
Can we put the data centers in space? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly map out the future of human habitation, research, and industry in low Earth orbit with Ariel Ekblaw, founder and CEO of the Aurelia Institute.
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Chuck Nice
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Gary O'Reilly
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Gary yes, we just learned that the future in space does not include the iss.
Gary O'Reilly
It's going down space drama.
Chuck Nice
Yeah, hopefully they take the astronauts out first, though.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay, we'll send Chuck's note along. Coming up, what our future in space will probably look like because we got the expert on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition, which means I got Gary O'Reilly right next to me.
Chuck Nice
Gary.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Hey, Neil. And Chuck.
Chuck Nice
Nice. What's Up, Neil.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
All right. So Gary, I don't know how you came up with this subject. You and Lane over in la.
Gary O'Reilly
Alright, yeah, we had a little help from Lindsey Walker and Lindsey Walker. Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So my co author, Lindsey Walker.
Gary O'Reilly
Yes. And credit to both Lindsay and Lane. All right, let's get into this. Consider this. The ISS is to be decommissioned International Space Station.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
For those who have never listened to this show ever at all.
Gary O'Reilly
And that's due 2030, 2031. So now you start to extend your thought process. So what will replace it? What will Earth's orbital space look like? What new technologies are going to emerge? Will Earth's orbit become an annex for our off worlding, our industries?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I love that phrase, off worlding. And that's just. That just sounds.
Chuck Nice
It sounds so like futuristic and spacey.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I mean, I have to get off world right now.
Chuck Nice
I'm telling you, I'm a wanted man. I have to get off world.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Off world.
Gary O'Reilly
Yeah. So I mean that's gonna be prefixed with a big old dollar sign.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes.
Gary O'Reilly
Once you start to get into those areas, there's a lot to unpack. So let's bring on our guests, shall we?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
All right. We got a guest here. You know, it'll take me half the show to read the credentials here.
Gary O'Reilly
Then don't read them all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
No, I'm gonna read them all. Okay, we have Ariel Ekblisle. Did I pronounce your name correctly?
Ariel Ekblaw
I did, sir.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ariel, welcome back to StarTalk.
Ariel Ekblaw
Thank you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Star Talk. You were last on during COVID Yes, and I have no memory of anything that happened during COVID And I didn't even have Covid.
Ariel Ekblaw
Don't we all?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's not my excuse. So you are founder and CEO. I love anybody who's that of anything. Founder and CEO of the Aurelia Institute, whose mission is to bring humanity space exploration future to life.
Chuck Nice
Nice.
Ariel Ekblaw
I'm working on it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Oh, making the future now.
Chuck Nice
Now.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes. Okay. Founder and Director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.
Chuck Nice
Mm, look at that.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Man, that is serious.
Gary O'Reilly
Been busy.
Chuck Nice
Some serious stuff.
Ariel Ekblaw
Hashtag nerd would also suffice.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, that's true. Hashtag nerd, like geek. Nerd squared. NASA Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium on the executive committee of that. Okay.
Ariel Ekblaw
Obviously. Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And you've actually worked on space hardware that's on the surface of Mars right now. Oh, wow.
Ariel Ekblaw
I got to see.
Chuck Nice
So your parents are really disappointed in you. Just like I don't know what happened.
Ariel Ekblaw
I never did learn to fly. They are. Oh God, the underachiever.
Chuck Nice
I was.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Get out Parents are Air Force pilots. Both of them?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes, my parents are both pilots.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You're such a disappointment.
Ariel Ekblaw
What's left, though? Double pilot parents. You gotta go to space.
Chuck Nice
That's right. That's so true. Okay, mom, dad, stay in the atmosphere.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I don't care. So what piece of hardware is on Mars that you touched?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, I got to work on Sherlock on the perseverance rover, Mars 2020, which is looking for, in NASA's classic terminology, can't say, looking for life. Looking for signs of past habitability on the Martian surface.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Looking for life.
Chuck Nice
Look at that.
Ariel Ekblaw
Looking for life.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Looking for life. That's the current rover. It's still an active rover.
Gary O'Reilly
Don't tell me it's got a deer stalker hat and a magnifying glass just running around on the Martian surface.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Very Sherlock Holmesy. No, I'm delighted to learn all of this. Now the bit that you worked on, that was at jpl, I guess, when they assembled it. So you didn't like sneeze on it before they launched it?
Ariel Ekblaw
Not to my knowledge.
Chuck Nice
And now there is life on Mars. Well, what do you know?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
This aerial snot on Mars that come
Ariel Ekblaw
to life, snuck past that planetary protection protocol, right?
Chuck Nice
The Andromeda Strain. It's the aerial strain.
Ariel Ekblaw
Aerial strain. Oh, God, the horror. They bake those things out, though, they gotta really heat them up before they send them. So I'm pretty sure that my little fingerprint gets baked off of that aluminum.
Chuck Nice
Okay.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Or the booger that you put on
Chuck Nice
it when you what that do.
Ariel Ekblaw
Stop, stop.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay, let me get. Let me start off here. So the International Space Station, I mean, I'm old enough to remember when it was debated when we wanted to make sure. Because at the end of the Cold War, all these Russian aerospace scientists, we didn't want them going to our enemy. So the original space station, which was called Space Station Freedom, we retooled that to bring in the Russian astronauts. And only then did it become the International Space Station, bringing in the Japanese and Europe and the like. So when was that? Early 90s. So that was 35 years ago. And no one would come near any piece of technology that's 35 years old today.
Ariel Ekblaw
Oh, for sure.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
If I say, oh, look at this shoulder mounted cell phone or whatever. So we have a space station that is way older than anything you would deign to use today here on Earth. So just put this in context now. Did they not build, in its obsolescence, Future proof.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, future proof. Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Or future proof, we know it's going to be. We're going to drop it out of the sky or we have swappable panels everywhere now.
Gary O'Reilly
The future's become exponential. So the.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So tell me.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, yeah. So how do you prepare? I think that's a great point. Yeah. It's basically debated, thought about in the 80s debated. And then built in the 90s, flown in the early 2000s. So it's like a home that desperately needs a reno. It's really old. And what we're looking at now is what's the. The next opportunity to build modern technology into space architecture fundamentally for this next wave of commercial space stations that are going to replace the International Space Station when it does get decommissioned. 2030.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
2031 is decommissioned. Code for drop it out of orbit.
Ariel Ekblaw
Fiery death.
Chuck Nice
Fiery death.
Gary O'Reilly
We're going to decommission small object. This is sizable.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes. And it's no small feat for NASA to be able to do that. Well, I think there's a lot of orbital dynamics planning and reentry, drag engineering.
Chuck Nice
What's the difference between something that large and things that are deorbiting all the time?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah. Whether they burn up completely on reentry, whether they fully incinerate or whether for the case of the iss, probably parts of it will end up being intentionally plopped in the ocean or somewhere if it's not fully burning up on reentry.
Chuck Nice
Unless you're China, in which case you
Neil deGrasse Tyson
don't care where you throw your garbage.
Chuck Nice
China throwing their garbage all over the world.
Ariel Ekblaw
This is a very trenchant example because the Chinese did get in some trouble for Tiangong, one of their earliest space stations, for not deorbiting it properly. So there's a lot of eyes on NASA. I believe in NASA fully at the ability to do this, but there's a lot of eyes on NASA to make sure they do it well. Do it safely.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
To do it safely and well means you drop it into the great toilet bowl of space, which is the Pacific Ocean.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Chuck Nice
Right.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And not on the Pacific Ocean is one third of all longitude on Earth. If you can't plunk a satellite into that, damn, you got problems.
Ariel Ekblaw
Right, yeah. Just don't hit Point Nemo. Right. Because on Point Nemo, the craziest thing.
Chuck Nice
Point Nemo.
Ariel Ekblaw
Point Nemo is the most remote place.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Is that where Finding Nemo went?
Ariel Ekblaw
If only Point Neo, then we'd know where he was.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Chuck Nice
That was good.
Ariel Ekblaw
I'm just learning from the best. I'm learning from the best.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That was so good. Okay, so what is Point Nemo?
Ariel Ekblaw
Nemo is the most remote place on Earth. So if you're in Point Nemo, you're farther away from any other human than any other landmass. Except when the International Space Station flies over, then you're only 250 miles away from a human. So when, you know, when it goes over point numero, you're closer to space humans than you are to Earth humans.
Chuck Nice
Wow. And doesn't that sound like heaven to be close to space?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well, if you like being alone. To Earth humans, if you're like a hermit. Yeah.
Gary O'Reilly
Is there any way you can disassemble the ISS before you bring it back?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes, I suspect that there will be part of the ConOps concept of operations as they're going to pluck some of the different modules apart rather than just trying to have the entire kind of unwieldy structure with all those solar panels.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Why would you do that? Is it because you can reuse it? Something from 35 years ago? Let the damn thing burn up.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah. So this is the crux of NASA's plan that just got re announced with ignition. So we have Jared Isaacman, new NASA administrator. Exciting times. They are going to double down on this idea that the new commercial space stations who are going to replace the International Space Station, first they attach to the existing iss, they build up their modules, and then it's like the Phoenix rising from the ashes of the iss. The remainder of the ISS that's not going to be kind of consumed and built into the future, the remainder of the ISS will be deorbited.
Chuck Nice
I'm going to say that's a pretty damn good plan.
Ariel Ekblaw
It's a cool plan.
Chuck Nice
Yeah.
Gary O'Reilly
That means sending astronauts out and the risk of that. And you're putting people in jeopardy.
Chuck Nice
Space construction, man.
Gary O'Reilly
What could go wrong?
Chuck Nice
That is awesome.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Come on.
Chuck Nice
We all know that when you have space construction, okay. That a jump scare is coming.
Ariel Ekblaw
This is what I'm really passionate about. How do we start to build things way bigger than the International Space Station, where each module could only be as big as your biggest rocket. They then put a bunch of them together. But what if you could build a room.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Wait, just to unpack that. So the biggest module was what could fit in the payload bay of a shop. So there's no piece up there that's bigger unless you're gonna fold it. But so all those cylindrical pieces, they like within.
Ariel Ekblaw
Oh, crazy tolerances.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Crazy tolerance, right. Because you max that out. And so the shuttle and the space station complete each other. Oh, my cue.
Gary O'Reilly
Are we talking flatback we are talking flatback.
Ariel Ekblaw
We're talking ikea.
Gary O'Reilly
NASA are gonna go to ikea. You took the thought out of my mind. Because we told kilos equal dollars in terms of payload.
Chuck Nice
Okay, go ahead.
Gary O'Reilly
No, no. So this is where you're taking it. Where do you get your cues for design? Now we know we're going to flat pack everything. Where do we get our cues from design? Is it the 35 year old tech or are we thinking something or even
Ariel Ekblaw
further back than that in some sense, even further back. So it's like this vision from science fiction of how do you have massive structures that are way bigger than your biggest rocket payload fairing. And there's this idea from Buckminster Fuller. So even well before the International Space Station was designed of buckyballs. Geodesic domes. Why do we love spheres in space? Because for a given surface area, you're optimizing for all that volume. Most efficient shape.
Gary O'Reilly
Okay, I can't resist saying this. You're inventing Spaceballs. Awesome. Sorry, we could not keep that in my mind.
Ariel Ekblaw
Slowly but surely.
Chuck Nice
Slowly but surely.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Spaceballs.
Chuck Nice
Okay, when exactly does dark helmet enter the equation? Is that his name?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dark helmet, yes. Not Darth Vader. Not Darth Vader.
Gary O'Reilly
Darth Helmet.
Ariel Ekblaw
Dark helmet. Self assembling baseballs.
Chuck Nice
Yes, very nice.
Ariel Ekblaw
That's the idea.
Chuck Nice
So why either. Why not? Or in addition to, would you not use printing? Since we are now able to print extremely strong, very light metals.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So 3D printing?
Chuck Nice
Yes. 3D printing, yes.
Ariel Ekblaw
I think the answer is yes. And okay, so we definitely want innovative structures in space. We want self assembling, modular things.
Chuck Nice
Gotcha.
Ariel Ekblaw
The reason we want modularity, that's not just 3D printed. Because then it's. When it's 3D printed, it's done.
Chuck Nice
It's a done deal.
Ariel Ekblaw
If you get damaged on one of my modular flat packed panels that have since popped out of their can.
Chuck Nice
Yes.
Ariel Ekblaw
Self assembled. You can remove a tile, pop a new one off. Or if you had a window tomorrow.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's Legos.
Chuck Nice
It's Lego.
Ariel Ekblaw
It's Legos. It's space Legos. With magnets.
Chuck Nice
Legos.
Gary O'Reilly
If you're making a sofa magnet.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Chuck Nice
Nice.
Gary O'Reilly
Okay, we'll get onto magnets.
Chuck Nice
But that's.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And since you're in zero G, you will never step on a Lego LEGO piece and hurt your feet.
Chuck Nice
You'll never hear a astronaut in the middle. Well, it's always the middle of the night. Go God damn.
Ariel Ekblaw
God damn.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Leave your lingo.
Gary O'Reilly
So if you're making the spherical construction, that's Tessellation of shapes. So that becomes biomimicry.
Ariel Ekblaw
It does. My PhD at MIT was really inspired by ideas in biology of how nature self assembles.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And what department was that?
Ariel Ekblaw
I was in between Aeroastro Course 16 and the MIT Media Lab, which is very creative architecture.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, I know. Yeah. We've had people from there here before. Right. So they couldn't fit you anywhere, so you had to straddle. Yeah, all right, all right.
Gary O'Reilly
Okay. The irony is you wouldn't trust a 35 year old technology.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
No, I wouldn't.
Gary O'Reilly
But we've gone to mother nature for cues to design the.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Tell me some of your nature cues.
Chuck Nice
Ah, yeah, that's cool.
Ariel Ekblaw
Self assembly, like how proteins fold within the body or fold up into DNA.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Very cool.
Ariel Ekblaw
And then other examples of small units like swarms of termites and ants. They can take their tiny little bodies and bridge a gap that is bigger
Neil deGrasse Tyson
than anything I've seen that they self
Chuck Nice
attach to each other.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It scares the hell out of me.
Chuck Nice
And create structures.
Ariel Ekblaw
If they had a bigger brain, we would be nervous.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes, they would be.
Chuck Nice
However, if they had a bigger brain, you'd never be on the bottom of those structures when it comes to floods. That's how they survive floods.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes. Because they just.
Chuck Nice
They climb on top of each other, create a raft. And then the ones on the bottom, they're just like. I'm so sorry.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sor. Oh God.
Chuck Nice
My buddy Adam gave himself for us all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guys, just a quick brain fact recently learned by me. We grew up hearing that of course we don't have the biggest brains. We have the biggest brains relative to our body weight.
Chuck Nice
Okay.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So you have to perform some math magic to get us back at the top of that list. Otherwise we're fourth behind whales, dolphins and elephants.
Ariel Ekblaw
Gotta normalize. Exactly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
However, that's not even true. We're only fourth. We're only the top of the brain to body weight ratio among mammals. Really? If you bring in mid sized birds. Because birds are very light.
Chuck Nice
Yes, they are.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You bring in mid sized birds, we are behind birds.
Ariel Ekblaw
Wow.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And you know who beats everybody out?
Chuck Nice
Who?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Some species of ant. And you know they got big hands.
Chuck Nice
Yes. They have giant ants.
Gary O'Reilly
You see the heads up.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So do ants. So I'm just saying.
Ariel Ekblaw
He was just fact checking us here, talking about these ants.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah. I'm just saying, you got ants doing everything you're describing. They're probably doing calculus in their head.
Chuck Nice
That wouldn't be funny.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah.
Chuck Nice
Stupid humans. Still trying to figure out calculus. Jesus Christ. Look at them. Building above ground, housing Dumbasses.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Above ground housing.
Gary O'Reilly
That's right.
Ariel Ekblaw
Take them to Mars. They're going to help us do that. All that below ground, have them do all the construction.
Chuck Nice
There you go.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I've always wondered why Hollywood aliens tend to have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears, head, shoulders, neck, arms, legs, fingers, toes. Maybe it's because an actor is donning a costume. That's one of the reasons why I wrote Take me to your leader. It's to explore all that is possible in this universe beyond what has yet to to be imagined by Hollywood. So that for your first alien encounter, you'll be prepared. You'll have some anticipation of what they could look like, what kind of ship they arrived in, what you should or should not say, or should or should not presume. I narrated the audiobook. The print version is available as well. You better get the book now before you have that first alien encounter. Because afterwards it'll be too late.
Chuck Nice
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
Ariel.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I want an answer to this.
Ariel Ekblaw
Okay.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Why are you and NASA ignoring what every sci fi writer knows? You rotate your space station. You do so that no one has to complain about bone loss and 0G and muscle loss and eyeball. And rotate something so you get artificial
Chuck Nice
gravity, ear problems, all of that.
Ariel Ekblaw
I have a five step plan. You do. This is phase zero. Yes. Oh, self assembling first.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Right.
Ariel Ekblaw
So pack them flat in a rocket, get that IKEA furniture, pop them out like a little PEZ dispenser. The magnets help the tiles self assemble. The first structure is a sphere. Because we want a microgravity lab, because we want to do biotech research, that
Neil deGrasse Tyson
we can do that for the companies that are doing research.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes, scientists, like where I come from, from mit, all of that. But then the future absolutely is to try to tessellate structures and then spin them. And so at Aurelia Institute, our non profit, where we do all of this space architecture research, we've just released a paper on artificial gravity and our particular take on it.
Gary O'Reilly
All right, so you said about magnetism, self assembly, but there's a lot of magnetism around in space and other environmental issues. So you've got that to deal with.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
What do you mean? What are you talking about?
Gary O'Reilly
What kind of space junk?
Ariel Ekblaw
Earth's magnetic field.
Gary O'Reilly
Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
Gotta consider that when we have magnets. Yeah. Space junk, it's not all that strong.
Gary O'Reilly
And then you've gotta make sure you've got 100% seal.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Gary O'Reilly
On every facet of every tile.
Ariel Ekblaw
This was the hardest question.
Chuck Nice
Yeah, I was gonna say. Yeah, that makes sense.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes. And so the trade off to modular self assembly is you get all these seams. So what do we do with the seams? The magnets are what bring the exoskeleton together. So click, click, click in this big sphere.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And then using magnets in lieu of bolts and other fastening devices in addition.
Ariel Ekblaw
So the magnets pull the tiles together while they're still separated. So instead of using propulsion or a
Neil deGrasse Tyson
consumable like air trash, you're exploiting a force of nature to do this. A free force of nature.
Ariel Ekblaw
Exactly. Because you couldn't do it on Earth. And this is the elegance of self assembly in space.
Gary O'Reilly
You don't have the workforce issue.
Ariel Ekblaw
There's no friction.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So I hadn't put all this together the way you clearly have. If you have magnetic forces to otherwise move pieces in space requires some act of propulsion.
Ariel Ekblaw
Right.
Chuck Nice
Right.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And if there's already a built in force, then you've got it.
Chuck Nice
You don't need to.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Then the magnets come. Okay.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Chuck Nice
All right, so now step two.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let me finish what I'm talking about. Okay, I'm still explaining. Now we use the fancy word tessellate. Okay, fine, you tessellate. And what's that other word she used to.
Gary O'Reilly
I'm not telling you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You're gonna build a structure that you then will set. Rotating.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
What sets it into rotation?
Ariel Ekblaw
Ah. So the initial sphere that we're talking about, the buckyball, is not gonna rotate. What we're working on for the artificial gravity is more of what we call like a xylem. You know those tubes and plants that go up vertically along the length of the plant stem.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes.
Ariel Ekblaw
We want to align.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That has a word. Xylem.
Ariel Ekblaw
Xylem, Xylem and flow of. This is my like 4th grade memory from science. Xylem and phloem. So this is separate from the self assembling buckyball. But for the rotating artificial gravity station, the paper that we just put out is a bunch of cylinders. And you put the cylinders next to each other in a ring and then you spin that ring. And what sets that moving is you're going to have a bunch of motors. Basically you're going to have a bunch of traditional mechanized systems to get that going.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
But something has to take on the angular momentum in the opposite direction. So what is that going to be?
Ariel Ekblaw
So we have a bunch of balance ballast. And the structure that we're doing is we're trying to think about. If you think about like a typical ring, like 2001 Space Odyssey.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Typical, typical 2001 Sci Fi ring in the movie.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, we're sci fi nerds. Yeah, typical sci fi nerds.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So it's basically a ribbon. Some kind of ribbon. Yeah, yeah. And that's the. And then the gravity is closer to the radial. Right.
Ariel Ekblaw
The dirty little secret about that is if you're a human walking along that ring, you're gonna feel different gravity at your head.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
At your feet.
Ariel Ekblaw
At your feet.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes.
Ariel Ekblaw
Which is a lot of weird cross coupling effects for your vestibular system.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So we've changed that. Unless the ring is really huge.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And then the difference will be small.
Ariel Ekblaw
Then we're talking like. Yeah, 100 kilometers. If you could pull off a ring that big. Very small. And then you won't feel sick. Right. Cause you're spinning, but you're spinning so slowly. Huge diameter. How do we do artificial gravity in 10 years and not 100 years. That massive ring could be 100 years from now. What do we do in the next 10 years to make it more feasible? Instead of a ribbon of a ring. That was a great word. We have these cylinder pipes where the gravity level is consistent when you're occupying it. So you're not changing the gravity from foot to toe. So it's kind of like changing the geometry a little bit. Ultimately it is a ring of cylinders that then gets spun.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Right. So everywhere within a cylinder has the same force of gravity.
Ariel Ekblaw
That's the idea. It's at that same.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
But then what am I doing in that cylinder? I want to get to over here because that's where the gym is and this is where. Where the mess hall is.
Ariel Ekblaw
You do have to transit. And so we can't completely remove the cross coupling effects. If you're climbing towards the center, maybe the docking center of the ring, you're gonna go from normal gravity 1 g to 0. Gradually floating. But you can do a ladder. You can do ergonomic techniques to help get the humans upstairs.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So to be so worried about this variation from feet to head.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
When you apparently weren't worried when I was in no gravity at all. So. So what's a little gravity gradient between friends?
Ariel Ekblaw
In between friends? Between moments one moment to the next. It turns out it's tricky to basically have the human experience these gradient shifts. You really want to. When you go into zrt.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
How do you know that?
Ariel Ekblaw
We know that because of amazing studies done at mit.
Chuck Nice
There's some dude walking around right now who has zero balance at all. He's just falling all over the place.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Mike takes you. He's the one that she did the experiment on. Exactly.
Ariel Ekblaw
Carnival rides. We get the Gravitron going and we play with people inside of it. Kind of true.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay. I remember the Gravitron. That's the rotating thing. Yeah, yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
It's a centrifuge.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Flying saucer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
Human sized centrifuge. So we learned some from that from studies in that. And then there's also been a lot of science about when the astronauts first get to the International Space Station. Sometimes there's space sickness. They have to acclimate to the zero G environment. So we don't want you to be in a constant state of are you in real gravity or are you in zero g? You kind of want to pick one or the other and then give the humans as much time as possible to acclimate in those different regimes.
Chuck Nice
That's very cool.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah.
Chuck Nice
And so with the gradient changes from head to foot in zero g, you wouldn't have that at all. Because there is no head to foot in zero g. There's no up or down. There's no up or down.
Ariel Ekblaw
Exactly right.
Chuck Nice
Okay, gotcha.
Ariel Ekblaw
The reason we're so excited about this first phase, and then we're working towards our artificial gravity phase. But the first phase where you're staying floating, it's a big sphere. You're floating in a big sphere. We call it a geode because you have to think about how to subdivide a sphere on the inside. It's not a rectangular prism, so it's like little crystal chambers is kind of how we think about it. We want to do biotech, we want to do space infrastructure for the benefit of life on Earth first. And then we can kind of earn our right as a species to say, now let's go do artificial gravity, spin our habitat on the way to Mars and go explore the rest of ourselves.
Gary O'Reilly
Okay, so you touched on biotech. Can't we do basically almost everything you can do on the space station here on Earth in terms where you have the protein folding? Alpha fold three.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yep, alpha fold three.
Gary O'Reilly
All those aspects that gave them 90 plus percent accuracy on prediction.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Alpha fold three got the Nobel Prize. Right.
Ariel Ekblaw
With David Baker and Demis Hassabis, their AI folding for proteins. Yeah, Just one protein folding.
Gary O'Reilly
We had their head of it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
Okay. Yeah, yeah. This is a great question. What can you do uniquely in the zero G environment that you can't do on Earth? I think there are.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I only know one thing. Can I say it?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You can make perfect ball bearings.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Chuck Nice
Wow.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Because the force is like. Back to her sphere comment. The sphere minimizes surface area and maximizes volume. Perfect ball bearing. That's all I know that you can make in space.
Ariel Ekblaw
And that hits on kind of the fundamental principles that you want to think about when you're saying what can you only do in space? Space, you have no convection. So hot air's not rising, cool air is not sinking. You have no sedimentation, nothing sinking down. And for a lot of biological biotech processes, that's huge. To get rid of sedimentation fully, they
Neil deGrasse Tyson
took a case of wine. They did put it up into the space station.
Ariel Ekblaw
Do you have a bottle? I feel like someone's gotta give you a bottle of wine.
Chuck Nice
I can neither confirm nor deny.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
No, the point was. So one case went up and one stayed on Earth. And then they left it there for
Gary O'Reilly
like, did the twin experiment.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It was exactly a Case of identical wine. And they brought it back and they wanted me to comment officially on what effect 0G had on the wine. And I felt bad saying this, but if you're in zero g, the sediment doesn't know what to do. And so that's the same thing as you go into your cellar, pull out a bottle, shake it out and put it back in.
Ariel Ekblaw
Like it's gonna make it terrible.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You're simulating the one in space.
Chuck Nice
Exactly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You just shake everything all the time.
Chuck Nice
Dr. Tyson, here's the wine. I cannot believe you bring this to me. Your wine is absolute swill. You insult me.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Keep going down the list. Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
So what can you do? So you don't have any convection, you don't have sedimentation. And then you have things that we sometimes typically think of as a difficulty, but in space can be a feature, not a bug. So use the vacuum or use radiation to do something.
Chuck Nice
Oh, wow.
Ariel Ekblaw
So on the first two, the convection and the lack of sedimentation, you can do tissue engineering in zero G in a way that you cannot do on Earth. And a wonderful example is this company, LambdaVision, that's doing artificial retinas. Takes 200 layers of a really delicate little protein. And if you do it on Earth, you get little sagging effects. And with 200 layers, that amplifies the error.
Gary O'Reilly
Is this Lasix?
Ariel Ekblaw
It's not Lasix.
Gary O'Reilly
No, it's not Lasix.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah. It's a different process. It's bacteria.
Gary O'Reilly
No, that's why I asked it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah. So it's making Lasix is when they use light to make a change to your eye. This is growing a new retina in space. That is because you're floating. You get this perfect little cell matrix. You get this perfect structure. They have figured out a way to stabilize it and bring it back down to Earth so that you can actually have the surgery and the implantation on Earth.
Chuck Nice
Yo, that's crazy.
Gary O'Reilly
We are now talking some serious low Earth orbit economy.
Ariel Ekblaw
Exactly. Low earth orbit. Manufacturing, ball bearings, tissue engineering, fiber optic.
Gary O'Reilly
So this becomes pharmaceutical.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Gary O'Reilly
However, you know full well the rarest of rare issues will get lost.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Whereas the biggest, the rare ailments within people, there's no money.
Gary O'Reilly
So the biggest, the big ticket number sort of issues. They'll be brought in.
Ariel Ekblaw
They'll be brought in. It's true. And a great example of that is Merck's cancer drug. Keytruda is a $30 billion cancer drug.
Chuck Nice
That's right.
Ariel Ekblaw
They took it to space to figure out. They basically did a parameter sweep looking at the crystallization of the drug in space. And the amazing thing for Keytruda is they figured out a way to get more precise, consistent size of the crystallization of the drug. And it took it from an IV drug to a shot. So huge for patient quality of life. You don't have to go into a hospital to get to the hospital.
Gary O'Reilly
They couldn't replicate or extrapolate that on Earth.
Ariel Ekblaw
Well, what they did, that's the magic of some of the tools now that we have on Earth. To your earlier point that some of the things on Earth are getting so close to being good for space. For Keytruda, the cancer drug, they use space to do this parameter sweep of a bunch of data that would have been really hard to get on Earth. And then they was.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You're exploring all the variables that affect an outcome.
Ariel Ekblaw
Exactly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And, and so you'll know what not to do, how to repeat.
Ariel Ekblaw
Exactly right. But then they were able to figure out how to mimic part of the parameters that they did get in space on the ground. So they don't have to make every dose of Keytruda on the International Space Station.
Chuck Nice
No.
Ariel Ekblaw
So there's two examples. Tissue engineering, it's physical, it's at a macro scale. Even though we think of it as tiny, it's really macro scale for biology. That's good for those of us who want to build real estate and have a reason to expand our footprint in orbit. And then there's protein formulation and crystallization where maybe we get the data from space and then we help use that to inform Earth based processes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So in the future there'll be a shelf of biopharmaceutical products. Made in Space.
Ariel Ekblaw
Made in Space by Snaps.
Chuck Nice
Look at that.
Ariel Ekblaw
Made in Space.
Chuck Nice
We went from Made in Taiwan to Made in Space.
Ariel Ekblaw
There is a great company called Made in Space. They got acquired a couple years ago. They're doing 3D printing like what you were asking about.
Chuck Nice
Oh, very cool.
Ariel Ekblaw
And yeah, this is, this is what we want to do with our first version of Tesserae, which is what we call the self assembling ball. We want it to be an orbital biolab with shelves and shelves and shelves of experiments that are good for life on Earth. And my mission is to design it in a way that my graduate students at MIT could go and do their own experiments as citizen scientists, well trained, but not astronauts their whole career. And that I think we're just at the cusp where the cost to get to space is getting low enough where that could be feasible in the next few years.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I Was gonna ask you that. A commonly quoted price is $10,000 a pound to orbit low. And that's dropped in the era of SpaceX with reusable boosters and things. What is it now?
Ariel Ekblaw
It's about 1500. Forgive me. I'm gonna switch units on you. It's $1,500 a kilogram.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
This is America.
Ariel Ekblaw
I know. I'm a scientist.
Chuck Nice
Wow. Wow. You said it like those two things are in incongruent.
Ariel Ekblaw
Damn Patriot scientist.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay, just speak the metric slowly. Let's go.
Ariel Ekblaw
About $1,500 a kilogram today with starship coming online. These are not Elon's numbers. This is like independent analysis. It's expected to be $200 a kilogram.
Chuck Nice
Damn.
Ariel Ekblaw
Which is like FedEx.
Chuck Nice
That's right.
Ariel Ekblaw
If you ship something around the world. Cargo. Humans were a little more fragile. We're a little more expensive. But if you can ship cargo around the world, you can ship it to space. And that is unlocking this incredible inflection point in the space industry.
Chuck Nice
That's very cool. You know what? Can we. Because I think we skipped a step here and there's a gap in the construction. Because Gary asked about the seams.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Chuck Nice
And that's very important because you can bring magnets together. But we're talking about the vacuum of space.
Ariel Ekblaw
We are.
Chuck Nice
So now, when you have these panels, what's going to keep this? Yeah, because you need.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You need something what holds your air pressure. What holds it?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Gary O'Reilly
Duct.
Ariel Ekblaw
Tight seals. Velcro. Duct tape.
Chuck Nice
Made in space. Duct tape.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah. We prefer Velcro.
Gary O'Reilly
Okay.
Ariel Ekblaw
No, we do. Clamps. So between all of the seams of this tessellated bucky ball that's made out of hexagons and pentagons. Those are the tiles that come together with the magnets.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Just a quick second. Isn't that a soccer ball?
Gary O'Reilly
You read my mind. Yeah. From 1970s, that was the tessellation of
Neil deGrasse Tyson
the black and white.
Chuck Nice
That's the black and white ball.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Right.
Gary O'Reilly
Ball. Now, it's very different. But that was the 32 panel ball.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, exactly.
Ariel Ekblaw
That is exactly. It is a glorified soccer ball. We're sending a soccer ball to space. I played soccer as a kid. Maybe this influenced me more than I realized.
Gary O'Reilly
The only thing is, now I'm thinking, do you make a gigantic spaceball or do you now, Daisy. Change a certain size? I know. See Mel Brooks in your mind.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And just dovetailing that. As you know, we have bucky tubes where you. You break the ball in the middle and you extend it and you use the carbon geometry. You mimic that.
Ariel Ekblaw
I guess that is an idea for how to maybe eventually do. A big diameter ring is a bucky tube with some curvature.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's a bucky inner tube.
Ariel Ekblaw
Better.
Gary O'Reilly
Trademark that.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Now bucky torus. Excuse me. Let's get mathematical on it.
Ariel Ekblaw
It changes. It does compress the tiles on the inside of the curvature. That's the base concept that we're trying to refine. But yeah, it's a glorified soccer ball. And the clamps are what keep the air pressure in. So you're gonna have force due to air pressure pushing out.
Chuck Nice
Right. Cause the air pressure's pushing out. There is no other pressure out there.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah.
Chuck Nice
And so everything kind of like. Kind of like a. Kind of like the airplane. Cause that's what happens in the fuselage.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Except it's not zero pressure outside.
Chuck Nice
Exactly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And they don't pump the plane to atmospheric pressures. They drop it a little.
Chuck Nice
They drop it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah.
Chuck Nice
Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
But of course, whatever this is, it's nothing compared with going to the bottom of the ocean.
Ariel Ekblaw
Oh, right.
Chuck Nice
Interesting.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Because you have 10, 20, 30, 50 atmospheres of pressure that's ready to crush your ass. That's right.
Gary O'Reilly
Everest. How deep is the Marianas Trench?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's 35,000ft deep.
Gary O'Reilly
That's more than Everest.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's farther down than Everest is tall relative to sea level. I'm just saying that in space you only have one atmosphere.
Chuck Nice
That's all you need.
Ariel Ekblaw
The Delta is much better. Much more favorable.
Chuck Nice
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Gabby Windy
Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with Long Winded. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible. So listen to my podcast, won't ya? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls. And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. And I don't take that personally. Fall asleep. A listen is a listen even when you're sleeping. And a view is a view even with your eyes closed, if you dare. And it doesn't take much gumption. Enjoy. Listen to Long Winded wherever you get
Ariel Ekblaw
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
There's an old saying in my field. How do you make a telescope cost 100 times as much? Put it in space.
Chuck Nice
Wow.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So we try to do everything we can on Earth's surface because the same amount of money that gives you one space telescope gives you 10 or 20 earth based telescopes. So we're very careful about if we're gonna do, we have to completely justify what we're doing in space. Gotcha. And so the cost of getting the experiment up there, doing the experiment and bringing it back.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's huge.
Ariel Ekblaw
It is huge.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
You can build whole laboratories here on Earth for that cost.
Ariel Ekblaw
Right.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So who's doing that calculation? Who's.
Ariel Ekblaw
So this is a great question. When we think about what makes sense to uniquely do in the space, we kind of want to rule out all the other different ways to do it here. And we want to do the cheaper things here first. So the first thing we might do is a zero gravity flight. Right. But if you're working with biology, biology responds on the orders of days and weeks, not seconds.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah. The zero gravity flight, it's at most
Ariel Ekblaw
20 to 30 seconds. Affectionately known as the vomit. Calm down.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, when they. I was told this, I had no reason to doubt. When they filmed Apollo 13 with the director Ron Howard, that was a million zillion segments of these 90 second bits.
Chuck Nice
Wow.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And they. Do it again.
Ariel Ekblaw
Do it again.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And the plane has to go up and come down and then it's stitched together as one continuous zero G scene.
Ariel Ekblaw
Exactly. I have done 14 of those flights in my life. I've never puked. My parents would disown me.
Chuck Nice
Oh, God.
Ariel Ekblaw
But they're amazing. This is one of the.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I would puke like this, by the way. I'm the inadequate stuff. Just so you know.
Chuck Nice
Inadequate stuff.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's funny.
Ariel Ekblaw
But yeah, so you really, I think you raise a great point which is you want to only use space when you really have to be up there. And so there's a lot of mechanisms and things in biology you can do here. We just want to get to space for the absence of convection, sustained lack of sedimentation for weeks or months at a time. So you do a really long scale experiment like tissue engineering that's going to be economic viable to do in space.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Plus in space if you needed something to sediment, you just centrifuge it.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes, exactly. You can always add back in the earth effects in zero ghc.
Gary O'Reilly
So here I am thinking who's financing this?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Gary O'Reilly
Is it the biotech guys? Is it government? Is it someone with an awful lot of money in the bank and just yeah, I'll do this because they want to corner that particular part of the market. And you know, biotech in low earth orbit is one aspect of a whole load of off world industries that just might just occur.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And let me put a question just ahead of that. Sure. I was active in advisory roles in the government at the time this came up. It was the space station. When it runs its course, should it be deputized as a national lab?
Ariel Ekblaw
Right, right.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Because if it's a national lab, we already know how to sustain national labs. We've got, there's Los Alamos, there's Brookhaven. Right. So we know that model and what national labs do is the government does research that's not quite ready for the quarterly report or the annual report. It's just a little farther down the horizon. So the government is investing in itself but on a horizon that roi, venture capitalist corporate folks, they're not willing to go. That's right. And then you would apply for time on the station and the government would supplement that. And so whatever became of that.
Ariel Ekblaw
It's funny that you mentioned that that is what they did towards the end of the iss.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It did happen.
Ariel Ekblaw
ISS National Lab issnl that's actually happened. It did happen and it has been.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Pat me on the back.
Ariel Ekblaw
It's good advice.
Gary O'Reilly
Do you need this reassurance?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah. I was one of several people who that made complete sense in the day
Ariel Ekblaw
and that enabled my PhD because as a student I was able to get basically subsidized support to fly my little self assembling prototypes via ISS National Lab. Now I think we're 10, 15 years after that. Now we are ready for commercial space. And so what NASA's going to do to replace the International Space Station is truly commercial modules where These companies like Axiom are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in VC investment. People out there really do believe they can make money off of not just biotech, but also ball bearings.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And this would be their module or their buckyball.
Ariel Ekblaw
This would be their tube. They're gonna go back to a pressure cylinder. We want our buckyball to be an appendage on the Axiom space station or the Voyager Star Lab or the vast space station. So we will be kind of next gen habitat tech. The gate gets tested out in the next five years on the attachment side of a more traditional space station that's gonna replace the International Space Station.
Gary O'Reilly
So we're talking about a new financial frontier that's benefiting them. Not us.
Ariel Ekblaw
Benefits them.
Gary O'Reilly
The finance, private enterprise, the biotech guys.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
No, there's a medicine at the end, they become billionaires, but then you don't die tomorrow. How's that?
Ariel Ekblaw
That's the trick is like it's actually better than just it being science fiction like going to die on Mars. It's about infrastructure on Earth and where are they selling It's Earth based markets. It has to come back down and be of pragmatic use to someone on Earth for it to make sense. So I think that there's a nuance there. It can benefit life on Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Although there's a lot of research about what you would do in space that serves other needs in space. We have a whole colony on the moon and you do something in space, it might be cheaper to take it to the moon than back to Earth.
Chuck Nice
You mean to the studio where you guys faked it.
Gary O'Reilly
So ironically you want to get in on the ground floor with investment, but you're out in space.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Oh, I see what you're doing.
Gary O'Reilly
Thank you very much.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So it appears I haven't been able to keep up with all of these space startups. And it seems that they each have a niche bit of technology that they want to contribute to this going forward. And looking forward in the Artemis, not even low Earth orbit Artemis, every next mission is trying to bring in more private space enterprise to basically offload what NASA might have done. Instead of NASA pitching tent, get someone else to pitch tent. So NASA building an orbital lunar space station, get somebody else to do it. And is that going as you'd expect?
Ariel Ekblaw
It is. I mean NASA has this playbook with the International Space Station where they got SpaceX to begin doing commercial missions to ferry crew and cargo to the issuance. It worked incredibly well. People give SpaceX a lot of credit, but really it was that NASA model shifting and the government contracts that enabled SpaceX's amazing growth today.
Chuck Nice
Also that SpaceX didn't care if they blew up rockets, whereas NASA blows up a rocket tax credit. Everybody goes frickin people lose their shit. Bad crap.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Crazy.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes. Yeah. They were able to build like a cult of personality around SpaceX because they got people engaged in the iterative prototyping and the failure. But yeah, NASA was never given the space to do that. And that is a tricky dilemma there.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah. Because you're up against the failure is not an option ethos from Apollo 13.
Gary O'Reilly
I love that.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
When if you're doing something that's never been done before, you have to. Failure has to be an option.
Chuck Nice
Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
You have to iterate.
Gary O'Reilly
It's part of your success.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, that is. Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
And so that same playbook that worked with SpaceX for the International Space Station, NASA's doing for the moon, called CLPS, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, they're getting commercial companies to provide the transportation and the landing infrastructure for NASA to then be able to go out and do the science. And I think that there's a tension between watching NASA seed some of these activities to private enterprise. But what it's allowing NASA to do is what NASA does best. Let's free up NASA from the bit of an albatross of the International Space Station. Let's let NASA go figure out if there's life on Europa. That's something only NASA could do. And I think eventually we have to.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah.
Chuck Nice
There's no. And there's no money in that at all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Right. Commercial money in that.
Gary O'Reilly
All right.
Chuck Nice
We can't get away from by chance though, because private enterprise is about one thing and one thing only, and that is profit. Is there a chance that things like quality and integrity of mission and things along those lines would suffer in the cutting corners? By cutting corners, pursuit of optimizing profit.
Ariel Ekblaw
I think this is a really important question for NASA. And part of what they have done is kind of hybrid themselves into this new domain for private enterprise by doing public private partnership. So vast and Axiom, they're still working closely with NASA because NASA has these incredible standards for the safety of human spaceflight. So I think what we're hoping to see in the space industry is that we don't just toss out everything that NASA learned, we take the best of what NASA learned and we take some of the maybe better agility that a commercial company would have and we try to marry the two together. Doesn't mean that there won't be the exact risk of that you said. But it means that we're trying our best to get the best of both worlds into this next phase.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So, by the way, this has fascinating precedence with the birth of airmail. So the government says, hmm, this is newfangled thing called aeroplane. And mail is a big part of who and what you are as a country. Maybe we can move it by aeroplane. So the government says, who can carry this load of mail at what price? And so people climb over each other to try to get that contract. And by climbing over each other, they're making better and better and better airplanes. And they reached a point where you can carry so many bags of mail, you say, forget the mail. I'm carrying people. And it transitions from just cargo to people. And just.
Ariel Ekblaw
That's a great metaphor, for sure.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The model here is just the interplay between the needs of a government and the needs of a private enterprise.
Chuck Nice
I never even thought that that's a progression, but it makes sense.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
There's no U.S. postal Service airplanes. They're flying into Belly Delta Airlines.
Chuck Nice
Exactly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And apparently right now, not getting lunch. But okay, but. So that partnership is so time honored, it's not even thought about anymore in that context.
Ariel Ekblaw
And that's a great metaphor too, because that inflection moment that we saw with aviation, where the costs started coming down, more people started flying, it went from you dress up to go into first class. And it was a luxury thing to now sweatpants. Sweatpants.
Chuck Nice
Yeah.
Ariel Ekblaw
Don't worry, I think we will eventually see sweatpants to moon. You know, we will eventually see, oh,
Gary O'Reilly
gosh, let's go in your pajamas. Like you go to the supermarket in your pajamas and your crocs and then you just go to space.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Crocs in space.
Chuck Nice
Crocs in space.
Ariel Ekblaw
I'm more Birkenstocks girl. But yeah, we do. Okay, I'm in.
Gary O'Reilly
If we're looking at lunar and we're looking at off world industry, are we looking at data centers taking them to the moon? Are we looking then at solar power? And that becomes a very different scenario. And we're taking away an issue here on the surface of Earth and putting it.
Chuck Nice
We really want to. Because. Okay, maybe I'm. I could be wrong here, because you two are the scientists.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
We will totally tell you if you're wrong.
Chuck Nice
We will tell me. But Ariel just said a little earlier, there's no convection in space. The big problem with data centers is they give off an inordinate amount of heat. If there's no convection, then you need some place to push that heat. So then you would end up.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's the single biggest challenge, right? Yes.
Chuck Nice
I mean, how do you, you know, what do you do then?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, this is. You have hit on the crux of the tension around this idea of AI data centers in space. Take one step back and say, yes, we should be figuring out how to do big infrastructure space and off world, just like we were talking about at the beginning of the show. For data centers in particular, what we think is going to have to happen is use a self assembled approach like TESS array to handle that. Because if you have a traditional data center, you have these little volcanoes of heat in the servers. You have to pipe out the heat via conduction to these huge radiators. And all you can do in space is radiative cooling. It's radiative heat transfer. If you had all of your computers,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
just to be clear. So three ways you can move energy. So one of them is radiative, but the other two, which we live with here, we don't even think about it. It's conduction and convection. And convection, as you said, requires gravity for the light stuff to rise. Conduction is really slow. It's like I'm jiggling and now you're jiggling and then you're jiggling. So that's why the fireplace poker, it'll take 20 minutes for the handle to get hot when the other end is in the center. That's not an efficient way to move energy.
Chuck Nice
No.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Right. The radiator is just. It's photons coming off the surface, carrying it out into space. Okay, so that's. So pick it up there.
Ariel Ekblaw
So what we're trying to do with our decentralized tech for building things, even besides habitats, is can we use this self assembly mechanism, Put the compute that you need on an individual tile, put a solar panel that you need on that tile to get the energy you need. And on the backside is your radiator.
Chuck Nice
Whoa.
Ariel Ekblaw
And so you're doing hyper localized energy harvesting and radiator heat transfer for an AI data center.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Brilliant.
Gary O'Reilly
Are you able to scale that?
Ariel Ekblaw
So that's the vision for something like this that tessellates. It's like a honeycomb. You can finally, with this architecture, make something the size of four football fields that you could never origami up into a single rocket. So that's.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Origami is a verb. I love that. Origami. I used to do origami, so I'm feeling it. That one just got me excited. That's really cool. Do you origami I origami.
Ariel Ekblaw
I origami. Do we all origami?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So I love the idea that your tile that is the solar panel.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's. I mean to first approximation, that's the energy you're gonna have to radiate away.
Chuck Nice
Exactly.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Because it's just turned into something else. It becomes thermal rather than photonic. And so a surface the same size as the surface you're receiving, the energy would be about the right size. The radiator about the right size. To radiate it away, you just have to make. It's not facing another surface that's trying to radiate out because otherwise that out they just go. They heat each other.
Chuck Nice
That's all you're doing is still transferring the heat.
Ariel Ekblaw
So we have spun out a company to do this. So my passion for my life is habitats. I really want to scale humans in space with these curved self esteem.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
By the way, everybody at MIT spawns out companies just so you know. That's what.
Ariel Ekblaw
That's so we get taught to do.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's what they do. She just said it casually. That's a thing.
Chuck Nice
Nice.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That's a thing.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, it's called Pregnant again. Got another company idea.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
This one goes Fortune 500.
Ariel Ekblaw
So we spun out Rendezvous Robotics. They're going to focus on what we call the beachhead market. So big massive, flat things in space like solar panels, radiators, AI data centers, maybe big communication antennas to get really big apertures much bigger than you could have gotten. Again, having to squeeze it up into a rocket. So Rendezvous Robotics does that and then I'm going to keep the nonprofit to do future work on space stations for human spaceflight.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And where does your money come from? For which piece your not for profit.
Ariel Ekblaw
Not for profit is NASA grants, a little bit of corporate sponsorship and then philanthropy from visionaries who want to see a vision of space that is more inclusive, that is more transformative.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So rich people that just want to live the future all too old.
Ariel Ekblaw
They want to let
Neil deGrasse Tyson
both of them.
Ariel Ekblaw
I don't get any money from those two. I think it's more that we. And I used to be really obsessed with science fiction when I was younger. I really did want to go live on Mars and elsewhere someday. I think that'd be amazing for humanity. But I changed my focus in Aurelia Institute right around the time of the beginning of the pandemic to say I actually want to work on space infrastructure that is good for life on Earth. So our donors are people who are happy to support space, but they Want it to support life on Earth. They want it to be off worlding the AI data center so that you're not having that burden of the heat that's generated inside of our water vapor atmosphere. Right. That's why they're excited to support Aurelia. It's a little bit different than the other typical people that you think about in the space industry.
Chuck Nice
Yeah, well, the whole Mars thing, I mean, I'm sorry I've never said this publicly, but get over yourself. I mean, let's be honest here, you know.
Ariel Ekblaw
Come on, you don't want to go?
Chuck Nice
No, I don't want to go and I don't think anybody else wants to. To really go. And it doesn't really make sense.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Antarctica is warmer and wetter than Mars and no one is lining up to build condos in Antarctica.
Chuck Nice
In Antarctica. Yeah.
Gary O'Reilly
There's no Mars Tourist ball.
Chuck Nice
I think the whole Mars thing comes from the fact that ever since somewhere around the turn of the last century we developed this fascination and we were enamored of Mars and it's never left us. It's just never left.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It was Percival Lowell. Yeah, it's him and the king. He's a Mars fanatic on Mars. And he wrote a book called Mars. Then he wrote a book called Mars as an Abode of Life. Then he wrote another book called Mars and Its Canals. And everyone is thinking there's life on Mars. And then HG Wells heard about this. Then he wrote War of the Worlds with Martians coming and sucking our brains out. So we were off with the races at that point.
Ariel Ekblaw
I'm with you guys on this. I think, I think humans should live in space stations that can spin. Why go to another gravity well that's only one third our gravity well? Which means we're not going to do well. We're not even sure a woman can bring a baby to term in one third G. So talk about Mars civilization. It's more like Mars Outpost.
Gary O'Reilly
So going back to offworld industry, is there a way, is there any thought being put towards harnessing solar power to redirect it back to Earth and make it more a universal.
Ariel Ekblaw
This is my favorite topic. I think AI data centers has captured a lot of people's attention recently.
Gary O'Reilly
It's the now. But I think a problem that really does need solving.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
China already has a plan to do that.
Ariel Ekblaw
They do.
Gary O'Reilly
There's a big flashlight in the sky.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah. Well no, I mean it's microwaves to beam down.
Ariel Ekblaw
There are a bunch of us based commercial companies who are now trying to compete and beat China to it. So we've known since the 70s that we could do this with microwaves. Just a little bit scary to think about. So the way it works is you take the energy from these solar panels in orbit. Way more efficient because you're getting raw unfiltered sunlight.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And you can do it 247 and
Ariel Ekblaw
you can do it 24 7. So you collimate, you gather this energy up, you convert it into microwaves. Not trivial, but you can do it. And you beam it down. But the problem with that is it's very Austin Powers lasers in spikes.
Chuck Nice
First of all, here's the problem with that. That's called a weapon.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah. The plane accidentally goes off course.
Ariel Ekblaw
Oh yeah, Zap.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Cross that stream.
Ariel Ekblaw
So the company that we work with, Overview Energy, is a flashlight from orbit. So they're doing it with ir. The amazing thing about infrared. Infrared, the amazing thing about that is you can shine it on existing PV arrays, on photovoltaic cells, solar panels, so you don't have to build new structures.
Chuck Nice
Oh, it's a transfer of photons to collectors here on Earth.
Ariel Ekblaw
Two collectors here on Earth.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
So you take the wrong. Wait, wait, hold on. But you still can't get through clouds.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes. So, so it's not. And this is the trade off. You can have perfect piercing efficiency with microwave or you can do ir. I think it's probably the only way regulatory wise on the Earth to get this approved. But then you do, you get attenuated by water vapor. So you have to do it on a clear sky day or you do it to a place in Australia or Arizona or desert, any desert, and then
Neil deGrasse Tyson
you get it out.
Chuck Nice
We got a lot of desert, a
Neil deGrasse Tyson
lot of desert in the world.
Gary O'Reilly
Transparent from where you capture.
Ariel Ekblaw
And interestingly, to connect the two topics, AI data centers and space based solar power. This company, Overview Energy that we work with, they just signed a deal with Meta to power Meta's.
Chuck Nice
Oh God.
Ariel Ekblaw
Data centers.
Chuck Nice
So sorry.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Chuck has to blow a gasket once per. Once per episode.
Ariel Ekblaw
Not the O rings. We're a little sensitive in the space industry. Blow a gasket, not an O ring. The Meta deal is going to have space based solar power power the AI data centers on the ground. So they're not trying to do it in space, which solves some of those challenges we were talking about earlier. Radiation. How do you handle the heat? They're going to have the AI data center on the ground, but use 247 clean energy to power it.
Gary O'Reilly
And so they're not Microwaves. That's going to zap anything. Like all the satellites and space junk that's just flying around Earth.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, yeah. It's not microwaves.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The cross section of the space station, last I checked, rivals that of a football field. When you include all the solar panels and the radiators and everything. You want to make something bigger than that.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
That makes you that much more susceptible to the flying wallendas of space junk.
Ariel Ekblaw
Damn.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay. And space junk moving 18,000 miles an hour and you're just this billowy sail to collect it all. It's just. So how do you square your ambitions for large space architecture with the actual state of space junk?
Ariel Ekblaw
And space debris.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And space debris. And not to mention at this moment, last I checked, the 14,000 SpaceX satellites.
Ariel Ekblaw
Right. And ever increasing count.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yes.
Ariel Ekblaw
For the really massive deployments, like Starlink satellites. Starlink satellites. Yeah, for the really massive deployments that Rendezvous Robotics would do. Our startup that's trying to do big surface area solar panels for AI data centers in space or something. The benefit of it being modular is if you know where the debris is coming from, you can pop a few tiles out of the way and you can pass through it. And that's the benefit of it not being a monolithic architecture. It's a decentralized architecture. The better answer is or.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
But that'd be a lot of work.
Ariel Ekblaw
Clean up the debris. The much better answer is how about that? Invest in remediation.
Gary O'Reilly
Because you've only got to get it wrong once. No, no, no, no moving those tiles.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Oh, don't.
Chuck Nice
No, no, no, no.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Here's what you do.
Gary O'Reilly
Okay.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
No, you don't pop the tile and let it pass through. What good is that? Let it hit the tile, it'll repair, then it'll absorb the debris and then
Chuck Nice
you just pop a new tile in.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Pop a new tile in and then you take that tile and frisbee it back down to Earth so it burns up and then you're good.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Okay. I saw that. Format the whole thing out of rubber.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes, yes. Like flubber.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Like Flubber.
Ariel Ekblaw
This is great. We'll just combine the beachhead use case with the debris remediation all in one.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
There you go.
Ariel Ekblaw
And then put.
Gary O'Reilly
No, but you're hoping for small sized debris, I have to tell you that.
Chuck Nice
And that's not a bad idea for space cleanup.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well, most space debris is small. It's like size of marble.
Chuck Nice
It's very small.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, NASA has a. There's a whole website that NASA tracks.
Ariel Ekblaw
There is actually great progress being Made in trying to clean it up. There's ideas coming out of esa, European Space Agency, there's some companies trying to do Pac man for space.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I remember what that thing sounds like. Like not worried about you.
Gary O'Reilly
Computer game up.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let me hear it again, let me hear it again.
Ariel Ekblaw
Perfect. Stop it. If you can fly through a more, you know, relatively more crowded part of orbit with some big capture area, then you can eventually amass enough mass that you will aggregate and then burn up in the afternoon.
Chuck Nice
And then burn up in the. Oh, that's great.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah. So there's some serious efforts to try to remediate the debris problem and not just solve around it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Oh, so it's a self destructing object.
Chuck Nice
So you collect and then destroy with no problem. Right.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Cause as you're collecting, I don't know if it's the mass so much as it'll slow it down.
Ariel Ekblaw
It's the drag.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, yeah, the mass.
Ariel Ekblaw
And then you're right, I should say the envelope of this thing to get more drag from the upper edges of the atmosphere.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Right, exactly. Plus anything that hits it head on, it'll slow.
Chuck Nice
Slows it down to it drops it
Neil deGrasse Tyson
to a low or. And then it's a runaway.
Chuck Nice
I love it.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's a self cleaning vacuum, that's what it is.
Chuck Nice
Wow, that's nice.
Gary O'Reilly
All right, so what we've discussed so far is the International Space Station with an life expectancy about four or five years from now. What's the timeline for what we're discussing with you about Spaceballs? Space vacuums.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
He wants to know when your company's going public. That's what he wants to know.
Ariel Ekblaw
Maybe Rendezvous. Rendezvous Robotics is doing a priced seed round right now. So very early stage company. The Habitat work.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
How much do you need?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, we'd be honored. Oh my God. The habitat company or not. Sorry, the habitat research within the nonprofit. We think that we want to be able to attach our self assembly module to whatever the first commercial space station replacement is. They have to have a replacement for the ISS by the time they burn it up. From a national security perspective, we're not going to agree to have no American or western world space station in orbit. So we're trying to be ready for.
Gary O'Reilly
Where there's a will, there's a way, and there is a will to make that. Okay.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Where there's geopolitics, there's a way that's the biggest will out there.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah, exactly. Right. And so we want to be ready for that 2031, 2032 timeframe when the commercial Space station is up. The Phoenix from the ashes. We want to attach to that. So I've been working on this for a decade. I started my PhD in 2016. So it's not like I could just turn this project on and have it be feasible in five years. But 15 years. Yeah, but 10 years. We've already done five more years. Get ready to attach a proof of concept habitat. Self assembling habitat is the goal Rendezvous Robotics for the beachhead market stuff. They have to show that they can do customer traction in 2027, 2028, 2029. Like they don't get to have the pleasure that I have of doing longer term research. They have to really.
Gary O'Reilly
Have you had any low earth trials? Low Earth orbit trials?
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Gary O'Reilly
In the success of.
Ariel Ekblaw
We've done two successful low Earth orbit trials inside of the International Space Station where the tiles, we actually see them autonomously dance. They do this little pirouette in orbit to come together and dock and form the structure.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Wow.
Ariel Ekblaw
The Rendezvous Robotics, our company is going to do the first ever in LEO low Earth orbit, not inside of the iss but in free space. Demo of much bigger like tiles. Bigger than the size of this table. About five feet on edge there. Next year in 2027, I got a physics question. Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
To bring tiles together.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Aren't they kind of attached to each other on launch and you have to separate them in order to reassemble them in a different way.
Ariel Ekblaw
What we think we're going to do is pack them so the magnets are on the edges of the hexagons and the pentagons. We're gonna pack them flat like Pringles in a can. And what will Happen is my Ph.D. i studied, let them all out in one big swarm and see if we can get them all to come together. It's too complicated. But it worked in simulation. What we're gonna do for the company is a tile comes out of the stack. It moves over another tile, immediately comes up and pops. They're gonna move out and they will build a spiral like the reverse of peeling an orange. And it's not gonna be as complicated. Is 32 tiles that form a soccer ball floating around in a big orb
Chuck Nice
trying to find each other.
Ariel Ekblaw
Which is what I did for my PhD. To prove the harder problem of how could you do a big messy stochastic system, semi random system. We're just going to for the company do very pragmatic, connected, scale up.
Chuck Nice
There's a. I think it's called to sponsor it.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yes, yes. Or Lego.
Chuck Nice
I think it's called Connectix, which are. They're like. I played with those magnetic Legos, magnetite magnetiles,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
and they're balls. So that the segment has a concave. A concave surface that can attach onto a ball so that the angle can be anything. You can make all of the polyhedra with it. Because my wife is a physicist.
Ariel Ekblaw
Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
We wanted to make sure that all of their toys were probes of laws, of physics. And so this magnetic connection came. Yeah, it's very cool.
Ariel Ekblaw
I've been told that my generation was Legos, so I always say Legos with magnets, but apparently Magna tiles are the new thing for kids now, which are basically flat panels with magnets on their edges. So I wish I had come up with that toy as well.
Chuck Nice
You kind of did. But, you know, for the whole world.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, for the whole world. Well, we have to have you back. You live now in New York City.
Ariel Ekblaw
I live now in New York City.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Well, welcome to my office here at the Hayden Planetarium. And you came when you were a kid?
Ariel Ekblaw
I did. I came when I was a Girl Scout in 2002 or 2003 to do a museum overnight. So we slept in your planetarium.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
In the planetarium or under the whale?
Ariel Ekblaw
Right outside. Yeah, right outside, under the whale. But we basically got to do a tour of the planetarium, and that is what started my obsession with space. So it's kind of crazy to come.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I was a director.
Chuck Nice
Wow. Coming here was like a salmon swimming upstream. Came back.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Where it all begins. Where it all begins.
Ariel Ekblaw
So it's an honor, Neil. Thank you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Yeah, we will totally have to get you back.
Chuck Nice
Yeah.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
And tell us where to put money.
Chuck Nice
How far along are we? How's that baby coming?
Neil deGrasse Tyson
What trimester are you in?
Chuck Nice
Where's the due date on the baby?
Ariel Ekblaw
Chuck, I will keep you posted, I promise.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
All right, so this has been another installment of Stark special edition. This one felt extra special, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right again, Ariel, thank you.
Ariel Ekblaw
Thank you so much for having me
Neil deGrasse Tyson
being on Star Talk. Neil Degrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, keep looking up.
Ariel Ekblaw
Foreign.
Gabby Windy
Hi, I'm Gabby Windy with long winded. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm desperate. I'm desperate for your attention in any way possible. So listen to my podcast, won't you? It has great insights, exceptional humor, and plenty of pop culture to fill your dark souls. And some even say it's a great way to fall asleep due to my soothing voice. And I don't take that personally. Fall asleep A listen is a listen even when you're sleeping and a view is a view even with your eyes closed if you dare. And it doesn't take much gumption. Enjoy. Listen to Long winded Wherever you get
Chuck Nice
your podcasts, support comes from Amazon Business Free your team from time consuming procurement tasks. Discover smart business buy where unmatched selection meets AI driven tools to simplify complex processes so you can focus on what matters most. Learn more at amazonbusiness. Com.
Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-Hosts: Chuck Nice, Gary O’Reilly
Guest: Dr. Ariel Ekblaw (Founder & CEO, Aurelia Institute; Director, MIT Space Exploration Initiative)
Date: May 29, 2026
This episode dives deep into the evolving landscape of space stations as the International Space Station (ISS) approaches decommissioning around 2030-2031. Dr. Ariel Ekblaw, a leading innovator in space architecture and modular habitat design, joins Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts to discuss next-generation space station concepts, the shift toward commercial operations in low Earth orbit, and the exciting intersection of biology, engineering, and economics driving the future of human spaceflight.
The conversation is lively, playful, and full of infectious curiosity, punctuated by jokes, pop culture (IKEA, Spaceballs, soccer balls, Pac-Man), and deep respect for scientific rigor. Ariel Ekblaw’s approachable explanations are balanced by Neil’s probing, sometimes irreverent questions and Chuck’s comic relief.
This episode paints an optimistic, practical vision for the future of human activity in space: modular, self-assembling stations shaped by biological inspiration; industrial applications from biotech to AI; a shift toward commercial partnerships; and a steady focus on projects benefiting both off-world exploration and life on Earth. As old barriers fall—technological, economic, regulatory—we’re entering an era where sweatpants in space and "Made in Space" products could soon be part of everyday reality.
Final quote: “We will eventually see sweatpants to the moon… Crocs in space!” — Ariel Ekblaw & Co-Hosts [51:56–52:10]