tv [untitled] December 13, 2013 1:30pm-2:01pm EST
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they're dried up now but mars had liquid water on it for a billion years which is five times as long as it took life to appear on earth after there was liquid water here and so it's possible that life could have evolved on mars and if we go to mars and find traces of past life or even surviving present life it would prove that the development of life from chemistry is a general phenomenon in the universe and furthermore mars is a planet that has the resources not just to support life but technological civilization for our generation mars is the new world but from what we know right now if you can't breathe in mars can it because there's no atmosphere right there on mars there are sandstorms. i mean the place is pretty pretty inhospitable. yeah mars while it has a thin atmosphere not no one can very know you have to wear
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a spacesuit going outside on mars today. but nevertheless it's an extremely interesting place and it's a place that because it does have the fundamental resources it has water it has carbon it has nitrogen things that are all lacking on the move. where with sufficient technological inventiveness it can become a place that humans can colonize and you know humans are not native to most of the earth ok you didn't are not native to russia no single no human could survive a single winter night here in moscow without technology where you have to like it else how serious while walking around the earth we can do the this right but what i'm saying is to humans as they were originally most of the earth was uninhabitable we became a global species by inventing the technologies that allow us to live in your asia and north america and many other places that we were not originally designed for we
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have we're tropical animals we have long thin arms with no fur we became a global species by inventing technologies we can become a space faring species with numerous planets open to us by inventing new technologies to he believe that there was life on mars before. i actually believe there probably was although it's not proven ok that's the point we want to go to mars to to settle this issue if life could evolve on mars and we know of course it evolved on earth they've evolved separately on two second separate planets that means that the development of life from chemicals is a probable process and since we now know that the universe is filled with planets that most stars have planets if life could appear were ever has a planet means lives every. where and since the whole history of life on earth is one of development from simple forms to more complex forms manifesting greater
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capacities for and activity intelligence and ever more rapid evolution if life is everywhere it means intelligence is everywhere it means we're living in it a living universe on the other hand if mars really had oceans and all this stuff for a billion years but life never appeared there it could mean that the development of life on earth was a matter of chance and that life is a very improbable thing and we could be alone in the universe so what we're going to discover by going to mars is whether the universe is living or dead this is something that thinking men and women have wondered about for thousands of years but what i'm saying is that all the information we have from our so far is the information from robert's robot spin of robots that we sent to mars but we never actually got anything back from mars we haven't touched anything for miles and one it's been more logical to get something back before we send humans to mars well we sent humans to the moon before we got anything back. so we gets to do a sample return from the moon but that was after the apollo astronauts and gone to
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the moon the and the apollo astronauts of course brought back plenty of samples as well. there are some people who want to do a mar sample return that is the mission that is in planning at nasa to return a few kilograms from mars. but that's not a necessary step before we send humans to mars and i think frankly humans could do that mission much better instead of bringing back two kilograms we could bring back two hundred kilograms and they wouldn't just be chosen from the few places that a robot could go but they would be chosen by humans who've been the stay on mars for your exploring all over the place and choosing the two hundred kilograms of best samples out of thousands that they would have had a chance to examine while they were on mars while we talk about colonization of mars. are we talking about sending someone to mars who is not going to come back into. going to stay there forever are we talking about a simple trip someone going back and forth in the first this trial it takes five hundred days to get to mars right now it only takes one hundred eighty days to get
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to mars and then you would be on mars for five hundred days and another one hundred eighty days back. i think most people want to do exploration missions that is round trip missions before we do one way missions. there are some that are proposing to go to mars one way right from the beginning ok that's a settlement mission in my view and that of most people but not all this exploration should proceed settlement. so initial missions will probably be round trip missions of the kind i described but it is certain point people are going to want to go to mars to stay in that is a one way mission life's a one way mission what is the timeframe we're talking about because i mean we're talking about going to mars and staying there forever are we talking about hundreds of years fifty years ten years twenty years it's well coming from a technical point of view we're much better prepared today to send humans to mars than we were to send men to the moon in one thousand six hundred one the problem
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and. we were there it years later. the question though of when we will go to mars is a political question it's a question of when a decision will be made to do it. i think we should make such a decision we should make it now ok we went to the moon and we haven't gone back in forty years we haven't gone beyond low earth orbit in forty years the american space program needs a goal the world's space program needs a goal we shouldn't just be sending people to space to go up and down to the space station up and down forever with over three hundred missions to lower earth orbit what's the point the purpose of going to space is not to just hang out in space it's the go across space and explore and settle the worlds on the other side of space ok and this is the goal for our time what humans to the moon was in the one nine hundred sixty s. humans to mars is today this is the challenge for our time and i think we can do it and i think it would be a good way to bring the world together i in particular i'd like to see
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a joint us russian mission to mars before we get there when you say there needs to be a political decision you know exactly needs to decide on that. as well about the money . well yeah the. it's about committing the resources to it and committing the prestige in accepting the risks that are involved in doing such a program it's one thing to run a space program say we're going to avoid risk we're just going to do things we've done before ok but that is not a way to do great things for question are we running more risks now sending people to mars than where we were sending people to the moon or are about the same i would say it's lower risk we certainly know much more about mars than they knew about the moon we know much more about space flight than they knew i mean look when kennedy committed us to go to the moon ok garren had orbited the earth once and the united states had been orbiting the earth we had begun a sub orbital flight fifteen minutes in space we didn't even know if people could
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in space when we decided to go to the moon. you know when you embark on such adventure there are unknown questions but you have to have the confidence that you will be able to solve them along the way you're going to be able to succeed. and you know for people to say right now that going to mars is too formidable would really be saying we become less than the kind of people used to be kind lessen the kind of people who could take on new challenges. it's a new challenge but challenge is valuable nations are like people we grow and what challenge we stagnate when we're not i think the humans to mars program be tremendously positive challenge for every country participating and every country there participating in it would encourage millions of young people to go to science as you clubs adventure this would make science the great adventure if you're saying that we're running less risks while we're sending humans to the moon than where running now sending them to the mars make us the stumbling point is the money how
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much would it cost for us for something like that to bring someone there for five hundred days and then back. ok. if you did this. with an efficient program one that was designed to get the job done not one that was designed to just go on forever so people could stay on the payroll ok because there are both kinds of programs that we scenes space world hey i think that we can develop all the hardware we need to go to mars for about twenty billion dollars and then each mission. would cost perhaps between one and two billion dollars once you had the hardware now to give you a sense of what that means in american terms anyway. our space budget is sixteen billion a year if we develop the hardware over ten years twenty billion divided by ten is two billion a year that's about fourteen percent of nasa is budget ok and then two billion
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a year is one eighth of nasa is budget ok to carry it on so you know why is necessary for left and well i think they're reluctant to embrace risk and the current leadership and i think the political class has been reluctant to embrace rist but. embrace in risk is necessary we wouldn't be where we are today if people had gone before us hadn't taken risk columbus took risks lewis and clark took risks we took risks we went to the mood ok the nothing great has ever been accomplished without risk and the so we need to take the saw temperature break down but we will be back with robert to discuss whether national water should be drawn on mars. from the outside could be useful on our stay with us.
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they look like bound to. enjoy the sun and the ocean. but what was buried here years ago. means these people are suffering the consequences. how much more poison lies on the ground. behind this there is what we call the bank on which there is a deposit of plutonium left by security test which caused the dispersion of radium you clyde's despite previous cleaning efforts there remains a deposit of a little less than two kilos of plutonium stuck in the rock the coral reef about
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ten metres down. a never ending legacy. deliberate target is on its epic journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through to some nine hundred cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air and sea and others face little a limp a torch relay. m r t r g dot com. look what defines a country's success cliff a slim figures of economic growth. or a factual standard of living live. live
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welcome back to sophie and co our guest is robert zubrin an american aerospace engineer who advocates manned exploration of mars great to have you back with us right so a life on mars first of all what are you going to eat there. oh well the initial explorers will bring their food stock for two years or three years or four years of however much well turn a half years is the round ship six months out year and a half of them are six months back ok and they'll be. dehydrated food like pasta and flour and rice and so forth and sauces and meats the reason why you want to bring dehydrated foods is because you can recycled water and so for instance if a pound of spaghetti makes a whole meal for four people but it's relatively light weight itself and we'll have
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systems for recycling the water we know how to do that let the water well. we will be bring a certain amount of water and we're going to recycle it there are systems right now that can recycle water with better than ninety percent efficiency but now in fact we have discovered that there is water on mars even at the equator the soil is five percent water if you go further north or south it gets more up to sixty percent near the poles and there's even ice. so will the water is the new oil on mars well water is the staff of life i mean you know with water is more basic than oil in terms of what we need and the fact that there is water on mars will help us. we say broaden the water supply be able to use water more copiously instead of having to do sponge baths every other day than have a shower every day if you can get water from mars k. so that that's a good thing now of course once we go to mars to stay we're not going to want to
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bring our food well obviously you can't if you go there to stay you can't grow anything there you know you can we can set up greenhouses on mars and mars has got a carbon dioxide atmosphere it's got water ok also temperature there well the temperature in the daytime gets up to about. ten or fifteen centigrade which is fine at night it gets much colder minus ninety. so you want to stay inside at night . but the so you'd have to heat the greenhouse but heating the greenhouses is hardly beyond our technology and we could grow plants in the greenhouse we've got the water we've got the carbon dioxide the kind of nutrients that plants need are in the soil. and so we'll be able to grow plants on mars we'll be able to as a get water there's geothermally heated water deep underground we can actually extract power from that all the materials need for industry are present on mars for
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instance iron is extremely abundant that's why the planet is red but there's also silicon and aluminum and titanium and so fur and phosphorous and so forth. so in fact we go to mars we can develop the craft of how to use these different materials on mars and turn them into useful substances how to make metals glass ceramics plastics wires tubes habitats we can become self-sufficient there but but that was where what you're describing is a life for such hardship why would anyone want to do that why can't you just live when you're beautiful earth where you have seeds and notions and you have you know green trees and birds flying around in food that grows in soil well that's fine but. there's going to be always want to be people that want to go into place where the rules haven't been written yet an open frontier. a place where they have
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a chance to make their own world instead of just living in one that has already been made for them and that's a fundamental kind of freedom and that's what having an open frontier means so you are saying that reasonable laws for claims of sovereignty on mars. what's going to happen with the frontiers do you think people who will colonize mars should have frontiers they should up this should set up borders or is should it be just one big community living going together happily ever after to americans the frontier is the boundary of the known beyond which is the unknown ok ok and. for many americans the idea of having a frontier to have a place where you could go beyond into the undefined and create this is something extremely desirable famous historian walter west prescott where i once wrote a book called the great frontier which there's this quote he says the people with missed the frontier more than words can ever express and they do and i think that's
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why the space program has the kind of support america that it does because we view space as the final frontier and the and kennedy even talked about the spaces the new frontier and it is and. to have a place where the rules haven't been written yet to be able to define a new future in a new place this is a very liberating thing and it's worth. risking life and fortune to have but see i'm still thinking we could spend all that money to save our planet that we're living to to make it greener to make it safer to make it a better place to leave why spend all this money on mars why we haven't even taken care of our planet yet what makes you think that it will work out there if it's hardly working out here well that gas emissions now people are dying the atmosphere is so polluted way why just not make our plant
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a better place instead of going colonize lars well there are many useful things waiting to be done on earth i think that having a humans to mars program will encourage so many young people to go into science and engineering se the apollo did in the united states that out of that intellectual capital we would get all kinds of new inventions that don't just bear on space but bear on every aspect of human existence that advance the economy that advance public health that solves some of these environmental problems that you talk about . but i also think that the we're also doing a bunch of things on earth that we better off not doing and frankly i think we'd be a lot better. i'm thinking about how to get to mars and left less time thinking about how to get the upper hand in syria but when they'd be doing the same thing on mars if they call and i was there maurice well devices go everywhere with a human being it's not like they're going to forget about their had and brain once they go to mars well you know mars is certainly not going to be utopia but you know
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in and america's not utopia but unsettling america we did. leave some of the bad behind i mean there's certainly religious prejudice in america but there's never been a religious war in america ok there's. been different classes but there's never been blood aristocracy you know you go to chicago and you can pick the serbs and croats apart ok or the catholic irish in the protestant irish ok you can get past certain things by going to a new place now. you know we're going to go to mars and it may be that initial mars colonies are set up by different nations and so forth so i think about borders well they might but the game would be on a currency one language many languages are going to just one flag americans calling as more states american i think there's room on mars for more than one flag ok but
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ultimately i think that the many flags that there will be on mars that most of them will be new findings. because what we're talking about doing is not extending nations to mars but giving birth to new nations ok. in american. my country was started by england but and there's many things that we draw from english culture language shakespeare but but nevertheless we diverged from that we became a new nation ok the nations that go to mars will put their stamp on the future but they will be creating children who will then say you can save on mars. i see no reason why not. what my people can give birth course is quite a surprise because always the most of the people who think other planets should be colonized they think that because the earth is becoming overpopulated but your
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reasons are completely will tear it's to invigorate human faculty how to give me a more larger picture of how you see mars as a colonized planet by humans well i see the new societies they're ok and and they will be new they'll still take their initial traditions from those that went there first ok you know. so some will read mark twain and some will reply they said they would be the earth to a point that's their point of departure but they'll be new literature written on mars and they'll be nude languages and they'll be new histories of epic deeds that will inspire those who go further ok we talked about creating new nations. the way you talk about is fascinating and your are obviously very passionate about it are you going to part of all that i mean would you like to go to mars oh i'd
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love to go to mars i don't think i'm going to have a chance away well because some already sixty one years old and we're talking about the first missions going ten years from now and colonization missions going after that i think it could have been that i could have gone to mars i was seventeen when we landed on the moon ok and if we had kept going the way we were going then we would have been on mars by nine hundred eighty one but we had a massive failure of leadership in the united states the nixon administration canceled the program even as we were landing on the mood it was like columbus coming back from the new world and ferdinand and isabella saying ah so what who cares ok well we walked away from. accomplishment there but i think we should pick it up again and. once again i'm very much for america going to mars i am very proud of being an american and i want america to have its stamp on the future on the new world but i i don't think that we should be the only
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ones i think this other countries that also deserve to have their stamp on the new world and i think russia should be one of them well really briefly because we're out of time you said the russia and america should work on this together but i think to look back in the sixty's and seventy's it's their rivalry between the soviets and the americans that actually helped advance the lunar and the martian systems well if we want to work together by competing if we want to work together in a kind of a little friendly olympic competition that's fine too but whether we do it is one program or is two programs that are friendly rivals and driving each one's accomplishment forward by our own accomplishments either way is fine but there's a brotherhood in either way ok and i think this would be a very good thing you know right now there's a little chill going on in russia american relations i think we should turn this around this is not a trend that we want to see go forward i think we want to turn around i think we want to have a world of friendship and by working together on
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a project just great as this i think we can help foster that all right let's hope they will colonize mars together thank you very much for this interesting interview robert thank you and that's it for today folks edition of so think oh is over our guest was robert zubrin american aerospace engineer thanks for watching we'll see you next time. there's a media lead us so we leave that maybe. i can see the ocean see you in the way your party there's a good. shoes that no one is asking with the gas they deserve answers from. politics.
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time magazine's person of your friends was the catholic pontiff according to the managing editor the pope change the tone and perception of the roman catholic church this may be so but francis also be showing himself to be critical of the global economic order and capitalism is their hope for the church morris francis really a p.r. product. i was thinking somehow i had to come back because mom was waiting for me. i just knew that everything would be fine for some reason they were so confident because we were going to get married officially after he came back how could he not come back out of it never crossed my mind. when the militants
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decided to try and break through the. screaming grenade. explosions blow them all run his back. and it was all over all. we know that our comrades on our commander that won't leave us no matter how tough it gets we're team. they're going to move getting was a senior in his military trio. he knew that if he didn't smother that grenade with his body more of his comrades would die he gave his own life to save his friends. i play this street cleaner who's in love with a waitress i go on stage and imagine that there's an audience and i used to take
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ukraine's president says any talks of a deal with the e.u. must involve russia. as the prolonged european rallies are continuing to disrupt the government and worsening the already crippled economy. the honeymoon is over australia's high court overturns the country's first law allowing same sex marriages. in less than a week. we've been married and we've been on the meanwhile india's reinstated its ban on same sex relationships while people in croatia fight in a referendum to outlaw it for good look at the setbacks for gay rights in different countries. and going offline the co-founder of the fall is sharing website the pirate bay is being held in solitary confinement for these families left in the dog .
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