Thursday: Two Change Makers

Morning Change Makers, 

In this morning’s briefing, I have two Change Makers to tell you about. Incidently, both are to do with space and the survival of species.

Will

5 billion years ago dinosaurs were roaming the world. Velociraptors gliding through the skies, T’Rexs stalking the jungles, and Megalodons patrolling the seas. This planet had never known such biological might.

But civilisations are anything, if not fragile. Millions of years of evolution ended when a rock, 6 miles wide, struck modern-day Mexico.

Within weeks the world had been shrouded in a thick layer of smoke, plunging temperatures to uninhabitable conditions.

Humans

We, humans, like to view ourselves as biological exceptions: using our enormous brains to do and make things other species would never be capable of. 

Yet, like our Jurassic friends, we are equally vulnerable to the power of the cosmos. A meteor striking anywhere on Earth would reduce us to ash, just like it did the dinosaurs. 

However, we have one thing the dinosaurs never did: science. Through science we can manipulate the world around us, protecting, benefiting and perhaps one day, saving, our civilisation. 

AI 🤝 Meteor Detection

Last week a team of cosmic data scientists and physicists used the power of machine learning (AI) to detect over 27,000 meteors in our solar system, which up until his point had been unknown. Only a few years ago, one of these might have been plummeting toward us at galactic speeds, to our complete ignorance. We could have ended up being grouped with dinosaurs and be “just another species” that fell to the anarchy of the solar system.

The ability to spot these meteors is a game-changer in not allowing that to happen.

Detecting potentially dangerous meteors is one thing, but doing something about them is another.

Fortunately, like the advances we have seen in AI meteor detection, there have been similar advances in rocketry and weapon-guidance systems.

Here’s how we can combine all these technologies to divert a potentially civilization-ending meteor:

Step 1: A rocket armed with a nuclear warhead is launched aimed at the meteor, which has been detected using this new AI model.

Step 2: Nuclear warhead hits a meteor.

Step 3: An explosion of galactic proportions pushes the meteor off its path, ensuring it misses Earth.

(This might be the coolest use of technology ever.)

Long story short: Humans are really fucking smart. 

More resources:

1. What really Killed the dinosaurs (BBC)

2. More information on the specific of this AI breakthrough here

If you’re anything like me, simply looking up at the stars fills you with a sense of both wonderment and incredible insignificance. 

As the Asteroid piece above might confer to you, our existence is incredibly fragile, despite the fact we often behave as if it’s not.

Making life multi-planetary

To that end, I don’t believe there is a task more daunting or a mission more critical than getting humanity off our planet (perhaps besides that of saving our own).

Fortunately, I am not the only one who carries this thesis. There are people, far smarter than me, dedicating their entire careers to this. The mission: Make the human species multi-planetary.

But like all lofty goals, the devil is in the details. Step by step. Launch by launch, progress must be made. The urgency is clear: we don’t know how long we have left on this planet, so to ensure the permanence of our species we must get off Earth to avoid a single-event catastrophe.

To put into perspective how important this is, if you think take every ‘generation’ to be roughly 100 years (I know this is longer than average), it means the entire human existence is 60 generations long. That’s it. 60. We’ve been here for a blink of an eye on a cosmic timeline; our existence could vanish just as quickly as it was formed.

Becoming multi-planetary will be the single largest thing we can do to ensure our survival.

The Americans

To the credit of the Americans, NASA has done more for this initiative than any other entity. They are true Change Makers, having achieved feats most thought impossible.

But it’s time for them to read the writing on the wall and focus their efforts and importantly their money on where the real innovation is. They need to focus on the Change Makers of the 2020s and shed the skin of those stuck in the 20th century.

Boeing

Yesterday, NASA, under the flag of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Boeing, launched Starliner; Boeing’s module that should transport humans to low-earth orbit. This was supposed to launch in 2019, then 2020, then 2021….you get the idea. It’s been continually hindered by a series of software and hardware setbacks causing it to never make it off the launch pad. And to add salt to the wound, it’s come in $1.5 billion over budget.

(n.b. I wrote this paragraph on the weekend, expecting them to launch on Monday. But, as if it were written for me, they had to abandon the launch due to technical issues….)

And why?

Because NASA relied on Boeing, a company who have not only been going through the wringer with its aviation division in the last few years but has also had numerous failures in its space efforts as well.

Boeing is filled with so much bureaucracy and middle management that the company that once helped send people to the moon in 1969 can now barely get 2 people 0.00047% as far (yes, I ran the numbers).

I would personally feel more confident jumping in a rocket-propelled Mini Cooper captained by this guy than getting aboard a Boeing Spaceship.

To be (a Change Maker), or Not To Be

Being a Change Maker is not a “one and done” type thing. Boeing was one of the most admirable Change Makers of the 20th century, but they’ve become stagnant.

It’s time for NASA to invest in this century’s Change Makers, like Space X, Rocket Lab and Firefly.

NASA has advanced humanity’s off-Earth ambitions more than anyone else. They’ve inspired a generation of engineers, mathematicians and physicists to reach for the goal of extra-planetary travel, but to continue to do so they need to find partners who are pioneering the technology able to take the next great leap.

More resources:

1. Wikipedia page of Boeing’s Starliner (describes in detail all their issues)

2. YouTube video breaking down how SpaceX has outcompete Boeing

3. NASAs greatest achievements: