How Far Away Are We From Colonising Mars?

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:04]It seems that mankind is somehow rather obsessed by the idea of finding brothers and stars in other planets.

[00:00:13]Now we stand within what is considered to be the driest area in Yungai and therefore the driest on Earth.

[00:00:23]Mars 500 is a joint mission to simulate for the first time a complete round trip to Mars which has never been done before.

[00:00:33]In a way, science and fiction have some things in common. That is they both seek the unknown and this seems to be a part of human nature.

[00:00:48]Around 10 years ago, a researcher from NASA actually proposed that if one could replicate the experiments that took place in Mars, the results obtained in the Atakama desert would be almost identical.

[00:01:10]The universe is full of life, but we are not advanced enough to detect it yet.

[00:01:16]So finding that life is simply a matter of time.

[00:01:40]Hallelujah.

[00:02:16]We'll embark on a fascinating journey to Mars, our closest [music] neighbor to Earth.

[00:02:22]It is known as the red planet, [music] and it is one of the few places within the solar system that might harbor life outside Earth.

[00:02:34]However, after decades of searching, we still have not found any evidence of living beings on Mars.

[00:02:44]Did life exist on [music] Mars at some point in time and was later extinguished?

[00:02:56]How far are we from the day when a human being may leave Earth [music] and step on the surface of Mars?

[00:03:03]In order [music] to answer these questions about the enigmatic red planet, we travel through Latin America, [music] the United States, and Spain.

[00:03:15][music] Ernesto Blanco is a prominent Uruguayan physicist who [music] studies the movement of extinct animals such as dinosaurs.

[00:03:44]Some of his [music] favorite interests include comic books and science fiction.

[00:03:49]For Ernesto, these whimsical stories provide a great tool in bringing science closer to the general public.

[00:03:56]Mars plays an important role within this collective [music] imagination.

[00:04:11]It seems that mankind is somehow rather obsessed by the idea of finding brothers in stars in other planets.

[00:04:17]Well, there was a time when science fiction could refer to nearby planets like Mars and Venus as worlds where life could exist. It was thought that they might even contain oceans.

[00:04:28]The same was thought of the moon at a certain point. For a long time, Mars held a privileged place among this line of thought since it looked like a very similar planet to Earth.

[00:04:39]Observations done with telescopes gave the impression that Mars was very similar to planet Earth, that there might even be rivers there and vegetation.

[00:04:53]Later on, as we gained more knowledge with space expeditions, questions started to rise. Venus probably has no life due to its extremely high temperatures, a very hot atmosphere, so at least not life as we know it.

[00:05:08]Those civilizations like the ones found in Bradberry's Martian Chronicles, well, that seems very far away.

[00:05:20]In reference to Martian Chronicles, some people think that the scientists and engineers involved in the space race were inspired by reading Martian Chronicles when they were younger.

[00:05:30]That book depicts a vision of Mars, of a very interesting Martian civilization.

[00:05:35]In a way, the feeling that remains is like a parallel with the discovery of America. [music] For example, that one of exploring, [music] of finding a formidable civilization with all of its aspects, developments, wealth, and ultimately end up destroying it.

[00:06:05]It seems that there will always be fantastic tales about unknown worlds, stories, novels. And as science expands our knowledge, those imaginary worlds are getting pushed further away. But they will always exist.

[00:06:18]In a way, science and fiction have a common ground as they seek to discover the unknown, which seems to be a part of human nature.

[00:06:37]While Mars perhaps has lost some of its appeal to writers of science fiction and comics as a world where civilizations could still exist, it's become very interesting for scientific and technological research.

[00:06:49]Mainly for the possibility of voyages to Mars and perhaps to turn Mars into a second Earth for humans.

[00:06:58]That is quite [music] a change of perspective to believe that we can be the ones doing the settlement and establishment of a new civilization in Mars.

[00:07:22]During his work as a scientist, [music] Ernesto has carried out research on how different species evolve and adapt the shape of their bodies to their landscape.

[00:07:32]Humans up [music] to now have only lived on Earth, and our skeleton has adapted in the best possible way to our atmosphere. If we were to ever establish a permanent colony on Mars [music] or other planets, it would open intriguing possibilities for the future of our species.

[00:08:02]In the past, there were giant animals on Earth. Let's think of the dinosaurs for example, the large dinosaurs.

[00:08:09]Nowadays, the largest animal around is the elephant.

[00:08:13]Physics has shown through theoretical analysis that there is a limit to the size an animal can have on Earth.

[00:08:20]This limit is set by gravitational pull.

[00:08:23]In the case of our planet Earth, that limit is around 100 tons, which is more or less the size of the largest dinosaur that walked the Earth.

[00:08:33]In other planets with different gravities, that limit could change.

[00:08:38]For example, in a planet with less gravity, if humans traveled there and continued to evolve, humans might reach much larger sizes, even more so than that of the dinosaurs when they inhabited Earth.

[00:08:56][music] Even today, humans face [music] a lot of challenges when it comes to relating to one another.

[00:09:10]Think about people from different countries, different religions, and even the difficulties that we face when trying to relate with our closest relatives, apes and primates [music] who we actually don't even treat as equals, but rather as inferior beings.

[00:09:27]So when we take all that into account as well as our potential to develop communication between our species and the animal kingdom, we theorize that we're not entirely prepared to have a harmonious relationship in the case that we find extraterrestrial intelligence.

[00:09:43]Or maybe what could happen is that once we learn that life does exist elsewhere, we start to value the brotherhood and proximity with animals on Earth as well as with members of our own species.

[00:09:55]You can see.

[00:10:07][music] [music] If future space missions were to find microscopic life on Mars, it would result in profound questions. If we're unable to maintain an ecological balance here on Earth, [music] how could we protect any Martian species?

[00:10:33]How would we even know we are in the presence of a living being?

[00:10:38]Where do we look for life on Mars?

[00:10:43]These questions [music] will take us to the most arid desert in the world.

[00:10:59]The Atakama Desert is one of the places on Earth that is most similar to Mars.

[00:11:03]There are several ghost towns along the desert which look as if they had been taken out of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, the memories of an extinct civilization.

[00:11:16]These towns are in fact all that is left from the exploitation of nitrate which once filled the desert with life.

[00:11:30]Armandasa. My name is Armando Azua. I was born in this town which is known as Pedro de Valdivia.

[00:11:39]This town is placed in the middle of the Atakama desert north of Chile, which is one of the driest places in the world.

[00:11:47]The surroundings that you can see here are impressive because many of the Chilean families chose to come here at some point in history to live and work.

[00:11:57]Many raised their families here. But it is amazing that people might have lived, made friends in such an arid spot like this.

[00:12:24]Pedro de Valdivia was abandoned at one point because it seemed that it was less expensive to move people to a friendlier city such as Anttopagasta, mainly due to cost because these towns were self- sustaining.

[00:12:40]They had their own health service, a church, and places for entertainment.

[00:12:46]Nowadays, the town looks interesting, even strange, because people left in such a hurry. For example, in the kindergarten, there are still abandoned toys, which children from the town played with when they were little.

[00:13:00]Some of these toys were hung from trees, and they are still there 20 years later.

[00:13:30]This is the hospital in Pedro de Valdivia which basically remains in the same condition. it was when it was abandoned.

[00:13:38]Everything remains the same 17 years later. As you can see here, this room in particular was the maternity room where many babies were born, including myself.

[00:13:52]So, it is amazing to be here, look around and think that this is where I was born.

[00:14:06]It might sound strange, but people came here thinking that this was a desolate place, but in the end, they ended up forging closer friendships.

[00:14:16]Families become closer to each other under these conditions because they allow for a more human encounter. These extreme conditions make people approach other people.

[00:14:33]Some of the buildings that people revisit, one hears them say, "This is where I was born. This is where I lived.

[00:14:40]This is where I went to school." This phenomena is not usual in large cities.

[00:14:46]There is no connection with the surroundings as there is here. Maybe the type of environment forced this interaction and turned it into a more human one.

[00:14:59]Pedro de Valdivia is located within the driest part of the Atakama desert. The desert is very large and not necessarily equally dry, but in this place in particular, we are in one of the areas known as hyperarid.

[00:15:16]Rain here is non-existent practically.

[00:15:24]I mean rain may fall every 10 or 20 years and in some parts no rain has ever been recorded since measurements started.

[00:15:34]So perhaps it is remarkable that a person who was born here has chosen to follow a career that tries to understand how life can adapt to this type of system to such a dry environment.

[00:15:51]>> [music] >> Due to Atakama's extreme landscape, several NASA missions have used it as a field for testing the robots that will be sent to explore the Martian surface.

[00:16:19]Around 10 years ago, a researcher from NASA suggested that the Atakama desert was a good model of Mars.

[00:16:28]It was suggested that if one could replicate the experiments that took place in Mars, the results obtained in the Adakama desert would be almost identical.

[00:16:48]And it's not only the morphological likeness but also the environmental likeness.

[00:16:55]If one measures the relative humidity of this place at this time, it will be around 20%.

[00:17:02]That is very close to what the Curiosity robot is measuring in the surface of Mars, which means that it is an extremely dry place. I'm in the sec.

[00:17:16][music] In terms of aesthetics, the rocks that you see around me here remind us of the first images taken by the Mars Pathfinder mission.

[00:17:37]We are speaking of 1996 and exactly the environment described by that robot was very similar was very similar to this particular area.

[00:17:54]Now we stand within what is considered to be the driest area of Yungai and the driest in the Adakama desert and therefore the driest on Earth.

[00:18:10]So in an environment such as this life is not evident and to find it we have to closely look into the details.

[00:18:20]What you see here is a crystal made of salt. We have proved that it contains almost 99.9% of sodium chloride which is the same salt that we use on our tables.

[00:18:34]In terms of Mars, at some point in its evolution, there were large quantities of water on Mars and that this water in places we have measured through robots was salt water.

[00:18:47]Therefore, it is not absurd to think that perhaps the same phenomenon of these salt crystals might be present in Mars.

[00:18:56]So when you learn about this kind of phenomenon, you can begin to imagine which kind of life could be found and where we could possibly find it. In the case of Mars, we travel with Arbondo from the extreme dryness of the desert towards the [music] coast full of humidity, birds, fish, and an abundance of life.

[00:19:33]This ecosystem hides a spot that is [music] also very relevant to the search for life on Mars.

[00:19:45]We enter a cave devoid of almost all sunlight. Here, Armando has taken samples proving that exotic forms of life can flourish on its walls.

[00:19:57]They are very peculiar algae which manage to exist under very harsh environmental conditions.

[00:20:06]Mars could also [music] contain many caves where extraterrestrial life could be waiting to be found.

[00:20:15]Knowing where to search for life is a key element for the success of future space [music] missions to Mars.

[00:20:25]Astrobiology is a scientific discipline that seeks to understand the origins of life on earth and the possibilities for life to exist in other places of the universe.

[00:20:37]So this particular case is a very good example of how astrobiology can make use of this type of system because when you analyze this area in general the highest concentration of biodiversity of life will be found only underneath quartz such as this one.

[00:20:58]If I look for forms of life around the surrounding soil, they are either non-existent or they are found but in lesser quantities.

[00:21:06]That already defines the instructions you must give to a robot outside. Search here and don't search there. Because if you search there, you won't find anything probably. But if you search 4 in further to that side, you may find a whole living ecosystem.

[00:21:32]>> [music] >> In the case of the samples taken in the cave, we have found something especially interesting.

[00:21:42]We found a micro algae which upon further analysis proved to be extremely primitive.

[00:21:50]In fact, it matches the first stages of the evolution of plants.

[00:21:55]This microalgae was involved in this process and it is actually a living fossil that was trapped alive during this stage.

[00:22:04]We also realized that this microalgae is apparently extremely efficient at capturing light. Once we measured the light that reached that specific point in the cave, we realized that it could grow using less than.1% of the light that comes from outside.

[00:22:25]In the case of the other two places where we took samples from the coastal mountains and these salt crystals that we found around Yungai, there is evidence of certain microclimates, microhabitats where water can be found, although in very small quantities.

[00:22:42]And these are the places in particular that are used by life to colonize.

[00:22:48]If there is water, the process of life colonization can begin.

[00:23:07]I believe that at some point the conditions required for life to begin were met in Mars. At a certain point it was very similar to Earth. So I think that life may have existed on Mars.

[00:23:22]The big question is whether life still continues to exist on Mars. These type of examples sometimes make me think that it might be possible because when you have a specific type of surrounding, life is able to prosper.

[00:23:57]One of the last adventures to explore the red planet started here at the Jet Propulsion Lab, where the most advanced robot ever built by mankind, the Curiosity rover, is being assembled.

[00:24:13]Curiosity is twice the size of former rovers. It can carry equipment up to five times heavier than its predecessors.

[00:24:25]As part of the mission, NASA engineers created new technologies to enter and land on the surface of Mars.

[00:24:38]The voyage towards the red planet begins on November 26th, 2011.

[00:24:45]Come on. At 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 zero.

[00:25:27]It takes 8 months for the mission to reach Mars. Once it enters the Martian atmosphere, the complex descent systems are enabled and the spacecraft operates on its own without any help from Earth.

[00:25:41]We can only hope that all the years of calculations and preparation prove to be correct.

[00:25:52]They're looking good. Coming up navigating to the corner as we go in here.

[00:26:15]Uh it is reporting that we are seeing gains on the order of 11 12.

[00:26:24]We are now getting from >> 3 minutes before touching down on Martian ground, a parachute reduces [music] the speed of approach.

[00:26:38]>> Has separated the ground. We're down to 90 m at an altitude of 6.5 km descending.

[00:26:46]Then retro rockets are used to further reduce the rate of descent.

[00:27:04]Curiosity finally sets foot on the Martian surface.

[00:27:13]>> [music] >> Shot confirmed. RECEIVE ON [cheering] Got a thumbnail.

[00:27:53]The Curiosity rover weighs almost 2,000 lbs, including 176 lbs of instruments and equipment for scientific testing.

[00:28:02]With a length of almost 10 ft, the robot is able to overcome obstacles 2 [music] 1/2 ft high.

[00:28:09]It is driven automatically and can reach a maximum speed of over 295 ft per hour.

[00:28:16]It has five cameras, four spectrometers that measure the chemical composition of the ground.

[00:28:23]two radiation detectors and a [music] weather station to study the Martian atmosphere in detail.

[00:28:34]The robot's mission is to determine whether any life ever existed on Mars, as well as to characterize its climate, study its geology, and prepare for future human exploration.

[00:28:52]The next stretch of our journey in search of the secrets of Mars is Bogota, Colombia.

[00:29:01]Here we meet a Latin American astronaut who spent 500 days inside a small base camp simulating a future space colony on Mars.

[00:29:12][music] It is the next logical step in Mars exploration.

[00:29:26]What would everyday life be like on such a long and complex mission? Are humans psychologically able to stand such long journeys away from Earth?

[00:29:37][music] My name is Diego Orbina. I'm from Bogotaa, Columbia. I'm an electric engineer on space operations and I live in Cologne, Germany.

[00:29:58]Mars 500 is a joint mission shared between the European Space Agency, Russia, and China [music] to simulate for the first time a complete round trip to Mars, which has never been done before.

[00:30:14]The mission was comprised of several stages. One stage was the trip towards Mars which lasted eight months. Then a month in the surface of Mars and then the return trip which lasted eight more months.

[00:30:31]During the voyage to and from Mars, we stayed inside a spaceship simulator the size of two train wagons.

[00:30:37]Then for the period on Mars, we had to stay inside a much smaller module approximately the size of half a bus.

[00:30:50]We wanted to study the human factors and how being shut away from the world would impact us as well as the limited communications and limited space that a trip to Mars would involve. Looking at the effects on the body and mind For a small group of people to travel to Mars, it would require a mix of expertise distributed among the group.

[00:31:16]So you would probably need an electrical engineer, that was me, a mechanical engineer who was French. We had a psychologist who is Chinese and a trainer of astronauts.

[00:31:27]And we also had a diver from the Russian army as well as two doctors who were Russian.

[00:31:35]You need them since if anyone gets ill over there, you can't go to a hospital and you can't do the things you would do here on earth to heal someone.

[00:31:43]>> So you need the knowledge and talent of a surgeon who can perform an operation there.

[00:31:52]Regarding personal life, naturally being isolated from your family, not being able to communicate easily since the delay on the telephone communications did not allow us to communicate by phone as we do every day. We had to send text messages.

[00:32:06]Not being able to see anyone besides those five faces for a year and a half was hard.

[00:32:11]Not seeing your family or sharing time with them, not being able to meet new people or see strangers on the street felt very odd.

[00:32:19]For me, that was one of the most difficult aspects since humans are social beings naturally and you miss that.

[00:32:31]>> [music] >> But at the [music] same time, I was among five people and I could interact with them.

[00:32:49]Also, the fact of not having any fresh air or seeing the sunlight during all that time was hard to bear.

[00:32:57]But obviously there are moments that compensate for that during all the time.

[00:33:04]There were happy moments with the rest of the crew. We celebrated birthdays, Christmas and New Year's which helped balance things [music] out.

[00:33:16][music] First, I want to clarify that this is not a real pizza. This is a simulation of a pizza. Like, this is a simulation of a trip to Mars.

[00:33:40]But since we don't have any more ingredients here and the bakery is closed and uh the shops are closed at this time and we have to use what we have here in the models and so we're going to use some vegetables.

[00:33:58]Food is all canned or frozen which we could warm in the microwave and there was other food that we just need to add water to but always packaged food.

[00:34:14]The only time we enjoyed fresh food was on the second part of the mission.

[00:34:24]We were able to start a greenhouse where we grew cherry tomatoes and herbs that we could add to our food.

[00:34:32]When these were available once a month or every two months, we would devour them.

[00:34:38]Fresh food is really very important.

[00:34:41]I think that in a mission to Mars, fresh food will be very critical.

[00:35:04]As with all these space projects where the risk factor is high, you try to do things over and over again on Earth in order to pinpoint what can go wrong.

[00:35:18]So when you do it in space, you don't risk a human life or even the whole mission.

[00:35:30]>> [music] >> For instance, in the International Space Station, which has been orbiting Earth for the last 10 years, we're constantly doing simulations on Earth to train staff regarding emergencies and daily operations. [music] Each 10-minute operation carried on the space station entails hours and hours of training on Earth beforehand for staff and astronauts. People [music] always ask which has been the best day of your life. Before I didn't have one, but now I would say the nicest day of my life was when I left the mission.

[00:36:29]When I saw other people again after such a long time, when I was able to breathe the air and smell other things, my mother and sister both traveled to Russia to welcome me.

[00:36:39]Hugging my family was amazing.

[00:36:42]My legs shook when I left that place.

[00:36:46]I had to give a speech and I wanted to go through it quickly because my legs were shaking in front of all the journalists and I wanted to get out of there.

[00:37:00]>> During the Mars 500 mission, we managed to carry out the longest space flight in history on Earth with the hope that in the future, humanity has the chance of seeing a new sunrise.

[00:37:12]So I think yes that was the most important day of my life up to now.

[00:37:26]>> I'm very happy to be the first Colombian to participate in a mission of this kind and even more to be one of the six humans who have ever done this.

[00:37:42]I think that there's a lot of talent in Latin America and Colombia.

[00:37:46]For example, in this university, there's a great astronomical community [music] which has recently started and they are already producing good results in the field of space engineering. The universad Sergio Arba already built its first satellite.

[00:38:04]This is something that not everyone knows. Colombia already launched a satellite into space and setting aside all the technology and modern fields like engineering. We've been watching the sky for thousands of years even before the Spanish conquest.

[00:38:24]The Aztecs and Mois cultures already had a great detailed knowledge about the stars and constellations and I think we should take advantage of that heritage.

[00:38:41]>> [music] >> The last stage of our trip takes takes us to North America.

[00:39:11]We go to Texas to see new technologies that are being created to take humans [music] to Mars.

[00:39:18]Using current propulsion systems, a voyage to Mars can take months. We visit a facility where space engines are built, led by a former astronaut from Latin America. They are developing innovative propulsion systems to shorten a future voyage to Mars.

[00:39:36][music] >> Franklin, >> my name is Franklin Chang Diaz and I am the chairman of Adastra Company in Houston, Texas.

[00:39:49]I was an astronaut at NASA for 25 years.

[00:39:53]I started to work for NASA in 1980 and retired in 2005 when I started at Astro Rocket.

[00:39:59]at Astro Rocket.

[00:40:08]>> During my 25 years at NASA, I traveled in the space shuttle several times and also visited the Russian space station called MIR in those days.

[00:40:18]I also took part in the buildout of the International Space Station, which is what we have in orbit nowadays.

[00:40:30]There were several missions, a total of seven missions as well as spacew walks.

[00:40:35]>> I was very lucky to take part in all these activities expected from someone who's an astronaut.

[00:40:42]>> In the sky, a 23in metal sphere placed in orbit by a Russian rocket.

[00:40:50]I was fascinated by Sputnik, by the fact that space flights were no longer a matter of science fiction.

[00:40:57]In 1957, the first artificial satellite was launched.

[00:41:02]And several years later, the first human being flew into space, Yuri Gagarin.

[00:41:09]And just not long ago, we celebrated the first woman in space, Valentina Tereskova.

[00:41:14]Those were my heroes, and I wanted to be like them.

[00:41:20]I lived in Costa Rica in those days and for a child in Costa Rica, the dream was out of reach.

[00:41:34][music] >> I came to the US in search of that opportunity and I was lucky [music] enough to have achieved my dream.

[00:42:01]I studied engineering and physics and then I submitted an application after seeing a NASA advertisement seeking a new group of astronauts in 1979.

[00:42:12]I was selected in 1980.

[00:42:19]I was perhaps the first Latin American to be selected by NASA to become part of the team of astronauts and I felt immensely proud.

[00:42:48]I'd say that being able to witness our planet from above is something that can transform a person.

[00:42:54]It has the power to change you completely.

[00:42:57]To realize how small and fragile the planet really is along with its beauty also because our planet is extremely beautiful.

[00:43:11]But one can also notice the impact that humans have caused to the environment.

[00:43:16]All countries, not only one place or another, but along the whole world, there are signs the footprints of humans.

[00:43:38]The atmosphere, the change between daytime and nighttime, that half light as a veil which indicates the atmosphere's thickness.

[00:43:46]How small the atmosphere really is. That is also very stunning because one realizes that we depend on that thin veil of gas to sustain life in this planet.

[00:43:57]>> [music] >> We are an engine company. We produce rocket engines. But not the type of engines used to launch rockets from Earth, but the engines used in space to carry things from point A to point B.

[00:44:27]And we try to do this in a more efficient, less expensive and faster way.

[00:44:32]>> So that's our business. We don't build spaceships, but we provide the thrust for those vehicles which are built by third parties.

[00:44:46]The Vasmir engine is a plasma engine, an entirely new engine in the sense that it uses electricity and ionized gas.

[00:44:55]extremely hot gas to provide propulsion.

[00:45:01]>> 2.

[00:45:07]>> Typically in a rocket, you heat gases in a combustion chamber and you shoot them at high speeds which results in that propulsion based on Newton's law of action and reaction.

[00:45:21]And that also happens in a plasma engine except that the gases are extremely high temperatures.

[00:45:28]Given that the engine and the rocket become more efficient with more heat, it uses less fuel. So it's better. That's why we use these high temperatures.

[00:45:41]The problem with high temperatures is that if you go above the melting point for metals, the engine will consequently melt.

[00:45:50]We have solved this problem through the use of magnetic fields.

[00:45:54]>> The container, the tube through which the plasma spreads is not an actual container made of a particular material, but rather it constitutes an invisible magnetic field. It's a magnetic tube, a magnetic nozzle as we call it. There inside these magnetic structures, we can heat gases to temperatures similar to the sun.

[00:46:17]In our laboratory, we shoot plasmas that are at a temperature of perhaps one or two million degrees.

[00:46:26]>> And this provides us with a highly more efficient rocket than a conventional chemical one.

[00:46:36]>> Yeah.

[00:46:37]>> That one is our 28 volt power which powers the the gray box, the P.

[00:46:43]>> That's what distributes power to everything. Okay.

[00:46:45]>> And then part of one of those feedroughs from that box goes to the black box over there, the E900.

[00:46:51]>> Okay.

[00:46:52]And then what? Okay. This is keeping things at atmospheric pressure coming through here. This That's right.

[00:47:03]>> The technology we are developing will enable to cut down the time for human beings to voyage to Mars.

[00:47:10]So that instead of a journey taking eight or nine months, it could last just two months, maybe even a little less.

[00:47:32]An engine with the capability to carry humans to Mars is around 5 megawatt or more.

[00:47:39]We can't test a 5 megawatt engine in a vacuum chamber on Earth because it doesn't exist.

[00:47:46]>> And we can't test it on the International Space Station either because it would knock it out of orbit.

[00:47:54]The moon, however, provides a place with enough gravity in space to store solar energy and test an engine of this kind for a very long time.

[00:48:09]>> [music] >> We can learn to live in a place in space with less gravity than Earth, but close enough to Earth in the case that something should happen. So I think the moon is an ideal place for these tests.

[00:48:20]So we can establish this base, this campsite before we try to reach the summit. Before trying to reach the summit, you first want to settle into this camp. You get used to it and then then you make the attempt to reach beyond.

[00:48:40]Once we overcome this first step, I believe humans will be ready to embark on a mission to Mars.

[00:48:48][music] A more robust mission, not inside the traditional capsules that we are used to seeing, but in a strong interplanetary vehicle with sufficient power [music] and plenty of energy to solve any problem that might arise.

[00:49:06]>> [music] >> And once we can manage traveling to places as distant as Mars, there won't be a remote control available like in Houston for us to say, "Houston, we have a problem." Because 20 minutes would pass before Houston would receive the message and another 20 minutes before the reply could even reach us.

[00:49:33]So the spacecraft to Mars and to other planets must be autonomous.

[00:49:38]>> They must have the same autonomy as Christopher Columbus when he left Europe and had to solve his own problems. We should be able to solve any problems we encounter.

[00:50:04]I believe that it's only a question of time before we find life outside Earth.

[00:50:10]>> It's rather presumptuous of us to think that we are unique, that this is the only planet able to harbor life.

[00:50:19]Life can be found in our planet, as we have seen, in the most remote of places.

[00:50:26]even under the harshest conditions. So there's no reason why we should think this way.

[00:50:32][music] I believe that life outside Earth is the standard rather than the exception.

[00:50:42]The universe is full of life, but we are not advanced enough to detect it yet.

[00:50:48]So finding that life is simply a matter of time. Back.

[00:51:14]Heat.

[00:51:34]>> [music] [music] [music]