Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): It's okay.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I'm watching something like this.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Good job. Thank you.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Last time last time.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Alright. So this is going to be, as usual, completely different.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): our speaker tonight is going to be using his computer and his projector and this great big screen. So we're all going to get completely spoiled. At our next meeting we'll be looking at the little TV and going, but that's so small. So this will be nice but when he's done, and we have the usual questions and answer stuff.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Then we're gonna take this all down and we're gonna switch everything back to the normal setup.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So people on zoom. Be patient while we re every work everything up.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And so now, usual, as usual, Barb will come up and do her usual introductory thing, and mention things like.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Thank you to the Coal Creek Canyon Park and Rec for sponsoring us. Okay, yeah. Somebody in the back.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But George likes to listen. Yeah with headphones. Alrighty, you're up. So thank you for coming tonight and for also the people on zoom, and let me pass around some
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): April. Judy gave me a bad time for giving the one last month. That was just a couple of weeks. So this is next month and I don't think we'll be able to see it. But at 9 0. 3 tonight the space station is supposed to be flying over over in this direction, but with the clouds. I don't think we're going to see it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): so, but if you don't know about how to see the space station, it's spotthestation.nasa.gov, and I'll leave this back there in case you want to get that.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So we are thrilled to have here tonight, and Leonard and I know him really well, because we have gone to his conference at Colorado. School minds the space resources roundtable for about 10 or 15 years. Something like that. And it's so inspiring, and we just wanted him to come here and and share this with you
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): also. I wanted to say so he's going to speak first, st and then we have a number of people who are going to share information slides and amazing Aurora pictures from Clark and Y, who aren't here. But john Williams will pull those up, and then they'll be able to talk to us a bit about that. They went to Norway, northern Norway.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and saw the auroras and ice sculptures, and all sorts of things anyway. Then our next meeting will probably be May 3, rd and we have Andy Aldrin Buzz Aldrin, son, who's committed to come and talk to us, and that will be sort of general about space and commercial space. And he's a really good speaker, too. I think you'll really enjoy it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So let's see, do you want me to?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And you know, answer this. Okay.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): so do you have? Do you want to talk a bit about yourself? Or do you want me? Yeah, yeah. School minds. And we did have. If you were here. I think it was about a year ago last December. One of his students, Anastasia
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Stephanova, was here and gave a talk about her. You know she wants to be an astronaut and some of the training she's gone through in isolation and simulated missions
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): they also have a really nice sandbox down there. It's with lunar soil. Leonard and I actually haven't seen it yet. But 1st June conference we'll be down there, and I think I'll just turn it over to you to.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): you know. Ex, explain all about these space resources, and we've got people who will say, Why is this important? Why is this important? Thank you so much, Barbara. Really, I appreciate your introduction and the unique opportunity to be at this beautiful place of Cold Creek, Andy
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and be able to interact with the sky watchers here. I was so excited to come that I decided to look. I'm going to take the road from where I live, which is downstream of
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Poult Creek Canyon, in Louisville, and I decided to come along along the the the creek all the way up, and then all the way up to get into here. So it was a fantastic ride, beautiful and what would be my surprise that coming up the creek
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I saw this sign welcoming me, for the that was fantastic. I like I had to stop. This is fantastic. It was beautiful. The sun was there it was. It was great
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): at this place, where I'm sure when you go out you get to enjoy this beautiful.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): beautiful night sky, packed with stars, especially in the wintertime. And especially now today, if we had had the chance, you know, weather permitting, we would have seen exactly this view around 9 30, which is the time of which we would have gone out and and take a look at it. And what we would have seen.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Probably you're so familiar with with winter sky. We would have seen some visitors, some wonders, some planets. We have 2 of them that you can see with your naked eye you got Mars.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and you got Jupiter, and then, probably with a small telescope, you can see Uranus, so that will be fantastic. But, as you can see, they're right. They're surrounded by some of the brightest star in the night sky. Let's take a look at them, and they're in the asterisk. They call it the the Winner Circle, or the winter hexagon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): because you can form an hexagon with different sites, and and the different sites
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): are connected with those bright stars. So let's take a look at some of them. We got, for example, Polyps, one of the twins on the constellation Gemini. That's where we start, then we go to Capella in the constellation or region which is the chariot. Here, then, we have the eye of the bull Aldebaran on Taurus, which is my zodical sign.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Then we go to Rigel, which is one of the feet of Orion, which is beautiful these nights, then we have the brightest sky, the brightest star in the sky, serious with the the big dog, and even the small little puppy contributes the with cosine. And so if we wear out. We were actually able to see the the beautiful hexagon there. But I think it may or may not be possible. Who knows but the thing is.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): no matter what. When you're here in Cold Creek cannon, you get to enjoy this beautiful night sky, and I'm sure all of you are enamored with it. And you're also very fond of learning about exploration of the heavens. Obviously we can get to these places either by telescopes or spacecraft, and so I also love astronomy and all those types of things. But I'm here tonight to give you a different perspective of space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I'm here to see how is that we can
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): look at at this space, not just because of its beauty or the mysteries that it holds, but because of the value that it represents for the future of humankind and for future space exploration.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So I'm here to talk about the topic of resources beyond Earth, and how they will allow us to enhance exploration, to do more than we have been doing in the last 60 years. Travel further, larger payloads be able to stay on planetary bodies. But at the same time, from a practical point of view, how they're going to contribute to what we call now the new space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So that will be my, my, my topic tonight.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So let's get started with a planetary body that all of us are very familiar with, and that is planet Earth, in which natural resources have been the driving force behind exploration, but also the means to do so. And now they're an integral part of our lives, our society, and our economy. They have allow us to do all sorts of things. And let's see what we can learn from natural resources on Earth as we start looking at resources beyond Earth.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So before we go into the future or into space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): let's actually go back in time. Way way back.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): let's say a hundred 20,000 BC.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And let's meet our ancestor, the Homo sapiens at their cradle.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): the birthplace in southern part of Africa.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): where, as a result of drought and environmental degradation and population growth. They decided to leap to other parts of the continent, to Europe, to Asia, to Oceania, looking for basic survival water and food.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): They were not going into a scientific expedition, or to see what was on the other side of the mountain, or some of these romantic views that we have of our exploration. They were hungry and they were thirsty.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and that's what they did. But in the process, and you will see the analogy of what's going to happen in space? They were able to conquer some technologies, how to control fire, how to preserve food, how to come out with tools, to live an ever more extreme environment and extreme temperature.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Then, 15,000 years later, when we crossed into the Americas, it was time for the 1st economic revolution that was agriculture that allow us to finally settle and be able to store food and store energy.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): 6,000 8,000 to 86,000 years ago we started mining and and doing metallurgy which allow us to now look at resources for different uses.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): jewelry, religious objects, the 1st coins that were minted with electron, which was an alloy of gold and silver in Turkey around 650 BC.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Then, in the 15th century, when we started venturing
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): to the oceans, and we were bold enough to leave then the driving force behind that was for trade resources like silk and spices and gold and silver that allow us to then go to some of the most extreme places on the planet.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and the search continue in the 19th century, looking for the main source of energy which is still our main source of energy, which is oil.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and the search for resources has continued unabated. In the last 25 or so years we have been looking for those obscure elements of the periodic table with strange names called the rare earth, which are now fueling our renewable energy, industry and our communications industry, too.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And we continue doing that in the last 5, 10 years it's been about that 3rd element on the periodic table lithium which is now powering the electrical revolution for cars and everything else. So, as you can see.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): resources have allow us to explore every corner of our planet, to live up the land in ever more extreme environment, and they have become the main engine of our technological society.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So what happened when we decided to go beyond the confines of Earth
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and to store space. Why did we go out there? Was it resources survival?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): In fact, it was a little bit of a survival story. It was the competition between the 2 superpowers of the day, the Soviet Union, the United States that wanted to prove their technological superiority. They wanted to gain the higher ground and be able to survive as the best as the most powerful country on earth.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But even when the race was over we continue exploring, and we continue doing it mostly for scientific purposes, gathering scientific knowledge. And we have done. We have sent probes to every planet of the solar system asteroids. We have even gone beyond the solar system, and we're interstellar spaces at this point.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But something happened on our way to heaven.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): We discover that space had value that actually could be useful to us, and like any human activity that starts from the point of view of curiosity or science, eventually we find some application that can be useful to human
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): to the point that we have become so tight to our space assets that I would tend to say that if we remove our space assets for half an hour it will bring civilizations to its knees. That's how tight we are. And this
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): practicality of space started with the very 1st telecommunication satellite, private sponsor, Telstar, 2 health star, one in 1962, that allow us to communicate real time between Europe and the United States. We we didn't have to wait for 2 or 3 days to to see the soccer match. We could actually see it real time. And what Telstar did was to utilize the 1st resource from Spain.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and that is simply location. The view from above. This is giving us the ability to have weather forecasting global communications, to pinpoint every point in the in the air and locate in the surface of the earth with extreme accuracy, and even monitor the health of our planet as we continue extracting resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Not only this is the 1st resource, but it's the only commercial use of space telecommunications, satellites account for an industry of about 630 billion dollars a year, as of 2024, and is predicted to go into the trillions by all sorts of studies.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But in order to get to this magnitude of economic growth, we're gonna have to use something more than just location.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And here we know that we have practically unlimited amount of resources in the solar system and beyond.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But here is important to make a few definitions before I go any further.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): A resource has value by its utilization. It's not just an element of scientific interest or curiosity. It has to have an application in order for an element to be a research, and there are 3 steps that one needs to follow. If you want to extract and utilize resources on Earth, Moon, Mars, or wherever we go. And these are the following.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): first, st you have to have a recoverable resource, which means, you know, your element with enough geological but also engineering, but economical, legal, environmental certainty that you know that you can go after this is on the mining or the oil and gas industry is what's called a proven reserve. You have to have that certainty. Once you do that, you have to have a technology to recover that's going to depend on the environment where you go the destination.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And 3, rd as important, if not more important, you have to have a customer. If there's no demand, it's not a resource.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): There's gold in the ocean in parts per 1 billion. But there's no customers for that precious element, because it's not economy. So you've got to have those 3 things. So what I'm gonna do in my presentation. I'm gonna go through these 3 steps. First, st identify, what are these potential resources? What are the technologies that we're developing right now as we plan to recover them, and then look at who are the potential people that are, or organizations that are interested.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now, this topic of space resources or space mining, as some people call it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You may. It may seem to you that it's new, and yes, it's been on the press for quite some time, but it's not new. It's been around for quite some time. This realization of the value of resources goes back, at least from the from the engineering and scientific point of view as back as the early 19 hundreds
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): with Konstantil Silkowski, which is the grandfather of rocketry.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): He was the one who was. He was a high school teacher, and at night he will go back to home. And he was both a dreamer and thinker, and he came out with this publication in 19 0 3, the exploration of cosmic space by means of reaction devices where he was thinking about how that we can escape Earth. And he came out with this beautiful simple equation called the rocket equation.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is the question that we still use for every rocket that you see up on the Cape, they all being governed by that simple equation. And the interesting thing is that he was able to see on that equation the value of space resources
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): just thinking about it. I mean, he was quite a quite a a a mind.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I guess he was tired of teaching high school in the morning, and that's why he started putting those type of things in at night. And so what he did. And you don't need to know much math. It's just delta V corresponds to the change in velocity that you have to impart in a rocket to get from one destination to the other, and it's depending on the mass of the rocket. Just let's look at it from that point of view, the propellant that you have. So he sold for mass.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and he was able to see that in order to get from one destination to another, the amount of mass of propellant goes exponentially to where you're going.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): so that really
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): he light up? And he said, This is gonna we. We may be able to get out from Earth, but it's going to be really hard to travel to large to long distances.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): He even talked about it in a Science fiction book. If you're Science Fiction Lovers, you got to get this book. It's called beyond the Planet Earth, published in 1920, where he brings together scientists from all sorts of regions, Newton and Galileo and Kepler, and all those. And they're planning this mission to to outer space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But on that book he said the following, there exist
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): rich and inexhaustible source of material for establishing colonies beyond the Earth orbit. So he was able to see that in order that for us to start putting out even a simple base living, another planet or the moon, or do things in space. We are going to have to use the material that is available in space. We cannot bring it all from Earth just because of this simple equation.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): He was quite the thinker. He was doing this in 19 0 3. This is the same year in which we were barely trying to get off the ground with the Wright brothers, and he's already thinking about how is that we can get into space? That's the power of a thinker.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and we will see how his dreaming personality also comes through.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So all right, this idea has been around for quite some time. So let's start taking a look at what resources are out there besides location and knowledge.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The moment we cross the atmosphere, Earth, we're gonna find an environment that is really hard to replicate here on Earth
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): in space stations, you're gonna have ultra high vacuum. You have low gravity that allows us to make products that may have much better properties than the ones that you can find here on Earth. And in fact, this is happening as we speak. There's companies right now, company called, made in space that now is part of another company called redwire, that is actually building very high quality fiber optics that are much better quality, much better bandwidth that you can find here on Earth.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Just last month a company that is trying to use what's called bio printing. Use 3D. Printing of
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): bone implants or implants for this one, for example, for problem with nervous, the nervous system and the like, and they may be even who knows in the future may even make organs out of this if you happen to be on Mars or somewhere else. So this is the value of these properties on on lower orbit. Then we have solar energy unlimited, one photons that can serve yes, to power spacecraft. But think what we can do
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): if we could capture this energy in orbit and be able to collect it in hundreds of collectors, beam it down to earth in microwaves
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): so that they can be collected in retainers. This is called space, based solar power 24, 7. Without worrying about clouds or anything else. It's such an important component that has been around for 40 years on an idea. But now it's starting to make some sense. In fact, Europe
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): once Ukraine was invaded, and they started having problems with oil and all that, they started saying, Well, what's going to be part of our 2050 net 0 strategy and space-based solar power was included. You can see that in several plans in Germany and Uk in which they're considering this as part of the net 0 study to probably even a 50%. If by that time we can be, we're able to do this in an economic way.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): In fact, it's so important that China launched the 1st journal on Space Solar Power and wireless transmission about 2 years ago, and China is already testing the the assistant, collecting the energy and also testing the conversion into microwave. So this is an important, an important part. And these are just the intangible resources
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): people talk about space mining. Remember, it's not just mining these things that you don't even mining. But they're resources. Anything that is useful outside. Even recycling, is an important part. So these are just intangible resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now to now extract and utilize resources more concrete. We're gonna have to start traveling.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So fasten your seatbelt because we're going to go into a little bit of a trip to destinations to look for resources. So let's start with going to our nearest celestial neighbor. Let's go to our moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The moon that when we got there in the late 19 sixties. There was not much there was
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): identify as of use. In fact, if you listen to the recording of the second man on the moon. When he stepped out of the moon or landed, he looked around, and he called this magnificent desolation.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is a simple phrase that captures this duality of looking at space from the point of view of science, of beauty, and the other one from practicality. Yes, it's magnificent. And you can see actually our planet from there, but from the practical point of view it was desolation, no oxygen to breathe, no water to drink, no food, no cows, no wood, nothing that could be of use to us.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But this view of the moon has changed radically since then.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): because we have had 1st of all several spacecraft going around doing what's called remote sensing, being able to sense from the distance what could be potential elements of interest? We actually have material from the moon that we brought with different missions. The Apollo missions were able to bring up to 382 kg
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): the lunar missions from the Soviets. Robotically, they brought a little bit, but from different locations the Chinese were able to bring but 1.7 kg from another interesting region of the moon that we're going to talk about. And even from the far side. Just recently they brought a couple of kilogram. So wow! Now we have a much better idea
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): of what potential resources can be on demand, that have turned magnificent desolation into a place that could have very important elements for a variety of applications.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And so let's take a look at what what those elements could be. Now, in order to understand this, we have to understand a little bit about the formation of the moon and the geological process that gave rise to these resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The most accepted theory at this point or hypothesis, is that the moon was created with a large impact. This Mars, like planet called Theia, impacted the earth a very high impact and material from that planet, and from the moon just combined, and spell all these materials that then accreted and formed the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): this molten ball of lava that later on became the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and there you can see how this material came out. But then what happened afterwards is what's going to tell us how these resources are distributed geologically.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I can. You know, there's probably a whole course in in terms of how the moon evolved. But what I'm gonna do is I'm going to shrink
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): 4.5 billion years of geological evolution into 1 min.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Okay, so turn off your phones. Don't. Don't go to the restroom. Don't start testing anybody because you're gonna meet Miss millions of years. Okay? All right. So we're gonna go. We're gonna start with a moon. That is a molten ball of lava all right. And then we're gonna see how this evolves in 4.5 billion years in just 1 min.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So here we go. We have a molten ball of lava that starts crystallizing, and it forms the crust a very thin crust, and now you have a very smooth, nice surface, beautiful, intact, and then boom! It gets hit by a large asteroid that forms the south pole akin basin, one of the largest impact craters in the solar system, and then you have a period of what's called heavy bombardment. You have this asteroid hidden the moon in several parts and forming this big
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): impact craters that that break the crust. And with that you have material that starts coming out on a period of volcanism.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And now this lava starts filling these impact craters. And you start seeing the dark spots where you can see the man on the moon or the rabbit, and it's still smooth. But then there's a second period of impact that now starts poking the moon in every place, and then about a billion years go by and nothing happens. And we turns out to be the moon that we see tonight in the night sky.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is our moon, and these are the most important processes. Remember that big impact crater that you have the large, heavy bombardment period, and finally, the intermediate bombardment period. And that's going to explain where the resources are on the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So what happened after 4.5 billion years. We have 2 sides of the moon, the near side and the far side.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now remember, all of you here, from what I've gathered are experts, but if you don't know much about the moon, remember, it's the far side. It's not the dark side of the moon. I can guarantee you that it's enough light in both places 2 weeks at a time.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And the reason for that is because of this very unique property of the moon. Let's say that's the sun right there. This is the earth. This is the moon. The moon rotates one revolution per month around 28 days, but that revolution corresponds also to a revolution around the earth. So at the same time that this one is rotating, and we're seeing here the near side of the moon with plenty of light.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is the far side of people. Call it the dark side. But let's see if it's dark, starts rotating.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and, as you can see there's plenty of light here, even though we don't see it, but we always see this side of the of the of the moon. So
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): yes, we only see that one, but it's the far side, not the dark side, so
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): we may think it's the dark side, because we don't see it. But there's also been some cultural elements that have influenced our thinking.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I remember when I was in high school.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): one of the greatest albums from the greatest rock bands came out. If you have not listened to that album and we have some young people in the room, please listen to it. It's fantastic. The problem is that these things stuck on my mind the dark side of the moon, and so it took a while. Then there was novels and all sorts of things talking about the dark side of the moon. And that was the problem. But remember, it's the far side. Okay.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): because the near side is the one that we see. The one we we have communications is where most of the exploration has happened. You have Apollo, you have China, you have the Soviet Union. The Indians landed on the South Pole just a couple of years ago. Then we started having others, Japan very close to Apollo. 11
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): then commercial companies started attempting to do this the same thing, and we have intuitive machines both. I am one and the one from a few weeks ago. I am 2. That
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): sort of landed on the South Pole. They made an intent, but then we had the very 1st successful landing of a spacecraft near Mara Christen, which is the Blue Ghost for Firefly, that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): hopefully, I'm sure all of you were able to see the beautiful images and the light. But just for the heck of it, let's actually watch the last few moments of the landing of Firefly on the surface of the moon. So what you're gonna see is the surface of the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Al Khan, chief engineer on Ops.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Y'all suck the landing.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Whoa!
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You've got a company with a meager budget
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): where only big space agencies could do that before, and landing several payloads, one of them from one of your members right here that operated on them, you know. Let's give them a round
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and functioning nicely. This is an incredible achievement. And and I cannot tell you how excited we are about that, and I get carried away. So let me just keep going.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yes, hopefully, he can come back at some point and tell us exactly what he found, because he's listening and looking inside the moon way, way, way inside of the room. So that's a fantastic achievement. So
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): this is where we are.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The far side has been a little bit forgotten, because it's hard to get there. You don't see it. There's no communications, but the Chinese have landed there.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and not once, but twice and landed on a region. Remember that big impact at the beginning of the moon, the South policing basin, because that's 1 of the most interesting regions scientifically, because that's where a material was exposed. But, as you will see, it's also an important region for resources. So the Chinese know how to do things. They land on areas
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): or large in scientific interest, but they're going to be potential of use in the future. And they were able to not just have a lander. They have a rover, and they were able to
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): show us the 1st beautiful panoramic view of an area that we'll never going to be able to see with our own eyes unless we're there. That's the the far side of the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And so this is where we stand. At this point.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): in terms of the near side of the file. So now let's start looking at potential resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Let's 1st take a look at the ones that are coming to both the near side and the far side.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): One of them believe it or not, even though the moon doesn't have an atmosphere. It's got plenty of oxygen. 45% of the moon is oxygen. Where is the oxygen
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): water? Where water is it in the water? It's an oxygen. It's oxidized.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Very good, very good. That's where it is. So you just have to heat it up, and the oxygen will come out. We also have plenty of silicon, which is great for the semiconductor industry, but that's where the commonalities and in terms of the elements being on both sides
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): for other elements. We're going to start looking at some of the geological features and how it evolved. I'm not going to get into details. Let me just talk about the main features that you can see with your own eyes right there, one.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): There's a region called the Maria
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that dark spots the the rabbit on the moon, the man on the moon. It was called like that by Kepler, because Maria is a Latin seas. He thought they were oceans.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): He was sort of right, because at some point. There were oceans of lava there. So not bad. And this is where you have volcanic material basalting material.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The rest is about 83% of the moon is what's called the Terra, the Highlands. This is the primordial crust of the moon that's been there for billions of years, just exposed to all this erosion by asteroid north acidic material. And this is where you start seeing the differences between the 2 in terms of resources. For example, iron that is so important for all of our industry here on earth, mostly concentrated on the near side on the Maria.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But look at the place where the Chinese landed. You know, there's significant amounts of iron right there. So not a bad place to land.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Titanium. That is important for the aerospace industry, also highly concentrated on the near side, with a few spots on the south pole aching basin.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now the moon has this creepy side to it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Creep
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): with a K that stands for potassium, rare earth, and phosphorus, which are also very important elements. This is a region that that remained liquid, while the rest of the moon was crystallizing.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): because also it has some radioactive material. It has uranium and thorium. In fact, this is a map of thorium, and that locates that region. And in fact, this is the other region where the Chinese landed and where they got material and brought it to earth. So again, very important and strategic places where to go.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now, if you're in in the mining business, once you identify potential elements, the 1st thing you have to do is to crash the rock.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You have to drill blasted so that you can pulverize it, and then be able to extract the material. Luckily
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): nature has done some work for us already, because the moon has been bombarded for billions of years. First, st no comets.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): asteroids, meteorites, micro meteorites, and in the process these rocks, when they have impacted the the surface of the moon. What they have done is is crush the bedrock that existed and kept completely pulverize the material, so that what we have now is this very fine dust all over the surface of the solar of the of the of the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And this is what's called the lunar regolith. Is this artificial material that you find on the moon, and that's why you see the footprints of the astronauts on the moon. You don't see them working on rocks. You see them working on this very fine dust that has been produced over billions of years of being bomb bodied.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): It has an an average particle size of about 70 microns. So it's extremely fine.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and it's it's it's it's in the uppermost 10 meters or so has been accumulated by a process called gardening. You know you garden it, but with micrometer. And so you have all this fine material.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now, this is the material that actually is so important that this is where we're going to find the most important resources. This is the material is ready to go. It's fine, and you can start processing it, although it's a little bit different from what we find on Earth.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is terrestrial sand. This is sand that you can get up to in concrete right here, nicely rounded pebbles, erosion by water and by wind totally different from what you find on the moon, which you can see this glassy material, this material with jagged edges, extremely abrasive glutenates that we're going to have to deal with them because they're going to eat up any machinery that you have. If you ingest this your lungs are going to be.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): They're apart completely. So you're gonna have to watch out. So it's very different. But
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): this is the material that we have
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): now. The moon has been not only been bombarded by micrometeorites and asteroids, and the like, but also has been bombarded by solar wind. These are particles that come from eruptions from the sun, and because the moon doesn't have a magnetic field, they're just getting planted on the surface of the moon. We don't have that on earth because we have a magnetic field.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So, in fact, this lethal radiation that comes from Earth, we actually look at it from a very romantic point of view. You can see the Aurora realities, and somebody's going to talk about this beautiful greens and reds. But this couple doesn't know is that we didn't have a magnetic field that will be fried in an instant. So something to think about when we start thinking about having a base or a settlement on the moon, where you're going to have lots of these radiation.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But this radiation is good for other things it has implanted. I mean the moon has its own resources, but it has implanted volatiles in there, and some of them quite important hydrogen, helium, nitrogen carbon. This may be only the few sources of carbon and nitrogen that we have on the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): There has been also an element that has been identified that exists in larger
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): amounts on the moon that on earth. And I was talking to Bob Green today about that. And that is Helium 3. It's an isotope of Helium. Just remove one of the nutrients that you got this thing that started causing attention after Apollo 17 by Astronaut Harrison Smith. That said, You know, this is a really good source of fusion, energy.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): not fission, but fission, which means you can have 2 particles of helium, 3. You bring them together. They generate electricity directed with protons, and the waste is helium, not radioactive. This is stuff that you can breathe and talk funny or or use it for balloons, but it's clean
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): now it caught a lot of attention and a lot of fuss bus fusion. Yep,
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but then disappear a little bit. And then new technology came about to the point that now people are already looking again to Helium. 3. Why? Because they're using quantum computing, medical equipment defense applications. So there are 2 companies now that are looking about going about helium 3. But still
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): fusion is not been invented. Look at the amounts parts per 1 billion. This is a tiny little nothing of Helium 3. So you're going to have to mine or extract a lot of material in order to get reasonable amounts. But who knows? People are talking about quantum computing centers on the moon, where you can have extreme temperatures, so the future will tell us what's happening.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Other resources, unlimited location.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): How about lava tubes.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): lava tubes on earth are these geological features with lava flowed, and then the upper part solidified, and you form these tubes. Same thing got found on the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You can see here, where lava flowed at some point, and then the the roof was exposed of the the roof of this part by by impact from asteroids that allow us to see inside these places that can become a place where you can store equipment or even have humans down there at a reasonable average temperature. So location, it's important. We we may actually go back to the caves when we actually. But you got to start somewhere.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): all right.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): How about that element that we always look for wherever we go as humans?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Well, there was not much hope to find water on the moon, because the moon has this interesting property that is tilted just one and a half degrees towards the sun, not 23 degrees that we have here on earth. So in a typical day and night cycle on the moon, all the face of the moon is exposed, so any hope that water could be in the surface and have it there as a gas or liquid literally evaporates.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But this brings up a point that the rays of the sun are so oblique on the poles.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): In fact, if you're in the South Pole, where everybody wants to have a base
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): psychologically, it will be a very depressing place to be because you've seen the sun up and down the sunrise sundown. Do I go to bed? Do I wake up Long Shadow? But that's where we want to go, and we'll see why.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So scientists started thinking, Well.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): if we have those oblique regions, could it be that we have these very deep craters
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that have never, ever seen the light of the sun for billions of years that can store water coming from
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): comments, or ask rules that are going to these regions are extremely cold. We're talking about 40 degree, Kelvin. So that like, let's let's take a look at one of them. For example, this is a typical day and night cycle. Let's check this out. For example, it has some light, but this part here is completely the darkness. It doesn't matter.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): goes up round and around and around, so
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): there may be a possibility that water ice is there. So several missions were sent to check this out and look at this very
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This happens to be the South Pole. So there were different missions. Clement time. In 1994 lunar prospector in 1999, India's with an infrared spectrometer and the lunar reconnaissance orbiter. They carried different spectrometers, neutron spectrometers in which they got signals. They were able to see signals of water or hydrogen, or, oh, radical, something that looked like water.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So this is remote, sensing, mind you.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but the signals were strong enough that they say we might as well look to see if that's the case. Now, what these missions were able to give us 1st of all is to find another important element again, which is location.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And so they were able to find that indeed, both in the South Pole and North Pole you have these permanently shallow ridges
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): or Psrs. But as important as historic place are the rims of these craters that were named a very
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): romantic and poetic thing called Peak of eternal life. This was a French
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): scientists that call them. It's going to be light forever. Well, not necessarily, but about 90 0% of the time you have light. You don't have to wait for 2 weeks of darlings and 2 weeks of light. You have plenty of light, you have power, you have communications with earth. And that is why you see all these all these countries, the Us. And China and us and the Indians, and everybody wants to have a base on the moon, because they want to be on those high peaks. So
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): real estate becomes very important here. Yes, the moon is big, but these are prime real estate, and that's where we want to go. And these are places that we will see later, in which not only we have communications and power, but we can beam down that energy and maybe use that to extract some of the water that is there. I'm going to explain that later.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): All right. So these were some of the signals that came out from all this is a neutron count of potential of hydrogen. So the idea was all right. We're seeing this from a distance. How about just going in and touching it? Geologists and mining people want to go and touch to see if the real thing is there. So that's what we did. Exactly. So they looked at. Where is the most stronger signals coming? Let's see, cabaos. All right, let's go and hit Cabeos, and let's see what happens.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And so this mission, called Lcross did exactly that.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This mission, the mission that sent the lunar reconnaissance order, then, later on the upper stage separated that white one from the second one, and it was sent to Cabellos at the highest speed possible kilometers per second, and it hit it so hard that a plume came out. You can see here this cloud in which the second spacecraft was able to see in there, and was able to determine that indeed, there was some content of water anywhere from 3 to 8%,
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and not just water all sorts of different materials that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that could be bad because there could be contaminants. If you want to drink this water
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): well, your breath is not going to be very nice with hydrogen sulfide. Then you got mercury. You got magnesium, you got ammonia, but look at it from the point of view of resources. This may be great sources of nitrogen of carbon. If you want to do methane or whatever you want to do. So it cuts both ways. But we need to go inside and do more work. This is the only data point that we have which is not enough.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So what we have right now the view is that.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): indeed, in these permanently shallow regions.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): let's take a look at the South Pole. There exists, some water ice that has been detected in in this region which is, let's call it the Arctic Circle of of the month.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): That may be of potential use. But again, this is from remote sensing and one data point.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but that has not stopped
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): engineers and scientists and commercial companies to try to to estimate how much water there is. So the estimate right now is that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): it's about a hundred 1 million to a billion metric tons of water.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): 1 billion metric tons of water.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Whoa!
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): What is that? Is that? An Atlantic ocean, a Pacific ocean, a a lake. Any guess
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): one of the lakes but the tiniest lakes of all the Lake Saint Clair. That's the amount of water that you have on the moon. And actually, let's put it in in Colorado water measurements. It's about 2 to 3 Lake Dillards. So you would say, well, that's not much water. But remember, if you're thinking about water for humans.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): humans can recycle up to 95%, we're doing that on the space station.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So that's not an issue.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But how about water that we can split into hydrogen and oxygen, and that can give us fuel
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): if we do that. And you made the calculation that will be enough hydrogen and oxygen to fuel
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): one shuttle launch
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): per day for the next 2,200 years. So not bad. Now, mind you, these are rough estimates, and you're going to use it all, which is really hard, but at least tells you there's a possibility that we can use this for propellant, and use it not only in the moon, but somewhere else, as we will see in a moment. So this is where we stand. So these are the elements that we have on the moon. You got metals, rare earth volatiles, and the like.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and let's keep going. Let's not stop on it. Let's actually catch up with these amorphous rocks that are floating all over the solar system. The asteroids
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that fluctuate from anywhere about a meter to even kilometers series which is a dwarf planet, as you can see, you go from this irregularly shaped, more and more towards a more historical one. As your gravity starts going up and you start becoming more of a planet. But most of them are those small rocks.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and these are the rocks that probably you learn in high school that they're very well behaved. They're in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, but nature doesn't behave that way. Sometimes there impacts their resonance and they end up all over the solar system. You may see the skies as peaceful rocks all over the place, and some of them are trapped in orbits very close to the one that the sun has around this the earth has around the sun. So this is the earth going around the sun, and all these dots
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): are what's called near Earth objects that are trapped asteroids there, that they're they're interesting because they're closer to the main belt. So why not go there to extract a resource.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But let's take a look at the potential resources on asteroid.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And this is how they're classified people that are in the asteroid science. They have a classification like 30 of them.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But from the point of view of resources, I'm going to mention just 3 important ones. And this is the spectrum. These are the way that we have characterized them from observatories, from the ground or orbital. And these are the 3 important types you got the type C
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): called C, because carbonaceous. And this is for Bennu. As you know this, we actually went there, and we have a sample from Bennu from the science recognition. So they had carbon, but also they have up to 20% water. And these are some of the findings actually, that were found on not just bennu, but real the S types
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): like Irokawa, that these are the stony objects in which you start seeing some important metals, Nitel, nickel, and and iron.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and then you have the metallic types that we have not visited. There's a mission right now called Psyche that is going. This is what we know about Psyche now, and it's going to go there. And now you start seeing things like noble metals, the platinum, green metals, platinum, rhodium, iridium, and these are some of the important elements. So these are the 3 important classifications from the point of view of resource.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now, when you leave today, you're gonna say, I don't remember much of what he said, and I don't remember the classifications. What letters did he use? I'm gonna give you a tip very simple, and you will remember it forever.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): CSM. Colorado school of it's a shameless plug in advertisement, but
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I still bump into students 50 years from now, and I told them, do you remember the asteroid stack? Oh, yeah. Colorado School of Mines. So they may not know what they are anymore. But that's what they are. And so we know about them from spectral observations, but we also have this thing called meteorites, more than 55,000 that have fallen into our hands.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that away, and they some of them come from asteroids, and we may not.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): know exactly where they come from, but we we know what they are made of. In fact, I brought here one of the heaviest rockets that you can hold in your hands. This is a metallic type, or actually, they have a different classification, stony, stony iron. This is an iron mine, and then I have another one, which is one of the most interesting mirrors that you can find. It's a. It's a stony type.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): It's called the agenda.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): One of the most famous and most studied ones is one of the oldest pieces that we have in our hands. If you want to have antiques in your home, this is it 4.5 billion years. This is formed with material that was dust in our solar system some of the 1st metal, aluminum, and calcium you have. You can see inclusions there, and this is a fantastic piece of material.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): which is that one over there which I know is real and authentic, because I picked it up myself because I was born very close to where this thing fell in 1969, February first, st which was at the time which NASA was ready with chambers to look at the lunar samples, and that's why they studied this to death.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and so you're welcome to see it later on. All right. So we have the intangible resources. We have the resources from the moon all sorts of things, metals, rare earth and volatiles. Water. We have the 3 different types of asteroids. Type. Csm, now that you know.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Let's keep going a little bit more at least, and what we see that may be a place where we can extract and utilize resources in the next 30 to 40 years. So let's go to the Red Planet. And there was somebody from cheap Fpl here, there you go! There you go. Jpl has been probably the actually we have studied. We know more about Mars than we know about the moon, because we have all these spacecraft that have been going around gathering remote sensing. We have rovers
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): on all sorts of places that have allowed us to look at what Mars is made on the surface, and what we have found is that, like any body in the solar system, we're made of the same stuff. It's just that different geological processes accumulate this material. So yes, we have all the metals and the nonmetals that we find on the moon. But the interesting thing about Mars
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): is water
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): water that you can even see from here. I mean, there's there's water in the North Pole, the South Pole combined probably with some carbon dioxide. But it's right there for the taking. You don't have to go to these permanently shallow regions. You can see them. I mean, there's this European space agency that there's snow inside one of these craters called the coral and crater, the mission that we send Phoenix Lander just
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): barely scraped the surface, and you can find their water eyes a few centimeters below there.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Great. But this is if we're gonna have up 2 point humans on Mars. This is not great places to live. This is like going to the Arctic or Antarctica. Cold, dark.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So the consensus now, in terms of scientists and engineers is that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): if you're gonna have a a humans on mark, it's gonna be somewhere around 50 south and 50 north.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is our places where it's more benign for people to live. And if you look and compare these 2 to earth makes sense 50 north. It's like living in North Dakota. People live there. So why not? 50 South? It says, living in the bottom of Argentina and Chile, the Patagonia people live there. Why not? So that's a good place. So where can we find water on these places?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I mean, it's not obvious it's not there. But if you're around the 40 degree north or the 40 degrees south, you can actually find water right below the surface. This is an actual enhanced, visible image of a spacecraft flying by and seeing glaciers of ice a few meters below the surface, around 40 degree, north
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and south. Plenty of water there. If you want to live more in the equator, then water can come from what's called hydrated minerals. These are water that is locked in the minerals up to 20%.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): For example, this gypsum that can have up to 20% or something that is very common in Colorado place can have up to 4% or so of water. And if you're really thirsty, you can just pick up lunar Martian Regolith. And you got one to 2% of water. You're going to have to heat it up a little bit more than the others, but it can come out
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): now. Mars also has an atmosphere very thin.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but it has plenty of carbon dioxide, and once you have carbon, think about methane ethylene, hydrocarbons and plastics and everything that we do with carbon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So that's an important part. And let's not forget about these Moon Fogos and Demo Center that are hypothesized that they may be capture asteroid that may have some of the same component as type. C asteroid.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So there you have it. These are the different resources that we have found in the neighborhood. I'm not going to talk about Titan or Europa. That's a little bit far out. But these are just natural resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Believe it or not, we actually have human made resources in space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and that's all the junk and all the debris that we have said for 60 years that is floating around. We have spent a lot of money. Why, just let it burn in the atmosphere. Why not recycle the material, the aluminum, the titanium, and use it for structural materials for propellant. That's what's called recycling, which is actually a resource. So these are all potential resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Alright, you're looking at it. And you're saying, Okay, which space resources more value.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Well, let me ask, which space resource, do you think is more valuable? And let me give you some examples.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Noble, precious metals, medals.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): oxygen, water, polar power, helium, 3 location space debris who goes for noble and precious manner.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Nobody's really here. Oh, yeah, yeah. Somebody good. More valuable, to whom? Very good, very good. I'm going to go into that metals, iron, aluminum, titanium, somebody that deals with metals all day long. Oxygen.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yeah, yeah, we need to breathe. Okay, water. Yeah. Very good people are thirsty, we should give them a little bit of water solar power. It's getting cold. Yeah, very good location. Still, like the location, even for tourism that's going to be an important one, depending on the location you pick. Why.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): this one resource you can get where you can get them. All. Very good, very good space to breathe
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): perfect. Alright. So that's just like the gentleman said, and also back there.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is a tricky question, like everything. It depends. I didn't tell you if it's in the near term in the long term, if it's going to be use being brack to bring back to Earth or to use in space. So it all depends.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): If you think about bringing resources to Earth
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): really doesn't make sense. We have plenty of resources on Earth. We have barely scratched the surface. Maybe in the long, long term we start causing major environmental disaster. A lot of power too deep, maybe, but it really doesn't make sense. What about a use of their resources? Not here.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but in space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Think about this.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): We have sent hundreds or thousands of rockets to space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): every bolt, every nut, every satellite, everything that we have sent to Earth comes to space comes from Earth. We depend 100% from our planet to explore space, and that at some point doesn't make sense. That's not sustainable. Yes, we have achieved a lot by doing this, but at some point it's going to limit what we can do.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You look at a payload that goes to Pluto. You have this big rock, anyway, you end up spending is just this little instrument, because it's very difficult to send things from Earth. Why? Because this thing called gravity
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): gravity, that keeps us firmly on the ground that makes it so hard to sense things to space and so expensive.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Take a look at any rocket on launch pad. This happens to be the silent 5 that took us to the moon, but I don't care what it is could be. The Artemis rocket could be a spacex rocket. I don't care what rocket is there. If you look at it, 90% of that rocket is fuel
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): to send that other 10% with your satellite with your payload. And you're lucky because this is also takes into account the structure, the pumps. So you can. Probably you're lucky to send 2 to 4% of that. That's not an efficient way to send things to space. But that's all we have.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and it's not an economical proposition. Even with the largest economy. Scale the largest rocket. It costs about $5,000 a kilogram to send something to lower orbit. You want to go to the Moon 50,000. You want to go all the way to Mars
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): half a million per kilogram. This bottle was going to cost you about $250,000, so doesn't make much of a sense. And that's just material.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You want to say, humans multiply that by 10, because we are a very tough species to keep alive. In fact, I made sure to look this morning, because the price of gold has been going up heavily.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and I looked at the price of gold multiplied by my weight, and I'm literally, I am literally worth my weight in gold, just to send me to lower orbit.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So that is not a good thing. And you're going to say, my gosh! That's an exponential rising cost. Yes, exponential. Because remember our friend Constant, his rocket equation is an exponential equation. If you want to go from point 2 to 3. The amount of mass that you want to bring propellant goes up exponentially to the point that it just doesn't make sense from point of energy to point of economics and the like.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So when the question is which space resource is more valuable.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): it's not about bringing a thing to Earth. It's about
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): using the resources in space for space is the concept of living of the land. Don't bring with you all the propellant. Don't bring your bricks and mortar to make a base on the moon. Don't bring everything from earth. Use what you have. Look at that. We have plenty of material. Why, bring it with us. This is not the way we do it on Earth. Why do it in space? This is, we call it in our field in a very sophisticated way we call it in secret resource. It's just using resources on site.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And so when you start looking at what could be the most important ones.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): 1st and foremost is good old water.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): same element that we go after wherever we go. Why water not just for drinking, or for growing plants, or taking showers or or protecting yourself against graviation. Radiation is because you can split it into hydrogen and oxygen, which is the most energetic propellant that you can find. So think about what we can do if we now have the capability of having water
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): to use on the moon, hydrogen, and oxygen to be propelling from the moon. If you're able to propel yourself from the moon at 1 6 gravity, if you have the infrastructure, it will be cheaper to send the material to where the
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): A space station is which is going to be around 9 or 2 today. Which is just a few kilometers. It's more. It's less expensive, but to send it from Earth if you had everything ready, you can also put fuel stations that you can have it for refueling while you start going to places. You can start now using a developing, a propellant, refueling network in space. You can start refueling
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): spent spacecraft and even satellites in your synchronous orbit. You can even bring water from satellites and putting on depots. And that's when you start developing a water economy in space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And that's just water.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Let's use the regular. It's right there for construction, additive manufacturing. These are plan plans from the NASA, from Esa. You can make tools. Spare parts from the material. Don't carry it with you.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You need a tool. It's a very expensive tool to bring to you.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So now that we have seen the potential resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now let's take a look at technology that is being now developed to recover. This is technology that is being demonstrated. So when we're ready to start the resource, we have something to do it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And this is where the concept of space mining comes in. Now, remember, space resources is a lot of things. Space mining is how you will extract things on Earth. We have been very successful mining because we have these, you know, huge trucks and everything. Because we have 4 things.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): We have normal gravity. That's the only gravity that we know. So we have designed things correctly. We know our terrestrial environment, our pressure or temperature. We have plenty of labor. We have plenty of power.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But are we gonna go to the Moon
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): or Mars? None of those things are going to be the same. Everything is going to change. So we have to adapt. You're going to have to adapt to 1 6th gravity, to 1 3rd gravity, to no gravity at all in asteroid.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): extreme vacuum, extreme temperatures, labor, as you can see up there. Not much labor. So we're going to have to go robotically power, solar power, maybe nuclear power. We're going to have to adapt our systems to do this. And so I'm going to show you a few technologies that we're using in all the different aspects of money for the value chain. What is that you do 1st in mind? Well, you do prospect
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): what is prospecting?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Exactly what happened here in Colorado in 1859. That's why we start. In fact, this is a picture in the early 19 hundreds of a gentleman
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): panning for gold in
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Clear Creek School of Mines is just around there. This is road 6 and that's the way that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): gold was discovered. The voice was spread around. Thousands of people came without doing proper explorations of some of them.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): They didn't make it. But that's how we populated our state because people came looking for gold and silver. That's what we're gonna have to do on the north. And in fact.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): we're doing that. We were about to do it. In fact. a few weeks ago, and we need to prospect because yes, we have water eyes. But
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): how's that ice on the moon? Is that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): ready to be shoveled in a crater? 100 water? Is it mixed with a little bit of dirty ice, or is it actually hard packed? And 4% of that only with ice regolith. And you're going to have to drill it very hard. We don't know.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So we had to do the prospecting.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And this
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): started or wants to be started with the 1st drill on the South Pole from the prime one mission that went into intuitive machines, and unfortunately.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): belt to one side. The drill worked fine, but it couldn't drill any, and the idea was the following.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and will be tried later. This is intuitive machines trying to land on the moon if everything would have gone well. This drill, called the Trident, made by Honeybee robotics, was carried on board, and then this thing called a massive spectrometer. Think about it as an instrument to just look for important elements, and the idea was.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): you're going to drill in stages. You drill 30 cm. Then you pull some of this material, and then you have the massive spectrometer looking at it to see what's on that 1st layer. Then you go down to 60 cm.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): probably having a different type of element, and then you start identifying it and then go down to a full meter and bring it out, so that then the massive spectrometer can look for those important elements, such as the one that I've been talking about 1st and foremost water, but also hydrogen and carbon dioxide and nitrogen. So that was the purpose of this mission.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): It may be flown again, but hopefully had flown in a different type of mission which is called the Viper Mission, Volatov's Investigating Border Inspiration Rover, which was canceled last year. But there's hope that it can be revived, because if it does.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): then you got to carry on board that trident drill. But now it can move, not just in one location. Now you can go down to the permanently shallow regions. You can drill in different spots to see the distribution, the concentration, and how does it look in different parts to get a better idea and mapping the prospecting on
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): excavation.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Now that we know what the material is, let's now excavate it, and this is an example of a instrument that has been developed doesn't look like anything that I show you that looks on a mining field. But it's made specifically for the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So razor. What he can do is excavate and transport of the same thing he can operate, and once it's gravity he has enough traction. He doesn't have any lubricants, because he's in a pure vacuum. They don't evaporate. They're completely robotic. You can have one or a swarm of this, and once goes wrong, then you can use this one. So this is the excavation system that may be tested in a couple more years on the surface of the moon, and it can also be done on the surface of Mars.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So once you excavate, then you have to extract, and here are different concepts again adapted for the moon. This is the thermal mining concept, as the word says, you mine with heat.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): you just redirect the rays from the rings of the crater the moment the moment the lunar regulate sees light or heat
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): for the 1st time in billions of years. It's going to start sublimating. It's going to go from a solid to a gas. It can be trapped or contained in a tent, then in a coal trap that can move back and forth from here to the electrolysis plant, you can extract the material. This is one of the concepts. There's others, but this minimizes the amount of drilling and the line.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Then let's go to manufacturing. Let's use the lunar regulator. So lunar regulate sintering. This is a technique in which here we're replicating, concentrating solar power on a lunar simulate. And what you can do is, you can not only extract the material, but you can melt it or sinter it, so you can start doing, you know, landing pads or roads or berms, or you can even move it around and do 3D. Printing of material just concentrated solar energy on the lunar regular
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and even construction.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): 3D. Printed habitats.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): a company that actually started building homes here on Earth, called Icon. It's a 3D printed homes. They can build your home like this in 48 h, and they have built entire neighborhoods. They started saying, Well, can we do the same thing on in space?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And the they started talking with NASA. And NASA said, You guys have a very forward thinking approach. Let's test it. And they did this on one of the hangers at NASA,
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and they use Mars regular, and they use one of the large 3D printers to build a habitat simulated habitat on Mars, so in a few days they were able to build this whole habitat there, and even put
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): a crew that lasted, that that lived there for a full year and simulated living on Mars in one of these 3D printed homes. So that's the idea behind using the regulars. What you have, and not bring with you the bricks and mortar, and be able to do it that way.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And speaking of Mars right now as we speak, there's this robot called Perseverance.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that is extracting for the 1st time. The 1st resource in space is ingesting carbon dioxide through a
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): a unit called moxi, and it's producing oxygen. So there's oxygen on the moon now being produced. If you go to the you go to Mars, you can breathe this oxygen
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): for 20 min, and then that will be it. But it's a demonstration, it's a demonstration. And and the thing is that if you can scale it up, you have oxygen, and it's being demonstrated.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So this is where we are in terms of the technology.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But who cares about it? Who is the customer? What is the demand for this?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Well, this is interesting, because just in the Us. Government.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): If you had come to us like 50 years ago, the only agency that was interested was Nas.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Because they could see this. It will lower cost lower risk. This could use this on the future. But things were moving slowly at that point.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but once things started picking up now, it's not just the Us. Government
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): is the United States Geological Survey that said we can do natural resources on earth. Why not do it on the moon? And don't trust me. Trust Learner David, which is here in the audience right there. So he knows things. And that's why the Us. Actually happens to be here in Colorado. He's interactive. Not only that the Department of Commerce started thinking, well.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): is there going to be commercial applications? We need to have our own space administration within the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy that is looking at a space strategy, nuclear power, solar power, fuel cells, even defense. The Department of Defense is looking at how to protect economics, assets, and even use these for their own purposes, how to move and refuel in space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So you can start seeing all this activity taking place. And, by the way, several of these are here in Colorado. So Colorado is playing from the point of view of the Us. Government a pretty big role and not just the government
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): aerospace companies starting in 2016 with one with which back then, was the largest Launch Provider United Launch Alliance in 2016. This is a key year for Spain resources, because United Launch Alliance says for the 1st time, I'm going to be a customer
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): if you can refuel my spacecraft in lower orbit, so that I can use it for my satellites. I'll take it I don't care where the water comes from the moon or asteroid, I'll do it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Then, Lockheed Martin followed with the concept of a lunar lander that will be refueled with hydrogen and oxygen, so it can be refueled on the Moon and other companies. Boeing and north of Grumman started talking about. Well, how about the fuel depots in space and not just
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): the traditional aerospace companies. The new spaces started coming around Spacex, offering to take us to the moon to take NASA to the Moon blue origin with a strange concept first.st But now that team up with Lockheed Martin, and they're working on a lunar lander. So now you can see all this activity in terms of aerospace companies. And, by the way, most of these companies have either headquarters or presence here in Colorado.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So we're going
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and it's not just the Us. Yes, a few years ago it was NASA, but in 2016, one of the smallest countries in the world.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Luxembourg launched an initiative to go after spade resources.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): seen it from the point of view of financial and commercial point of view. And once this happened, now we have Russia. We have other European countries. We have the Canadians, we have the Indians, we have the Japanese and the South Koreans and the Chinese, and the Uae and Australians, all of them involved in one way or another to use their expertise to see how can they get involved in the various aspects of identifying, extracting and utilizing resources. So we have done
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): from 2 countries in the 19 sixties trying to raise for the moon. And now we have different countries and companies all in this next space race for the moon. It is not just the large aerospace companies, or the big government is small companies that are now injecting themselves in what we call the space resources balance sheet.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): These are startup companies, medium sized companies, companies that have operated only terrestrial, not never in space. But now they're saying, I'm going to be the one prospecting I can be doing the drills. I can do the extraction. I can do all the infrastructure. We're going to need power communications transfer. And I can feel probably 4 of these different slides with the amount of companies that are now involved. And a lot of these companies are here in Colorado.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yes, I should have known that you were coming. That's why I said that I can feel Sierra Space will be in the next one. So now you're seeing that the the interest is from from space agency for countries, from from small companies, launch companies. So even
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): at some point there was so much interest that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): there needed to be some education about this. The realities of this, and not just the hype and all the material and all of the different news that are going around. So, even academically, Colorado is playing an important role. The School of Mines launched 7 years ago, the 1st program in the world, educating not just science and engineering, but economists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): on the field of spare resources and given the interest around the world. We started offering certificates, Masters and Phds, all of them online, because
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): it was people coming from all sorts of companies. They cannot move to Colorado, and we had to reach everywhere on the way to the point that right now we have about 148 students from 5 continents, 24 countries from all professions. You've got scientists, engineers, economy. We even have lawyers, too. And from all sorts of fields. Because the interest is, how can I be the person in my company that can know about this? Or I can form my own company.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): or I can participate on so great.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): They interest you from governments, from companies, from education. Now you may be asking at this point, this is great.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but this is legal.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Can I just set up operations on the moon, and asteroids extracting materials, sell it, make a profit.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): aren't there some trees? They're telling us
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): how to behave. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, signed by more than 117 countries. That very specifically said on Article one, the exploration and use of space shall be the common province of all mankind. Article 2 talks about prohibiting claims of national sovereignty. A country cannot own the moon, or cannot own an astery or the Moon Treaty of 1979, in which
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): just 19 countries sign it, because by then they say, Well, maybe there's something else. And so we gotta be careful and not just. Is it legal? Is it fair? Is it just a matter of the superpowers doing this and taking advantage? Or is the whole world, as it says on Article one can enjoy these resources. This is a very important question.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And so
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): things started moving very rapidly in terms of trying to not bypass the international trees, but try to see if we can do these resources. And the United States started with this in 2015 with the Us. Commercial space launch, Competitive Acts 2015, signed by Congress, by Senate, by the President, in which says very clearly that if you're a united citizen or a company, you are entitled to a resource that you can possess it, own it, transport it, use it, and sell it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): According to the international obligation.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): as soon as the United States did that Luxembourg the following year became the 1st European nation to offer a legal framework for space resource. Utilization, followed by the United Arab Emirates, and then by the Japanese in 2021. So these are countries trying to make laws on their own, to try to attract individuals and companies to work from their countries. But
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): this is just a few countries. And so there have been efforts to do this in a more global way. In 2016,
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): the the Hague in the Netherlands, the Hague's Pay Resources group brought 35 countries
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): developing countries underdeveloped countries that find saying, Well, how is that? Can everybody play on this and enjoy the the resources
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): their work was done in by 2019 that has gone to the United Nations. Then this has gone to the office of auditors. There's now a subcommittee in the United Nations of Space Resources that by 2027 is going to come up with its legal framework. But still some people think, or some countries think, that this may take a long time. Everything that goes to the United nations may take time. So they tried not to bypass, but to form clubs.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The United States started in 2020. For me the Artemis accords, and 9 countries signed an agreement of how we should behave. If we are in the mood we have to regulate the launches. Who's going to extract? Where are you going to do it? And this has grown tremendously almost every month. There's a new one right now. We have about 53 countries. There's on the weddings 53 countries that have signed up to the Artemis accord.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): but at the same time
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): got China and Russia doing their own club. The International Lunar Research station, and now they have up to 13 countries, saying, If you come to the moon and we play by our rules, then you're part of the club. So now you have 2 poles.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): you're seeing the same reflection of what's happening on Earth in space. And we're gonna have to be careful, because, we better communicate. This is very challenging if we don't have to avoid any conflict that may happen in space. So with that, what I have tried to do is give you an idea of how space resources
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): have a promise both for
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): for for a large amount of scientific discoveries in the next in the future.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): because we're going to be able to travel further, to have larger tables. We're going to finally be able to inhabit on the Moon or Mars. We can lower transportation costs, we can refuel in space, but at the same time not just scientific exploration. But how is that? We can increase the number of commercial activities and truly start incorporating space into our global economy.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): It will be up to all of us on Earth
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): to learn of what we've done here on Earth, how we have benefited from resources for thousands of years.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and try to do the same thing when we go to space, but also learn from all the bad things that we have done in the process of extracting resources, as you know.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): so hopefully, we can do it in space, in yes, in an efficient, in an economic way, but also in a fair, in a responsible, in a sustainable way, so that we can enjoy both the benefits of resources for science and for application, and that we can fulfill the dreams of those that came before us.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that we're able to foresee the value of Spain resources
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): like a good friend Constantine Silkowski, that was able to see in that beautiful, elegant rocket equation the value of spare resources, and was able to not put those in those ideas and those thinkings into poetic terms, because he was also a dreamer when he said.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The earth is the cradle of humanity. But humankind cannot stay in the cradle forever, just like humans escape the cradle in South Far Africa. Use their resources to explore every corner of our planet. Let's hope that space resources can do the same as we venture into space. And with that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I'm open for
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): questions. People love.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Pardon me while I put my brain back together. I'm back.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yes, you are the one perfect so, as you said, there is
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): some marshall that's not what moon sand on there, however, moon, sand.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But Regolith, however, Regolith appears to be incredibly sharp.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): When plants grow in terrestrial dirt they're able to grow. However, one concern could be that regolith would be too short for the plants, and would cause damage to the South. Yes, there's already companies trying to treat the regolith and pass it through a
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): a grinder like a ball mill to round out the material. Because exactly that point. Wow, because you're gonna need that. Not only is sharp, it's electrostatically charged, and it's very fine and clings to everything. And so you're gonna have to
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): prepare that material for whatever comes next is that for extracting something or for growing plants absolutely. In fact, Brazil is actually interested now on lunar agriculture and how to do that. So they're finding that as a problem. And right now, what we do is simulants at school of mines. We actually make simulants, but no simulant can replicate what lunar regulatory is going to be. It's very difficult
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and hopefully, with the submissions that we have, we now get the chance to to get some of the properties of this this material
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): so good point ahead of us.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): What is caterpillar making to go to space? Seriously, caterpillar
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): wants to become the company, to be able to be able to excavate and do things. In fact, the Racer Rover that I mentioned to you caterpillar is working closely with NASA. In fact, there's a competition that takes place every year where cat is sponsored by caterpillar.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and they're doing it for 2 reasons. Yeah, they want to be the first.st But they're seeing. If you can develop technology on space that we can use here on Earth like full automation. We'll take it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): That's that's the bottom line. In fact, many mining companies. If you talk to them. They're saying, Yeah, yeah, they're saying, well, it'll be. Space is great. But give me technology operate in very extreme environments. Radioactive mines, very deep robotically, use wireless extraction processes like, because in the moon you don't have water you can extract without water.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): That's where they're interested. And they're saying
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): in the mining world. This junior companies, they call it. Let the juniors go, and they do something. We'll buy them, and then we'll get into the moon. But that's the thinking. But they're very interested on this. I mean you. In fact, you will see what is Rolls Royce doing. They're developing nuclear power, all the infrastructure. So these big companies are seeing potential opportunities. They're cautious, but they're thinking about it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Go ahead, Bob.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Oh, thanks. Yeah. Great talk. My question is about this sort of near term so-called lunar economy, because I I get it in the long run. You know, we could use all this for bases on the moon, and and the next step of humanity. But in the near term NASA has been selling the commercial lunar payload services as a public private partnership.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): in in which the 1st missions, like like Blue Ghost, didn't have any commercial payloads on it. I am, I think you know. I mean, they've they've had a couple of commercials. The the even the I spaces. Lander has some little, you know, paid rovers on it. And and so they're trying to develop this this, you know.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): having the the companies start an economy, and you know, other than you know. What are people going to get tired of sending grandpa's ashes to the moon. If that's even ethical, you know, it's it's like, what's the real economy for these companies to to make money on the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): It is like
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): everything that happened for railroads and airplanes and biotechnology and lasers, the Government definitely will be the 1st customer NASA is looking at from the point of view. If Commercial Company not only can take me to the moon and take your payload to the moon, but if they can extract the oxygen that I need
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): to have a base if they can start the water, and they can do it cheaper than I can. I'll take it, but they're very cautious, too, because they don't put in. They don't want to put it on the critical path. They don't want to send humans there and say, there's oxygen to breathe. Is that a good oxygen, or is that good water? So they're cautious now, but they're letting companies say, Okay, you go. Try if you can prove to me that you can build a habitat for me that you can do that we'll take it. It's low cost and low risk. So those are the 1st customers. That's the first.st
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): It's not an economy, because it's the government. But once that happens, who knows what's gonna happen after that? Maybe Re, that's why, right now the the most
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): short term is refueling in space, you know. That's going to be important. Like orbit Fab or recycling space debris. The moon will be next, but mostly for space agencies. Eventually, once you have a settlement the like.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): maybe you start doing this. But you're right. It's gonna be so if I just restated that you're saying it's not. It's not that they're creating their own economy and making money just on their Landers. It's that they are wanting to demonstrate technologies. They can sell forward still downstream. Correct? Okay, yeah. Thank you. I mean, you were, you were in a mission that proved that with a low budget you can actually get to the moon.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): NASA said. I will take that. Now. Can you give me oxygen? I'll give you oxygen. Can you build it for me, I'll take it. And and now it comes to the companies to prove that they can do be reliable and not crash all the time, you know that's difficult. That's it. Yeah.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): My question is, this seems like the probably made the 1st step thousands of years ago. But this seems like step number 2 number 3.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The earth is limited in its lifespan. Eventually, the sun.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I mean, we're talking 4, 5, 6, 10 billion years out.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): So long term.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Eventually, we have to leave the planet hopefully, take some life forms, have a chain of solar systems to get to a habitable planet. This would be, you know, millions of years down the road. But is there anybody kind of exploring?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I mean, that's seems to be inevitable. But it's so far away. But we are taking, obviously taking the 1st steps. That's the ultimate goal. So people that look long term is saying, this is how it's going to start. And maybe NASA will benefit, and maybe some things. But in the end.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): if we start now having a base limit, and we can start having some work there, some quantum computing centers or whatever. And then you start expanding it to Mars. Eventually, I don't know. I mean I I for me it's really hard to see beyond 1015 years, people actually start seeing. Well, if you can have all the extraction done in, in, on, in space and not on Earth, and then at some point move out.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that's the ultimate goal for me. It's difficult to see that because this term of being multiplanetary species is just.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I mean, we may be able to go to Mars. Maybe I don't know why. Probably that's the only planet. But eventually you're right. The sun is going to catch up with us. I don't know if we can go to extra planets, and I cannot foresee the future, but that will be the ultimate thing. How can you make the the human race?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): He's gonna morph into something else, because he's gonna have to live in different gravities. But that's that's far out. And it could take thousands of generations just to travel
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): across the go galaxy, hopping generations and generations. How many of us will be able to only get nuclear propulsion
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that's gonna go fast. So now, you got people working on nuclear propulsion, how can you go faster? So you never know when some technology is gonna be developed. That is, gonna change
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): the the way that you look at the future. And so we're just working on it and hoping something's gonna happen.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The other side is, how long do we live? We live for 80 years. What if we live for 808,000 now? A couple of seconds? No big deal
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): genetics, genetic technology may change the way we adapt to other places. These companies are doing 3D printed organs for Pete's sake. And so who knows where this is going to go. I mean, it's really hard for me to see that far away. Yes, bringing back to his his slides earlier when we moved out of Africa. We were thinking about food and how to move things across the land.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Nobody in that time could have imagined aircraft that could have taken those resources from another continent they didn't even know existed, and and brought it to them at a moment's notice. Absolutely. By the time we get there, there will be technologies we can't even hope to fathom. And this that's 100,000 years. Things are moving so fast now that it's almost exponential. The way that we're I mean in my lifetime I have seen so much that I just
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I just
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I cannot predict anything. I cannot say no anymore. I mean, these are these are things that are happening very fast. But you got a point. Yes. What about AI artificial intelligence? And I wondered if some of your students are working on
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): other than cheating on exam. Yeah. AI, I think it has. It has a room.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): it's developing so rapidly that I don't know how AI may be able to make decisions on robots around somewhere else without us having to send signals and all that they may be able to do things that we don't. These things is moving so fast. You're right.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that. That may be machine learning and all that. All this robotic technology that are being developed now are incorporating this. So you don't have to depend on signals that take 20 min or so to get there to do things
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that the next big thing that's gonna change. What happens is mode of transportation. And you know, if we can, you know, play a little game if
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): space travel is and has already happened. And we
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): find out. You know, this actually has existing. We'll find out the.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And we get the new new mode of transportation, if that'll
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): transportation is is big. I mean to go to Mars right now. People that want to go to Mars, and it takes 2 to 3 years just to go there. Live. Come back if you can speed it up with nuclear propulsion, boy, things can change radically. So yes, I was wondering a couple of things back in 2,006 I participated in a department of energy study to beam power
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): from the rim of Shackleton Crater. They had, like a 10 megawatt solar power, and they had to beam it
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): 10 miles to 5 different mining stations that were mobile.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): We looked at that versus running wires
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): down there was a trade study.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): The things we we found out, you know, that the 3rd is electoral.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and the temperatures that they have to deal with.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And the bottom of these craters
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): are something that we really don't have a whole lot of experience with, and making parts and making machines that will survive down in those temperatures. Can you comment on both the power beaming and the temperature thing? And where are we at with trying to develop things for that I know we have the retina to get power off. We're about 50%
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): efficient. But can you comment? This is interesting that you you were talking about this study from 2,006 just to 2 years ago we did a study from school minds, and Lockheed Martin on power beaming, and we resurrected your ideas actually. But now with newer technology.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): and we were able to. And we have this, we call it dirty vacuum chambers at school of mine. We can put regulate them all that. But we had a We. We put a a battery and transmission and all that inside this chamber.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And we simulated ultra high vacuum
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): plus. We have a cryo shield that we can bring it down to liquid nitrogen temperatures minus 190. And 1st of all, we found issues with vacuum. It's shorting and all sorts of things. But we were able to solve that temperature is an issue.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): But we were able to actually win one of the competitions on beaming power. And then, in lucky we did it. It was like 2, 3 kilometers from one place to another, obviously an atmosphere. But the same technology. But we're trying to do it at at the right conditions right? Vacuum temperature radiation and all that. It's challenging. But I think that's the way to beam things down. You don't. You don't want to just have cables going down.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): We were just kind of the 1st ones to start looking into it. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely
Lena: Dr. Abood, Madrid.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yes.
Lena: I'm in a zoom call with you. I have a question. I by far. This is the best presentation I've heard in in the period of time. I've listened to sky watchers. So thank you very much.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I'm telling myself
Lena: But what I would. What I see from your presentation is that the real value
Lena: is in in the exploration of all these minerals and metals, and that we're going to learn technology that can be used here on Earth. I mean, there's so much that we don't even know about our oceans that we'll probably the technology will probably be used for some of that, or to go into areas of the world
Lena: that are somewhat and uninhabitable in the in on earth that we can use for the same purposes that are being are being used out in outer space.
Lena: So I mean, the value is in the knowledge and the technology that comes out of it. I mean, even 50 years ago or 40 years ago, satellite technology, people wouldn't didn't even imagine that we could communicate the way we do. But that's due to space research
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You're absolutely right. And in fact, that's why I mentioned that companies here are seeing how they can bring that technology here to Earth because robotics is advancing very quickly, and you need robotics in space, and they're quite advanced if you can use it here. Just imagine going to the depth that you have to go now for mining certain elements for radioactive material. If you can use that technology.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): that's the interest. And you mentioned something interesting science and technology. So science, right now, for example, is very interested on the moon to be able to catch it before all this activity happens. You know, scientists are concerned. And maybe Bob Green can tell us about it that
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): once people start doing all these things, you're going to contaminate things. But science can inform technology and technology can also inform science. If you have one of these drills, and you can identify the elements that you find for scientists that would be extremely valuable. And also for technology. We just need to get along between the 2 communities. But you're right developing technologies that can be used
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): for us. The billions of people here on Earth is probably one of the most important things that we can get from space. As we have learned through the 60 years that we have been doing this
Lena: Well. And there's 2 other factors that were raised in my mind as you were talking historically. It's when businesses get involved in the technology or in the research and science that things progress very quickly.
Lena: It was, you know, in the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, the communications revolution, the Internet revolution. I mean that they're all moved so quickly because of businesses getting involved. And honestly, I think one of your best slides was the the number of businesses that are interested in doing work in the field of space, research, and resources.
Lena: I was just amazed at how many companies were interested.
Lena: and not only here in the United States, but also in other parts of Earth. So that was one big factor. The other, which was very interesting to me, is that there was no mention whatsoever of microbes and potential disasters.
Lena: and I remember I I was in the space field in 1976, and the Challenger Act 86, and the challenger accident.
Lena: and all of a sudden everything died
Lena: of in the field I was working in in space, I mean, just there was. NASA didn't do anything for so many years.
Lena: And so I see potential issues in. And some of this research, because most of it will not be used here on Earth for some time. It'll take time to develop some of these technologies.
Lena: but because business is involved, I know it'll progress a lot faster than we even dreamed. And someone mentioned AI. You mentioned 3D. Printing, but there's also 4 d. Printing and 5 d. Printing now, which I'm sure can be used in space
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yeah, I think you you bring up 2 important points. How fast this has moved. Like I mentioned 10 years ago, NASA was thinking this on the
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): far future.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Then companies got involved, and this thing went just so fast. I remember the 1st meeting that we had with lunar output. Lunar output is a company that is here in Colorado. They came to us saying, You know, we want to put a rover on the moon. We thought they were crazy. I mean you. You want to do that. Why, we will. We just want to prove that we that a company can do it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): And there were on the moon just 2 weeks ago. They couldn't get the Rover out, but they were communicating, and you got intuitive machines and firefly. All the Honeybee robotics in just a matter of 7 years or so. So that pushes even technology much faster. And just like you said, this is going to go exponential. Now you mentioned the other side microorganisms and all that. That's a concern for Mars, for sure. I mean, we're going to start extracting things from Mars. We got to make sure that we don't
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): bump into bugs and microorganisms there. And there's planetary protection, and all of that. The moon is different. But still there was some complaints about an Israeli payload that carries some bugs that they didn't tell anybody, and and that's a concern. And then Bob brought something very important. The ethical issues of space.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): I've been giving talks on this, for I don't know how many years. At 1st people were enamored with the technology. Then the question started being about the environment. Well, are we going to struggle the water there? And who's you know? Are we going to leave no water on the moon, what's the deal? And then the ethical question started coming
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): with this issue of of bringing ashes to a year ago or so indigenous people in Australia, and here in the United States started complaining, said, Look.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): the moon is an object of adoration for every culture since the beginning of time, and for some of them is this, where the ancestors go and live? Why are you contaminating them that way? So this is a very important issues that have to be addressed. So not just scientists and technology have to get along, but but also cultures that we have not taken into account the perfect example
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): of how to do it right is Mount Ikea, in Hawaii, when you have
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): a place where they consider sacred by the locals, but also a great place for telescopes, and they had somehow
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): figure out how to how to coexist. And these are the issues that we're going to have to deal with, not just microorganisms, but different cultures and and asteroids. Nobody cares, nobody sees them but the moon. The moon is something that when you start seeing some changes on the moon, because there's some activity. There's going to be some complaints. So just something to to tell you what's going on here. But there's
Lena: But how do we know that there are not microbes in those deep, deep into those craters that you were talking about in the South Bow. I mean, we have life on Earth that doesn't come to life until it's spring. We have animals that burrow into the ground and literally don't come alive until there's a little bit of water or heat involved
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): That's a good point. I was actually part of the Planetary Protection Committee of the National Academies of Sciences, and we did a study for the moon, and the conclusion was, there is no life on the moon. There may be prebiotic material that came from asteroid that is stored down on the permanent shadow regions, but at those temperatures at that radiation, and that those environments life is just not possible. So
Lena: But that's life as we know it.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): As as we. Yes, so it's good to to study that material that could have come, and in the right conditions may do that. But but the moon right now it's it's categorized so that you have to protect those things for science, but not necessarily for life. Mars is a whole different world that definitely could have, that could have life
Lena: So Musk wants to musk, wants to bypass the moon and go directly to Mars.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yes. So that's gonna be an issue.
Lena: He seems to have a lot a lot of say, these days.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yeah. But to make it happen it's gonna take more than 4 years. So who knows? Alrighty, I think we need to wrap it up here. We got a couple of other things to go. Let's thank our speaker here. That was great.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): That's nice.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Well, we need to kind of strike the set and get things reset up again. So I it seems to me it should take 5 min probably means it'll take 10. But
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): meanwhile discuss how about yourself? Hey, man?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yeah. Leonard's gonna give his talk.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): This is your adapter, my adapter.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): You got all those things in there.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Let me get all my stuff here, little gimbal size.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): What's over
Lena: Oh!
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yeah, we're not putting stuff away yet.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Yeah, it's a connection.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Oh, there, you! That's why knowledgeable person there.
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): right?
Angel Abbud-Madrid (CSM): Oh, yeah.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Quick audio check. John Williams, can you tell me if you guys can hear me
John Williams: Okay. Now you were muted a minute ago. It's good now.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yeah, I just noticed that you have mute on the
CCCIA Meeting Hall: thanks, so you can hear us fine. So Leonard, who has been having some very some allergy voice issues is going to get his talk. But he's got a trouble talking
CCCIA Meeting Hall: right? Right? Yeah.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yeah. Well, since I don't know what to say or they. And here's another slide, and and here's another one.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: No, you can't, because the slides are so minimal rain.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Oh, wait one more thing back somewhere. Let me unmute this back.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Because, okay, interesting. Okay, yeah. One last light. Thank you.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: It's a gnarly kind of
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Whoa, okay, there you go.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: What? I'm ready.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: All right. I I hereby turn it over to Leonard, should be working.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Go, wait, wait!
CCCIA Meeting Hall: There we go.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Am I correct?
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Move forward!
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I I do have to shake it loops and everything. So next.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: hey, you know, I'm on a near death experience here with my voice. I you know, Barb and I have a
CCCIA Meeting Hall: a tendency to leave our I believe ours, our Christmas tree, until March
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and I took the thing down, and I I got so much pollen coming out of that thing, and I'm I'm I'm
CCCIA Meeting Hall: hallucinating now, but it's pretty pretty
CCCIA Meeting Hall: standard operating procedure here. But you know what a week in the last couple of weeks.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Landings on the moon crashes on the moon.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Starship blew up.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know it's on and on, I mean, I I wish I was 13 again, and have a better voice.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: But you know there is so much happening at once, and it's a it's a really impressive time
CCCIA Meeting Hall: with failure and success. And I'm gonna skip this because Bob's gonna do a little
CCCIA Meeting Hall: update on. You know it. It really is something to know somebody that landed something on the moon
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and at work. Yeah, well, I know, but I'm telling you, you know, it's a great thing, you know, and getting on. The moon is a big deal.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: So Blue Ghost Mission one
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know, Firefly aerospace. Mid January landed on the moon on March second.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Now the bad news kind of a competitor in a weird way. And
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know, as intuitive machines. Another company tried this.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and it was a replay of their failure.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: That they did in February of last year.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: The thing tried to land, skid it across the service.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Busted the leg. Looks like it broke a leg
CCCIA Meeting Hall: wound up in a crater died in a day or so. I'm not a big fan of these people. They they don't tell you everything that happened. But anyway.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: one casualty in this last couple of weeks
CCCIA Meeting Hall: we looks like we lost the lunar trailblazer, which was a lunar orbiter built by Caltech and Lockheed Martin.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and it it, as far as I could tell this morning it was still lost in space. And
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I'm not sure that mission is going to be retrievable, but was really important.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Because it was gonna be a lunar orbiter. Look for what?
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And gal was talking about the water rise on the moon.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I mean, it was a fairly significant contribution to the search for water. Ice on the moon so may have lost that. So? We have.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know, great success with Firefly.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I am 2 intuitive machines. Crash!
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Lunar trailblazer was lost.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: But you know, the the point is, we're really trying to get this down
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and getting back to the moon is gonna be
CCCIA Meeting Hall: a long term event, you know, even though I lived through a lot of these Landers way back when my in my youth. But it's exciting, you know, to see the private companies attempt all these things, and
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and you know, I must say, and gals talk. It's just
CCCIA Meeting Hall: outstanding. That's why I go to the School of Mines. Every year
CCCIA Meeting Hall: that place has got more stuff going than any other conference.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: It it brings the best of
CCCIA Meeting Hall: the world together in a meeting.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: That's a school of mines local about where we're going
CCCIA Meeting Hall: elsewhere. And that's a terrific talk.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And you know, I gotta remember where
CCCIA Meeting Hall: we got 10 humans in space right now.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know, right now on the International Space Station. It's it's flying by as we talk almost
CCCIA Meeting Hall: 10 people up there. They're all squeezed together
CCCIA Meeting Hall: these these folks just arrived not too long ago.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and we also you gotta count in the Chinese. They got their own space station. Don't forget them. This is the big news.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know. They just had a spacewalk yesterday or 2 days ago.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and that's the 3rd spacewalk on that space station.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: They're making a lot of progress. I always keep an eye on China.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: It's gonna be the wild card of it all.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And guess what the stranded crew is packed.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: These poor people had to go into space.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: They rode, you know, the the Boeing built starliner capsule.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: They got up there. The thing that the mission was kind of
CCCIA Meeting Hall: fouled up early in the rendezvous with the space station and a lot of problems.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And so, you know, despite it all, they they weathered the storm of criticism, and you know they're stranded. They're gonna be
CCCIA Meeting Hall: never come back, and she's losing weight.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know. But Sonny Williams and Butch Wilmore.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: they went up on a Boeing Starlander capsule.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yeah.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Lot of propulsion issues. And to get there and they had to bring that capsule
CCCIA Meeting Hall: starliner capsule back uncrewed. So they were, you know, quote unquote, stranded.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: But
CCCIA Meeting Hall: They were, reassigned the Spacex crew Dragon.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: This is,
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know the the thing that just happened just a couple of days ago they got back down on the ground. They're doing fine.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And you know, the thing about this mission was really a subliminal message. It was
CCCIA Meeting Hall: NASA really moving up the gauntlet about safety of crew.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and I'll give it. I'll give credit to them because they got a ways to go on some other issues that they're dealing with now. But you know, holding on to those 2 crew people and bringing them down on the dragon capsule proved successful, and it showed kind of a robustness in our
CCCIA Meeting Hall: ability to not put humans in danger in low authority. However.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: then, if you wanna have a
CCCIA Meeting Hall: a heyday on the Internet, it's like listening to the Space Cadets.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and I listen to him a lot. I mean, I'm on everything.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and we're I don't know where we're going, but the cutbacks.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know, Elon Musk is a hate love Guy
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Donald Trump's trying to cut back on Federal resources and
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and skew things. But all of a sudden you start seeing Boeing. You know we need the sls, the space launch system, you know. Write your Congress people. So you know, it's trouble.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And so something's coming and how this is gonna sort itself out.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I mean, I've heard everything. I mean, I've tried to write about it, but it
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I'm on the low end of understanding what really is. Gonna happen
CCCIA Meeting Hall: not tomorrow, but like an hour from now. There are things happening pretty much real time.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and it's very hard to see how NASA doesn't avoid this kind of circular motion that's going on now, and I don't know what it means, you know, for NASA cutbacks
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you shut off voyager you kill.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I I've heard everything, you know people are panicked.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: People are losing jobs. NASA's restructuring
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and we got a weird thing going on.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And I'm really mad about this.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: You got a guy that trump asked to be the NASA administrator, and he's flown in space.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and he is not. He's a no-show.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: because it's a no show, because we haven't had a confirmation here
CCCIA Meeting Hall: at a time when NASA needs guidance.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: This guy is not is not an is a notion.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yeah, we need to get going on this and get him in there.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and God help him, because it is way beyond his skill set.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: So I don't know where we're going.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: but from a writer's standpoint. We got some real
CCCIA Meeting Hall: problems coming here about the future of NASA.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: What's gonna get cut Artemis program rearrange. Oh, forget the moon. Let's go to Mars.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I don't know. But you know that's why I love writing. It's so much fun. I think that's enough for me. Let's Bob.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Bob Graham. Come on, give me that. We have the video. Let's go. Can I control video? I don't know where's the video?
CCCIA Meeting Hall: But dreading
John Williams: Be able to control it.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Well, I just want you to like. It's only like 4 images. I just want to be able to speak to each one briefly before we like. Look at it. And then I also have a couple of images of John. Yeah. Because I asked him to take pictures. Okay, so what order. Do you wish to do that? The video before the video? Because the because the the pictures are of the the right before sunset? At at the landing site. Okay, okay, so yeah. But
CCCIA Meeting Hall: after Bob's done, then Clark and Y have some stuff to show about auroras and their little trip, and that will be the end of our show. Yeah. So you got some screen.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: So
John Williams: You're not. It's not showing on the main screen.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yeah, I need, I just need to get it up on the TV screen. So that's a sensor video right there.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Okay, let me you can. Yeah, just just leave that for now just go full screen. No. What I need to do is,
CCCIA Meeting Hall: okay. So glugos landed successfully. 1st United States landing this century. The, you know, this is a commercial service. So NASA selected 10 payloads. In 2019 we were selected, and
CCCIA Meeting Hall: 7 of them are were competed externally. That was with a lot we were in, and 3 of them were assigned by NASA. So so we're doing this thing called lunar magnetoric sounder magnetoric means means magnetic and electric. We're measuring electric and magnetic fields at the surface of the moon. And so this is the rendering of a lander.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and this this thing that goes up vertically is a is a mast. It carries a magnetometer on it so that it. It's away from the Lander to have less interference. And then there's 4 spring launched
CCCIA Meeting Hall: electrodes that came outside of the Lander and and those are. Those are the measured electric fields like a voltmeter. So this is, roll it. And because I pretty much explained it all, how excited were you, though, about getting this thing. You worked on this for how long?
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Since 2019? Okay, yeah.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: so that's what. Yeah, these these are. These are all around the sides of the Lander. This is this is the coolest thing for us. We saw this at like 3 in the morning.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and this is a deployment of megatometer.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: So let's can we just go back?
CCCIA Meeting Hall: We okay, that this is what we're doing. All right. That's the whole thing.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I just wanted to to see that. I mean watching that thing launch so that it it's a spring that shoots it out like 60 feet. And yeah. So we're we're in the middle of the night when when our window came up to do this, and and they said, Yeah, we could, we could see from the data that they they deployed. But then Firefly downloaded the video and we and we pulled it into our little Ops center in Boulder and and saw this and about hit the floor. Because.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: yeah, we didn't. We didn't expect to see video. I mean, originally, we're just gonna like, look at our data and have to take pictures of it later. And they said, We want to take video. So we said, Great, and it turned out to be like, you know, looks pretty cool. Yeah. So I mean, that thing is straight up. It's a it's a it's a, you know. It's a. It's a lens distortion. So we're gonna we're gonna rectify everything. And
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you can actually see the electrodes lying on the surface
CCCIA Meeting Hall: in in pictures from later in the day. And
CCCIA Meeting Hall: it was. It was 2 weeks, you know, working all hours. It's supposed to be just to turn it on. Let's take data, and that's it. But there was a lot of activity going on that we had to adapt a lot of things happening during the mission. In the end. NASA was able, and firefight would give us
CCCIA Meeting Hall: much more data
CCCIA Meeting Hall: volume than we expected to get and then and then a long duration, a continuous duration near the end that we really wanted to have a long continuous measurement sequence. And that came together, you know, in the last 4 days. So yeah, then, we sat around on. Just 2 of us left. Everybody went home.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: all of our operators. There's 2 of us left me and the the project engineer. So yeah, we just sat around on Sunday afternoon and drank beer, waiting for the Sunday, which which it did, and you know we could. We could see. We turned our instrument off a little earlier to we didn't think we're getting very good data. So we turned off a little early and gave some energy, you know, back to the Lander, and they
CCCIA Meeting Hall: they just rode it. They rode into the sunset.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: And that was it. Yeah, now it's dead right now. It's dead now they did. They did do some things that we could tell from the sequences. Yeah, procedures that they're they're allowed. They're making it so it could be favorable conditions for it to wake up again. It's not designed to wake up again, you know it did its job. But it's not out of the question that could wake up. We got a 14 day.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yeah, night, day cycle. We wait till the next crescent moon. We'll be. And his experiment was one of, I guess. 10. Yeah, you know. And you know, as far as I need to talk to about. Did you see, Lister? Did you see the drilling. Yes, he was fantastic. It's really weird, I mean, yeah, yeah, it blew out big chunks instead of nice, you know. Yeah, there's no. It wasn't like a bunch of 70 70 micron
CCCIA Meeting Hall: particles. Yeah, something weird is happening. So yours was a seismic. No, it's electromagnetic. Oh, electromagnetic, measuring, natural, electromagnetic fields, very long periods of minutes, hours, even days, that in those long periods penetrate very deeply into the moon
CCCIA Meeting Hall: many hundreds of kilometers. So we're trying to understand the internal temperature of the moon and its evolution. Bob, if Firefly comes to life, can you turn it on? You know I mean, NASA's never said it enough like NASA bought what they bought, and I think all the instruments have gotten really really cold, you know. Frankly, I would say I would say we don't need to. I mean, we, I mean.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: it's going to be more of the same. At this point we need to understand this data. And actually, we have another entire instrument going in 2027. Same thing is gonna go to shorter crater on the far side with, and that is with the Blue Monitor, and with the heat flow again. And so we're gonna do it better
CCCIA Meeting Hall: somewhere else. So I'm kind of, I want to analyze this when I'm done with it, and then look forward to the next one. John, describe what he did, but I put out an Apb like, you know, this is sunset. This is this is the Blue Ghost Moon. This is this is their moon. Hold on one second. John Williams, you need to stop sharing so that we can share.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: and then we need these pictures. Let me just point out where the landing site is, and John can describe the pictures. It's it's right on the far side of my Chris here. So you know, we're hours away from from sunset. Okay, John, please. Well, John Williams is still sharing his screen. So the Zoomers aren't seeing any of it.
John Williams: You can take over
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I can send a request.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Well, okay. So before you describe what you did, I'll just say, Thank you. And then, yeah, because I wanted a shot of the moon.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: you know, to to remember the mission by and this is, you know, to be part of our archive. So thank you. You're welcome. I was happy to help, because I know
John Williams: There you go!
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Email, saying that Bob wanted some pictures, and we had this lovely, cloudy lunar eclipse, and my gear was sitting right near the door because they had it all out a few nights before. So I thought, it's gonna stay there and we'll cross our fingers. So yeah, it was clear. But it was very turbulent and windy, and it looks sharp
CCCIA Meeting Hall: there. But I could have done better with a steady night. So I took 2
CCCIA Meeting Hall: I shot basically over 2
CCCIA Meeting Hall: separate periods, one around one am. And one around 5 am. And you can see that the Terminator is moving over Monty Christian compared to the 1st shot in the second shot. So you want the second shot now? Yeah, sure.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: there's the second shot. See the Terminator? It moved.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: So I think this. The sun set on the spacecraft somewhere in the afternoon. It was yeah. It was 7 h later. Yeah, it was like 3 o'clock in the afternoon for us. Okay? I think
John Williams: It might help to point out that Merichrysium is that
John Williams: mayor that's in the right. There
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yes, thank you.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: So yeah, that's all true. Alright. So
CCCIA Meeting Hall: John Williams, you have the stuff for. Okay, I will stop sharing then and let you do that.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: But now we need Clark Rice this week.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Okay. And now what, Kevin, and why we should go to the
Ychapman: Okay? Well, well, we
Ychapman: planned last spring actually to go to Norway, near Solar Max above the Arctic Circle, in the hopes of seeing aurora borealis. So, in fact, we and a couple of friends of ours who tried to see the Aurora a few years ago, but
Ychapman: the airplanes screwed them up. The 4 of us went to Alta, Norway, and arrived at a resort on February 28th
Ychapman: and while we were having our 1st dinner at this resort, way up above the Arctic Circle, they suddenly came in and said, Hey, come.
Ychapman: come out
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Okay.
Ychapman: See the Aurora. The previous picture showed
Ychapman: the Aurora kind of during dusk
Ychapman: the bright spot there is Venus. And why took these pictures with her
Ychapman: iphone. I had my old 35 camera, and the Aurora was spectacular enough that I actually
Ychapman: saw a bit of the Aurora in my pictures. But nothing beats Aurora photography like a modern smartphone. Why do you want to talk about it? I would just like to say one thing that's that's really impressed me the most, and that was the speed of the constant changing of the visuals. It was like nothing I could ever even imagine. It was just
Ychapman: constant, newly creative visuals. That was just mind boggling.
Ychapman: That's all I basically, I have to say about the aurora borealis. It was. It was beyond spectacular. Yeah. Well, we then went back in to eat some more dinner, and about an hour later they said, Hey, you got to come out now, and this picture is the 1st of a few taken later in the evening of the 28th of February, and the locals there said it was the most spectacular Aurora they had had in over a year. So we really lucked out.
Ychapman: yeah, we certainly did.
Ychapman: Hey? You can cycle through these
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Wow!
Ychapman: It was just a
Ychapman: amazing. I I once saw an aurora when I was a teenager back in Buffalo, New York, and this Aurora exceeded.
Ychapman: that this is just was an incredible experience for everybody there
Ychapman: and and then we actually had signed up for an aurora hunt, and it took place on
Ychapman: on March second in the evening, and we went out and
Ychapman: sat for 3 and a half hours out by a campfire or warming up in a minibus.
Ychapman: Okay? And right here. Now this stop here for a moment.
Ychapman: So we sat there, and the sky was totally clear. Brilliant stars. You know the crescent moon is long since set, and you know there's no cities around Alta, Norway. And so we got on the minibus. We're headed back to the resort, and 5 min from the resort, the the driver suddenly pulled over to the side and said, I see lights.
Ychapman: And so we got out, and the the last several pictures. Here are the Aurora
Ychapman: that we saw at that time.
Ychapman: and I don't know. Yeah, the Reds. The Reds showed up here more than before, and it's just just amazing.
Ychapman: And right down here, near the bottom, just above the trees, are the Pleiades. You might see them just at the tip of a tree in the center of the picture.
Ychapman: It it was, I mean, if we hadn't seen the big Aurora 2 nights earlier we would have been satisfied going to going to Norway just to see this Aurora. But
Ychapman: anyway, it it it rather quickly faded away again, and anyway, we had a wonderful time in in Norway, and we were rewarded with
Ychapman: these 2 Aurora shows.
Ychapman: Oh.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yeah.
Ychapman: Yeah, at this. At this resort there's an ice hotel, I mean, we stayed in a lodge except for the final night, when we actually slept for about 4 h in the Ice Hotel, but the ice hotel which they make every year they do ice sculpting. And this is a Medusa. That's why. And myself
Ychapman: in front of this ice, Medusa, we're there for scale. And I think there's 1 more picture, maybe.
Ychapman: I don't know. Is there one more focus
John Williams: That was all. I had sorry
Ychapman: Oh, okay. Well, okay. Sisyphus will have to be seen later another time or not at all. But anyway,
John Williams: Didn't get them.
Ychapman: Certainly, I think we were thrilled with our whole trip to Norway. It's a wonderful country. They're a little aghast about what's happening over over here. But Norway was working fine, and the skies cleared, and the sun did its
Ychapman: thing
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Yep, cool.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Our audio hung up for a second. There, I think it was at the
John Williams: Yeah, we did on Zoom, too.
John Williams: There is a chance tonight of Aurora in Colorado.
John Williams: The sun threw something at the earth, and
John Williams: so if it's clear to the north, go outside and check it out
Ychapman: Well, it was about a year. It was about a year ago that there was an aurora in Colorado, and that's when y 1st tried out or iphone on the Aurora and got, you know, pretty nice picture of red glows from here
Ychapman: near Nederland.
John Williams: Yep.
John Williams: A friend of mine got a picture of Aurora near Cortez, so
Ychapman: Northern Colorado should be good too.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Not really pick a while.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Well, cool, thanks, guys.
John Williams: You want to be done
Ychapman: Yeah, done. That's it for for us
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Okay.
John Williams: I'm asking, do you want to see the other images we had, or call it? Call it a wrap.
Ychapman: Your image.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Oh, you got some images.
John Williams: Yeah, from Dave Elmore and myself, but we can show next time
CCCIA Meeting Hall: You want them. Now, folks, now we're here. The vote here is, show them now
John Williams: So me first.st I was
John Williams: part of the live stream for time and date again with the lunar eclipse.
John Williams: I it was cloudy here in Santa Fe. So I drove to Santa Rosa, where the wind was.
John Williams: It was clear, but the wind was crazy.
John Williams: So my image is not very good, and but I got to do a little interview.
John Williams: This was the only picture I got of the lunar eclipse.
John Williams: This was the next night. This was I was gonna do Bob's thing, but it was cloudy down here that Tuesday night, so no pictures from me. Sorry, Bob.
John Williams: And my latest deep sky photo of the Rosette nebula, but
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Our buddy, Dave Elmore is blowing us away with this image
John Williams: Of the Dolphin Head. And here's some explanation
John Williams: of what we're seeing for the next couple of slides.
John Williams: So 12, 3 h, 12 h, and then 12 h processed with 2 X drizzle.
John Williams: So here's the 3 h, 12 h that doesn't make much sense.
John Williams: And with the drizzle, and then this next one is of the flame nebula and the Horsehead Nebula.
John Williams: He's taken them in, not Hubble image colors, but through filters where
John Williams: H. Alpha is in red oxygens, and the teal color sulfur is in the deep yet red kind of yellowish area. 9 h, 30 min, and that's what you get.
John Williams: Incredible.
CCCIA Meeting Hall: That's amazing.
John Williams: Agreed.
John Williams: So thank you, Dave. Thank you. Everybody who sent in photos.
John Williams: and now it can be a wrap
CCCIA Meeting Hall: What the hell!
CCCIA Meeting Hall: Well, that would be then a wrap. So, zoomers, good night in here we'll turn the lights up real quick. We want to just have everybody come up and take a big group photo, and then when we're done with that, we'll put away the chairs and stuff