. so can we all as a community get together and recognize that, hey, sustainability is important. >> right. question over here. >> hi. harry finger, going back to the origin of nasa and its predecessor, in fact, and also as head of the joint office of nasa and the atomic energy commission where we develop the nuclear thermal rocket propulsion and in 1970 we were ready to really move forward talking about human mars missions. i heard no word of the thermal

propulsion at all here and i haven't heard of it in anything. we really had it. president nixon killed that program and several ores in the space program. we were really ready to move forward with a mars mission at that time. we're talking now over 40 years later. what consideration has been given to nuclear thermal rocket propulsion that we already had developed then and could move on at high thrust. you mentioned nuclear electric but it's a low-thrust system that takes longer for mission. >> yeah. well, i think we're still living on the shoulders of giants and you're one of those giants because many of the technologies and capabilities we have were

either proven out including some of the work -- every time we come up with a new system entry/set landing, i ask, it was done in the '60s. yeah, here is the test data in the '60s. it's all been done. it's all been done. so nuclear thermal i agree with, it was really push forward in a significant way in the '70s. i think all -- most of the trade studies that we see to go to mars, including the ones that we have in space tech say that nuclear thermal is probably the best means we have to get there as quick as we can. and as quick as we can, you know, helps with the crew, helps with radiation. so it is a question of investment, priority and when do you invest and how much do you invest and when do you do it? we have modest investments right now in nuclear thermal. they're in bill's -- we kind of tried to make sure we're not overlapping, right? there's modest investments there to keep the system alive and when we can get the right budget and the right time, many would

argue that's the way to go. >> i think it was unfortunate calling it a puck she ma engine, though, wasn't that a bad idea? >> frankly, i just don't more in i would appreciate it. go ahead, sir. >> you are coming a long way and some of the answers i've seen with bill and you i've been very good they're music to my ears as far as working with the private sector, but there's still this

learning that needs to occur, maybe even not so much at nasa but over on the hill and the staffers and the people there as to the fact that the private sector not just commercial but the private sector is going to be maybe starting slow but they'll be going faster and faster and faster. there will be times where you get ahead of you. you can see some of these billionaires pool together and do a mars mission, it might go faster. wouldn't it be a good idea to have sort of an annual at least reswru in nasa and the leaders in the private sectors sit down and talk about and maybe coordinate these things because it's going to happen. it's going to get faster and faster and faster. you might land there second. >> i mean, that sounds like a reasonable thing we should think about -- >> hard to think of something wrong with that. >> again, back to the other discussions, we've got to make sure we're not just talking to ourselves all the time, right? to your point, we need to go look and maybe we need to talk about these things to a broader

community, expose them to what we can do and also have them tell us what they can do. private sector can clearly take more risk. they have significant investment funds. where would they like to go, what are they interested in? it might be nice to expand that human to mars workshop to include a broader community. >> if you get there second, you still need to make it look like a victory. right? >> all right. do this quickly. quick question, please. >> yes. excellent point from the gentlemen who brought up the alternative of nuclear thermal propulsion. i have a related question. why is there so much of a focus on solar electric propulsion? >> the focus on solar electric couple fold, right? one, the retrieval mission, the next mission to the proving ground where we can go operate in deep space, it has the capability and most efficient form of transportation out there in space. we think about transportation on

earth, we have tugs, we have barges, we have fast vehicles and slow. sep is extremely efficient. we think it's ready for the next step. we can leverage the interest in industry. it's good for multiple purposes. it's the next one we can push over the needle. it's not only us. look at the national research council, high priority go to high power sep. look at most of the trade studies, it enables exploration. >> a big piece is what mike was pulling on it. it has more applications to just to nasa and our mission. to get high power solar rays is important to the satellite industry. they would very much like to have those. they will be pushing this technology so it's us and them pushing. it's not just nasa pushing this for our own needs. the higher powered thrusters to replace motors on communication satellites, commercial industry is interested in that piece. this is a way we can leverage off of what commercial is already doing and moving forward

and then nuclear thermal propulsion area it's pretty much us along pushing. there isn't quite yet another private sector for that class of rocket. we need to keep investing in the technology and take the work that was done back in the '60s and take it to that next step. we know a lot more about control systems. computers are much more sophisticated. we can take some of that and move it forward at the right pace and then expose that. but i think our focus really is on along the lines of sustainability. this is something that isn't uniquely needed for us. it can be shared with a broader group. >> that's the key aspect of where we are today. this is again not trying to do it all ourselves and trying to be smart about it. and, you know, one of the challenges for nuclear thermal is the ability to store liquid hydro general. that's one of the k keys to it. we're working that now. we're trying to take the common pieces and threads and do it

today. >> i have several questions but we have a break coming up and people can be thinking about them. in relation to doing things in the past and then kind of putting them on the shelf, it reminds me of the hl-20. it was part of a program and it was put on the shelf and jim benson bought it and now mark is doing it again. i'm just wondering if inflatables is a trans-hab is a program. now it's back in another program developed by las vegas bigelow.

just several days ago, we had a giant thinker leave us, john hubolt and he was a great role model for me and i hope that some of the thoughts that i come up with can in some way mimic what he's been able to do. at the moon, we had a free return trajectory and we modified that once the sps was working we were always in a relatively close lunar earth orbit. and apollo 13 indicated that we could probably come back. i don't believe we have that capability in the trans-mars injection with a fly-by free return that is an acceptable solution nor do we have a rescue ability. why don't we do like many other

industries do instead of one, big large thing that could fail, why don't we have two small things like fighter airplanes they fly in formation, if one can't do the job, the other one can. sure you could do them but leave staging orbit five mile formation difference or ten mile and now -- wait a minute. don't be so stupid, why don't you put them together in the staging orbit and have them fly out, now you can jetson the one that fails and continue to do the job if you have two crew modules. on the subject of crew modules, can o' ryan aerobreak into mars' orbit. does it have the capability of doing that? when i look at what i need at mars, i need landers and landers

are capable of aerobraking and transporting people from one position to another to bringing back people. i don't know who is here from lockheed, but i have to ask the question, why do we need o' ryan in mars' orbit? i really don't believe that that's the case. i may have had another question. well, i guess we did have the idea of wanting to have a launch vehicle and then a larger habitat. once we have the larger habitat, we can put the people in the launch vehicle, why can't we put them into the large vehicle in a landing vehicle just as well as an o'ryan?

let me leave it at that. >> i suppose yes or no is not an option. >> first of all, on expandable, we'll look at that on space station with beam in 2015. we'll go look at expandable technology to see what advantages that gives to us. so we'll get a chance to see its reported to have better thermal conditions. also the larger volume allows you to put water in for shielding for radiation which would be a good thing. we'll get some real world experience with expandables on board station. so buzz's point, we're looking at we call it now evolvable and a modular architecture for mars. so it's along the lines of what buzz is talking about, maybe multiple habitation modules we may preposition the habitation module around mars someplace ahead of time than we do the rendezvous with that module and that's your return vehicle. you may preposition your return

vehicle at mars and then come back. so instead of looking at a single mission, we're looking at we call it evolvable where it can -- we build positions, we position pieces up front and call it modular. we're starting to look at those things. can we take advantage of these natural satellites around mars and use those as in the mars architecture and use a piece of those for what we're trying to go do? we're looking a lot at high lipt kal earthorbbit. we're starting to take a different approach towards mars than we did before. our classic missions were more apollo style in a way. we launched everything in a campaign within a year and sent the spacecraft that you saw in the view graphs towards mars. i think we're going to do that maybe over a period of time over a period of years and build more

of an evolvable piece. so we need all of us to start thinking maybe in a different way. so it's not a single mission but it really is this pioneering aspect or how do we move human presence in. once that mental change starts making and you're looking at it for the long term then you invest in some things that might take actually longer to go do but they may be more sustainable. we're looking at many of these things that buzz talked about. >> last word, mike? >> i think well said. if you look at we're getting to mars, we'll get there in a sustainable, affordable way and we know the technology is important and that's why we have the investments we have under way and again you'll see us continue to make thosemissions

and what they've revealed about the planet. this is 35 minutes. [ applause ]. >> thanks. thank you very much. can everyone hear me? thank you very much. i want to take you on a tour really kind of like the ice lan dick sagas of what the science discoveries from mars especially in the last 14 years of our program of exploration known as the mars exploration program which is implemented at our jet propulsion lab has given us. i would like to leave you a thought that the science discoveries that i hope to convince you are real, they come from a large community of scientists across universities, nasa centers and private industry are really the impetus for human exploration of this planet. and many of us have been working these missions all the way back

to viking, believe this. i hope i can give you that sense. i want to remind you of where we are. we are a long way today from mars, even though we're in a very close approach geometry right now. very good for telecommunication. it's really, really striking that mars is not our mother earth. it's a profoundly different world. it does not read our textbooks. in fact, the mode we're in today for mars scientifically is one of rapid massive discovery. our ideas are changing with a large community of scientists working with missions like curiosity, mars reconnaissance orb tor, the landscape is changing. we don't totally know what we have. that's important as we look forward to the era of human exploration. in fact, mars is an ever-changing frontier. we're just realizing the questions we have to ask to allow us as that situational

awareness. this is just a view we see of where we're going with curiosity over the next 100s of souls literally as we drive everyday, we see elements of the new mars. so le me paint that picture for you by reminding you that science organizes itself in different ways. for the last almost 20 years, we've looked at mars science thematically, through four primary themes. obviously we would like to know whether we're alone in this universe, this is a profound question that goes back farther than we can record in history. but getting at the question of life, active biological systems, were there ever there, could they be there? it took humanity a long time on earth to understand the past history on our planet. that was a joke. so to get at the question of life, we need to look through

the record books, recording elements of climate change, change of environment, the rock record, you know, the pages in stone that don't lie but are not always available to us. and through the preparation for having us be there to make these discoveries. we've organized our program through these themes following different threads, understanding the role of water, mars is a water planet, we know that now. understanding whether there's places that if they were here on earth could be inhabited by organisms. could they be preserved if they were there and they're not preserved because they can't be, what good does that do us? we need to parse those through our program. so what we've done for the last 14 years with the restructured program that some of us were so fortunate to work on was develop a robotic science exploration program. every step is driven by questions we've had, high high

pott these we're testing. new approaches, new measurements. the mars we've seen during the course of this program as you see all the way back to around 2,000 all the way to present and moving forward is about questions, measurements, the same way we people would attack programs in science. this is all about stem. it puts together the engineering, the science questions, the math and the technology to solve problems. we've been doing that remarkably effective. our batting average is literally 1,000. many teams would love to have it. we've done it very well since this program came about. it's a partnership with engineering. i want you to understand, we can't do all of this without engineers helping us do that. the fact that many of these missions survive today, way beyond design life, opportunity being a good example is really

testament to that. so let me explain the discoveries we've been making. this will be the movie version. many of my colleagues would like to tell it and would tell it much better than i with more time. let me try to do that. first, let me remind you the mars we see is rather foreboding. it's not really waiting for us. it's extremely cold. oxidizing, can't breathe the air, lost its magnetic field, don't understand why the surface deposits of dust that are very inconvenient, sub micron scale, not good for space suits or rovers or actuators or camera lenses, this is not the place you would go for your summer vacation. scientifically, though, it is. and we've learned that since the first voyages of the '60s and into the viking era that it really is impressive. are really, if you will, a

misnomer for what really mars has done. we have to look at the mars today and project back in time to a planet that really we think records in its record books some things that really actually help us understand our planet earth. so let's look at it. mars has an extremely rarefied atmosphere today. in fact, we've often talked about the temperature at our toes for a short guy like me in my head would go through a gradient of tens of degrees. the difficult to do here on mars. the kinds of surface liquid water we like here on earth necessary for the kind of microbial life that's rampant, can't exist today. water on the short term human life scale, days, weeks is unstable. but that could change. mars, in fact, does climate change really well. the record of water on mars in the minerals and the landscapes pretty much wherever we look is there. we've learned that. so if someone says we discouverd

water on mars, well rk, we kind knew that. thank you. what does that mean? how much was there? where did it go? how would that have affected the geological history the eternal evolution the climate and the looking for signs of life? many of us believe that the mars we see today at one point reflected a history where water was a prominent surface feature, lakes and sees if not oceans covered the lowlands. i should point out, the reason we can do this kind of study is because way back in the '90s we had the forethought to make measures of the very fine scale topography and character of the landscape so we can literally flood mars and play the tape back in time and ask what would it have been like? does that make sense? physics and chemistry. and that's what we've done. this also allows us of course to figure out where to land in an engineering sense. we flood mars and the lowlands and the northern plains often

covered with dust, large basins, the biggest impact site we've discovered in the solar system. these systems would be under water. some of the signs gee morphically that tell us this may have been the case. we're still looking for the shorelines and how that would be reflected in the shape of the planet, but nonetheless, we see that. and then there's the question of the record of life. and on earth, we sort of know or at least we think we do. and we look back in time to the earliest times of our planet, coming out of late/heavy bombardment. the planet became inhabitable by the single cell world into the world we know with primitive dna, a few billion years ago. that's recorded in the rock records, things got a little better in terms of the atmosphere and the more complicated organisms us came about. that's where we think we know very sim plisically on earth. the question is we see records

of these things recorded in the rock record on our planet, which is extremely dynamic. the question is, well, could this have happened on mars and could it have been preserved? this is a key question. if it happened and it's not preserved, we can't tell. how do we find snout how do we ask is the mars of today reflecting a history like this or a flatline history or even a history of extent life? what we did about 14 years ago after some setbacks in mars exploration in the late '90s, we restructured an entire program. the best women and men in the country together working with our team at jpl. first, we'll do the reconnaissance. where do you go? it's a big planet. 150 mile square kilometers, you can't go everywhere. let's understand where the action is from orbit. let's land where the actions is and move around as if we were there. sort of apollo without the

astronauts with reasonably smart robots and then eventually get to a point where we can do analysis and return stuff from mars to earth. by the way, while we were doing this we realized that there are meteorites delivered to us from mars rather favorably by mother nature. we can also study and put that together to understand the planet and we have been remarkably successful. since the orbitors known as odyssey and through two rovers like spirit and opportunities landers like phoenix and currently curiosity and of course moving on to maven which is on the way, we have rewritten the textbooks. the kids of 2,000, the young mill len yal stemmers would see a new mars in their textbooks 2014. things we didn't know about the magnetic field back then. but these are just some of the balls reflecting the data sets we produced. some of them have huge science value. the magnetic field.

the topography which is good enough to land things on as well as to follow the water. understanding of the minerals and context of dust. we have seen a diverse planet with complexity over time. let me just fill in the tape. over those years what we've been able to do through our missions is increase the resolution and the detail across the wavelengths of electro magnetic radiation to see the planet. we actually have a mini mars observing system in place now on the surface in orbit to study this world, this fourth planet. and some of them tell us about the character of what the surface is like compositionally. others tell us the character on the scale we would walk on. by the way, when we first put together the road map to have cameras that could see things the size of beach balls on the planet, many colleagues said, we don't need that. why would one want to see those things? engineers kind of did want it, i

must add. but lot of scientists said let's do other things. but i can say now with some confidence that the team that were able to build these amazing instruments for orbit, the success of those have allowed us to watch ourselves drive on the planet and make choices strategically that help us with where we are. what did we learn from this? we started to see exposures at the scale we can imagine ourselves exploring. relationships between rock layers that tell us of the history of water and wind evolved on the surface and even the detail to pick places to go. and so we went from an era of first landing viking -- this is viking ii in september of '76. there's the flag, of course, color balanced though mars atmosphere is not quite so blue. amazing site, the probability of landing safely in this bolder field was about 40 to 50%. we didn't know it was a bolder field and so we landed any way. pretty heroic.

we landed then with new delivery systems with the air bag assisted pathfinder, moving on to the era of the rovers which basically gave our program the vision at the surface to ask the tough questions that begot curiosity where we are today 606 days into our exploration. but the surface missions starting with the first lander on another planet from viking have painted a continuously changing picture. viking, cold, sterile desert, nothing would survive that would be related to modern biology. transitions into the rock world mars that we saw with pathfinder. into the history of water world. we saw and still see with the mars exploration rover such as opportunity, 36-plus kilometers and driving into this world that we're now probing with new instruments with curiosity. so, what have we learned? a lot. and we still have not assembled the jigsaw puzzle. mars has lots of interesting

variations and composition. dust storms, active surface change on hourly scales, dust avalanch avalanches. explosive faces. impact craters that expose the surface like natural drill rigs. all this together with areas where we've actually seen the water. there's a little trench from our phoenix scout mission in 2078. we have seen sub surface layering with radars that have been partnered with italy to show us the way that climate record on mars is put together. all this paints a picture for a blan et that is really profoundly interesting, alluring and compelling to get ourselves there. but, wait, there's still -- there's still problems. first, on our nice convenient earth we have mother nature's natural force field with our great magnetic field protecting

fr us from all that nasty stuff. mars does not obviously have bumps on it, it has relic magnetic signatures. magnetic electron experiment. and we think then that mars inside versus earth is very different. we're a dynamic planet exchanging energy from the inside/out with dynamically rotating core. producing all this cool stuff, encompasses work, all this. mars, that story changed. maybe it wasn't quite big enough to retain the con vektive energy to do that. we're still working on that. insight will contribute to understanding. this picture, as it launches in 2016. but again, a different world. we also know that there's a diversity of kind of places on mars. the things you see here in terms of all these strange names of mineral phases and stuff i won't go through them ad nauseam with

you, but every one of them has a baring on how you record the history of water and sediments that could preserve potentially the history of life. if it is preserved as organic chemicals, we've seen all these things since we began -- reagan our program in 2000. all this gives us, if you will, the impetus to want to be there, to want to touch the rocks that contain carbon phase molecules. to be able to go to the place with chlorides that might reserve records of life. why not on mars? these become questions for biologists not geologists like myself. we've been able to organize the landscapes of mars in time. all the way to the present through the different landscapes we've measured from orbit with these powerf fuful reconnaissan

steps. we put it in there in 2,000 against many colleagues saying do you really want that to be able to give us a vision to do this. hutten and smith put together in the 19th century for earth and we've done that. we have we have fosle river deltas on mars. places that reflect the layering history of the role of water and wind working together and we've seen that mars is pummelled by the stuff of space, our atmosphere shields us but mars isn't and every one of these blemishes now on the order of 250, 300 of them tell us basically about the shallow interior of the planet as it is affected by the exogenic world

of space. you all remember february 2013 and other events like that. this is common. all the meteor showers, well on mars, they're not showers. they produce impact events. other events craters the size of football stadiums and small cities and they expose the shallow sub surface. what you see on the surface is not always what ewe want to see when you measure things on mars about some of these very tough questions we're asking. little far there. we're also -- we've also discovered that mars has gone through major changes in the way it's geology is reflected in the rocks from a time when it was wetter. this is a paper by banfield and others. when it was wetter and the kinds of volcanos erupted that were explosives, st. helens.

to the dhiend are today oozing lava. this is a very important step. we have also seen with our mars exploration rovers an amazing history of water in the rocks at two different sites, thousands of kilometers apart. we renamed things, blueberries and newberries. and then we transitions. when we reagan this program in 2001, we looked at the idea of putting the best instrumentation with the most powerful vantage point we could get on the surface, we did that through a mission known as the mars science laboratory today with the rover called curiosity and this behee mouth the size of a mini cooper or vw bus carries with it 14 different experiments including ones that deal with weather and radiation, for decent images, for chemistry in different ways and she's been a beauty. i'll give you a brief synopsis

now. we've mae made more measurements that this slide shows. nearly almost 500 gigabytes of data has been released. everything ranging from our own little self portrait which is an interesting piece of engineering to use an arm and photograph a w job by curiosity to the measurementeds we've made by not actually touching rocks. a partnership with france. to the instrument known as sam that can actually measure things on mars as good as the labs that measured the rocks that buzz brought back from the moon, we can now do that on mars without bringing them home. talk about engineering, vision, science can now measure parts per billion at the level of detection where we can actually see that we contaminated aspect of our experiment with florida air we can do that on mars. and so, let me just remind you again, we're a long way from home. you know, at closest approach, 35, 36 million miles once every 15 years, but earth and moon are

small dots relative to this view from curiosity. so, this mobile laboratory, even though she sometimes moves at the pace of a giant tortuous is an amazing feat. she is seeing things to me as a geologist are spectacular. these conglomerated rocks with bits of rocks made of other rocks are what we expect to see when streams and rivers leave deposit its that are baked into stone. this is gio one. that's good. water flowed. shallow water. we now know what it was made of. we've drilled mars. these drill holes are the size of a dime, but we have drilled the surface. measured down centimeters, collected it and made measurements inside our belly with this integrated mass speck trom ter gas system allot of words for a really cool set of hardware developed at goddard and france that allows us to

measure exactly what made the stuff you see here. you can see the surface materials we exkoe vated are not the classic brown red or red color of mars that is almost brown. what we discovered on mars in 06 days of work, there are environments that would be habitable in they were on earth. the buildup of the kind of chemistry we know and love, this is the classic el mental stuff we need for life to do its thing. there was probably water there. the minerals and oxidation suggest there was energy. some use under the ocean today. so we have found habitability works on mars. the question is what does it preserve about what might have been there? that's the challenge we face with curiosity and beyond. one of the other things we did, not even imagined when we launched the mission. we took that rover with its mass speck trom ter and we were able to use it not only to measure

what stuff is made of and how it got there but by using clever chemistry, our team at cal tech and at goddard were measure the age of the rocks. this was a huge goal for mars as early as 2,000 we now did it on mars as a side bar to what we were trying to do. we also measured the surface exposure age. this is really important. while the rocks are really old, older than any rock on earth, like the lunar rocks, they've only been exposed for a few tens of millions of years. what we see in those rocks exposed is very important because we now know from new lab work that's been done around our community on this mission that the space radiation, that nasty stuff that we were talking about earlier today destroyed organic molecul molecules. you won't know you found the stuff you're looking for. so we have to be more creative and clever. we think we understand that the materials that are buried deeper

relative to these little hills are protected from space radiation relative to those that are constantly being skaf anged by the wind. so if you're trying to find organic molecules, you can't look out on the nice smooth parking lot. they'll be baked by radiation for tens of millions of years. you have to go into places where they're exposed or more protected. this will be important for human explorers to understand that when we start exploring ourselves. so the mars we see today is kind of like the bad lands of the american southwest or mongolia, kazakhstan, really rather telling layered rocks, we love them. this is mt. sharp, this is an artist rendering of the what the ancient mars could have been like. the measurements we made of these isotopes of key elements suggest that we can possibly understand the earlier atmosphere of mars to be a window into whether it could

have inhabitable. is there a record of past life? we've done that. the mars we see, this is it, you know, doesn't look like beach front terrain today is really a challenging terrain. we've seen wheel wear on our rovers. we've driven across it for more than 6 kilometers. we know it was habitable. that's the record in the rocks. what we don't know is how long that stage of habitability existed. our stage team the trying to understand that. was it a long period? was it a short blip? did it cycle? carl sagan talked in much better language than i about the cycling nature of climate on mars. was an attempted humor at lunchtime. forgive me, not funny. but in any event, we don't know. we have more measurements to make. that's why the robotic program, the science push for human exploration to open our window, our eyes to the windows are so important. now, i have to show one bit of

humor. we found some interesting rocks on mars that one of our scientists founds looks a lot like mummified seals you see in the an arctic. you're imagination can take you wherever you want. i found my initials many times so i know i've been there. some people think they've seen walmart. i'll leave that to others. but more importantly, we have been pursuing this line of reasoning, we have found the water. water-altered rocks, ice, we have discovered that there are habitable zones on mars. certainly on gale crater from curiosity. obviously with opportunity and evidence in gusef crater. we're still looking for this one. connecting these things up to there and maybe it will take this, maybe we'll get so far and then it will take the humans, but this record of potential biology, particularly the record of past life which we think will be a better hypothesis to test

scientifically is really important. so, we've made great progress. the real question then is how can we use this bow wave of science, this era of almost renaissance-like discoveries with a large science community, literally more than 1,000 scientists across universities and other institutions are working mars now. we've built up that community internationally. how can we use that to ensure the sustainment of this questioning regime to question into human exploration? so i leave you in the next five minutes with my final thoughts. first, unfortunately it's not easy. we've all heard mars is hard spoken in different languages. and whatever. but, you know, we really want to see whether there's any record of the kinds of carbon that would record the signature of past life in the chemistry and understand where that stuff goes and how that links to modern life. the diagram, by one of our best and brightest young scientists kind of shows all the action.

we don't know how things are escaping from mars. we haven't understood how the surface water percolates in gullies. we don't yet know if there are brian fwllows. the questions raised here by how all this stuff cycles, whether it's min earlized, we have to get at that if we're going to be serious and maybe it will take human exploration to tie that together. we have seen active features, some colleagues believe these c floes, recurring slope linear, sliding down the slopes of crater walls may be floes of brine. these have been found in multiple sites. could there be reservoirs of these low-melting point fluids? we don't know. maven, a lot of people ask, another orbiter, don't we need

another rover? we would love a rover. how has mars lost its atmosphere? it's done that. in earth our atmosphere recycled itself, became habitable. mars maven, lockheed martin, instruments from all over the world is going to address that question and, after it does that, and it asks primarily how an atmosphere that is today rather unbreathable co2, nice for plants but not so much us. how it has evolved in time by reading the record of what's happened today in situ through various experiments, mass spe o spectometer. the mission was selected on the basis of its science and engineering. that's how we do things in science. kind of like the stem olympics. send a mission to mars.

if you're real good, you get a lot of -- whatever the judges score now. it's good stuff. taking a little selfie. m maven will do that. critical ratio that tells you about escape rates for mars is different. viking with very good measurements. this is what we would thought we would see from meteorites and this is what we got from one data point from curiosity. we want to fill in how it would go from there to there. these are big changes. we need to get at that. maven will do that. we can actually use it as a telecommunication orbichlt ter, allowing us to talk to rovers and other things on the surface. big final thing i want to leave

you with is this is what we're up against on mars. 10,000 feet of layered rocks. taken us 600 days to get halfway into this zone here. we want to get up into there by the end of the curiosity mission. it's a long drive through rough terrain, you know. some of our best astronauts will tell me they could probably walk it in a day. it's taken 600. different economies of scale and efficiency. so i leave you with a couple of -- i hate to use these dig diagr diagrams. i do love them. science-driven program asking questions like curiosity, what the directorate does. it is, in fact, humans to mars, this meeting and this would be a

kind of goal that would be open to serendipty by having human people -- obviously human people. women and men in contact with the science. not light minutes away. it will be different than apollo. this is what we're doing with the space station and the next steps beyond that. we put this together all moving toward this goal. this is the key first step together with that. you've heard that today. so, how will we explore with people? final point is there's lots of opportunities. telescience that we've already used in the ocean. artist rendering of how robots on the surface with people, obviously, large -- they're all good. choosing one is not so important now. it's more important to get the

people there with the questions to ask. this partnership that we start to bring the human exploration into space, people bring skills that robots, however we build them, how long whoa take, will never catch up to. we will always be able to adapt. sometimes nonlinearly, different than our robotic warriors. that's good. it's the partnership that matters. we're here and here. biology, geology, climatology. this is a big step. this step is going to beget that. two thoughts. science has given us the ammunition to know what we want to ask when we go. the robotic program will

continue through our mars 20 rover and missions in the 20s to open the door to what we need when we get ourselves there. that will change everything, folks. this will be like the columbus moment. to ask questions that we can't ask today with our brilliant robotic program. i don't think you've seen anything yet. mars has never disappointed. it's a discovery engine. let's keep going. thank you. [ applause ] i'm told i have limited time for a question. i'm one guy representing a science community of thousands. don't pummel me with too much. >> one question. >> go ahead. >> good to review. you have mentioned some results on water, you have talked so much about organics, the next step before looking for life.

we have a mission that searches for organics, possibly signs of life with a drill. what is the plan in the u.s. and what is the next mission that you think we need before we go with humans? >> bernard, thank you. jim green will be talking about the whole program architecture this afternoon. he is the plantry division directorment i'm just a mars science geek. good question. that mission is the leap to the subsurface we've all been waiting for ever since i was on viking as an intern. to get below the depth where the ionizing radiation will modify the chemistry or at least we think that depth and by sampling that stuff with a very powerful set of instruments, pastel payload in germany, we will look for organics for the first time directly in the context of the samples. exo mar sincere a key step beyond everything i showed you.

the discovery potential of exo mars in 18, the mission with russia and other partners is critical as will be the mars 20 rover. it's valid. we're not done. robotic programs have to keep going beyond maven and insight, heat flow background on mars. there's the exo mars mission on 16. there's our mars 20 rover and then there's the 20s open to all the young stem people here. excellent point. we're thrilled to have the partnership we have with this next generation. subsurface. so we want to go, you know --

s important to the space program. this is also a discussion on mars exploration. it's an hour. >> the key note and first panel this morning was enlightening to me. we're going to leverage and continue with that discussion. the way i wanted to run this panel is i'm going to give a bio on each one of the panelists and let them go through discussions

and charts that they have. then we really are very willing to answer any questions they have. please be thinking of questions you have as we're starting through this. the first thing i should say is one of the panelists, or actually the moderator, didn't make it for a couple of reasons. one was sick and the other wasn't. randy sweet was kind enough to jump in for us today. james brown, sitting to my left, is executive director of the stem education coalition. this is an alliance of more than 500 business, professional and educational organizations and it works to raise awareness in congress, the administration and other organizations about the critical role that stem education plays in enabling the u.s. to remain the economicoloi.

i'm happy to see stem is getting more and more attention as we go on. prior to joining the coalition, james was an assistant director for advocacy of the american chemical society, nuclear engineer. previously worked as a legislative aid for doc hastings of washington, director of policy and development at the consumer energy council of america and began his career with newport news ship building, working on aircraft carrier construction. thanks. i might have flown off a couple of those carriers you worked on. probably not. >> good chance. >> i probably threw off the ones that were there before you were. masters from penn state, both in nuclear engineering, and holds an mba from george washington university. with that, james -- >> thank you.

thank you, kent. so it's a pleasure to be here and to speak to an audience like this. it's also relatively tough to speak to an audience about space issues when you have so many distinguished people like buzz aldrin and others in the audience. it's definitely an honor. i'm always surprised by the breadth of stem education and different things that perfect vad our society. i like to think about one stat that summarizes our particular challenge quite well. a poll was done in 2011 by the harris group that polled parents about issues relating to stem education and they found that roughly 93% of parents considered stem should be a priority within the school system. but that only about 49% thought it was a challenge -- i mean was a priority in the school system. that is a challenge, if you

really think about it. everybody recognizes the importance of the stem projects, whether it's to space, technology or future of computing or any other technological or scientific endeavor we know from our history will lead to the future of the country. but we have yet to make the kinds of changes in our education system to really prioritize those subjects. certainly if we're going to get to mars we need to draw from every part of our talent spectrum to get there. it's going to take smart engineers, smart astronauts. it's going to take people who can build the equipment that will get us there. it's going to take welders, people of every background to be able to do that. but the other poll i'm quite fond of -- this is a poll from several years ago. 68% of parents think their kids are in the top third of their class. if you think about that, that sort of illustrates the first

statistic quite well. how to build a competitive workforce that can support the kinds of grand national missions like going to another planet, i think about three things. one is we need to get our federal house in order. as we all know, we're dealing with the political gridlock of perhaps a century or more. and that is going to have a high water mark. and i hope it will recede. it will get to working on challenges like improving our education system at a national level. and so the united states invests about $3 billion in stem education programs, scattered across some 250 programs. that, in itself, is a challenge. i know people in the nasa family are dealing with issues of efficiency and trying to get the most out of federal investments. we have to make sure those investments are well spent and they're making the kinds of big bets towards improving education. the other thing the states are

dealing with what are called the common core standards in math and science. that is an interesting opportunity for us to improve math and science education across the board. of those standards developed by the states. there are lots of collaborations between states and one another. and it would be nice if, when my daughter, who is 4 1/2, is in the seventh grade and we decided to move from the district of columbia to the state of washington or somewhere else that we wouldn't have to repeat algebra. that's another positive thing that's moving in the right direction. if you think about the workforce that underlies the stem fields it's a little known fact that roughly 50% of that workforce is not going to require a four-year degree to enter that workforce. when you think about stem education, at least in the minds of policy makers in this town, most of the time they're thinking about the rocket scientists. they're thinking about people who are going to study in graduate school and who are going to measure their productivity by things like

patents and intellectual property and other things. half the jobs right now that are available in the stem fields don't require a four-year degree. technicians, auto mechanics and everybody uses software these days. even if you're going to work at the most basic level in the stem field, building something in an advanced facility you're going to need a background. those are three important trends that underlie the challenges of getting to mars, of improving our health care, of dealing with every other major challenge our country faces. >> great. thank you. you know, i already have a question for you, james. it makes a lot of sense, it's important to improve our education facilities, quality of education. what about the other side of how do you incentivize these children to want to go into the stem fields? is that a big piece of it as well? >> you ask the 93% of parents if it's a priority, most of them --

can we go to the next slide? so, one of the stats that you'll see is that most of the parents get that stem is where the jobs are. and i think if you look at the pipeline of students going into those fields, what you'll find is the parents see the connection between getting a good stem education and jobs, but there are lots of parts of our society that are being left out of this. if you look at, for example, the stem workforce, african-americans are 11% of the population, but only 3% of the stem workforce. and the same is true for hispanics. it's also true for certain fields for women. that's one of the challenges in terms of how do we expand that pipeline and how do we really get at that challenge? it's not just good policies and education, so they have good tests and you have good curriculum and well-trained teachers. the kids can see the examples of science and technology in

society if they have mentors in their families, if they have good role models. and i think you're starting to see that emerge in the computing fields. look at the popularity of the cosmo series. that is really getting attention. it's not often that you have a face like his in the big face of technology and enterprise. >> thank you. the next panelist is julie van kleek, aero jet rocketdime. technology development and product development programs. miss van kleek joined aero jet in 1981 and was appointed to her position in 2013. space and launch business unit and the space program's organization for aero jet. from 2004 to 2005, she was executive director for atlas

programs. from 2001 to 2004, she served as executive director space systems business development responsible for strategic direction, investments and growth of aero jet space propulsion business. from mid 1999 to october 2001, she managed a multinational project during which she interfaced extensively in affiliated government agencies. miss van kleek earned her bachelor of science degree from the university of california and has extensive hands-on experience in rocket research and development, liquid rocket, system design, development and testing. gosh, there's a lot of great stuff here. she also is a chairperson of the european space propulsion board of directors. so, anyway, i guess to summarize

this, and in julie's own words, she truly is a rocket scientist. so, julie? >> i used to be. i'm going to go over here. can i have the first slide, please? i think that's the last slide. isn't it? oh, well. what i'm going to talk about is actually the -- you know, going to mars and how that affects u.s. competitiveness. and i'm going to do that from the standpoint of being a rocket company. as i start this out, let me talk about what competitiveness is. i'm sure everybody has a different idea of what that means, if you look at definitions. it's the ability to sell things into a market relative to others. and if you think about the u.s., i would say that, you know, we're very competitive. many people would say we're very competitive worldwide. i think a lot of that has been

because we've been technical leaders, you know, and pushed the envelope in a number of things, which is a part of, you know, the american spirit. you know, as you get more of an international marketplace, you know, that's still very important. but the other way for competitiveness is how do you maintain, you know, being the best value or cost effective? and that, you know, speaking from being a rocket scientist, we've always pushed the envelope, but only in the last, you know, ten years has being more cost competitive really come into, you know, our vernacular. we were always like can you really do it? now space is becoming everybody's life. it's becoming more of an international commercial marketplace. so now it's how do we become competitive? so you look at this and you say, okay, humans to mars. does that have an affect on american competitiveness? and i would say it absolutely does. you know, if i look at what makes you competitive, what makes, you know, many of our

aerospace companies competitive, it's do we have the technology? are we going to, you know, push the envelope and sell those things and provide those things that no one else has? then do we have products that meet certain needs? and then do we have the workforce that can keep all that going and keep, you know, making ourselves more competitive, and keeping this a sustainable business? so i would say with, you know, trying to get to mars, we're going to attack every single one of those things. and i think it's -- you know, could bring great value to this country. next slide, please? you've seen this slide before. you saw it earlier. i think both mr. bolden as well as the past panel used it. and if you look at it, it's showing -- charting a course to mars. and some people say we're not going to mars until 2030. i would say we're going to be going to -- we're building the infrastructure, the workforce, the products to take us to mars and that will be ongoing for the next 15 to 20 years.

and it's necessary because this is a very difficult thing to do, but along the way, we're going to be driving competitiveness into the people and the companies within this country. and, likely, worldwide. you know, if you look at -- reflect on this slide, we're going to see some of the basic building blocks for this, the s.i.s. and orion system. the most powerful rocket ever built. orion will be a very special crew capsule that will be able to do many kinds of missions. in developing this infrastructure we've had to face technological challenges we haven't had to do before. in that, we will expand capabilities of our workforce. once we have these products, you know, we've moved from just pushing the state of the art. now we have products to sell to other applications. talking about modularity and using things. if you look at where we're at in

this country, we're not where we were during apollo, just trying to achieve a very specific goal. here, we're looking at sustainability. here, we're dealing with constrained budgets and with those things we drive the need to look at the problem differently. we can't just spend money to go achieve a singular goal. we live in a budget-constrained environment. every investment we make, furthering science, furthering technology is very important. we want to be doing that in a way that leaves us with products that can be used elsewhere, making good on that investment. and that's the thing that this budget constraint environment is doing, is putting us all in that environment of having to think about how do i -- how do we create architectures, create products? not just achieve a very difficult thing but also can be useful in other ways. to me, that underscores the definition of being competitive. next slide, please.

okay. mars is hard. okay. mars is -- you've heard, you know, many of the different challenges. it's pretty exciting when you think about him trying to attack all those different things, you know, with the amount of resources he has been allocated. it also gives you a perspective of what we're facing to do this. as we, you know, attack each of those different technologies in the areas of, you know, transportation and for us that means propulsion. rocket company. but light support and the landing. we're going to overcome a number of difficult things, create new technologies and see those things result in other products we can't even imagine today. we think of the many things that came out of the apollo program and space program to date. we see the cameras in our cell phones, clean water systems that are being used in mexico. you know, attacking those many different technological hurdles will result in things that will

benefit, you know, not just the mars program, but mankind and companies, you know, across the world. next slide, please. and with that, you know, this will enhance the competitiveness of companies within the u.s., as i think we were going through, putting together for this panel every dollar invested in human space flight has returned $8 to the u.s. economy. i would imagine we would see a similar type of return. you know, not just going to mars but on our journey to mars, as we move through, you know, getting beyond earth alliance and on to mars in the 2030s. next slide, please. and then i bring it to home. i work for a rocket company. we heard a little bit about solar electric propulsion. we had some questions about that, you know, with the last panel. and, you know, to me this is a product that, you know, solar electric propulsion, the reason it's important, it's much, much

more efficient, if you can use it for a certain application, much more efficient than commercial. that means you carry much less propellant. if you look at where you're at today, you're using solar electric propulsion in some of our -- you know, in our satellites, both government satellites as well as commercial. the commercial world has really jumped on board. you see a number of different satellite architectures being upgraded to go partial or all electric. that's because the economics are good. you know, the place of solar electric propulsion in the pursuit of mars is to develop the higher power systems and to develop those infrastructures such as solar electric tugs that were in the last panel we talked about barges. think about barges in space, to actually move things around. these will be far more cost effective than doing this with chemical propulsion. now you don't have to lift all that propellant off the earth.

you lift a much smaller portion of that. you look at the types of systems that are relevant to our, you know, pursuit of mars, we'll be driving the power up, the capability of solar rays, propulsion systems and power systems and what we'll see is those migrate into the commercial satellite world in the next generation or the generation after that in their buses. and so truly enhancing, by developing this, we'll enhance the competitiveness, you know, the propulsion industry and the commercial satellite industry, in general. so, you know, i just tried to give you a snapshot of some of the key things that i think can come from this. i've tried to bring it home to what it means to a particular company like ours in propulsion. and i look at all the things that we're going to see today. i look and say we're finally making science fiction real and i really am thankful to be part

of it. thank you. >> thank you, julie. so the panelist on the end here is randy sweet. in his defense, until about seven minutes ago, he didn't even know he was on this panel. so, he was kind enough to jump in when i heard randy was in the area, i thought, randy will be great. i've had the benefit of getting to work with him. randy has been with lockheed martin over 30 years, director of their civil space and business development. he has a heritage back in the shuttle program. matter of fact, he was an orbital test conductor. when the shuttle is being processed and getting ready to fly, when the astronauts climb in the vehicle, they are working with otc, orbital test conductor, if you will. randy, with that, the floor is yours. >> thanks, kent. obviously, i don't have any prepared remarks.

but i would like to talk a little about my perspective of -- first, i'll talk about stem here a little bit. we obviously, on the orion program, we do a lot of work in the area of stem, both domestically and internationally. i have to say we had an international conference ten years ago with james cameron was one of the keynote speakers and one of the things he told us, and we've kind of built upon this, is you guys should take a look at the entertainment industry and look at what they do. and even use the word avatar. this was way back before the movie "avatar." basically what we find in stem -- we're missing this from the shuttle days. kent, you know this well. we would send crews out to events, flight crews out. and the students would ask lots of questions about what it's like to fly and what it feels

like and some of those things. that's certainly a motivator for stem, for students. the other one is, you know, near-term successes and events. we're starting to make a lot of progress on orion. we have the flight test coming up. we have lots of events where we'll test a heat shield or transport something and it's amazing. social media just blows up. there's a lot of interest out there when we talk about mars. it's just incredible. but in a lot of cases, conferences like this, we're essentially talking to a fairly small community within ourselves. so it's really good that we have organizations like explore mars that are broadcasting this. but i think as we get closer to flying, that we have more engagement from pop culture and the entertainment industry. we do a lot of work with them. you'll be seeing more of that. once we get crews assigned and we start getting crews more

involved in events, i think those are things that we can do to really kind of engage the stem community. we have a program we call the exploration design challenge coming up on orion where we're flying a radiation test sample. we've had a contest. i can't remember the numbers but over 100,000 students have applied. this is open internationally. we've gotten 80 countries involved. we'll be announcing the finalist at the engineering and science festival coming up here. it's gotten a lot of attention. there's a lot of interest out there. so, i think we just need to keep doing that. >> thank you so much. and so folks that have questions, please start making your way to the mikes. to maybe put this in perspective, when guys like neil armstrong and buzz aldrin

stepped on the moon, it had a phenomenal impact globally. a result of that is the huge numbers in aerospace engineering technical fields today. as a kid, i was very incentivized by that. as a result where we are today, i think, all of our companies, the average age of a worker is in the 50s. so what we've seen is that huge generation that was inspired is moving through. and so in the next ten years there will be a large exxoexodue given a lot of responsibility. none of the old timers will be left. there's a big gap in experience. and so do we think something like going to mars, putting

humans on mars can kind of reset that kind of excitement? i don't know. what do you think, james? >> i, for one, am a huge proponent of doing these kind of big things. is there anything you can propose that would be bigger in science and technology than to put a person on mars and bring them back? i would ask this question slightly differently. i would say i'm sure in 1956 there were people sitting around saying, why on earth are we wasting our time about going to the moon? what's in it for us? what's the commercial value of that? what are the -- why will anybody care? but i don't think anybody looks back on that and doesn't think it was, number one, a good investment of federal dollars and of time and people and energy. and i think we would look back on going to mars the same way. because i think it's such a uniting force to try to do

something enormous like that. and i also think the interesting dimension to that debate about space exploration now is that you have a viable commercial sector as well. so, you know, you can look at it as an inspiration for kids, you can also look at it as a very american thing where you'll attract pruentrepreneurs who th of making fame and fortune off of it as well, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. >> do we have a question out here? >> mike goddard, space flight center. in my outreach to high schools, especially those that aren't located near nasa centers or in metropolitan areas, i'm finding that they really don't have any awareness of what the country is doing in space exploration. more significantly, their funding for stem is such a small percentage of that for other activities like athletics, for

example. in fact, at this one high school they actually had to have a bake sale or something to have a robotics competition and they didn't get enough money, so they didn't have it. yet they've got this huge football field, you know. and so i guess my question is, how do we encourage -- not only encourage the students to get interested -- in lieu of an active exploration, how do we bring that apollo-like interest in stem that apollo kind of generated on autopilot? it kind of just happened. young students wanted to get involved in engineering and science and math. we don't have that at this time, at least not that i'm aware of. so how do we get them involved in -- or interested in pursuing those things with a visibility

that they see with the sports on tv and some of the other aspects of our society that aren't -- you know, that are more visible than the space program? >> so i'll start to answer that. i think there's two halves to the equation. one of the keys in getting more kids interested in the stem fields and getting them in those types of careers is very -- very sobering. and that is we have to have policy changes that will make the kinds of things happen in the classroom and outside the classroom that will really make a difference. and so when i hear stories about schools that have tried to do these things on their own and have struggled it's not the first time i've heard that story. and i would say we do a very good job in our best high schools in the most affluent neighborhoods of dealing with the stem subject. when you watch a media report,

it's a lot of times kids in white lab coats going to college before they were involved in the after-school program or the engineering competition or other things, already in that direction and we're accelerating them in that direction. there's another category of stories thatoldn' as much about the struggling schools that also see that these subjects are important, see the jobs, the connections to the future but either don't have the resources, the expertise or the critical mass to make all that happen. that's where the policy change that i started talking about at the beginning is going to have the biggest bang for its buck, in those schools that will achieve that. the other half of the equation is the inspirational piece. if a child is properly educated and has all of the right supports in school but they never see the other end of the equation, they never see the grand design that they can fit into, or they never have the mentorship experience that they can fit into, then that's also a weak link. an interesting part of this is

we're only starting to understand how to hook people from outside this sort of traditional stem, college-bound population into the stem fields. i think you can see this in the resonance of the astronauts of color and women, too, and how young women relate to female astronauts. and i think that is something that we have to take into account when we're thinking about these things as well. i would also offer a challenge to the space industry. so if i had a meeting with james cameron, i would be thinking to myself, i wonder if we could get a number of space companies together and get a movie done about going to mars. and not, you know -- i know we've had movies like this before, but wouldn't it be nice to have one every so often so that people didn't look at val kilmer going to mars and say, i don't even know who that is, right? >> to follow up on that, you know, as i mentioned earlier, we do the best we can with stem,g given the budgets that we have.

i think nasa does a great job of it. my fellow companies do a great job. we're certainly out there, doing everything that we can. as i said, i think we need to leverage a few things. one is upcoming events that we have that we all need to take advantage of, try to get that out there and get the top tier media involved so it really is a topic of discussion on the -- all the talk shows and such. the other is leveraging pop culture. and it's amazing when you look at role models of these students, especially the k through 12, they really look at the entertainment industry. and it's really amazing, the leverage you can get out of that. and i still say astronauts are a big motivator for young kids. and we need to do more of that. we're talking to the folks trying to get crews assigned

early and it's really tremendous, you know, the impact that you can have when you bring their role models into play. >> thanks. did we answer your question? >> yes. how important do you all feel that cross energy and cross disciplinary synergy between green technology, technology is in helping american competitiveness? it seems to me the way to get more involvement, more money is to understand that there's a very deep synergy between all these fields and how do we organize to help maximize that

any thoughts on that? >> great question. >> the first thing i would say, it's a relatively new concept. it's a term that we need to determine its actual components are. when policy makers think about this, it was competitiveness with india and china. but in some sense i think we're also competing against ourselves because when you talk about federal investments, really competitiveness -- when i hear that term, i think about and

doing that very well makes us competitive. are around the issue of equity. when the biggest potential gains are getting people who are not within the stem pipeline into the stem pipeline, i think about that being a huge advantage that we have as a country because we have a tradition of trying to broaden opportunity for all americans. if you believe that brain power and capability are equally distributed across all different parts of our society that's, by far, the biggest gain because if you have role model that is can inspire people from all different backgrounds that's how you'll open up that pipeline. i don't think we understand what being more competitive in