0:00:00.858,0:00:04.635
I want to tell you a story about stories.

0:00:05.510,0:00:09.033
And I want to tell you this story[br]because I think we need to remember

0:00:09.057,0:00:11.249
that sometimes the stories[br]we tell each other

0:00:11.273,0:00:15.686
are more than just tales[br]or entertainment or narratives.

0:00:16.482,0:00:18.188
They're also vehicles

0:00:18.212,0:00:22.081
for sowing inspiration[br]and ideas across our societies

0:00:22.105,0:00:23.608
and across time.

0:00:24.800,0:00:26.292
The story I'm about to tell you

0:00:26.316,0:00:29.381
is about how one of the most advanced[br]technological achievements

0:00:29.405,0:00:30.557
of the modern era

0:00:30.581,0:00:32.185
has its roots in stories,

0:00:32.881,0:00:37.668
and how some of the most important[br]transformations yet to come might also.

0:00:38.954,0:00:41.065
The story begins over 300 years ago,

0:00:41.089,0:00:45.385
when Galileo Galilei first learned[br]of the recent Dutch invention

0:00:45.409,0:00:50.079
that took two pieces of shaped glass[br]and put them in a long tube

0:00:50.103,0:00:52.966
and thereby extended human sight[br]farther than ever before.

0:00:54.005,0:00:57.873
When Galileo turned[br]his new telescope to the heavens

0:00:57.897,0:00:59.459
and to the Moon in particular,

0:01:00.418,0:01:02.148
he discovered something incredible.

0:01:03.121,0:01:07.843
These are pages from Galileo's book[br]"Sidereus Nuncius," published in 1610.

0:01:08.531,0:01:11.748
And in them, he revealed to the world[br]what he had discovered.

0:01:11.772,0:01:15.235
And what he discovered was that the Moon[br]was not just a celestial object

0:01:15.259,0:01:17.410
wandering across the night sky,

0:01:17.434,0:01:20.294
but rather, it was a world,

0:01:20.318,0:01:23.552
a world with high, sunlit mountains

0:01:23.576,0:01:27.013
and dark "mare," the Latin word for seas.

0:01:28.075,0:01:30.958
And once this new world[br]and the Moon had been discovered,

0:01:30.982,0:01:35.061
people immediately began[br]to think about how to travel there.

0:01:35.085,0:01:37.286
And just as importantly,

0:01:37.310,0:01:39.395
they began to write stories

0:01:39.419,0:01:41.261
about how that might happen

0:01:41.285,0:01:43.179
and what those voyages might be like.

0:01:43.679,0:01:47.126
One of the first people to do so[br]was actually the Bishop of Hereford,

0:01:47.150,0:01:48.811
a man named Francis Godwin.

0:01:48.835,0:01:51.310
Godwin wrote a story[br]about a Spanish explorer,

0:01:51.334,0:01:52.847
Domingo Gonsales,

0:01:52.871,0:01:55.675
who ended up marooned[br]on the island of St. Helena

0:01:55.699,0:01:57.161
in the middle of the Atlantic,

0:01:57.185,0:01:58.987
and there, in an effort to get home,

0:02:00.050,0:02:02.066
developed a machine, an invention,

0:02:02.090,0:02:04.997
to harness the power[br]of the local wild geese

0:02:05.021,0:02:06.654
to allow him to fly --

0:02:06.678,0:02:09.596
and eventually to embark[br]on a voyage to the Moon.

0:02:10.016,0:02:14.397
Godwin's book, "The Man in the Moone,[br]or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither,"

0:02:14.421,0:02:18.293
was only published posthumously[br]and anonymously in 1638,

0:02:18.317,0:02:22.102
likely on account of the number[br]of controversial ideas that it contained,

0:02:22.126,0:02:25.160
including an endorsement[br]of the Copernican view of the universe

0:02:25.184,0:02:27.928
that put the Sun at the center[br]of the Solar System,

0:02:27.952,0:02:30.535
as well as a pre-Newtonian[br]concept of gravity

0:02:30.559,0:02:33.500
that had the idea[br]that the weight of an object

0:02:33.524,0:02:36.272
would decrease with increasing[br]distance from Earth.

0:02:36.801,0:02:39.599
And that's to say nothing[br]of his idea of a goose machine

0:02:39.623,0:02:41.049
that could go to the Moon.

0:02:41.073,0:02:42.708
(Laughter)

0:02:42.732,0:02:45.572
And while this idea of a voyage[br]to the Moon by goose machine

0:02:45.596,0:02:49.739
might not seem particularly insightful[br]or technically creative to us today,

0:02:49.763,0:02:54.093
what's important is that Godwin described[br]getting to the Moon not by a dream

0:02:54.117,0:02:57.498
or by magic, as Johannes Kepler[br]had written about,

0:02:57.522,0:03:00.383
but rather, through human invention.

0:03:00.407,0:03:03.610
And it was this idea[br]that we could build machines

0:03:03.634,0:03:05.525
that could travel into the heavens,

0:03:05.549,0:03:09.453
that would plant its seed[br]in minds across the generations.

0:03:10.174,0:03:13.053
The idea was next taken up[br]by his contemporary, John Wilkins,

0:03:13.077,0:03:14.834
then just a young student at Oxford,

0:03:14.858,0:03:17.423
but later, one of the founders[br]of the Royal Society.

0:03:17.981,0:03:22.126
John Wilkins took the idea of space travel[br]in Godwin's text seriously

0:03:22.150,0:03:24.224
and wrote not just another story

0:03:24.248,0:03:27.114
but a nonfiction philosophical treatise,

0:03:27.138,0:03:29.732
entitled, "Discovery[br]of the New World in the Moon,

0:03:29.756,0:03:32.109
or, a Discourse Tending to Prove

0:03:32.133,0:03:36.068
that 'tis Probable There May Be[br]Another Habitable World in that Planet."

0:03:36.930,0:03:39.115
And note, by the way,[br]that word "habitable."

0:03:39.462,0:03:42.129
That idea in itself would have[br]been a powerful incentive

0:03:42.153,0:03:45.377
for people thinking about how to build[br]machines that could go there.

0:03:45.795,0:03:49.212
In his books, Wilkins seriously considered[br]a number of technical methods

0:03:49.236,0:03:50.521
for spaceflight,

0:03:50.545,0:03:54.116
and it remains to this day[br]the earliest known nonfiction account

0:03:54.140,0:03:56.114
of how we might travel to the Moon.

0:03:56.138,0:03:59.376
Other stories would soon follow,[br]most notably by Cyrano de Bergerac,

0:03:59.400,0:04:00.799
with his "Lunar Tales."

0:04:00.823,0:04:03.847
By the mid-17th century,[br]the idea of people building machines

0:04:03.871,0:04:06.034
that could travel to the heavens

0:04:06.058,0:04:09.111
was growing in complexity[br]and technical nuance.

0:04:10.152,0:04:12.986
And yet, in the late 17th century,

0:04:13.010,0:04:15.741
this intellectual progress[br]effectively ceased.

0:04:16.289,0:04:18.813
People still told stories[br]about getting to the Moon,

0:04:18.837,0:04:20.540
but they relied on the old ideas

0:04:20.564,0:04:23.591
or, once again, on dreams or on magic.

0:04:24.203,0:04:25.646
Why?

0:04:25.670,0:04:29.321
Well, because the discovery[br]of the laws of gravity by Newton

0:04:29.345,0:04:34.003
and the invention of the vacuum pump[br]by Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle

0:04:34.027,0:04:35.586
meant that people now understood

0:04:35.610,0:04:38.815
that a condition of vacuum[br]existed between the planets,

0:04:38.839,0:04:41.477
and consequentially[br]between the Earth and the Moon.

0:04:41.501,0:04:43.929
And they had no way of overcoming this,

0:04:43.953,0:04:46.330
no way of thinking about overcoming this.

0:04:46.354,0:04:48.231
And so, for well over a century,

0:04:48.255,0:04:52.025
the idea of a voyage to the Moon[br]made very little intellectual progress

0:04:52.602,0:04:55.124
until the rise of[br]the Industrial Revolution

0:04:55.148,0:04:57.899
and the development[br]of steam engines and boilers

0:04:57.923,0:05:00.236
and most importantly, pressure vessels.

0:05:01.030,0:05:05.119
And these gave people the tools to think[br]about how they could build a capsule

0:05:05.143,0:05:07.352
that could resist the vacuum of space.

0:05:08.371,0:05:11.575
So it was in this context, in 1835,

0:05:11.599,0:05:14.584
that the next great story[br]of spaceflight was written,

0:05:14.608,0:05:15.907
by Edgar Allan Poe.

0:05:16.452,0:05:19.833
Now, today we think of Poe[br]in terms of gothic poems

0:05:19.857,0:05:21.734
and telltale hearts and ravens.

0:05:22.084,0:05:24.322
But he considered himself[br]a technical thinker.

0:05:24.788,0:05:26.271
He grew up in Baltimore,

0:05:26.295,0:05:28.665
the first American city[br]with gas street lighting,

0:05:28.689,0:05:31.208
and he was fascinated[br]by the technological revolution

0:05:31.232,0:05:33.071
that he saw going on all around him.

0:05:33.095,0:05:36.780
He considered his own greatest work[br]not to be one of his gothic tales

0:05:36.804,0:05:39.360
but rather his epic prose poem "Eureka,"

0:05:39.384,0:05:41.620
in which he expounded[br]his own personal view

0:05:41.644,0:05:44.346
of the cosmographical nature[br]of the universe.

0:05:45.230,0:05:48.826
In his stories, he would describe[br]in fantastical technical detail

0:05:48.850,0:05:50.755
machines and contraptions,

0:05:50.779,0:05:54.541
and nowhere was he more influential[br]in this than in his short story,

0:05:54.565,0:05:57.786
"The Unparalleled Adventure[br]of One Hans Pfaall."

0:05:58.585,0:06:01.279
It's a story of an unemployed[br]bellows maker in Rotterdam,

0:06:01.303,0:06:04.756
who, depressed and tired of life --[br]this is Poe, after all --

0:06:04.780,0:06:06.407
and deeply in debt,

0:06:06.431,0:06:10.761
he decides to build a hermetically[br]enclosed balloon-borne carriage

0:06:10.785,0:06:13.229
that is launched into the air by dynamite

0:06:13.253,0:06:15.935
and from there, floats[br]through the vacuum of space

0:06:15.959,0:06:17.757
all the way to the lunar surface.

0:06:18.575,0:06:21.523
And importantly, he did not[br]develop this story alone,

0:06:21.547,0:06:23.104
for in the appendix to his tale,

0:06:23.128,0:06:26.819
he explicitly acknowledged Godwin's[br]"A Man in the Moone"

0:06:26.843,0:06:29.622
from over 200 years earlier

0:06:29.646,0:06:31.234
as an influence,

0:06:31.258,0:06:34.681
calling it "a singular and somewhat[br]ingenious little book."

0:06:35.500,0:06:39.685
And although this idea of a balloon-borne[br]voyage to the Moon may seem

0:06:39.709,0:06:42.714
not much more technically sophisticated[br]than the goose machine,

0:06:43.698,0:06:46.812
in fact, Poe was sufficiently detailed

0:06:46.836,0:06:50.028
in the description[br]of the construction of the device

0:06:50.052,0:06:53.512
and in terms of the orbital[br]dynamics of the voyage

0:06:53.536,0:06:57.954
that it could be diagrammed[br]in the very first spaceflight encyclopedia

0:06:57.978,0:07:00.492
as a mission in the 1920s.

0:07:01.309,0:07:06.062
And it was this attention to detail,[br]or to "verisimilitude," as he called it,

0:07:06.086,0:07:08.157
that would influence the next great story:

0:07:08.678,0:07:11.969
Jules Verne's "From the Earth[br]to the Moon," written in 1865.

0:07:12.545,0:07:15.144
And it's a story that has[br]a remarkable legacy

0:07:15.168,0:07:18.194
and a remarkable similarity[br]to the real voyages to the Moon

0:07:18.218,0:07:20.724
that would take place[br]over a hundred years later.

0:07:20.748,0:07:25.643
Because in the story, the first voyage[br]to the Moon takes place from Florida,

0:07:25.667,0:07:28.074
with three people on board,

0:07:28.098,0:07:30.169
in a trip that takes three days --

0:07:30.193,0:07:34.325
exactly the parameters that would prevail[br]during the Apollo program itself.

0:07:35.268,0:07:38.316
And in an explicit tribute[br]to Poe's influence on him,

0:07:38.340,0:07:42.686
Verne situated the group responsible[br]for this feat in the book in Baltimore,

0:07:42.710,0:07:44.086
at the Baltimore Gun Club,

0:07:44.110,0:07:46.527
with its members shouting,[br]"Cheers for Edgar Poe!"

0:07:46.551,0:07:50.091
as they began to lay out their plans[br]for their conquest of the Moon.

0:07:50.115,0:07:52.600
And just as Verne was influenced by Poe,

0:07:52.624,0:07:56.125
so, too, would Verne's own story[br]go on to influence and inspire

0:07:56.149,0:07:58.374
the first generation of rocket scientists.

0:07:58.398,0:08:01.888
The two great pioneers of liquid fuel[br]rocketry in Russia and in Germany,

0:08:01.912,0:08:04.367
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth,

0:08:04.391,0:08:07.301
both traced their own commitment[br]to the field of spaceflight

0:08:07.325,0:08:10.105
to their reading "From the Earth[br]to the Moon" as teenagers,

0:08:10.129,0:08:12.130
and then subsequently[br]committing themselves

0:08:12.154,0:08:15.400
to trying to make that story a reality.

0:08:15.928,0:08:18.666
And Verne's story was not[br]the only one in the 19th century

0:08:18.690,0:08:20.360
with a long arm of influence.

0:08:20.384,0:08:22.054
On the other side of the Atlantic,

0:08:22.078,0:08:24.804
H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds"[br]directly inspired

0:08:24.828,0:08:27.815
a young man in Massachusetts,[br]Robert Goddard.

0:08:28.356,0:08:30.478
And it was after reading[br]"War of the Worlds"

0:08:30.502,0:08:32.070
that Goddard wrote in his diary,

0:08:32.094,0:08:34.092
one day in the late 1890s,

0:08:34.116,0:08:37.874
of resting while trimming[br]a cherry tree on his family's farm

0:08:37.898,0:08:43.053
and having a vision of a spacecraft[br]taking off from the valley below

0:08:43.077,0:08:44.953
and ascending into the heavens.

0:08:44.977,0:08:48.934
And he decided then and there[br]that he would commit the rest of his life

0:08:48.958,0:08:52.439
to the development of the spacecraft[br]that he saw in his mind's eye.

0:08:53.266,0:08:54.701
And he did exactly that.

0:08:55.238,0:08:57.627
Throughout his career,[br]he would celebrate that day

0:08:57.651,0:09:00.042
as his anniversary day,[br]his cherry tree day,

0:09:00.066,0:09:03.679
and he would regularly read and reread[br]the works of Verne and of Wells

0:09:03.703,0:09:07.273
in order to renew his inspiration[br]and his commitment

0:09:07.297,0:09:11.103
over the decades of labor[br]and effort that would be required

0:09:11.127,0:09:13.810
to realize the first part of his dream:

0:09:13.834,0:09:15.687
the flight of a liquid fuel rocket,

0:09:15.711,0:09:18.331
which he finally achieved in 1926.

0:09:18.897,0:09:22.758
So it was while reading "From the Earth[br]to the Moon" and "The War of the Worlds"

0:09:22.782,0:09:26.430
that the first pioneers of astronautics[br]were inspired to dedicate their lives

0:09:26.454,0:09:28.325
to solving the problems of spaceflight.

0:09:28.349,0:09:31.301
And it was their treatises[br]and their works in turn

0:09:31.325,0:09:33.441
that inspired the first[br]technical communities

0:09:33.465,0:09:35.524
and the first projects of spaceflight,

0:09:35.548,0:09:38.210
thus creating a direct chain of influence

0:09:38.234,0:09:40.645
that goes from Godwin to Poe to Verne

0:09:40.669,0:09:42.040
to the Apollo program

0:09:42.064,0:09:44.699
and to the present-day[br]communities of spaceflight.

0:09:45.689,0:09:48.269
So why I have told you all this?

0:09:48.970,0:09:51.081
Is it just because I think it's cool,

0:09:51.105,0:09:55.118
or because I'm just[br]weirdly fascinated by stories

0:09:55.142,0:09:57.427
of 17th- and 19th-century science fiction?

0:09:58.538,0:10:00.165
It is, admittedly, partly that.

0:10:02.085,0:10:04.562
But I also think[br]that these stories remind us

0:10:04.586,0:10:07.472
of the cultural processes[br]driving spaceflight

0:10:07.496,0:10:09.896
and even technological[br]innovation more broadly.

0:10:10.582,0:10:12.149
As an economist working at NASA,

0:10:12.173,0:10:14.770
I spend time thinking about[br]the economic origins

0:10:14.794,0:10:16.777
of our movement out into the cosmos.

0:10:17.349,0:10:22.526
And when you look before the investments[br]of billionaire tech entrepreneurs

0:10:22.550,0:10:24.258
and before the Cold War Space Race,

0:10:24.282,0:10:27.795
and even before the military investments[br]in liquid fuel rocketry,

0:10:27.819,0:10:33.280
the economic origins of spaceflight[br]are found in stories and in ideas.

0:10:34.431,0:10:38.322
It was in these stories that the first[br]concepts for spaceflight were articulated.

0:10:38.346,0:10:39.897
And it was through these stories

0:10:39.921,0:10:44.371
that the narrative of a future[br]for humanity in space

0:10:44.395,0:10:46.901
began to propagate from mind to mind,

0:10:46.925,0:10:50.770
eventually creating an intergenerational[br]intellectual community

0:10:50.794,0:10:53.705
that would iterate[br]on the ideas for spacecraft

0:10:53.729,0:10:56.098
until such a time[br]as they could finally be built.

0:10:57.180,0:11:01.213
This process has now been going on[br]for over 300 years,

0:11:01.237,0:11:04.773
and the result is[br]a culture of spaceflight.

0:11:05.614,0:11:07.884
It's a culture that involves[br]thousands of people

0:11:07.908,0:11:09.961
over hundreds of years.

0:11:09.985,0:11:13.115
Because for hundreds of years,[br]some of us have looked at the stars

0:11:13.139,0:11:14.331
and longed to go.

0:11:14.355,0:11:16.028
And because for hundreds of years,

0:11:16.052,0:11:17.895
some of us have dedicated our labors

0:11:17.919,0:11:20.396
to the development[br]of the concepts and systems

0:11:20.420,0:11:22.357
required to make those voyages possible.

0:11:23.857,0:11:26.484
I also wanted to tell you[br]about Godwin, Poe and Verne

0:11:26.508,0:11:30.152
because I think their stories[br]also tell us of the importance

0:11:30.176,0:11:33.908
of the stories that we tell each other[br]about the future more generally.

0:11:33.932,0:11:37.255
Because these stories don't just[br]transmit information or ideas.

0:11:37.279,0:11:39.281
They can also nurture passions,

0:11:40.136,0:11:42.381
passions that can lead us[br]to dedicate our lives

0:11:42.405,0:11:44.843
to the realization of important projects.

0:11:44.867,0:11:47.351
Which means that these stories can and do

0:11:47.375,0:11:50.229
influence social and technological forces

0:11:50.253,0:11:52.203
centuries into the future.

0:11:53.314,0:11:56.836
I think we need to realize this[br]and remember it when we tell our stories.

0:11:57.233,0:11:59.085
We need to work hard to write stories

0:11:59.109,0:12:02.165
that don't just show us the possible[br]dystopian paths we may take

0:12:02.189,0:12:05.348
for a fear that the more dystopian[br]stories we tell each other,

0:12:05.372,0:12:08.463
the more we plant seeds[br]for possible dystopian futures.

0:12:09.343,0:12:11.850
Instead we need to tell stories[br]that plant the seeds,

0:12:11.874,0:12:13.402
if not necessarily for utopias,

0:12:13.426,0:12:17.013
then at least for great new projects[br]of technological, societal

0:12:17.037,0:12:18.747
and institutional transformation.

0:12:19.428,0:12:22.665
And if we think of this idea[br]that the stories we tell each other

0:12:22.689,0:12:24.327
can transform the future

0:12:24.351,0:12:26.708
is fanciful or impossible,

0:12:26.732,0:12:29.243
then I think we need to remember[br]the example of this,

0:12:29.267,0:12:30.920
our voyage to the Moon,

0:12:30.944,0:12:33.201
an idea from the 17th century

0:12:33.225,0:12:37.106
that propagated culturally[br]for over 300 years

0:12:37.130,0:12:38.971
until it could finally be realized.

0:12:39.842,0:12:42.758
So, we need to write new stories,

0:12:43.615,0:12:45.556
stories that, 300 years in the future,

0:12:45.580,0:12:48.457
people will be able[br]to look back upon and remark

0:12:48.481,0:12:51.906
how they inspired us[br]to new heights and to new shores,

0:12:51.930,0:12:55.289
how they showed us new paths[br]and new possibilities,

0:12:55.313,0:12:57.537
and how they shaped[br]our world for the better.

0:12:57.561,0:12:58.731
Thank you.

0:12:58.755,0:13:02.605
(Applause)