To Infinity & Beyond: The Fellows Visit NASA & Learn About the Future of Life on the Moon
Released on 07/09/2014
[Narrator] 20 winners, all under age 20.
$100,000 to drop out of school and pursue our dreams.
This is Teen Technorati.
This is N-245.
It's home to a lot of space scientists,
astrobiologists, and some astrophysicists.
I used to work in this office.
I'm between break times at UC Berkeley.
An amusing artifact in here
is the Star Trek poster right over there.
I find it very inspirational when I'm working
in the depths of code, trying to get
the modeling coefficients just right.
Hey, Chris.
Hey, come on in, Rebecca.
How are you doing?
I'm Chris McKay.
I'm a planetary scientist here at NASA Ames Research Center.
Do you have enough material, physical sample,
to do the experiment?
(Chuckles) Plenty. I've got about seven transects,
where each transect is about 10-15 samples.
We discussed the samples that I collected
in French Polynesia last semester.
We're now working on genetic analysis to see
what's related to what in these rocks
that I collected from the inner tidal zone.
From my perspective, Rebecca is at a decision point.
She's clearly got the capability to do science,
but she's also entrepreneurial.
She could really be a role model for other women
as to what possibilities are open.
Science is something you can do.
Or starting tech companies is something you can do.
To the Thiel fellowship, I now have the time
to pursue my research interests as well as my company idea.
Honey Badger Aerospace intends to do prequalification
of small satellites in space before they get to space.
Today, right now, we're gonna be introduced
to Moon Express, which is aspiring to put the very first
commercial private robotic space craft
on the surface of the moon.
And by doing so, to change the definition
of what is possible.
Everything that we care about, fight about,
and find precious on Earth,
energy, resources, land, territory,
it's all available in infinite quantities in space.
The first kids born today will be looking up
and seeing lights on the moon.
So, as we create space colonies, we learn to live
in other worlds, we're not only increasing our survivability
as a species, but we're replicating our basis
here on planet Earth, which has so far,
only constrained to one potential point of failure, right?
The dinosaurs didn't have a space program.
Sure, go ahead.
How do you plan about terraforming?
I love the idea of terraforming
and I've kind of grown up with the idea of
some day, we're gonna terraform Mars.
But the magnetic field is such that the particles
flying off the sun, strip off the atmosphere over time,
causing a set of collisions that removes the atmosphere.
So, what if instead, we actually restarted the dynamo?
That might be a great idea of how we'd do that.
We use this facility to develop our own engineering test
of our first concept of our lunar landers.
We wanted to have a scalable system, so we could start small
and scale it without redesigning the entire thing
as the market responded.
So, what we can up with was this space craft design.
We could get all the way from Earth orbit
to the surface of the moon
just with this little guy right here.
At Moon Ex, I really learned and saw first hand,
the need to have this kind of pre-qualification go on
before we send something into space,
so you can be able to tell the person
who's carrying your payload whether it will be safe or not.
We've given you an orientation of S.U. and lunar express.
We showed you the hover test facility.
We saw the mock-up lander.
Now, you're gonna meet some of the really important people
behind the vision that's making it happen.
Let me introduce Andy Aldrin, Buzz's son, our president.
Andy.
The opportunity to come here and actually participate
in sending space craft to the moon
and developing the moon commercially,
is just a dream come true.
I brought Andrew, Jake, and Mike to meet with you
as a sample of the younger generation of engineers
that are twenty-somethings, at the same age basically,
as the twenty-somethings who created the Apollo program.
I'm Andrew Mitchell.
I'm an electrical engineer here.
I work in the avionics department.
I graduated from the University of Michigan.
I worked on Q Sats there for three years
and I've been working out here,
working on some pretty amazing things.
I dropped out after my sophomore year of college
when I was 20 years old to come work here
because I figured, you know,
I wasn't going to get this opportunity when I graduated.
We all have stories about how our parents
reacted to dropping out of high school or college.
I'm curious to hear how your parents felt
about you trying to do this.
My mom was incredibly surprised when I brought it up.
Of all the kids that she knew,
I wouldn't be the one to drop out of school,
but given the opportunity, she was pretty supportive of it.
It's all about the people and the relationships you build
and you can do amazing things.
I know some of you are space nerds
and we're gonna be seeing you again, I know.
So, I've had the privilege of meeting new friends
and new amazing people.
Now, I've met you.
So, let's change the world.
It's really cool to see the old space side
and the new space side working together.
There's crazy things that happen in the space environment
you can't really prepare for,
but you gotta try to prepare for it.
What if you could test it in space
before you could get it to space?
That would be awesome.
The company I'm pitching is actually
Honey Badger Aerospace and ironically,
this is exactly what we're trying to look at.
Yeah, I'd love to talk to you more about that,
especially about the practice of being an engineer
at such a company.
I'm looking at starting hiring
over the next few months in particular.
Cool. I can go and run and grab a notepad or something
and give you my email.
How many times you guys get to use
Houston, we have a problem?
(Chuckles) Uh, there's too many problems.
We'd get tired of saying that.
Let's go to the moon.
Go point up.
That was really good.
[Narrator] Tune in for the next episode of Teen Technorati
when Thomas shares his plans to cure cancer.
And be sure to subscribe to the Wired channel.
Starring: Rebecca Jolitz, Dr. Chris McKay
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