today mankind stands at the dawn of a new era a celestial frontier awaits as a technological revolution practiced the final barriers to affordable space travel the potential reward has ignited a new race for space a competition based on commercial opportunity rather than national pride to meet the challenge pioneers throughout the world are looking to a new generation of space craft exotic designs unlike anything seen before wings of tomorrow which will carry us from a new orbital Oasis to the desolate vistas of Mars and beyond [Music] [Music] it's a familiar sight along the sun-soaked coastline of Cape Canaveral Florida the Space Shuttle are linked to the heavens wore skyward for years the shuttle has stood proudly as the vanguard of nasa's space program yet in the dawn of a new century its retirement is close at hand each time the shuttle takes to the heavens 240 tons of metal falls helplessly into the ocean the rockets which carry it aloft won't be needed once liberated from the perpetual tug of gravity [Music] and fuel tanks rockets man-hours and meticulous attention to safety means that every shuttle mission costs five hundred million dollars during the Cold War scientific bragging rights were worth almost any cost but today space has a new more practical role the revolution and digital communication has brought the satellite from the hands of the few to an irreplaceable part of everyday life by the year 2010 the number of satellites orbiting the Earth will increase tenfold making access to space as much to do with the pocketbook a scientific achievement that cost to get into space is just too hot today it's about $10,000 for every pound that you want to launch to space and what we're gonna have to do is dramatically reduce the cost down to a thousand dollars and even below if we're really going to be able to achieve all the benefits that Space Systems can offer us the answer lies in a width shaped machine that will takeoff under its own power get to orbit and return to fly again it's called the venture star tomorrow's link to space the venture star will emerge from America's best-known yet most secretive design team Lockheed Martin's skunk works it will pick up where the Space Shuttle left off the key to the entire program is summed up in four words single-stage-to-orbit the venture star seven unique rocket engines will carry it from sea level through the atmosphere without the aid of booster rockets or fuel tanks it will reach space on its own return to earth and be ready to fly again within seven days if all goes as planned it will reduce the cost of getting to space by a factor of 10 it will carry satellites to orbit and provide the lifeblood of man and material to the new International Space Station it may not be pretty nor will it satisfy the whimsical ambitions of those futurists who want to see motels on Mars but today the venture star represents the most practical and immediate means of getting to space the venture star is the culmination of NASA's search for an rlv or reusable launch vehicle along the way this search led them down several different paths unique among these was the DCX a when NASA laid out the ground rules for a reusable launch vehicle the two most important requirements were that it takeoff under its own power and returned safely to earth the 43 foot tall DCX could not only take off under its own power but it would land the same way on its tail the unique approach captured the attention of the US Air Force which named the cone-shaped rocket delta clipper then in the summer of 1995 the Air Force turned it over to NASA the unmanned craft was extensively modified renamed clipper gram and then moved to the desolate missile range at White Sands New Mexico the first NASA flight came on may 18th 1996 all test flights were controlled from a trailer one mile from the launch pad the first flight was routine until the landing as the rocket touchdown a fire flared up scorching its side after replacing a damaged flap the skin was scrubbed resprayed and flight tests resumed the Clipper Graham was never meant to get into space merely to demonstrate that a rocket-powered machine could takeoff climb to a respectable altitude land then refuel and do it all over again in a short period of time this it did on its second and third flights on June 7th the rocket climbed to 2,000 feet traveled laterally 560 feet as seen here on the computer model and then returned to Earth just 26 hours later the Clipper Graham climbed to over 10,000 feet moved across the range about the length of a football field before landing safely on the pad the significance of the flights wasn't that the rocket performed flawlessly but that the two flights were completed in just over one day unfortunately this would be the high point of the Clipper gram program the fourth flight came on the last day of July 1996 at fifteen minutes after one o'clock the Clipper Gramm fired up its engines the flight was intended to last two minutes [Music] the take-off was routine after less than a minute and a half the rocket peaked at 4,000 feet it then pitched its nose over 60 degrees and began heading down the range [Music] everything was going as planned after traveling almost 3,000 feet laterally over the desert the Clipper Graham began its descent so far the flight was a complete success the Clipper Graham had achieved all test objectives and appeared to be heading for a routine landing landing here lemon 98 seconds into the flight the computer ordered the landing gear to deploy then something went wrong after landing the rocket tipped over and burst into flames its internal water tanks couldn't contain the fire an emergency crews headed toward the range first of all I want to say we had a we had a good flight until the landing the vehicle flew the flight profile as planned the flight profile was going extremely well everything looked real good the problem came about 200 feet above above the ground when two gear deployed one gear came down slowly the fourth gear did not deploy the Clipper Graham was completely destroyed the culprit was a disconnected brake line on the landing gears helium pneumatic system although the accident wasn't any fault of the design the Clipper Graham program was shelved nonetheless it was a major step toward cheaper more accessible space travel DCX was essentially the first in this series of advanced space transportation systems looking at ways to reduce the operational cost and reduce the cost of going into low-earth orbit so it demonstrated that you can fly test with a small number of people to turn it around between flights with a small number of people so this demonstrated operational efficiency for advanced space transportation systems here in his 1985 the note will address President Ronald Reagan spoke of a new Orient Express which by the end of the decade would take off from Washington accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound and reach Tokyo in under two hours what Reagan was referring to was a highly classified project called Copper Canyon it was then being funded by DARPA the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [Music] but the Copper Canyon plane was never really expected to fly from Washington to Tokyo it was designed for single-stage-to-orbit part airplane part spaceship it would take off from a runway achieve orbit then land the same way it took off Copper Canyon evolved into this number 30 in America's proud family of experimental planes as the design of the x30 aerospace plane went public in the late 80s it was touted as the shape of things to come it stood on the shoulders of its experimental predecessors it was a sort of ultimate X plane made possible thanks to breakthroughs in composite materials and digital processing but propulsion was the real challenge getting from sea level to space with a single engine is the holy grail of aerospace engineering the x30 was indeed ambitious it initially resembled the concorde but as it turned out this look was more stylish than practical as the program matured so did the shape the sleek pencil like body was flattened and the wings were all but removed the x30 may have been transformed into a flying shoehorn but NASA and the DoD had an aerospace plane they could believe it the purpose of the x30 was to harness the power of a new kind of engine the scramjet everything about the space plane has to do with the engine it's very shape at a purpose the squared nose and wedge-shaped body were designed to create smooth airflow for the difficult business of supersonic combustion the entire x30 aerospace plane would be built around the edge the scramjet would burn on a mixture of hydrogen fuel and oxygen which is scooped up from the atmosphere once in space old-fashioned rocket power would take over not to be outdone by the Americans a European consortium came up with a design of their own but for a time it was the x30 which appeared to be the future of space travel it was hailed as the next generation shuttle perhaps even taking passengers to future space stations it seemed that the x30 was a space plane for the people but the program's budget structure is more telling with 80% of its funding coming from the Department of Defense it was clear that the government had something else in mind exactly what is unclear an aircraft capable of appearing over any part of the world in just an hour and a half could have made reconnaissance or ballistic missile defense a tempting option whatever the intention the US Air Force began to have its doubts and in 1994 backed out of the program on its own NASA couldn't carry the burden and the x30 program faded almost as quietly as it had appeared [Music] today the x30 aerospace plane has been reincarnated not as a passenger plane to the stars but an unmanned 12-foot research plane called HyperX dr. Scott Holland works at the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia his latest challenge is to help see the HyperX through its most difficult ride going from concept to reality Viper X project is designed to demonstrate net positive for us from a scramjet in a flight environment what it involves doing is taking a small-scale flight vehicle in this case a 12-foot long vehicle boosting it to altitude separating it from the booster and then allowing the engine to ignite and demonstrating that the vehicle will accelerate sounds easy enough first the 12-foot HyperX is mounted to the front of a pegasus rocket then dropped from the wing of an Air Force b-52 the rocket fires taking the unmanned HyperX to 110,000 feet then the real test begins if all goes well the HyperX will break free from the Pegasus then the blistering force of the onrushing air will ignite the scramjet the HyperX will accelerate traveling over seven miles in only five seconds before burning out it seems straightforward the catch is a scramjet has never been tested in flying [Music] tucked within the bowels of the Langley Research Center is one of NASA's few operating scramjets the exact design is sensitive it's concealed from our cameras within a small metal chamber inside a hypersonic wind tunnel before the air enters the scramjet it's compressed in what's known as an arcview the arc heater is adorned with a labyrinth of orange hoses some contain water for cooling others pipe and gaseous hydrogen used to fuel the supersonic airflow the compressed air is then forced into the scramjets Windtunnel chamber at speeds exceeding five times that of sound the scramjet maybe the engine of tomorrow but the idea is nothing new the ramjet requires virtually no moving parts incoming air is compressed simply by ramming the whole engine ahead at high speed the scramjet is really just a more advanced version of the ramjet a technology that's been with us for over 60 years like common jet engines Ram Jets provide thrust by compressing air burning it working and forcing it out the back the difference is a ramjet has no moving parts the air is compressed by the forward speed of the engine itself Ram Jets require air to be entering at supersonic speeds in the past they've been tested on airplanes rockets and even the tips of helicopter rotors the scramjet is the next step helicopters with Iran jet requires the air to be entering at about Mach 2 or 3 and that's the minimum speed at which the momentum of the air can provide enough energy to provide the compression process now a scramjet takes over from a ramjet around Mach 5 and the term scramjet is a supersonic combustion ramjet and the air is not slowed down to subsonic speeds but instead the combustion process takes place at supersonic speeds scramjet is it's so simple it's it's just it's just like any other engine to produce power you have to compress the air then you add heat and then you expand and in that recycle you actually produce thrust [Music] this is one of the many hypersonic wind tunnels at the NASA Langley Research Center hypersonic is the term for the blistering speeds of Mach 5 and Beyond at one side of the tunnel is an enormous tank where air is compressed to over 200 pounds per square inch on the other side is a massive vacuum when the valves connecting them are opened the compressed air screams toward the vacuum through a 31 inch tube at ten times the speed of sound [Music] the HyperX will eventually fly at Mach 10 at this speed the friction of the air is enough to charge vulnerable leading edges before dropping from the b-52 models like this one will spend thousands of hours being blasted in NASA's wind tunnel airflow patterns shock waves and the searing effect of the air will be meticulously studied this 3% replica is testing the interaction between the HyperX and its booster rocket the Pegasus it's one of the most difficult challenges of the program the model I'm holding here is a three-percent model of a Pegasus with the HyperX on the leading edge what this model is designed to do is to help us understand the forces that the vehicle will go through is the flight vehicle is dropped off the b-52 then accelerated to the test point and brings us to the point where we want to separate and take the free flyer away from the Pegasus so we can begin our engine test the HyperX will separate from the pegasus rocket at speeds exceeding Mach 5 this split-second event is the most risky part of the test flight there are two Pistons that fire to separate the free flyer from the Pegasus to move it forward and at the same time there are pistons that fire to rotate the lower portion of the adapter down so that we can minimize the possibility of recontact computer models will let engineers study the airflow at hypersonic speeds and help predict what will happen during the crucial microseconds that the HyperX breaks free from its booster these are computational fluid dynamic or CFD solutions this is that part that breaks down here and this is a research vehicle what we have right here is about 30 degrees rotated down it creates strong shock waves as it moves back and I'll walk through it quickly to start with you can see that the shocks move back with it the disturbance on the research vehicle is less at this point that has rotated all the way around and it's been assumed to break off if the separation goes as planned the three flight vehicles will fly first to Mach 5 then to Mach 7 and finally to Mach 10 but the HyperX wasn't built to last each will succumb to the thermal extremes of hypersonic flight but not before revealing the secrets of the scramjet a stepping-stone to affordable space travel and perhaps the orient-express of tomorrow [Music] this wedge-shaped machine represents the next step in space transportation it's called the x-33 and by the turn of the century it will emerge from the shadowy design offices of the Lockheed Martin skunk works [Music] the x-33 is known as an advanced technology demonstrator its purpose isn't to fly into space but merely to pave the way at 63 feet from tip to tail it's an exact half scale replica of the venture star America's next generation spacecraft the x-33 will be powered by two rocket engines five less than the venture star a series of test flights will launch it to an altitude of 50 miles and a velocity 15 times the speed of sound after each flight the x-33 will catch a ride back to Edwards Air Force Base in California aboard a NASA 747 the longest of these flights will be after the x-33 makes its third and final hop to Malstrom Air Force Base in Montana the entire reusable launch vehicle program is a cooperative agreement between NASA and the builders key to the program is summed up in forward single-stage-to-orbit for years it has been the most difficult barrier on the road towards greater access to space single-stage-to-orbit is so challenging because you carry everything with you you don't drop off tanks you don't drop off rockets every pound that's in the vehicle has to go all the way to orbit the answer is a unique rocket engine called the aerospike conventional rockets like the boosters on the space shuttle burn most efficiently only at specific air pressures at low altitudes where air pressure is high the Rockets work best exiting in a narrow stream but as the rocket moves higher a wider exhaust plume is needed to compensate for the drop in air pressure in the past NASA overcame the problem by piling on all the Rockets needed after each rocket pushes through a given altitude it burns out falls to the earth and the next one takes over the linear' aerospike engine is shaped like an upside-down Bell the Rockets are positioned in two rows along the top as the Rockets fire pressure causes the exhaust to cling to the sides of the engine [Music] but as the engine pushes to higher altitudes the natural decrease in pressure allows the exhaust to ease away from the engine automatically changing the shape of the exhaust plume the idea isn't new during the early 70s it was suggested to power the space shuttle but NASA rejected it as too risky the x-33 will be the second machine to carry the aerospike engine the first is sitting in a hangar at NASA's Dryden Flight test Center in California it's a sleek veteran the sr-71 blackbird mounted to the back is a section of the x-33 containing a scaled-down aerospike engine like the blackbird the partial spaceship bears the unmistakable mark of the skunkworks the sr-71 was chosen to test the aerospike because of its famed reputation for reaching extreme altitudes the Blackbird gives the engineers about the closest thing they can get to leaving the atmosphere the venture star will be pushed aloft by seven aerospike engines the setup not only provides single-stage-to-orbit but it's safe the failure of one of the shuttles booster rockets spells disaster but the venture stars line of seven engines can deal with such a problem if an engine quits its opposite number automatically shuts down the remaining engines power up and venture stars stays on course another advantage offered by the venture star is its simplicity and easy turnaround on the space shuttle the protective ceramic tiles need to be checked and if damaged replaced a process which takes over 17,000 man-hours for every mission the venture star won't have this problem its outer skin will be a metallic thermal shield working enough to withstand 100 cm reentry's but when the venture star returns it can't simply float toward Earth it needs to maneuver its way down or else it will skip off the dense air of the atmosphere like a rock off a pond or just vehicle flies from 20,000 feet per second down to landing speeds so they have to be able to make certain maneuvers primarily they must rotate about this wind coming at them this way sideways so that they fly sideways rather than up and out of the Earth's atmosphere or they're in trouble the boat like hull of the lifting body is the optimum design to survive reentry but during landing it's the Achilles heel a lifting body doesn't provide lift nearly as well as the wings of an airplane it can also be difficult to control especially if it begins to roll back and forth but the pitfalls landing them are mitigated by one important factor weight without fueled the venture star is only 1/8 its takeoff weight unburdened by payload the buoyant spacecraft can land on an 8,000 foot runway shorter than most major airports once the venture star lands the challenge is to get it checked out loaded and ready to fly again in just seven days the key to the quick turnaround is a revolutionary launch and recovery pad these pads are much smaller than the vast complex is used by the shuttle they're designed for convenience and a small maintenance staff for example instead of taking the venture star to the hangar the hangar comes to the venture star [Music] one of the venture stars strengths is cargo capacity a lifting body has a vast amount of internal space a fully loaded venture star will weigh as much as two 747 jumbo jets even though its length and width are roughly equal to the much smaller 757 the cargo is checked and sealed within a large package about the size of the containers pulled by a standard 18-wheeler the package is brought into the hangar and then lowered into the venture stars 15 by 45 foot cargo bay for flights to low-earth orbit the venture star carries up to 40,000 pounds the other two million pounds are reserved for the liquid hydrogen and oxygen needed to get it there the amount of fuel and cargo aboard such a light spacecraft makes the venture star the aeronautical equivalent of a 20 pound bicycle carrying a person who weighs 200 pounds when all's clear the hangar pulls away the venture star is already sitting on the launch pad [Music] without booster rockets or external fuel tanks the unwieldy job of assembling a launch package is eliminated the venture star is ready to fly [Music] the venture star will be a cooperative effort NASA takes on the high-risk technologies while industry is responsible for building the contractors don't make a profit the venture star will be built at cost but if it works they'll make money launching it the reason for this kind of thinking is simple the revolution in digital technology has changed the way we communicate satellites are already being used to connect digital cellphones or provide movies to the home Global Positioning satellites provide real-time maps for Renault cars and precise locations too stricken voters today we're seeing only the beginning as we grow ever more dependent on satellites the venture star may be a cheap way of getting them to orbit NASA and private industry hope to reduce the cost of putting satellites into space from $10,000 a pound down to only one thousand when a company wants to launch a satellite they'll rent space aboard the venture stone it's a lofty goal but if it works the venture star will do more than deliver satellites in the decades to come NASA's going to need to go to space more often it will be an important shareholder in a permanent manned oasis 248 miles above the earth the United States Russia Canada Japan and the members of the European Space Agency are combining their efforts to build a truly International Space Station when all the final modules panels and trusses are attached in 2002 the space station will span the size of one and a half football fields each of the laboratory and habitation modules are about the size of a school bus over an acre of solar panels will provide 112 kilowatts every 90 minutes the length of time it takes to orbit the Earth a cupola gives the astronauts the 360-degree view all around when work needs to be done outside the space station the cupola becomes the command center letting astronauts watch and communicate with the space walkers aboard the space station astronauts won't need as much sleep as usual the body does less work when not fighting gravity an average American plows through a hundred and sixty gallons of water per day aboard the space station astronauts will use only eight almost every drop of which will be recycled although the space station is designed for self-reliance resupply craft will be a welcome sight as the American space shuttle and Russian Soyuz Rockets begin to show their age round-trip visits to the space station will be handed over to the venture star crew members will ride in a passenger module which fits snugly in the cargo bay when the venture star approaches the space station the cargo bay doors will open and a pre-programmed flight control system will guide it into the docking module [Music] many communication satellites dwell in low orbit above earth to reach the space station the venture star will need to go much further limiting its capacity to about 20,000 pounds [Music] the space station will be the largest manned object ever to orbit the earth but it may not seem so big after six months four tired astronauts the venture star may be a welcome way home as one group arrives another will leave but life on the space station will continue to be around the New International Space Station will allow us to have a 24-hour seven-day-a-week 3 and 6 t5 de year manned space activities going on for all sorts of areas of research that really dramatically affect things here on earth [Music] without gravity scientists will not only unearth new discoveries but improve on what we already know extremely high quality chips can be manufactured in the zero-g environment likewise a medical research can be conducted unique things that that look at the way bones grow for instance and repair themselves it can again be conducted on a space station in a way that it can't be done on the ground so that continuous manned presence in space on the space station will allow dramatic advancements in our technology really across across the board in all sorts of areas like a ship at sea the space station sails alone through an unfriendly environment if something happens it too will need a lifeboat this is the x-38 the prototype for such a spacecraft it's constructed under a NASA contract by Burt Rutan Burt designed the world-record-breaking Voyager NASA calls their lifeboat a crew return vehicle or CRV it will carry up to six passengers lying on their backs during any medical or mechanical emergency astronauts can be on their way to safety within three minutes as the CRV moves away from the space station a small rocket appropriately called the deorbit engine is fired pushing the astronauts berth [Music] what happens next is well understood the emergency CRV is closely based on air force lifting body aircraft flown during the mid 60s [Music] the heat of reentry is spread evenly along the sea RV's rounded underbelly for an astronaut who has been in space any length of time landing is never easy bone and muscle are weakened by a prolonged lack of gravity when they return their body has trouble dealing with their own weight much less a punishing impact with the ground [Music] to soften the blow the CRV will automatically deploy a steerable parachute developed by the US Army the spacecraft will touch down on skids rather than wheels for those aboard the two-hour ride home may not be comfortable but it beats the alternative [Music] while the venture star sits on the horizon dreamers and aerospace engineers alike are already looking beyond new designs and untested propulsion systems will be needed to provide true breakthroughs in space traffic these technologies are too risky and far-reaching for industry so NASA's space transportation program is leading the way the main goal of the program is to carry people satellites and cargo to Earth's orbit and more distant destinations like the moon before the turn of the century NASA will explore computer models of exotic designs but like the venture star the key to any aerospace revolution is in the engine the dreams and ideas of tomorrow appear to draw from the whimsical prose of science fiction most are classified with names like a pulse detonation fusion propulsion antimatter and gravity modification for some experts it all seems a little too much but the space transportation program is significant not because it's going to revolutionize the way we get to space but because it will change the way we think we can get to space only then can we make the breakthrough needed to open the final frontier [Music] almost 400 years ago Galileo made the first telescope observations of Mars since then man has been fascinated by the Red Planet finally in the summer of 1997 we all visited Mars not through the eyes of intrepid astronauts but through the camera lens of a two foot robot called Sojourner the event has rekindled an old idea to take the next step sending man to Mars dr. Bobby Braun worked on the Pathfinder team if Pathfinder had failed it would have been a catastrophic loss for all of us that had worked on the mission for five years but there were been no loss of human life as soon as you take that step to a human mission the complexity of it just goes way up in 1953 Verner von Braun published the Mars project a work which detailed mathematical tables for a manned mission to Mars with the success of Pathfinder von Braun's work has been taken from the shelf dusted off and plans to put people on Mars are beginning to take shape [Music] a manned flight to Mars won't happen all at once it will be a step by step process which has already begun with the Pathfinder a series of unmanned capsules will be blasted toward Mars as early as five years before the people by the time the astronauts arrive much of what they need will already be there as the astronauts depart most of their cargo will be the fuel which sees them through the journey the problem is getting back carrying fuel for a round-trip journey is unwieldy and expensive to make the trip possible they'll need to make fuel on Mars using the Martian atmosphere and a few key ingredients brought from Earth the astronauts won't need to bring fuel for the ride home even so the amount of cargo needed to support a human visit to Mars will amount to the largest journey ever taken outside the Earth's atmosphere it was about 200,000 kilograms of gross weight on that launch vehicle that took Pathfinder to Mars and we only put 24 kilograms of payload on the surface that would go up by a factor of ten to a hundred for a human mission and of course we're putting a lot more than just 24 kilograms on the surface because we're putting several people plus the supplies plus a rover that's more like a car perhaps the kind of engine which will take man to Mars is still under debate nuclear propulsion is the most efficient but firing an atomic reactor through the atmosphere on a pillar of volatile rocket fuel doesn't go over well on earth in the years to come debate will continue over whether the engine should be a conventional rocket nuclear or something else whatever the decision is going to be a long trip it could take anywhere from 6 to 18 months depending on the number of people trajectory and even the year that it leaves some engineering studies even suggest that because of the immense risk the crew should be kept to a minimum of 4 during the journey the real threat comes from prolonged exposure to galactic radiation the next problem is the descent to Mars in 1997 the Pathfinder entered the Martian atmosphere without a hitch but as dr. Bobby Braun can explain putting a robot down is one thing safely delivering people is entirely different [Music] Pathfinder pulled about 16 G's during the entry there at Mars if you think about people traveling through space for a year year and a half on the way to Mars in in a zero-g environment they're not going to do 2l pulling 16 G so we need to shallow out the entry essentially to spread out that G pulse maybe get it down to 3 or 5 G's that requires a different shaped vehicle one that has a little bit more lift and flies a bit more like an airplane than then like Pathfinder which essentially just fell like a rock through the atmosphere [Music] the landing will be carried out automatically by a pre-programmed onboard computer some planners have even suggested not bringing a pilot saving the seat for a geologist or chemical engineer whatever the makeup of the crew it's vital that they land in exactly the right spot to send people to Mars we're going to send a few cargo ships first what would be nice is if the first cargo ship could land say somewhere in this room the next cargo ship could land in you know just a few feet away and when the people came they were just several more feet away so everything could just be plugged together and you'd have your little Basecamp what you don't want to do is have one cargo ship you know a hundred miles to the east and the other cargo ship 100 miles to the west with the people in the middle on the Pathfinder precision landing wasn't an issue the cocoon-like package was dropped off in roughly the right place before bouncing to a final resting spot Pathfinder's landing ellipse was about 200 kilometers by a hundred kilometers that's roughly the distance from Los Angeles to San Diego and you can see that if we set down three ships that all had to work together between LA and San Diego that when the people got there there'd be a lot to do the people will have a lot to do anyway after making their triumphant first step the first order of business is to begin making the three things necessary to survive air to breathe water to drink and fuel to get them home [Music] the Martian atmosphere is almost entirely carbon dioxide oxygen is produced by breaking down the ambient atmosphere with a co2 reduction unit to make fuel and water the only ingredient the astronauts need to bring is liquid hydrogen the rest is simple chemistry a processing unit combines the hydrogen with the atmospheric co2 producing methane and water the amount of fuel produced is more than 18 times the amount brought from Earth 12 tonnes of it will power the rover's use to explore Mars the rest is needed to get home [Music] since the astronauts arrival their ride home has been loitering around Mars in an orbital parking lot now comes the time for the crucial rendezvous the orbital link-up is the final challenge of a momentous journey the closing of another frontier it won't be cheap and it won't be easy but one day it may be a reality I'm actually very confident that in my lifetime I'll see people going to Mars I used to think when I was younger that it would be me but I'm not confident of that anymore I actually think that people that are in school now whether it's in junior high perhaps or high school that some of those people will probably be the first to create footsteps on Mars [Music] [Music] you
