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00:00NASA. The name conjures up images of dramatic space launches and exploring the stars.
00:06Yet the space race has impacted our lives here on Earth.
00:09In so many ways, it's hard to even imagine modern life without that force.
00:14Suddenly, NASA technology just disappears.
00:17You're going to be looking at a lot of rotting food.
00:19It shapes our very existence with a steady energy we don't even see.
00:24Often we take the sun for granted on Earth,
00:26but that technology is also going to be critical for us to be able to explore space.
00:31Every AI always has a mission, and that's to be correct.
00:34Yet experience every day.
00:36There are a lot of follow-on effects from the sorts of problems that NASA's thinking about today
00:41that will be useful 10, 20, 30 years from now.
00:44But the next big step is going much further, and that's going to Mars.
01:10Space. The most inhospitable environment.
01:15One that NASA had to conquer to reach beyond our planet.
01:18The dating world, too, can be an inhospitable environment.
01:23Every single has a story of a bad date, meetings with zero follow-through,
01:27one-night stands that go nowhere, and budding relationships that crumble into nothing.
01:33But how did an algorithm created for the space shuttle impact online matchmaking?
01:49It all starts here, with the space shuttle program.
01:52The world's first reusable spacecraft.
02:02This complex vehicle is comprised of an orbiter, two solid rocket boosters, and an external tank.
02:09Like its predecessors, it launches vertically.
02:12But unlike any other spacecraft, it re-enters the atmosphere and glides to Earth, landing like a plane.
02:19The really marvelous thing about the shuttle is it could be reused.
02:21It would go into space, come back to Earth, be refurbished, and then fly in space again.
02:26The space shuttle's where the crew was and the cargo,
02:28and then it was mounted to that large orange structure was the external tank
02:32that fed the engines on the space shuttle.
02:33And the two solid rocket boosters were on the side,
02:36and they provided most of the thrust for the SN.
02:38We have little engines on board that can move the shuttle around,
02:41but then when we're ready to come on, we fire a couple big engines that we have,
02:44and that brings the shuttle back to Earth, and it would just free-fall,
02:47and it lands like a massive 100-ton glider.
02:51So to give you some sense of the numbers involved here,
02:54one Apollo rocket in the late 60s cost a few hundred million dollars,
02:58and if you were to extend that cost to today, it would be a few billion dollars for each spacecraft.
03:03So it's pretty unlikely that we would have flown 135 space shuttle missions
03:07with a billion-dollar price tag for each vehicle.
03:10The space shuttle was nothing less than a revolution in the spaceflight industry.
03:14It lowered the cost of space travel significantly,
03:18though it meant NASA had to figure out how to keep the spacecraft in operating shape.
03:23How do systems receive feedback?
03:25How do they determine red flags?
03:27How do the different systems interact to produce the best results?
03:30The checklists are designed to make sure that the spacecraft operates correctly in terms of sending information back and forth,
03:37and also that it makes the correct decisions based on whatever the situation is.
03:42So in the very early days, the checkout of the spacecraft used thousands of pages of paper
03:48where someone would have to go step by step.
03:50Doing it manually eventually becomes impossible to do.
03:53That pushed companies like IBM to create these large mainframe computers that could handle these kinds of tasks.
04:00Would we have done these things ordinarily?
04:02We would have gotten to it eventually.
04:03But the fact that there was an impetus to handle this one very important data-driven task
04:10that helped push technologies, computer technologies in particular, forward.
04:15Apollo was so complicated that we introduced computers into the pre-flight checkout, into the launch itself.
04:21As NASA continued to embrace more technology, they developed a program called the Reaction Control System,
04:28allowing 44 small engines on the space shuttle to automatically adjust the flight.
04:33This system became more accurate with each transmission of the information,
04:37and overall made it much safer for the crew.
04:41That process of controlling the position that the shuttle was in with those 44 engines
04:45is really one of the first simple ways of artificial intelligence,
04:49because the system is not only taking data, but then it's taking action.
04:54Taking more data, taking more action.
04:56So it was really this interactive loop between the system's performance and the data it was putting out.
05:01NASA has to come up with a complex AI that will help control the systems on the shuttle.
05:06But the idea of giving the computer control is quite revolutionary and a cause of concern.
05:11In the movies, HAL 9000 is this AI that exists to help these astronauts as they're exploring space.
05:19And the idea is that using an AI allows you to figure out the constraints,
05:23and then from there figure out what actions do I need to perform in order to make this command come
05:27to be.
05:27You could get a human to do this, fine, but the idea of a computer is that it can take
05:32in more data than a human could.
05:34It's not as prone to error. It doesn't need to sleep.
05:36The computer and the AI is able to take in this information and be able to act the way a
05:42human would,
05:43and do it with a certain reliability.
05:45The same innovator uses the NASA algorithm to launch a cutting-edge dating website called WeAttract.com.
05:52So in 2003, Match.com incorporated the WeAttract software into their algorithms.
05:58They were the first dating platform that incorporated an in-depth personality questionnaire,
06:03were leaps and bounds above any other personality questionnaire compared to pop psychology questionnaires that were out there at the
06:10time.
06:10Every AI, matchmaking or otherwise, always has a mission, and that's to be correct.
06:15And if you feed the system with bad information, it's going to create bad matches.
06:19And sometimes people's beliefs about themselves and their rank in the food chain is not a reflection of what's reality.
06:27Matchmaking software, it would develop a belief of what you are like and what other people are like.
06:33And it's not necessarily going to match you with the people that fit exactly what you were looking for.
06:37You may say you want these things, but the AI would actually look at it and say,
06:41OK, well, based on this, I've figured out that people who answer the question,
06:45these profile questions in this way, are looking for this type of person,
06:48even if that type is not necessarily a direct match to the answers you've given.
06:52This idea of evolving beliefs is possible, but it has to be something that's built into its original directives to
06:59say,
06:59in order to satisfy my directives, I have to go beyond some of my original programming and perform actions that
07:06might not have been anticipated,
07:08but satisfy my directives better than my programmers might have anticipated.
07:12Using these two people, we might discover that John's not ready to settle down, even though Sandy is.
07:18Sandy believes in monogamy, and she's on a date with John because his profile indicates that he believes the same
07:23thing.
07:24Sandy believes that if she plays the fun girl, she'll get a second date with John.
07:29As an overarching desire, she wants to get married and have kids.
07:33Finally, intentions are desires to which the agent has committed.
07:37She's chosen to stick out the date because she's decided that he's a good catch.
07:41Next, desires. John believes women are easy to acquire.
07:45Now, he ultimately does believe in monogamy, but not right now.
07:49He desires to take Sandy home with him.
07:51John's also getting distracted by the two attractive women in the corner,
07:55and he keeps looking at them when she's not looking.
07:58Finally, intentions.
08:00He's chosen to stick out this date because he's discovered that Sandy's actually prettier than most and not uninteresting.
08:07John's belief that there's plenty of fish in the sea might actually prevent him from appreciating the woman right in
08:13front of him.
08:13We attract worth-to-build psychological models of daters' emotional and cognitive attitudes
08:19to predict how to best accomplish what they ultimately desire.
08:23By having in-depth models of participants, the software not only susses out the basic demographic and behavioral attitudes,
08:31it also delves deep into their emotional and cognitive makeup.
08:36Let's say that you love hiking, and the key to happiness for you is being outdoors.
08:40The software is not going to match you with someone that's not into fitness.
08:44There are new models and new information constantly being fed into modern-day matchmaking algorithms.
08:50The information of what's on the internet, research, studies, actual facts, things that our human brain cannot compute in one
08:57single match.
08:58So the technology gets more sophisticated, it learns, and it continues to perfect matches according to your behavior and beliefs.
09:05If you're going at a party and you're trying to figure out who you want to talk to, you look
09:10at the way they're dressed,
09:11look at the way they're behaving, look at their face, and come up with an overall set of candidates, the
09:17people you want to approach.
09:18We do this for a lot of things, humans, you know, when we're trying to identify if somebody is someone
09:23you want to introduce yourself to,
09:24or someone that you might want to feel threatened by.
09:26Facial recognition is AI. It is not only able to identify faces in photographs and video,
09:31but it can do a fairly decent job of identifying or matching faces together.
09:36Humans can't possibly maintain a list of faces as well as a computer can.
09:41And you can use AI to look at other faces, say at an airport, and identify who matches with a
09:47list of potential threats.
09:49NASA's tech has done far more to protect you on an everyday basis than you can imagine.
10:11Good technology you don't see or feel. It's designed to be seamless with the environment so that it doesn't impact
10:17your experience.
10:18People walking across bridges just assume it's going to be safe.
10:22We notice technology when it's not working. You just expect things to work. And because of engineering, they do.
10:29After Russia becomes the first nation to put a man in space, the US ramps up its approach.
10:35I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out,
10:42of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.
10:46The Russians really got way ahead of us. They had the first satellite in space, they had the first animal
10:51in space,
10:52the first man, the first woman, the first spacewalk. We were really way behind.
10:56And it really is a testament to our combined effort to actually catch up and then to get to the
11:02moon first.
11:02In the early days of the Apollo program, with this huge Saturn V rocket,
11:06they had to put it on a mobile launch platform that would move essentially from the assembly building and bring
11:13this out to the launch pad itself.
11:16That rocket weighs millions of pounds, right? And so you're trying to launch this extremely heavy thing up into the
11:24air that's being pulled down by gravity the whole time.
11:27You're sitting on top of essentially a controlled explosion going from being stationary to traveling 25 times the speed of
11:35sound in eight and a half minutes.
11:36That's an incredible ride. And it's a ride associated with risk.
11:40You need that rocket to ultimately be moving at something like 11 kilometers per second.
11:44It takes a tremendous amount of force to launch this rocket upward and get to the speed that you need
11:50to reach to be able to put something in orbit.
11:53To fuel the rockets, NASA comes up with a mobile launch platform,
11:57nine umbilical arms attached to the rocket via electrical bolts and connected with the rocket systems.
12:03Generating this much thrust, what's happening is that you can also create resonance.
12:08It causes not only the rocket to vibrate, but it also causes anything around it to vibrate.
12:14You've got to figure out how can you disconnect this in a safe way without it snapping or interfering with
12:21the rocket as it's launching.
12:23You know, you see that iconic footage of the Saturn V going up and there are these giant arms that
12:28swing away from the rocket before it takes off.
12:32The arms are 10, 20, 30 feet long and those gigantic arms, for example, have to swing out of the
12:38way exactly at the right time or it's going to be catastrophic failure.
12:42If you didn't have any dampening, the acceleration imparted on them would cause them to just recoil.
12:47To address the issue of thrust, NASA engages Taylor devices.
12:52Taylor devices had developed these dampers to, you know, stop that vibration in fighter jets that were undergoing very large
13:00accelerations.
13:01as they went through different kinds of maneuvers.
13:04Dampers help you move large structures into a particular position quickly and don't allow them to bounce.
13:10It's basically a super large effective shock absorber.
13:14A damper works by changing kinetic energy into heat or friction, redirects that force and tunes it down to an
13:21acceptable level.
13:23Taylor devices would develop a revolutionary fluid-based damper withstanding higher pressures than any that preceded it.
13:31There are various fluids that you can use at a damper.
13:33Often it's a silicone oil.
13:35The higher the viscosity, the thicker that fluid is and the more dampening you're going to get.
13:39And viscosity of a fluid is important.
13:42This is the mechanism that helps us dampen these forces.
13:45You can imagine swimming in a pool.
13:47If you're walking on the pool bottom, you're not feeling too much resistance.
13:50But say you start to try running in the water, you're going to have your resistance.
13:54You can't do it. And that is a dampening force.
13:57With rocket-grade dampers under their belt, Taylor devices looked at commercializing their new technology.
14:03Dampers are in all kinds of things that we don't even think about.
14:06In our cars, we have shock absorbers on the forks of our bicycles, on motorcycles, door closers.
14:11Hinges on kitchen cabinets and drawers.
14:14Bridges, buildings, you think about earthquake areas, geologic disasters kind of my thing.
14:20And the last thing that you want is to be on a bridge during an earthquake or in a tall
14:25building during an earthquake and not have dampers.
14:28There's this famous video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State that was vibrating due to the wind.
14:34And it started twisting back and forth to the point where the bridge snapped and completely collapsed.
14:40There could be dozens of dampers on any structure.
14:43It's all part of dissipating energy and ensuring that the structure performs the way that we're expecting it to.
14:49When an earthquake occurs, you're talking about energy that's moving through the ground.
14:54You've got seismic waves that are going to propagate outwards.
14:58Well, when that hits a building or a bridge, that bridge and building is going to take that energy and
15:03it's going to try and move it through that.
15:05And if you have dampers, the dampers are going to help secure that bridge so that it won't shake and
15:12fall apart or that building won't start to sway and then crumble down.
15:16The potential lifespan of these dampers is pretty reasonable.
15:19They're pretty low maintenance.
15:20You would need to ensure that they're not leaking or any of that fluid is escaping out.
15:24We need to make sure that they don't corrode if they're exposed to the environment.
15:27And if there's any points of lubrication, they need to be lubricated.
15:30The London Millennium Bridge is an excellent example of why dampers are so cool.
15:35The Millennium Bridge connects Bankside with the city of London.
15:39The city's engineers considered everything, including weather, but they overlooked an unlikely human impact.
15:46Pedestrians fall into the category of a live load and they can behave erratically.
15:50The pedestrians excited the bridge in the way the engineers didn't expect, a lateral excitation.
15:55What happened was, as it would start to sway a little bit, people would step in line with the sway.
16:02So when it opened, it amplifies the effect.
16:06It was shaking it at a rate that made the whole thing sway rather alarmingly.
16:10People were like, whoa, you know, is this bridge safe?
16:13They start getting sick or nauseous because of the swaying movement and they had to shut the bridge down.
16:19Just two days after opening, the Millennium Bridge closes.
16:23Taylor Devices steps in.
16:25Then they renovated the bridge to install dampers underneath it to stop that motion.
16:30And these are exactly the same kind of dampers that they use for the retracting arms on the Saturn V
16:35launch platform.
16:36It's a fascinatingly simple technology.
16:39It's not anything electronic or computerized or anything like that.
16:43It is a cylinder full of oil and you're dragging a piston through it.
16:48And by carefully engineering the shape of the piston and the shape of the cylinder, you can get exquisite control
16:54over how much motion you get.
16:56Because we now have this technology, it's making things safer.
16:58We can build bigger, better, longer lasting, more efficient, more comfortable structures.
17:03It's pushing the bounds of what we're able to do in the world.
17:06This is just one way NASA's quest for space actually ends up changing our daily lives on the planet.
17:12But you don't have to look at extreme disaster to see its impact on your daily life.
17:18The supermarket. In these aisles, the freshest bounty is within reach.
17:22Shiny apples, plump tomatoes, greener than green kale.
17:27In a world without NASA, strawberries rot faster, bananas go soft, broccoli curls and peaches go brown.
17:34Oh man, if you're sitting in the supermarket and suddenly NASA technology just disappears,
17:41you're going to be looking at a lot of rotting food really quickly.
17:44If you think about the water budget for three people going around the moon for about a week, that's manageable.
17:49But if you're talking about having people be in space for two, three months and even stretching beyond that, it's
17:55just not feasible.
17:56In space, when we go to the bathroom and we void, the water in our urine actually goes through a
18:02very complex system of technology
18:04and is reclaimed and ultimately we reuse it as drinking water.
18:08We've developed that technology to enhance our ability to have these closed loop systems work effectively.
18:15Weight is the currency of space launches. You don't want to have to keep doing launches. It's terribly expensive.
18:20You need a way to recycle what you have with you, to reuse it.
18:24And this is what NASA had to start thinking about as they were transitioning away from the Apollo era.
18:27But if humans are to survive in space, we'll need to figure out a reliable food source.
18:33The whole purpose of plants, isn't it, is to reproduce.
18:36What they've got to do first is attract sort of insects and birds and that to take it so they've
18:41got nice sweetness.
18:42But then what they're going to do is ripen more. And what they do to ripen is produce ethylene.
18:48So ethylene is what makes our bananas going from green to yellow to brown, tomatoes going from green to red.
18:56Ethylene is what we call a plant hormone. We don't need it, but for a plant, ethylene is vital because
19:02it's that ripening process.
19:04One of the things that you can try that you may not have thought of when it comes to ripening
19:08food that you've gotten at the grocery store
19:10is take an avocado that is unripe, it's still hard, and a banana.
19:15And because they both produce ethylene, this one produces more than this one, you can take them, drop them into
19:23a brown paper bag, close it up, and let it sit for 24 hours or just overnight.
19:30What's happened is that ethylene has nowhere to go, and it's going to cause our avocado to ripen quicker.
19:37And you'll be amazed at what happens when you come back.
19:40Voila, a ripe avocado ready to be eaten.
19:45So now, when we take and apply our ethylene scrubber in space, what that does is it reduces the ripening
19:52effect so that this stays fresh longer.
19:56When we go to the grocery store, that means that we get more fresh avocados and other fruits and vegetables
20:03all the time instead of ripened fruit that must be eaten right away.
20:08You can think of the space shuttle in the International Space Station as giant paper bags, basically. Whatever you take
20:12up in them is just going to start rotting right away.
20:14If NASA could figure out a way to remove the ethylene, fruits and vegetables would last longer in space.
20:20At Marshall Space Flight Center, scientists invented what is called a scrubber.
20:23Scrubbers are devices, basically, that are titanium dioxide tubes that suck the air out.
20:27By scrubbing the ethylene gas, you have vastly extended the shelf life of those fruits and vegetables, and that's perfect
20:32for space flight.
20:33And the ethylene that gets removed from the fruits and vegetables actually gets converted into water. Very valuable in space.
20:37So imagine being able to grow lettuce, grow tomatoes in space on board the International Space Station.
20:43This is research that will be critical for us in the future to be able to go to the moon
20:48and on to Mars and things.
20:49And so the way that these ethylene scrubbers work is that you're going to take ethylene in the atmosphere
20:55and you're going to push it through these tubes that are made of titanium dioxide and basically you zap them
21:01with ultraviolet radiation.
21:03And what happens is the ethylene actually breaks down into carbon dioxide and water.
21:09And so those two byproducts, well, they're actually useful for the plants.
21:13To test this new technology, the scrubber is sent up in the space shuttle with a crop of potato seedlings.
21:20Using the scrubber, NASA is able to stop the seeds from ripening and rotting.
21:25Not only do the scrubbers clear the air of ethylene gas, they also sterilize the air of bacteria and mold
21:32spores.
21:33Even odors are all removed by the scrubbers.
21:37It's not only food transport and grocery stores where ethylene scrubbers have been a major step forward.
21:42They're also used extensively in hospitals.
21:44You think about hospitals, there's a lot of stuff in the air there that you want out.
21:47If we get better at, you know, cleaning the air that astronauts are breathing on a years-long trip,
21:53that's technology that we can use to clean carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and reduce the impact of climate
22:00change.
22:00There are a lot of follow-on effects from the sorts of problems that NASA's thinking about today that will
22:06be useful 10, 20, 30 years from now.
22:08Some of the best tech has come from NASA innovations.
22:15Unfortunately, some of those lessons also had to be learned through tragedy.
22:22I've got fire in the cockpit.
22:24The Apollo 1 crew was training for their upcoming launch when fire broke out in the capsule.
22:30NASA attempts a rescue, but the astronauts perish in the fire.
22:34Leading up to the Apollo 1 incident, scientists and engineers were really trying to minimize the amount of weight.
22:40They made the decision to try and use pure oxygen for the astronauts to breathe in the capsule.
22:45And in pure oxygen environments, organic materials become very combustible, much more so than they would be in normal air.
22:52And what happened was in the pure oxygen environment when that spark occurred, a fire very rapidly broke out in
22:58the capsule.
22:58And the capsule is a sealed unit.
23:00Remember, it's supposed to go up into space, so it has to retain the pressurization of the breathable gas in
23:06the capsule when it's in space.
23:08And much like an airplane fuselage where the door has to swing in and then pop out and lock into
23:13place,
23:14the capsule door was similar in that it was held in place by the pressure of the capsule inside when
23:20it was in space.
23:21On Earth, if there was a pressure balance inside and outside, there would be very little force across that door
23:26and it would be easy to move in and out.
23:28In a fire environment, we're producing more gas, so we're starting to pressurize that capsule.
23:33As heat is produced, the gas is also expanding and pressurizing that capsule.
23:37And as the fire progressed, what ended up happening was it basically became impossible for the astronauts to open the
23:43door.
23:44With the tragedy that day, NASA did learn some important lessons about space flight.
23:47If at the time of the accident, the astronauts had a particular type of fabric on and breathing apparatuses,
23:53they could have survived long enough, hopefully in time, for responders to have gotten there and put out the fire.
23:58To move forward, NASA would have to look into the past to a material first developed by chemists Vogel and
24:06Marvel for the U.S. Air Force.
24:07A lot of innovations in the world are happenstance, so we develop one material with something in mind and then
24:15we end up using it for something else.
24:17And it takes time for scientists to have those epiphanies where they go,
24:21Oh my God, this may be good in this situation, even though that wasn't what we originally intended this material
24:26for.
24:27With the debut of fighter jets, drogue parachutes were needed to slow the aircraft down upon landing.
24:32Jets put out extremely high heat from their engines and these parachutes could not be made out of a material
24:39that would catch on fire.
24:40The result? A polymer called polybenzametazole.
24:44Breakthrough with PBI is it resists the impact of radiation or flame contact.
24:51So when exposed to heat, instead of sustaining a flame and adding to the combustion that's ongoing.
24:57It doesn't actually catch on fire.
24:59Which is sort of exactly what you would want your astronauts to be wearing.
25:02And it's basically an aromatic hydrocarbon, so it has benzene rings.
25:06And the neat thing about benzene rings is they don't combust very well.
25:10They actually decompose, which is a little bit different.
25:13And stable at over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
25:16But this miracle material, PBI, was expensive.
25:19The Air Force decided not to use it, they left it on the shelf, they went to cheaper alternatives.
25:23That is, until NASA came calling.
25:26Luckily, they also had the space race budget behind them.
25:30PBI is so durable, some of the only parts that survived the re-entry of Skylab are made of it.
25:36I remember Skylab, you know, when it was falling to Earth.
25:40My understanding is the only parts that survived were those that had PBI on them.
25:45But NASA's new material would become invaluable to a whole other industry.
25:55Firefighting technology has changed fairly recently within my career.
25:59When I started in the fire service, I still had a canvas two-side with rubber in the middle type
26:06coat, rubber boots.
26:07We did not have what is known as bunker gear.
26:09That was relatively new in the late 80s, early 90s is when we saw it.
26:15Our SCBA, or self-contained breathing apparatus, were steel tanks, very heavy, cumbersome.
26:21And then again, in the late 80s, early 90s, we started to see composite fibers, materials that were much lighter.
26:28In the 1970s and 1980s, PBI is used for flight suits, clothing, webbing, and tethers to the Apollo, Skylab, and
26:38shuttle missions.
26:39Any and all gear that may experience thermal extremes include PBI.
26:44Since its first use on the Apollo missions, blends have been created to amplify the materials quality.
26:50It remains one of the most flame-proof and durable materials around.
26:55NASA's triumph helped create the shield for your local fire heroes.
26:59But NASA also had a hand in helping them breathe.
27:04NASA technology and innovation allowed humans to brave the most inhospitable environments.
27:11Against the odds, firefighters can face the inferno, protected from heat, and with an air supply.
27:19The fire service, as early as 1825, was looking at ways to bring air to firefighters,
27:25whether that was through a hose to almost like a diving helmet.
27:28All throughout history of what we call now self-contained breathing apparatus, SCBA,
27:34there was an evolution to, if you will, bringing your own air and having a self-contained breathing apparatus.
27:41In the 1970s, fire chiefs started noticing that a lot of their firefighters were having smoke inhalation injuries and problems.
27:47And that shouldn't have been the case because they had firefighting breathing apparatuses.
27:52But when they investigated it, they noticed that a lot of firefighters were choosing to go into burning buildings without
28:00their breathing apparatuses.
28:02When we started out, they were what they call pressure demand.
28:05The way that these things worked is you had to suck that thing onto your face a little tight to
28:11get it to feed the air to you.
28:12So when you were working, you know, some of the barriers to these earlier SCBA and why people didn't want
28:18to wear them is they weren't comfortable.
28:21They were big, they were bulky, they were cumbersome.
28:24They took a lot of lung power to get the air out of the tank.
28:26All those aspects of the design made people just go, maybe I'll just leave this on the side, I can
28:32move better in the fire.
28:33And a number of chief officers, you know, leading lights in the fire service, went to NASA and said,
28:38can you help us with these space-age technologies to improve, if you will, the technology that the fire service
28:44can use?
28:45And so some of the developments were direct spin-offs from NASA with respect to regulators, compressed air cylinders that
28:52now use composites instead of heavy metals,
28:55aluminum, carbon fiber, many things that were used to lighten, if you will, the Apollo spacecraft.
29:02And so those technologies all got transferred into the fire service through a research effort that was directed, if you
29:07will, by the U.S. government and NASA as an agency.
29:10The first major overhaul was of the system's air canisters.
29:14NASA contracts Martin Marietta and structural composites to build lightweight air cylinders inspired by rocket motor casings.
29:23Some of these casings that NASA developed had to hold a million liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.
29:28The key to making all this work of compressing that gas and having to withstand these tremendous forces is the
29:33metal, is the material that you're using.
29:35By compressing the oxygen for firefighters, this means you can have a smaller tank or you can have much more
29:41that you need in the tank to get the job done.
29:44And you have the material that can withstand that interior pressure and withstand the exterior heat that the firefighter is
29:50going to be exposed to.
29:51For firefighters, there are also payload specifications.
29:55Firefighting agencies had to come up with strict weight guidelines on how much one could carry.
30:00Making the canisters lighter meant engineers could actually increase the size of the canisters to hold more compressed gas.
30:08A 30-pound tank could hold enough air for 30 minutes.
30:12Newer canisters with the same amount of air weighed just 20 pounds.
30:16This allowed them to make bigger tanks that could hold enough compressed air for 45 minutes.
30:21The harness was also overhauled.
30:24Previous tanks could be slung around the firefighters' shoulders.
30:28But the new harness would shift critical weight to the firefighters' hips.
30:32The modern cylinder is a combination of aluminum and carbon graphite fiber that is wrapped and has tremendous strength.
30:40And it's considerably lighter, about half the weight than this old steel cylinder.
30:45The modern pack, there's better padding in the shoulders.
30:48The frame itself is considerably different and it's designed to be adjusted for the user and very specifically spread the
30:57weight across the back in a better way.
30:59And much easier in terms of the harness so that the weight is shifted to the hips as opposed to
31:04the shoulders.
31:05You can see the width as well, very similar but the padding's different and the behavior of this pack system
31:13redistributes the weight to the firefighter in a much more efficient way.
31:17In the old system, you'll notice the pack, it's just a flat sheet of metal with a bump on it
31:22and it was really quite uncomfortable.
31:25The straps themselves were holding most of the weight, which compressed, if you will, on your shoulders.
31:30The assembly at the waist was poor and threw you off balance if you were working on ladders or if
31:36you were throwing an axe.
31:37And it could throw off your center of gravity very, very easily.
31:41A new face mask boasted a closer fit and better visibility.
31:45In addition, a new warning system is put into place to alert firefighters when air is running low.
31:52When you look at the face piece, there's a set of lights in here that tells you your air supply
31:57is down.
31:57And as the air goes down, you'll see orange telling you, hey, heads up, you're about halfway through.
32:03And then when it goes to red, you're about a quarter, you've got time to get out.
32:06And in the older systems, there is a bell on the back, this warning device.
32:12And in a fire, you may not know whose bell's going off.
32:15So you had to reach back and feel your bell because there's a lot of noise in a fire.
32:19Machines operating, people yelling, people chopping holes in floors or walls.
32:24And you're in the interior of a building and you may not hear that warning bell.
32:28Both the captain and I came on with the same materials and it is a very clunky material.
32:34So the gear has changed from the perspective of its performance ergonomically, its capacity for heat.
32:39But equally another unintended consequences is the superior protection.
32:44We now have to explain to firefighters the limitations of this gear.
32:47Whereas in this one, there's such a delay in that transmission of heat to the body that firefighters are so
32:53well protected,
32:53they may not recognize the danger.
32:55So we're teaching them how to recognize and what to look for in other cues other than what we would
33:01normally have done in the past,
33:03which is, hey, my ears are burning, I better back out.
33:05There is a phenomenal amount of protection in this.
33:08If you put both of these people in the same fire, this firefighter would be backing out much earlier than
33:12this firefighter.
33:13NASA and its contractors increased the amount of time firefighters can spend inside a burning building.
33:20They've given firefighters more breathing time and reduced the weight they carry into the flames.
33:26In 74 and 75, firefighters in big cities in the U.S., in New York, Houston and Los Angeles,
33:32they were equipped with these space-age systems.
33:34They got to give them a go, and the firefighters loved them.
33:37This was so much better than what they were using before.
33:39It let them go into the smoke-filled buildings.
33:42It let them withstand the heat.
33:44It really let them do their job so much better.
33:46There's so many aspects of the Apollo program that found their way into the fire service,
33:51whether it's the clothing, whether it's our breathing apparatus, the equipment, all types of equipment we use.
33:58It's that science that is everywhere in the fire service today.
34:02Keeping us safe right here on Earth is something NASA seems to do regularly.
34:07But you might be surprised that NASA tech helps with crime-fighting.
34:11As a surveillance camera looks on, a car is stolen.
34:15The camera had just captured the event, but the footage is grainy.
34:19When police try to zoom in on the license plate, it's too distorted to read.
34:24In the late 1990s, solar physicist David Hathaway and atmospheric scientist Paul Meyer are hard at work at the Marshall
34:32Space Flight Center.
34:34Both Paul and I were in the business of processing images.
34:39Paul processed images, satellite images of the Earth, of clouds and formations in the Earth's atmosphere.
34:47I was processing images of the sun.
34:49Some of that involves trying to make them clearer, that there's a little bit of blur that comes with those
34:56as well, and you like to clean it up.
34:57And these are very specialized instruments that you can literally split up sunlight into a million different colors.
35:04And from the fine division of that, you can not only tell the chemicals that are there, you can tell
35:10how they're moving.
35:11It's the Doppler effect, the same thing that the radar gun does.
35:15To deal with the occasional shaky images and imprecise data being beamed down to NASA from a low Earth orbit,
35:23Meyer and Hathaway developed software, Video Image Stabilization and Registration, or VISAR.
35:30We dealt with algorithms for taking fuzzy images and making them clear.
35:36And that's what Hubble needed, was Hubble would have a single image, and it was blurry.
35:40The great thing with Hubble, you knew exactly how it was blurry.
35:43Because they're stars, and stars are single little points of light.
35:47So, you know, this is a pinpoint, and if you put it together right, it should be a pinpoint.
35:52VISAR actually started out as an eye test, where we tried to do it by hand.
35:56It's like, all right, move it over a pixel and a half, and up three quarters of a pixel.
36:01Is that better than moving it over this far?
36:03And so, is A better than B?
36:05And it was literally like an eye test.
36:08And we did that for longer than we ever should, you know, as far as how much time we spent.
36:13And we were like, we can automate this.
36:17We'll just write a program using what we know about how to measure motions of things.
36:22And that became VISAR.
36:24If VISAR could help scientists uncover more of the Earth's atmosphere and our solar system,
36:30could it also help us solve crimes down here on Earth?
36:33After the 1996 bombing of the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, the FBI are at an impasse.
36:40Though they have photos of the suspect depositing bombs, they can't make out faces.
36:45Hearing about Hathaway and Myers stabilization software, the FBI approached the NASA scientists and asked for help.
36:53We never had any idea we'd ever be working for law enforcement.
36:56They knew the evidence was there as far as they've got lots of video.
37:01But if you look at a single image, even if you brighten it up because of the video noise, you
37:06brighten it up, you just see the noise.
37:07This is where Paul and I came in.
37:09So Hubble was easy.
37:10The problem we had in particular when we got into the forensic ends of things and like video from the
37:15Olympic Park bombing is,
37:16you don't know how fuzzy things are.
37:19You don't have a star to look at to tell you how fuzzy it is.
37:22And so we did, we did do a fair amount of research.
37:25The real gains in what we did came simply from adding images together.
37:31And from that, the noise eventually goes away and you end up with a clean image that you can see
37:36all kinds of detail.
37:37Hathaway and Myers were able to clarify the footage that was originally made with handheld camcorders.
37:43From the footage, investigators were able to learn more about the bomb and the explosions.
37:48This was used on a daily basis.
37:50I think the state of Florida bought a whole bunch of their workstations.
37:53People were using this every day.
37:54And so I couldn't even guess how many cases were ultimately worked on with that tool.
38:00You never quite know where the next big discovery is going to come from.
38:05But if you give people the resources and the freedom to pursue some activity,
38:11then perhaps they'll come up with something like Vizar.
38:15There were people like myself that studied the sun,
38:18people that studied the Earth's magnetosphere, the Earth's atmosphere.
38:22You know, this is a serendipity of discovery that you never know when something totally unexpected
38:28is going to come out of something.
38:30And I think for that matter, it behooves us to continue to explore
38:34because it's in exploring that we make these discoveries.
38:37We are a power hungry society.
38:40As technology advances, so too does the demand for energy.
38:44NASA also has power challenges in deep space.
38:48And it's in their quest for solutions that we might find our most breakthrough energy moment right here on Earth.
38:53We've spent the past 50 years transitioning step by step,
38:58getting off of the planet, then getting to the moon,
39:01establishing a shuttle program, building a space station.
39:04But the next big step is going much further, and that's going to Mars.
39:08I'm 29 now, so for my entire life, there has been a human being in space the entire time nonstop.
39:15That is incredible.
39:17We have this innate curiosity and desire to explore things that we don't understand,
39:22whether it's diving to the bottom of the ocean or going to outer space.
39:25But it is so far away.
39:28Going to the moon took three days. It's about 240,000 miles away.
39:32The distance to Mars is about 150 times the distance to the moon.
39:36So you can imagine that introduces all kinds of complications.
39:40If you want to go past the moon, then you need to worry about
39:43the truly gigantic amount of fuel that you have to have,
39:47and where is that going to come from?
39:49There are no gas stations in space that are going to just
39:51conveniently fill you up with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen between here and the moon.
39:56Humans have devised numerous ways to harness energy,
39:59but most are not an option in space.
40:02Here on Earth, most of the electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels, coal and natural gas.
40:09Fossil fuels are what their name describes.
40:11They are quite literally from fossils.
40:13They are from organic compounds decaying in the ground.
40:16All these things get compressed in the ground.
40:18They form oil. We mine the oil. We use it for energy.
40:20If we go to other planets, based on the current data we have,
40:23we do not anticipate encountering other forms of organic matter,
40:28which means we're not going to have fossil fuels.
40:30There's different ways to power things in space.
40:32If we look at the Voyager spacecrafts, they use plutonium batteries,
40:36really crazy technology, but they last forever.
40:39We've used fuel cells in space for a long time in various battery technologies.
40:43One of the ways that we could help solve the fuel problem
40:46is to use what is available to us there in space.
40:49There's hydrogen and oxygen in the atmospheres of other planets,
40:53but then you just have the same problem that you had to begin with.
40:55You have to go down into the gravity of those planets,
40:58get the stuff, come back out.
41:00That's just as hard as bringing it up from the Earth in the first place.
41:04Space is empty. There's not a lot to work with there,
41:06but what is there is sunlight.
41:08Solar is popping up in really interesting places.
41:11So we're getting to the point where people are thinking about
41:15how can we incorporate solar into our everyday lives.
41:18Often we take the sun for granted on Earth,
41:20but that technology is also going to be critical for us to be able to explore space.
41:24All of the electricity that we generate by burning fossil fuels
41:27or nuclear reactors or hydroelectric plants,
41:30that's just absolutely dwarfed by the amount of energy that comes to us from the sun.
41:35We see solar energy fields all over the world now.
41:38We've gone past the barrier where it's cost prohibitive now
41:42to where it's cost effective to make electricity out of solar panels.
41:46Arguably, we'll drive the development of that technology in space
41:50to create more efficient solar arrays and then use that technology here on Earth.
41:54Solar energy is really nice because once we get it up there, it's there forever.
41:59We don't have to bring more fuel up. It keeps on going and going and going.
42:03So where we're close enough to the sun, as much as possible,
42:07we like to use solar panels to provide energy to the spacecraft.
42:11Basically what happens is we have a silicon crystal and it has to be very pure silicon.
42:16We then cut that into really, really thin sheets
42:18and we put thin wires on the top and the bottom of the sheet.
42:22You can think of the light coming from the sun as a stream of photons.
42:25Each of those photons carries a small amount of energy.
42:28Photons coming from the sun hit the solar panels, eject electrons.
42:33You connect that to a circuit.
42:34You can do all of the things that you would do with electrical power.
42:37From our car's perspective, the car is driving along
42:41and it has solar cells on the top surface of the car.
42:43The sun, when it hits the solar cells, it generates a voltage
42:47and it also generates a current flowing through the solar cells
42:51and into our battery box.
42:53Between the battery box and between the solar cells,
42:55we have something called the peak power trackers.
42:57This essentially dictates what is the maximum power
43:00that we can get from the sun and what the voltage and the current
43:03is supposed to be.
43:04So the motor would be able to use the energy that is harnessed
43:07from the sun to drive the wheels and to go forward.
43:10It seems straightforward here on Earth,
43:13but in space there are other factors to consider.
43:15If we're going to use solar arrays and solar power out in space,
43:19well, we got to get it up there.
43:20Getting there, we have to worry about weight.
43:22Every kilogram we launch into space costs thousands
43:26and thousands of dollars.
43:27So any time we can reduce the weight of those panels,
43:31there's a huge advantage.
43:32So almost more than anything, that weight constraint
43:35is the biggest one we've got to engineer for.
43:37But we also need a huge surface area.
43:39We need hundreds of square metres of solar panels
43:42on a spacecraft like the ISS.
43:44You can't put a 100 metres square area on the surface of a rocket
43:48and send it into space.
43:49There's too much friction, too much drag.
43:51It's kind of like putting your arm outside the window of your car
43:54at 120 kilometres an hour.
43:55You can feel the wind pushing on your arm.
43:57If we had solar panels that were sticking out of a rocket,
44:00they would just be ripped off.
44:01And so what happens is we tuck all that stuff inside the rocket.
44:05And then once we get it up into space, that whole assembly opens up
44:10and these solar arrays roll out.
44:13If you want to re-enter, you've got to fold those solar panels back up
44:17and put them back inside some type of vehicle.
44:19Re-entry is probably the most difficult thing to deal with in terms of space.
44:24You've got to go through the atmosphere
44:26and you're going to be moving very fast when you enter.
44:29You have to deal with the enormous amount of heat and friction
44:32that's generated as a fast-moving thing comes into the atmosphere.
44:36The temperatures that we're talking about in those type of re-entries
44:40can be 2,000 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
44:43So, you know, well beyond the melting temperature of most common materials.
44:48So we really have to spend a lot of time developing technologies
44:51that can resist that heat.
44:53But again, like all space materials, it has to be light.
44:56In addition to all the light and heat that the sun sends out,
44:59there's a constant stream of high-energy particles coming from the sun.
45:03That radiation is mostly blocked by the Earth's atmosphere
45:06for people on the ground.
45:07But if you're out in space, that radiation is much harder to screen out.
45:11We are going to be exposed to really strong radiation on the way to Mars.
45:16And so we will have to figure out a way to deal with that
45:20so that the astronauts can survive when they go to Mars.
45:23So then think what it might do to your equipment as well.
45:26That movement of charged particles past the Earth
45:30and through our ionosphere and through the Van Allen belts
45:32generates electric fields in the long power lines on Earth
45:36and can lead to blackouts.
45:37The same thing can happen on spacecraft.
45:39Those particles can lead to problems with the electrical systems
45:42and lead to short circuits and damage.
45:45There's other issues to deal with.
45:46There's space debris, of which there's a lot up there now,
45:49and most of it is humans' fault.
45:51So these are tiny, tiny little bits that are flying around the Earth.
45:55Any one of those hits your solar panel and cracks it,
45:58why buy solar panel?
45:59So over time there is some degradation in the panels,
46:02but we put a lot of technology into making sure that those panels
46:05don't degrade and they stay as functional as they can
46:07over long periods of time.
46:09So you can generate electricity relatively easily.
46:12The trick is how do you use that then to propel your spacecraft forward?
46:16It's not like you can just hook up a fan and blow yourself through space,
46:21because there's no air to push against.
46:23The electrical current from the solar panels must be converted to thrust.
46:29You're producing thrust basically by taking stuff and throwing it out the back of the rocket
46:34at the highest speed you can, which means you're essentially setting off
46:38a lot of little explosions ejecting material.
46:41But that means you've got to start with an enormous amount of stuff
46:44that you can throw out the back.
46:45Typically these days they use liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen.
46:49You mix the two of them together and give it a spark,
46:51they'll burn and produce water essentially.
46:54That's a very rapid reaction, generates a lot of energy,
46:57shoots the water vapor that's produced out the back of the rocket
47:01at an extremely high speed and propels it forward.
47:03So how can a solar array create thrust?
47:06Through something called solar electric propulsion.
47:08At NASA's Glenn Research Center, engineers have designed solar electric propulsion technology
47:15that would feed energy into thrusters.
47:17The thrusters would generate and track electrons in a magnetic field
47:21and use them to ionize an onboard propellant, xenon,
47:25to create an exhaust plume of plasma, or thrust.
47:29This is as close to a self-sustaining power source in space as we've ever come.
47:33The amount required is ten times less than current systems,
47:37reducing the weight of the craft and allowing for longer missions.
47:41As we design for space exploration and solar in space,
47:47and we overcome the hurdles that are associated with that,
47:50we become efficient.
47:52That technology directly comes back to Earth
47:55and makes us more efficient here with solar energy.
47:58That's important because we need to get off fossil fuels.
48:02The world is still getting warmer and there are going to be consequences.
48:05And we're going to have to deal with that.
48:07You know, it's really in our DNA to go explore
48:09because every time we explore,
48:11it seems like we gather information that makes our lives better.
48:14And so through exploration,
48:15we often find things that we never could have expected
48:18and it's benefited our lives.
48:20And I predict that we will be on the surface of Mars
48:23and have humans walking and exploring the surface of Mars
48:26before the 100th anniversary of Apollo.
48:28And that's going to be remarkable because those astronauts
48:32are probably alive today.
48:34They may be five years old.
48:35They may be seven years old.
48:36We don't know.
48:37And if you walked up to one of those kids and said,
48:39hey, have you ever thought about being an astronaut?
48:42They go, oh, I'd love to be an astronaut.
48:43You could be one of the first people to walk on the surface of Mars.
48:48And that's something that's absolutely incredible.
48:51And really, that's what the space program is all about,
48:53making the impossible possible.
48:55Return to the Moon, Mars, and our Solar System
48:58are merely the next stepping stone in our quest for the heavens.
49:02With NASA's inspiration,
49:04many other ventures have set their sights on the stars.
49:07And as a result, newer and better technologies, materials,
49:11and systems are being tested every day.
49:13The conquest of space may seem like an expensive and dangerous endeavor,
49:17but it's the ripple effect and spin-off that has created the very life we live here on Earth.
49:23And we've only just begun venturing out of our home.
49:26Imagine when the push for space will take us next.
49:29music
49:33play
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50:00Transcription by CastingWords
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