AGU Fall Meeting

have clearly blown through those so how do you think about that and and how do you focus on getting by those obstacles well I'm a big believer in um in the sort of uh science or physics framework of trying to analyze problem particularly if if they're new um so if something's new then analogies don't don't work very well um because it's it's it's it's new I mean the way we get through daily life is most by analogy or by sort of copying things with minor variations um because it's a computational shortcut uh but if you want to do something that's that's fundamentally new uh or particularly it's counterintuitive then you have to do a first principles analysis um and you know take things from from the what appear to be as fundamental sort of simple fundamental

truths and then reason up from there um and uh I mean that that requires a lot more thinking and you can't you can't do that for everything but um but if you trying to figure out something new I think it's it's really the only way to go so um I mentioned that that I was in Paris and I know that you were there too and um as I listened to presentations uh first there was a real sense of optimism at this cop that I don't think was there before but there was still an overwhelming sense of a lot of of work that we have to do and I was struck by um some comments that you made when you were talking to a group of students at the surbone um and they were talking about sustainability and you said regarding the carbon cycle this is analogous to not paying for garbage

collection it's not as though we should say in the case of garbage have a garbage free Society it's very difficult to have a garbage free Society but it's it's just important that people pay for the garbage collection so we need to go from having an untaxed negative externality which is effectively a hidden carbon sub subsidy of enormous size 5.

3 million trillion a year and we need to move away from this and have a carbon tax so can you talk a little bit about that especially from the standpoint of being in price yeah I mean essentially price are just information um they they the primary information um to allow for labor labor allocation um and they sort of tell people what what to do and what thing should be favored or another thing um and and so when the prices are wrong then the wrong thing happens in the economy um so when you have a sort of a tragedy of Commons um like the CO2 capacity of the oceans in atmosphere um and it's it's un price or the price is is much lower than it than it should be um then the wrong Behavior happens so effectively uh we're we're incenting bad behavior um and

um I mean I just talked about how analogies are imperfect but but um you know it's kind of like if if we had uh high taxes on on fruits and vegetables and low taxes on on cigarettes and alcohol that would that wouldn't make sense um that that's sort of what we have um right now with respect to energy um and and um and we're very powerful forces trying to keep it that way um so um now it will eventually um correct but and we are seeing some good movement in that direction with the Paris climate talks it sounds like it's direct directionally correct and um and there will be some movement not as much as there should be but it's it's encouraging um and um I think that it's worth noting that like generally when when when the government interferes in the economy

it's it's it's it's that usually results in a in a a pricing error increase um but in this case uh I think it would it would be it's hard to miss like any any sort of C text would reduce the effect of error in the system of prices in the economy um i' like to shift directions uh while we are a research Community we're also an education community and uh we have crowdsourced and questions for today's event and one of them comes uh from the education community so this came to us uh on Twitter from Regina Brinker uh at Brinker science if you want to follow her and she says I teach Middle School stem what should students be learning to be prepared for and contribute to the Future Workforce um well I think um I mean software engineering is um probably the single

biggest area that that people should learn um and um and and I think I think I'm always sort of a fan of physics and uh General economics and critical thinking I think those are we really should teach critical thinking a lot more um me seem like a simple thing but it's it's just um like you need to just tell people like this is how you know whether you should believe something or [Laughter] not yeah you you can tell how much everybody resat I think I'm preaching to the convered here yeah but yeah it's um yeah you know just teaching people these are the general types of fallacies and this is how people will generally trick you and how to avoid being trick and I think it be really great let's do it uh at the fall meeting here uh we also try to uh stress

the importance of transdisciplinary research and how science informs other areas like uh policy and so forth so another question we received from Twitter uh came from Lori xowski she's at extra neutrons um who asked so you didn't mention geoscience in that list of things that people should know about I do think J is very important um yeah what do the engineers of the future need to know from geosciences and how can uh how do we influence that and work together um well I mean I think in general I think that it would be good in general for people to know about geosciences and um to know how um our actions um as a civilization will affect the future um or and how we can possibly affect it how we might be negatively affecting it um you know on the assumption

that we want the future to be good uh we want to direct our actions to um you know with respect to to geosciences to to a good outcome um so so I generally it's it's it's sort of quite surprising how little actually people know about about geosciences I mean even like pretty straightforward stuff like the carbon cycle you know sort of um I mean I've had conversations with with quite quite smart and well people who um who who don't understand that there's like a surface carbon cycle and and then but if you did Stu up from deep underground and add it to the surface carbon that that that fundamentally changes the chemical like liing of the of the surface of the Earth um and they're like wow really [Music] yeah and um you know like there's just conservation

of mass is not totally obvious to people you know like you can't just create new carbon from nothing um you have and you can't just disappear yeah it doesn't disappear um yeah exactly so uh you know just like basic stuff like that be like wa to keep people on ter um I we s bouncing around but I have some you know I we got great input from all of you uh when we ask for questions and I want to make sure we try to uh touch on a lot of different topics so um I want to talk about the gools of the private and public sector in ensuring the advancement of scientific research and Innovation and where do you see um the roles of the private sector versus the public sector are there places where they overlap are they totally separate yeah I think the public sector

is when when you have something that's um kind of a small amount of good for the whole population U or for you know the whole country or even the whole the whole world um but it would be really difficult to go and collect like $10 from everyone um to understand um you know more about the nature of the Earth or the solar system the Universe um so you it's it's sort of it's not efficient to go to try and sort of you know collect service if if you got say A you know a$3 billion project to go and get $10 from everyone in the United States it's like it's it's better to do that by the public sector um and um and then you know you have great things like like the Hubble um and I think what people would say like that's that's quite a quite a good thing um or the

Mars missions um so I think um you know where where you have these things which are a small amount of good for for a lot of people it makes sense for public sector to to you know for government to do that um where you can um more concretely close the economic Loop um uh that that's where the private sector makes sense um so for example at SpaceX we do a lot of launches of communications and broadcast satellites um and and that that can sort of close the economic Loop because uh then people can uh listen to X and radio or get Direct TV or something like that um and and that kind of makes sense um but then we'll also do missions for NASA to re resupply the space station um so we can sort of learn more about space that makes sense as a as a public sector

thing um so I think that's the basic basic difference so in that public sector um not only geoscience but a lot of Sciences seen very flat funding at a time when uh other nations are investing uh at a time when there's a tremendous opportunity uh how do you think that the private sector can help us uh turn that around and focus on you know what the benefits will be for Society for uh public sector investment in research um well I'm certainly a proponent of increasing um investment in in science in general uh from you know both the public and private sector um and um I'm a super pro science so I um and it is um interesting to see like um the lar collider you know that was that was really a great effort there there in Europe um and uh you know we sort of

canel the superc conducting to glider here in the US um I thought that was that was sort of a sort of a sad thing that we did there um you know I I really think we should we should increase funding for science absolutely um you across the world really great uh we have the director of the National Science Foundation in the front row here I'm sure she's uh yeah in violent yeah definitely so you mentioned Mars and um uh in your interview with stepen coar you said that Mars is a fixer uper Planet yeah but you've also been a proponent of colonizing U Mars uh what are some of the challenges that you think we would face in traveling to Mars I know you're very interested in this how do how do you think about that sure um well I think first of all I should say

you know why do I think this is important um and and that's uh if I sort of unpack the sort of philosophical basis for that as far as I'm concerned it's the reason I came to that conclusion was that um you know I think that um we don't there there's so much more to understand and learn about the nature of the universe um and that understanding will will grow kind of proportion to the scope and scale of of human civilization um and um the probability of the probable lifespan of human civilization is is much greater if we are a multipl species as opposed to a single plan species um if we're a single plan species then eventually there will be some Extinction event either um you know either from humans or or some natural uh so um so I think and now it's the

first time in the history of Earth that the the window is opened where it's possible for us to extend life to another planets I mean it's been one and a half billion years so it's a long time and and that that window may be open for a long time and hopefully it is uh but it may also be open for a short time and so I think the the wise move is to make life multiplanetary while we can um and and um and and this ultimately uh is what will lead to um a huge amount of of new science um and in sure that uh that we have the highest probability of of understanding the nature of the universe um so that that's actually the the reason that I think it's important um and and I also think it would be a great adventure um and you know there need to be things that um

people look forward to very in the morning like it's it's exciting inspiring um and um you know we we need those things yeah I'm old enough to remember the uh landing on the moon and uh getting up that day and about that and just the change yeah exactly point so um but but it it will be super hard to do this um and it will take a long time and um I I suspect I probably would't live to see it become self-sustaining um but um if we had to aim for that objective then you know they important technological steps that are needed um to to get there um one of them for example being uh reusable Rockets um if we reusable Rockets we can reduce the the cost of of um of access to space by probably two magnitude um and worting that for the the Falcon n um which is

a about a $6 million rocket to B the the cost of the propellent is only um about $200,000 so you know it's much like U refilling um think it's 747 something like that um so it's it's really a massive difference if we can make rity work um and then we also need scale um need to have really big Rockets um and um and you need to do uh local propelling production on Mars um so if we can do those things then I think we can establish a self sustaining civilization on R so I understand that you're going to be launching your uh newest rocket next week and uh this is the first launch since the Falcon 9 uh back in June and uh I've lost some scientific year that was pretty expensive in the ocean and I know what that feels like Maybe not maybe I don't know how it

scales but um uh you know if this is successful it's it's clearly historic and uh um how do you think about uh that issue of uh you know uh failing forward um well I think uh I think I success forward but um yeah it's it's it's quite emotionally traumatic actually um and uh yeah the the last fight which failed actually did so on my birthday which of a doubt yeah so yeah I me it's it's Rockets are hard the uh I mean if if gravity was just a little lighter much easier actually If gravity was a little little stronger on Earth it would be basically impossible to do with chemical Rockets it's amazing how much uh gravity effects things like this small change in G and it's like wow um you look at say the Saturn 5 which was like the size of like an basically

an office building uh to take off from Earth and and yet to take off from the moon was just the top half of the eagle Lander so it's wow it's like a crazy difference so anyway the so for for in order to make things work on Earth for Rockets you have to really push everything to the maximum um so you have to have really Advanced Materials um really optimize the design um everything's got to you can't have huge amounts of margin in in the rocket otherwise it just won't get to open at all um and um and it's really hard to test everything in the ground in the exact circumstances that you're would experiencing life because there's just no there's no test facility that can do that um exactly so you do you make it close but not exact um but for for this upcoming

flight um there are number of improvements in the rocket um and one of the things we're doing for the first time um the first time I think anyone's done it is uh deep deeply cryogenic propellant so we're subcooling the propellant particularly particularly the liquid oxygen because it's 23 liquid oxygen um close to its freezing point um which increases the density quite quite significantly um and um and then the thrust is higher we're going to improve uh stage separation system we stretched the upper stage of the rocket um to add more propellent to that and there are a number of other improvements in electronics so it's I think a um significantly improved rocket from the last one um and then I should say what is important about reusability as far as the

Boost stage is concerned um what the key sort of figure of marit is is the transfer um transfer energy um so if you take the potential energy and the kinetic energy um and say how much has been transferred to the the alha stage by the Boost stage um and and and what's the mass that so basically yeah basically connecting to potential energy transport that that's the thing that that's the figure of marit um so the the boo stage of falcine is is capable of of transfer of a transfer velocity to the opp stage of 8,000 km an hour so it's really that's pretty fast um a bullet from an assault rifle it goes at 2,000 km hour so it's four times fast than a bull from an assault rifle um that's a transfer velocity of roughly 100 kilomet um and uh to to a mass of about

120 tons so it's accelerating 120 tons to four times FAS than than a bullet I loved the way that you just compared something that people wouldn't have any uh conception of to something that they would and that they would be really impressed by I mean was that amazing communication that was terrific um I wanted to ask you one last question and then we're going to throw things open for the the audience when you talked about Mars you said I don't think I'll ever get there well and yeah um you talk a little about you know a lot of us get involved in projects that we don't know if we'll see the realization and can you talk a little bit about how you think about that and and uh trading off you know I get to do it versus it'll come later well you know going

back to the sort of UNL mindl sort of philosophical rationale for doing the first you know doing in the first place um the you know basically I sort of was thinking about this when I when I was a kid and um trying to find some meaning in life like what's the meaning of life and um I quite sort of sad about it actually when I was a teenager um and um and then um I read the HED guide thexy which basically said like the real the you know basically universe is the answer and you need figure out the questions so I think um you know that that's if I can help kind of figure out the questions uh then that I consider that to be very absolutely maybe we can 's a b fish right exactly okay uh now it's time for you and uh I'm going to go um we're going to alternate

between questions from the audience and questions from the the U no Joan we're not we we won't okay just the audience okay um so it's your turn questions for youone um please come to the microphones that are in the uh in the aisles and there's somebody at this microphone go ahead thank you very much for appearing today uh two weeks ago the Los Angeles Times featured prominently on its front page a story in which it described many self-described Venture capitalists from this area who were enamored by a new and as yet unspecified technique of power generation it did not uh it was promised in the article I think was different than those demonstrated at three m Island chyl and Fukushima uh the uh I'd like to ask if you had uh what your critical thinking skills

would be when approached by people offering uh you to invest or become involved in uh new and undefined nuclear power techniques you know what they're talking about and two uh what you see as a future for nuclear power in our efforts to restore the Earth to the conditions that it might have existed more closely at the start of the you had to proceed sure um well I I actually am um I I I mean I think there's nothing wrong with nuclear power whether Vision or Fusion I think if a properly designed uh Vision power system is actually fine particularly if it's in an area that's not subject to natural disasters um so you know for example France has a lot of fion power um and that can that I think makes lot of s for um um but but for California it's more questionable

um or Japan um so then then um then then fusion um I I definitely think Fusion is a solvable problem um the the reason I sort of haven't done anything in um direct Fusion is that I I currently think and I may be wrong about this that that indirect fusion um from the big Fusion explosion in the sky called the sun is uh you know and having portable takes is is probably going to make the most things economically um and in the in the Norther in the high high latitudes in nor Northern Hemisphere you tend to have a lot of Hydro power so um that that that really helps solve the um you know how do you make power when it's dark problem or or in the middle of winter type thing so um I don't want to discarge people from pursuing Fusion but person thing I think the

economics are going to favor indirect Fusion of multiple pable Tes um at least to an overwhelming degree particularly when combined with uh batteries and um high voltage lines running East West and L South um I mean you can completely solve Earth's all the power need on Earth um with a with a fairly small uh percentage of the surface area um I mean for the United States you could take basically little a corner of Utah Nevada and power the entire United States um with solar power so I I think that's that's mostly how it will get solved the next so this is a bit of a followup on that uh solar power has been doubling um basically every 2 years and we all know that exponential growth is a powerful thing so we're only what seven doublings away from everything

being powered by solar power and do you think that that doubling rate will will keep Pace I mean I I think it'll probably slow down um but but it's still going to be a high percentage growth rate every year um once you reach a certain percentage of solar into the grid you really need to add batteries in order to load level um and uh kind of cash power but um but solar combined with with batter is really you kind of like I said you can completely solve all of this power with just those those two things great that Victor yeah it's it's worth noting I think probably people aware of this but you get um it's there's one Gatt per square km of solar um energy solar power I'm Victor massive F ofio work um particularly fighting the carbon pollution and actually

full up on this battery question uh we tend to start understanding how powerful the carbon pollution is but uh the battery related technology and F takes has its own production c i was Wonder you could maybe share your thoughts on what the consequences and maybe a radiation recyle if that would be yeah well um all of the battery packs for Tesla are currently recycled um so the recycling centers in North America and Europe and and Asia um and it kind of makes sense because you can just think of the battery packs as really high quality ore um it's way better to mine a battery pack than rocks um so uh so it kind of makes sense to to recycle them economically um yeah um and that obviously reduces the the cost of production quite a bit um for the G Factory

that that we're building in Nevada uh that will have recycling built in so they we uh completely sort of you know close that cycle um and it will be um in the long term fully sustainably powered so solar wind and geothermal yeah and microphone hi I'm Jim croll from Arizona State University uh I was um listening to Dr Chris McKay another advocate of humans to Mars and he was talking about um when we do go to Mars uh if we find life either currently there or extinct we should uh consider removing human presence so we can allow that life to thrive um I was wondering what thoughts on that were well I it really doesn't seem like there's any life on on Mars I mean if they're on the surface at least um we're not seeing any sign of that um I think if we do find

some sign of it then we sure we need to understand um you know what it is and and try I try to Ure that we we don't extinguish it I mean that's uh that's important but I think um I think the reality is that there isn't any life on the surface of Mars um there may be uh microbial life deep underground uh where it's sort of shielded um from radiation and um from the cold um and uh yeah so that that's that's a possibility but in in that case I think anything we do on the surfice is really not going to have a big impact on the sub tring life um yeah thank you here again hi um with a decision coming out of cop 21 just a few days ago with the world now appearing to be on track to decarbonize the Energy System renewable energy and of course storage is going

to become increasingly important and um likely the development will accelerate I'm really interested in what Tesla's doing on batteries that will help smooth the intermittent of um the renewable generation and would really like to hear your discussion of where you see Tesla going on battery storage for Renewables and generally the whole issue of storage for Renewables yeah well definitely this um B technology is super important to sustainable energy um what what we're doing with the the the big Factory and that we're buling in Nevada is is really trying to take uh economies of scale to the liit um so it's like the biggest Factory we could conceive of um in order to to maximize economies of scale um and then obviously there's the underlying technology

itself um which there there will be I would say moderate improvements in the underlying technology um not giant but not not small but kind of medium um but then over time I would expect those those technology improvements to get better and better um from Tesla standpoint we're always interested in trying to figure out how to how to make it better um I I do think that batteries are one of the hottest technology problems out there um because there's so many constraints on creating a useful batter um it's it's really I mean so many super smart people have broken their pick on improving batteries uh so so usually ends up being on average like about a 5 to 8% Improvement per year in energy density um and economics um although I think we'll be able to improve

the economic element a lot more just by the economies of scale um but I anyone who's interested in in doing batteries I'd certainly encourage them to uh to research better batteries it's it's a super hard problem and a critical one to solve um what do you think are the main steps in a low carbon energy transition and in that vein what technologies um out there What technological developments do you find very interesting that you're not already working on things that aren't batteries or electric vehicles but that you think are cool areas for people to go into well I think electrification of Transport in general is important um so aircraft and boats um that that's very important um and um and then Heating and Cooling electrification of that um yeah I me

I think um I mean the nucleus stuff could be could be quite interesting um but it would just have to sort of see how it competes against uh solar um but yeah and any anything which any form of energy generation or consumption which if you extrapolate into future um goes on for a very long time and still has the world being good I think we should just do that over here good morning Pisha Hoover from Purdue University um my question pertains to uh science access and energy within the global context um and I was wondering how you see any or all of your your companies and Ventures um trying to address the the inequity of science access or access to energy um or or what types of things that you're hoping to do um within that context to try and really expand

those resources um and make it accessible to everyone sure well um I mean as was mentioned earlier um Tesla just made all the patents open um and um uh Solar City is um actually uh going even a step further than that uh which is uh they're making the technology available um to um uh developing countries and and they're offering to have people come from those countries and actually sit in the factory and see how it's done so I think you know trying to be helpful in that respect um and uh but but I I do think that you know the internet is a great equalizer of access to information um the um you know this is this is maybe not talk about as much as it should be but you can learn anything if you have a $100 internet device you can just learn anything which

is amazing compared to the Past um you don't need you don't need to access to a library um in just you can learn whatever you want for free really that's that's a pretty great part of the future that we're in right now on the end hi uh ke Park from T national uh Tesla has done a great job creating an infrastructure for electric cars in the country so far but I don't think electric cars themselves solve green greenhouse gas problems because we're still generating greenhouse gases from and natural power plant natural gas power plants which are not as efficient as U gasoline cars so how did you originally Envision the future source of electricity and how do you envision it now yeah actually um it's it's worth noting that uh even if the grid was completely

powered by uh coal and natural gas um electric cars uh would still generate less CO2 um even when you extra when you take it all the way to the power plant level um the the reason for that is that uh when you're not constrained by mass and volume you can make the um the efficiency of energy extraction much better um in a power plant than you can in a car um so if you take say um like natural gas power plant from from G it's it's over 60% efficient um so take the s 60% efficient in generating electricity so it's really good um whereas typically a gasoline powered car over the drive cycle will be less than 20% efficient um and um and that's because you know the the big um natural gas turbine is it it can be really heavy it can be really bulky um and you

can take the the waste heat and then run a steam turbine um and uh you know get even more energy out so your efficiency is just fundamentally much better and so even when you take into account the transmission losses and the charging losses uh you're still way far ahead with electric cars than you are with gasline cars so even you can take this do this with any Source fuel coal uh anything um you're you're just always going to win um even if everything's um powered by by CO2 sources um then then of course everything isn't powered by two sources uh you have hydro ummal uh solar wind um and as was pointed out by one of the earlier question is the um growth of solar is very dramatic um so the you know the percentage of the grid that is sustainable energy

is increasing over time um and when we add batteries to the mix uh that will that will further increase the rate so I think I think we're we're on a we're headed in a positive direction it's just a question of how long it will take to get there in fact like one of the things I really emphasized in the par tool was that uh it it is a certainty that we will move to a sustainable energy economy um because the alternative would be would be able to mine all of the carbon based fuels from the ground burn them um and then you either move to a sustainable economy or the entire economy collapses because then it doesn't have any energy so we know for sure that we will move to a sustainable energy economy the question is just when and and how many you know billions

of tons of of CO2 are uh in the atmosphere versus in the ground that that's really the only question is is um what what what PPM number will we you know yeah exctly so you know so given that we know we will end up uh which is the sustainable energy economy it seems like we should we should terminate this experiment as soon as possible why not I'm sorry but we don't have time for any more questions um when I was walking in one of my friends uh was telling me how excited he was to be here and I wrote down what he said um because I think it's something we all share he said it's such a rare thing to see a person devote themselves to coming up with real solutions to the biggest problems and then doing it thank you so much thanks time thank all of you for joining

us today please come back later on uh in in about an hour uh to hear from France Cordova the um the uh head of the National Science Foundation