a familiar looking landscape rich with
resources some believe Mars is the next
home for Humanity a frontier of freedom
and prosperity
and a backup copy of civilization in
case of disaster here on earth
but the real Red Planet is a trickster
with a long history of fooling us once
thought a mythic place of exotic
intelligent creatures the true Mars is a
failing world much colder than
Antarctica bone-dry with a harsh toxic
landscape we may soon have the means to
get there
but will we live there
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for thousands of years Mars has been
trying to tell us something
Earth and Mars come closest together
every 780 days or so called a planetary
opposition it's the best time to observe
the Red Planet
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which appears to slow down backtrack
then speed forward again puzzled by this
capricious motion Egyptians skywatchers
personified members as a hawk headed
human rated deity flying back and forth
between the realms of the living and the
dead
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Babylonian astrologers believe Mars to
be a quick impulsive volatile God
observing the moon pass in front of the
Red Planet
Aristotle deduces that Mars must be
higher up and farther away than the moon
but he would have been surprised by how
much Mars is about two hundred times
more distant
chemical rockets that take around three
days to get to the moon
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would take nearly seven months to reach
Mars
future nuclear thermal rockets could cut
that to less than three months
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but even that is a very long time to
spend confined in a spacecraft far from
Earth even with comfort foods along
and you can't just return home in a few
hours if there's a problem
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astronauts in microgravity must exercise
often bones become brittle heart muscle
gets lazy
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how will Mars 1/3 gravity affect human
health over the long term Greek
mathematician and astrologer Claudius
Ptolemy proposes that martyrs and the
other four wandering stars must circle
earth on a set of spheres around 850 ad
Islamic astronomers begin to find
problems with Ptolemies epicycles but it
will take another seven centuries for
the truth to surface in Europe in 1543
Copernicus of Poland finally puts the
Sun at the centre of motion
now Mars looping behavior makes sense
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wealthy obsessive Danish astronomer
Tycho Brahe he likes Copernicus geometry
but can't quite let go of tunnel Tycho
insists the mass of Earth is too lazy to
orbit
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but massive world's do move in the early
solar system Jupiter may have moved
toward the Sun as far as Mars
present-day orbit gobbling much of the
inner solar nebulas dust and gas
robbing Mars of its potential the
stunted planet could grow to only about
half Earth's diameter and barely 11% its
mess Tycho is a compulsive data taker
but it will fall to his research
assistant Johannes Kepler to make sense
of Tycho's numbers Kepler bets a friend
he can plot Mars orbit in one week after
five years and forty attempts he finds
that all planetary orbits are elliptical
putting the last nail in the coffin of
Ptolemies crystal spheres within spheres
as the early solar system evolves
Jupiter and Saturn displaced billions of
tons of icy rocks flinging them inward a
deluge of debris lasting three million
years the late heavy bombardment
today the high country of Mars southern
hemisphere has one very large hole
punched in it the helis basin the third
largest impact crater in the solar
system its floor lies ten kilometers
below the heights of a nearby south
polar cap but Mars may have been hit by
something even bigger near its opposite
Pole as you fly from south to north the
height of the landscape sinks seen here
going from red and orange highlands down
to green and blue valleys Mars whole
northern hemisphere is a sunken ellipse
draping over 40% of the planet if this
is an impact site the incoming object
would have been about the size of dwarf
planet Pluto
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it would have totally remade Mars
possibly shutting off its internal
dynamo erasing its protective magnetic
field and killing the chances for a
life-sustaining atmosphere Galileo
Galilei makes the first telescopic
observation of Mars he says he's afraid
it isn't round
Francesco Fontana creates the first
known drawing of the planet saying it
looks like a very black pill probably
due to flawed lenses in his spyglass the
Dutch brothers Chris John and Constantin
Huygens are innovating better optics
Christian sketches an irregular mark on
martyrs living in the wetlands of
Holland he thinks it looks like a big
balk so it becomes known as the Great
Marsh syrtis major Huygens uses that
shape to measure Mars day length finding
it to be about the same as earth's
giovanni domenico cassini refines that
figure to 24 hours plus 40 minutes very
close to what astronomers measure today
he also logs the first observation of
Mars south polar cap drawn here by his
friend Huygens Cassini imagines that
Mars is similar to earth
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three billion years ago Mars may indeed
have been earth-like
volcanoes building the atmosphere steam
and mist and flowing water filling early
oceans with more fluid than the Arctic
Ocean on earth the first Mars rover
little Sojourner the Pathfinder lands in
the outflow of what must have been
cataclysmic flood
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the Mars exploration Rovers Spirit and
Opportunity find stacked strata of rock
laid down by flowing water over
thousands of years and little rounded
iron-rich concretions nicknamed
blueberries that formed in cavities of
silt under salty water but is there any
water near the surface of modern Mars in
2008 NASA's Phoenix finds evidence soft
landing in the high northern latitudes
it's rocket plumes blow away surface
dust exposing some white material the
little probe digs a shallow trench
revealing more it disappears in a day
proving it was water ice
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and on the Landers legs drops of liquid
appear then change the Mars Science Lab
Curiosity rolls through dry stream beds
between the banks of ancient water
courses and across fans at the mouths of
long-dead rivers the robot geologist
sees a range of layered landscapes each
was built by episodes of flowing mud
with dry times in between
today's Mars seems a lifeless desert
a lonely landscape crying out for
company Elon Musk's space exploration
company hopes to end Mars long isolation
SpaceX begins building a constellation
of satellites eventually numbering
almost 12,000 orbiting unusually close
to earth to move data much faster than
today's wired internet and to raise
money for making life multiplanetary
though christiaan huygens has died his
final book cosmos the arrows will excite
future generations
Huygens argues that the moon and planets
Harbor intelligent beings
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but do the other planetary worlds of our
solar system truly have what it takes to
be habitable the moon is rich in
aluminum titanium silicon and magnesium
asteroids add carbon cobalt platinum
molybdenum nickel and other elements
Mars has all of these plus abundant iron
and many other metals especially near
its enormous volcanoes but the key is
water it can be split to make breathable
oxygen and hydrogen fuel the Mars 2020
Rover will test this idea
it'll breathe in carbon dioxide and
electro chemically break out oxygen to
see if rocket propellant and life
support can be made on Mars water from
beneath the surface and carbon dioxide
from its atmosphere can be rearranged to
make methane and oxygen burn the methane
using that oxygen and you can launch
rockets
make that propellant on Mars and you can
drop the cost of getting back to Earth
by a factor of at least five exactly
what SpaceX has committed itself to do
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to conjure up space-based civilization
launched only what you need to live off
the land tools and talent and factories
and power generators if everything for
space has to be built in pieces on earth
then trucked up from the bottom of our
deep gravity well and tediously fit
together on orbit we'll never get
anywhere Giacomo Filippo morality
guesses that dark rings around Mars
poles might be melted material could the
poles be ice caps
80 years later Friedrich Wilhelm
Herschel declares yes Mars poles are
water ice and he thinks the broad dark
equatorial patches are oceans the large
syrtis major feature has come to be
called the hourglass see Herschel and
his contemporaries dream of what it
might be like to sail these waters
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Mars may have lost its oceans long
before life on earth emerged the
northern desert lowlands the flattest
terrain on any planet or moon look like
the floor of an ancient sea up to four
kilometers deep Mars polar ocean may
have covered 1/3 of the planet in 1785
Herschel speculates that Martians
probably enjoy a situation similar to
our own
but he reports Mars atmosphere must be
very thin it is thin the planet is
enveloped in sparse carbon dioxide
there's very little water in the air but
there's plenty not far under the crust
Mars also makes tiny amounts of methane
which could be coming from hot geology
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but those methane levels seem to bloom
in certain seasons and that has a lot of
experts wondering might there be life
below the surface Johann
hieronymus shredder believes Mars has no
solid surface at all just drifting
clouds and Misty Rain he thinks he sees
sweeping atmospheric changes right
before his eyes Schroders shifting scene
probably is due to an atmosphere but
it's the unstable air of Earth above his
telescope that has spoiled his seeing
the true story of Mars atmosphere is
becoming clearer
go back at least a billion years
intense ultraviolet radiation from the
Sun and the sputtering solar wind are
bombarding the small planet with its low
gravity
and frail global magnetic field Mars
can't hold on to its protective gas
envelope
most of its air and much of its water
are lost to space back in 1830 however
none of this tragic history is yet known
Johann Heinrich modeler and vilhelm
beard make the first truly accurate Mars
maps they placed their longitude zero
line through a feature that will later
be named sinus Meridiani Meridian Bay
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the Mars rover Opportunity is working
there right now
in images Mars looks like a picturesque
desert it's easy to imagine yourself
standing there gazing at the intricately
weathered rocks nearly everywhere you
look you see evidence of past liquid
water
though there are no oceans today there's
plenty of ice the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter records eroded cliff faces
exposing compacted water ice in some
places more than 100 meters thick on
passes over the poles
Amaro's radar reveals up to two
kilometers of ice it seems to have been
laid down in layers
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does Mars climate cycle between warm and
cool orbiting spacecraft have watched
dark streaks appear over time usually on
the steeper slopes of craters they look
just like desert gullies on earth
the markings change with Mars seasons
many researchers thought they might be
flowing salty water new analysis
suggests at least the larger ones are
dry streams of rounded sand grains
tumbling over one another flowing like
liquid in the low gravity of Mars but
the small ones seem truly wet another
slippery Mars paradox
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astronomer Camille Flammarion picks up
the intelligent alien torch and runs
with it eventually publishing eight
books on the topic the plurality of
inhabited worlds becomes an all-time
bestseller with the publication of
Charles Darwin's origin of the species
from a tree all has realized that
differing conditions on various planets
should cause creatures on them to be
unlike those of Earth the building
blocks of life are in fact plentiful on
Mars curiosity has found abundant oxygen
carbon nitrogen phosphorus and sulfur as
well as complex organic macromolecules
clay minerals would have filtered salts
and harsh compounds from the primeval
flowing waters many microbes now living
on earth
would likely have survived on early Mars
[Music]
but no photos fossils or chemical
evidence of life as yet turned up
[Music]
the Vatican becomes concerned about the
state of grace of the marshal's father
Pietro Angelo secchi of the Roman
College Observatory starts to charge
where they might live it gives the
hourglass sea a new name calling it the
atlantic canal that word simply means
channel say Qi intends no reference to
intelligent design but his turn can a
delay will cause much confusion in the
coming decades over in England
astronomer William Dawes is making Mars
maps of his own
he's extremely nearsighted but his
charts are more detailed than any made
before smelling a great story
science writer Richard Anthony Procter
blasts the Dawes maps out to the public
[Music]
the Suez Canal is completed in November
of 1869 making news around the world the
Panama Canal is being planned many
people make a connection between the
straight canal e on Mars Maps and these
great works of engineering on earth
there are in fact many ancient water
channels all over Mars but there's no
evidence of technology in their shapes
Mars comes once more into opposition but
this time many new telescopes are
pointed at it one belongs to Nathaniel
Greene on the island of Madeira an
artist by day an astronomer by night
Greene paints the most accurate Mars
chart yet over in America the
self-taught astronomer Asaph Hall sees
something no one else has two tiny
movements fobos and damos may be bits of
Mars flung into orbit by giant impacts
long ago or they may be asteroids
captured by the planets gravity as Mars
comes close within 56 million kilometers
of Earth Giovanni Schiaparelli is ready
though he like Dawes is nearsighted and
colorblind chaparral II is able to
extract more from the telescope than
others
heetu calls the lines he sees on Mars
Canali and he gives them whimsical names
from classical literature like Pyrrhus
Cerberus and piri Phlegethon labels
still used by Mars mappers today why are
some Mars opposition's closer than
others while Earth's orbit around the
Sun is nearly circular Mars orbit is
much more elliptical only Mercury's is
more eccentric during Mars southern
ottoman winter that hemisphere is tipped
away from the Sun and the whole planet
is farther away making those seasons
longer and colder another close
opposition and Schiaparelli comes to
believe he's seen pairs of straight
Canali
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Harvard College Observatory director
William Henry Pickering declares the
canals of Mars are only rendered visible
by plants growing along their banks and
the surrounding lap any science-based
speculation about large engineering
projects by smart Martians will die
abruptly on the night of July 14th 1965
as NASA's Mariner 4 flies by Mars in the
probes 21 images Mars looks much more
like the moon than the earth
and worse Mariner can't find a
protective magnetic field harsh solar
wind and cosmic radiations scour the
planet it's hard to imagine how even
primitive plant life could survive here
and water seems to have flowed only in
the ancient past back in 1892 Camille
Flammarion has filled his imaginary
Martian canals with water speculating
maybe the rectification of old rivers by
the inhabitants for the purpose of
general water distribution and the
actual habitation of Mars by beings
superior to our own is very probable
Pickering adds fuel to flow Maryland's
fire asserting that he has seen 40 lakes
at about the same time a wealthy world
traveling American diplomat is feeling
like he needs a career change and a
personal passion project Percival Lowell
has read Flammarion books and he makes
plans to look for Martians during the
coming opposition of 1894 Pickering
helps Lowell ring two telescopes on a
hilltop in Flagstaff Arizona the new
Lowell Observatory is trained on Mars
all summer long at the telescope Lowell
sees what he believes and sketches a
complex irrigation system transporting
billions of gallons of melted polar snow
to equatorial desert oasis the irrigated
agriculture projects of an advanced race
but during the same opposition Edward
Barnard wielding the California lick
observatories larger refracting
telescope cannot find a single straight
line anywhere on Mars and when the licks
William Campbell examines Mars with a
spectroscope he sees not a trace of
water in the atmosphere English
astronomer Edward maunder demonstrates
how straight lines on Mars could be
optical illusions
undeterred Percival Lowell Sprint's
across America on a lecture to promoting
his book named simply martyrs a story
thirsty public buys his tales of Martian
water works by the thousands the real
Mars is a parched planet
though tilted rocks tell us there were
lakes here long ago
with no liquid water to irrigate plants
and no plants to hold the soil dust
devils swirl across the barren terrain
Curtin's of desiccated grit sweep up
into the hazy sky from rugged Canyon
cliffs sandy landslides garnished steep
crater walls and clump on the floors
Percival Lowell begins observing with an
even bigger refractor but still cannot
see his glaring error
Lowell will carry on for 20 more years
inventing over 450 canals with
vegetation he pictures a desperate
civilization bravely combating global
climate change as their dying world
cries to a planetary desert
in fact Mars climate did change
radically
but it happened long before Lowell's
time
without a large moon to stabilize it
Mars wobbles tens of degrees over
hundreds of thousands of years much more
radically than earth when Mars points a
pole toward the Sun billions of tons of
co2 are released unleashing a box of
greenhouse warming melting subsurface
ice flooding the planet HG Wells
publishes War of the Worlds a dying race
of Martians wants to conquer earth to
make it more like Mars
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in 1976 earth will send two Viking
landers not to subjugate but to
investigate
[Music]
they will find very active intriguing
surface chemistry
[Music]
but no obvious life
[Music]
but back in 1905 at Lowell Observatory
Carl lamp 'land claims he's photographed
thirty-eight canals
[Music]
Alfred Russel Wallace who originated the
idea that natural selection drives
evolution realizes that craters observed
on Mars must be the impact sites of
large meteorites Rovers opportunity and
curiosity finds several small impactors
sitting right on the surface
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these rocks from the sky tell a story of
a planet with a thick atmosphere long
ago at the muda Observatory near Paris
Eugene and Tony Adi realizes there are
no straight canals on mars american
novelist edgar rice burroughs releases
the first of his 11 volume tale
depicting heroic john carter on a
fictional Mars the desert planet Barsoom
a century later Disney director Andrew
Stanton will bring it to the screen
curiosities Mars is a desert world too
the rover tricks around a wide field of
dark sand dunes rolling like waves on an
ocean the sandy mounds slowly migrate
across the landscape
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[Applause]
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Mount Wilson Observatory astronomers
measure surface temperatures on Mars
finding them to swing wildly they range
from 15 degrees Celsius at midday to
minus 85 degrees Celsius just before
sunrise Russian filmmaker Yakov
protozoan makes Aelita
an earth man flies by rocket to lead a
revolt against the rulers of Mars
and win the love of the Martian Queen
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but the prospects for civilization on
the planet grow dim as astronomer
Walters Sydney Adams can find only
vanishingly tiny quantities of oxygen
and water in the Martian atmosphere at
Yerkes Observatory 13 years later Gerard
Kuiper detects abundant carbon dioxide
rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun rights
project Mars it's a sci-fi novel a full
of factual engineering
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gray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles puts
a human colony on Mars to escape a
nuclear war devastated earth through the
rocketship XM it's a stranded astronaut
crew against Stone Age humanism remnants
of a Martian global nuclear war
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the first thermonuclear bomb is tested
in the same year von braun publishes das
mars project a comprehensive technical
workup for a large-scale space program
that will become the blueprint for
NASA's Mercury Gemini
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and Apollo projects
in 1955 Paramount Pictures releases
conquest of space it too is based on von
braun's planetary plans I can give you a
confounded little reason for this
attempt to reach Mars and no assurance
at all that it will even be successful
at Los Alamos National Lab Project Rover
begins it's an effort to harness nuclear
fission to drive spaceships at constant
thrust
[Music]
project Orion a different approach to
nuclear rockets starts testing hardware
the idea is to detonate atomic bombs
behind a ship to push it along
it's called post plasma-wave propulsion
[Music]
outrageous as it seems this method could
offer rapid transport to Mars and the
rest of the solar system the u.s.
nuclear engine for rocket vehicle
application Nerva program accumulates 17
hours of live engine test time it raises
hopes for Mars missions and moon bases
[Music]
in the Soviet Union
engineers are working on nuclear thermal
rockets of their own
Soviet leaders have the specific goal of
making Mars a politically red planet
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the Soviets try several times to send
probes to Mars
[Music]
but they get no closer than 197 thousand
kilometers and achieve very little
science
[Music]
someday a manned trip to Mars and return
may become the mission assignment to
answer that challenge craft Araki a
visionary German American engineer
introduces the idea of ganging together
clusters of nuclear rockets he argues
that his modular approach could bring
Mars and Venus within reach as early as
the 1970s Erik a passionately believes
that human expansion throughout the
solar system is a fundamental right and
that we are at our most dignified when
we apply the laws of physics to elevate
and protect human freedom
[Music]
just days before Apollo 11s lunar
landing
a monstrous moon bound Soviet n1 rocket
rises 200 meters only to shut down and
crash completely destroying its launch
it is one of the largest non-nuclear
explosions that humans have ever made
the n1 might have ferried six cosmonauts
on Mars missions lasting 630 days using
nuclear-powered upper stages but when
the u.s. wins the moon race
the Kremlin's interest in the red planet
seems to evaporate
[Music]
Mariner six flies within 3437 kilometers
of Mars equatorial region this same year
and Mariner 7 sails past Mars South Pole
finding the temperature of chilly - 125
degrees Celsius
with two moon landings fresh in mine
the public expects NASA astronauts to go
on to Mars but when Apollo 13 nearly
ends in disaster
President Richard Nixon fears the
political consequences of another
failure
and tries to end the moon voyages
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Mariner 9 the first craft to orbit
another planet finds conclusively Mars
has no canals no cities no forests no as
Apollo wines day no fun Brown proposes
that Saturn five rockets lift the pieces
of a pair of reusable nuclear-powered
ships they would carry orbiters and
surface expedition vehicles across the
great void to Mars but Nixon shrinks the
budget to only a space shuttle confining
the human space program to low-earth
orbit
for what will turn out to be half a
century in that time for United States
Presidents will ask for Mars related
programs
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but none will get much further than the
planning stages there is growing
suspicion among space advocates that
large government space programs might be
too slow and inefficient to ever get to
Mars Engineers Robert Zubrin and David a
Baker proposed Mars direct
travel light they say and live off the
land
[Music]
by making rocket fuel from the planet
itself
[Music]
explorers could insure themselves a ride
home
[Music]
by 1993 key ideas from Mars direct are
finding their way into NASA's Mars
design reference mission
NASA will update the design for more
times but consistent support for a
direct affordable approach never fully
materializes
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it's the private sectors turn the mars-1
company starts taking applications for
one-way journeys to colonize the planet
so called Mars to stay programs could
dramatically reduce travel outlays but
at what cost in human terms
the big established aerospace companies
prefer to bring their crews back
[Music]
boeing's affordable Mars mission would
send a solar electric sailing ship to
reconnoitre from low orbit when all is
ready explorers would descend
protected by an inflated aeroshell
touching down like the Apollo missions
to find a previously landed habitat
waiting
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they'd return like last century's
moonwalkers for the long trip home
[Music]
Lockheed Martin proposes a Mars orbiting
base camp it's smartly built by stacking
pairs of modules two habitats two tank
farms two rocket propulsion units
redundancy for safety far from Earth
[Music]
astronauts make sorties to the surface
with a single-stage lander but this
surface to orbit shuttlecraft doesn't
depend on fuel made on Mars Elon Musk
goes public with his plan to settle Mars
SpaceX has been developing a big
reusable booster the Falcon heavy
[Music]
which could launch Apollo style missions
Blue Origin led by Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos has been quietly developing large
boosters of its own
blue intends nothing less than extending
civilization into space
[Music]
Elon Musk super-sizes his already large
vision SpaceX will build a big Falcon
rocket
it's designed to quickly fly between
points on earth
[Music]
called massive payloads around the solar
system and to transport people as many
as 100 at a time to the surfaces of
planets asteroids
and of Mars
SpaceX envisions complete terraforming
of our neighbor world
[Music]
dream projects like these may make it to
Mars but the old trickster planet lies
in wait its surface is loaded with toxic
caustic perchlorates
the chemicals that give fireworks their
bay and with a constant rain of cosmic
rays and solar flares hurling highly
energetic particles settlers would have
to spend most of their time underground
might it be better to investigate Mars
through augmented reality
[Music]
or teleoperated robots artificial
intelligence perhaps machines smart
enough to terraform Mars on their own
pioneers of the future could find a more
comfortable planet ready-made for them
[Music]
in 2033 Mars will come into particularly
favorable positioning for launching
human exploration will we be ready to
answer its call of nearly 50 missions
launched to Mars
more than half have failed
the ones that succeeded conveyed the
indelible impression of a desperate
struggling planet the technically
engineered salvation of this desert
world as imagined by Percival Lowell may
yet come to pass but if Mars is to live
again it will be up to us we face a long
difficult battle to reboot an entire
world and Mars will no doubt change
humanity even as humans change Mars
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[Applause]
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