YouSaid · the spoken record

Ariel Ekblaw

lines on the record: 112
first: 2022-03-23
most recent: 2022-03-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Then there's also another purpose, like another version of the meaning in my life that is trying to do good things for humanity. So that sense that we can be individual humans and have our local meaning and we can also be global humans, maybe someday like the Star Trek utopia will all be global citizens. I don't want to sound too naive, but there is, I think, that beauty to a meaning and a purpose of your life that's bigger than yourself working on something that's bigger and grander than just yourself.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting. Is there a single kind of driving purpose why, or can it just be curiosity based? I certainly feel, and this is not the scientist in me talking, but just more of like a human soul talking, I certainly feel some sense of purpose and meaning in my life. And there's a version of that that's a very local level within my family, which is funny because this whole conversation has been big grand space exploration themes. But you asked me this question, and my first thought is what really matters to me, my family, my biological reproducing unit.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our meta awareness about our own thoughts, our own thoughts. Yeah, turtles all the way down. I think that that is a really special gift that we have been given as a species and that there's a worth to expanding our circles of awareness. So we're very aware of as an earth-based species, we've become a little bit more aware of the fragility of earth and how special a place it is when we go to the moon and we look back. What would it mean for us to have a presence and our purpose in life as a intersolar system species or eventually an intergalactic species? I think it's a really profound opportunity for exploration for the sake of exploration, a real gift for the human mind.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think we're a remarkable species that we are aware of our own thoughts. We are meta aware of our own thoughts and of ourselves.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do. We have an arts curator on the Space Exploration Initiative side. She helps make sure partly around that communication challenge that we talked about that we're not just doing 0G flights and space missions, but that we take our artifacts of this sci-fi space future to museums and galleries and exhibits. She pushed me to make sure her name is Shinglu. She pushed me for our first ISS mission. I was just gathering all the engineering payloads that I wanted to support for the students to fly, including my own work. And she said, you know what, we should do an open call internationally for artists to send something to the ISS. And we found out it was the first time. We were the first ever international open call for art to go to the ISS. And that was thanks to Shing, an artist bringing a perspective that I might not have thought about prioritizing.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say one piece of advice is find really good teammates because I get to be the one that's talking to you, but there are 50 graduate student staff and faculty that are part of my organization back at MIT. And I'm actually, you guys can't see it on camera, but I'm sitting here with my co-founder and COO, Danielle Delat. And that is really what makes these large scale challenges for humanity possible is really fantastic teams working together to scale more than what I could do alone. So I think that that's an important model that we don't talk about enough in academia. There's a big push for this lone wolf genius figure in academia, but that's certainly not been the case in my life. I've had wonderful collaborators and people that I work with along the team.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say you should feel empowered because it's really the first time in human history that we're at this cusp of interplanetary civilization. And I don't think we're going to lapse back from it. So the future is incredibly bright for young people, that even younger than you and I, who will actually really get a chance to go to Mars for certain. The other thing I would say is be open-minded about what your own interests are. You are an artist, and that is your passion, but you would love to do space art, or if not space art, use your artistry to communicate a feeling or a message about space. That's a role that we desperately need, just as much as we need space scientists and space engineers.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Comments. That's why we titled the book into the anthropo cosmos. We know it's a long and kind of a mouthful, but this notion of the anthropocene, we have a lot of commons problems in humanity. How are we treating the earth global climate change? How are we going to treat and behave in space? How can we be responsible stewards of the space commons? And I would love to see an approach to the moon that is commons-based, but it's hard to know who would be the protector or the enforcer of that.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was going to be my next answer to you, which pushed me harder for a more provocative question where I might disagree with other people. I don't yet have my own opinions fully formed on this, but we are trying to figure out right now what happens to the moon with all of these first come, first served actors just arriving and setting precedents that might really affect future access. And one example is property rights. We do want companies that have the expertise to go to the moon and mine stuff that will help us develop a human settlement there or a gateway. But companies need to know generally that they have rights to a certain area or that they have some legal right to sell things that they're getting. Does that mean we're going to grant property rights on the moon to companies who has the right to give that right away? So there's a bunch of really kind of gnarly questions that we have to think about, which is why I think we need space lawyers. Maybe that's the true provocative answers. I think we need...”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, it's a stable orbit. There are several different Lagrange points. And so it just requires less energy to stay where you're trying to stay.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pockets like the Lagrange points, which is where we just sent we, not me personally, but NASA just sent James Webb, the big telescope. I think it's at L2.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Structures. Yeah. I think low Earth orbit might come to look like that. And it's a really interesting regulatory challenge to make sure that there's some cross purposes. So the more cool space cities we have in orbit, the more shiny objects in the night sky, the worse it is for astronomers in a really kind of overly simplified case. So there's some pushback to this amoeba ing where we just grow kind of incongruously or indiscriminately as an amoeba in low Earth orbit. Beyond that though, I think we'll grow in pockets where there are resources. So we won't just expand around the gravity well of Earth. We'll do some development around the moon, some development around asteroids, some development around Mars, because there'll always be purposes for which we want to go down to a physical object and study it or extract something or learn from it. But I think we'll grow in fits and starts in pockets. Some of the coolest pockets are the gravity balance.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But did that immediately translate to technology for engineering? No, but it's still a really important part of our understanding of these fundamental laws of physics. And so I don't know that it's always immediate, but I think it is really critical knowledge for humanity to seek.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“July 4th, 2012, that it was announced. We all waited like nerds overnight in line to get into the announcement chamber. I had never waited for even like a Harry Potter premiere in my life, but we waited for this announcement of the Higgs boson to get into the...”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could be. I mean, I worked at CERN for two summers in undergrad and we were looking for super symmetry. Was one of these alternatives to the standard model, and it was sad because my professors were getting sadder and sadder because they weren't finding it. They were excluding what we would call this parameter space of finding these super symmetric particles. But the search for what that theory of everything could be or a grand unified theory that kind of answers some of the holes within the standard model of physics would presumably kind of unlock a better understanding of certain fundamental physical laws that we should be able to build a better understanding of engineering and day-to-day services from that. It might not be an immediately obvious thing. When we discovered the Higgs, the Higgs boson, I was there at CERN that day.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To really make a positive impact for a broader swath of citizens. And so that kind of led me from the physics domain to thinking about engineering and practical questions for life and space.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I loved about having this chance to do a liberal arts education was trying to understand the human condition. And I think more designers for space exploration should be thinking about that because there's so much depth of, like we were talking about, issues and opportunities around human connection, human life, meaning in life, how do you find fulfillment or happiness? And I think if you approach these questions just purely from the standpoint of an engineer or a scientist, you'll miss some of what makes it a life worth living. And so I love being able to combine some of this notion of philosophy in the human condition with my work. But I'm also a pragmatist and I didn't want to stay just purely in these big picture questions about the universe. I wanted to have an impact on society. And I also felt like I had such a wonderful childhood and a really fantastic setup that I owe society some work.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As an ex physicist, but I've always found so profound. It's just that at really, really small scales, like particle physics and really, really big scales like astrophysics, there are similarities in the way that those systems behave and look. And there's a certain beautiful symmetry in the universe that's just kind of waiting for us to tie together the physics and really understand it. That is something that just really captivates me. And I would love to, even though I'm now much more on the applied space exploration side, I really try to keep up with what's happening in those physics areas because I think that will be a huge answer for humanity along the lines of are we alone in the universe?”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I couldn't agree more. And I actually think that this is why we need a real life Starfleet Academy right now. It was the place where the space cadets got to go to learn about how to engage in a future of life and space. And we can do it in a much better way. There are a bunch of groups that traditionally haven't thought that they could engage in aerospace, whether it's because you were told you had to be into math and science. Now we need space lawyers. We need space artists like Grimes, right? We need really creative, profoundly interesting people to want to see themselves in that future. And I think it's a big challenge to us in the space industry to also do some more diversity, equity, and inclusion and show a broader swath of society that there's a future for them in this space exploration vision.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All these different stages, but that level of spiral engineering theory of development isn't super impressive and it's a really interesting approach that SpaceX has taken. And I think between people like Elon and Jeff Bezos and Firefly and NASA and ESA, we are going to get there. They're building the road to space. These trailblazers are doing it. And now part of the challenge is to get the rest of the public to understand that it's happening a lot of people don't know that we're going back to the moon, that we're going to send the first woman to the moon within a few years. A lot of people don't know that there are commercial space stations in orbit, that it's not just NASA. that does space stuff. So we have a big challenge to get more of humanity excited and educated and involved again, kind of like in the Apollo era, where it was a big deal for everybody.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what's so special about what Elon is doing with SpaceX he takes these risks and he tests iteratively and we'll see the spectacular failures on the path to a successful starship. It's something that people have said, why isn't NASA doing that? Well, that's because NASA is doing that with taxpayer dollars and we would all revolt if we saw NASA failing.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, kind of combining something we were talking about, you can form these relationships with objects and anthropomorphized. One of the things that we're thinking about for agriculture created by Menwei and Somu, so two students at MIT, was this little, it looks like a planet, but it's inspired by, I think, a mandala or Nepalese spinning wheel. And you plant plants on the inside, and the astronaut has to spin it every day to help the plants survive. So it's a way to give the astronaut something to care about, something that they are responsible for keeping alive and can really invest themselves in. And it's not necessary, right? We have other ways to grow in orbit hydroponics, liquid, medium, trying to keep the liquid around the plant roots is hard because there's no gravity to pull it down in a particular direction. But what I loved about this project was they said, sure, we have ways that the plants could grow on their own, but the astronauts might want to care for it in the same way that we have little plants that come to be important to us, little plant friends. So there's agrifuge. That's an early model of this spinning manually spinning plant habitat.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, it's super manual. It's basically just like a kind of a set pattern of inflating as we're testing it. But in the future, if we had a neural link, I mean, this is something that you could imagine directly controlling, just thinking thoughts and controlling it. That's a ways away.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we talked about life in space, and you might need more arms than legs. One of the projects by Valentina Sumini was an air-powered robotics tail. So it's a soft robotics tail that essentially has a little camera on the back end of it, can do computer vision and knows where to grapple. So it's behind you. It grapples onto something and holds you in space and then you can actually free up both of your hands to work. So we're already starting to think about the design of bionic humans or prosthetics or things that would make you kind of like a cyborg to augment your capabilities when you're in a space environment.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a probe out really far, but we can also partner with SpaceX and see what human life in a SpaceX Mars settlement might look like and how we could design for that.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think, you know, people have been worried about NASA the last few years because in some people's minds they are seeding ground to these commercial efforts. But that's really not what's happening. NASA empowered these commercial efforts because they want to free themselves up to go to Mars and go to Europa and continue being that really aspirational force for humanity of pushing the boundary, always pushing the boundary. And if they were anchored in low Earth orbit, maintaining a space station indefinitely, that's so much a part of their budget that it was keeping them from being able to do more. So it actually is really fantastic for NASA to have grown this commercial ecosystem and then that frees NASA up to go further. And in academia, we like to think that we will be able to do the provocative next generation research that is going to unlock things at that frontier. And we can partner with NASA. We can go through a program if we want to.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the reasons we're spinning out Aurelia is we actually realized it's cheap enough, it doesn't even have to be MIT. And we wanted to start democratizing access to these spaceflight opportunities to a much broader swath of humanity. Could you get a Khan Academy educational course about, hey, students around the world, this is how you get ready for a Zero G flight? And by the way, come fly with us next year, which is something we're going to do with Aurelius. We're going to bring much more just kind of day-to-day folks on ZeroG flights and get them access to engaging in the space industry. So it's become cheap enough and the prices have dropped enough to consider even that. So that's amazing. It definitely doesn't have to be a consortium of universities anymore. Depends on what you want to fly. If you want to fly James Webb, a huge telescope that's decades in the making, sure, you need a NASA allocation budget. You need billions. But for a lot of the stuff in the book and our research portfolio, it's actually becoming far more accessible.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the first part of your question I am thrilled by all of the commercial activity in space. It has really empowered our program. So instead of me waiting for five years to get a grant and get the money from the grant, and only then can you send a project to space, I go out and I fundraise a lot like a startup founder and I directly buy access to space on the International Space Station through SpaceX or Nanoracks, same with Blue Origin and their suborbital craft, same with Axiom now, Axiom's making plans for their own commercial space station. It's not out of the realm of possibility, but in a few years, I will rent lab space in orbit. I will rent a module from the Axiom Space Station or the Orbital Reef, which is the Blue Origin space station, or Nanorax is thinking about Star Lab Oasis. There's probably some other companies that I'm not even aware of yet that are doing commercial space habitats. So I think that's fabulous and really empowering for our research.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For one, we're going to build more robust habitats that don't depend on astronauts being so impeccably well trained. So we're going to make it better for inclusion and just opening access to space. But there's a fantastic group called Astro Access that is already helping disabled space flyers do ZeroG flights and potentially get access to the ISS. And some of the things that we think of as disabilities on Earth are hyper abilities in space. You don't need really powerful legs in space. What you'd really benefit from having is a third arm, more ways to kind of move yourself around and grip and interact. So we are already seeing a much more open-minded approach to who gets to go to space and Astro Axis is a wonderful organization doing some of that work.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Graduate students to the ISS to do their research. I do think you and I both would have an opportunity to go to a lunar base of some sort within our lifetime. And there's a good chance If we really wanted to, we might have to really advocate for it, you know, apply to an astronaut program. There will be some avenues for humans in our lifetime to go to Mars.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Yeah, I'm coming back. I don't want that one way mission. I want the two way mission. But yes, I mean, I think we're already talking about a pretty near-term opportunity where I could send graduate students to the International Space Station. Not a sacrifice. But then graduates”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what we hope. You don't have like a Apollo 13 situation that doesn't quite make it back. But yeah, the This is also why Mars is such a challenge. The moon is only three days away. That's a lot quicker to recover from if there's a psychological problem with the crew or any type of maintenance problem, anything. Three years is such a challenge compared to these other domains that we've been getting more used to in terms of human spaceflight. So this is a question that we will need to have explored more before we start really sending crews to Mars.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And have a really tough dynamic. And so there's a lot of open questions still to answer about what is the ideal psychological makeup of a crew. And we're starting to test some of these things with the civilian crews that are going up with Inspiration 4, like last fall with SpaceX and Axe One that's going to fly in a few days here in March. As we begin to lengthen the time of those civilian crews, I think we'll start to learn a little bit more about just average everyday human-to-human dynamics and not the astronauts that are themselves selected to be perfect human specimens, very good to work with, easy to get along with”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not an expert in this area, but an anecdote that I'll share. My understanding is that NASA has still not decided whether it's better to send married couples or single crew members in terms of you want some level of stability, you don't want to have the drama of romantic relationships like you're alluding to before, but they can't decide because married couples also fight.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, one of the big challenges is you can't just open a window or walk out a door and blow off steam, right? You can't just go somewhere to clear your head. And in that sense, you need to build habitats that are homes that really care for the humans inside them and have, whether it's biophilia and a place where you can go and feel like you're in nature or a VR headset, which for some people is a porcemulcrum, but is maybe better than nothing, you need to be thinking about these technological interventions that are going to have to be part of your home and be part of your maybe day-to-day ritual to keep you steady and balanced and happy or feeling fulfilled.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. One of the projects in the book that I gave you, which is a catalog of the projects that we've worked on over the last five years, is this social robot that was developed at the Media Lab. And one of the first years in 2017 that we flew a Zergi flight, we took the social robot along and tried to do a little bit of a very scaled-down human study to look at these questions because you do imagine that we would form a bond, a real bond with the social robots that might be not just serving us on a mission, but really be our teammates on a future mission. And I do think that that could have a powerful role in the mental health and just the stability of a crew is to have some other robot friends come along.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That might be asked to autonomously maintain the station while the humans are away, or detection algorithms that are going to say, you know, if you had a human pilot, they might see debris in orbit and steer around it. There'll be a lot of autonomous navigation that has to happen. That'll be one of the early test beds where we'll start to get a little bit closer to that future.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It should be on the horizon. It's always good to think about these things early because we make a lot of technical design decisions at this phase working with swarm robots that it would be better to have thought about some of these questions early in the life cycle of a project. There is a real interest in NASA right now thinking about the future of human-robot interaction, HRI, and what is the right synergy in terms of level of control for the human versus level of dependence or control for the robot. And we're beginning to test out more of these scenarios. For example, the gateway space station, which is meant to be in orbit around the moon as a staging base for the surface operations, is meant to be able to function autonomously with no humans in it for months at a time because they think it's going to be seasonal. They think we might not be constantly staffing it. So this would be a really great test of, I don't know that anybody's yet worried about how 9,000 evolving, but certainly just the robustness of some of these AI systems.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let a lot of people on earth actually control the robot or at least benefit from the data that we're gathering and try to release the data openly. So we're exploring a couple different ideas for how do we engage more people in this mission.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. Interesting when you just a minute ago talking about the reflection of Space can be so aspirational and so uniting. There's a great quote from Bill Anders from the Apollo 8 mission to the moon, which is he, it's the Earthrise photo that was taken where you see the Earth coming up over the horizon of the Moon. And the quote is something along the lines of, we came all the way to discover the moon and what we really discovered was the Earth, this really powerful image looking back. And so we're also trying to think for our lunar mission, we realize we're a very privileged group at MIT to get the opportunity to do this. How could we bring humanity along with us? And so one of the things we're still testing out, I don't know if we're going to be able to swing it, would be to do something like a Twitch plays Pokemon.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, these could also be centralized. So they have wireless technology that could also talk to a central base station and will be assessing kind of case by case whether it makes sense to operate them in a decentralized form or to command them in a centralized swarm.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Storm of one, exactly. We're testing out. It's a tech demonstration mission, not a true, not a true swarm. Yeah, there they are. Those are the asteroids.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, exactly. An aunt writing a rover, that rover gets packed in a lander, that lander gets packed in a SpaceX rocket. So it's a whole nesting dolls situation to get to the moon.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we're actually going to fly one of the little astro ants. That's the current plan, one of the little swarm robots on the top of a rover that's part of the front.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And trying to take data from our research payloads at this historic South Pole site where NASA's supposed to send the first humans back on the Artemis 3 mission. So our hope is to directly support that human mission with our data.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. One is the future of in space manufacturing. So if we're going to build large scale space structures, yes, it's great to ship them up from Earth and self-assemble them. But what about extrusion in orbit? It's one of the best technologies to leverage in microgravity because you can extrude a particularly long beam that would sag in a normal gravity environment, but might be able to become the basis of a truss or a large-scale space structure. So we're doing miniature tests of extrusion and are excited to fly this on the International Space Station in a few months. We are working on swarm robots. We have just announced actually MIT's return to the moon. So my organization is leading this mission for MIT, going back to the surface of the moon as early as the end of this year, 2022, maybe early 2023.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it'd be really important right now in particular to find other platforms where these hegemonic powers in the world and developing world nations can come and collaborate on the future of space and purposefully intertwine our success so that there's a danger to multiple parties if somebody is a bad actor.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am really concerned about that, and I do think for decades, the scientific community in space has hung on to this notion from the 1967 outer space treaty, which is space is the province of all humankind, peaceful uses of outer space only. But I do think the rise in tensions and the geopolitical scene that we're seeing, I do harbor a lot of concern about hot wars following humanity out into space. And it's worth trying to tie nations together with more collaboration to avoid that happening. The International Space Station is a great example. I think it's something like 18 countries are party to this treaty. It might be less, it might be more. And then, of course, there's a smaller number of countries that actually send astronauts. But even at the fall of the Soviet Union and through some tense times with Russia, the ISS had been a place where the US and Russia were actually able to collaborate between Mirror and ISS.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If they do in that I mean, there's great sci-fi right about people being born on Mars and because it's a lower gravity environment, they're taller, they're more gangly if they were actually able to develop there. And then they come back to Earth and they're like second class citizens because they can't function here in the same way because the gravity is too strong for them. You see this in series like The Expanse with the belters and these different societies that if we were to succeed in having human societies grow up in different pockets is not necessarily going to be easy for them to always come back to Earth as their home.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that is the goal. And I think the current political climate is such that you can't get the trillion dollar investment to build, to start from scratch and build the sci-fi megastructure. But if you can build it in fits and starts in little different pieces, which is another advantage of self-assembly, it's much more like how nature works. So it's biomimicry-inspired way for humanity to scale out in space.”
2022-03-23 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #271 – Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source