Ariel Ekblaw: Space Colonization and Self-Assembling Space Megastructures
太空与探索音乐与艺术生物与进化历史与文明AI 与机器学习
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spacehumanearthhumansdonmarsfutureorbitexplorationableselfmitmoonnasastationengineeringcooldoinghopescale
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🎙️ 完整对话（2619 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
We think that self assembly,
我们认为自组装，
Lex Fridman (00:01.720)
this modular reconfigurable algorithm
这种模块化的可重构算法
Lex Fridman (00:04.760)
for constructing space structures in orbit
用于在轨道上建造空间结构
Lex Fridman (00:07.520)
is gonna give us this promise of space architecture
会给我们带来太空建筑的希望
Lex Fridman (00:10.760)
that's actually worth living in.
这实际上是值得居住的。
Ariel Ekblaw (00:12.320)
You see, you do believe we might one day
你看，你确实相信有一天我们会
Lex Fridman (00:14.500)
become intergalactic civilization.
成为星际文明。
Ariel Ekblaw (00:17.920)
I have a hope, yeah.
我有一个希望，是的。
Lex Fridman (00:21.280)
The following is a conversation with Ariel Ekblah,
以下是与 Ariel Ekblah 的对话，
Ariel Ekblaw (00:24.240)
Director of MIT Space Exploration Initiative.
麻省理工学院太空探索计划主任。
Lex Fridman (00:27.400)
She's especially interested in autonomously
她对自主特别感兴趣
Ariel Ekblaw (00:30.120)
self assembling space architectures.
自组装空间建筑。
Lex Fridman (00:32.700)
Basically, giant space structures
基本上，巨型空间结构
Ariel Ekblaw (00:35.880)
that can sustain human life
可以维持人类生命
Lex Fridman (00:37.720)
and that assemble themselves out in space
并在太空中自行组装
Lex Fridman (00:40.440)
and then orbit Earth, Moon, Mars, and other planets.
然后绕地球、月球、火星和其他行星运行。
Lex Fridman (00:46.240)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
这是莱克斯·弗里德曼的播客。
Ariel Ekblaw (00:48.280)
To support it, please check out our sponsors
为了支持它，请查看我们的赞助商
Lex Fridman (00:50.240)
in the description.
在描述中。
Lex Fridman (00:51.480)
And now, dear friends, here's Ariel Ekblah.
现在，亲爱的朋友们，这是 Ariel Ekblah。
Lex Fridman (00:55.420)
When did you first fall in love with space exploration
Lex Fridman (00:59.540)
and space in general?
Lex Fridman (01:01.260)
My parents are both ex Air Force.
Lex Fridman (01:04.100)
So my dad's an A10 fighter pilot
Lex Fridman (01:05.860)
and my mom trained and had qualified to be a fighter pilot,
Lex Fridman (01:09.660)
but it was early enough
Lex Fridman (01:11.000)
that women were not allowed in combat at that time.
Lex Fridman (01:13.380)
And so I grew up with these two pilots
Lex Fridman (01:16.380)
and although they themselves did not become astronauts,
Ariel Ekblaw (01:18.620)
there's a really rich legacy of Air Force pilots
Lex Fridman (01:20.960)
becoming astronauts and this loomed large in my childhood.
Lex Fridman (01:24.260)
What does it mean to be courageous, to be an explorer,
Lex Fridman (01:26.780)
to be at the vanguard of something hard and challenging?
Lex Fridman (01:31.680)
And to couple with that,
Lex Fridman (01:32.900)
my dad was a huge fan of science fiction.
Lex Fridman (01:35.060)
And so I, as a kid, read Heinlein and Isaac Asimov,
Lex Fridman (01:39.580)
all these different classics of science fiction
Ariel Ekblaw (01:41.220)
that he had introduced me to.
Lex Fridman (01:42.500)
And that just started a love affair with space exploration
Lex Fridman (01:45.900)
and really thinking about
Lex Fridman (01:47.820)
civilization scale space exploration.
Lex Fridman (01:50.740)
So did they themselves dream about going to the stars
Lex Fridman (01:57.720)
as opposed to flying here in Earth's atmosphere,
Lex Fridman (02:01.020)
just looking up?
Lex Fridman (02:02.000)
Yeah, my dad always said he was absolutely convinced
Ariel Ekblaw (02:04.100)
because he was a child of the Apollo years
Lex Fridman (02:06.300)
that he would get to go in his lifetime,
Ariel Ekblaw (02:08.580)
really thought it was gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (02:09.980)
And so it was a challenge and sad for many people
Ariel Ekblaw (02:12.760)
when to their view on the outside,
Lex Fridman (02:15.220)
space exploration slowed down for a period of time.
Ariel Ekblaw (02:17.940)
In reality, we were just catching up.
Lex Fridman (02:19.700)
I think we leapt so far ahead with Apollo,
Ariel Ekblaw (02:23.140)
more than the rest of society was ready for.
Lex Fridman (02:25.260)
And now we're coming back to this moment
Ariel Ekblaw (02:27.620)
for space exploration where we actually have an economy
Lex Fridman (02:29.980)
and we have the other accoutrement that society needs
Ariel Ekblaw (02:32.780)
to be able to make space exploration more real.
Lex Fridman (02:34.980)
And my dad's thrilled because finally,
Ariel Ekblaw (02:37.340)
not nearly, I hope not anywhere near the end of his life,
Lex Fridman (02:39.980)
but as he's an older man,
Ariel Ekblaw (02:40.920)
he now can see still within his lifetime,
Lex Fridman (02:44.480)
people really getting a chance
Ariel Ekblaw (02:45.540)
to build a sustainable lunar settlement on the moon
Lex Fridman (02:47.900)
or maybe even go to Mars.
Lex Fridman (02:49.180)
So settlement, civilizations and other planets,
Lex Fridman (02:52.120)
that's the cool thing to dream about in the future.
Ariel Ekblaw (02:55.580)
It certainly is.
Lex Fridman (02:56.820)
What was the favorite sci fi authors when you were growing up?
Ariel Ekblaw (03:00.580)
Pabé Eszeg Asimov Foundation Trilogy.
Lex Fridman (03:02.560)
This is an amazing story of Harry Seldon,
Ariel Ekblaw (03:05.220)
this foundation that he forms at different ends of the,
Lex Fridman (03:09.180)
well, according to the story,
Ariel Ekblaw (03:10.860)
different ends of the universe
Lex Fridman (03:12.420)
and has this interesting focus on society.
Lex Fridman (03:16.820)
So it's not just space exploration
Lex Fridman (03:19.220)
for the sake of space exploration or novel technology,
Ariel Ekblaw (03:21.500)
which is a lot of what I work on day to day at MIT,
Lex Fridman (03:23.940)
but how do you structure a society
Lex Fridman (03:27.960)
across those vast expanses of distance and time?
Lex Fridman (03:31.540)
And so I'd say absolutely a favorite.
Ariel Ekblaw (03:33.640)
Now though, my favorite is Neal Stephenson and Seveneves.
Lex Fridman (03:38.060)
It's a book that inspired my own PhD research
Lex Fridman (03:40.620)
and some ongoing work that we're doing with NASA now
Lex Fridman (03:43.100)
for the future of swarm robotics for spacecraft.
Ariel Ekblaw (03:46.660)
We were saying offline about Neal Stephenson
Lex Fridman (03:49.700)
because I just recently had a conversation with him.
Lex Fridman (03:51.580)
And I said that not until I was doing the research for him
Lex Fridman (03:54.660)
that I realized he also had a role to play in Blue Origin.
Lex Fridman (03:59.860)
So it's like sci fi actually having a role to play
Lex Fridman (04:02.760)
in the design, engineering,
Ariel Ekblaw (04:06.080)
just the implementation of ideas
Lex Fridman (04:07.640)
that kind of percolate up from the sci fi world
Lex Fridman (04:10.860)
and actually become reality.
Lex Fridman (04:11.980)
It's kind of a fascinating figure in that way.
Lex Fridman (04:14.540)
So do you also think about him
Lex Fridman (04:16.900)
beyond just his work in science fiction,
Lex Fridman (04:19.660)
but his role in coming up with wild, crazy ideas
Lex Fridman (04:22.900)
that actually become reality?
Ariel Ekblaw (04:24.220)
Yes, I think it's a great example of this cycle
Lex Fridman (04:26.860)
between authors and scientists and engineers
Ariel Ekblaw (04:29.980)
that we can be inspired in one generation
Lex Fridman (04:32.100)
by what authors dream up.
Ariel Ekblaw (04:33.900)
We build it, we make it a reality.
Lex Fridman (04:35.740)
And then that inspires another generation
Ariel Ekblaw (04:37.420)
of really wild and crazy thought for science fiction.
Lex Fridman (04:40.540)
I think Neal Stephenson does a beautiful job
Ariel Ekblaw (04:42.240)
of being what we'd call a hard science fiction author.
Lex Fridman (04:44.740)
So it's really grounded in a lot of science,
Ariel Ekblaw (04:46.500)
which makes it very compelling for me
Lex Fridman (04:47.940)
as a scientist and engineer to read
Lex Fridman (04:50.140)
and then be challenged to make that vision a reality.
Lex Fridman (04:53.260)
The other community that Neal's involved with
Lex Fridman (04:56.100)
and some of my other mentors are involved with
Lex Fridman (04:57.620)
that we are thinking about more and more in the work
Ariel Ekblaw (05:00.260)
that we do at MIT is the Long Now Foundation.
Lex Fridman (05:03.940)
And this focus on what does society need to take
Ariel Ekblaw (05:08.860)
in terms of steps at this juncture,
Lex Fridman (05:11.460)
this particular inflection point in human history
Ariel Ekblaw (05:14.500)
to make sure that we're setting ourselves up
Lex Fridman (05:16.140)
for a long and prosperous horizon,
Ariel Ekblaw (05:18.780)
for humanity's horizons.
Lex Fridman (05:20.440)
There's a lot of examples
Ariel Ekblaw (05:21.340)
of what the Long Now Foundation does and thinks about.
Lex Fridman (05:23.860)
But when I think about this in my own work,
Ariel Ekblaw (05:25.500)
it's what does it take to scale humanity's presence
Lex Fridman (05:30.140)
in orbit?
Ariel Ekblaw (05:31.740)
We are seeing some additional investment
Lex Fridman (05:34.200)
in commercial space habitats.
Lex Fridman (05:36.300)
So it'll no longer be just NASA
Lex Fridman (05:37.660)
running the International Space Station,
Lex Fridman (05:39.420)
but to really democratize access to space,
Lex Fridman (05:42.860)
like Bezos wants to have millions of people living
Lex Fridman (05:44.780)
and working in space,
Lex Fridman (05:46.020)
you need architecture that's bigger and grander
Lex Fridman (05:49.460)
and can actually scale.
Lex Fridman (05:50.940)
That means you need to be thinking about
Lex Fridman (05:52.100)
how can you construct things for long time horizons
Lex Fridman (05:55.120)
that are really sustainable in orbit
Ariel Ekblaw (05:56.740)
or on a surface of a celestial body
Lex Fridman (05:59.460)
that are bigger than the biggest rocket payload fairing
Ariel Ekblaw (06:02.180)
that we currently have available.
Lex Fridman (06:03.460)
And that what led me to self assembly
Lex Fridman (06:05.420)
and other models of in space construction.
Lex Fridman (06:08.300)
Okay, every time you speak,
Ariel Ekblaw (06:10.580)
I get like a million tangent ideas.
Lex Fridman (06:12.540)
You can cut me off.
Ariel Ekblaw (06:13.380)
No, no, no, no, no, no, please keep talking.
Lex Fridman (06:15.220)
This is amazing.
Ariel Ekblaw (06:16.140)
I just, there's like a million of ideas.
Lex Fridman (06:19.100)
So one sort of on the dark side, let me ask,
Lex Fridman (06:21.820)
do you think about the threats to human civilization
Lex Fridman (06:25.060)
that kind of motivate the scaling of the expansion
Lex Fridman (06:28.940)
of humans in space and on other planets?
Lex Fridman (06:31.740)
What are you worried about?
Ariel Ekblaw (06:32.900)
Nuclear war, pandemics,
Lex Fridman (06:35.660)
super intelligent, artificial intelligence systems,
Ariel Ekblaw (06:40.820)
more not existential crises,
Lex Fridman (06:44.100)
but ones that have significant,
Ariel Ekblaw (06:46.360)
potentially significant detrimental effects on society,
Lex Fridman (06:48.760)
like climate change, those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (06:51.020)
And then there's of course the fun S story
Lex Fridman (06:52.780)
coming out from the darkness and hitting all earth.
Ariel Ekblaw (06:55.420)
There's been a few movies on that.
Lex Fridman (06:57.060)
Anyway, is there something that you think about
Lex Fridman (07:00.300)
that threatens us in this century?
Lex Fridman (07:03.140)
I mean, as an ex military family,
Ariel Ekblaw (07:04.520)
we used to talk about all of this.
Lex Fridman (07:06.420)
We would say that luck favors the prepared.
Lex Fridman (07:08.740)
And so growing up, we had a plan, actually a family plan
Lex Fridman (07:13.300)
for what we would do in a pandemic.
Ariel Ekblaw (07:14.460)
Didn't think we were gonna have to put that
Lex Fridman (07:15.540)
and plan into place and here we are.
Ariel Ekblaw (07:17.500)
We do, certainly among my own family and my friends
Lex Fridman (07:20.780)
and then our work at MIT,
Ariel Ekblaw (07:21.820)
we do think about existential threats and risks to humanity
Lex Fridman (07:24.900)
and what role does space exploration
Lex Fridman (07:27.260)
and getting humans off world have to play
Lex Fridman (07:29.180)
in a resilient future for humanity.
Lex Fridman (07:32.100)
But what I actually find more compelling recently
Lex Fridman (07:35.420)
is instead of thinking about a need to ever abandon earth
Ariel Ekblaw (07:40.540)
through a path of space exploration or space foraging
Lex Fridman (07:42.980)
is to see how we can use space technology
Ariel Ekblaw (07:44.900)
to keep earth livable.
Lex Fridman (07:47.260)
The obvious direct ways of doing this would be,
Ariel Ekblaw (07:50.020)
satellite technology that's helping us learn more
Lex Fridman (07:52.300)
about climate change or emitters or CO2.
Lex Fridman (07:56.260)
But there's also a future for geo engineering
Lex Fridman (07:58.160)
that might be space based.
Ariel Ekblaw (07:59.580)
A lot of questions that would have to be answered
Lex Fridman (08:01.040)
around that, but these are examples of pivoting our focus
Ariel Ekblaw (08:04.940)
away from maybe the Hollywood vision of,
Lex Fridman (08:06.940)
oh, an asteroid's gonna come,
Ariel Ekblaw (08:08.200)
we're all gonna have to escape earth
Lex Fridman (08:09.380)
to let's use our considerable technology prowess
Lex Fridman (08:14.420)
and use space technology to save earth
Lex Fridman (08:16.420)
and be very much focused on how we can have
Ariel Ekblaw (08:18.180)
a worthwhile life for earth citizens.
Lex Fridman (08:20.780)
Even if some of us wanna go out and further venturing.
Ariel Ekblaw (08:24.020)
Right, just the desire to explore the mysterious, yes.
Lex Fridman (08:28.060)
But also it does seem that by placing us
Ariel Ekblaw (08:31.500)
in harsh conditions, the harsh conditions of space,
Lex Fridman (08:33.860)
the harsh conditions of planets,
Lex Fridman (08:35.700)
and the biology, the chemistry, the engineering,
Lex Fridman (08:38.020)
the robotics, the materials, all of that,
Ariel Ekblaw (08:41.540)
that's just a nice way to come up with cool new things.
Lex Fridman (08:43.940)
Great forcing function, yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw (08:45.140)
Yeah, exactly, it's a forcing function like survival.
Lex Fridman (08:48.500)
You don't get this right, you die.
Ariel Ekblaw (08:50.960)
So, and that you can bring back to earth
Lex Fridman (08:53.420)
and it will improve, like figuring out food in space
Ariel Ekblaw (08:57.920)
will make you figure out how to eat,
Lex Fridman (09:01.860)
live healthier lives here on earth.
Lex Fridman (09:04.140)
So true, I mean, some of the technologies
Lex Fridman (09:05.900)
that we're directly looking at right now
Ariel Ekblaw (09:08.700)
for space habitats, it's hard to keep humans alive
Lex Fridman (09:12.080)
in this really fragile little pocket against the vacuum
Lex Fridman (09:15.620)
and all of the dangers that the space environment presents.
Lex Fridman (09:19.060)
Some of the technologies we are gonna have to figure out
Ariel Ekblaw (09:20.900)
is energy efficient cooling and air conditioning,
Lex Fridman (09:24.700)
air filtration, scrubbing CO2 from the air,
Ariel Ekblaw (09:28.900)
being able to have habitats that are themselves resilient
Lex Fridman (09:34.220)
to extremes of space weather and radiation.
Lex Fridman (09:36.340)
And some of these are direct translational opportunities
Lex Fridman (09:39.340)
for areas turned by natural disasters.
Ariel Ekblaw (09:41.740)
People in California a decade ago would never have had
Lex Fridman (09:43.740)
to think about having an airtight house.
Lex Fridman (09:45.860)
But now with wildfires, maybe you do want something close
Lex Fridman (09:48.800)
to an airtight house, how do you manage that?
Ariel Ekblaw (09:51.520)
There's a lot of technologies
Lex Fridman (09:52.760)
from the space habitation world
Ariel Ekblaw (09:55.060)
that we are hoping we can actually bring back down
Lex Fridman (09:57.020)
to benefit life on earth as well
Ariel Ekblaw (09:58.660)
in these extreme environment contexts.
Lex Fridman (10:01.220)
Okay, so you mentioned to go back to swarm.
Ariel Ekblaw (10:05.860)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (10:06.700)
So that was interesting to you,
Ariel Ekblaw (10:09.120)
first of all, in your own work,
Lex Fridman (10:10.380)
but also I believe you said something
Ariel Ekblaw (10:12.620)
that was inspiring from Niel Stevenson as well.
Lex Fridman (10:14.900)
So when you say swarm, are you thinking about
Ariel Ekblaw (10:19.420)
architectures or are you thinking about
Lex Fridman (10:24.300)
artificial intelligence like robotics
Lex Fridman (10:26.040)
or are those kind of intermixed?
Lex Fridman (10:28.380)
I think the future that we're seeing
Ariel Ekblaw (10:30.180)
is that they're going to be intermixed,
Lex Fridman (10:31.780)
which is really exciting.
Lex Fridman (10:33.160)
So the future of space habitats
Lex Fridman (10:35.220)
are one of intelligent structures,
Ariel Ekblaw (10:38.580)
maybe not all the way to Hal
Lex Fridman (10:39.960)
and the 2001 Space Odyssey reference that scares people
Ariel Ekblaw (10:43.220)
about the habitat having a mind of its own.
Lex Fridman (10:45.820)
But certainly we're building systems now
Ariel Ekblaw (10:47.820)
where the habitat has sensing technology
Lex Fridman (10:51.800)
that allows it to communicate its basic functions,
Ariel Ekblaw (10:56.380)
maintaining life support for the astronauts,
Lex Fridman (10:58.340)
but could also communicate in symbiosis
Ariel Ekblaw (11:01.500)
with these swarm robots
Lex Fridman (11:03.220)
that would be on the outside of the spacecraft,
Ariel Ekblaw (11:05.700)
whether it's in a microgravity orbiting environment
Lex Fridman (11:08.140)
or on the surface.
Lex Fridman (11:09.220)
And these little robots,
Lex Fridman (11:10.460)
they crawl just a la Niel Stevenson in seven eves,
Ariel Ekblaw (11:13.320)
they crawl along the outside of the spacecraft
Lex Fridman (11:15.460)
looking for micrometeorite punctures
Ariel Ekblaw (11:18.180)
or gas leaks or other faults and defects.
Lex Fridman (11:21.620)
And right now we're just working on the diagnosis.
Lex Fridman (11:24.020)
So can the swarm with its collective intelligence
Lex Fridman (11:27.260)
act in symbiosis with the spacecraft and detect things?
Lex Fridman (11:30.220)
But in the future we'd also love
Lex Fridman (11:31.280)
for these little micro robots to repair in situ
Lex Fridman (11:34.100)
and really be like ants living in a tree
Lex Fridman (11:37.620)
altogether connected to the spacecraft.
Lex Fridman (11:39.460)
Do you envision the system to be fully distributed
Lex Fridman (11:44.260)
and just like an ant colony,
Ariel Ekblaw (11:45.820)
if one of them is damaged or whatever,
Lex Fridman (11:51.900)
loses control and all those kinds of things
Ariel Ekblaw (11:53.520)
that doesn't affect the performance of the complete system
Lex Fridman (11:57.340)
or doesn't need to be centralized?
Ariel Ekblaw (11:58.960)
This is more like almost like a technical question.
Lex Fridman (12:01.140)
Do you think we can?
Ariel Ekblaw (12:01.980)
Good architecture question.
Lex Fridman (12:03.020)
Right, from the ground up,
Ariel Ekblaw (12:05.860)
it's so scary to go fully distributed.
Lex Fridman (12:08.820)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (12:10.140)
But it's also exceptionally powerful, right?
Lex Fridman (12:12.700)
Robust, resilient to the harsh conditions of space.
Lex Fridman (12:15.860)
What do you, if you look into the next 10, 20, 100 years,
Lex Fridman (12:22.300)
starting from scratch,
Lex Fridman (12:23.460)
do you think we should be doing
Lex Fridman (12:24.620)
architecture wise distributed systems?
Ariel Ekblaw (12:28.040)
For space, yes, because it gives you this redundancy
Lex Fridman (12:31.300)
and safety profile that's really critical.
Lex Fridman (12:33.380)
So whether it's small swarm robots
Lex Fridman (12:35.140)
where it doesn't matter if you lose a few of them,
Ariel Ekblaw (12:37.300)
to habitats that instead of having a central monolithic habitat,
Lex Fridman (12:43.820)
you might actually be able to have
Ariel Ekblaw (12:45.780)
a decentralized node of a space station
Lex Fridman (12:49.060)
so that you can kind of right out of Star Wars,
Ariel Ekblaw (12:50.980)
you can shut a blast door if there's a fire
Lex Fridman (12:53.300)
or if there's a conflict in a certain area
Lex Fridman (12:55.060)
and you can move the humans and the crew
Lex Fridman (12:57.180)
into another decentralized node of the spacecraft.
Ariel Ekblaw (12:59.820)
There's another idea out of Neal Stephenson's Seven Eves
Lex Fridman (13:01.980)
actually where these arclets,
Ariel Ekblaw (13:03.820)
which were decentralized spacecraft that could form
Lex Fridman (13:06.180)
and dock little temporary space stations with each other
Lex Fridman (13:09.980)
and then separate and go off on their way
Lex Fridman (13:12.140)
and have a decentralized approach to living in space.
Lex Fridman (13:15.900)
So the self assembly component of that too,
Lex Fridman (13:19.100)
so this is your PhD work and beyond,
Ariel Ekblaw (13:21.780)
you explored autonomously self assembling space architecture
Lex Fridman (13:25.420)
for future space, tourists, habitats,
Lex Fridman (13:28.220)
and space stations in orbit around Earth, Moon, and Mars.
Lex Fridman (13:31.420)
There's few things I personally find sexier
Ariel Ekblaw (13:34.660)
than autonomously self assembling space architecture.
Lex Fridman (13:40.980)
In general, it doesn't even need to be space.
Ariel Ekblaw (13:42.740)
The idea of self assembling architectures
Lex Fridman (13:46.100)
is really interesting, like building a bridge
Ariel Ekblaw (13:48.420)
or something like that through self assembling materials.
Lex Fridman (13:51.580)
It feels like an incredibly efficient way to do it
Ariel Ekblaw (13:57.340)
because optimization is built in.
Lex Fridman (13:59.860)
So you can build the most optimal structures
Ariel Ekblaw (14:03.180)
given dynamic, uncertain, changing conditions.
Lex Fridman (14:09.060)
So maybe can you talk about your PhD work,
Lex Fridman (14:11.340)
about this work, about Tesserae, what is it in general?
Lex Fridman (14:17.380)
Any cool stuff, because this is super cool.
Ariel Ekblaw (14:19.420)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Lex Fridman (14:21.100)
So Tesserae is my PhD research.
Ariel Ekblaw (14:23.700)
It's this idea that we could take tiles
Lex Fridman (14:26.820)
that construct a large structure like a bucky ball.
Ariel Ekblaw (14:30.020)
Yeah, this is exactly what we're looking at here,
Lex Fridman (14:31.860)
which is the tiles that are packed flat in a rocket.
Ariel Ekblaw (14:34.700)
They're released to float in microgravity.
Lex Fridman (14:38.380)
Magnets, pretty powerful, electropermanent magnets
Ariel Ekblaw (14:41.220)
on their edges draw them together for autonomous docking.
Lex Fridman (14:44.460)
So there's no human in the loop here,
Lex Fridman (14:46.100)
and there's no central agent coordinating
Lex Fridman (14:48.180)
saying tile one, go to tile two.
Ariel Ekblaw (14:50.740)
It's completely decentralized system.
Lex Fridman (14:52.500)
They find each other on their own.
Lex Fridman (14:54.820)
What we don't show in this video
Lex Fridman (14:56.060)
is what happens if there's an error, right?
Lex Fridman (14:58.220)
So what happens if they bond incorrectly?
Lex Fridman (15:00.140)
The tiles have sensing, so proximity sensing,
Ariel Ekblaw (15:02.620)
magnetometer, other sensors that allow them
Lex Fridman (15:04.780)
to detect a good bond versus a bad bond
Lex Fridman (15:07.900)
and pulse off and self correct,
Lex Fridman (15:10.020)
which anybody who works in the field of self assembly
Ariel Ekblaw (15:12.700)
will tell you that error detection and correction,
Lex Fridman (15:15.780)
just like error detection in a DNA sequence
Ariel Ekblaw (15:19.020)
or protein folding is really important part of the system
Lex Fridman (15:21.900)
for that robustness.
Lex Fridman (15:23.140)
And so we've done a lot of work to engineer that ability
Lex Fridman (15:26.380)
for the tiles to be self determining.
Ariel Ekblaw (15:29.300)
They know whether they're forming the structure
Lex Fridman (15:30.820)
that they're supposed to form or not.
Ariel Ekblaw (15:32.180)
They know if they're in a toxic relationship
Lex Fridman (15:34.340)
and they need to get out.
Ariel Ekblaw (15:35.780)
Right, right, if they need to separate, exactly, yeah.
Lex Fridman (15:38.700)
All right, this is like so amazing.
Lex Fridman (15:40.500)
And for people who are just listening to this,
Lex Fridman (15:41.980)
yeah, there's, I mean, how large are these tiles?
Lex Fridman (15:45.180)
So the size that we use in the lab,
Lex Fridman (15:47.780)
they can really be any size
Ariel Ekblaw (15:49.140)
because we can scale them down to do testing
Lex Fridman (15:51.020)
in microgravity.
Lex Fridman (15:51.860)
So we sent tiles that were about three inches wide
Lex Fridman (15:55.020)
to the International Space Station a couple years ago
Ariel Ekblaw (15:57.100)
to test the code, test the state machine,
Lex Fridman (16:00.100)
test the algorithm of self assembly.
Lex Fridman (16:02.260)
But now we're actually building
Lex Fridman (16:03.500)
our first ever human scale tiles.
Ariel Ekblaw (16:05.660)
They're me human size.
Lex Fridman (16:06.860)
So a little smaller than maybe your average human,
Lex Fridman (16:09.660)
but they're 2.5 feet on edge length.
Lex Fridman (16:13.980)
The larger scale that we would love to build in the future
Ariel Ekblaw (16:16.700)
would actually be tiles that are big enough
Lex Fridman (16:18.700)
to form a bucky ball, big open spherical volume,
Ariel Ekblaw (16:21.900)
spherical approximation volume,
Lex Fridman (16:23.580)
that'd be about 10 meters in diameter.
Lex Fridman (16:25.660)
So 30 feet, which is much bigger and grander
Lex Fridman (16:29.100)
in terms of open space than any current module on the ISS.
Lex Fridman (16:32.540)
And one of the goals of this project was to say,
Lex Fridman (16:35.140)
what's the purpose of next generation space architecture?
Ariel Ekblaw (16:38.780)
Should it be something that really inspires
Lex Fridman (16:41.660)
and delights people when you float into that space?
Lex Fridman (16:44.780)
Can you get goosebumps in the way that you do
Lex Fridman (16:46.700)
when you walk into a really stunning piece
Lex Fridman (16:48.740)
of architecture on earth?
Lex Fridman (16:50.180)
And so we think that self assembly,
Ariel Ekblaw (16:52.260)
this modular reconfigurable algorithm
Lex Fridman (16:55.300)
for constructing space structures in orbit
Ariel Ekblaw (16:58.060)
is gonna give us this promise of space architecture
Lex Fridman (17:01.300)
that's actually worth living in.
Ariel Ekblaw (17:03.460)
Living in, oh, I thought you also meant
Lex Fridman (17:05.340)
from like outside artistic perspective,
Ariel Ekblaw (17:07.340)
when you see the whole thing is just.
Lex Fridman (17:09.660)
With the aesthetics of it, absolutely.
Ariel Ekblaw (17:11.460)
You know, when you like go like into Vegas,
Lex Fridman (17:14.460)
whenever you go into a city
Lex Fridman (17:16.460)
and it like over the hill appears in front of you.
Lex Fridman (17:19.340)
And I mean, there's something majestic about seeing like,
Ariel Ekblaw (17:23.380)
wow, humans created that.
Lex Fridman (17:25.300)
It gives you like hope about like,
Ariel Ekblaw (17:26.820)
if these a bunch of ants were able to figure out
Lex Fridman (17:28.780)
how to build skyscrapers that light up.
Lex Fridman (17:31.420)
And in general, the design of these tiles
Lex Fridman (17:33.980)
in the way you envision it are pretty scalable.
Ariel Ekblaw (17:36.460)
Yes, and they're inspired by exactly
Lex Fridman (17:38.460)
what you mentioned a moment ago,
Ariel Ekblaw (17:39.540)
which is we have these patterns of self assembly on earth.
Lex Fridman (17:42.980)
And there's a lot of fantastic MIT research
Ariel Ekblaw (17:45.020)
that we're building this concept on.
Lex Fridman (17:46.500)
So like Daniela Ruse at CSAIL and Pebbles,
Ariel Ekblaw (17:49.380)
taking the power of magnets to create units
Lex Fridman (17:53.860)
that are themselves interchangeable,
Ariel Ekblaw (17:56.180)
this notion of programmable matter.
Lex Fridman (17:58.620)
And so we're interested in going really big with it
Ariel Ekblaw (18:01.580)
to build big scale space structures with programmable tiles.
Lex Fridman (18:05.340)
But there's also a really fascinating,
Ariel Ekblaw (18:07.340)
you know, end of that on the other side of the spectrum,
Lex Fridman (18:08.940)
which is how small can you go with matter
Ariel Ekblaw (18:11.380)
that's programmable and stacks and builds itself
Lex Fridman (18:13.780)
and creates a bridge or something in the future.
Lex Fridman (18:16.860)
What do you envision the thing would look like?
Lex Fridman (18:19.540)
Like when you imagine a thing far into the future
Ariel Ekblaw (18:22.300)
where there's, so we're not even thinking about
Lex Fridman (18:25.900)
like small space, well, let's not call them small,
Lex Fridman (18:28.980)
but our currently sized space stations,
Lex Fridman (18:30.780)
but like something gigantic, what do you envision?
Ariel Ekblaw (18:34.260)
Is this something with symmetry
Lex Fridman (18:36.620)
or is this something we can't even come up with yet?
Lex Fridman (18:38.860)
Is there beautiful structures that you imagine in your mind?
Lex Fridman (18:42.900)
I've got three candidates that I would love to build.
Ariel Ekblaw (18:45.740)
If we're talking about monumental space architecture,
Lex Fridman (18:48.700)
one is what does a space cathedral look like?
Ariel Ekblaw (18:51.740)
It can be a secular cathedral,
Lex Fridman (18:52.860)
doesn't necessarily have to be about religion,
Lex Fridman (18:54.460)
but that notion of long sight lines,
Lex Fridman (18:57.980)
inspiring, stunning architecture when you go in.
Lex Fridman (19:01.260)
And you can imagine floating instead of, you know,
Lex Fridman (19:03.860)
being on the ground and only looking up in space,
Ariel Ekblaw (19:07.300)
you could be in a central node
Lex Fridman (19:08.740)
and each direction you look at,
Ariel Ekblaw (19:10.740)
all the cardinal directions are spires going off
Lex Fridman (19:14.100)
in a really large and long way.
Lex Fridman (19:15.420)
So that's concept number one.
Lex Fridman (19:17.180)
Number two would be something more organic
Ariel Ekblaw (19:19.980)
that's not just geometric.
Lex Fridman (19:21.780)
So here, one of the ideas that we're working on at MIT
Ariel Ekblaw (19:24.420)
in my lab is to say, could you,
Lex Fridman (19:27.580)
instead of the tesserae model, right,
Ariel Ekblaw (19:29.260)
which is self assembling a shell,
Lex Fridman (19:31.900)
could you define a module that's a node,
Ariel Ekblaw (19:34.980)
a small node that someone can live in
Lex Fridman (19:36.940)
and you self assemble a lot of those together,
Ariel Ekblaw (19:39.660)
they're called plesiohedrons like space filling solids
Lex Fridman (19:43.620)
and you dock a bunch of them together
Lex Fridman (19:45.580)
and you can create a really organic structure out of that.
Lex Fridman (19:49.820)
So this is the same way that muscles accrete to appear,
Ariel Ekblaw (19:53.460)
you can have these nodes that dock together
Lex Fridman (19:55.580)
and one shape that I would love to form out of this
Ariel Ekblaw (19:57.660)
is something like a nautilus, a seashell,
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.440)
There's something about rockets.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:00:02.160)
There's something about, and I mean like space exploration
Lex Fridman (1:00:05.800)
that inspires the world about the positive possibilities
Ariel Ekblaw (1:00:13.800)
of the human species.
Lex Fridman (1:00:15.600)
So in terms of Ukraine and Russia and China and India
Lex Fridman (1:00:18.760)
and the United States and Europe and everywhere else,
Lex Fridman (1:00:22.840)
it seems like collaborating on giant space projects
Ariel Ekblaw (1:00:27.920)
is one way to escape these wars,
Lex Fridman (1:00:31.160)
to escape these sort of geopolitical conflicts.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:00:33.720)
I mean, there's something,
Lex Fridman (1:00:34.560)
there's so much camaraderie to the whole thing.
Lex Fridman (1:00:37.440)
And even in this little period of human history
Lex Fridman (1:00:42.840)
we're living through, it seems like that's essential.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:00:45.480)
Even through this pandemic,
Lex Fridman (1:00:47.720)
there's something so inspiring about those
Ariel Ekblaw (1:00:49.720)
like SpaceX rockets going up, for example.
Lex Fridman (1:00:52.280)
This reinvigoration of the space exploration efforts
Ariel Ekblaw (1:00:57.080)
by the commercial sector, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:00:59.520)
That was, as many of us have,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:03.120)
sort of some dark times during this pandemic,
Lex Fridman (1:01:06.360)
just like loneliness and sometimes emotion and anger
Lex Fridman (1:01:10.120)
and just hopelessness and politics.
Lex Fridman (1:01:13.640)
And then you look at those rockets going up
Lex Fridman (1:01:15.680)
and it just gives you hope.
Lex Fridman (1:01:17.120)
So I think that's an understated sort of value
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:21.360)
of space exploration,
Lex Fridman (1:01:22.920)
is the thing that unites us and gives us hope.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:26.320)
Obviously also inspires young generations
Lex Fridman (1:01:29.120)
and young minds to also contribute
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:31.480)
in not necessarily in space exploration
Lex Fridman (1:01:33.000)
but in all of science and literature and poetry.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:35.400)
There's something about when you look up to the stars
Lex Fridman (1:01:38.120)
that makes you dream.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:39.760)
Very true.
Lex Fridman (1:01:40.600)
And so that's a really good reason
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:43.560)
to sort of invest in this,
Lex Fridman (1:01:45.040)
whether it's building giant megastructure,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:47.120)
which is so freaking cool,
Lex Fridman (1:01:48.400)
but also colonizing Mars.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:01:52.680)
Yeah, it's something to look forward to.
Lex Fridman (1:01:55.960)
Something that, and not make it a domain of war,
Lex Fridman (1:02:02.080)
but a domain of human collaboration
Lex Fridman (1:02:04.520)
and human compassion, I think.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:06.800)
You're the founder and director
Lex Fridman (1:02:09.240)
of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:12.240)
It includes a ton of projects.
Lex Fridman (1:02:14.440)
So I just wanted to, they're focused, I guess, on life in space
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:18.520)
from astrobiology, like we talked about, to habitats.
Lex Fridman (1:02:22.160)
Are there some other interesting projects,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:23.800)
part of this initiative that pop to mind
Lex Fridman (1:02:27.440)
that you find particularly cool?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:29.280)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (1:02:30.280)
One is the future of in space manufacturing.
Lex Fridman (1:02:33.320)
So if we're gonna build large scale space structures,
Lex Fridman (1:02:35.720)
yes, it's great to ship them up from Earth
Lex Fridman (1:02:37.760)
and self assemble them.
Lex Fridman (1:02:39.200)
But what about extrusion in orbit?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:41.880)
It's one of the best technologies
Lex Fridman (1:02:43.760)
to leverage in microgravity
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:45.240)
because you can extrude a particularly long beam
Lex Fridman (1:02:48.440)
that would sag in a normal gravity environment,
Lex Fridman (1:02:51.000)
but might be able to become the basis of a truss
Lex Fridman (1:02:53.560)
or a large scale space structure.
Lex Fridman (1:02:55.080)
So we're doing miniature tests of extrusion
Lex Fridman (1:02:57.920)
and are excited to fly this
Ariel Ekblaw (1:02:59.280)
on the International Space Station in a few months.
Lex Fridman (1:03:01.840)
We are working on swarm robots.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:04.280)
We have just announced actually MIT's return to the moon.
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.840)
So my organization is leading this mission for MIT,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:11.480)
going back to the surface of the moon
Lex Fridman (1:03:12.920)
as early as the end of this year, 2022,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:15.480)
maybe early 2023,
Lex Fridman (1:03:17.440)
and trying to take data from our research payloads
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:21.640)
at this historic South Pole site
Lex Fridman (1:03:24.440)
where NASA is supposed to send the first humans back
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:27.120)
on the Artemis III mission.
Lex Fridman (1:03:28.200)
So our hope is to directly support that human mission
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:30.720)
with our data.
Lex Fridman (1:03:32.120)
How does that connect to the swarm aspects?
Lex Fridman (1:03:34.400)
Does it connect?
Lex Fridman (1:03:35.680)
Yeah, so we're actually gonna fly
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:37.000)
one of the little astro ants.
Lex Fridman (1:03:38.400)
That's the current plan.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:39.840)
One of the little swarm robots on the top of a rover.
Lex Fridman (1:03:42.800)
That's part of the mission.
Lex Fridman (1:03:44.320)
Ants riding a rover?
Lex Fridman (1:03:45.640)
Yes, exactly, an ant riding a rover.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:48.160)
That rover gets packed in a lander.
Lex Fridman (1:03:49.840)
That lander gets packed in a SpaceX rocket.
Lex Fridman (1:03:52.000)
So it's a whole nesting dolls situation
Lex Fridman (1:03:53.880)
to get to the moon.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:03:55.440)
Mother of robot dragons.
Lex Fridman (1:03:57.200)
Yes, exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:03:58.640)
So this one, a swarm of one?
Lex Fridman (1:04:01.560)
Swarm of one, exactly.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:02.720)
We're testing out.
Lex Fridman (1:04:03.720)
It's a tech demonstration mission,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:05.480)
not a true swarm.
Lex Fridman (1:04:06.840)
Yeah, there they are.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:07.680)
Those are the astro ants.
Lex Fridman (1:04:09.200)
Wow, and this was a distributed system,
Lex Fridman (1:04:11.600)
and in theory, you could have a ton of these.
Lex Fridman (1:04:14.200)
Yes, these could also be centralized.
Lex Fridman (1:04:15.880)
So they have wireless technology
Lex Fridman (1:04:17.400)
that could also talk to a central base station
Lex Fridman (1:04:19.840)
and will be assessing kind of case by case
Lex Fridman (1:04:22.520)
whether it makes sense to operate them
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:23.880)
in a decentralized swarm
Lex Fridman (1:04:25.120)
or to command them in a centralized swarm.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:29.120)
Each robot is equipped with four magnetic wheels
Lex Fridman (1:04:32.200)
which enable the robot to attach to any magnetic surface
Lex Fridman (1:04:35.680)
so you can operate basically in any environment.
Lex Fridman (1:04:37.760)
He tested the, we tested the mobility of all robots
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:41.000)
on different materials in a microgravity environment.
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.840)
On the vomit comet prior to going to the moon.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:46.960)
That must look so cool.
Lex Fridman (1:04:48.360)
So they're basically moving along different
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:50.720)
like metallic surfaces.
Lex Fridman (1:04:52.120)
Yeah, exactly.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:04:54.200)
It's interesting when you, just a minute ago
Lex Fridman (1:04:56.480)
talking about the reflection of
Lex Fridman (1:04:59.320)
how space can be so aspirational and so uniting.
Lex Fridman (1:05:01.920)
There's a great quote from Bill Anders
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:03.720)
from the Apollo 8 mission to the moon,
Lex Fridman (1:05:05.320)
which is he, it's the Earthrise photo that was taken
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:08.280)
where you see the Earth coming up
Lex Fridman (1:05:09.720)
over the horizon of the moon.
Lex Fridman (1:05:11.080)
And the quote is something along the lines of
Lex Fridman (1:05:12.840)
we came all the way to discover the moon
Lex Fridman (1:05:15.200)
and what we really discovered was the Earth.
Lex Fridman (1:05:17.880)
This really powerful image looking back.
Lex Fridman (1:05:20.080)
And so we're also trying to think for our lunar mission
Lex Fridman (1:05:22.360)
we realized we're a very privileged group at MIT
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:24.560)
to get the opportunity to do this.
Lex Fridman (1:05:26.280)
How could we bring humanity along with us?
Lex Fridman (1:05:29.000)
And so one of the things we're still testing out
Lex Fridman (1:05:31.080)
I don't know if we're gonna be able to swing it
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:32.760)
would be to do something like a Twitch plays Pokemon
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.560)
but with the robot.
Lex Fridman (1:05:36.880)
So let a lot of people on earth actually control the robot
Lex Fridman (1:05:39.560)
or at least benefit from the data that we're gathering
Lex Fridman (1:05:42.000)
and try to release the data openly.
Lex Fridman (1:05:44.040)
So we're exploring a couple of different ideas
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:45.560)
for how do we engage more people in this mission.
Lex Fridman (1:05:48.360)
That would be surreal to be able to interact
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:51.440)
in some way with the thing that's out there.
Lex Fridman (1:05:53.920)
Exactly.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:54.760)
On another surface.
Lex Fridman (1:05:55.600)
Direct connection.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:05:56.600)
Direct connection.
Lex Fridman (1:05:59.040)
I think about artificial intelligence in that same way
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:01.320)
which is like building robots
Lex Fridman (1:06:04.840)
puts a mirror to us humans.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:07.360)
It makes us like wonder about like
Lex Fridman (1:06:09.320)
what is intelligence?
Lex Fridman (1:06:10.520)
What is consciousness?
Lex Fridman (1:06:11.640)
And what is actually valuable about human beings?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:14.560)
When AI system learns to play chess better than humans
Lex Fridman (1:06:18.320)
you start to let go of this idea
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:19.760)
that humans are special because of intelligence.
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.800)
It's something else.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:26.280)
It's maybe the flame of human consciousness.
Lex Fridman (1:06:29.160)
It's the capacity to feel deeply
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:32.680)
to sort of to both suffer and to love all those things.
Lex Fridman (1:06:36.360)
And that somehow AI to me sort of puts a mirror to that.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:39.800)
You mentioned HAL 9000.
Lex Fridman (1:06:41.880)
You have to bring it up with these swarm bots
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:46.400)
crawling on the surface of your cocoon in space.
Lex Fridman (1:06:50.840)
I mean, all right.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:52.440)
Let me steel man the HAL 9000 perspective here.
Lex Fridman (1:06:56.680)
Okay.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:06:58.920)
The poor guy just wanted to maintain the mission
Lex Fridman (1:07:02.120)
and the astronauts were,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:07:03.200)
I mean, I don't know if people often talk about that
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.680)
but like doctors have to make difficult decisions too.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:07:10.080)
When there's limited resources
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.600)
you actually do have to sacrifice human life often
Ariel Ekblaw (1:07:14.040)
because you have to make decisions.
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.680)
And I think HAL is probably making that kind of decision
Ariel Ekblaw (1:07:20.120)
about what's more important,
Lex Fridman (1:07:22.800)
the lives of individual astronauts or the mission.
Lex Fridman (1:07:26.640)
And I feel like AI and other humans
Lex Fridman (1:07:30.200)
will need to make these decisions.
Lex Fridman (1:07:33.000)
And it also feels like AI systems will need to help
Lex Fridman (1:07:37.160)
make those decisions.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:07:38.920)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:07:40.200)
I guess my question is about
Ariel Ekblaw (1:07:42.680)
greater and greater collective intelligence by systems.
Lex Fridman (1:07:49.320)
Do you worry about that?
Lex Fridman (1:07:51.560)
What is the right way to sort of solve this problem
Lex Fridman (1:07:54.720)
keeping a human in the loop?
Lex Fridman (1:07:56.000)
Do you think about this kind of stuff
Lex Fridman (1:07:57.480)
or are they sufficiently dumb now the robots
Lex Fridman (1:08:00.040)
that that's not yet on the horizon to think about?
Lex Fridman (1:08:03.480)
I think it should be on the horizon.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:04.840)
It's always good to think about these things early
Lex Fridman (1:08:06.560)
because we make a lot of technical design decisions
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:09.280)
at this phase working with swarm robots
Lex Fridman (1:08:11.160)
that it would be better to have thought
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:12.600)
about some of these questions early
Lex Fridman (1:08:13.920)
in the life cycle of a project.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:16.320)
There is a real interest in NASA right now
Lex Fridman (1:08:18.600)
thinking about the future of human robot interaction, HRI,
Lex Fridman (1:08:21.640)
and what is the right synergy
Lex Fridman (1:08:22.920)
in terms of level of control for the human
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:25.800)
versus level of dependence or control for the robot.
Lex Fridman (1:08:29.120)
And we're beginning to test out more of these scenarios.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:33.560)
For example, the Gateway Space Station,
Lex Fridman (1:08:36.080)
which is meant to be in orbit around the moon
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:37.920)
as a staging base for the surface operations,
Lex Fridman (1:08:40.680)
is meant to be able to function autonomously
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:43.640)
with no humans in it for months at a time
Lex Fridman (1:08:46.360)
because they think it's gonna be seasonal.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:47.800)
They think we might not be constantly staffing it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:50.160)
So this will be a really great test of,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:08:51.800)
I don't know that anybody's yet worried
Lex Fridman (1:08:53.480)
about HAL 9000 evolving,
Lex Fridman (1:08:55.280)
but certainly just the robustness of some of these AI systems
Lex Fridman (1:08:58.800)
that might be asked to autonomously maintain the station
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:01.840)
while the humans are away or detection algorithms
Lex Fridman (1:09:06.080)
that are gonna say, if you had a human pilot,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:07.960)
they might see debris in orbit and steer around it.
Lex Fridman (1:09:09.920)
There'll be a lot of autonomous navigation
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:11.280)
that has to happen.
Lex Fridman (1:09:12.800)
That'll be one of the early test beds
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:14.160)
where we'll start to get a little bit closer to that future.
Lex Fridman (1:09:16.640)
Well, the HRI component is really interesting to me,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:20.880)
especially when the I includes like almost friendship
Lex Fridman (1:09:24.760)
because people don't realize this, I think,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:27.560)
that we humans long for connection.
Lex Fridman (1:09:29.840)
And when you have even a basic interaction
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:32.320)
that's just like supposed to be just like serving you
Lex Fridman (1:09:35.280)
or something, you still project,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:37.680)
it's still a source of meaning and connection.
Lex Fridman (1:09:45.320)
And so you do have to think about that.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:47.040)
I mean, HAL 9000, the movie maybe doesn't portray it
Lex Fridman (1:09:51.520)
that way, but I'm sure there's a relationship there
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:53.800)
between the astronauts and the robot,
Lex Fridman (1:09:56.240)
especially when you have greater and greater level
Ariel Ekblaw (1:09:57.800)
of intelligence.
Lex Fridman (1:09:58.720)
And maybe that addresses the happiness question too.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:02.960)
Yeah, I think there's a great book by Kate Darling,
Lex Fridman (1:10:06.320)
who's one of my colleagues at MIT.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:08.200)
Yeah, she's amazing.
Lex Fridman (1:10:09.480)
She's already been on this podcast,
Lex Fridman (1:10:11.520)
but we talk all the time and we're supposed to talk
Lex Fridman (1:10:14.760)
and we've been missing each other
Lex Fridman (1:10:16.200)
and we're gonna make it happen soon.
Lex Fridman (1:10:18.000)
Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:18.840)
Come down to Texas, Kate.
Lex Fridman (1:10:20.520)
All right, anyway, yeah, she's amazing.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:22.320)
She has this book, her whole work is about this.
Lex Fridman (1:10:25.160)
Connection with robots, yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:26.520)
This beautiful connection that we have with robots,
Lex Fridman (1:10:28.440)
but I think it's greater and greater importance
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:30.600)
when it's out in space,
Lex Fridman (1:10:32.240)
because it could help alleviate some of the loneliness.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:34.920)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:10:35.760)
One of the projects in the book that I gave you,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:37.360)
which is this catalog of the projects
Lex Fridman (1:10:39.040)
that we've worked on over the last five years,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:40.760)
is this social robot that was developed at the Media Lab.
Lex Fridman (1:10:43.960)
And we, one of the first years in 2017
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:46.320)
that we flew a zero G flight,
Lex Fridman (1:10:47.920)
we took the social robot along
Lex Fridman (1:10:49.680)
and tried to do a little bit
Lex Fridman (1:10:50.760)
of a very scaled down human study
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:53.000)
to look at these questions,
Lex Fridman (1:10:54.080)
because you do imagine that we would form a bond,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:10:56.880)
a real bond with the social robots
Lex Fridman (1:10:58.840)
that might be not just serving us on a mission,
Lex Fridman (1:11:01.600)
but really be our teammates on a future mission.
Lex Fridman (1:11:04.480)
And I do think that that could have a powerful role
Ariel Ekblaw (1:11:06.640)
in the mental health and just the stability of a crew
Lex Fridman (1:11:08.680)
is to have some other robot friends come along.
Lex Fridman (1:11:10.880)
What do you, by the way, the book you mentioned
Lex Fridman (1:11:13.320)
is into the Anthropocosmos,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:11:18.320)
a whole space catalog from the space catalog.
Lex Fridman (1:11:22.000)
Get that reference.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:11:22.840)
Yeah, so call out to Earth catalog,
Lex Fridman (1:11:25.240)
a whole space catalog
Ariel Ekblaw (1:11:26.320)
from the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.
Lex Fridman (1:11:30.440)
What about the happiness?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:11:31.880)
You said that that's one of the problems
Lex Fridman (1:11:33.920)
of when you're out in space.
Lex Fridman (1:11:35.880)
How do you keep humans happy?
Lex Fridman (1:11:37.480)
Again, asking for a friend.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:11:38.760)
Yes, I mean, one of the big challenges
Lex Fridman (1:11:40.920)
is you can't just open a window
Lex Fridman (1:11:43.440)
or walk out a door and blow off steam, right?
Lex Fridman (1:11:45.920)
You can't just go somewhere to clear your head.
Lex Fridman (1:11:49.280)
And in that sense, you need to build habitats
Lex Fridman (1:11:52.760)
that are homes that really care for the humans inside them
Lex Fridman (1:11:56.920)
and have, whether it's biophilia
Lex Fridman (1:11:59.240)
and a place where you can go and feel like you're in nature
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:02.040)
or a VR headset, which for some people is a poor simulacrum
Lex Fridman (1:12:06.920)
but is maybe better than nothing.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:09.200)
You need to be thinking
Lex Fridman (1:12:10.280)
about these technological interventions
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:12.920)
that are gonna have to be part of your home
Lex Fridman (1:12:14.960)
and be part of your maybe day to day ritual
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:17.720)
to keep you steady and balanced and happy
Lex Fridman (1:12:20.760)
or feeling fulfilled.
Lex Fridman (1:12:22.840)
What about other humans, relationship with other humans?
Lex Fridman (1:12:25.600)
Do those get weird
Lex Fridman (1:12:28.000)
when you get past a certain number of humans?
Lex Fridman (1:12:30.360)
I'm not an expert in this area
Lex Fridman (1:12:31.600)
but an anecdote that I'll share.
Lex Fridman (1:12:33.040)
My understanding is that NASA has still not decided
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:36.240)
whether it's better to send married couples
Lex Fridman (1:12:38.400)
or single crew members in terms of,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:41.040)
you want some level of stability,
Lex Fridman (1:12:43.040)
you don't wanna have the drama of romantic relationships
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:45.560)
like you're alluding to before,
Lex Fridman (1:12:47.600)
but they can't decide because married couples also fight
Lex Fridman (1:12:50.600)
and have a really tough dynamic.
Lex Fridman (1:12:52.080)
And so there's a lot of open questions still to answer
Lex Fridman (1:12:54.400)
about what is the ideal psychological makeup of a crew?
Lex Fridman (1:12:57.520)
And we're starting to test some of these things
Ariel Ekblaw (1:12:59.800)
with the civilian crews that are growing up
Lex Fridman (1:13:01.720)
with Inspiration4, like last fall with SpaceX
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.120)
and Axe One that's gonna fly in a few days here in March.
Lex Fridman (1:13:07.360)
As we begin to lengthen the time of those civilian crews,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:13:10.920)
I think we'll start to learn a little bit more
Lex Fridman (1:13:12.440)
about just average everyday human to human dynamics
Lex Fridman (1:13:15.800)
and not the astronauts that are themselves selected
Lex Fridman (1:13:18.280)
to be perfect human specimens, very good to work with,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:13:21.600)
easy to get along with.
Lex Fridman (1:13:23.040)
I wish you collected more data about this pandemic
Ariel Ekblaw (1:13:26.360)
because I feel like it's a good rough simulation
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.240)
of what it'd be like out in space.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:13:30.440)
A lot of people are locked down, some married couples,
Lex Fridman (1:13:33.520)
I think a lot of marriages broke up,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:13:35.360)
a lot of marriages got closer together.
Lex Fridman (1:13:38.400)
So it's like, and then the single people,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:13:41.120)
some of them went off the cliff
Lex Fridman (1:13:43.120)
and some of them discovered their new happiness
Lex Fridman (1:13:45.680)
and meaning and so on.
Lex Fridman (1:13:46.840)
It's a beautiful little experiment, a painful one.
Lex Fridman (1:13:50.080)
Is there a thorough way to really test that?
Lex Fridman (1:13:54.840)
Because it's such a costly experiment
Ariel Ekblaw (1:13:58.560)
to send humans up there,
Lex Fridman (1:13:59.800)
but I guess you can always return back to Earth
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:01.560)
if it's not working out.
Lex Fridman (1:14:02.760)
That's what we hope, that's what you hope.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:04.600)
You don't have like a Apollo 13 situation
Lex Fridman (1:14:06.960)
that doesn't quite make it back.
Lex Fridman (1:14:08.040)
But yeah, this is also why Mars is such a challenge.
Lex Fridman (1:14:11.920)
The moon is only three days away.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:13.560)
That's a lot quicker to recover from
Lex Fridman (1:14:15.280)
if there's a psychological problem with the crew
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:17.040)
or any type of maintenance problem, anything.
Lex Fridman (1:14:19.400)
Three years is such a challenge
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:23.680)
compared to these other domains
Lex Fridman (1:14:25.020)
that we've been getting more used to
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:26.240)
in terms of human spaceflight.
Lex Fridman (1:14:27.960)
So this is a question that we will need to have explored more
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:30.760)
before we start really sending crews to Mars.
Lex Fridman (1:14:33.000)
So you're a young scientist, do you think in your lifetime
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:39.760)
you will go out into orbit,
Lex Fridman (1:14:43.480)
you will go out beyond into deep space
Lex Fridman (1:14:47.360)
and potentially step, you,
Lex Fridman (1:14:50.380)
I don't know if you can call yourself a civilian.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:14:53.320)
I don't know if that's what you count as,
Lex Fridman (1:14:54.740)
but you as a curious ant from MIT land step on Mars.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:03.660)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:15:06.240)
That's a firm, that's a firm.
Lex Fridman (1:15:07.080)
Are you coming back?
Lex Fridman (1:15:07.920)
Firm, yes, yeah, I'm coming back.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:08.980)
I don't want that one way mission, I want the two way mission.
Lex Fridman (1:15:12.080)
But yes, I mean, I think we're already talking
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:14.220)
about a pretty near term opportunity
Lex Fridman (1:15:16.240)
where I could send graduate students
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:17.900)
to the International Space Station.
Lex Fridman (1:15:19.140)
Yeah, not a sacrifice, but send graduate students.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:25.000)
For the experience.
Lex Fridman (1:15:25.840)
For the experience.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:26.960)
Send graduate students to the ISS to do their research.
Lex Fridman (1:15:29.440)
I do think you and I both would have an opportunity
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:31.720)
to go to a lunar base of some sort within our lifetime.
Lex Fridman (1:15:35.640)
And there's a good chance if we really wanted to,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:39.620)
we might have to really advocate for it,
Lex Fridman (1:15:41.760)
apply to an astronaut program.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:43.280)
There will be some avenues for humans
Lex Fridman (1:15:45.120)
in our lifetime to go to Mars.
Lex Fridman (1:15:46.800)
What's the bar for like health?
Lex Fridman (1:15:51.080)
Do you think that bar will keep getting lower and lower
Ariel Ekblaw (1:15:53.380)
in terms of how healthy, how athletic,
Lex Fridman (1:15:55.320)
like how the psychological profile,
Lex Fridman (1:15:57.880)
all those kinds of things?
Lex Fridman (1:15:59.000)
Yeah, for one, we're gonna build more robust habitats
Ariel Ekblaw (1:16:01.600)
that don't depend on astronauts
Lex Fridman (1:16:03.360)
being so impeccably well trained.
Lex Fridman (1:16:05.320)
So we're gonna make it better for inclusion
Lex Fridman (1:16:08.280)
and just opening access to space.
Lex Fridman (1:16:10.480)
But there's a fantastic group called Astro Access
Lex Fridman (1:16:12.800)
that is already helping disabled space flyers
Ariel Ekblaw (1:16:15.480)
do zero G flights and potentially get access to the ISS.
Lex Fridman (1:16:18.480)
And some of the things that we think of
Ariel Ekblaw (1:16:19.840)
as disabilities on earth are hyper abilities in space.
Lex Fridman (1:16:24.800)
You don't need really powerful legs in space.
Lex Fridman (1:16:27.520)
What you'd really benefit from having is a third arm,
Lex Fridman (1:16:30.760)
more ways to kind of move yourself around
Lex Fridman (1:16:32.360)
and grip and interact.
Lex Fridman (1:16:33.640)
So we are already seeing a much more open minded approach
Ariel Ekblaw (1:16:38.040)
to who gets to go to space and Astro Access
Lex Fridman (1:16:40.840)
is a wonderful organization doing some of that work.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:16:43.440)
I'm hoping introversion will also be a superpower in space.
Lex Fridman (1:16:47.640)
Okay, well, first I'd love to get your opinion
Ariel Ekblaw (1:16:50.000)
on commercial space flight, what SpaceX,
Lex Fridman (1:16:52.640)
what Blue Origin are doing.
Lex Fridman (1:16:54.200)
And also another question on top of that is,
Lex Fridman (1:16:58.680)
because you've worked with a lot of different kinds
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:01.360)
of people, culturally, what's the difference
Lex Fridman (1:17:03.240)
between SpaceX or commercial type of efforts
Lex Fridman (1:17:07.960)
NASA and MIT?
Lex Fridman (1:17:10.800)
And academia.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:11.760)
Academia.
Lex Fridman (1:17:12.720)
Yeah, so the first part of your question,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:14.440)
I am thrilled by all of the commercial activity in space.
Lex Fridman (1:17:18.360)
It has really empowered our program.
Lex Fridman (1:17:20.000)
So instead of me waiting for five years to get a grant
Lex Fridman (1:17:23.480)
and get the money from the grant
Lex Fridman (1:17:24.600)
and only then can you send a project to space,
Lex Fridman (1:17:26.920)
I go out and I fundraise a lot like a startup founder
Lex Fridman (1:17:29.640)
and I directly buy access to space
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.440)
on the International Space Station
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:33.600)
through SpaceX or NanoRacks, same with Blue Origin
Lex Fridman (1:17:36.160)
and their suborbital craft, same with Axiom now.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:38.720)
Axiom's making plans for their own commercial space station.
Lex Fridman (1:17:42.480)
It's not out of the realm of possibility,
Lex Fridman (1:17:44.200)
but in a few years, I will rent lab space in orbit.
Lex Fridman (1:17:48.360)
I will rent a module from the Axiom space station
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:50.920)
or the orbital reef, which is the Blue Origin space station
Lex Fridman (1:17:54.000)
or NanoRacks is thinking about Starlab Oasis.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:56.840)
There's probably some other companies
Lex Fridman (1:17:58.000)
that I'm not even aware of yet
Ariel Ekblaw (1:17:59.040)
that are doing commercial space habitats.
Lex Fridman (1:18:00.880)
So I think that's fabulous
Lex Fridman (1:18:02.800)
and really empowering for our research.
Lex Fridman (1:18:04.800)
Is it affordable?
Lex Fridman (1:18:06.320)
So like loosely speaking, does it become affordable
Lex Fridman (1:18:09.800)
for like MIT type of research lab?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:13.800)
Does it, or does it need to be a multi university
Lex Fridman (1:18:18.200)
like a gigantic effort, a consortium thing?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:20.800)
One of the reasons we're spinning out Aurelia
Lex Fridman (1:18:22.800)
is we actually realized it's cheap enough.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:24.640)
It doesn't even have to be MIT.
Lex Fridman (1:18:26.640)
And we wanted to start democratizing access
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:29.640)
to these spaceflight opportunities
Lex Fridman (1:18:30.960)
to a much broader swath of humanity.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:33.040)
Could you take a Khan Academy educational course
Lex Fridman (1:18:36.640)
about, hey, students around the world,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:38.800)
this is how you get ready for a zero G flight.
Lex Fridman (1:18:40.720)
And by the way, come fly with us next year,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:43.280)
which is something we're gonna do with Aurelius.
Lex Fridman (1:18:44.800)
We're gonna bring much more just kind of day to day folks
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:48.120)
on zero G flights and get them access
Lex Fridman (1:18:50.280)
to engaging in the space industry.
Lex Fridman (1:18:52.600)
So it's become cheap enough
Lex Fridman (1:18:54.720)
and the prices have dropped enough to consider even that.
Lex Fridman (1:18:57.000)
So that's amazing.
Lex Fridman (1:18:57.960)
It definitely doesn't have to be a consortium
Ariel Ekblaw (1:18:59.360)
of universities anymore.
Lex Fridman (1:19:00.880)
Depends on what you wanna fly.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:19:02.040)
If you wanna fly James Webb,
Lex Fridman (1:19:03.440)
a huge telescope that's decades in the making,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:19:05.880)
sure, you need a NASA allocation budget.
Lex Fridman (1:19:08.920)
You need billions.
Lex Fridman (1:19:10.520)
But for a lot of the stuff in the book
Lex Fridman (1:19:12.480)
and our research portfolio,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:19:13.600)
it's actually becoming far more accessible.
Lex Fridman (1:19:16.000)
So that's a commercial.
Lex Fridman (1:19:17.520)
What about NASA and MIT academia?
Lex Fridman (1:19:21.200)
Yeah, I think people have been worried about NASA
Ariel Ekblaw (1:19:25.720)
the last few years because in some people's minds,
Lex Fridman (1:19:28.400)
they are ceding ground to these commercial efforts,
Lex Fridman (1:19:31.600)
but that's really not what's happening.
Lex Fridman (1:19:34.360)
NASA empowered these commercial efforts
Ariel Ekblaw (1:19:37.560)
because they wanna free themselves up to go to Mars
Lex Fridman (1:19:40.080)
and go to Europa and continue being
Ariel Ekblaw (1:19:43.000)
that really aspirational force for humanity
Lex Fridman (1:19:46.000)
of pushing the boundary, always pushing the boundary.
Lex Fridman (1:19:48.760)
And if they were anchored in low earth orbit,
Lex Fridman (1:19:50.840)
maintaining a space station indefinitely,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:19:53.200)
that's so much a part of their budget
Lex Fridman (1:19:54.800)
that it was keeping them from being able to do more.
Lex Fridman (1:19:57.120)
So it actually is really fantastic for NASA
Lex Fridman (1:19:59.000)
to have grown this commercial ecosystem
Lex Fridman (1:20:00.920)
and then that frees NASA up to go further.
Lex Fridman (1:20:03.040)
And in academia, we like to think that we will be able
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:05.400)
to do the provocative next generation research
Lex Fridman (1:20:09.480)
that is going to unlock things at that frontier.
Lex Fridman (1:20:13.120)
And we can partner with NASA.
Lex Fridman (1:20:14.920)
We can go through a program
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:15.960)
if we wanna send a probe out really far,
Lex Fridman (1:20:18.160)
but we can also partner with SpaceX
Lex Fridman (1:20:19.560)
and see what human life in a SpaceX Mars settlement
Lex Fridman (1:20:22.720)
might look like and how we could design for that.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:24.880)
Speaking of projects, maybe are there other projects
Lex Fridman (1:20:27.600)
that pop to mind from the Space Exploration Initiative
Lex Fridman (1:20:30.120)
or maybe stuff from the book that you can mention?
Lex Fridman (1:20:32.800)
Something super cool.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:34.280)
I mean, everything we've been talking about is cool,
Lex Fridman (1:20:35.800)
but just something that pops to mind again.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:37.800)
Yeah, so we talked about life in space
Lex Fridman (1:20:40.520)
and you might need more arms than legs.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:42.680)
One of the projects by Valentina Sumini
Lex Fridman (1:20:44.800)
was a air powered robotics tail.
Lex Fridman (1:20:48.680)
So it's a soft robotics tail
Lex Fridman (1:20:50.400)
that essentially has a little camera on the back end of it,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:53.000)
can do computer vision and knows where to grapple.
Lex Fridman (1:20:55.680)
So it's behind you.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:20:56.840)
It grapples onto something and holds you in space
Lex Fridman (1:20:59.320)
and then you can actually free up
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:00.440)
both of your hands to work.
Lex Fridman (1:21:02.080)
So we're already starting to think about
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:03.400)
the design of bionic humans or prosthetics
Lex Fridman (1:21:07.040)
or things that would make you kind of like a cyborg
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:09.240)
to augment your capabilities
Lex Fridman (1:21:11.600)
when you're in a space environment.
Lex Fridman (1:21:13.160)
How would you control something like that?
Lex Fridman (1:21:14.600)
So it's kind of like a, I mean, you can't call it a leg,
Lex Fridman (1:21:17.960)
but whatever, it's a. An additional appendage.
Lex Fridman (1:21:20.280)
Appendage, so how would you,
Lex Fridman (1:21:21.760)
what are ideas for controlling something like that?
Lex Fridman (1:21:23.840)
Yeah, so right now it's super, yeah, there you go.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:26.560)
That's cool.
Lex Fridman (1:21:27.400)
Right now it's super manual.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:29.720)
It's basically just like a kind of a set pattern
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.400)
of inflating as we're testing it.
Lex Fridman (1:21:34.160)
But in the future, if we had a Neuralink,
Lex Fridman (1:21:35.960)
I mean, this is something that you could imagine
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:38.000)
directly controlling,
Lex Fridman (1:21:39.000)
just thinking thoughts and controlling it.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:41.360)
That's a ways away.
Lex Fridman (1:21:42.560)
Yeah, so we talked about on the biology side,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:45.360)
astrobiology, there's probably agriculture stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:21:48.720)
Is there other things that kind of feed the ecosystem
Ariel Ekblaw (1:21:51.240)
of out in space for survival
Lex Fridman (1:21:53.160)
or the robotics architectures, the self assembly stuff?
Lex Fridman (1:21:56.200)
So kind of combining something we were talking about,
Lex Fridman (1:21:59.000)
you can form these relationships with objects
Lex Fridman (1:22:01.040)
and anthropomorphize.
Lex Fridman (1:22:02.640)
One of the things that we're thinking about for agriculture
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:04.840)
created by Manwe and Somu, so two students at MIT,
Lex Fridman (1:22:08.720)
was this little, it looks like a planet,
Lex Fridman (1:22:10.880)
but it's inspired by, I think, a Mandala
Lex Fridman (1:22:13.160)
or Nepalese spinning wheel.
Lex Fridman (1:22:15.000)
And you plant plants on the inside
Lex Fridman (1:22:16.680)
and the astronaut has to spin it every day
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:19.160)
to help the plants survive.
Lex Fridman (1:22:20.920)
So it's a way to give the astronauts
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:22.520)
something to care about,
Lex Fridman (1:22:23.960)
something that they are responsible for keeping alive
Lex Fridman (1:22:26.400)
and can really invest themselves in.
Lex Fridman (1:22:29.120)
And it's not necessary, right?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:30.600)
We have other ways to grow in orbit,
Lex Fridman (1:22:33.560)
hydroponics, liquid medium,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:35.120)
trying to keep the liquid around the plant roots is hard
Lex Fridman (1:22:37.480)
because there's no gravity to pull it down
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:39.080)
in a particular direction.
Lex Fridman (1:22:40.440)
But what I loved about this project was they said,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:42.680)
sure, we have ways that the plants could grow on their own,
Lex Fridman (1:22:45.600)
but the astronauts might want to care for it
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:48.040)
in the same way that we have little plants
Lex Fridman (1:22:49.680)
that come to be important to us, little plant friends.
Lex Fridman (1:22:52.680)
So there's AgriFuge, that's an early model
Lex Fridman (1:22:54.480)
of this manually spinning plant habitat.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:22:58.040)
I guess this is the best of academic research
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.520)
is you can do these kinds of wild ideas.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:23:03.520)
Wild ideas, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:23:04.520)
Well, I get to spend quite a bit of time
Ariel Ekblaw (1:23:07.240)
with Mr. Elon Musk and he's very stressed,
Lex Fridman (1:23:12.000)
especially about Starship
Lex Fridman (1:23:14.520)
and all those kinds of engineering efforts.
Lex Fridman (1:23:17.800)
What do you think about how damn hard it is
Lex Fridman (1:23:20.600)
to get out of space?
Lex Fridman (1:23:23.520)
Like, are we humans gonna be able to do this?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:23:26.920)
I don't know, I think it feels like
Lex Fridman (1:23:28.880)
it's an engineering problem, it's a scientific problem,
Lex Fridman (1:23:31.400)
but it's also just a motivation problem
Lex Fridman (1:23:33.400)
for the entire human species.
Lex Fridman (1:23:35.400)
And you also need to have superstar researchers
Lex Fridman (1:23:39.520)
and engineers working on it.
Lex Fridman (1:23:40.800)
So you have to get like the best people in the world,
Lex Fridman (1:23:42.920)
inspire them and starting from a young age and kind of.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:23:47.200)
Almost inculcating us into why we do it.
Lex Fridman (1:23:48.920)
I mean, I guess that's why it's exciting.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:23:50.360)
You don't know if we're gonna be able to pull this off.
Lex Fridman (1:23:52.480)
Like, we could like fail miserably.
Lex Fridman (1:23:56.280)
And that, I suppose, I mean,
Lex Fridman (1:23:57.760)
that's where the best of engineering is done
Ariel Ekblaw (1:23:59.960)
is like success is not guaranteed.
Lex Fridman (1:24:02.880)
And even if it happens, it might be very painful.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:06.320)
I think that's what's so special
Lex Fridman (1:24:07.200)
about what Elon is doing with SpaceX
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:08.920)
is he takes these risks and he tests iteratively
Lex Fridman (1:24:12.000)
and he'll, we'll see the spectacular failures
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:14.880)
on the path to a successful Starship.
Lex Fridman (1:24:17.480)
It's something that, you know, people have said,
Lex Fridman (1:24:18.720)
why isn't NASA doing that?
Lex Fridman (1:24:19.960)
Well, that's cause NASA is doing that with taxpayer dollars
Lex Fridman (1:24:22.440)
and we would all revolt if we saw NASA failing
Lex Fridman (1:24:25.120)
at all these different stages.
Lex Fridman (1:24:26.200)
But that level of, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:24:27.600)
spiral engineering theory of development
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:30.200)
isn't super impressive.
Lex Fridman (1:24:31.560)
And it's a really interesting approach
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:32.760)
that SpaceX has taken.
Lex Fridman (1:24:34.360)
And I think between people like Elon and Jeff Bezos
Lex Fridman (1:24:37.920)
and Firefly and NASA and ESO, we are gonna get there.
Lex Fridman (1:24:41.520)
They're building the road to space.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:43.160)
These trailblazers are doing it.
Lex Fridman (1:24:45.000)
And now part of the challenge is to get the rest
Lex Fridman (1:24:47.760)
of the public to understand that it's happening, right?
Lex Fridman (1:24:52.000)
A lot of people don't know that we're going back
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:53.600)
to the moon, that we're gonna send the first woman
Lex Fridman (1:24:55.400)
to the moon within a few years.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:24:57.720)
A lot of people don't know
Lex Fridman (1:24:58.640)
that there are commercial space stations in orbit,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:25:00.680)
that it's not just NASA that does space stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:25:03.320)
So we have a big challenge to get more of humanity excited
Lex Fridman (1:25:07.040)
and educated and involved again,
Lex Fridman (1:25:08.480)
kind of like in the Apollo era
Ariel Ekblaw (1:25:09.840)
where it was a big deal for everybody.
Lex Fridman (1:25:12.360)
Well, a lot of that is also one of the big impressive things
Ariel Ekblaw (1:25:15.120)
that Elon does, I think, extremely well
Lex Fridman (1:25:18.560)
is the social media, is the getting people excited.
Lex Fridman (1:25:21.280)
And I think that actually, he's helped NASA
Lex Fridman (1:25:24.200)
step their game up in terms of social media.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:25:26.520)
There's something about, yeah, the storytelling,
Lex Fridman (1:25:28.680)
but also not like, you know, like authentic
Lex Fridman (1:25:34.000)
and just real and raw engineering.
Lex Fridman (1:25:36.200)
There's a lot of excitement for that humor and fun also.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:25:40.520)
All of those things you realize,
Lex Fridman (1:25:42.560)
the thing that make up the virality of the meme
Ariel Ekblaw (1:25:46.080)
is beautiful, you have to kind of embrace that.
Lex Fridman (1:25:48.680)
And to me, this kind of,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:25:53.520)
I criticize a lot of companies based on this.
Lex Fridman (1:25:56.200)
I talked to a bunch of CEOs and so on,
Lex Fridman (1:25:59.320)
and it's just like, there's a caution,
Lex Fridman (1:26:01.000)
like let us do this like press conference thing
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:04.600)
where when the final product is ready
Lex Fridman (1:26:06.760)
and it's overproduced,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:08.160)
as opposed to the raw, the gritty just showed off.
Lex Fridman (1:26:11.520)
I mean, something that I think MIT is very good at doing
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:14.000)
is just showing the raw, by nature, the mess of it.
Lex Fridman (1:26:17.560)
And the mess of it is beautiful
Lex Fridman (1:26:18.920)
and people get really excited and failure is really exciting.
Lex Fridman (1:26:21.760)
When the thing blows up and you're like, oh shit,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:23.920)
that makes it even more exciting when it doesn't blow up.
Lex Fridman (1:26:27.080)
And doing all of that on social media
Lex Fridman (1:26:29.040)
and showing also the humans behind it,
Lex Fridman (1:26:31.680)
the individual young researchers or the engineers
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:35.240)
or the leaders where everything's at stake.
Lex Fridman (1:26:38.480)
I don't know, I think I'm really excited about that.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:40.840)
I do want MIT to do that more for students
Lex Fridman (1:26:43.840)
to show off their stuff and not be pressured
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:47.240)
to do this kind of generic official presentation,
Lex Fridman (1:26:51.080)
but show their, become a YouTuber also.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:54.480)
Like show off your raw research
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.960)
as you're working on it in the early days.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:26:58.120)
I hope that's the future.
Lex Fridman (1:26:59.480)
Things like, I was teasing about TikTok earlier,
Lex Fridman (1:27:02.280)
but these kinds of things I think inspire young people
Lex Fridman (1:27:07.280)
to show off their stuff, to show their true self,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:11.240)
the rawness of it,
Lex Fridman (1:27:12.080)
because I think that's where engineering is best.
Lex Fridman (1:27:13.880)
And I think that will inspire people
Lex Fridman (1:27:16.120)
about all the cool stuff we could do out in space.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:18.920)
I should say, I couldn't agree more.
Lex Fridman (1:27:20.240)
And I actually think that this is why we need
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:21.920)
a real life Starfleet Academy right now.
Lex Fridman (1:27:24.680)
It was the place where the space cadets got to go
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:27.080)
to learn about how to engage in a future of life in space.
Lex Fridman (1:27:31.360)
And we can do it in a much better way.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:33.840)
There are a bunch of groups that traditionally
Lex Fridman (1:27:35.120)
haven't thought that they could engage in aerospace,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:37.840)
whether it's because you were told
Lex Fridman (1:27:38.920)
you had to be into math and science.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:40.680)
Now we need space lawyers,
Lex Fridman (1:27:42.160)
we need space artists like Grimes, right?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:44.240)
We need really creative, profoundly interesting people
Lex Fridman (1:27:48.120)
to wanna see themselves in that future.
Lex Fridman (1:27:51.560)
And I think it's a big challenge to us
Lex Fridman (1:27:53.200)
in the space industry to also do some more diversity,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:55.440)
equity and inclusion,
Lex Fridman (1:27:56.520)
and show a broader swath of society
Ariel Ekblaw (1:27:58.920)
that there's a future for them
Lex Fridman (1:28:00.360)
in this space exploration vision.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:01.960)
Let me push back on one thing.
Lex Fridman (1:28:03.160)
We don't need space lawyers.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:04.480)
I'm just kidding.
Lex Fridman (1:28:05.320)
Okay, it's a joke.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:06.680)
We do, we do, we do.
Lex Fridman (1:28:07.760)
Okay, we do.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:09.400)
The lawyers are great, I love them.
Lex Fridman (1:28:11.400)
Okay, let me ask a big, ridiculous question.
Lex Fridman (1:28:13.840)
What is the most beautiful idea to you
Lex Fridman (1:28:17.120)
about space exploration?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:19.200)
Whether it's the engineering, the astrobiology,
Lex Fridman (1:28:22.560)
the science, the inspiration, the human happiness,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:28.800)
or aliens, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:28:30.200)
What do you, like, inspires you every day
Lex Fridman (1:28:35.400)
in terms of its beauty, in terms of its awe?
Lex Fridman (1:28:39.560)
As a ex physicist, what I've always found so profound
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:44.280)
is just that at really, really small scales,
Lex Fridman (1:28:47.080)
like particle physics,
Lex Fridman (1:28:48.320)
and really, really big scales, like astrophysics,
Lex Fridman (1:28:51.520)
there are similarities in the way
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:53.360)
that those systems behave and look,
Lex Fridman (1:28:55.560)
and there's a certain beautiful symmetry in the universe
Ariel Ekblaw (1:28:59.440)
that's just kind of waiting for us
Lex Fridman (1:29:01.120)
to tie together the physics and really understand it.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:29:04.280)
That is something that just really captivates me,
Lex Fridman (1:29:07.760)
and I would love to,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:29:08.880)
even though I'm now much more
Lex Fridman (1:29:09.920)
on the applied space exploration side,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:29:12.480)
I really try to keep up with what's happening
Lex Fridman (1:29:14.240)
in those physics areas,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:29:15.160)
because I think that will be a huge answer for humanity
Lex Fridman (1:29:18.360)
along the lines of, are we alone in the universe?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:29:22.560)
One of the fascinating things about you
Lex Fridman (1:29:24.200)
is you have a degree in physics, mathematics,
Lex Fridman (1:29:28.120)
and philosophy, and now, I don't know,
Lex Fridman (1:29:31.360)
would you call it aerospace engineering maybe kind of thing?
Lex Fridman (1:29:34.280)
So you have at a foot in all of these worlds,
Lex Fridman (1:29:36.940)
the theoretic, the beauty of that world,
Lex Fridman (1:29:42.160)
and the philosophy somehow is in there,
Lex Fridman (1:29:44.680)
and now the very practical, pragmatic implementation
Ariel Ekblaw (1:29:48.380)
of all these wild ideas,
Lex Fridman (1:29:50.880)
plus your incredible communicator, all of those things.
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.320)
What did you pick up from those different disciplines?
Lex Fridman (1:29:56.120)
Or maybe I'm just romanticizing
Ariel Ekblaw (1:29:57.540)
all those different disciplines,
Lex Fridman (1:29:59.400)
but what did you pick up from the variety
Lex Fridman (1:30:02.760)
of that physics, mathematics, philosophy?
Lex Fridman (1:30:06.200)
What I loved about having this chance
Ariel Ekblaw (1:30:07.880)
to do a liberal arts education
Lex Fridman (1:30:10.120)
was trying to understand the human condition,
Lex Fridman (1:30:13.400)
and I think more designers for space exploration
Lex Fridman (1:30:16.440)
should be thinking about that,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:30:17.720)
because there's so much depth of,
Lex Fridman (1:30:19.800)
like we were talking about,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:30:21.200)
issues and opportunities around human connection,
Lex Fridman (1:30:24.420)
human life, meaning in life.
Lex Fridman (1:30:27.060)
How do you find fulfillment or happiness?
Lex Fridman (1:30:29.400)
And I think if you approach these questions
Ariel Ekblaw (1:30:31.160)
just purely from the standpoint of an engineer
Lex Fridman (1:30:33.240)
or a scientist, you'll miss some of what
Ariel Ekblaw (1:30:35.360)
makes it a life worth living.
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.240)
And so I love being able to combine
Ariel Ekblaw (1:30:40.360)
some of this notion of philosophy
Lex Fridman (1:30:41.760)
and the human condition with my work,
Lex Fridman (1:30:43.660)
but I'm also a pragmatist,
Lex Fridman (1:30:45.240)
and I didn't want to stay just purely
Ariel Ekblaw (1:30:47.140)
in these big picture questions about the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:30:49.920)
I wanted to have an impact on society,
Lex Fridman (1:30:52.280)
and I also felt like I had such a wonderful childhood
Lex Fridman (1:30:55.940)
and a really fantastic setup that I owe society some work
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:01.360)
to really make a positive impact
Lex Fridman (1:31:04.400)
for a broader swath of citizens.
Lex Fridman (1:31:05.640)
And so that kind of led me from the physics domain
Lex Fridman (1:31:07.820)
to thinking about engineering and practical questions
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:10.340)
for life in space.
Lex Fridman (1:31:11.240)
In physics, was there a dream?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:13.960)
Are you also captivated by this search
Lex Fridman (1:31:16.120)
for the theory of everything that kind of unlocks
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:19.400)
the deeper and deeper, in the simple, elegant way,
Lex Fridman (1:31:23.580)
the function of our universe?
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.300)
Do you think that'll be useful for us
Lex Fridman (1:31:28.360)
for the actual practical engineering things
Lex Fridman (1:31:30.360)
that you're working on now?
Lex Fridman (1:31:31.520)
It could be.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:32.360)
I mean, I worked at CERN for two summers in undergrad,
Lex Fridman (1:31:35.200)
and we were looking for supersymmetry,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:37.560)
which was one of these alternatives to the standard model.
Lex Fridman (1:31:40.040)
And it was sad because my professors
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:41.640)
were getting sadder and sadder
Lex Fridman (1:31:43.200)
because they weren't finding it.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:44.520)
They were excluding what we would call this parameter space
Lex Fridman (1:31:47.080)
of finding these supersymmetric particles.
Lex Fridman (1:31:50.000)
But the search for what that theory of everything could be,
Lex Fridman (1:31:53.120)
or a grand unified theory that kind of answers
Ariel Ekblaw (1:31:55.480)
some of the holes within the standard model of physics
Lex Fridman (1:31:58.360)
would presumably kind of unlock a better understanding
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:02.320)
of certain fundamental physical laws
Lex Fridman (1:32:05.480)
that we should be able to build a better understanding
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:08.000)
of engineering and day to day services from that.
Lex Fridman (1:32:10.760)
It might not be an immediately obvious thing.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:13.140)
When we discovered the Higgs boson,
Lex Fridman (1:32:15.160)
I was there at CERN that day.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:16.600)
It was July 4th, 2012 that it was announced.
Lex Fridman (1:32:19.840)
We all waited like nerds overnight in line
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:22.240)
to get into the announcement chamber.
Lex Fridman (1:32:23.800)
I'd never waited for even like a Harry Potter premiere
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:25.760)
in my life, but we waited for this announcement
Lex Fridman (1:32:27.760)
of the Higgs boson to get into the chamber overnight.
Lex Fridman (1:32:30.840)
But did that immediately translate
Lex Fridman (1:32:33.840)
to technology for engineering?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:35.680)
No, but it's still a really important part
Lex Fridman (1:32:39.200)
of our understanding of these fundamental laws of physics.
Lex Fridman (1:32:41.560)
And so I don't know that it's always immediate,
Lex Fridman (1:32:43.160)
but I think it is really critical knowledge
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:44.660)
for humanity to seek.
Lex Fridman (1:32:46.880)
It might just shake up understanding of the world.
Lex Fridman (1:32:50.680)
What scares me is it might help us create
Lex Fridman (1:32:52.880)
more dangerous weapons.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:32:54.160)
So, and then we'll figure out that great filter situation.
Lex Fridman (1:32:57.680)
And I still believe that human compassion and love
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:02.120)
is actually the way to defend against all these greater
Lex Fridman (1:33:04.280)
and greater and more impressive weapons.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:07.740)
Let me ask a weird question in terms
Lex Fridman (1:33:10.600)
of you disagreeing with others.
Lex Fridman (1:33:12.520)
What important idea do you believe is true
Lex Fridman (1:33:15.640)
that many others don't agree with you on?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:20.400)
Maybe, it's a tough question.
Lex Fridman (1:33:22.160)
You might have to think about that one,
Lex Fridman (1:33:23.800)
but whether it's very specific,
Lex Fridman (1:33:26.320)
like which material to use or something
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:28.800)
about a particular project,
Lex Fridman (1:33:30.680)
or it could be grand priorities on missions.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:35.200)
I think one you actually mentioned is interesting
Lex Fridman (1:33:36.920)
is like the thing we should be looking for
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:40.640)
is like colonization of space
Lex Fridman (1:33:43.000)
versus colonization of planets.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:45.040)
Meaning like.
Lex Fridman (1:33:45.880)
Yes, it's probably my best hot take
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:47.540)
that people would disagree with me on
Lex Fridman (1:33:49.080)
is life in floating cities
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:51.840)
as opposed to life on the surface.
Lex Fridman (1:33:54.840)
How do you envision that like spread of humans?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:33:58.320)
Cause you said at the beginning of the conversation,
Lex Fridman (1:34:00.720)
something about like scale, increasing the scale
Ariel Ekblaw (1:34:03.760)
of basically humans in space.
Lex Fridman (1:34:05.560)
Are they just like in, they're in orbit
Lex Fridman (1:34:09.480)
and then they get a little farther and farther out.
Lex Fridman (1:34:11.640)
Like, do you see this kind of floating cities
Lex Fridman (1:34:15.760)
just getting farther and farther from earth?
Lex Fridman (1:34:17.460)
They can always kind of return,
Lex Fridman (1:34:18.960)
but like if you look a few centuries from now,
Lex Fridman (1:34:22.000)
do you just see us, all these like floating cities.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:34:24.240)
Like Amoeba.
Lex Fridman (1:34:25.080)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:34:25.900)
And it just kind of envelops the space around us
Lex Fridman (1:34:30.640)
in these like neighborhoods.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:34:31.920)
Yeah, in these neighborhoods.
Lex Fridman (1:34:32.760)
It's like rural and there's like giant structures
Lex Fridman (1:34:36.760)
and there's small pirate structures
Lex Fridman (1:34:38.960)
and that kind of stuff.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:34:39.800)
Pirate structures, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:34:40.620)
I think low earth orbit might come to look like that.
Lex Fridman (1:34:43.400)
And it's a really interesting regulatory challenge
Lex Fridman (1:34:45.680)
to make sure that there's some cross purposes.
Lex Fridman (1:34:49.200)
So the more cool space cities we have in orbit,
Lex Fridman (1:34:51.620)
the more shiny objects in the night sky,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:34:53.800)
the worse it is for astronomers
Lex Fridman (1:34:55.320)
in a really kind of overly simplified case.
Lex Fridman (1:34:58.080)
So there's some pushback to this like Amoebaing
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.840)
where we just grow kind of incongruously
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:05.080)
or indiscriminately as an Amoeba in low earth orbit.
Lex Fridman (1:35:08.000)
Beyond that though, I think we'll grow in pockets
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:10.640)
where there are resources.
Lex Fridman (1:35:12.200)
So we won't just expand around the gravity well of earth.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:15.840)
We'll do some development around the moon,
Lex Fridman (1:35:18.600)
some development around asteroids,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:20.200)
some development around Mars,
Lex Fridman (1:35:21.760)
because there'll always be purposes
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:23.300)
for which we wanna go down to a physical object
Lex Fridman (1:35:25.480)
and study it or extract something or learn from it.
Lex Fridman (1:35:28.460)
But I think we'll grow in fits and starts in pockets.
Lex Fridman (1:35:32.000)
Some of the coolest pockets are the gravity balanced pockets
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:35.140)
like the Lagrange points, which is where we just sent,
Lex Fridman (1:35:37.800)
we not me personally, but NASA just sent James Webb,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:41.440)
the big telescope, I think it's at L2.
Lex Fridman (1:35:44.000)
So.
Lex Fridman (1:35:44.840)
What's the nice feature about those pockets?
Lex Fridman (1:35:46.480)
So it's a stable orbit.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:48.480)
There are several different Lagrange points.
Lex Fridman (1:35:50.520)
And so it just requires less energy
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:52.400)
to stay where you're trying to stay.
Lex Fridman (1:35:55.200)
Yeah, that's fascinating.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:35:57.480)
What's also fascinating is the interaction
Lex Fridman (1:35:59.840)
between nations on that regard.
Lex Fridman (1:36:04.440)
Like who owns that?
Lex Fridman (1:36:06.480)
Would you say in those floating cities,
Lex Fridman (1:36:09.200)
do you envision independent governments?
Lex Fridman (1:36:13.080)
That was gonna be my next answer to you,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:36:14.520)
which pushed me harder for a more provocative question
Lex Fridman (1:36:17.480)
where I might disagree with other people.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:36:19.320)
I don't yet have my own opinions fully formed on this,
Lex Fridman (1:36:22.720)
but we are trying to figure out right now
Lex Fridman (1:36:24.280)
what happens to the moon
Lex Fridman (1:36:25.840)
with all of these first come first served actors
Ariel Ekblaw (1:36:29.820)
just arriving and setting precedents
Lex Fridman (1:36:32.360)
that might really affect future access.
Lex Fridman (1:36:34.480)
And one example is property rights.
Lex Fridman (1:36:37.260)
We do want companies that have the expertise
Ariel Ekblaw (1:36:40.080)
to go to the moon and mine stuff
Lex Fridman (1:36:41.880)
that will help us develop a human settlement there
Ariel Ekblaw (1:36:45.960)
or a gateway, but companies need to know generally
Lex Fridman (1:36:49.200)
that they have rights to a certain area
Ariel Ekblaw (1:36:50.800)
or that they have some legal right to sell things
Lex Fridman (1:36:52.900)
that they're getting.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:36:53.740)
Does that mean we're gonna grant property rights
Lex Fridman (1:36:55.760)
on the moon to companies who has the right
Lex Fridman (1:36:58.760)
to give that right away?
Lex Fridman (1:37:00.720)
So there's a bunch of really kind of gnarly questions
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:02.760)
that we have to think about,
Lex Fridman (1:37:03.580)
which is why I think we need space lawyers.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:04.920)
Maybe that's the true provocative answers.
Lex Fridman (1:37:07.600)
I think we need space lawyers.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:09.040)
I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, but those questions,
Lex Fridman (1:37:12.020)
again, as you said eloquently,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:14.580)
will help us answer questions about here on Earth.
Lex Fridman (1:37:17.120)
We hope so, yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:18.240)
It is a little strange.
Lex Fridman (1:37:20.920)
I mean, it's obvious, but it's also strange
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:23.100)
if you look at the big picture of it all
Lex Fridman (1:37:25.640)
that we draw these like borders around geographical areas
Lex Fridman (1:37:28.940)
and we say, this is mine, like,
Lex Fridman (1:37:32.120)
and then we fight wars over what's mine
Lex Fridman (1:37:34.160)
and not, it seems like there's possible alternatives,
Lex Fridman (1:37:39.200)
but also it seems like there needs to be a public ownership
Lex Fridman (1:37:42.920)
of some parts, like, what is it?
Lex Fridman (1:37:45.880)
Central Park in New York.
Lex Fridman (1:37:47.280)
Is there something like preserving?
Lex Fridman (1:37:51.440)
The commons.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:52.400)
Yeah, the commons.
Lex Fridman (1:37:53.240)
The commons.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:37:54.080)
That's why we titled the book Into the Anthropocosmos.
Lex Fridman (1:37:57.320)
We know it's a long and kind of a mouthful,
Lex Fridman (1:37:59.680)
but this notion of the Anthropocene,
Lex Fridman (1:38:02.360)
we have a lot of commons problems in humanity.
Lex Fridman (1:38:04.900)
How are we treating the Earth, global climate change?
Lex Fridman (1:38:07.000)
How are we gonna treat and behave in space?
Lex Fridman (1:38:09.180)
How can we be responsible stewards of the space commons?
Lex Fridman (1:38:12.880)
And I would love to see an approach to the moon
Ariel Ekblaw (1:38:15.120)
that is commons based, but it's hard to know
Lex Fridman (1:38:18.340)
who would be the protector or the enforcer of that.
Lex Fridman (1:38:21.960)
And if it's, which it will be probably in the early days,
Lex Fridman (1:38:25.120)
a lot of companies sort of working on the moon,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:38:28.080)
working on Mars, working out in space,
Lex Fridman (1:38:30.840)
it feels like there still needs to be
Ariel Ekblaw (1:38:33.080)
a civilian representation of like the greater effort
Lex Fridman (1:38:37.400)
or something like that.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:38:38.680)
Like where there should be a president,
Lex Fridman (1:38:40.160)
there should be a democracy of some kind
Ariel Ekblaw (1:38:42.840)
where people can vote.
Lex Fridman (1:38:43.880)
Some representative government.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:38:45.320)
Those are all, again, the same human questions.
Lex Fridman (1:38:49.200)
What advice would you give to a young person today
Lex Fridman (1:38:54.000)
thinking about what they wanna do with their life, career?
Lex Fridman (1:38:57.840)
So somebody in high school, somebody in college,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:01.540)
maybe somebody that looks up to the stars
Lex Fridman (1:39:03.300)
and dreams to one day, take a one way ticket to Mars
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:07.120)
or to contribute something to the effort.
Lex Fridman (1:39:09.900)
I'd say you should feel empowered
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:12.800)
because it's really the first time in human history
Lex Fridman (1:39:16.080)
that we're at this cusp of interplanetary civilization.
Lex Fridman (1:39:19.940)
And I don't think we're gonna lapse back from it.
Lex Fridman (1:39:22.240)
So the future is incredibly bright for young people
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:25.200)
that even younger than you and I,
Lex Fridman (1:39:26.680)
who will actually really get a chance to go to Mars
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:28.560)
for certain.
Lex Fridman (1:39:30.280)
The other thing I would say is be open minded
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:32.800)
about what your own interests are.
Lex Fridman (1:39:34.360)
I don't think you anymore have to be shoehorned
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:36.480)
into a particular career to be welcomed
Lex Fridman (1:39:39.200)
into the future of space exploration.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:41.320)
If you are an artist and that is your passion,
Lex Fridman (1:39:43.800)
but you would love to do space art or if not space art,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:47.400)
use your artistry to communicate a feeling
Lex Fridman (1:39:49.920)
or a message about space.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:39:51.880)
That's a role that we desperately need
Lex Fridman (1:39:54.400)
just as much as we need space scientists
Lex Fridman (1:39:56.080)
and space engineers, so.
Lex Fridman (1:39:57.880)
Well, when you look at your own life,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:40:00.200)
you're an incredibly accomplished scientist,
Lex Fridman (1:40:02.800)
young scientist, but you know,
Lex Fridman (1:40:05.000)
and you hopped around from physics to aerospace.
Lex Fridman (1:40:08.960)
So going from the biggest theoretical ideas
Ariel Ekblaw (1:40:11.640)
to the biggest practical ideas.
Lex Fridman (1:40:14.280)
Is there something from your own journey
Ariel Ekblaw (1:40:15.760)
you can give advice to,
Lex Fridman (1:40:17.720)
like how to end up doing incredible research at MIT?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:40:22.320)
Maybe the role of the university and college
Lex Fridman (1:40:26.680)
and education and learning, all that kind of stuff.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:40:29.440)
I'd say one piece of advice is find really good teammates
Lex Fridman (1:40:33.120)
because I get to be the one that's talking to you,
Lex Fridman (1:40:35.280)
but there are 50 graduate students, staff and faculty
Lex Fridman (1:40:38.920)
that are part of my organization back at MIT.
Lex Fridman (1:40:41.640)
And I'm actually, you guys can't see it on camera,
Lex Fridman (1:40:43.160)
but I'm sitting here with my co founder and COO,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:40:45.560)
Danielle DeLotte, and that is really what makes
Lex Fridman (1:40:48.920)
these large scale challenges for humanity possible
Ariel Ekblaw (1:40:52.560)
is really fantastic teams working together
Lex Fridman (1:40:55.120)
to scale more than what I could do alone.
Lex Fridman (1:40:57.360)
So I think that that's an important model
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.600)
that we don't talk about enough in academia.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:00.360)
There's a big push for this like lone wolf genius figure
Lex Fridman (1:41:03.680)
in academia, but that's certainly not been the case
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:06.000)
in my life.
Lex Fridman (1:41:06.840)
I've had wonderful collaborators and people
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:09.440)
that I work with along the team.
Lex Fridman (1:41:10.680)
Also cross disciplinary.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:12.560)
Absolutely, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:41:13.680)
Cross disciplinary, interdisciplinary,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:15.320)
whatever you wanna call it, but.
Lex Fridman (1:41:17.240)
Artists, where do artists come in?
Lex Fridman (1:41:19.280)
Do you work with artists?
Lex Fridman (1:41:20.200)
We do.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:21.040)
We have an arts curator
Lex Fridman (1:41:22.120)
on the space exploration initiative side.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:24.160)
She helps make sure partly around that communication
Lex Fridman (1:41:26.560)
challenge that we talked about,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:27.600)
that we're not just doing zero G flights
Lex Fridman (1:41:29.560)
and space missions, but that we take our artifacts
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:32.720)
of this sci fi space future to museums
Lex Fridman (1:41:35.440)
and galleries and exhibits.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:38.000)
She pushed me to make sure her name is Shinglu.
Lex Fridman (1:41:41.760)
She pushed me for our first ISS mission.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:44.440)
I was just gathering all the engineering payloads
Lex Fridman (1:41:46.720)
that I wanted to support for the students to fly,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:48.600)
including my own work.
Lex Fridman (1:41:49.800)
And she said, you know what?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:41:50.640)
We should do an open call internationally
Lex Fridman (1:41:52.920)
for artists to send something to the ISS.
Lex Fridman (1:41:55.920)
And we found out it was the first time.
Lex Fridman (1:41:57.760)
We were the first ever international open call
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:00.120)
for art to go to the ISS.
Lex Fridman (1:42:01.840)
And that was thanks to Shing, an artist bringing
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:04.080)
a perspective that I might not have thought
Lex Fridman (1:42:05.520)
about prioritizing, so.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:08.000)
Yeah, that's awesome.
Lex Fridman (1:42:09.040)
So when you look out there,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:11.080)
it's the flame of human consciousness.
Lex Fridman (1:42:12.920)
There does seem to be something quite special
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:15.040)
about us humans.
Lex Fridman (1:42:16.760)
Well, first of all, what do you think it is?
Lex Fridman (1:42:21.760)
What's consciousness?
Lex Fridman (1:42:23.000)
What are we trying to preserve here?
Lex Fridman (1:42:27.080)
What is it about humans that should be preserved
Lex Fridman (1:42:32.120)
or life here on earth?
Lex Fridman (1:42:34.920)
What gives you hope to try to expand it out
Lex Fridman (1:42:37.880)
farther and farther?
Lex Fridman (1:42:38.960)
Like, what makes you sad if it was all gone?
Lex Fridman (1:42:43.140)
I think we're a remarkable species
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:46.180)
that we are aware of our own thoughts.
Lex Fridman (1:42:49.820)
We are meta aware of our own thoughts
Lex Fridman (1:42:52.060)
and of ourselves.
Lex Fridman (1:42:52.900)
And we're able to speak on a podcast
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:54.580)
about our meta awareness, about our own thoughts.
Lex Fridman (1:42:56.940)
About our own thoughts, yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:42:58.020)
Turtles all the way down.
Lex Fridman (1:43:00.900)
I think that that is a really special gift
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:03.140)
that we have been given as a species
Lex Fridman (1:43:04.740)
and that there's a worth to expanding
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:07.660)
our circles of awareness.
Lex Fridman (1:43:09.540)
So we're very aware of, as an earth based species,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:12.140)
we've become a little bit more aware
Lex Fridman (1:43:13.700)
of the fragility of earth and how special a place it is
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:15.980)
when we go to the moon and we look back.
Lex Fridman (1:43:18.100)
What would it mean for us to have a presence
Lex Fridman (1:43:21.940)
and our purpose in life as a inter solar system species
Lex Fridman (1:43:26.180)
or eventually an intergalactic species?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:28.540)
I think it's a really profound opportunity
Lex Fridman (1:43:30.160)
for exploration, for the sake of exploration.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:34.500)
A real gift for the human mind.
Lex Fridman (1:43:36.300)
Yeah, for anything, we're curious creatures.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:41.020)
You see, you do believe we might one day
Lex Fridman (1:43:43.220)
become intergalactic civilizations.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:46.340)
Long, long time from now.
Lex Fridman (1:43:47.700)
We have a lot of propulsion challenges
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:49.980)
to answer to get that far.
Lex Fridman (1:43:51.500)
So you have a hope for this.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:43:53.140)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:43:54.740)
Another big ridiculous question building on top of that.
Lex Fridman (1:43:57.580)
What do you think is the meaning of life?
Lex Fridman (1:44:00.220)
This individual life of ours, your life,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:03.820)
that unfortunately has to come to an end
Lex Fridman (1:44:06.300)
as far as we know for now.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:08.060)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:44:09.180)
And our life here together, is there a why?
Lex Fridman (1:44:13.900)
Or do we just kinda like let our curiosity carry us away?
Lex Fridman (1:44:20.740)
Oh, interesting.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:21.580)
Is there a single kind of driving purpose why
Lex Fridman (1:44:25.380)
or can it just be curiosity based?
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:28.020)
I certainly feel, and this is not the scientist
Lex Fridman (1:44:30.700)
in me talking, but just more of like a human soul talking.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:34.080)
I certainly feel some sense of purpose
Lex Fridman (1:44:38.420)
and meaning in my life.
Lex Fridman (1:44:39.580)
And there's a version of that
Lex Fridman (1:44:40.580)
that's a very local level within my family,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:43.340)
which is funny because this whole conversation
Lex Fridman (1:44:44.860)
has been big, grand space exploration themes.
Lex Fridman (1:44:47.060)
But you asked me this question
Lex Fridman (1:44:48.140)
and my first thought is what really matters to me,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:50.060)
my family, my biological reproducing unit.
Lex Fridman (1:44:53.480)
But then there's also another purpose,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:44:57.900)
like another version of the meaning in my life
Lex Fridman (1:44:59.780)
that is trying to do good things for humanity.
Lex Fridman (1:45:02.420)
So that sense that we can be individual humans
Lex Fridman (1:45:04.980)
and have our local meaning,
Lex Fridman (1:45:06.740)
and we can also be global humans.
Lex Fridman (1:45:08.620)
Maybe someday like the Star Trek utopia
Ariel Ekblaw (1:45:10.500)
will all be global citizens.
Lex Fridman (1:45:12.460)
I don't wanna sound too naive.
Lex Fridman (1:45:15.480)
But there is I think that beauty to a meaning
Lex Fridman (1:45:17.260)
and a purpose of your life that's bigger than yourself,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:45:20.100)
working on something that's bigger and grander
Lex Fridman (1:45:21.960)
than just yourself.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:45:23.640)
The deepest meaning is from
Lex Fridman (1:45:25.140)
the local biological reproduction unit.
Lex Fridman (1:45:28.020)
And then it goes to the engineering scientific,
Lex Fridman (1:45:32.140)
what is it, corporate like company unit
Ariel Ekblaw (1:45:35.240)
that can actually produce and compete
Lex Fridman (1:45:37.380)
and interact with the world.
Lex Fridman (1:45:38.620)
And then there's the giant human unit
Lex Fridman (1:45:41.340)
that's struggling with pandemics.
Lex Fridman (1:45:43.980)
And commons.
Lex Fridman (1:45:45.180)
And together struggling against the forces of nature
Ariel Ekblaw (1:45:49.220)
that keeps wanting to kill us.
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.820)
Yeah, there'd be nothing like an alien invasion
Ariel Ekblaw (1:45:52.920)
to unite the planet, we think.
Lex Fridman (1:45:54.980)
I can't wait, bring it on aliens.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:45:57.980)
Listen, your work, you're an incredible communicator,
Lex Fridman (1:46:00.660)
incredible young scientist there.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:01.900)
It's huge honor that you would spend your time with me.
Lex Fridman (1:46:04.860)
I can't wait what you do in the future.
Lex Fridman (1:46:07.740)
And thank you for representing MIT so beautifully,
Lex Fridman (1:46:10.980)
so masterfully.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:11.820)
You're an incredible person.
Lex Fridman (1:46:12.800)
Thank you for talking to me.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:13.640)
Thank you so much for having me.
Lex Fridman (1:46:14.660)
It's been an absolute pleasure.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:15.660)
It's a great conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:46:17.620)
Thanks for listening to this conversation
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:19.140)
with Ariel Ekblah.
Lex Fridman (1:46:20.700)
To support this podcast,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:21.940)
please check out our sponsors in the description.
Lex Fridman (1:46:25.260)
And now let me leave you with some words from Seneca,
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:29.280)
the Roman stoic philosopher.
Lex Fridman (1:46:31.200)
There is no easy way from earth to the stars.
Ariel Ekblaw (1:46:36.200)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (20:00.460)
that beautiful, you know, fibonacci spiral sequence
Ariel Ekblaw (20:03.500)
that you get in that shape,
Lex Fridman (20:04.940)
which I think would be a stunning
Lex Fridman (20:06.180)
and fabulous aggregated space station.
Lex Fridman (20:10.300)
You said so many cool words, plesiohedron.
Ariel Ekblaw (20:14.180)
Yeah, plesiohedron.
Lex Fridman (20:15.020)
So that's a space filling.
Ariel Ekblaw (20:18.220)
Solid, the simplest thing to think of is like a cube.
Lex Fridman (20:20.980)
Oh, cube. A cube, right?
Lex Fridman (20:21.980)
So you can stack cubes together
Lex Fridman (20:23.620)
and if you had an infinite number of cubes,
Ariel Ekblaw (20:25.380)
you'd fill all that space,
Lex Fridman (20:27.140)
there's no gaps in between the cubes,
Ariel Ekblaw (20:28.900)
they stack and fill space.
Lex Fridman (20:31.340)
Another plesiohedron is a truncated octahedron
Lex Fridman (20:34.660)
and that's actually one of the candidate structures
Lex Fridman (20:36.420)
that we think would be great for space stations.
Lex Fridman (20:38.660)
What's the truncated part?
Lex Fridman (20:40.020)
Ah, so you cut off,
Ariel Ekblaw (20:41.820)
an octahedron actually has little pointy areas,
Lex Fridman (20:44.540)
you truncate certain sections of it
Lex Fridman (20:46.260)
and you get surfaces that are on the structure
Lex Fridman (20:50.020)
that are cubes and I think hexagons,
Ariel Ekblaw (20:52.820)
I have to remind myself exactly what the faces are.
Lex Fridman (20:55.540)
But overall, a truncated octahedron can be bonded
Ariel Ekblaw (20:59.180)
to other truncated octahedrons
Lex Fridman (21:00.700)
and just like a cube, it fills all the gaps
Ariel Ekblaw (21:03.500)
as you build it out.
Lex Fridman (21:04.820)
So you can imagine two truncated octahedrons,
Ariel Ekblaw (21:07.700)
they come together at an airlock,
Lex Fridman (21:09.180)
which is what we space people call doors in space
Lex Fridman (21:12.260)
and you dock them on all sides
Lex Fridman (21:14.180)
and you've basically created this decentralized network
Ariel Ekblaw (21:18.060)
of space nodes that make a big space station
Lex Fridman (21:21.980)
and once you have enough of them
Lex Fridman (21:23.620)
and you're growing with enough big units,
Lex Fridman (21:25.460)
you can do it in any macro shape you want.
Ariel Ekblaw (21:28.020)
That's where the Nautilus comes in,
Lex Fridman (21:29.300)
is could we design an organically inspired shape
Lex Fridman (21:32.940)
for a space station?
Lex Fridman (21:34.220)
Can I just say how awesome it is to hear you say,
Ariel Ekblaw (21:36.820)
we space people.
Lex Fridman (21:38.700)
I know you meant people that are doing research
Ariel Ekblaw (21:41.220)
on space exploration, space technology,
Lex Fridman (21:43.820)
but it also made me think of a future.
Ariel Ekblaw (21:45.940)
There's earth people and there's those space people.
Lex Fridman (21:50.580)
And then there's the Mars people.
Ariel Ekblaw (21:51.420)
I'd love to unite those too.
Lex Fridman (21:52.380)
Yeah, no, no, for sure, for sure.
Lex Fridman (21:54.140)
But like, it's like New Yorkers and like Texans
Lex Fridman (21:58.620)
or something like that.
Ariel Ekblaw (22:00.500)
Yeah, of course you live for a time in New York
Lex Fridman (22:03.540)
and then you go up to Boston
Lex Fridman (22:05.140)
but for a time you're the space people.
Lex Fridman (22:07.100)
Oh, I know those space people.
Ariel Ekblaw (22:09.300)
They're kind of wild up there.
Lex Fridman (22:11.140)
We'll see how that dynamic evolves.
Ariel Ekblaw (22:12.500)
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman (22:13.340)
There's that culture, culture forms.
Lex Fridman (22:14.660)
And I would love to see what kind of culture,
Lex Fridman (22:17.020)
once you have sort of more and more civilians.
Ariel Ekblaw (22:21.100)
I mean, there's a human,
Lex Fridman (22:22.500)
I mean, I love psychology and sociology
Lex Fridman (22:24.420)
and I'll maybe ask you about that too,
Lex Fridman (22:27.540)
which is like the dynamic between humans.
Ariel Ekblaw (22:29.580)
You have to kind of start considering that
Lex Fridman (22:31.700)
and you start spending more and more time up in space
Lex Fridman (22:34.660)
and start sending civilians, start sending bigger
Lex Fridman (22:37.660)
and bigger groups of people.
Lex Fridman (22:39.140)
And then of course the beautiful and the ugly emerges
Lex Fridman (22:42.900)
from the human nature that we haven't been able
Ariel Ekblaw (22:47.380)
to escape up to this point.
Lex Fridman (22:49.020)
But when you say the plesiohedrons, these kinds of shapes,
Lex Fridman (22:53.060)
are they multifunctional?
Lex Fridman (22:54.500)
Like is the idea you'd be able to,
Ariel Ekblaw (22:58.620)
humans can occupy them safely in some of them
Lex Fridman (23:02.220)
and some others have some other purposes?
Ariel Ekblaw (23:04.820)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (23:05.660)
One could be sleeping quarters.
Ariel Ekblaw (23:07.300)
One could be a greenhouse or an agricultural unit.
Lex Fridman (23:10.380)
One could be a storage depot.
Ariel Ekblaw (23:13.740)
Essentially all of the different rooms
Lex Fridman (23:15.660)
or functions that you might need in a space station
Ariel Ekblaw (23:17.860)
could be subdivided into these nodes
Lex Fridman (23:19.940)
and then stacked together.
Lex Fridman (23:22.220)
And one of the promises of both Tesseray,
Lex Fridman (23:24.460)
my original PhD research, which is these shells,
Lex Fridman (23:26.940)
and then this follow on node concept,
Lex Fridman (23:29.540)
is that right now we build space stations
Lex Fridman (23:32.100)
and once they're built, they're done.
Lex Fridman (23:33.780)
You can't really change them profoundly.
Lex Fridman (23:36.260)
But the benefit of a modular self assembling system
Lex Fridman (23:38.940)
is you can disassemble it.
Ariel Ekblaw (23:40.940)
You can completely reconfigure it.
Lex Fridman (23:42.780)
So if your mission changes or the number of people
Ariel Ekblaw (23:45.140)
in space that you wanna host,
Lex Fridman (23:46.340)
if you have a space conference happening
Ariel Ekblaw (23:47.740)
like South by Southwest.
Lex Fridman (23:48.860)
I was thinking space party,
Lex Fridman (23:50.100)
but space conference is good too.
Lex Fridman (23:52.460)
Then maybe all of a sudden you want to change out
Lex Fridman (23:55.660)
what were window tiles yesterday, cupola tiles,
Lex Fridman (23:58.700)
and make them into a birthing port
Lex Fridman (24:00.460)
so that you can welcome five new spaceships
Lex Fridman (24:02.540)
to come and join you in space.
Ariel Ekblaw (24:04.260)
That's what this promise of reconfigurable space architecture
Lex Fridman (24:07.260)
might allow us to explore.
Ariel Ekblaw (24:09.060)
I've been hanging out with Grimes recently
Lex Fridman (24:10.660)
and I just feel like she belongs up in space.
Ariel Ekblaw (24:13.180)
This is like designed for artists essentially.
Lex Fridman (24:15.460)
Like imagine, I mean, this is what South by
Ariel Ekblaw (24:18.140)
keeps introducing me to is there's like
Lex Fridman (24:20.220)
the weird and the beautiful people and like the artists.
Lex Fridman (24:23.420)
And it feels like there's a lot of opportunities
Lex Fridman (24:26.300)
for art and design.
Ariel Ekblaw (24:28.660)
100%.
Lex Fridman (24:29.500)
It's like space is a combination of arts, design,
Lex Fridman (24:32.540)
and great engineering.
Lex Fridman (24:36.820)
It's safety critical with like the highest of stakes.
Lex Fridman (24:39.780)
So don't, you can't mess it up.
Lex Fridman (24:41.740)
And is this, is there, first of all,
Ariel Ekblaw (24:43.220)
you're talking about tiling.
Lex Fridman (24:44.660)
So Neil Stephenson is obsessed about tile.
Ariel Ekblaw (24:46.620)
I don't know if it's related to any of this,
Lex Fridman (24:48.780)
but he seems to be obsessed with like,
Lex Fridman (24:50.620)
how do you tile a space?
Lex Fridman (24:51.660)
That's like a mathematical, geometric notion.
Ariel Ekblaw (24:54.060)
Like the tessellation.
Lex Fridman (24:55.060)
And it's, I mean, it's a beautiful idea for architecture
Ariel Ekblaw (24:59.540)
that you can self assemble these different shapes
Lex Fridman (25:03.380)
and you can have probably some centralized guidance
Ariel Ekblaw (25:07.460)
of the kind of thing you want to build.
Lex Fridman (25:09.700)
But they also kind of figure stuff out themselves
Ariel Ekblaw (25:12.020)
in terms of the low level details,
Lex Fridman (25:13.540)
in terms of the figuring out when the,
Ariel Ekblaw (25:15.980)
when everything fits just right for the OCD people,
Lex Fridman (25:19.700)
like what's that subreddit?
Ariel Ekblaw (25:23.060)
Pleasantly, it's like really fun.
Lex Fridman (25:25.660)
Everything, they have like videos of everything
Ariel Ekblaw (25:27.380)
is just pleasant when everything just fits perfectly.
Lex Fridman (25:29.580)
Very pleasing.
Ariel Ekblaw (25:30.420)
All the tolerances come together well, yeah.
Lex Fridman (25:32.540)
So they figure that out on themselves
Lex Fridman (25:34.420)
and the local robotics problem.
Lex Fridman (25:36.340)
But by the way, what's the Pebbles Project?
Ariel Ekblaw (25:39.340)
The Pebbles Project are little cubes
Lex Fridman (25:41.540)
that have EPMs in them, electropermanent magnets,
Lex Fridman (25:44.260)
and they can self disassemble.
Lex Fridman (25:46.140)
So they'll turn off.
Lex Fridman (25:47.100)
And so you'll have this little structure
Lex Fridman (25:48.340)
that all of a sudden can flip the little pebbles over
Lex Fridman (25:51.660)
and essentially just disaggregate.
Lex Fridman (25:54.540)
They have to make some pleasing sounds.
Ariel Ekblaw (25:56.620)
Yes, they do.
Lex Fridman (25:57.460)
And that's gonna, so I'm supposed to talk to Danielle,
Lex Fridman (26:01.380)
so I'll probably spend an hour
Lex Fridman (26:02.900)
just discussing the sounds on the pebbles.
Lex Fridman (26:04.980)
Okay, what were we talking about?
Lex Fridman (26:07.540)
So that's, because you mentioned two, I think.
Ariel Ekblaw (26:10.940)
Right, my third one.
Lex Fridman (26:12.060)
Yeah, is there a third one?
Ariel Ekblaw (26:13.220)
My third one is The Ringworld,
Lex Fridman (26:14.580)
just because every science fiction book ever
Ariel Ekblaw (26:17.300)
that's worth anything has A Ringworld in it.
Lex Fridman (26:19.820)
Is it like a donut?
Ariel Ekblaw (26:21.860)
A donut, yeah, it's a really big torus
Lex Fridman (26:24.460)
that could encircle a planet
Ariel Ekblaw (26:27.620)
or encircle another celestial body,
Lex Fridman (26:29.580)
maybe an asteroid or a small moon.
Lex Fridman (26:32.100)
And the promise here is just the beauty
Lex Fridman (26:36.060)
of being able to have that geometry in orbit
Lex Fridman (26:39.900)
and all that surface area for solar panels and docking
Lex Fridman (26:43.140)
and essentially just all of what that enables
Ariel Ekblaw (26:46.540)
to have a ring world at that scale in orbit.
Lex Fridman (26:48.940)
By the way, for the viewers, we're looking at Figure 11.
Lex Fridman (26:51.540)
What paper is this from?
Lex Fridman (26:52.580)
This is a hexagonal tiling
Ariel Ekblaw (26:54.820)
of a torus generated in Mathematica
Lex Fridman (26:57.340)
referencing code and approach from two citations.
Lex Fridman (27:01.060)
So we're looking at a tiled donut, and I'm now hungry.
Lex Fridman (27:04.220)
So this is the, is this from your thesis or no?
Ariel Ekblaw (27:06.940)
This is probably, I mean, this is in my thesis.
Lex Fridman (27:08.740)
This looks like it was one of my earlier papers.
Ariel Ekblaw (27:10.580)
This was an approach to say, great,
Lex Fridman (27:13.260)
we've come up with this tessellation approach
Ariel Ekblaw (27:15.460)
for a buckyball, and we picked the buckyball
Lex Fridman (27:18.120)
because it is the most efficient surface area
Ariel Ekblaw (27:21.340)
to volume shape and what's expensive in space,
Lex Fridman (27:23.940)
the surface area shipping up all that material.
Lex Fridman (27:26.340)
So we wanted something that would maximize the volume.
Lex Fridman (27:28.780)
But if we think about ring worlds and other shapes,
Lex Fridman (27:30.820)
we wanted to look at how do you tile a torus?
Lex Fridman (27:34.060)
And this is one example with hexagons
Ariel Ekblaw (27:36.420)
to be able to say, could we take this same tesserae approach
Lex Fridman (27:39.120)
of self assembling tiles and create other geometries?
Ariel Ekblaw (27:42.180)
This is so freaking cool.
Lex Fridman (27:43.540)
That's awesome.
Lex Fridman (27:44.360)
So you mentioned microgravity, and I saw,
Lex Fridman (27:48.420)
I believe that there's a picture
Ariel Ekblaw (27:50.180)
of you floating in microgravity.
Lex Fridman (27:52.020)
When did you get to experience that?
Lex Fridman (27:53.740)
What was that like?
Lex Fridman (27:54.580)
Ah, so I've flown nine times
Ariel Ekblaw (27:56.920)
on the affectionately known as the Vomit Comet.
Lex Fridman (27:59.980)
It's the parabolic flight, and essentially,
Ariel Ekblaw (28:02.500)
it does what you'd want a plane never to do.
Lex Fridman (28:04.300)
It pitches really steeply upwards at 45 degrees.
Ariel Ekblaw (28:07.060)
Oh, that's a picture of you.
Lex Fridman (28:07.900)
Yeah, yeah, that's tesserae.
Ariel Ekblaw (28:09.540)
That's super early in my PhD,
Lex Fridman (28:11.300)
some of just the passive tiles
Ariel Ekblaw (28:12.800)
before we even put electronics in.
Lex Fridman (28:14.260)
We were just testing the magnet polarity
Lex Fridman (28:17.100)
and the, essentially, is it an energy favorable structure
Lex Fridman (28:20.900)
to self assemble on its own?
Lex Fridman (28:22.260)
So we tweaked a lot of things between.
Lex Fridman (28:23.900)
Are we looking at a couple of them?
Ariel Ekblaw (28:25.940)
Yeah, you're looking at a bunch of them there.
Lex Fridman (28:27.260)
Oh, oh, I see.
Ariel Ekblaw (28:28.100)
Almost 32 of them, yeah.
Lex Fridman (28:29.260)
Cool.
Ariel Ekblaw (28:30.100)
They're clumping, they're clumping, yeah.
Lex Fridman (28:31.660)
Can you comment on what's the difference
Lex Fridman (28:33.140)
between microgravity and zero gravity?
Lex Fridman (28:35.900)
Yes, so there is, is that an important difference?
Ariel Ekblaw (28:37.980)
It's an important difference.
Lex Fridman (28:38.820)
There is no zero gravity.
Ariel Ekblaw (28:41.580)
There's no nothing, there's, in the universe,
Lex Fridman (28:43.740)
there is no such thing as zero gravity.
Lex Fridman (28:46.000)
So Newton's law of gravity tells us
Lex Fridman (28:48.180)
that there's always gravity attraction
Ariel Ekblaw (28:50.280)
between any two objects.
Lex Fridman (28:51.300)
So zero G is a shorthand that some of us fall into using,
Ariel Ekblaw (28:54.240)
where it's a little easier to communicate to the public.
Lex Fridman (28:56.420)
The accurate term is microgravity,
Ariel Ekblaw (28:59.420)
where you are essentially floating, you're weightless,
Lex Fridman (29:02.040)
but generally in free fall.
Lex Fridman (29:04.220)
So on the parabolic flights, the vomit comet,
Lex Fridman (29:06.580)
you're in free fall at the end of the parabola.
Lex Fridman (29:09.260)
And in orbit around the Earth when you're floating,
Lex Fridman (29:12.380)
you're also in free fall.
Lex Fridman (29:14.340)
So that's microgravity.
Lex Fridman (29:15.900)
So affectionately called vomit comet,
Ariel Ekblaw (29:17.660)
I'm sure there's a reason why it's called affectionately.
Lex Fridman (29:19.780)
So what's it like?
Lex Fridman (29:21.040)
What's your first time?
Lex Fridman (29:23.560)
So both philosophically, spiritually, and biologically,
Lex Fridman (29:27.940)
what's it like?
Lex Fridman (29:28.860)
It's profound.
Ariel Ekblaw (29:30.300)
It is unlike anything else you will experience on Earth
Lex Fridman (29:35.120)
because it is this true feeling of weightlessness
Ariel Ekblaw (29:38.660)
with no drag.
Lex Fridman (29:40.000)
So the closest experience you can think of
Ariel Ekblaw (29:41.660)
would be floating in a pool,
Lex Fridman (29:43.020)
but you move slowly when you float in a pool
Lex Fridman (29:44.860)
and your motion is restricted.
Lex Fridman (29:46.540)
When you're floating, it's just you and your body flying,
Ariel Ekblaw (29:49.940)
like in a dream.
Lex Fridman (29:52.160)
It takes the littlest amount of energy,
Ariel Ekblaw (29:54.260)
like a finger tap against the wall of the plane
Lex Fridman (29:56.440)
to shoot all the way across the fuselage.
Lex Fridman (29:58.760)
And you can move at full speed.
Lex Fridman (30:01.100)
You can move your arms.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:02.680)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (30:03.520)
So your muscles work.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:04.340)
There's no resistance.
Lex Fridman (30:05.180)
There's no resistance.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:06.800)
They actually tell you to make a memory
Lex Fridman (30:09.940)
when you're on the plane
Ariel Ekblaw (30:11.440)
because it's such a fleeting experience for your body
Lex Fridman (30:13.900)
that even a few days later,
Ariel Ekblaw (30:14.940)
you've already forgotten exactly what it felt like.
Lex Fridman (30:17.780)
It's so foreign to the human experience.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:20.140)
They kind of suggest that you explicitly try
Lex Fridman (30:22.500)
to really form this into a memory
Lex Fridman (30:24.380)
and then you can do the replay.
Lex Fridman (30:25.700)
Is that for training?
Ariel Ekblaw (30:26.540)
Cognitively freeze it.
Lex Fridman (30:27.700)
Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:28.540)
Cognitively.
Lex Fridman (30:29.380)
Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:30.200)
Save.
Lex Fridman (30:31.040)
Right.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:31.880)
When we have Neuralink, we can replay that memory.
Lex Fridman (30:34.980)
So in terms of how much stress it has on your body,
Lex Fridman (30:38.200)
is it biologically stressful?
Lex Fridman (30:41.180)
You do feel a 2G pullout, right?
Lex Fridman (30:43.580)
So the cost of getting those micro G parabolas
Lex Fridman (30:46.460)
is you then have a 2G pullout and that's hard.
Ariel Ekblaw (30:48.900)
You have to train for it.
Lex Fridman (30:50.180)
If you move your neck too quickly in that 2G pullout,
Ariel Ekblaw (30:52.620)
you can strain muscles.
Lex Fridman (30:54.780)
But I wouldn't say that it's actually
Ariel Ekblaw (30:56.800)
a profound tough thing on the body.
Lex Fridman (31:00.180)
It's really just an incredibly novel experience.
Lex Fridman (31:02.940)
And when you're in orbit
Lex Fridman (31:04.500)
and you're not having to go through the ups and downs
Ariel Ekblaw (31:06.620)
of the parabolic plane,
Lex Fridman (31:07.840)
there's a real grace and elegance.
Lex Fridman (31:09.900)
And you see the astronauts learn to operate
Lex Fridman (31:12.460)
in this completely new environment.
Lex Fridman (31:14.980)
What are some interesting differences
Lex Fridman (31:16.380)
between the parabolic plane
Lex Fridman (31:17.800)
and when you're actually going up into orbit?
Lex Fridman (31:20.180)
Is it that with orbit you can look out
Lex Fridman (31:22.900)
and see that blue little planet of ours?
Lex Fridman (31:26.180)
You can see the blue marble, the stunning overview effect,
Ariel Ekblaw (31:28.800)
which is something I hope to see one day.
Lex Fridman (31:31.940)
What's also really different is if you're in orbit
Ariel Ekblaw (31:34.180)
for any significant period of time,
Lex Fridman (31:36.060)
there's gonna be a lot more physiological changes
Ariel Ekblaw (31:38.180)
to your body than if you just did an afternoon flight
Lex Fridman (31:41.500)
on the Vomit Comet.
Ariel Ekblaw (31:42.860)
Everything from your bones, your muscles,
Lex Fridman (31:44.940)
your eyeballs change shape.
Ariel Ekblaw (31:47.500)
There's a lot of different things that happen
Lex Fridman (31:49.020)
for long duration space flight.
Lex Fridman (31:51.120)
And we still have to, as scientists,
Lex Fridman (31:52.520)
we still have to solve a lot of these interesting challenges
Ariel Ekblaw (31:54.500)
to be able to keep humans thriving in microgravity
Lex Fridman (31:58.400)
or deep duration space missions.
Ariel Ekblaw (32:01.000)
Deep duration space missions.
Lex Fridman (32:03.580)
Okay, let's talk about this.
Ariel Ekblaw (32:05.080)
I was just gonna ask a bunch of dumb questions.
Lex Fridman (32:08.220)
So approximately how long does it take to travel to Mars?
Ariel Ekblaw (32:11.660)
Asking for a friend.
Lex Fridman (32:12.620)
Asking for a friend, as we all do.
Ariel Ekblaw (32:14.820)
About three years for a round trip.
Lex Fridman (32:17.780)
And that's not that it actually takes that long.
Lex Fridman (32:19.180)
Why the round trip, is that?
Lex Fridman (32:20.940)
Well, you're just asking about the one way trip.
Ariel Ekblaw (32:23.780)
Got it, got it, got it.
Lex Fridman (32:25.020)
It's okay, cool.
Lex Fridman (32:25.860)
So for just like literally flying to Mars in a round,
Lex Fridman (32:29.460)
it takes three years.
Ariel Ekblaw (32:30.740)
There's some interstitial time there
Lex Fridman (32:32.540)
because you really can only go between Earth and Mars
Ariel Ekblaw (32:35.460)
at certain points in their orbits
Lex Fridman (32:37.540)
where it's favorable to make that journey.
Lex Fridman (32:39.420)
And so part of that three years
Lex Fridman (32:40.860)
is you take the journey to Mars,
Ariel Ekblaw (32:42.900)
a few months, six to nine months.
Lex Fridman (32:45.000)
You're there for a period of time
Ariel Ekblaw (32:46.400)
until the orbits find a favorable alignment again.
Lex Fridman (32:49.860)
And then you come back another six to nine months.
Lex Fridman (32:51.900)
So one way travel, six to nine months.
Lex Fridman (32:54.140)
They hang out there on vacation and come back.
Ariel Ekblaw (32:56.420)
Forced vacation.
Lex Fridman (32:57.260)
Forced vacation.
Ariel Ekblaw (32:58.080)
You come back.
Lex Fridman (32:58.920)
Well, me who loves working all the time,
Ariel Ekblaw (33:00.940)
all vacation is forced vacation.
Lex Fridman (33:03.260)
All right.
Lex Fridman (33:04.660)
So okay, so that gives us a sense of duration.
Lex Fridman (33:07.780)
And we can maybe also talk about longer
Lex Fridman (33:10.260)
and longer and longer duration as well.
Lex Fridman (33:13.580)
What are the hardest aspects of living in space
Lex Fridman (33:18.700)
for many days, for let's say 100 days, 200 days?
Lex Fridman (33:23.320)
Maybe there's a threshold when it gets really tough.
Lex Fridman (33:25.900)
What are some stupid little things or big things
Lex Fridman (33:29.780)
that are very difficult for human beings to go through?
Ariel Ekblaw (33:32.340)
It's one big thing and one little thing.
Lex Fridman (33:33.860)
And there are these two classic problems
Ariel Ekblaw (33:35.460)
that we're trying to solve in the space industry.
Lex Fridman (33:37.260)
One is radiation.
Ariel Ekblaw (33:38.820)
It's not as much of a problem for us right now
Lex Fridman (33:40.940)
on the International Space Station
Ariel Ekblaw (33:42.280)
because we're still protected
Lex Fridman (33:44.100)
by part of Earth's magnetosphere.
Lex Fridman (33:46.140)
But as soon as you get farther out into space
Lex Fridman (33:47.980)
and you don't have that protection
Ariel Ekblaw (33:49.340)
once you leave the Van Allen belt area of the Earth
Lex Fridman (33:52.700)
and the cocoon around the Earth,
Ariel Ekblaw (33:55.380)
we have really serious concerns about radiation
Lex Fridman (33:57.940)
and the effect on human health longterm.
Ariel Ekblaw (33:59.940)
That's the big one.
Lex Fridman (34:01.360)
The small one, and I say it's small
Ariel Ekblaw (34:02.960)
because it seems mundane,
Lex Fridman (34:04.340)
but it actually is really big in its own way,
Ariel Ekblaw (34:06.020)
is mental health and how to keep people happy and balanced.
Lex Fridman (34:09.100)
And you were alluding to some of the psychological
Ariel Ekblaw (34:10.820)
challenges of having humans together on missions
Lex Fridman (34:13.980)
and especially as we try to scale the number of humans
Ariel Ekblaw (34:16.180)
in orbit or in space.
Lex Fridman (34:18.180)
So that's another big challenge is how to keep people happy
Lex Fridman (34:20.520)
and balanced and cooperating.
Lex Fridman (34:24.140)
That's not an issue on Earth at all.
Ariel Ekblaw (34:25.940)
At all.
Lex Fridman (34:27.220)
Okay, so we'll talk about each of those
Ariel Ekblaw (34:29.460)
in a bit more detail,
Lex Fridman (34:31.140)
but let me continue on the chain of dumb questions.
Lex Fridman (34:34.460)
What about food?
Lex Fridman (34:35.700)
What's a good source for food in space?
Lex Fridman (34:38.660)
And what are some sort of standard go to meals, menus?
Lex Fridman (34:42.700)
Right now your go to menu is gonna be mostly freeze dried.
Ariel Ekblaw (34:46.060)
Every so often NASA will arrange for a fun stunt
Lex Fridman (34:50.380)
or fresh food to get up to station.
Lex Fridman (34:51.900)
So they did bake DoubleTree cookies with Hilton
Lex Fridman (34:54.540)
a couple of years ago, as I recall,
Ariel Ekblaw (34:55.800)
I think sometime before the pandemic.
Lex Fridman (34:57.820)
But there's work actually in our lab at MIT,
Ariel Ekblaw (35:00.140)
Maggie Koblans, one of my staff researchers
Lex Fridman (35:02.140)
is looking at the future of fermentation.
Lex Fridman (35:04.580)
Everybody loves beer, right?
Lex Fridman (35:06.120)
Beer and wine and kimchi and miso,
Ariel Ekblaw (35:08.700)
these foods that have just been really important
Lex Fridman (35:11.880)
to human cultures for eons because we love the umami
Lex Fridman (35:15.100)
and the better flavor in them.
Lex Fridman (35:16.540)
But it turns out they also have a good shelf life
Ariel Ekblaw (35:18.420)
if done properly.
Lex Fridman (35:19.740)
And they also have a additional health benefit
Ariel Ekblaw (35:22.460)
for the microbiome, for probiotics and prebiotics.
Lex Fridman (35:25.660)
So we're trying to work with NASA and convince them
Ariel Ekblaw (35:28.180)
to be more open minded to fermented food
Lex Fridman (35:30.980)
for long duration deep space missions.
Ariel Ekblaw (35:33.120)
That we think is one of the future elements
Lex Fridman (35:35.180)
in addition to in situ growing your own food.
Ariel Ekblaw (35:38.580)
Okay, this is essential for the space party
Lex Fridman (35:41.420)
is the space beer.
Ariel Ekblaw (35:43.300)
Yes, it's the fermented product, yes.
Lex Fridman (35:45.780)
Okay, cool.
Lex Fridman (35:46.740)
In terms of water, what's a good source of drinkable water?
Lex Fridman (35:49.700)
Like where do you get water?
Lex Fridman (35:50.660)
Do you have to always bring it on board with you?
Lex Fridman (35:52.900)
And is there a compressed efficient way of storing it?
Lex Fridman (35:56.700)
So to steal a line from Charlie Bolden,
Lex Fridman (35:58.860)
who's the former administrator of NASA,
Ariel Ekblaw (36:01.420)
this morning's fresh water is yesterday's coffee.
Lex Fridman (36:04.640)
So if you think about what that means,
Ariel Ekblaw (36:06.420)
you drank the coffee yesterday.
Lex Fridman (36:08.100)
Right, as it travels, it goes fully through the body.
Ariel Ekblaw (36:10.780)
Fully through the body as the recycling system.
Lex Fridman (36:13.100)
And then you drink what you peed out
Ariel Ekblaw (36:15.420)
as clarified, refined fresh water the next day.
Lex Fridman (36:20.420)
That is one source of water.
Ariel Ekblaw (36:22.340)
Another source of water in the near neighborhood
Lex Fridman (36:24.460)
of our solar system would be on the moon.
Lex Fridman (36:26.180)
So water ice deposits, there's also water on Mars.
Lex Fridman (36:29.100)
This is one of the big things that's bringing people
Ariel Ekblaw (36:31.740)
to want to develop infrastructure on the moon
Lex Fridman (36:34.260)
is once you've gotten out of the gravity well of Earth,
Ariel Ekblaw (36:36.780)
if you can find water on the moon and refine it,
Lex Fridman (36:39.340)
you can either make it into propellant
Ariel Ekblaw (36:40.900)
or drinkable water for humans.
Lex Fridman (36:43.180)
And so that's really valuable as a potential gateway
Ariel Ekblaw (36:46.100)
out into the rest of the solar system
Lex Fridman (36:47.660)
to be able to get propellant
Ariel Ekblaw (36:48.860)
without always having to ship it up from Earth.
Lex Fridman (36:52.300)
So how much water is there on Mars?
Ariel Ekblaw (36:55.220)
That's a great question.
Lex Fridman (36:56.060)
I do not know.
Lex Fridman (36:56.900)
We don't know this yet, right?
Lex Fridman (36:57.740)
I know there's water at the caps.
Ariel Ekblaw (36:58.900)
I suspect NASA from all of the satellite studies
Lex Fridman (37:03.340)
that they've done at Mars have a decent idea
Ariel Ekblaw (37:05.780)
of what the water deposits look like,
Lex Fridman (37:07.620)
but I don't know to what degree
Ariel Ekblaw (37:08.660)
they have characterized those.
Lex Fridman (37:10.540)
I really hope there's life or traces
Ariel Ekblaw (37:13.100)
of previous life on Mars.
Lex Fridman (37:15.780)
This is a special spot in my heart
Ariel Ekblaw (37:17.660)
because I got to work on SHERLOC,
Lex Fridman (37:20.020)
which is the astrobiology experiment
Ariel Ekblaw (37:22.260)
that's on Mars right now,
Lex Fridman (37:23.660)
searching for what they would say
Ariel Ekblaw (37:25.540)
in a very cautious way is signs of past habitability.
Lex Fridman (37:30.060)
They wanna be careful not to get people overly excited
Lex Fridman (37:32.260)
and say we're searching for signs of life.
Lex Fridman (37:34.180)
They're searching to see if there would have been organics
Ariel Ekblaw (37:37.460)
on the surface of Mars or water in certain areas
Lex Fridman (37:39.820)
that would have allowed for life to flourish.
Lex Fridman (37:42.660)
And I really love this prospect.
Lex Fridman (37:44.620)
I do think within our lifetimes
Ariel Ekblaw (37:46.500)
we'll get a better answer about finding life
Lex Fridman (37:49.420)
in our solar system if it's there.
Ariel Ekblaw (37:51.420)
If not on Mars, maybe Europa, one of the icy worlds.
Lex Fridman (37:54.980)
So you like astrobiology.
Ariel Ekblaw (37:58.300)
I do.
Lex Fridman (37:59.140)
This is part of the, it's not just about human biology.
Ariel Ekblaw (38:02.620)
It's also other extraterrestrial alien biology.
Lex Fridman (38:05.740)
Search for life in the universe.
Ariel Ekblaw (38:07.540)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (38:08.380)
Does that scare you or excite you?
Ariel Ekblaw (38:09.580)
It excites me, profoundly excites me.
Lex Fridman (38:11.220)
That there's other alien civilizations
Lex Fridman (38:13.580)
potentially very different than our own?
Lex Fridman (38:16.100)
I think there's gotta be some humility there.
Lex Fridman (38:18.020)
And certainly from science fiction
Lex Fridman (38:19.300)
we have plenty of reasons to fear that outcome as well.
Lex Fridman (38:22.660)
But I do think as a scientist
Lex Fridman (38:24.020)
it would be profoundly exciting if we were to find life
Ariel Ekblaw (38:26.660)
especially in the near neighborhood of our solar system.
Lex Fridman (38:29.540)
Right now we would expect it to be most likely microbial life
Lex Fridman (38:32.580)
but we have a real serious challenge in astrobiology
Lex Fridman (38:34.860)
which is it may not even be carbon based life.
Lex Fridman (38:37.860)
And all of our detectors,
Lex Fridman (38:39.180)
we only know to look for DNA or RNA.
Lex Fridman (38:42.100)
How would you even build a detector
Lex Fridman (38:43.820)
to look for silicon based life
Ariel Ekblaw (38:47.260)
or different molecules than what we know
Lex Fridman (38:49.140)
to be the fundamental molecules for life?
Lex Fridman (38:51.380)
And then you mentioned offline Sarah Walker.
Lex Fridman (38:53.380)
I mean she, her, the question that she's obsessed with
Ariel Ekblaw (38:56.380)
is even just defining life.
Lex Fridman (38:58.300)
What is life?
Ariel Ekblaw (38:59.460)
To look outside the carbon base.
Lex Fridman (39:02.020)
I mean to look outside of basically anything
Ariel Ekblaw (39:04.380)
we can even imagine chemically.
Lex Fridman (39:06.740)
To look outside of any kind of notions
Ariel Ekblaw (39:08.300)
that we think of as biology.
Lex Fridman (39:10.260)
Yeah, it's really weird.
Lex Fridman (39:11.740)
So you now get into this land of like complexity
Lex Fridman (39:14.420)
of a measuring of like how many assembly steps
Ariel Ekblaw (39:20.540)
it takes to build that thing.
Lex Fridman (39:22.580)
Right.
Lex Fridman (39:23.420)
And maybe dynamic movement or some maintenance
Lex Fridman (39:27.660)
of some kind of membrane structures.
Ariel Ekblaw (39:29.700)
We don't even know like which properties life should have.
Lex Fridman (39:33.500)
Right.
Ariel Ekblaw (39:34.340)
Whether it should be able to reproduce
Lex Fridman (39:36.220)
and all those kinds of things or pass information,
Ariel Ekblaw (39:39.180)
genetic type of information.
Lex Fridman (39:41.180)
We don't know.
Lex Fridman (39:42.420)
And it's like, it's so humbling.
Lex Fridman (39:45.140)
I mean I tend to believe that there could be
Ariel Ekblaw (39:48.540)
something like alien life here on Earth
Lex Fridman (39:51.060)
and we're just too human, biology obsessed
Ariel Ekblaw (39:54.620)
to even recognize it.
Lex Fridman (39:55.980)
The shadow biosphere, I remember you and Sarah
Ariel Ekblaw (39:57.940)
were talking about.
Lex Fridman (39:58.940)
I mean that's like, speaking of beer,
Ariel Ekblaw (40:02.220)
I mean that's something I wanted to make sure
Lex Fridman (40:04.380)
in all of science to shake ourselves out of like,
Ariel Ekblaw (40:07.240)
remind ourselves constantly how little we know.
Lex Fridman (40:10.140)
Because it might be right in front of our nose.
Ariel Ekblaw (40:13.100)
Like I wouldn't be surprised if like trees
Lex Fridman (40:15.900)
are like orders of magnitude more intelligent than humans.
Ariel Ekblaw (40:18.860)
They're just operating at a much slower scale
Lex Fridman (40:21.300)
and they're like talking shit about us the whole time.
Ariel Ekblaw (40:23.820)
Like about silly humans that take everything seriously
Lex Fridman (40:26.580)
and we start all kinds of nuclear wars
Lex Fridman (40:28.640)
and we quarrel and we tweet about it and then,
Lex Fridman (40:31.900)
but the trees are always there just watching us silly humans.
Ariel Ekblaw (40:35.180)
Like the Ents in Lord of the Rings.
Lex Fridman (40:37.020)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (40:37.860)
So I mean, I don't know, I mean, obviously I'm joking
Lex Fridman (40:40.940)
on that one, but there could be stuff like that.
Ariel Ekblaw (40:44.140)
Well, let me ask you the Drake equation,
Lex Fridman (40:46.700)
the big question, how many, like obviously nobody knows,
Lex Fridman (40:51.060)
but what's your gut, what's your hope as a scientist,
Lex Fridman (40:54.180)
as a human, how many alien civilizations are out there?
Ariel Ekblaw (40:58.540)
As a ex physicist, I'm now much more
Lex Fridman (41:01.260)
on the aerospace engineering side for space architecture,
Lex Fridman (41:03.500)
but as an ex physicist, I hope it is prolific.
Lex Fridman (41:08.660)
I think the challenge is if it's as prolific
Ariel Ekblaw (41:10.660)
as we would hope, if there are many, many, many
Lex Fridman (41:12.900)
civilizations, then the question is, where are they?
Lex Fridman (41:16.940)
Why haven't we heard from them?
Lex Fridman (41:18.740)
And the Fermi paradox, is there some great filter
Ariel Ekblaw (41:21.820)
that life only gets to some level of sophistication
Lex Fridman (41:25.540)
and then kills itself off through war or through famine
Ariel Ekblaw (41:29.220)
or through different challenges that filter
Lex Fridman (41:30.860)
that society out of existence?
Lex Fridman (41:33.820)
And it would be an interesting question to try
Lex Fridman (41:35.140)
to understand if the universe was teeming with life,
Lex Fridman (41:38.100)
why haven't we found it or heard from it yet,
Lex Fridman (41:41.080)
to our knowledge?
Ariel Ekblaw (41:41.920)
Yeah, I personally believe that it's teeming with life,
Lex Fridman (41:44.900)
and you're right, I think that's a really useful,
Ariel Ekblaw (41:46.920)
productive engineering scientific question
Lex Fridman (41:49.460)
of what kind of great filter can just be destroying
Ariel Ekblaw (41:53.540)
all of that life or preventing it from just constantly
Lex Fridman (41:57.380)
talking to us, silly descendants of apes.
Ariel Ekblaw (42:01.540)
That's a really nice question, like what are the ways
Lex Fridman (42:05.380)
civilizations can destroy themselves?
Ariel Ekblaw (42:09.020)
There's too many, sadly.
Lex Fridman (42:10.660)
Well, I don't think we've come up with most of them yet.
Ariel Ekblaw (42:13.620)
That's also probably true.
Lex Fridman (42:15.580)
That's the thing, it's, I mean, and if you look
Ariel Ekblaw (42:18.920)
at nuclear war, some of it is physics,
Lex Fridman (42:21.860)
but some of it is game theory, it's human nature,
Ariel Ekblaw (42:26.180)
it's how societies built themselves, how they interact,
Lex Fridman (42:29.260)
how we create and resolve conflict,
Lex Fridman (42:32.540)
and it gets back to the human question
Lex Fridman (42:34.640)
on when you're doing long term space travel,
Lex Fridman (42:37.120)
how do you maintain this dynamical system
Lex Fridman (42:40.320)
of flawed, irrational humans such that it persists
Ariel Ekblaw (42:46.580)
throughout time, and not just maintain the biological body,
Lex Fridman (42:50.140)
but get people from not murdering each other,
Ariel Ekblaw (42:52.660)
like like each other sufficiently to where you kinda
Lex Fridman (42:56.700)
fit well, but I think if songs or poetry or books
Ariel Ekblaw (43:01.900)
taught me anything, if you like each other a little too much,
Lex Fridman (43:05.800)
I mean, the problems arise, because then there's always
Ariel Ekblaw (43:07.860)
a third person who also likes, and then there's the drama,
Lex Fridman (43:10.180)
it's like, I can't believe you did that last night,
Ariel Ekblaw (43:12.820)
whatever, so, and then there's beer.
Lex Fridman (43:14.780)
Gets complicated quickly. Gets complicated quickly.
Ariel Ekblaw (43:17.180)
Okay, anyway, back to the dumb questions,
Lex Fridman (43:20.220)
because you answered this, there's an interview
Ariel Ekblaw (43:22.900)
where you answer a bunch of cool little questions
Lex Fridman (43:24.500)
from young students and so on, about like space.
Ariel Ekblaw (43:29.540)
One of them was playing music in space.
Lex Fridman (43:32.340)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (43:33.220)
And you mentioned something about what kind of instruments
Lex Fridman (43:37.060)
you could use to play music in space.
Ariel Ekblaw (43:39.460)
Could you mention about like the Spotify work in space,
Lex Fridman (43:43.120)
and if I wanted to do a live performance,
Lex Fridman (43:45.060)
what kind of instruments would I need?
Lex Fridman (43:47.780)
Yeah, I mean, you referenced culture before,
Lex Fridman (43:50.300)
and I think this is one of the most exciting things
Lex Fridman (43:51.960)
that we have at our fingertips, which is to define
Ariel Ekblaw (43:55.380)
a new culture for space exploration.
Lex Fridman (43:57.780)
We don't just have to import cultural artifacts from Earth
Ariel Ekblaw (44:01.620)
to make life worth living in space,
Lex Fridman (44:03.460)
and this musical instrument that you referenced
Ariel Ekblaw (44:05.140)
was a design of an object that could only be performed
Lex Fridman (44:08.180)
in microgravity.
Ariel Ekblaw (44:09.460)
Oh, cool.
Lex Fridman (44:10.300)
So it doesn't sound the same way when it's,
Ariel Ekblaw (44:13.140)
it's a percussive instrument when it's rattled
Lex Fridman (44:15.140)
or moved in a gravity environment, it is unique.
Lex Fridman (44:17.500)
Can we look it up?
Lex Fridman (44:18.340)
It's called the Telematron.
Ariel Ekblaw (44:19.500)
Yeah, it's created by.
Lex Fridman (44:20.340)
Of course it's called the Telematron.
Ariel Ekblaw (44:21.900)
Telematron.
Lex Fridman (44:22.720)
That is so awesome.
Ariel Ekblaw (44:23.560)
Created by Sands Fish and Nicole Boulier,
Lex Fridman (44:25.780)
two amazing graduate students and staff researchers
Ariel Ekblaw (44:28.540)
on my team.
Lex Fridman (44:29.460)
What does it look like?
Ariel Ekblaw (44:30.300)
It looks steampunk, actually.
Lex Fridman (44:33.300)
That's awesome.
Ariel Ekblaw (44:34.140)
Yeah, it's a pretty cool design.
Lex Fridman (44:35.100)
It looks like it's a geometric solid
Ariel Ekblaw (44:37.300)
that has these interesting artifacts on the inside,
Lex Fridman (44:39.860)
and it has a lot of sensors, actually,
Ariel Ekblaw (44:41.260)
additionally on the inside,
Lex Fridman (44:42.220)
like IMU's inertial measurement sensors
Ariel Ekblaw (44:44.980)
that allow it to detect when it's floating
Lex Fridman (44:47.780)
and when it's not floating,
Lex Fridman (44:49.140)
and provides this really kind of ethereal,
Lex Fridman (44:52.500)
they later sonify it.
Lex Fridman (44:53.580)
So they use electronic music to turn it into a symphony
Lex Fridman (44:56.220)
or turn it into a piece.
Lex Fridman (44:57.620)
And yeah, this is the object, the Telematron.
Lex Fridman (44:59.580)
How does the human interact with it?
Ariel Ekblaw (45:01.380)
By tossing it.
Lex Fridman (45:02.220)
So it's an interactive musical instrument.
Ariel Ekblaw (45:04.020)
It actually requires another partner.
Lex Fridman (45:06.420)
So the idea was that it's something like a dance
Ariel Ekblaw (45:09.420)
or just like something like a choreography in space.
Lex Fridman (45:12.020)
Got it.
Ariel Ekblaw (45:12.860)
Speaking of which, you also talked about sports,
Lex Fridman (45:15.820)
and like ball sports, like playing soccer.
Lex Fridman (45:18.340)
So you mentioned that,
Lex Fridman (45:20.220)
so your muscles can move at full speed,
Lex Fridman (45:23.780)
and then if you push off the wall lightly,
Lex Fridman (45:26.460)
you fly across, zoom across.
Lex Fridman (45:28.660)
So how does the physics of that work?
Lex Fridman (45:31.340)
Can you still play soccer, for example, in space?
Ariel Ekblaw (45:34.420)
You can, but one of the most intuitive things
Lex Fridman (45:37.220)
that we all learn as babies, right,
Ariel Ekblaw (45:39.140)
is whenever you throw something,
Lex Fridman (45:40.620)
if I was gonna toss something to you,
Ariel Ekblaw (45:41.940)
I'd toss it up,
Lex Fridman (45:42.980)
because I know that it has to compensate
Ariel Ekblaw (45:44.660)
for the fact that that Keplerian arc is gonna draw it down,
Lex Fridman (45:47.620)
the equations of motion are gonna draw it down.
Ariel Ekblaw (45:50.860)
I would, in space,
Lex Fridman (45:51.900)
I would just shoot something directly towards you,
Lex Fridman (45:54.420)
so like straight in line of sight.
Lex Fridman (45:56.260)
And so that would be very different
Ariel Ekblaw (45:57.380)
for any type of ball sport,
Lex Fridman (45:58.580)
is to retrain your human mind
Ariel Ekblaw (46:00.420)
to have that as your intuitive arc of motion
Lex Fridman (46:03.380)
or lack of arc.
Ariel Ekblaw (46:04.300)
From your experience,
Lex Fridman (46:05.460)
from understanding how astronauts
Ariel Ekblaw (46:07.180)
get adjusted to this stuff,
Lex Fridman (46:08.460)
how long does it take to adjust to the physics
Lex Fridman (46:10.340)
of this world, this other world?
Lex Fridman (46:12.980)
So even after one or two parabolic flights,
Ariel Ekblaw (46:15.420)
you can gain a certain facility
Lex Fridman (46:18.620)
with moving in that environment.
Ariel Ekblaw (46:20.660)
I think most astronauts would say
Lex Fridman (46:22.180)
maybe several days on station
Ariel Ekblaw (46:23.820)
or a week on station,
Lex Fridman (46:25.020)
and their brain flips.
Ariel Ekblaw (46:26.740)
It's amazing the plasticity of the human brain
Lex Fridman (46:28.940)
and how quickly they are able to adapt.
Lex Fridman (46:31.140)
And so pretty quickly,
Lex Fridman (46:32.060)
they become creatures of this new environment.
Ariel Ekblaw (46:36.100)
Okay, so that's cool.
Lex Fridman (46:36.940)
It's creating a little bit of an experience.
Lex Fridman (46:38.980)
What about if you go for more than 100 days
Lex Fridman (46:42.420)
for one year, for two years, for three years?
Lex Fridman (46:46.100)
What challenges start to emerge in that case?
Lex Fridman (46:49.100)
So Scott Kelly wrote this amazing book
Ariel Ekblaw (46:50.940)
after he spent a year in space,
Lex Fridman (46:52.580)
and he's a twin.
Ariel Ekblaw (46:53.460)
It's absolutely fantastic
Lex Fridman (46:54.780)
that NASA got to do a twin study.
Ariel Ekblaw (46:57.140)
It's perfect.
Lex Fridman (46:58.540)
So he wrote a lot about his experience
Ariel Ekblaw (47:00.740)
on the health side of what changed,
Lex Fridman (47:02.980)
things like bone density, muscle atrophy,
Ariel Ekblaw (47:06.900)
eyesight changing
Lex Fridman (47:08.140)
because the shape of your eyeball changes,
Ariel Ekblaw (47:10.060)
which changes your lens,
Lex Fridman (47:11.180)
which changes how you see.
Ariel Ekblaw (47:12.900)
If we're then thinking about the challenges
Lex Fridman (47:14.620)
between a year and three years,
Ariel Ekblaw (47:16.500)
especially if we're doing that three year trip to Mars
Lex Fridman (47:18.500)
for your friend who asked earlier,
Ariel Ekblaw (47:20.340)
then you have to think about nutrition.
Lex Fridman (47:23.940)
And so how are you keeping
Lex Fridman (47:25.620)
all of these different needs for your body alive?
Lex Fridman (47:28.060)
How are you protecting astronauts against radiation?
Ariel Ekblaw (47:30.620)
Either having some type of a shell on the spacecraft,
Lex Fridman (47:33.100)
which is expensive because it's heavy.
Ariel Ekblaw (47:35.540)
If it's something like lead,
Lex Fridman (47:36.420)
a really effective radiation shell,
Ariel Ekblaw (47:37.980)
it's gonna be a lot of mass.
Lex Fridman (47:39.660)
Or is there a pill that could be taken
Ariel Ekblaw (47:42.060)
to try to make you less in danger
Lex Fridman (47:46.500)
of some of the radiation effects?
Ariel Ekblaw (47:49.300)
A lot of this has not yet been answered,
Lex Fridman (47:51.060)
but radiation is a really significant challenge
Ariel Ekblaw (47:53.420)
for that three year journey.
Lex Fridman (47:55.540)
And what are the negative effects of radiation
Lex Fridman (47:57.460)
on the human body out in space?
Lex Fridman (47:59.140)
A higher likelihood to develop cancer at a younger age.
Lex Fridman (48:03.300)
So you'd probably be able to get there and get back,
Lex Fridman (48:05.260)
but you'd find yourself in the same way
Ariel Ekblaw (48:08.100)
of if you were exposed to significant radiation on Earth,
Lex Fridman (48:10.740)
you'd find significant bad health effects as you age.
Lex Fridman (48:14.380)
What do you think about like decades?
Lex Fridman (48:16.980)
Do you think about decades?
Lex Fridman (48:19.100)
Or is this like an entire?
Lex Fridman (48:21.220)
I think about centuries for MySpace.
Lex Fridman (48:23.980)
But yeah, for decades,
Lex Fridman (48:25.820)
I think as soon as we get past the three year mark,
Ariel Ekblaw (48:28.340)
we'll absolutely want,
Lex Fridman (48:29.580)
somewhere between three years and a decade,
Ariel Ekblaw (48:31.100)
we'll want artificial gravity.
Lex Fridman (48:33.620)
And we know how to do that, actually.
Ariel Ekblaw (48:35.300)
The engineering questions still need to be tweaked
Lex Fridman (48:37.380)
for how we'd really implement it,
Lex Fridman (48:38.460)
but the science is there to know
Lex Fridman (48:39.700)
how we would spin habitats in orbit and generate that force.
Lex Fridman (48:44.100)
So even if the entire habitat's not spinning,
Lex Fridman (48:46.380)
you at least have a treadmill part of the space station
Ariel Ekblaw (48:49.060)
that is spinning,
Lex Fridman (48:50.180)
and you can spend some fraction of your day
Ariel Ekblaw (48:52.340)
in a near to 1G environment and keep your body healthy.
Lex Fridman (48:56.780)
Wait, literally from just spinning?
Ariel Ekblaw (48:58.420)
From spinning, yes, centripetal force.
Lex Fridman (49:00.140)
That's fascinating. So you generate this force.
Ariel Ekblaw (49:01.500)
If you've ever been in those carnival rides,
Lex Fridman (49:03.500)
the gravitrons that spin you up around the side,
Ariel Ekblaw (49:06.060)
that's the concept.
Lex Fridman (49:07.300)
And this is actually one of the reasons
Lex Fridman (49:08.900)
why we are spinning out a new company
Lex Fridman (49:12.140)
from my MIT lab. Spinning out, ha.
Ariel Ekblaw (49:13.860)
Spinning out, ha.
Lex Fridman (49:14.700)
That was accidental, but well noted space pun.
Ariel Ekblaw (49:18.020)
It's like impossible to avoid. Dad jokes, all right.
Lex Fridman (49:20.660)
But yeah, we're spinning out a new company
Ariel Ekblaw (49:23.820)
to look at next generation space architecture,
Lex Fridman (49:27.820)
and how do we actually scale humanity's access to space?
Lex Fridman (49:30.540)
And one of the areas that we wanna look at
Lex Fridman (49:32.540)
is artificial gravity.
Lex Fridman (49:34.060)
Is there a name yet?
Lex Fridman (49:34.940)
Yep, there's a name. We are brand new.
Ariel Ekblaw (49:36.540)
We are just exiting stealth mode.
Lex Fridman (49:38.780)
So your podcast listeners will literally be among
Ariel Ekblaw (49:40.940)
some of the first to hear about it.
Lex Fridman (49:42.540)
It's called Aurelia Institute.
Ariel Ekblaw (49:45.220)
Aurelia is an old English word for chrysalis.
Lex Fridman (49:48.260)
And the idea with this is that we, humanity collectively,
Ariel Ekblaw (49:51.940)
are at this next stage of our metamorphosis,
Lex Fridman (49:55.620)
like a chrysalis, into a spacefaring species.
Lex Fridman (49:58.660)
And so we felt that this was a good time,
Lex Fridman (50:00.860)
a necessary time, to think about
Ariel Ekblaw (50:04.340)
next generation space architecture,
Lex Fridman (50:06.100)
but also Starfleet Academy,
Ariel Ekblaw (50:08.100)
if you know that reference from Star Trek.
Lex Fridman (50:12.300)
Yes, so let me ask a silly sounding, ridiculous sounding,
Lex Fridman (50:17.220)
but probably extremely important question.
Lex Fridman (50:19.900)
Sex and space, including intercourse, conception,
Ariel Ekblaw (50:23.220)
procreation, birth, like being a parent,
Lex Fridman (50:27.820)
like raising the baby.
Lex Fridman (50:29.180)
So basically from birth, well, from the before birth part,
Lex Fridman (50:33.420)
like the birds and the bees and stuff,
Lex Fridman (50:34.780)
and then the whole thing.
Lex Fridman (50:37.020)
How complicated is that?
Ariel Ekblaw (50:38.500)
I remember looking at the, thank you.
Lex Fridman (50:43.300)
I remember looking at this exact Wikipedia page actually,
Lex Fridman (50:46.020)
and I remember being, the Wikipedia page is sex and space,
Lex Fridman (50:50.180)
and fascinating how difficult of an engineering problem
Ariel Ekblaw (50:52.660)
the whole thing is.
Lex Fridman (50:53.740)
Is that something you think about too,
Lex Fridman (50:55.340)
how to have generations of humans?
Lex Fridman (50:58.900)
Self, self replicating organizations.
Ariel Ekblaw (51:03.100)
Yeah, societies essentially.
Lex Fridman (51:04.740)
I mean, I guess with micro,
Ariel Ekblaw (51:05.820)
like if you solve the gravity problem,
Lex Fridman (51:07.500)
you solve a lot of these problems.
Ariel Ekblaw (51:09.020)
That's the hope, yeah.
Lex Fridman (51:09.980)
It's like the central challenge of microgravity
Ariel Ekblaw (51:12.140)
to human reproduction.
Lex Fridman (51:13.660)
But we do host a workshop every year at Beyond the Cradle,
Ariel Ekblaw (51:16.660)
which is the space event that we run at MIT.
Lex Fridman (51:18.820)
And we always do one on pregnancy in space,
Ariel Ekblaw (51:21.580)
or motherhood, or raising children in space,
Lex Fridman (51:24.420)
because there are huge questions.
Ariel Ekblaw (51:26.740)
There've been a few mammal studies
Lex Fridman (51:29.060)
that have looked at reproduction in space,
Lex Fridman (51:31.060)
but there are still really major questions
Lex Fridman (51:32.500)
about how does it work?
Lex Fridman (51:33.820)
How does the fetus evolve in microgravity
Lex Fridman (51:36.100)
if you were pregnant in space?
Lex Fridman (51:37.460)
And I think the near term answer is just gonna be,
Lex Fridman (51:39.540)
we need to be able to give humans a 1G environment
Ariel Ekblaw (51:43.940)
for that phase of our development.
Lex Fridman (51:45.220)
Yeah, so there's some studies on mice in microgravity.
Lex Fridman (51:49.220)
And it's interesting, I think the mice,
Lex Fridman (51:51.180)
like one of them, the mice weren't able to walk,
Ariel Ekblaw (51:53.180)
or their understanding of physics, I guess,
Lex Fridman (51:55.380)
is off or something like that.
Ariel Ekblaw (51:56.580)
Yeah, the mental model when you're really young
Lex Fridman (51:59.940)
and you're kind of getting your mental model of physics,
Ariel Ekblaw (52:03.460)
we do think that that would change kids abilities
Lex Fridman (52:07.020)
to if they were born in microgravity,
Ariel Ekblaw (52:09.020)
their ability to have that intuition
Lex Fridman (52:11.100)
around an Earth based 1G environment might be missing,
Ariel Ekblaw (52:13.860)
because a lot of that is really crystallized
Lex Fridman (52:15.340)
in early development, early childhood development.
Lex Fridman (52:17.820)
So that makes sense that they would see that in mice, yeah.
Lex Fridman (52:20.060)
So what about life when we choose to park our vehicles
Lex Fridman (52:27.180)
on another planet, on the moon, but let's go to Mars?
Lex Fridman (52:30.500)
First of all, is that excite you, humans going to Mars,
Lex Fridman (52:35.660)
like stepping foot on Mars?
Lex Fridman (52:37.460)
And when do you think it'll happen?
Ariel Ekblaw (52:38.820)
It does excite me.
Lex Fridman (52:39.860)
I think visionaries like Elon are working
Ariel Ekblaw (52:42.420)
to make that happen in terms of building the road to space.
Lex Fridman (52:45.860)
We are really excited about building out
Ariel Ekblaw (52:48.460)
the human lived experience of space once you get there.
Lex Fridman (52:51.420)
So how are you going to grow your food?
Lex Fridman (52:53.180)
What is your habitat going to look like?
Lex Fridman (52:55.220)
I think it's profoundly exciting,
Lex Fridman (52:56.620)
but I do think that there's a little bit
Lex Fridman (52:57.980)
of a misunderstanding of Mars anywhere in the near future
Ariel Ekblaw (53:02.420)
being anything like a replacement for Earth.
Lex Fridman (53:04.980)
So it is good for humanity to have these other pockets
Ariel Ekblaw (53:07.300)
of our civilization that can expand out beyond Earth,
Lex Fridman (53:10.020)
but Mars is not in its current state,
Ariel Ekblaw (53:13.620)
a good home for humanity.
Lex Fridman (53:15.780)
Too many perchlorates in the soil,
Ariel Ekblaw (53:17.420)
you can't use that soil to grow crops.
Lex Fridman (53:19.580)
Atmosphere is too thin, certainly can't breathe it,
Lex Fridman (53:21.820)
but it's also just really thin compared to our atmosphere.
Lex Fridman (53:25.420)
A lot of different challenges that would have
Ariel Ekblaw (53:26.780)
to be fundamentally changed on that planet
Lex Fridman (53:29.700)
to make it a good home for a large human civilization.
Lex Fridman (53:33.380)
How does a large civilization of humans get built on Mars?
Lex Fridman (53:37.940)
And where do you think it starts being difficult?
Lex Fridman (53:42.540)
So can you have a small base of like 10 people,
Lex Fridman (53:44.980)
essentially, kind of like the International Space Station
Ariel Ekblaw (53:47.820)
kind of situation, and then can you get it to 100,
Lex Fridman (53:51.380)
to 1,000, to a million?
Ariel Ekblaw (53:53.220)
Are there some interesting challenges there
Lex Fridman (53:55.620)
that worry you, saying that Mars is just not a good backup
Lex Fridman (53:58.900)
at this time for Earth?
Lex Fridman (54:00.980)
I think small outposts, absolutely, like McMurdo, right?
Lex Fridman (54:04.060)
So we have these models of really extreme environments
Lex Fridman (54:06.540)
on Earth in Antarctica, for example,
Ariel Ekblaw (54:08.740)
where humans have been able to go
Lex Fridman (54:10.360)
and make a sustainable settlement.
Ariel Ekblaw (54:13.460)
McMurdo style life on Mars, probably feasible in the 2030s.
Lex Fridman (54:18.760)
So we want to send the first human missions to Mars
Lex Fridman (54:21.100)
and maybe as early as the end of this decade,
Lex Fridman (54:22.660)
more likely early 2030s.
Ariel Ekblaw (54:24.780)
Moving anywhere beyond that in terms of a place
Lex Fridman (54:28.060)
where like an entire human life would be lived,
Ariel Ekblaw (54:31.060)
where it's not just you go for a three month deployment
Lex Fridman (54:33.460)
and you come back, that is actually the big challenge line,
Ariel Ekblaw (54:36.820)
is just saying, is there enough technological sophistication
Lex Fridman (54:41.420)
that can be brought that far out into space?
Ariel Ekblaw (54:44.540)
If you imagine your electronics break,
Lex Fridman (54:46.540)
there's no RadioShack, this dates me a little bit
Ariel Ekblaw (54:48.860)
that my mind jumps to RadioShack,
Lex Fridman (54:50.340)
but there's no supply chains on Mars
Ariel Ekblaw (54:54.140)
that can supply the level of technological sophistication
Lex Fridman (54:58.100)
for all the products that we rely on, on day to day life.
Lex Fridman (55:01.100)
So you'd be going back to actually a very simple existence,
Lex Fridman (55:03.940)
more like pioneer life out West,
Ariel Ekblaw (55:06.000)
in the story of the US, for example.
Lex Fridman (55:08.700)
And I think that the future of larger scale gatherings
Ariel Ekblaw (55:13.140)
of humans in orbit, or sorry, in space,
Lex Fridman (55:15.180)
is actually gonna be in microgravity,
Ariel Ekblaw (55:17.660)
floating space cities, not so much trying
Lex Fridman (55:21.260)
to establish settlements on the surface.
Lex Fridman (55:25.600)
So you think sort of a significant engineering investment
Lex Fridman (55:29.500)
in terms of our efforts and money
Ariel Ekblaw (55:31.420)
should be on large spaceships,
Lex Fridman (55:34.420)
that perhaps are doing this kind of self assembly,
Ariel Ekblaw (55:40.040)
all these kinds of things, and doing it in orbit,
Lex Fridman (55:41.960)
maybe building a giant donut around the planet over time.
Ariel Ekblaw (55:45.480)
Yeah, that is the goal.
Lex Fridman (55:46.320)
And I think the current political climate
Ariel Ekblaw (55:48.240)
is such that you can't get the trillion dollar investment
Lex Fridman (55:52.340)
to start from scratch and build the sci fi megastructure.
Lex Fridman (55:56.760)
But if you can build it in fits and starts,
Lex Fridman (55:58.960)
in little different pieces,
Ariel Ekblaw (56:00.000)
which is another advantage of self assembly,
Lex Fridman (56:02.000)
it's much more like how nature works.
Lex Fridman (56:04.160)
So it's biomimicry inspired way for humanity
Lex Fridman (56:07.600)
to scale out in space.
Lex Fridman (56:09.760)
And whether it's out in space or on Mars,
Lex Fridman (56:12.720)
the idea that sort of two people fall in love,
Ariel Ekblaw (56:16.240)
they have sex, a child is born,
Lex Fridman (56:21.560)
and then that couple has to teach that child
Ariel Ekblaw (56:25.000)
that they came from Earth.
Lex Fridman (56:27.600)
I just love the idea that somebody is born on Mars
Ariel Ekblaw (56:30.560)
or out in space, and you have to be like,
Lex Fridman (56:33.400)
this is not actually like the original home.
Ariel Ekblaw (56:36.400)
Just them looking at Earth and being like,
Lex Fridman (56:38.940)
this is where we came from.
Ariel Ekblaw (56:40.240)
I don't know, that's really inspiring to me.
Lex Fridman (56:42.040)
And the child being really confused
Lex Fridman (56:43.640)
and then wanting to go back to TikTok,
Lex Fridman (56:45.800)
or whatever they do.
Ariel Ekblaw (56:47.520)
Whatever they do in that area.
Lex Fridman (56:49.120)
I mean, there's great sci fi, right,
Ariel Ekblaw (56:50.520)
about people being born on Mars.
Lex Fridman (56:52.960)
And because it's a lower gravity environment,
Ariel Ekblaw (56:55.000)
they're taller, they're more gangly,
Lex Fridman (56:56.800)
if they were actually able to develop there.
Lex Fridman (56:58.240)
And then they come back to Earth
Lex Fridman (56:59.360)
and they're like second class citizens
Ariel Ekblaw (57:01.400)
because they can't function here in the same way
Lex Fridman (57:04.080)
because the gravity's too strong for them.
Ariel Ekblaw (57:06.080)
You see this in series like The Expanse
Lex Fridman (57:07.800)
with the Belters and these different societies
Ariel Ekblaw (57:10.120)
that if we were to succeed in having human societies
Lex Fridman (57:13.840)
grow up in different pockets,
Ariel Ekblaw (57:14.960)
it's not necessarily going to be easy for them
Lex Fridman (57:17.880)
to always come back to Earth as their home.
Ariel Ekblaw (57:20.360)
Yeah, different cultures form,
Lex Fridman (57:21.800)
which is the positive way of phrasing it.
Lex Fridman (57:23.440)
But it's also, this human history teaches us
Lex Fridman (57:26.700)
that we like to form the other.
Lex Fridman (57:29.360)
So there's this kind of conflict
Lex Fridman (57:30.760)
that naturally emerges.
Ariel Ekblaw (57:33.080)
Let me ask another sort of dark question.
Lex Fridman (57:35.280)
What do you think about coming from a military family?
Ariel Ekblaw (57:38.880)
There's still sadly wars in the world.
Lex Fridman (57:43.360)
Do you think wars, military conflicts
Lex Fridman (57:46.440)
will follow us into space, wars between nations?
Lex Fridman (57:51.340)
Like from my perspective currently,
Ariel Ekblaw (57:54.040)
it just seems like space is a place
Lex Fridman (57:56.280)
for scientists and engineers to explore ideas.
Lex Fridman (58:00.120)
But the more and more progress you make,
Lex Fridman (58:02.720)
does it worry you that nations start to step in
Lex Fridman (58:05.960)
and form, that go out and fall out military conflict,
Lex Fridman (58:11.640)
whether it's in cyberspace, in space,
Lex Fridman (58:15.620)
or actual hot war?
Lex Fridman (58:18.400)
I am really concerned about that.
Lex Fridman (58:19.920)
And I do think for decades,
Lex Fridman (58:22.040)
the scientific community in space
Ariel Ekblaw (58:23.600)
has hung on to this notion
Lex Fridman (58:24.920)
from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty,
Ariel Ekblaw (58:28.000)
which is space is the province of all humankind,
Lex Fridman (58:30.400)
peaceful uses of outer space only.
Lex Fridman (58:32.800)
But I do think the rise in tensions
Lex Fridman (58:35.000)
and the geopolitical scene that we're seeing,
Ariel Ekblaw (58:38.400)
I do harbor a lot of concern about hot wars
Lex Fridman (58:42.080)
following humanity out into space.
Lex Fridman (58:44.880)
And it's worth trying to tie nations together
Lex Fridman (58:49.340)
with more collaboration to avoid that happening.
Ariel Ekblaw (58:51.960)
The International Space Station is a great example.
Lex Fridman (58:53.760)
I think it's something like 18 countries
Ariel Ekblaw (58:55.500)
are party to this treaty.
Lex Fridman (58:57.040)
It might be less, it might be more.
Lex Fridman (58:59.360)
And then of course, there's a smaller number of countries
Lex Fridman (59:01.120)
that actually send astronauts.
Lex Fridman (59:02.640)
But even at the fall of the Soviet Union
Lex Fridman (59:05.640)
and through some tense times with Russia,
Ariel Ekblaw (59:07.920)
the ISS had been a place where the US and Russia
Lex Fridman (59:10.720)
were actually able to collaborate between Mir and ISS.
Ariel Ekblaw (59:13.960)
I think it'd be really important right now in particular
Lex Fridman (59:17.080)
to find other platforms where these hegemonic powers
Ariel Ekblaw (59:20.600)
in the world and developing world nations
Lex Fridman (59:23.480)
can come and collaborate on the future of space
Lex Fridman (59:26.560)
and purposefully intertwine our success
Lex Fridman (59:29.520)
so that there's a danger to multiple parties
Ariel Ekblaw (59:31.280)
if somebody is a bad actor.
Lex Fridman (59:32.880)
So we're now talking as there's a war in Ukraine
Lex Fridman (59:36.480)
and I haven't been sleeping much.
Lex Fridman (59:37.840)
I have family, friends, colleagues in both countries.
Lex Fridman (59:43.120)
And I'm just talking to a lot of people,
Lex Fridman (59:45.480)
many of whom are crying, refugees.
Lex Fridman (59:48.720)
And there's a basic human compassion
Lex Fridman (59:52.640)
and love for each other that I believe technology
Ariel Ekblaw (59:55.760)
can help catalyze and accelerate.
Lex Fridman (59:59.120)
But there's also science.
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