(Video)
(John F. Kennedy) Many years ago,
the great British explorer George Mallory,
who was to die on Mount Everest,
was asked why did he want to climb it.
He said, "Because it is there."
(Video ends)
So, in 1962,
then-President Kennedy announced at Rice University in Texas
the goal of sending humans to the Moon
and returning them safely to Earth within that decade.
And, of course, we sort of take it as a given that the President said it,
it became a national initiative, vast amounts of money were spent.
But, in fact, one of the things that had to happen
was a large number of policymakers and taxpayers
all had to be persuaded that this was a good idea.
Well, in August of 1963,
about 11 months after Kennedy made his historic speech in Texas,
two NASA scientists
by the name of Newell and Jastrow
wrote a little booklet which was distributed very widely
among policymakers and to anyone in the public who was interested,
and basically posed the question:
Why should we land on the Moon?
Why was this worth a vast amount of money?
And there were three principal lines of argument
that are discussed in this little booklet.
One, of course, has to do with the national interest,
national security, national prestige.
We were in the midst of the Cold War,
and the space race with the Soviet Union
was at that moment, in 1962 and then in 1963,
still being lost.
The Soviet Union had been the first to space with a satellite.
They had been the first to space with an animal, a living animal, a dog.
They had been the first to space with an astronaut,
and the administration was looking for an initiative
that was something that the US could win in the space race
because that would demonstrate that the US socio-economic system
was competitive and was superior to communism.
So, first and foremost, national interest, national prestige,
demonstrating that the US was a superior system.
Secondly, as Kennedy mentioned in his speech,
we do these things not because they are easy
but because they are hard.
And the pursuit of the space race and the pursuit of the Apollo program
would lead to tremendous technical innovation
in aerospace technologies and computing and materials and all these technologies
that were of great value both in the Cold War
and for the future of the United States.
And lastly, for science.
Because there was at that time still a big question
about how was the Moon formed,
what is the relationship between the Moon and the Earth,
and what was the earliest origins of our solar system,
and how did the Earth and the Moon get affected by the impacts
that came from deep space?
All of those things were unknown.
Well, all of those questions were addressed
and all of those technologies were developed.
The space race was won; missions took place.
So why are we talking now about going back to the Moon?
There are really three principal reasons again.
First and foremost, there's been a fundamental change
in our understanding of the Moon in the last 10 or 15 years,
based on the discovery
that there is, in fact, vast amounts of water
in the form of ices and hydrated minerals at the north and south pole of the Moon.
One of the things we learned from Apollo
was that the Moon was bone dry
and always would be and always had been.
There was no water, no hydrogen, no oxygen,
no way to make life support materials, no way to make rocket fuels, and so on.
Turned out none of that was true,
and there is, in fact, a vast amount of water
at the poles of the Moon, where it's cold.
Second big change.
Right now, there is a revolution going on
in space launch systems technology,
driven in large measure by two firms: SpaceX and Blue Origin,
both of which are developing new launchers
which will deliver payloads to space,
and therefore to the Moon,
at a 90% cost reduction,
from the costs of getting into space and getting to the Moon,
compared to the glory days of Apollo and the space shuttle.
That changes everything.
And lastly - and I use these metaphors -
and lastly, there has been tremendous advances
in a wide range of technologies here on Earth,
which allow large numbers of 3D printed,
technically modular,
rapidly reconfigurable intelligent systems
to be mass-produced all over the world.
If you have ever seen a little CubeSat,
or you have seen ...
if you have one of these things in your pocket,
then you are enjoying - it's a mobile phone -
you are enjoying the benefits of mass-produced
modular digitally reconfigurable systems.
This changes how we return to the Moon
and what we can do there and at what price.
As a consequence of water on the Moon,
new launch systems, lower prices, new technologies,
a vast number of countries and companies
are now all planning to go to the Moon.
And so, one reason now is the time to go to the Moon
is because everybody else is also going.
And they are going
for the purposes of exploring, finding those resources,
developing those resources and using them,
not only for basically the operations on the Moon,
which is kind of a selfie if you're eating watermelon -
we go to the Moon to get resources to operate on the Moon -
it's not really useful.
But, in addition, finding materials on the Moon like water ice,
using the other resources of the Moon
silicon, aluminum, iron, and so on to manufacture things,
print things, 3D printing on the Moon,
affordably will allow us to basically use the Moon
as a stepping-stone to the rest of the solar system,
and to introduce lunar resources
in the form of manufactured things
into a larger near-Earth economy,
including the delivery of energy,
solar energy harvested in space to the markets on Earth
in tremendous quantities
and in completely carbon neutral fashion
during the coming decades.
Moreover, we go back to the Moon
because it is a tremendous test bed for new technologies,
a research and development lab.
We can use it as shown in the lower right image
as a test bed for going back to Mars.
So it's a tremendous R&D lab
because it's going to be cheaper to get there
because we'll have the resources to be there in a sustainable fashion.
And operations in near-Earth space on orbital platforms
will basically open the gateway - pun intended -
for a current NASA program on this level
to the rest of the solar system.
Just going in and being on the Moon
is not the same as being able to go anywhere in the solar system.
That becomes possible.
And, lastly, we go back to the Moon
because it is a tremendous platform
for doing astronomy and for observing our universe
in ways that we cannot achieve here on Earth.
And, finally, we go back to the Moon to stay.
There is no better place in our solar system
where we might consider the creation of a sustainable Earth-like habitat
than at the north and the south pole of the Moon
where we have basically the same amount of energy,
we have the same kind of minerals.
We have some shortcomings.
But the discovery of water fundamentally changes the opportunity
for human settlement of the Moon.
And, ultimately, we do all these things
not individually, not in a race,
but we do them because we have the opportunity to do them together.
We have the opportunity to do all of these things,
development of the Moon's resources, delivery of energy for Earth,
sustainable settlements in space in the form of a village as a metaphor -
not in a race but rather doing these things altogether.
And I think that many of the students here at Laguna Blanca
will be part of these programs in these efforts over the coming years.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)