WEBVTT - Episode 3: Planet B 0:00:15.436 --> 0:00:15.876 Pushkin. 0:00:20.556 --> 0:00:23.716 You are looking at a live view of the Falcon Heavy. 0:00:24.596 --> 0:00:29.036 In twenty eighteen, Elon Musk's company SpaceX launched a rocket 0:00:29.036 --> 0:00:32.356 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida under blue skies 0:00:32.556 --> 0:00:36.596 streaked with clouds. A giant white rocket attached to two 0:00:36.636 --> 0:00:40.036 smaller white boosters stood perched on the launch pad. 0:00:40.356 --> 0:00:42.756 All systems are Golfer launch. 0:00:43.036 --> 0:00:46.556 A crowd assembled at mission control giddy and loud. This 0:00:46.716 --> 0:00:50.236 was the company's splashiest launch yet of its biggest rocket 0:00:50.756 --> 0:00:52.796 built for a Mars crossing orbit. 0:00:53.236 --> 0:00:56.916 Stacked inside the firing is Elon's cherry red Tesla Roadster. 0:00:57.436 --> 0:01:00.436 Then there was the payload described by SpaceX in its 0:01:00.476 --> 0:01:01.956 live broadcast. 0:01:01.436 --> 0:01:04.236 And inside of it a passenger. His name is Starman, 0:01:04.436 --> 0:01:05.716 but don't worry, he's not human. 0:01:06.436 --> 0:01:09.076 There was also an arc, a sort of Noah's ar 0:01:09.156 --> 0:01:13.316 Ark of an archive on a space Proof Courts compact disc. 0:01:13.756 --> 0:01:16.036 On the arc that's being launched today. The Foundation has 0:01:16.036 --> 0:01:19.836 stored Isaac Asimov's classic sci fi series, the Foundation Trilogy. 0:01:20.396 --> 0:01:22.716 One objective of this test flight was to put a 0:01:22.836 --> 0:01:26.716 Tesla Roadster carrying the works of Isaac Asimov into orbit 0:01:27.076 --> 0:01:28.596 for a billion years. 0:01:28.636 --> 0:01:57.716 Three two. 0:01:46.836 --> 0:01:49.876 Welcome to x Man The Elon Musk origin story. 0:01:50.556 --> 0:01:51.396 I'm Jill Lapour. 0:01:51.716 --> 0:01:54.916 I'm a professor at Harvard. I'm a US political historian, 0:01:55.116 --> 0:01:57.636 and for a long time I've been studying the relationship 0:01:57.676 --> 0:02:02.716 between technological and political change. I'm fascinated by visions of 0:02:02.756 --> 0:02:07.996 the future in political discourse, in literature and science fiction, and. 0:02:07.916 --> 0:02:08.876 Even comic books. 0:02:11.956 --> 0:02:15.556 The series, I'm exploring a new kind of capitalism, call 0:02:15.596 --> 0:02:22.076 it Muskism, extravagant extreme capitalism, extra terrestrial capitalism, where stock 0:02:22.156 --> 0:02:25.396 prices can be driven by dreams and fantasies that come 0:02:25.836 --> 0:02:32.836 from science fiction. Last episode, I looked at Musk's early 0:02:32.876 --> 0:02:36.076 life in South Africa, growing up rereading The Hitchhiker's Guide 0:02:36.116 --> 0:02:39.196 to the Galaxy. He ended up in Silicon Valley in 0:02:39.236 --> 0:02:42.556 the nineteen nineties, founding a company called x dot com 0:02:42.796 --> 0:02:46.836 that merged with PayPal. eBay bought PayPal for one point 0:02:46.876 --> 0:02:50.956 five billion dollars. Musk use that money to start SpaceX. 0:02:51.876 --> 0:02:55.396 He also started talking about very big plans for the 0:02:55.436 --> 0:02:56.956 future of humanity. 0:02:57.396 --> 0:03:00.276 When I was in the university, I thought about what 0:03:00.516 --> 0:03:03.556 would most affect the future of the world, and the 0:03:03.596 --> 0:03:06.756 three areas that I came up with the Internet, sustainable energy, 0:03:06.916 --> 0:03:08.836 and making life multiplanetary. 0:03:09.356 --> 0:03:12.396 Musk began to argue that his plan was to save 0:03:12.556 --> 0:03:17.076 the human race, including by going to Mars. But why 0:03:17.836 --> 0:03:21.556 future of humanity questions used to belong to religion and philosophy. 0:03:22.076 --> 0:03:27.156 Under Muskism, they belonged to engineering an entrepreneurship. How did 0:03:27.196 --> 0:03:33.076 that happen? This episode of X Man is called Planet 0:03:33.196 --> 0:03:36.636 b strap in to head to Mars, which is where 0:03:36.636 --> 0:03:39.636 Elon Musk was headed before he took a detour to 0:03:39.716 --> 0:03:43.236 the White House. In twenty sixteen, the year Donald Trump 0:03:43.276 --> 0:03:46.516 was elected president for the first time, Musk spoke to 0:03:46.596 --> 0:03:49.556 an audience at a SpaceX event about the ship he'd 0:03:49.596 --> 0:03:50.556 like to take to Mars. 0:03:50.956 --> 0:03:53.196 I think like maybe the name of the first ship 0:03:53.396 --> 0:03:56.116 that goes to Mars. My current favorite is Heart of 0:03:56.156 --> 0:04:00.116 Gold from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and I 0:04:00.196 --> 0:04:03.836 like the fact that it's driven by infinite improbability. I 0:04:03.916 --> 0:04:06.556 think ourship is also extremely improbable. 0:04:07.156 --> 0:04:10.636 One pretty useful way of understanding Tusk's vision for SpaceX 0:04:10.716 --> 0:04:14.196 is that it's Douglas Adams fan fiction. Or you could 0:04:14.196 --> 0:04:18.916 make a fair argument that SpaceX's inspiration comes from the Foundation. 0:04:18.636 --> 0:04:29.516 Series titlely Foundation author Isaac Asimov Encyclopedia Galactica one hundred 0:04:29.556 --> 0:04:30.356 and sixteenth edition. 0:04:32.156 --> 0:04:36.676 This Encyclopedia Galactica runs through all the Foundation Series, and 0:04:36.756 --> 0:04:40.436 if that sounds familiar, that's because the Hitchhiker's Guide is 0:04:40.436 --> 0:04:41.396 a lampoon of it. 0:04:41.876 --> 0:04:46.556 The Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the Great Encyclopedic Galactica 0:04:46.596 --> 0:04:50.516 as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom because, 0:04:50.556 --> 0:04:54.196 although it has many omissions contains much that is apocryphal 0:04:54.396 --> 0:04:57.956 or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, 0:04:58.236 --> 0:05:02.716 more pedestrian work in two important ways. First, it is 0:05:02.836 --> 0:05:07.316 slightly cheaper, and second, it has the words don't Panic 0:05:07.436 --> 0:05:10.276 inscribed in large friends letters on the cover. 0:05:11.196 --> 0:05:13.796 That Tesla roadster that must send up into space had 0:05:13.836 --> 0:05:17.436 a copy of Asimov inside, and it also had don't 0:05:17.476 --> 0:05:22.636 Panic on its dashboard. Asimov's Foundation Series revolves around a 0:05:22.676 --> 0:05:25.996 scholar named Harry Selden on. 0:05:26.676 --> 0:05:28.836 Nine hundred and eighty eight years of the Galactic Ealing 0:05:29.436 --> 0:05:34.796 died twelve thousand and sixty nine. Birthplace heliconnor of TOWARDUS sector. 0:05:36.196 --> 0:05:40.156 Harry Selden is responsible for the future of humanity. His 0:05:40.316 --> 0:05:44.716 plan engineers will save us. Selden knows that the Galactic 0:05:44.756 --> 0:05:47.956 Empire will soon collapse, after which the galaxy will endure 0:05:47.996 --> 0:05:50.436 a dark age. He's got a plan to hide away 0:05:50.516 --> 0:05:53.516 two sets of experts, one at each end of the galaxy, 0:05:53.676 --> 0:05:58.356 the two Foundations, to store the knowledge of civilization. Elon 0:05:58.476 --> 0:06:00.876 Musk read the story as a kid, and later said 0:06:00.876 --> 0:06:03.236 that the lesson he drew from it was that you 0:06:03.276 --> 0:06:05.316 should try to take the set of actions that are 0:06:05.476 --> 0:06:09.036 likely to prolong civilization, to minimize the probability of a 0:06:09.196 --> 0:06:11.956 dark age, and reduce the length of a dark age. 0:06:12.156 --> 0:06:23.196 If there is one anxiety about the imminent end of civilization. 0:06:24.076 --> 0:06:30.596 Existential catastrophism is an essential feature of Muskism. Humanity, in 0:06:30.636 --> 0:06:34.076 this understanding of the world, is always at risk of extinction. 0:06:35.196 --> 0:06:39.036 Entrepreneurs and engineers are trying to save us all. I 0:06:39.116 --> 0:06:41.836 got to wondering where this idea came from. When did 0:06:41.876 --> 0:06:44.876 people begin worrying about human extinction? 0:06:45.636 --> 0:06:48.236 That's a good question, So it depends on what you 0:06:48.436 --> 0:06:49.756 mean by worrying. 0:06:50.436 --> 0:06:54.116 That's Thomas moynihan, author of the twenty twenty book X Risk, 0:06:54.356 --> 0:06:58.436 How Humanity Discovered its own extinction. I called it Moynihan 0:06:58.476 --> 0:07:00.556 to ask him about the history of the panic. Don't 0:07:00.596 --> 0:07:04.356 panic about human extinction, which is different from a religious 0:07:04.356 --> 0:07:06.156 worry about the coming apocalypse. 0:07:06.356 --> 0:07:10.516 The apocalypse occures a senseiment ending, whereas extinct anticipates the 0:07:10.596 --> 0:07:11.396 ending of sense. 0:07:11.876 --> 0:07:15.756 According to Moynan, people started worrying about human extinction sometime 0:07:15.796 --> 0:07:20.116 in the eighteenth century during the Enlightenment, partly because scientists 0:07:20.356 --> 0:07:24.516 studying fossils had begun to observe and to document the 0:07:24.636 --> 0:07:30.036 extinction of other species, like dinosaurs. This fascinated romantic poets. 0:07:30.516 --> 0:07:35.396 Byron himself refers to using steam engines to deflect incoming 0:07:35.436 --> 0:07:38.356 asteroids and stop them from wiping out humanity. 0:07:38.996 --> 0:07:42.636 Mary Shelley, a decade after she wrote Frankenstein, wrote The 0:07:42.756 --> 0:07:46.916 Last Man, the first novel in English that imagines human 0:07:46.916 --> 0:07:51.076 extinction by way of a global pandemic. By the end 0:07:51.116 --> 0:07:54.076 of the nineteenth century, you get science fiction that imagines 0:07:54.076 --> 0:07:57.116 a risk coming from other planets. 0:07:57.156 --> 0:07:59.316 Nothing out of the shadow, like a gray snake. 0:07:59.996 --> 0:08:02.716 Martians came to Earth in H. G. Wells's eighteen ninety 0:08:02.756 --> 0:08:05.996 eight novel War of the World, But as morning Hand 0:08:05.996 --> 0:08:09.076 points out, Wells also thought of other planets as a 0:08:09.276 --> 0:08:10.716 way to avoid human extinction. 0:08:11.036 --> 0:08:13.316 Thankies a gentleman, saind describers, I can highly force myself 0:08:13.356 --> 0:08:14.116 to keep working at it. 0:08:14.516 --> 0:08:18.196 At the end of War of the World's he mentions 0:08:18.276 --> 0:08:22.636 that humanity might be able to migrate to Venus in 0:08:22.636 --> 0:08:26.836 the long term, and that would somehow prolong the lifespan 0:08:26.876 --> 0:08:27.716 of civilization. 0:08:28.436 --> 0:08:31.556 But of course, early science fiction emerged during an era 0:08:31.796 --> 0:08:36.876 of imperialism. After all, as Cecil Rhodes himself said, I 0:08:36.876 --> 0:08:38.716 would annex the planets if I could. 0:08:43.796 --> 0:08:44.076 HG. 0:08:44.116 --> 0:08:47.596 Wells wasn't actually promoting a colony on Venus. He was 0:08:47.636 --> 0:08:51.036 opposing British colonies on Earth. He began War of the 0:08:51.076 --> 0:08:55.556 Worlds by talking about British colonial expansion into Tasmania, writing 0:08:55.556 --> 0:08:58.916 that the Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were 0:08:59.076 --> 0:09:02.036 entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination 0:09:02.476 --> 0:09:05.676 waged by European immigrants in the space of fifty years. 0:09:05.996 --> 0:09:08.596 Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if 0:09:08.636 --> 0:09:13.036 the Martians ward in the same spirit, The line from 0:09:13.116 --> 0:09:16.876 Welles to Musk is a line of rupture to recycle 0:09:16.996 --> 0:09:21.276 age of imperialism. Science fiction absent the criticism of imperialism 0:09:21.876 --> 0:09:27.876 is to erase history. Moynan argues that in the middle 0:09:27.916 --> 0:09:31.436 decades of the twentieth century, fears of human extinction got 0:09:31.516 --> 0:09:35.396 ratcheted up after Harshima and during the Cold War, with 0:09:35.516 --> 0:09:40.716 its concern about nuclear armageddon. The danger was an alien invasion, 0:09:41.636 --> 0:09:45.436 the danger was us. By the nineteen eighties, people concerned 0:09:45.436 --> 0:09:49.276 about what's come to be called existential risk, especially people 0:09:49.276 --> 0:09:53.396 fighting for arms control, came up with some fancy calculations 0:09:53.596 --> 0:09:54.796 to try to win the argument. 0:09:55.316 --> 0:09:58.396 We shouldn't be thinking about human extinction as just the 0:09:58.396 --> 0:10:00.996 death of the seven billion people that are currently alive. 0:10:01.476 --> 0:10:05.116 We need to think about it more as the foreclosure 0:10:05.236 --> 0:10:08.316 of all the future generations of people that could have been, 0:10:08.356 --> 0:10:10.076 who could have had work while lives. 0:10:10.476 --> 0:10:15.396 This idea really took off. This to me strange calculation 0:10:16.036 --> 0:10:18.876 by which our lives, the lives of everyone here on Earth, 0:10:19.396 --> 0:10:21.756 just don't amount too much compared to the lives of 0:10:21.836 --> 0:10:24.796 all the future beings who won't live if we don't 0:10:24.916 --> 0:10:29.156 establish colonies on other planets. Then, in the nineteen nineties, 0:10:29.276 --> 0:10:32.316 moynihan says, a lot of tech people involved in early 0:10:32.356 --> 0:10:36.556 message boards came together to really panic about a long 0:10:36.716 --> 0:10:38.436 list of existential risks. 0:10:38.836 --> 0:10:44.676 Asteroid or comet impact, super volcanic eruptions, stellar explosions, nuclear war, 0:10:45.116 --> 0:10:47.956 climate degradation, and then one that also gets a lot 0:10:47.956 --> 0:10:50.276 of attention as well is artificial intelligence. 0:10:50.876 --> 0:10:53.436 At the time this list was growing on tech message boards, 0:10:53.796 --> 0:10:56.516 Elon Musk was in college and then in Silicon Valley 0:10:56.796 --> 0:11:03.556 developing his sense of mission. A few years back, Bernie 0:11:03.596 --> 0:11:06.956 Sanders tweeted, We're in a moment in history where two guys, 0:11:06.996 --> 0:11:09.956 Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, own more wealth than the 0:11:09.956 --> 0:11:14.076 bottom forty percent of people in this country. Musk tweeted back, 0:11:14.716 --> 0:11:18.036 I am accumulating resources to help make life interplanetary and 0:11:18.116 --> 0:11:22.596 extend the light of consciousness to the stars. Not everyone 0:11:22.636 --> 0:11:26.276 thinks Musk and Bezos are heroically saving humanity from extinction. 0:11:26.956 --> 0:11:29.236 My question is why do they think. 0:11:29.116 --> 0:11:29.676 They're doing that. 0:11:31.556 --> 0:11:34.996 Jeff Bezos was born in New Mexico in nineteen sixty four. 0:11:35.956 --> 0:11:39.516 Both he and Elon Musk grew up on stories about 0:11:39.556 --> 0:11:43.356 the Apollo eleven moon landing. The US ended its moon 0:11:43.396 --> 0:11:47.276 program in nineteen seventy two, Bezos, a Star Trek fan, 0:11:47.676 --> 0:11:50.956 always wanted to go back to the moon. Musk tells 0:11:50.956 --> 0:11:53.196 a story about how, as a kid he went to 0:11:53.196 --> 0:11:55.996 the NASA website to look up the schedule for going 0:11:56.036 --> 0:12:01.596 to Mars, and was disappointed to find there wasn't one. 0:12:01.636 --> 0:12:05.396 In nineteen sixty four, NASA had launched the Mariner for Probe, 0:12:05.756 --> 0:12:08.396 the first spacecraft to fly by Mars. 0:12:09.236 --> 0:12:10.876 Question is what will matter? 0:12:10.916 --> 0:12:11.476 No reveal? 0:12:11.956 --> 0:12:14.876 Of course, the possibility of life on Mars has been 0:12:14.916 --> 0:12:16.116 debated for many years. 0:12:16.476 --> 0:12:20.076 Faint lines seen on the surface have led to the 0:12:20.156 --> 0:12:21.476 idea that these were. 0:12:21.316 --> 0:12:23.076 Canals dug by the Martians. 0:12:23.116 --> 0:12:25.676 But I don't think anybody goes that far these days. 0:12:25.876 --> 0:12:28.636 The Probe sent back twenty one photographs unveiled at the 0:12:28.676 --> 0:12:32.916 White House before Lyndon Johnson, but the photographs revealed a barren, 0:12:33.236 --> 0:12:37.436 dusty wasteland, all but crushing any hope. As Johnson said 0:12:37.956 --> 0:12:40.316 that there was life on Mars. 0:12:40.156 --> 0:12:45.836 It may be. It may just be that life as 0:12:45.876 --> 0:12:54.516 we know it, with its humanity, is more unique than 0:12:54.596 --> 0:12:55.516 many have thought. 0:12:56.836 --> 0:12:59.836 That view of Mars started to change in the nineteen nineties, 0:13:00.396 --> 0:13:04.436 which marked a convergence. Tech types had become consumed with 0:13:04.476 --> 0:13:08.996 the possibility of human extinction. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, 0:13:09.116 --> 0:13:12.556 We're starting to make millions, even billions of dollars, and 0:13:12.636 --> 0:13:15.956 writers and scientists had begun to imagine ways Mars could 0:13:15.996 --> 0:13:19.836 be made habitable. The science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson 0:13:19.876 --> 0:13:23.436 published the Mars Trilogy, in which scientists from Earth have 0:13:23.716 --> 0:13:27.956 terraformed Mars. In nineteen ninety eight, an aerospace engineer named 0:13:28.036 --> 0:13:31.276 Robert Zubrin published a book called The Case for Mars. 0:13:31.796 --> 0:13:37.196 There's three reasons why Mars should be the goal of 0:13:37.236 --> 0:13:40.356 our space program, and in short, it's because Mars is 0:13:40.396 --> 0:13:42.516 where the sciences, it's where the challenges, and it's where 0:13:42.516 --> 0:13:43.156 the future is. 0:13:43.596 --> 0:13:46.956 Bezos founded his space company Blue Origin in the year 0:13:47.036 --> 0:13:51.836 two thousand. Musk started SpaceX two years later. In the 0:13:51.876 --> 0:13:56.356 two and a half decades since, despite painful setbacks, SpaceX 0:13:56.396 --> 0:14:01.236 has been an engineering wonder, a juggernaut revitalizing space exploration. 0:14:02.076 --> 0:14:04.396 But even as the richest men on this planet were 0:14:04.396 --> 0:14:07.956 thinking about traveling to other planets, more and more Earthlings 0:14:08.036 --> 0:14:10.476 were worried about life here on Earth. 0:14:11.116 --> 0:14:14.036 Five million students around the world took to the streets 0:14:14.036 --> 0:14:17.476 and a climate strike last Friday, students flood of the 0:14:17.516 --> 0:14:21.236 streets with a clear message, there is no planet B. 0:14:22.116 --> 0:14:25.196 Well, Musk and Bezos were building rockets. There is no 0:14:25.396 --> 0:14:29.636 planet B became the motto of the environmental movement, a 0:14:29.676 --> 0:14:33.756 way for people to say that space exploration not only 0:14:33.836 --> 0:14:37.236 fails to address the risk of human extinction, but is 0:14:37.276 --> 0:14:41.196 instead part of the problem. Even Kim Stanley Robinson took 0:14:41.236 --> 0:14:41.876 this line. 0:14:42.076 --> 0:14:44.836 I still speak positively about us going to Mars and 0:14:44.876 --> 0:14:48.316 even perhaps some day terraforming Mars, but it's a project 0:14:48.356 --> 0:14:52.356 for like the year three thousand a d. What I 0:14:52.436 --> 0:14:55.196 feel I have to say now is to remind people 0:14:55.476 --> 0:14:58.476 there is no planet b It's not simple, it's not fast, 0:14:58.556 --> 0:15:01.036 it isn't going to happen anytime soon, and so we 0:15:01.076 --> 0:15:03.116 can't be thinking that Earth is disposable. 0:15:03.556 --> 0:15:06.836 About twenty years ago Elon must began to change the 0:15:06.876 --> 0:15:08.956 way he talked about going to Mars. 0:15:09.636 --> 0:15:11.996 Have we screwed it up so badly here on this 0:15:12.076 --> 0:15:15.316 planet that our only hope is to build a new 0:15:15.636 --> 0:15:17.316 civilization out there? 0:15:17.516 --> 0:15:18.036 No, not at all. 0:15:18.036 --> 0:15:20.356 I actually I'm quite optimistic about the future of humanity 0:15:20.356 --> 0:15:20.716 on Earth. 0:15:20.836 --> 0:15:24.076 So what is the benefit to humanity then to inhabit Mars. 0:15:24.516 --> 0:15:26.476 Well, I think if you consider two paths, one where 0:15:26.476 --> 0:15:28.476 we're forever confined to Earth, and the other where we 0:15:28.516 --> 0:15:31.476 are space frank civilization out exploring the stars. I think 0:15:31.516 --> 0:15:32.956 the latter is far more exciting. 0:15:33.436 --> 0:15:36.596 SpaceX is about taking science fiction stories and turning them 0:15:36.636 --> 0:15:39.836 into fact. But what if SpaceX is actually fulfilling the 0:15:39.956 --> 0:15:43.316 vision of dystopian science fiction by way of Muskism, not 0:15:43.356 --> 0:15:48.196 only as extraterrestrial capitalism, but as a new political order. 0:15:54.916 --> 0:15:58.116 Isaac Asimov's Foundation series first appeared as a book in 0:15:58.236 --> 0:16:01.996 nineteen fifty one, but a more prophetic science fiction story 0:16:02.036 --> 0:16:05.596 about money and politics and the future of humanity came 0:16:05.596 --> 0:16:06.796 out in nineteen fifty two. 0:16:07.956 --> 0:16:12.276 The Space Merchants, Frederick Poles and C. M. Cornbliss's modern 0:16:12.356 --> 0:16:15.716 classic about the future when the wizards of high pressure 0:16:15.836 --> 0:16:17.196 salesmanship take over. 0:16:19.676 --> 0:16:23.796 The Space Merchants is dystopian science fiction, later made into 0:16:23.796 --> 0:16:27.476 a radio drama. The story opens on a blighted, depleted, 0:16:27.636 --> 0:16:31.236 overcrowded Earth had a board meeting of an advertising agency 0:16:31.436 --> 0:16:33.596 called Fouler shockun. 0:16:33.316 --> 0:16:38.716 Associates, gentlemen, Good morning, Good morning, that's the shogun. Now 0:16:38.956 --> 0:16:41.356 sit down, sit down. I'm going to stand for a moment. 0:16:41.556 --> 0:16:43.476 I have just come back on the Moon rocket, as 0:16:43.516 --> 0:16:47.836 you know. Want to stretch my legs. How alright, there's 0:16:47.876 --> 0:16:52.076 a shockun gentlemen. I am proud and I'm humble when 0:16:52.116 --> 0:16:54.956 I say it's successful. The mining ventures are bringing the 0:16:54.956 --> 0:16:57.556 people here on Earth many of the metals our forefathers 0:16:57.596 --> 0:17:00.836 exhausted long ago. The colonist seemed quite untouched by the 0:17:00.916 --> 0:17:04.716 Kanci revolutionists. Only six instances of Kanci' sabitaged in the 0:17:04.756 --> 0:17:05.476 past week. 0:17:06.876 --> 0:17:10.556 On this desperate, dying earth, po Shakun is worried about 0:17:10.756 --> 0:17:15.676 Conci's conservationists, or what we'd call environmentalists gentlemen. 0:17:15.756 --> 0:17:18.076 On my trip back from the Moon, I begin to 0:17:18.236 --> 0:17:23.356 wonder are we getting soft? But now I've decided Fowler 0:17:23.436 --> 0:17:26.876 Shotgun Associates is not soft, that it's ready to meet 0:17:26.916 --> 0:17:29.676 a challenge greater than our development of the Moon, the 0:17:29.796 --> 0:17:32.876 greatest challenge the world of advertising and promotion has ever met. 0:17:33.236 --> 0:17:34.756 The colonizing of Beatus. 0:17:37.396 --> 0:17:40.636 The Space Merchants wasn't the first version of this dystopian vision. 0:17:41.316 --> 0:17:43.836 In his story from nineteen oh one with the excellent 0:17:43.916 --> 0:17:47.676 title to Mars with Tesla, that is, with Nikola Tesla, 0:17:48.236 --> 0:17:50.956 a guy advertising a rocket trip to Mars turns out 0:17:50.956 --> 0:17:54.036 to be a con man. In twenty twenty two, in 0:17:54.116 --> 0:17:58.396 Fowler Shokun Fashion, SpaceX was involved in the first fully 0:17:58.476 --> 0:18:02.596 private entirely for profit mission to the International Space Station. 0:18:03.316 --> 0:18:07.396 It carried three space tourists, paying fifty five million dollars 0:18:07.436 --> 0:18:11.196 each for a seventeen days trip. The Washington Post has 0:18:11.236 --> 0:18:13.916 reported that SpaceX might be involved in a project to 0:18:13.956 --> 0:18:17.876 build the first hotel in space. Next up, the Red 0:18:17.956 --> 0:18:25.156 Planet blussed back to the past to the US presidential 0:18:25.196 --> 0:18:28.956 election year of twenty twelve. During that year's contest for 0:18:28.996 --> 0:18:33.316 the Republican nomination, moderates like Mitt Romney said a plan 0:18:33.396 --> 0:18:35.396 to go to the Moon was crazy. 0:18:35.756 --> 0:18:38.596 I spent twenty five years in business. If I had 0:18:38.596 --> 0:18:40.596 a business executive come to me and say they want 0:18:40.636 --> 0:18:42.916 to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a 0:18:42.956 --> 0:18:46.836 colony on the Moon, I'd say, you're fired. The idea 0:18:46.836 --> 0:18:49.196 that corporate America wants to go off to the Moon 0:18:49.236 --> 0:18:51.636 and build a colony there. It may be a big idea, 0:18:51.676 --> 0:18:52.596 but it's not a good idea. 0:18:52.996 --> 0:18:57.036 But far right Republicans like Newt Gingrich endorse this idea. 0:18:57.316 --> 0:18:59.396 I'll tell you, I do not want to be the 0:18:59.436 --> 0:19:02.556 country that, having gotten to the moon, first turned around 0:19:02.636 --> 0:19:04.076 and said it doesn't really matter. 0:19:04.396 --> 0:19:07.116 Let the Chinese dominate space. What do we care. 0:19:07.596 --> 0:19:11.876 During the US presidential electtionction year of twenty sixteen, Gingrich 0:19:12.116 --> 0:19:15.796 was one of Trump's closest advisors. Then, in the weeks 0:19:15.796 --> 0:19:19.716 between Trump's election and his inauguration, Elon Musk and Jeff 0:19:19.756 --> 0:19:22.876 Bezos both went to see him in Trump Tower. In 0:19:22.956 --> 0:19:26.756 twenty seventeen, after Trump took office, people started talking about 0:19:26.836 --> 0:19:30.316 moon fever. As one commentator put it, Trump wanted to 0:19:30.356 --> 0:19:34.916 make the Moon American again. Americans, though, weren't much behind 0:19:34.956 --> 0:19:38.036 this project. A poll found that sixty three percent of 0:19:38.076 --> 0:19:42.596 Americans wanted NASA to focus instead on climate research. Only 0:19:42.636 --> 0:19:46.036 thirteen percent favored another trip to the Moon. But this 0:19:46.076 --> 0:19:47.036 didn't stop Trump. 0:19:47.436 --> 0:19:51.596 Thank you very much, Vice President Pence for helping. Where's 0:19:51.596 --> 0:19:52.876 our vice president? 0:19:53.516 --> 0:19:53.996 Great job? 0:19:54.596 --> 0:19:57.236 To restore American leadership in space. 0:19:57.596 --> 0:20:00.396 Trump directed NASA to alter its schedule and make a 0:20:00.476 --> 0:20:02.636 priority of sending Americans to the Moon. 0:20:03.036 --> 0:20:05.716 Our journey into space will not only make us stronger 0:20:05.756 --> 0:20:10.236 and more prosperous, but will unite us behind rand ambitions 0:20:10.276 --> 0:20:13.116 and bring us all closer together. 0:20:13.276 --> 0:20:14.556 Wouldn't that be nice? 0:20:14.956 --> 0:20:17.236 Can you believe that space is going to do that? 0:20:17.636 --> 0:20:19.836 At the end of twenty seventeen, at the White House, 0:20:20.316 --> 0:20:23.196 Trump made a formal announcement of a new destination. 0:20:23.556 --> 0:20:26.996 This time, we will not only plant our flag and 0:20:27.076 --> 0:20:30.836 leave our footprint, we will establish a foundation for an 0:20:30.876 --> 0:20:36.756 eventual mission to Mars and perhaps someday to many worlds beyond. 0:20:37.196 --> 0:20:39.356 It wasn't only about science, he said. 0:20:39.276 --> 0:20:42.676 Space has so much to do with so many other applications, 0:20:42.716 --> 0:20:44.716 including a military application. 0:20:45.276 --> 0:20:47.236 What he meant by that became clear. A year and 0:20:47.276 --> 0:20:47.996 a half later. 0:20:48.436 --> 0:20:51.436 We're gathered here in the Rose Garden to establish the 0:20:51.516 --> 0:20:54.316 United States Space Command. 0:20:54.676 --> 0:20:55.476 It's a big deal. 0:20:56.476 --> 0:21:01.596 Spacecom will soon be followed very importantly by the establishment 0:21:01.676 --> 0:21:07.316 of the United States Space Force as the sixth branch 0:21:07.996 --> 0:21:09.996 of the United States Armed Forces. 0:21:12.876 --> 0:21:17.276 Space isn't so much the next frontier as the next battleground, 0:21:17.796 --> 0:21:21.236 and Elon Musk and his dream of a multiplanetary civilization 0:21:22.076 --> 0:21:26.836 that is being funded by American taxpayers. SpaceX and Space 0:21:26.916 --> 0:21:32.076 Force are two sides of the same bitcoin. SpaceX's military 0:21:32.116 --> 0:21:36.436 projects have included manufacturing missile tracking satellites and new rockets 0:21:36.436 --> 0:21:40.236 for Space Force, and developing a rocket capable of delivering 0:21:40.276 --> 0:21:45.516 weapons anywhere in the world. By twenty twenty four, SpaceX 0:21:45.556 --> 0:21:50.316 had received nearly twenty billion dollars in government contracts. Trump 0:21:50.396 --> 0:21:55.076 vowed to increase that funding. We approached SpaceX for a response, 0:21:55.356 --> 0:21:57.956 but at the time of recording we hadn't received a reply. 0:22:01.036 --> 0:22:05.556 There is a politics of space lately, it looks less 0:22:05.596 --> 0:22:08.916 like the politics of star Trek, a JFK style new 0:22:09.276 --> 0:22:12.796 tier of exciting science and good government, then like the 0:22:12.836 --> 0:22:17.596 politics of star wars, of swaggering generals and imperial death stars. 0:22:18.396 --> 0:22:22.316 There's also something of a party politics of space, and 0:22:22.396 --> 0:22:26.436 in the US it's been generally Republican and conservative. This 0:22:26.636 --> 0:22:29.316 was true long before Musk became a Trump supporter and 0:22:29.396 --> 0:22:33.196 the GOP's most generous donor in the Senate. The race 0:22:33.236 --> 0:22:35.956 to space was, for a long time most fiercely endorsed 0:22:35.996 --> 0:22:40.876 by the Texas Senator and one time presidential aspirant Ted Cruz. 0:22:41.556 --> 0:22:44.636 No longer is space just an uninhabited void or a 0:22:44.676 --> 0:22:45.716 scientific novelty. 0:22:46.116 --> 0:22:49.076 That's Cruz in twenty nineteen, sharing a hearing on the 0:22:49.116 --> 0:22:53.476 emerging space environment. Cruz grew up reading the science fiction 0:22:53.676 --> 0:22:57.436 of Robert Heinlein, a noted libertarian and author of The 0:22:57.516 --> 0:23:01.476 Man Who Sold the Moon. Heindline's estate awards the Heinland 0:23:01.516 --> 0:23:05.676 Prize for Space commercialization. Both Musk and Bezos have won it. 0:23:06.236 --> 0:23:10.636 By some estimates, the space sector grow to nearly three 0:23:10.916 --> 0:23:16.436 trillion dollars in value in the next three decades alone. 0:23:16.716 --> 0:23:19.996 It is also my belief that the world's first trillionaire 0:23:20.996 --> 0:23:21.996 will be made in space. 0:23:22.876 --> 0:23:26.516 One purpose of Space Force is to protect the space merchants. 0:23:26.996 --> 0:23:29.676 Bernie Sanders wasn't the only person on the left to 0:23:29.756 --> 0:23:34.636 notice the ironies here this daggering inequalities. In twenty nineteen, 0:23:35.116 --> 0:23:37.836 Trevor Noah, the mixed race South African who hosts the 0:23:37.916 --> 0:23:41.156 Daily Show on Comedy Central in the US, pictured Elon 0:23:41.276 --> 0:23:43.396 Musk bringing colonists to Mars. 0:23:43.756 --> 0:23:45.396 You gotta admit it would have been kind of funny 0:23:45.436 --> 0:23:48.236 if Elon Musk waited until they landed on Mars to 0:23:48.316 --> 0:23:50.516 be like, oh, I forgot to mention you are my 0:23:50.636 --> 0:23:51.596 space slaves. 0:23:51.716 --> 0:23:55.516 Now get to work building my base, because then uralize 0:23:55.516 --> 0:23:58.596 all those rich white people would be slaving away on 0:23:58.676 --> 0:23:59.716 the Martian fields. 0:23:59.836 --> 0:24:01.956 They'll be singing their old Caucasians virtuals. 0:24:02.156 --> 0:24:06.236 Trevor Noah tied race to space, but they got tied 0:24:06.276 --> 0:24:09.636 together again in twenty twenty, After George Floyd was killed 0:24:09.676 --> 0:24:14.196 in Minneapolis on May twenty fifth, a Monday, protests began 0:24:14.276 --> 0:24:17.916 in Minneapolis that night. By Wednesday, they'd begun to spread 0:24:17.956 --> 0:24:21.756