watch landmark cases live monday at 9:00 eastern on c-span. listen with the free radio at. background, order your copy of the landmark cases companion book. it is available at our website. explore the interactive constitution created by the national constitution center. there is a link on our website. >> reknowned physicist stephen hawking died earlier this week. he was part of a discussion on the future of space exploration as part of a lecture series to mark the 50th anniversary of nasa. this is 50 minutes. >> welcome to the campus. this promises to be a very remarkable afternoon. i'm director of the space policy institute. institute.

we are very happy cohost along nasa ofkheed martin and this afternoon's lecture by professor stephen and lucy hawking, which promises to be something very special. professor hawking's has prepared a brand new lecture. this is the first new showing or talking this afternoon. and you think that's remarkable. my job is to quickly get out of the way by introducing for a formal welcome the 16th president of george washington university dr. steven knapp. [applause] dr. knapp: thank you very much. on behalf of the board of

trustees and on behalf of the george washington university, it's a pleasure to the third lecture celebrating the third anniversary of nasa. i particularly would like to acknowledge the presence here of shannon dale, who's the deputy administrator of nasa. it's a pleasure to be sitting here with lucy hawking. time does not permit me to acknowledge all the distinguished members of today's audience. but you are all welcomed for what i though will be a very exciting and stimulating lecture. worked hawking has closely with many of you. james e. webb studied law at g.w. in the 1930's. and was a member from 1961to 1963. as nasa administrator, webb asked them to turn their attention to the policy implications of the u.s. space program and for more than 40 years since then g.w. has made

space policy a focus of its research and its graduate education efforts we establish the space policy institute in 1987 as par of the elliott school of international affairs. that has has become the leading study in the world. much of the research and outreach activities has been supported by nasa grants and contracts. and we appreciate nasa's trust in the work. we appreciate the continuing support that lockheed martin has provided to the space policy institute from its very inception. the institutes focus on spaces typical of these goal of international affairs, with one of the most leading schools. its mission is to create knowledge and inspire wisdom and action. introduces not to

professor hawking. that falls to someone else in of thecutive office president. i will note to only bet professor hawking's pioneering mind is one of the greatest and are in your in his profound insight to the nature of the thingse is an admirable to present to the general public. now it is my privilege to achieve do some battson or russell, who serves as deputy director in our institute for technology. he served as president bush's ambassador to the 2007 world radio communication conference. he first joined as chief of staff in 2001 allowing a decade and service in capitol hill where he worked on technology and science issues in both houses of congress. ambassador russell.

[applause] ambassador russell: thank you dr. knapp. it is truly a pleasure and honor to introduce this acres in the third in a series that nasa's 50this anniversary year. this is an opportunity to discuss key issues of scientific discovery, aeronautics, and research to audience of key policy makers, corporate leaders, academics, and the public sector. i would also like to technology and in bail for establishing the series. nnon dale for establishing this series. it's going to be a treat to listen to professor hawking and lucy hawking. today we have a unique father-daughter pair.

not much needs to be said about professor hawking who is one of the world set leading cosmologists. actually at a stand-in for dr. john marburger, who actually has the flu today. he wanted me to you about how important professor hawking's being ableterms of to translate science and do something understandable for the public. dr. moore haven used to be the head of the brookhaven national laboratory. while he was there they started up the heavy collider also known as "rick." rick was talk then that if was turned on it would create a blackhole that would eat the world. the public actually believe that

a blackhole might be created and professor marburger turned to professor hawking and asked for advice and ask for him to give advice to the press. it is because of his advice that we should not be worried about being consumed by a blackhole if the collider was turned on is turn itallowed us to on. dr. marburger expressed his sorrow at not being able to be her today but also ask to profess his thanks to professor hawking for being able to relate to the general public and move science forward. the vets are hawking's lecture titled "why we should go into is considered by him to be a 50th birthday present for nasa and quite a birthday present it will be. his starter lucy is also a

professor. she and her father have published a book for children. there is a second book on the way. officer hawking will speak for a few moments followed by lucy. i would like to introduce professor hawking a end lucy. thank you also much. and lucy.or hawking so much. all [applause].

[indiscernible whispering] hawking: [whispering] [indiscernible]

fes are hawking: -- hawking: can you hear me? audience: yes: should we go: why into space? rocks?ect a few there better causes here on earth? that is the way they felt the

situation was before the in europe in 1492. people might well of heard you thought it was a waste of money to send columbus on a wild use chase, yet the discovery of the new world made a profound difference. just think, we would not of had big mac or kfc spreading out into space. maybe it will have a greater effect that will completely change the future of the human race end may determine whether we have a future at all. it will not solve any of our albumscy at -- immediate on planet earth, but it will give us a new perspective on them and cause us to look outward and inward's. hopefully it will unite is to face a common challenge. this could be a long-term strategy had by long term i mean hundreds or thousands of years.

could reach mars and have explored the moon and 200 years.lanets in by reach, i mean 200 years. flight.n person space we have already driven toward mars and landed on saturn. if one is considering the future of the human race, we have to go there ourselves. not bento space will cheap, but it will take only a small portion of world resources. the question has remained in real terms since the time of the apollo. of gdpdecreased by 23% in 1970 and is less than 1% now.

even if we were to increase the international budget to make a serious effort to go into space, it would only be a small fraction of world gdp. there will be those arguing it would be better to solve a our pollutionhings like rather than wasting it on a possibly fruitless search for a new planet. i am not denying the importance of fighting climate change and global warming by it is still a small percentage of world gdp or space. this is our future.

worth a quarter of a percent. thought space was worth a big effort in the 1960's. in 1962, president kennedy to land athe country man on the moon by the end of the decade. this was achieved just-in-time inthe apollo 11 mission 1969. the space race helped great a fascination with science and lead a change in technology, including the great integrated circuit which led to modern computers. however, after the last two landings in 1972 with no future left for further man to spaceflights, public interest in

space declined. led to a consensus in the even know it had brought great benefits, it had not solved the social problems that were increasing. space flight was launched to increase public enthusiasm in space and for science generally. muchic missions are cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they do not catch the public imagination in the same way.

and, they do not spread the human race into space which i think should be our long-term strategy. goal of a base on the moon by 2020 and a man landing on the the by 2025 would reignite space program in give it a sense of purpose in the same way president kennedy's bloom target oon target 1960's -- m did in the 1960's. it would also increase an interest in science generally. the most science has turned out consequences.ous we live in a society increasingly governed by science fewer younggy, yet people want to go into science.

to -- step, my. are you in and lucy and i have written a children's book. i will now lead lucy talk about how to encourage the next generation to keep an interest in science and space. and gooducy: hello afternoon. i am very honored to be in her at the nasa 50th birthday series. it is a great honor to be her. you for it my father telling you about why we need to travel let in space. i would like to take a few minutes to tell you why we need to have a next generation who wants to travel in space as well. as my father said, at the moment we face a paradox. never before has science and

technology played such a big part in our lives. same time, it seems children are turning away from science. losing interest in science. not studying them. i would like to talk about what we have learned from children. what we learned about child's -- children and science education that theasa can ensure next generation does not forget science. lester, mike father and i published a book for children's. it is an adventure story in which all of the adventures are based on real science. it is about little boy who lives next door to a scientist and the scientist has an amazing computer called cosmos. powerful and an intelligent, it controls the doorway through which you can walk to any part of the known universe. nasa about cosmos, they said we wish we had one of

them because it would help our budget enormously. father wants to work on this project because of his high level of concern about children and science education. saying we set out to persuade every child to be a scientist, because our world needs people with a wide variety of school. but science affects all of us. it will do even more so in the future. the children of today are the adults up tomorrow in they need to have a basic understanding of science if they are going to make the kind of decisions to affect us all. we're going to need scientists at all. not just the work of place travel. but issues like climate change, fuel exhaustion, food production. through recent research, it is highlighted about children and science education. in the united kingdom, a recent

survey found a a third of u.k. schoolchildren believe prime time -- believe winston churchill was the first man to walk on the moon. i'm sorry about that, nasa and neil armstrong. the statistics came with the survey are not very heartening either. they found 40% of children thought mars was a chocolate bar. 35% of children said the earth planet.an official extraordinarily, 72% could not identify the moon from pictures. encase you are sitting there feeling smug, i'm afraid the results in the usa do not look much better. only 4% of u.s. adults when asked could named a living scientist they would nominate as

a science role model. of the same time, 96% of u.s. adults think it is important for in u.s. to be a leader science education. it sounds groovy but there is hope. as i found out, when i went on a thedwide lecture tour about seller system about the concepts of astronomy and their radical physics we set out to carry -- cover in book. --e probably spoken to 20 20,000 children. we ask questions like, can you rollerblade on jupiter.

what would happen if you got to the edge of the universe? you could say we're just lucky, and that we have got the bookstore and of science at our disposal. but i can tell you, black holes presented by stephen hawking explained simply for kids was a winner. we had them with us all the way. but more seriously, some research at universities and u.k. shows a significant percentage of students studying sciences, and i mean across-the-board notches physics, report their interest in science was sparked by exactly this. they went on to become scientists because of an early interest in astronomy and the exotic phenomenon of theoretical physics. space has a power to capture children's imagination and engage curiosity. there seems absolutely no doubt.

we have never needed to do this more urgently. it is not just what we say to kids, it is what we show them. the images sent back by nasa's hubble play such a huge part capturing kids attention in an ever increasing crowded world with many demands. we can show kid something of the cosmic environment that surrounds that from saturn's rings to getting them to think about what it would be like to see a sunset on mars. man's space life is a topic it's never tire of. because of nasa they can read about it, hear about it, watched documentaries, look at autographs and visit space centers. nasa runs a huge amount of educational programs. this means kids space trips are not limited to science fiction.

we have exciting new missions planned back to the moon and onwards to mars, it means kids now may grow up wanting to be astronauts as excited about it as a whole generation of astronauts today. the ones who watched the moon landing it in pajamas with their parents and decided they were going to grow up to be an astronaut which is more aspirational than wanting to grow up to be a popstar or appear on a reality program. we can also show kids what our planets, what hours looks like. they can see how formidable, how fragile it is. we can make it clear to them they need to look after it. when we look around us in space, we see also other sorts of extraordinary worlds but we do not see another planet nearby

earth. like the that is a strong message to tell kids, you live on a beautiful planet. we are saying the work done by now sarah has a profound and lasting impact on the way children view their life on earth, their cosmic environment and it can influence the choices theirake in the future in careers. i would like to close with a fan letter we have from ben, age six. he washer had told us not a confident child but he loved reading about space so much that it has changed his life. he wrote was to say, now that i know i'm good at space i have decided to become a scientist when i grow up. thank you. thank you for listenings. [applause]

dr. hawking: what will we find when we go into space? is there alien life out there or are we alone in the universe? we believe that life arose spontaneously on the earth, so it must be possible for it to appear another suitable planets, of which there seem to be a large number in the galaxy. but, we don't know how life first appeared. the probability of something as complicated as a dna molecule being formed by random collisions of atoms in the ocean is incredibly small.

however, there might have been some simple macromolecule which orn built up the dna something else capable of reproducing its cells. still, the probability of life appearing on a suitable planet is very small since the universes infinite. life would have appeared somewhere. the probability is very low, the distance between two independent appearances of life would be very large. is a possibility that life could spread from planet to planet or from stellar system to stellar system carried by meteors. we know earth has been hit by

meteors that came by mars and others may have come from further field. we have no evidence that any carried-- lead years life but it remains a possibility. an important feature spread by sameformia would have the possibility for dna as life on earth. , ande other hand appearance of life would be extremely unlikely to be dna-based. so watch out if you meet an alien. you could be infected with a disease against which you have no resistance. one piece of ops a ration evidenced on the probability of life appearing is that we have

an analogy from 3.5 billion years ago. the earth was formed 6 billion years ago, and it was probably too hot for about the first have billion years. so life appeared on earth within half a billion years of it being possible, which is short compared to the 10 billion year lifetime of an earth-like planet . this would suggest either transform yet or that the probability of life appearing independently is reasonably high. if it was very low, one would have expected the timetable to be the 10 billion years available. is transformia, life in nearby solar systems would also be dna-based.

while there may be primitive life in other regions of the galaxy, there do not seem to be any advanced intelligent beings. we do not appear to have been visited by aliens. would ufos appear only to crackpots and weirdos? [laughter] dr. hawking: if there is a keepnment conspiracy to the knowledge itself it seems to be a singular policy so far. furthermore, the extensive

search by the project does not intelligence. this probably indicates there are no alien civilizations at our stage of development within the radius of a few hundred light years. this insurance policy against infection or abduction by indians seems a pretty safe bet. why haven't we heard from anyone out there? is expressed in this cartoon. the caption reads, sometimes i think that the surest sign that

intelligence life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. more seriously, there could be three possible explanations of why we have not heard from aliens. it may be that the probability of permanent life appearing on a suitable planet is very low. second, the probability of may beve life appearing reasonably high, but the probability of that life developing intelligence like ours may be very low. but just because evolution led

our case, wece in should not assume intelligence is an infallible consequence of natural selection. not clear that intelligence converts to long-term survival advantage. willria and insects survive quite happily of our intelligence leads us to destroy ourselves. the third possibility, life appears and in some cases develops into intelligent beings but when it reaches the stage of sending radio signals it will also have the technology to make nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction.

it would therefore be in danger of destroying itself before long. hope this is not the reason we have not heard from anyone. personally, i favor the second possibility that primitive life is relatively common, but that relatively life is rare. some would say it has yet to occur on earth. [laughter] existsor hawking: can we for a long time away from the earth? theexperience with international space a and shows it is possible -- international shows it isn

possible for human beings to survive for many months away from planet earth. however, the zero gravity has a number of undesirable physiological changes as well as a weakening of the bones as well is creating practical problems with liquids, and etc. to fourut long-term humans to be outside of the planet earth? what would be thermal insulation from meteors and cosmic rays. the planet hormone could also serve as a source of the raw materials that would be needed if the extraterrestrial community was going to be self sustaining independently of earth.

what are the possible sites of a human colony in the solar system? the most obvious is the moon. it is close and relatively easy to reach. we have already landed on it and driven across it in a buggy. on the other hand, the moon is withoutd with that -- atmosphere or a magnetic field to deflect the solar radiation particles like on earth. there is no liquid water, but there may be ice in the craters at the north and south poles.

a colony on the moon could use this as a source of oxygen with power provided by nuclear energy or solar panels. base forcould be a travel to the rest of the solar system. mars is the obvious next target. it is half as far again as the earth from the sun and so it receives half of the warmth. it once had a magnetic field, years ago,yed leaving mars without protection from solar radiation. stripped mars of most of its atmosphere living a with only 1%

of the pressure of the earth's atmosphere. however, the pressure must have been hired the past because we see what appears to have been channels of dried lakes. life could not exist on mars now, it would vaporize in the vacuum. where it might've had a time where light appeared throughpontaneously or transformia. now but no life on mars we have found evidence that life may have existed. that would indicate it was once

maintain life. nasa has sent a number of missions to mars, starting in 1964. it has surveyed the planet with a number of orbiters, the latest being the mars reconnaissance orbiter. these orbiters have revealed deep valleys and the highest mountains in the solar system. nasa has also landed a number of mars, on the surface of most recently the mars rover. these have sent back pictures of the dry desert landscape. however, there is a large

velocity of water in the form of ice in the polar regions. the colony of mars could use this as a source of oxygen. -- falcon and no connectivity on mars. this would have -- there has been volcanic activity on mars, this would bring minerals the colony could use. the moon and mars are the most for colonies in the space system. mercury and venus are too hard solidher planets have no surface. very smallf mars are and have no advantage over mars

itself. some of the moons of jupiter and thern might be possible, moon of saturn is larger and more massive than our moon and has a denser atmosphere. a probe has landed and sent back pictures of the surface. however, it is very cold. being so far from the sun, i living there.y the solar beyond

system? our observations indicate a significant amount of planets them.tars around so far, we can detect only planets like jupiter and saturn but it is expected to be reasonable to assume they would be surrounded by smaller, earth-like planets. , the distance from the stars are within the reich -- in the right range to exist on the surface. there are around 1000 stars earth.light-years of if 1% of these have earth-sized planets in the zone we have candidates for new worlds.

we cannot envision visiting them with current technology but we should make interstellar travel a long-term aim. by long-term, i mean over the years.0-500 the human race has existed as a separate species for about 2 million years. civilization began about 10,000 years ago and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have the ability to go where no one has gone before. for listening.

[applause] >> thank you professor hawking ar that serious insight and challenge to us all. i believe now, for those who wanted to do flash photography

and will be ok for a couple moments. i invite you all to head upstairs for a very nice reception courtesy of our sponsor lockheed martin. thank you all. hawking:] professor thank you for listening.

>> c-span's washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up sunday morning, former nsc russet director gregory edmonds discussed russia's alleged role in the poisoning of a double agent in britain and meddling in the u.s. elections. then, the debut of our series, 1968: america in turmoil. marinissand david talk about the major political and diplomatic developments in the vietnam war. be sure to watch washington

journal live at 7:00 eastern on sunday morning. join the discussion. c-span's q&a, colorado college professor talks about his book "imagining a great republic." >> i think the reading of major political classics is very empowering in terms of this country stands for something, very special, and the great they are- storytellers, saying our tribe wants to be something special. not just a city on a hill, but a city that cares and loves one another and wants to work with one another. and understands that politics is indispensable to bringing about

progress for as much people as possible. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span. next, the hearing of space a national security. general john raymond who heads the air force space command testified to a house armed service subcommittee. he was joined by two other defense department officials for about 40 minutes. chairman rogers: good afternoon, this is -- welcome, everybody. this hearing of the subcommittee on strategic forces. and our hearing on the 2019 budget request for national security space programs. unfortunately, as everybody in the room now knows, we were interrupted by votes and we're an hour behind starting off.