An Unknown Future Where We Can Thrive w/ Jan Wörner #49

Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the age of infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which in turn have led to the renaming of periods into ages. You probably just you you personally have just experienced the information age and what a ride it's been.

Now consider that you may be right now living through a new transitioning age into the age of infinite, an age that is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefined lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources, which will be made possible through a new construct where the moon and the earth, as we call it Mearth, will create a new ecosystem and a new economic system that will transition us into the infinite future.

The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that will come to life in your lifetime. The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hunt Foundation. We're looking to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon. We were named Project Moon Hunt by NASA through the accelerated development of an earth and space based ecosystem, then to use the innovation, the paradigm shifting thinking, and the endeavor, and then to turn that back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species.

Today, we're going to be exploring an unknown future where we can thrive. With us today is Jan Werner. Also, Jan, great to have you here. Hello. So here's Jan's brief introduction. Everybody who's listened to a podcast knows we don't spend a lot of time here. Jan is the president of the National Academy of Science and Engineering. Previously, he served as director general of the European Space Agency. He's been the chairman of the executive board of the German Aerospace Center DLR.

And one interesting piece of facts while I was reading through his bio is that he spent some time living in Japan investigating earthquakes, and safety near nuclear power plants. I thought that was kinda cool. And one last thing before we start, and this is something that I've had to add because individuals who listen to podcasts think this is all scripted, that I've got a ton of questions in front of me. This is how the podcast actually works.

We find the guest that we think would fit the profile, what we're looking for. We send them some information. They get to learn a little bit about who we are. We have a call to decide on what topic this individual would like to talk about. We don't have the topic. We don't say you need to speak on this. And, surprisingly, what they end up talking about is often far off what we originally thought they would.

Then the guest is left on their own for a period of time to design their own format, their own structure, what they'd like to talk about, and then we come here to have the interview. So this is the first time I'm hearing, just as the first time you're hearing, the information that Jan is gonna be delivering. So let's get started. Jan, do you have an outline for us to follow? Yes, David. So for me, the most important thing is, let's have, the question of why, in the forecast.

So why are we doing space, and, how are we doing it? But first, the why. The why question is, normally forgotten, and we just say, okay. We do this. We do that. So before that well, if you can give me the whole outline, then we will come back, and we'll hit all of these. Okay. So the why question Yep. It's number 1. The second question is how. And then the third question is the who question. And if we get this together, then we can go forward. Perfect. Nice short outline.

So, you and I started before the before the podcast started, starting a conversation that was beginning to become interesting. And if you'd like to pick it up there or you can jump into the why, either way, it's up to you. Before I I jump in into the why, I have to tell you that, you see, my personal experience with space is very special because I'm not a space guy by training. I'm a civil engineer by training and most of my life, I was not doing any activity in the space area.

So I was first a civil engineer in an office, and I was a professor for civil engineering. Next step, was to be a president of a university. And it was only in 2007, that I became the chairman of the executive board of DLR. And with that position, I came closer and closer to space.

However, of course, as a private person, I followed all the things in the sixties of the last century, starting even earlier with Sputnik in 1957, where I was just 3 years old, but my father showed me up to the sky and said, look Jan, there is a satellite. I did not know what word of satellite means, and I did not see any sputnik. But if your father tells you something when you are 3 years old, then you believe, first of all, it must be important.

I have a German father too, so I completely understand. Yes. And from that point on, I followed all the space activities, but I was never thinking about coming into space. And now looking back, in an age of 67, looking back to what I did, I can tell you that maybe also for the institutional space, I was not the right person at all time because for institutional space, you need a very special personal position. You have to accept that politicians are always right. And I did not do so.

You have to accept that the space in itself is and the institutional space is is not really characterized by contents, but more about what is the next job we can do. And therefore, that's the reason why I said the why question is for me the most important. So so I Before you hit that then, you said accept that the politicians are always right. That's a that's a bombshell in my head. So what do you mean by that?

Yeah. The the the the institutional space, in all countries of this world, they are following what the politicians are saying. That's my observation. And if the politicians are saying, earth observation is very important, they do earth observation. If they say, pioneering is very important, they do pioneering. So the institutional space is not really defining its way by itself. In some cases they do, but normally they, they don't do it.

And I tried to really to look first to the right question and then say, okay, after I have answered the right right question, then to look how and what to do. And this, of course, is not always directly in the same directions as politicians believe. There is one additional point which I have to mention at this time, Science and especially space science are not calculated in political terms.

I got several times when I proposed something, politicians were asking me, do you really complete this within my term as minister, within my term as whatever? Yep. And this is There was no there was no value to it. It was just did it have a political value? Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And this is for me maybe that was my biggest mistake in my whole life that I never accepted that. I I What would you have done what would you have done differently if you had accepted it?

Yeah. I just want to say because there there there would be big differences. The the big difference would be, when I shave myself in the morning, I could not look into the mirror if I followed them Because that would be that would not be Jan Werner. And this is really a problem because you you can say it in a positive direction. You have to be very flexible in this institutional space. You can also say it in a negative way. You have to be a follower and not a leader.

So do you feel that you had I mean, it's I'm trying to summarize the entire term. Do you feel you had impact, or you feel you were the tail being wagged by the dog? I had impact. I was lucky enough that in some areas, I had really an impact. In some areas, the impact came either never or later. And this was during my whole life. It was not only in space, but in space, it was extreme. It was also before that, when I was a president of a university.

And so so I had some, ideas not only created by myself. Sometimes the ideas came from my coworkers or other people, and I believed, okay, this is a very good idea, which brings us forward because it, it answers part of our open questions. But then I had to learn that, in this publicly financed frame, it's very difficult to get really disruptive ideas realized.

And, so you see that what you hear is, that I have, of course, some positive feelings about my past, but at the same time, I think, I was not successful enough because some of the ideas I had, I could not realize. Well, this is not this is not far off. We, I, you might note, Mamber. I'm trying to think of his first name. Mamber from Nanoracks. Yeah. He grew up he grew up at the same time as my mom did, so we we ended up doing an interview.

And he said on there, one of the biggest mistakes or one of the biggest challenges to the ecosystem of Beyond Earth is agencies. He said instead of into organizations working to improve their performance and and go to markets, what they do is they form their company, and then they try to sell everything to the agency. And he said, there is no air industry. There is no water industry. There they don't have industries, but we've classified this as space.

So every country wants to have one, and every time they do it, it actually diminishes the possibilities of moving forward. That was his take. His take was right with some modifications. I this when I was at ESA, I tried to define 5 roles of ESA. Five different roles. Number 1 is to be a research and development agency. This is what NASA is. This is what, EASA is. This is what the national agencies are. Fine. Excellent.

And through this through this research and development, they are also, doing management of missions, paying industry to deliver some parts, and then, the the the whole structure is developed and produced. This is only one role, and this is a role which does not fit from my point of view as the unique role for the future. There are 4 other roles which are as as important as the first one. The second one is to be a partner of industry.

So not to be above industry, not to be the one who is saying together, no. You have to do something for me, but to say, we let's do it together. Public private partnership. This is something ESA is doing, but not to the amount I would like to see it. The third one is to be a customer because our system of space has changed dramatically. We are talking about industry 4.0 in industry in general terms. We could also talk about space 4.0. Space 1.0 would be astronomy or astrology.

Space 2.0 is a race in space, and also the Soyuz Apollo times. Space 3.0 is some opening for international cooperation like the International Space Station, but now we are in a different world, in a in a there is a shift of paradigm. Space 4.0 with artificial intelligence, with disruptive ideas, with also commercialization. And in this role, in this different, space 4.0 frame, to be a customer is a very important role. And the the fourth role is to be an enabler.

Space agencies should understand themselves to enable things, especially agencies, which are not only working, on a smaller country, but a big country like the United States of America or like, ISA for whole Europe to enable, different industries to enable different regions or countries to, have their specific space activities. And the last one is to be a broker, to combine different capabilities either in the space or even in the non space sector.

So and from this perspective, an agency should not be a self fulfilling administration with a very strict and, and clear administration, etcetera, but it should be an agile, flexible organization being ready to focus on different roles at the same time. Yeah. So let's try the first point that you made, which was more and the name was Jeffrey Mamba. It couldn't come it didn't come into my mind.

The the first one is the challenge that you had that you didn't understand about politics and politicians and where they go. And now you've outlined the 5 ways that a that I'm not gonna call it an agency, but this organization should be operating. Do you feel that this will happen? Because as, who was it? Charlie Bolden said, we're adding more and more agencies. So we're making it more complicated and more challenging to create what you just defined. Yeah. You're right.

This is this, Charlie is right. It's an issue. When I was traveling, around our tiny globe and giving, talks to students, I had always, I did a small survey all the time. Out the interest, which which field is for them the most interesting field. Is it earth observation? Is it navigation and so on and so on. And then I ask also, what is your idea about space agencies?

Would you like to see in future regional agencies, national, national agencies, agencies for a continent or one global space agency? And it's interesting. The ma the vast majority of students in all countries, even China, even Japan, even the US were saying one global space agency. That was a clear demand and shows that the the young people are looking for the global perspective. But still, for me, we have to define what is what is an agency.

And for me, an agency, as I try to line out, the outline is, more than just, an in an administration which gives money, and does, and does some, management to get the mission, flying. It's much more. It's it's it should be a customer. It should be an enabler. It should be a program. I mentioned it. So now now that you're out of it in the in the in a new role different role, not saying new. Different role.

What if you're you were to give me advice, because I'm trying to navigate this too, trying to learn. If you're gonna give me advice to help to get from the political side to what you're articulating, what should what should I what should we do? Because I that's it it seems so far from the realities of today that I I would like to know how you would say how would you would plan this out? I believe it's not that far. In, I think it was in 2018 or 19 in Colorado Springs.

I was heading a a panel discussion moderating a panel discussion of, space agencies leaders. And there were agency, heads of agencies of bigger ones and smaller ones. And I asked exactly the same question, which is behind your question. I asked them, what about in 25 years, what about, space agencies? There there was one leading a rather big, agency saying nothing will change. We will have exactly the same situation as today, What space agencies are doing.

Another 2 were saying no, no, no, it's not like that in 25 years. Most of the space activities will be something like commodities, for instance, earth observation or, telecommunication, which is already more or less commercial. So we will we will change what we are doing. We will have a different setup. And then there were 2 heads of agencies, which said we don't need an agency in 25 years. Space is then really part of, the ecosystem of our world. It's it's not a specific area.

It is just one area, and we don't need space agencies at that time. And I believe between the second and the third, answer, there will be the reality. My personal opinion was when I started at DLR, the German Aerospace Center, I showed a picture, PowerPoint picture to people showing what will happen in the future. And I moved a lot of the different topics like navigation, earth observation, telecommunication, more and more to the commercial market.

I still at that time thought that security, that, exploration and science will remain public. Now I have to change my mind because we see also that private companies are entering into the exploration area. They are also entering into the science area. And so maybe security is one thing where still the national interest is so strong that, that will not be given directly to industry.

But, if you look to, what is going on in, for instance, in, in science, then of course, many of these instruments, which are used to do science are not produced by the scientists themselves. They come from industry. Now, some specific instruments might come from the scientists and that's the same for space. We will see in the future that, also in science, industry will be, just a company which is offering to the agencies as a customer, scientific missions.

While you're talking about this, I'm thinking back when we first when project Moon Hat first became initiated, one of the constructs that I tried to outline is that the ecosystem, while it seems very small, that everybody tends to says they know each other, I would say it's not very small. It's actually very large.

If there's a company in Guangzhou that makes gaskets that go into a rocket and they go let's say they're a $20,000,000 a year business, but they only get a an order once a year for a $100,000, and that becomes the, the product, and they're part of the space ecosystem. The, I people would sometimes get it, but I remember someone from the European Space Agency, which was interesting.

I said to her I said I told her the scenario, and she said, well, David, if you look at it that way, then the space industry is huge. And I said, yeah. Kind of it is. There are a lot of individuals who are servicing all forms of the industry, whether it be training or software or hardware. It could be creating a part, might not be their primary application.

But the more that there's opportunities for companies to be able to use part services throughout the ecosystem, it will become an integral part of our everyday life. No different than this call might be using a satellite. I I went downstairs. I had some food. It was freeze dried. There were, you know, firefighters wear outfits that came come from the from inventions through beyond Earth activities. So I think we'll we shall see that integration happen.

But on the political side, don't you think those politicians will fight back? It might be. But, I mean, this point you mentioned is very important. So NASA, called it the cuts that we take really things directly off the shelf that this is really also part of the future of space. And I believe this is true. We don't need to certify each screw, And this has to be understood. The politicians see in the agencies a part of their power and therefore it's, they love agencies.

I will give you another example. You see my son, his PhD was about carbon fibers and, fixings of carbon fiber structures to other material. And he used screws for that. Okay? So he fixed the carbon fiber material with screws to some metallic structure. In his thesis and he investigated about the behavior of this carbon carbon fiber reinforced part. In his PhD examination, one of the professor asked him, so can you tell us more about the screws you were using?

What was the the material, what was the young modulus, what was they did not ask, but what was the color and so on and so on. They they asked about these screws. And my son said, I did not care. I took them off the shelf Yep. Which is for a scientific examinations, a rather brave answer. So this But he was right. It was right, and he was right because it was not about the screws.

It was about the carbon fiber behavior, and that does not it has no relation to, in this case, to the behavior of the single screw. If the screw fails, then it's a different story, but the screw did not fail. So he was right in giving this answer, And I believe this is the same for space. We should not look into space as a totally different industry where each and everything is different, even the color of the screws. That's not the right view.

And therefore, we can have in space more and more also companies which are not so far not active in space. And this means also a shift of paradigm towards commercialization. If you look to Elon Musk, for instance, what he is using, not all the parts are really coming from space and, were certified for space at the very beginning.

Of course, if you go to a higher risk, area like human space, transportation, you have to be careful, but in other areas, you one should be brave enough in to focus on the on the main aspects and not on the each and every time part. We do that already in in high risk scenarios.

You if you're gonna build a submarine, if you're going to build up a rig on a platform rig, if you're going to build a structure that's 30 stories high, you have to have certain characteristics of the types of materials you use, the type of design you use, but that's normal. That's a that's a normal approach is there are certain strengths, materials Yeah. That work better than others. I I completely agree with you.

I so I'm I'm trying to I think you I don't know if I said this in our pretalk, not today, but earlier, is that we have to get past the point that believing space is an industry. Space is not an industry. It's a geography. And when someone like Paragon, Grant Anderson from Paragon, I'm assuming you know him, Grant is in life support, but he's in life support in the geography, a low earth orbit, medium earth orbit, all the way out to the moon or even to Mars.

He's in the geography, but he could also be life support in a hospital. He could be life support underwater. And so Yeah. If we take this word, are you in the space industry? No. You're in the telecommunications industry, and you're using spaces you're using low earth orbit as a tool. And I think if we can change that verbiage, then you won't say someone wants, well, I'm in the space industry, and I'm in the and you don't say you're in you're in the automotive industry.

You're not in the it doesn't even compare. You're not in the air industry. You're not in the water industry. You're not in the land industry. You're in the construction industry. You are in the, yacht building industry. We take this term, and I think it helps to I think it separates individuals more than it does unites them the way you're discussing. You you're right. You're right. There's one small disagreement, which we have, which you had also in the previous discussion.

You call space geography and just the geography. And I said, and you, said this is not right. I see also space as an infrastructure, not the satellites as infrastructure. Like on, the streets, an infrastructure, not the cars. And therefore I I I agree with that as an add on to it. So I would say I think you I would say space is not an industry. It's a geography and can be built into an infrastructure. Exactly. Okay. Then we then we are in agreement.

Yeah. This is That's that's actually I I actually I love that, and I'm going to I don't hope you don't mind. I'm going to use that and say that we kind of collectively created this because that helps a lot. Right. And, therefore, we always have to look what are the special conditions of this geography. Number 1, what are special requests coming from using it as an infrastructure? Yes. But this is not, that means space is totally different and there must be a space industry.

We, as you mentioned, we have no air industry. We have no soil industry. We we have no water industry. We have industry working in water. Make we have industry. We call them, lane industry or It could be filtration systems. It could be scrape. It could Exactly. There's so many, but those are the industries. Like, you don't say I'm in the it's the car industry because you make cars, but you don't make air. And there's also there is no the we really don't have an air agency.

We don't have a land agency in the same city. Land agencies we have, but different way different way. Yeah. And we don't have a water industry in the same way. Yeah. And this was by the way, that's what you what you mentioned that argument earlier and in the discussion I I was explaining from Colorado Springs. Also, though, so one of this agency, leader who said we don't need an agency in 25 years said exactly the same.

He said, we do not have agencies for all other areas, so why should we have one for space? He said exactly that one. And that's and to me as a non, I I'm gonna say non beyond earth to say, if you hear I use the word beyond earth. I use that because I'm trying to be more precise in the in the definition of where we're working or talking about. When I say space, to me, in my head, it rattles. Like, we're not talking about anything that's concrete.

So this individual in 25 years, the hope is individuals will understand that you really can't have a day on earth. You can't live a day on earth without interacting with innovations that came directly from your mobile phone, cordless power tools, whatever. You can't that were offshoots of innovations that came out of, or people who left a job and went to work for somebody else and used what they learned to create a a new form of mouse or a cup or something else.

Our lives are integrated into the beyond Earth ecosystem. It's just it is. We can't even think about Yeah. But for this development, in order really to understand that space is just not only just, it's in geography and an infrastructure. Of course, a lot of work has to be done. And maybe for that purpose, agencies can be helpful by really being enablers. I come back to the roles by being enablers by being partners of, industry, being a customer of industry and being a broker.

So because this geography space needs special development. And there I see for the next upcoming years, I see also a very strong role of agencies, but this role should look to really the changing, the shift of a paradigm and should not stay in the past. I mean, NASA did a great, job with all these, support of private companies. Eiza is on that path as well, and I believe this, has to be accelerated. Okay. So great great segue.

I I've got this question that jumped into my head, and I I really want your honest opinion on how to get here. And I know you're not saying non honest answers. More direct. We we have teams all over the world helping us. We have structural engineers all the way through to accounting firms. I mean, the the range is very diverse. And we don't go after or interact to some degree with agencies. We don't spend the time with them. We don't spend with military. We are looking purely commercial.

That's where we spend our focus. We're very quiet in terms of what we're doing because we just wanna do the work. Now if we were to interact with, and let's use your your home base, the European Space Agency, and we didn't want them to dominate us, we didn't want them to dictate the rules, we didn't want them to say, well, you can't work with Russians. Well, there's a difference between Russians and Russian government. Well, you can't work with the Chinese, which we've heard from people.

I said, well, wait. Wait. Wait. Are you confusing the Chinese government with 1,400,000,000 Chinese people who are amazing? I've worked there. They're great people everywhere. And so we kind of avoid them. If we were to interact with them to get them to understand what you just outlined besides sharing the video the audio, How would you suggest if we came to you, we could get that participation where you're not using politics to move us and geopolitics to interact? But you actually said, yeah.

We would like to we would like to be a part of this, and we will do our share. How do you do that? I I have no, real, solution for that. Okay. Thank you. Because I I was trying during all my time as being a head of, German Aerospace Center or the, European Space Agency, I was always trying to communicate that cooperation is an enabler and, competition is a driver. And this holds true for regional areas, as well as for the global areas.

And I don't see any reason why I should not cooperate with people around this tiny globe. Now people are saying in that moment, wait, wait, wait. The the human rights in China, you cannot work with China because of human rights. That that's a very quick answer which you get immediately. Absolutely. And I lived in Hong Kong for 10 years, so I Okay. Preferred that a lot.

Now the question is, let's, assume that all the other countries have the same human rights and the same values, which they don't have. Even within Europe, we have quite different, different, understanding of values, etcetera. But let's, let's assume for a moment, let's assume the whole world, except China and North Korea, have the same values and understanding of human rights. Do you believe that then isolation of China and North Korea will solve the issue? No. Of course not.

Isolation never helps. So therefore, one has to find, ways of cooperating to enable things, but and not by forgetting your personal values. I also believe one should not put their own value values just under the national values or the continental values or whatever. So I'm I'm not fighting for European values. First of all, I'm fighting or I'm convinced about my own values. Lucky enough, they they are more or less equal to the European values, but this is, just by chance.

This is not, by decision. And then if I see people with different opinions, that's fine. If they have different values, which I believe are very bad for humans, and that might happen, then I will not isolate this person. I will try to convince him or her about my opinion. And the best how you can do it is through cooperation. There there's 7,450,000,000, 7,600,000,000, 7,600,000,000 people today.

The challenge that, in my head, and I I won't speak for others, is we don't know individuals globally don't know enough about the other cultures to understand why some decisions are made, how they got there, what their belief structures are, how they interact. The it's when when you go visit a country and you go on a tour and you come out, you didn't go to the country. You you you had a glimpse of it.

But to understand the culture and to understand how decisions are made, that's something that humans I I don't know why we it's been so challenging in my lifetime to see individuals when they do argue these points to not say, wait. Wait. Wait. There's an interconnectedness here. There are reasons or nonreasons for things happening. Explore more, find more, learn more. And it it's a a gut reaction that, you know, you're not gonna deal with the Chinese, are you? Of course we are.

Of course, we are. And then what do you mean? They say, where are you coming from? Will the Chinese do this? I said, do all Chinese do that? What's the government? And you have to separate people, governments, decisions, regions. Not every German's the same, and I could say that because my father was German. Not every Luxembourg is just the same. Never not every, French person is the same. I don't with your accent.

And I believe, David, what is important, you also have to question your own system, your own values. And maybe my values today are different to the values I had some 20 years ago. And I hope that they are different because that means that I'm still able to learn. And I hope that in 10 years, time it will be again, if I'm still alive, there will be again, as a set of values, I believe people, the the values of people define really the value of a person.

But this is a personal decision and not a global decision and not a global, value evaluation. I I the when I first landed in Hong Kong maybe this is somewhat useful. When I first landed in Hong Kong, I this person took me in. Her name is Hazel, and she was absolutely amazing. And one day, we were sitting in her kitchen, and I looked at her because I was trying to get a framework of her thinking. And I said to her, if you were to give a police report, how would you give it? And she looked at me.

Now in Western culture, I'm going to assume, at least where I grew up, United States, it's hair color, it's height, it's, you know, blonde hair, blue, white, and whatever. You'd give this list. And she said, well, number of eyelids. One eyelid, 2 eyelids, no eyelids. So my mind is blown at this point. The first thing she's defining is eyelids. She said then the shape of the face, is it round? Is it oval? This is the bridge of the nose.

And I had to stop and think if if before hair color was around, the society she lived in, most people had black hair. So the definitions of how she looks at the world, what she sees, I had to understand that to be a better person living in Asia. And you have to give up your own thoughts to make room for others. I think that's what you're kind of inferring is you have to you have to be able to connect. And to make what you're saying happen, going back to the question I asked, how do you do it?

And you said you don't know, which I appreciate that, is that's what we're working on in our project, and I appreciate your candidness, your your directness with that answer. So let's because I I I love this conversation. I think there's gonna be so much more. The why. The why. It's the number one. That was that was my feeling. We should come back to the why. So So So we're starting at why. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.

I like this was and thank you, Jan. This is exactly the conversation I personally wanna be having with someone like you who's seen it from your perspective. So thank you. So let's go to why. Why are we going to space? And, there are different answers in different cultures. So for instance, if you ask a typical American, he might answer because of pioneering, because of being the first, something like that. You will not hear the same from European. Again, it's it's a stereotype.

It's, not each and every one, but in more in general terms. I had a discussion with that about, with Charlie Bolden several times because, when he had his asteroid redirect redirect mission, I asked him also the why question. And he said, pioneering. Pioneering, Jan. You have to understand it's pioneering. And we would be the first one. And I said, I I understand, Charlie.

But for us, in order to convince also, the German taxpayer and also the government, we need to have a better answer than just pioneering. And this is for all the different missions, it's the same. So why why do we go to space? There's a general answer. This is because humans always try to get beyond, from the caves, out of the caves, from a continent to another continent. But this is not a sustainable, answer.

And, by the way, it it will give us also some issues in space because, okay, ISS moon and then Mars is really far beyond. So therefore, we have to answer them the why for each and every mission. What can it be? It can be discovery, just general discovery. It's a good reason, because discovery is really what people are doing. It can be, it can be using the this geography to understand our earth better. For instance, climate change and other things.

It can be that we are using this geography because of its special environmental situation of microgravity, which is good for experiments. So there are several areas, where you can use space activities. You can also use it, in a in a way of politics as a geopolitical tool or let's say space geography. Use it to make some, cooperation, which is which have which has a geopolitical geopolitical effect.

Because while we are talking, we know that on earth, we have some tensions between Russia, the US, Europe, etcetera, etcetera. But still we have in the ISS, we have Russian, cosmonauts, American astronauts, and the European astronauts. So it is obvious that space is also bridging earthly crisis. And, then we have also the situation that, you'd, if we are realizing a very complicated space missions, like the Apollo mission to go to the moon or others.

Now with James Webb to go to l 2 to observe the universe or whatever you you see these all of these missions, are really fascinating. Nobody can deny that space missions are fascinating. And if you have something which is fascinating, this is already for people. It's a positive move in their brain. And from, fascination, the next step is to think about it. That means inspiration. And then you go from inspiration to motivation. You say, okay.

And this was by the way, the way I approached space, I used all these, space activities. I observed what was going on with Soyuz, with, Sputnik, with, Lunar hot with, Apollo, etcetera, etcetera. And I said, wow, people on earth are creating spacecraft, which are able to land on the moon. So if this, if, if people can do so, why should I not be able to create things, which was never done before? Or to go when no one has gone before, but I mean, also on earth, also on earth.

And this was the reason I selected for myself to become a civil engineer. So it's motivation. And then you have a chain from from fascination to inspiration to motivation, and, of course, finally, transpiration. This is always the same. So these are the why there are answers for the why questions. And the why questions should be answered in each and, every case again.

When, you do something, on earth or you do something, in the in space, you should answer the question why, especially if you are using public money. So you probably gotten this question before. I've never heard you speak, so I don't have that, your answer. One of the questions with our project is and I've had this more in audiences than I have personally, like, 1 on 1 or small groups, is why are we wasting all this money on space?

There's plenty of challenges here on Earth that we could be spending our time on. I know you've gotten it, so I just wanna hear your reply because I have my own. Yeah. So I asked that question. So I I got the question several times. Yeah. Yes. I know it's you can't you can't be in need of something without it. Yep. It's okay. When I was in front of the space ministers in 2019, you know, that ISA the ISA director general has to go to his ministers every 3 years to get money.

And I was thinking, well, how should I convince these ministers who normally do a totally different job? Say, I'm not thinking about space. They are research ministers here, and they might be, economy ministers in another country. So how can I convince them? And what we did, we did a survey. 1st, we asked European citizens, how much money would you like to give to space per year? And the people said something like €270 per citizen per year. They would that was the the answer from the survey.

Now if you compare this number with this number which, which John F. Kennedy asked in the sixties for the Apollo program. He said, I believe 50¢ per week. If you calculate that, you come to and you take the inflation into account, you come to roughly the same amount. So John F. Kennedy was right. Now that's what the people say they would like to love to to give. Now then I told the minister, so now I give you the number which will which we will spend if you say yes to all my proposals today.

And it's about €8 per citizen per year. €8. Now tell me another technology, whatever it is, another activity which you can really build by €8 per citizen per year. There is not so much. Now that that's it's a ridiculous there are a lot of things that could be used for, but it does justify the claim that, Yes. And there is and by the way, this is first of all the number crunching only. But then we go into the details.

People are saying, yeah, but for cancer research, we have to do need to, we have to do more. Yes. We have to do more. And we do a lot of, a lot more of that in space. We are investigating space, in space in this special geography with micro g investigating the development, of, cancer cells in order to develop better medicine. We are doing it. We are doing for the for the for the COVID crisis, COVID 9 COVID 19. And you know that these mRNA vaccine, they have to be in a very special environment.

It's called lipid. And this one was also investigated in space. So it is also even the COVID vaccine has some direct relation to the ISS research. And so on, I could give you hundreds of examples from the research. But then, look to other areas. So for instance, you have the climate change, which will be a major challenge for humans. And it's not only the climate in 100 years. It's also the weather, which is changing. And we all know that weather forecast is so important for our daily life.

So without space, it will not work without space activities and so on. And so I could give hundreds of examples where space is not just something beyond all what we are doing daily day by day, but it's part of our life. And as you said earlier, it's part of the geography which which we are using. So when you said it, even though it was only €8, did they say, okay. We'll just give you the money? I can tell you they spent exactly the amount which I asked for.

Okay. So they were willing They gave me they gave me even, 2% more, which I got some criticism afterwards that I did not ask for enough money. But this would not be Jan Werner. Jan Werner would not ask for a 100 if he needs only 50. Should have asked for more. Yes. So are you artic are you saying that a rational argument is what individuals need to be able to understand the value proposition that's being proposed? People need both. People need rational arguments, but also a good narrative.

But the narrative should not be the dominating part because the rationale should be the dominating part. But, underline, how should I say, supported by a good narrative? You can, for instance, when, when an astronaut is telling us stories, how he sees the world, the earth from space, he is the, the fragility, the beauty and so on and so on. This is a narrative. It's not irrational.

The rational one comes from from, spacecrafts, or from satellites measuring the temperature and the methane and, what the wind and so on. But in addition, the narrative of, astronauts telling, you see this thin atmosphere around our globe and the beauty of the sea and the beauty of the desert and blah, blah, blah, this together makes a really convincing story. And especially in the part of institutional, space, we need convincing stories based on rational plus narrative.

In the commercial world, it's maybe different. This is the area which are trying to discover since I left, ISA, I'm now active and supporting several small startup companies. And I learned a lot because there you have also have to look not not just for a rational and why are we doing it, but also, of course, from the economic point of view for a company. I am surprised at how many individuals pay absolutely no attention to what goes on beyond Earth.

And I am not again, I came into this this long story too, but I came into this from the side. I didn't come in, wanting to be a part of the Beyond Earth ecosystem. And these individuals, what they see and what they hear about is not what you just talked about. What they hear is what, a a rover was on Mars, or we're gonna try to do gastro asteroid mining. They hear about the or they see the the space tourism scenarios that are happening when it's you hear the well, those are for the billionaires.

These are the toys for the billionaires. Yeah. You'd the messaging my point is the messaging that's getting to the person who's not paying attention is far away from what you just described. Even though it's all true, but it's not the messaging. But if I give a talk, and I do that quite frequently even now in the COVID times, I always try to have both the rational and the emotional part. For instance, when I explain people, did you ever think about where the water comes from on earth?

You might say, yes, I have it in the kitchen, but this is not a good answer to the question. So the the earth was in its past, it was so hot that probably there was no water, but we have a lot of water. Two thirds of the of the surface is covered by water. Where does the water come from? Isn't that an interesting question? And I mean, I believe curiosity is also something which is in all people, especially when they are young.

Some forget about curiosity when they learn too much in school and in in the company, but curiosity, what is what what is driving humanity? And therefore, if you raise a question, did you ever think about where does the water come from? This is already in from my experience in a public presentation, a very nice question. It is. And then you say and now we try to find out what is the reason? How where does the where where does the water whether this water really comes from comets?

And then you have them on a path, and then you can say, yes. We went there. Of with a mission Rosetta. We went to a comet. We landed on a comet. We investigated the comet. And interesting enough, yes, there is water on this comet. Now the simple answer is water comes from comets. Wait, wait, wait. There is there is hydrogen in on earth. Everybody should know what hydrogen is. It's, it's a proton and an electron.

Now you have also hydrogen where you have, in addition to the proton, you have a neutron in the core and even 2 neutrons still hydrogen. Now this is heavier hydrogen and you can do water with the light hydrogen and with the heavier hydrogen. It's a little bit complicated, the story, but now let's have a look to the comet. What type of water is there? Is it with the heavy hydrogen or with the light hydrogen?

And interesting enough, the relation between the the the heavy water and the light water is totally different on than it is on earth. Now what does it mean? We we did not find the answer for the question. This opens more questions, and and I believe this is a typical example. And, yes, it's it takes a little bit in a in a talk, but so far, I found that this is really interesting for everybody.

Also when you're saying, okay, everybody heard about, the big bang and, that the, the, the, the universe is expanding. And then you go into dark energy theory and etcetera. It's also fascinating. Okay. You have to give also the the rationale at the next time that using earth observation, we can forecast the weather. We can help in case of, any catastrophe, be it an earthquake or be it an avalanche or whatever. So you have to balance out the rational and, the narrative and the curiosity.

I'm I would believe you know Ron Levin? Yes. I know him. Ron and I, my first time I visited Israel, I was set up a meeting with, from Ofer Lapid with, Ron. We were having a drink, a coffee or something in a restaurant, and he said, do you know how we get to all the Israeli children? And this is, not not it's Christians, Jews, Muslims, whomever's in school. It's not just one group. Is every year we have a hackathon. We bring together about 250 experts.

They hackathon how they would teach students, and every year in every school, we send individuals in to talk to the children.

And if you think about it, if you're 4 years old and you hear something that no one else in the world is learning about, and in 5 years old, you hear it, and 6 years old, and 7 years old, and 8 and 9 and 10, when you come out the other end of the pipe, if there is one pipe of, education, you have a whole new set of questions to be able to ask about the potential future, not only of beyond Earth, but even new materials or ways of living or interactions or psychology or movies or And

this is the main secret of good education. You have to put not knowledge into the people, but you have to teach them to go beyond all existing levels of, of knowledge. This is the secret of what people are calling education. I believe the word is not so good, but this is really where it starts really to create the future. If we give the spirit to young people that they are supported by going beyond all existing knowledge. Well, if if I love that you asked the question.

I do similar types, not as scientific as yours, to try to get individuals who argue, why are you spending time on this? That's one of the big questions. You could be spending your time on so many other things. Why this? And I use a a questioning philosophy too. I will say, well, what do you do for a living? Well, I run a business, or I'm a lawyer, I'm a this. And I'll say, why do you do that? Why don't you become a farmer? I I don't wanna be a farmer. What are you doing to improve Earth?

I and no answers. Well, if you walk someone through a series of why did you get there, why are you doing this, they'll realize that they're doing it for reasons that they don't even realize, and you open up doors for exploration of conversation. So I I like that you took it you took it very scientific. I know a lot of individuals who have challenges with proton, electron, neutron, heavier hydrogen, the difference between heavy and light.

I know that would be very challenging for a lot of individuals, but the questioning, a good question is worth its weight in gold or whatever currency you wanna say. So to so the why for you with everything you're saying, why why for you personally? And you talked about the why of all this. Why for you personally do you want this? Why I want to have space activity? Yeah. Why do you wanna have beyond earth activity? And and what to you, what's the definition in your lifetime?

What would you like to see? Why? For me, really, the why is curiosity. But I know that this is not sufficient for all people. I mean, for politicians, curiosity is only they are curious about results of the next election. So for me, curiosity is really one. I I you can you can, you can, how should I, you can bring me to a question, far away from all what I did so far. If you really get my curiosity, then I'm really interested. I I'm and this is not only technical aspects.

So so So if your curios curiosity is the underlying driver. Yes. Yes. Would you like to see in your lifetime? And we have a 45 year plan. So our plans go out 45 years. What would you like to see you said you're 60, how old did you say? 67. 67. 6. 67. So we go 5 years so much. I always use it for 40 years. So that's too long. Too long. Okay. So let's let's put 20 on top. So you're 87. What would you like to see in these 20 years happen? With regard to space?

With regard to Yeah. Beyond beyond Earth. Yes. Beyond or or Earth even. Whatever you wanna see because I don't I don't disconnect them. The only reason I'm in for me, I'm involved in this to to improve how we live on earth for all species where we have 6 mega challenges. We're defining what we want to solve on earth. You could tell me what your paradigm is. Yeah. So, I, of course, I could mention now a lot of very challenging missions.

Mhmm. But for me, the main aspect is really that we are trying to use the space as a geography to really, come to solutions for what is called the sustainable development goals of the UN. Because we have challenges on earth. And it's it's so broad. It's hunger at first. It's, people being poor people. So, you know, all of this. So there are these 17, sustainable development goals. I always believe that there was one missing. This is, handling the migration. It's not in.

I was always surprised that that would be 18 then. What they can do is they could take off number 17, which is to do the 16 and substitute in this one. Yeah. That would be possible. Or to put it as the eighteens in because, 18 is even better for for any picture. The the challenge in my the challenge in my mind with the 17 SDGs, which I'm glad that individuals are working on it, is Yes, sir. To have a target of no hunger, no poverty is a real challenging. It it's too massive.

And then there are definitions in there. For example, there's one that says strong institutions. Yeah. And I would argue that US, Russia, Germany, China, These are strong institutions. So they there's a lack of definition, and it depends on your perspective. What is the For me for me, the sustainable development goals should not talk about nations, should not talk about institutions, should be just focused on the on a peaceful and good living of the individual. Very simple. Very simple.

And for that purpose, I I I hope to see in the next years that we are developing something. So I'm really right now, we see this conflict, Ukraine and Russia. Yep. And, this is this is a typical example where I maybe I'm too stupid. I don't understand the problem. I don't understand the problem. And, yeah, one has to solve the issue. I don't know. You see, I I'm I did also the mediation for the Frankfurt airport.

K. They wanted to have a new runway, and they were they were, of course, opponents saying, no. No. No. No. No. Oh, no runway. And some people are saying, oh, we need a new runway. So how does how do you solve such a question? And you can then try to when I explain it, you can try to transfer it to the Ukraine, Russia, conflict. So how do you solve this issue? You make a survey, how many people are against or in front, or you are looking like politicians are always looking for compromises.

They say, okay, that means you don't build a build a full runway, but only half the length. Or what do you build? You see that it doesn't work. No. And therefore, we, at that time, I learned about an example where you can understand what you have to do. If you have one orange and 2 people would like to have the orange, what do you do? Compromise would be to cut the orange into half, But that means none of the 2 gets what he or she wants to have. Only 50%. This is a compromise.

It works in many fields. It works when you there is a salary discussion between the companies and the unions, but it doesn't work for, for instance, for political conflicts. I think compromises is just a compromise. Now a real real result can be found if you ask the people, why, why do you want to have the orange? What would you like to do with the orange? And then one would say, this is more or less simple, naive. I want to eat the fruit. The other might say, ah, there is some oil in the skin.

I want to have the oil out of the skin. And suddenly, you have an an a solution which gives both 100% of what they want to have. Now in reality, in many cases, this you will not find this clear 100% solution. But asking first, what is your intention? What would you like to have? And then look for a solution is better than just to to say, do you want to have the orange? I don't know whether I was clear what I meant. No. No. No. Actually, I'm laughing, Yohan.

I'm laughing because there are so many parallels for certain things that I do that mirror what you do, and we've never written that. For example, one of the challenges having worked with the CEOs of, you know, companies like Mereskin, Infosys, and Wipro, is I will say the the most powerful tool in your arsenal is asking the right question. It's easier to give an answer.

Yeah. But if you can find the right question, if you can really dig and ask the right one and use the first one was, do you would you want an orange? Well, yeah, of course, I do. So everybody wants, but that's not the right question. Exactly. Spend enough time on the question, the answers appear. And so come to the right question. That's the point. Yeah. You you you you're you're using some of the terminology, and I I think you know I wrote a small book, paid to think.

And in there, I talk about the power of the question, and it's not a philosophical book. There's a lot of tools, but one of them is you have to ask and learn to ask the correct answer. So I love that you did this, and it makes perfect sense. You found the answer in their answers. Yes. And for the airport, there was a solution What? Because the people, the communities, they wanted to have silent nights. And the the the, the airliners, they wanted to have more opportunities to fly.

So what we did is we built a new runway and a night flight ban for the whole airport. And you have something like the orange. Again, it's not it's not 100%, but close enough, much better than a compromise to build only half a runway. Yeah? It's it's a perfect solution because everybody can go home. I don't wanna use this term, but it's the only one that comes to mind, winning. Yeah. They went home with what they wanted.

And in the end, it doesn't matter when individuals will say, well, I do this for the community. Well, the reality is is you still are doing it for yourself, and that answers the question you have or the thirst you have to do something not for yourself, but for community. So you're still answering the same question, but you're defining it as, no. It's all about community. Well, really, you made this choice because for you, you're answering your own question.

How do I fulfill my you my my being, my nest, my person? So perfect. I I love it. And the example you gave is fabulous. So what about then, I think, where the how? Yeah. So the the the how and the who the how and the who is very, very important. So we have the why. Now the next point is the what and the how. So what are we doing and how are we doing it? So let's, say, okay. We want So wait. Wait. Wait. You have a what in there now?

Yeah. The the the what why the what and the how is is for me more or less very, very, very close at least. Very close. Well, I'm just I'm again, I think you I think I told you I take notes. So so we have a what. We're gonna we're gonna answer what and how. Yes. So what and how. So if you learn now, if you why, if you answered your why question, let's say, I want to really, to understand, the climate situation. And this is the point, the reason I'm doing some space activities.

Then, of course, the what what and how comes immediately. You say, okay. We put some satellites in orbit, which can measure the, the methane or the sea level rise or whatever. And the the how is an more a trivial answer to that. So in this case, the what and how is rather simple. Now, if you look to other areas, for instance, through geopolitical points, then, the what and the how is, again, it's linked, but it, you can say, I want to have astronauts in space.

That would be the what and the how would be that we put them together with different nations. So therefore, the what and how is really very close. And, yeah, that's that's the point. So the what and the how, is for me that what is normally done in all these agencies and etcetera. But for me, the the why has to be answered first. Yeah. You you had tossed out the 25 year mark. And, again, I won't go into it, but I actually use 25 years all the time.

The 20 the how to get to the 25, meaning and let me let me give you a scenario. It might not be right, the condition.

A conflict between agencies, conflicts between countries that are happening at the moment, discrepancies on what the future should be in terms of low earth orbit, medium earth orbit, high earth orbit, how many satellites, the should you have this, this these systems being created with tens of thousands of satellites, the robots taking satellites and throwing them into further orbits. So you have those conflicts.

You have the political conflicts that are happening on the ground between individuals. There's currency. There's sea level water rise that's happening that could could alter a lot of these or whether it could changes that are happening. There's a lot of these things going on. So if you were to get the how in 25 years to this new future, which is you the title is an unknown future where we can thrive. How do we get from here?

And you probably have a lot of other things going on in your head that are going on. How do you get from here to there? Through personal responsibility and ethics. I don't trust rules as a major instrument to, to regulate. I know that they, that they are there. Yes. And yes. But to be very blunt without, even without a law, I would never kill another person. I don't need the law for bidding me to kill somebody.

And this means for the how I hope that we will see in the future that this massive ideas of having constellations with 10 thousands of satellite without at the same time solving the issue of space debris, This should not be, realized. So we need for the how in that respect, also ethics and moral and responsibility to avoid that we have really too much debris in space. This is my personal naive positions. I do accept if, politicians come up with a regulation for that.

But I'm, I'm not so sure that they will be fast enough because, mass, the masks and the Bezos, and now also Europe, they want to have, constellations with thousands of satellites. And you know, that we had already, accidents in space uranium and cosmos. We had a nearby accident between, Starlink and ESA satellite, Aelos. So, therefore we have to avoid that.

We are really coming to what is called the Kessler syndrome that we have so much so many debris particles in space that there is no no life, no good life for satellites any longer. So therefore Yeah. How do you get so your personal responsibility, like, is one issue or one topic. Yep. And yet there are people who will kill people, and there will be people who will maim people, and there will be people who put people in slavery. So we have to include them as the human species. Unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. And, Marie Bajah, when we were starting our conversation to do an interview, he was talking about space debris, and maybe I'm naive. I said, I I don't I don't wanna do a talk on space debris. And like I did with you, we talked, we talked, we talked, we talked, we talked, we talked, and we called it space environmentalism. With even space environmentalism as the topic, We're still going in that direction.

We're still headed, you know, 200 kilometers per hour smack into exactly what you're saying would happen. But I I have the feeling that the the world is changing in a positive way in that direction. So there is now more paying more attention to this, especially in Europe. The space debris discussion is very strong. We see a lot of startups looking to this area.

So, that means for instance, there's a small company, a startup, which is creating artificial intelligence to avoid collisions of satellites in space from Portugal. There's there are companies now building up, capabilities of, removal of, satellites or in orbit servicing. Like in Japan, I know a company which did already some tests in that direction. So I've read about them too. Yes. Yeah. So we really see that this is going forward And this is good.

Now for me, the situation of future should be that whenever a satellite is launched, one of 3, conditions have to be fulfilled. 1 of 3. Number 1 is they have onboard an automatic deorbiting system, which is independent of the major of the main, space main satellite operation. So totally independent operation which which allows the orbiting, if either after lifetime or if there's any problem with the satellite.

Number 1. Number 2, that they have a contract with a company which guarantees that in case that the satellite is not any longer operating securely, that this company will bring down the satellite. That they show that they have this contact. And number 3 is, something like we have with bottles and stuff like that.

A deposit to give a deposit to an agency or to another trustful organization that in case the satellite is not brought down after operation that the deposit can be used and this not must not be a deposit in cash, but a guarantee that then this money is used to, to bring it down. So I believe this should be the basis for future and this should be always also in public discussed because you're right without a regulation, it might be difficult.

But to get a a global regulation for that is also difficult. So maybe Yeah. That that's that's where I'm going. My head is saying we can't agree on small things. There's we can't agree on fishing rights. We can't agree on land rights. We can't agree on what's happening in the deforestation of the rainforest or the doomsday cliff and what's happening and will the impact of sea level water rise. We can't agree on any of these topics globally. Why should we why should we yeah.

Why should we agree here? I can tell you that many companies which are now launching satellites, if you ask them, especially if you ask them in public, they will react and tell you that they have, done something in order to avoid, to create new space debris. This is already already something which did not happen 10 years ago. So it's, it's right. Even Elon Musk is saying all his satellites have the possibility to to, secure the deorbiting. So he is saying that already, which is good.

And so we have to have good examples to make it, available for Orca. I think I I love it, yet there's a simplicity to this. If in fact, you there there is no standard and you have multiple countries doing the this type of work with different individuals, like I said, who see the their see the number of eyelids. They see the world differently, and their conclusion is we're just adding another 15,000, and we don't have the same money, so we're gonna skimp on this.

Yeah. All you need, at least in my knowledge of this, you would know a far more than I, would. All you need is one satellite to smack into another satellite, and you need to have one of them happen every few weeks, and we create a disaster zone around Earth. That's right. And, therefore, we have to fight against it. I I didn't we have when I was the DG of ESA, I defined, space debris removal mission. And this one is will be realized, I think, in 2 years' time.

It takes a little bit longer than I wanted, but, again, that's not the point. So the interesting thing was, this, mission, the idea of a small start startup was because we we opened them. We told them you can take whatever you like in space, which is owned by ESA, and you bring it down. Please select one part. And, you know, we have in Europe, we have the Vega launcher and we have the Ariana launcher.

The Vega launcher is a smaller launcher, and sometimes the Vega launcher brings 2 satellite at once in space. Okay. Between the 2 satellites, there is an adapter called Vespa, not like the Italian, motorbike. So it's Vespa. It's it's this adapter for Vega. Now, their idea was because from previous, Vega launches, there are some Vespas flying around the earth. So their idea was to bring down one of these Vespas. And we said fine, and they gave us a price tag for that.

And we said we were all lucky and happy and very nice. We have a good solution. We are we can be lucky. Now then I looked in detail into this mission, which they are planning, and what they were planning was that it should be launched by a Viga launcher as a secondary payload. That means 2 spacecraft on the same Viga launcher Yeah. Of course, with a Vespa in between. So they would launch in order to get 1 Vespa down.

At the same time, they would they would bring 1 Vespa up, which is not really convincing. And therefore, I said, we will not pay you for that mission because you are not reducing the space debris, and that was the target. So what is done right now that they have they will do it. They will bring down a Vespa which is in space already. And for the Vespa which is on board of this flight, they will have an automatic independent, deorbiting propulsion system.

So with this single launch, we will have space debris removal, space debris, avoidance. And by the way, it's also it's a way where ESA is a is just a customer. We'll also have a shift of paradigm concerning the contract. So one can do it in space agencies. We come back to the question we had at the beginning. Yeah. Space agencies can be a front runner or supporter of those types of ideas.

And next time, it will be another company which will provide the same thing because they know this is something which is good. I I love the idea, yet I think you in a few times we've spoken, you probably know my mind is racing, and I'm saying, okay. Well, we're bringing on new space agencies, whether it be our friend Val who just did the last podcast. And then he brilliant podcast, and and they have 230 people working in their environment.

Then you've got the Indian Space Agency, and you've gotten Japan, and all of these have their own whys. All of them have their own hows. And the coordination between them, I'd like to be optimistic. Yet I it's hard for me to say that this will be a ubiquitous, a very normalized way of doing business. I think they'll always be rogues. Yes. And that rogue makes it a challenge. But if it would be easy, I would never I would never try to work in this area. It's I think it's it's hard.

You know, it's, again, it's on f Kennedy. It's it's very hard. So so let me let's take it a little further because we could talk about satellite. In 25 years, and not to be a futurist, what do you as a pragmatic person and we're still on the how and the what, so I'm trying to figure this out. What would be the end in 25 years? What do you see, and how do we get there? I believe that we will see this space debris avoidance much faster.

Within 25 years, I will I I strongly believe that we will have also some new ideas how to remove debris. I mean, to remove satellites, the technology is more or less, close to be realized, but we don't have good solutions for the smaller parts for smaller particles. So I believe that within the next 25 years, we will have also a clear space debris removal concepts.

And I hope that we will have, in this very special geography, and I take your term again, that we will see the, circular economy and recycling also taking place in this geography, not only on the surface of the earth, but also in space. Because many of the things we have over there are still, well, they still, have a big value of financial value. So so so what In orbit in orbit servicing, in orbit recycling, I hope that this is something we will see.

You so we're talking about robotics taking satellites, reusing them Right. Or reusing parts or doing sub sub, a, low earth orbit manufacturing of satellites using pieces. It also leads itself to the other side, which is the apprehension, destruction, and all the other parts that could happen, not trying to always be negative. But there that same technology could be used on the No. No. On the what was that just recently? And I don't know how true this is because I don't But I yeah.

Yeah. Anti sat anti ASAT, that that was that happened. All the big countries did ASAT, right, experiments. And I don't understand if I would be the politician in one of these countries, I would never give a single euro, a single dollar, a single ruble for, for developing a robot to destroy a satellite. Why not? Because you see, I'm a civil engineer. A small piece of concrete is enough to destroy a satellite. I don't, I don't need a robot for that. Not at all.

So therefore, I don't see the danger that a robotic spacecraft is used for destructive purposes because that's, that's, that's not necessary. If you want to be destructive in space, take a, take a ball of concrete and just eat it. That's all. It's excellent. But this, so it says the military use of this geography is of course, an issue, and I hope that, this will not really go to Star Wars.

We have, there are people who call me about Project Moon Hut, and I've had these conversations because we do not address. We we do not approach military or agencies or governments in that way. And, wow, these individuals have thoughts about how, you have to have a full military within the moon earth ecosystem. You have to have military on the moon. We have to make sure that they're military. There's military. That's how that's what's kept us safe. There's the argument, not just from Americans.

These are from people all over the world. While the seas have been safe because the Americans have been able to keep the seas safe, but we beyond Earth is not gonna be that way, and we have to have strong military up there. And there are a lot of people who believe this. Yeah. But, 1,000,000 of flies, eat shit, and is it the right way? Yeah. No. You cannot you cannot argue just because many believes the same or many, do the same that this is right.

So therefore okay, therefore, I believe this this is just wrong. We don't believe in I don't believe in it either, and I also have a a a re recent observation I had made about what you're talking about to some degree. I read the book Steven Jobs by Isaac man Isaac son. Isaac man? Isaac son. And you'd have this company. There's only 5, 6 people in it called Apple, and they took on companies like IBM. And everybody said they wouldn't be able to succeed. They wouldn't be able to win.

And IBM now has about 270, 300,000 employees. I mean, they're not a small company, and they they're involved in a lot of activities. But when was the last time you used the letters IBM, and when was it the last time you said Apple? That these small little startups, these thoughts transition into some can transition into something large. And that's why I I wanted you on the program. I wanted to talk to you. Actually, it was not the program.

It was just talking, is to hear how you we take it from where we are today and not do what happened in 1969, 70, 71 where everybody said, we're gonna make it. It's gonna happen. This is the world. We are going to be living on the moon. We're gonna be living on Mars, and every this this beyond Earth ecosystem was beside itself. This was it. And I spoke in Luxembourg on the 50th anniversary to this space organization. They expected 500 people to show and about 60 did.

And what's the say in 50 years we won't be in the same position? So I'm kind of this unknown future where we can thrive. How do we get from here to there talking politics, talking the challenges that we're facing on earth and being pragmatic, and then still make it? How? How do we get around the obstacles without just thinking it's all gonna happen serendipitous by itself? It's going to happen randomly. This will just happen. How do you how do you do that?

Yeah. The keyword is of call of course, leadership. But behind leadership is not the understanding of hierarchy and, leading by power, but leading by contents. So that's my my clear I'm convinced about that. Also, my experience is sometimes a different one. So I see that politicians, can decide just by their formal power and not by their personal, knowledge.

This makes my me a little bit dizzy sometimes, but I still believe that good arguments, good, rational, and as we said earlier, at the same time, a good narrative will can lead to a really a good future. Is do you see it out there right now? If if I would answer no right now, then I should, commit suicide immediately because my whole life was going like that. And I did everything wrong in my life. If I say, no to request, I believe it is possible. Not always 100%.

Sometimes it takes a little bit longer. But, at the same time, it is very much satisfying if you can, succeed, by, rational and by, narrative that you can really then realize something which was not done before. And for instance, this mission, I told you about space debris. When I started this, in ISA, I had a lot of people, enemies, even fighting against it, but the narrative international was convincing finally. So it's, it's possible like that.

And there I have some hope, not only some of them. I have a big big hope that we can go like that. I I have hope. That's what that's what we wake up every day and do. So I was looking to yours. So the who, because that kind of ties into this. Yep. Who's gonna do this? Or how you Who is What is your who? The the who is, the has several, several levels. First of all, all these moral things and ethical things, which we discussed, of course, the who is done by the people who are the good people.

So to say the good guys. And the other thing is, in space, I'm really convinced that the WHO should be always the human kind, not just an American or a German or a Japanese, but humankind. So, my hope is that we come to a situation that the WHO is really done together, is performed together. This does not mean that all missions and everything has to be done in cooperation. But if you look to my idea of the Moon Village, then we come really to the WHO.

The Moon Village was first when I decided it or when I proposed it very beginning, I said we should have a multi partner open concept on the moon. Multi partner open concept sounds very complicated. It's not complicated. That means many partners should look to have some joint activities on a very special place, and this is the moon. So it's not a plan. It's not a project. It's an overarching concept.

And, so maybe different countries, different organizations, different companies have different capabilities, and they bring their capabilities together in a joint activity, in a joint concept, not in a joint program or plan. And then a journalist told me, mister Werner, it sounds, rational behind it. I see the rational, but there is no good narrative. You have to have a narrative and the narrative is, the moon village because a village is especially is exactly what it should be.

So in a village, different players come together. Maybe somebody who is, wants to have wants to create a restaurant as an engineering office, another one, maybe an undertaker. I don't know. So, by having these different competences together, this is number 1, which is a part of a village. And the other hard thing is to look for a special location, and the location is a moon.

So moon village is not, something which people misunderstood that I want to send all humans to the moon, colonization of moon. That's not the case. So it is multipartner open concept, and I I would think the Moon Village shows as an example what I mean with who. How is the Moon Village moving forward? Very much. Because what we saw in the past, the last years, that whenever there was some activity of a country, it was openly, communicated.

Now you could see, for instance, with the with the NASA, the the activities with SLS and also, with the outpost close to the moon, we see that this idea of having, something together, it's not only NADA, it's the Europeans, it's Canada, Japan, etcetera. So we are very close to this idea. It's not as open as I hoped. So for instance, China and India are not directly part, of this story, but it's close enough. Are you still actively engaged involved in it?

What do you mean with In the Moon Village because I I I I haven't I know of several people who are on the advisory or the committee. There is there is an there is an there is now a a Moon Village Association, which formed on this idea, and I'm very happy that it was formed. And I don't have to be the master of that, that activity. And I'm very I I do know, if you go down the list, there's some of the people I think we've interviewed on this podcast.

Several of the people we've had, Mankins and there's quite a few. Which is good. Which is good. So this Moon Village idea has already, sucks its success. So it's not any longer a vision of the future. It is already real reality from my point of view because people are coming together. The Moon Village Association is one example. This is more the the soft part of the example, but also the hard part is the gateway.

And, these activities, these are the the hard facts, which, really realizes the the multi partner open concept. Again, it's an open concept. It's not a closed door. That's that's different. It's not only just one mission or so. I have to look back when I met, and I actually can do that right now because I met Charlie Bolden at a it's called Renaissance weekend. And I met him when he spoke about this gateway and the concept that they were looking at.

And I met Charlie back in oh, wasn't that long ago. Charlie Bolden. Oh, that's his group. He was at NASA at that time. I met him back in 2016, That's when I first heard about this concept that he had thrown some slides up saying this is where he was gonna go. So, yes, there's, there are there are some activities there. Yeah. And the gateway is now now the next step is, of course, to go down to the surface of the moon.

This is just, again, a small step for manna, giant leap for mankind, but it's not that important whether it's in the by in the close to the moon or whether it's on the surface of the moon, whether it's with robotics or with astronauts. It doesn't make that big difference. The idea is it should be multipartner. Many partners from different from different origin, companies, public organizations, blah blah blah. And, it should be an open situation and not a closed shop.

This is the that part is still difficult. When I you know, when the Augustin Commission was formed under Barack Obama to discuss about the future of ISS, they interviewed me, and they asked me, what about your idea about the future of ISS? And this was and I asked I answered it with the who question. I said, well, let's open the hatches. I know not to the, you know what I mean? Let's open the hatches for India and China. And they immediately said it was a telephone interview.

Maybe the connection was wrong. Can you repeat, please? And I said, yes. India and China. And I said that also in public in public events frequently when we had, at the IAF, the IAC discussions with the heads of agencies. I always said the Chinese were there and the American, they said, let's work together. It's there is no reason not to work together on the ISS.

But There is there is coming into Project Moon Hut, I didn't know anything about the fact that how how many things the Russians did first. I mean, it's it's absolutely incredible. And when the space shuttle was decommissioned, how did everybody get to the International Space Station? They got up through the Russian Soyuz. Yes. So there there's so much collaboration going on in the background, yet the world doesn't I'm not gonna say the world. That's a bad way to say it.

I would say that the information of how we've existed and how we've been able to thrive has not gotten out there. The messaging has just not been complete. And going back to my comment, which I there are 1,400,000,000 Chinese. I have worked in Asia for years. They are great people. Yes. Be careful of how we define. So what we've done, Jan, which is a little bit different, is we don't go after those. We go after individuals and organizations, and they come on board.

They start there's a individual just yesterday. He's out of Luxembourg. We're setting up an office in Luxembourg, and this guy works for a company called GQT. They're a fund management business, and he said, I'm in. I wanna participate. And we've got people in Japan, and we've got people I don't know if we have anybody in India. We have people in Hong Kong. We have people in the UK. We have people in South Africa.

And we we're we're just looking at it as people instead of organizations or companies. And when you get the people and you get the right people, you expand even your Kiara. The the the next interview, I think she's next. Kiara, thank you for for introducing me to her, but I will never forget you. She is excellent. Well, you when I asked you if there's anybody else to be interviewed, I think you you said it in in just a few words.

Yep. You said I want to introduce you to the, the not the smartest. You said now I'm not it's escaping me. The, yeah, the brightest person I know. Yep. Those were your words. And Yep. I I mean, wow. Now Kiara and I have had maybe 3 conversations. We're we're looking that's when you bring the people together.

If you go after the companies, the company if you go after the people first, the network, second, organizations, and then capital third, you get amazing people, and we're we're collecting them on our team. So you you were very thankful very helpful in that respect. So thank you for that introduction. No. No. That was, it's very logic for me.

Well, you know, when you ask a question like that, anybody you could have said, well, you should interview this person and this person and this person, but you did you could you know enough to give 10 people, but you didn't. You said the one the person you should have talked to is Kiara. She is the brightest person I know. Yeah. And I that's that says a lot. So going back to this unknown future, we can end with some type of thing here, the the unknown future where we can thrive.

What is your what's your Okay. I will tell you something in that direction. I'm using this quote from Antoine frequently. And I believe really this is the best word also for the end of our discussion today, David, because yes, we can have visions. We can have ideas. We can try to realize something here and there. But if you look back in history, when people discussed, in the sixties of last century about the future of cities, It did not realize like that.

It is not that we are going in, in, 4 dimensions through our cities of different levels. It's not, there were other things which were not, not foreseen. And so therefore, I'm always using this very simple quote of Saint Exupery. And I think this is really the fundamental understanding of me as a person, what I did in my past, what I'm trying to do in, right now. It is one should not want to predict the future, but to make it possible. Can't fix yesterday. You can only create tomorrow.

Absolutely. Absolutely. This has been fantastic, John. I I appreciate you coming on the program, and I appreciate you taking the time to think about what you would be sharing with us today. So, I wanna thank everybody else out there who's taking the time out of your day to listen in, and I do hope that you've learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Again, the Project Moon Hat Foundation is where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon through the accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem, then to take the endeavor, the paradigm shifting thinking, and the innovations in turning back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. Never said this before, but maybe I should have. You go to www.projectmoonhut.org. In the top right hand corner, there are 3 videos.

We always suggest that people watch video 1 and video 3, and you'll get a better understanding of what we're working on. So, Jan, what is the single best way for people to get a hold of you? What do you mean? To get If they wanted to connect with you, they wanted to email you, how would they They can email me. They can email me. That's very simple. It's Werner, w o e r n e r, at acatech.de. That's simple. But I'm also in the in the, the telephone register, so no problem.

I'm I'm a transparent person, so it's easy to get me. Well, I definitely appreciate you being on. If you're looking to connect with me, you can reach me at [email protected]. You can connect to us on Twitter at project moon hut or directly to me at atgoldsmith. You have we are on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook. We're on Instagram, so you can catch us on those as at least platforms. We don't put a lot of information out. We're we're doing the work in the background.

And that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening. Hello, everybody. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the age of infinite. Throughout history, humans have made significant transformational changes, which in turn have led to the renaming of periods into ages. You probably just you you personally have just experienced the information age and what a ride it's been.

Now consider that you may be right now living through a new transitioning age into the age of infinite, an age that is not defined by scarcity and abundance, but by a redefined lifestyle consisting of infinite possibilities and infinite resources, which will be made possible through a new construct where the moon and the earth, as we call it Mearth, will create a new ecosystem and a new economic system that will transition us into the infinite future.

The ingredients for an amazing sci fi story that will come to life in your lifetime. The podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hunt Foundation. We're looking to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon. We were named Project Moon Hunt by NASA through the accelerated development of an earth and space based ecosystem, then to use the innovation, the paradigm shifting thinking, and the endeavor, and then to turn that back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species.

Today, we're going to be exploring an unknown future where we can thrive. With us today is Jan Werner. Also, Jan, great to have you here. Hello. So here's Jan's brief introduction. Everybody who's listened to a podcast knows we don't spend a lot of time here. Jan is the president of the National Academy of Science and Engineering. Previously, he served as director general of the European Space Agency. He's been the chairman of the executive board of the German Aerospace Center DLR.

And one interesting piece of facts while I was reading through his bio is that he spent some time living in Japan investigating earthquakes, and safety near nuclear power plants. I thought that was kinda cool. And one last thing before we start, and this is something that I've had to add because individuals who listen to podcasts think this is all scripted, that I've got a ton of questions in front of me. This is how the podcast actually works.

We find the guest that we think would fit the profile, what we're looking for. We send them some information. They get to learn a little bit about who we are. We have a call to decide on what topic this individual would like to talk about. We don't have the topic. We don't say you need to speak on this. And, surprisingly, what they end up talking about is often far off what we originally thought they would.

Then the guest is left on their own for a period of time to design their own format, their own structure, what they'd like to talk about, and then we come here to have the interview. So this is the first time I'm hearing, just as the first time you're hearing, the information that Jan is gonna be delivering. So let's get started. Jan, do you have an outline for us to follow? Yes, David. So for me, the most important thing is, let's have, the question of why, in the forecast.

So why are we doing space, and, how are we doing it? But first, the why. The why question is, normally forgotten, and we just say, okay. We do this. We do that. So before that well, if you can give me the whole outline, then we will come back, and we'll hit all of these. Okay. So the why question Yep. It's number 1. The second question is how. And then the third question is the who question. And if we get this together, then we can go forward. Perfect. Nice short outline.

So, you and I started before the before the podcast started, starting a conversation that was beginning to become interesting. And if you'd like to pick it up there or you can jump into the why, either way, it's up to you. Before I I jump in into the why, I have to tell you that, you see, my personal experience with space is very special because I'm not a space guy by training. I'm a civil engineer by training and most of my life, I was not doing any activity in the space area.

So I was first a civil engineer in an office, and I was a professor for civil engineering. Next step, was to be a president of a university. And it was only in 2007, that I became the chairman of the executive board of DLR. And with that position, I came closer and closer to space.

However, of course, as a private person, I followed all the things in the sixties of the last century, starting even earlier with Sputnik in 1957, where I was just 3 years old, but my father showed me up to the sky and said, look Jan, there is a satellite. I did not know what word of satellite means, and I did not see any sputnik. But if your father tells you something when you are 3 years old, then you believe, first of all, it must be important.

I have a German father too, so I completely understand. Yes. And from that point on, I followed all the space activities, but I was never thinking about coming into space. And now looking back, in an age of 67, looking back to what I did, I can tell you that maybe also for the institutional space, I was not the right person at all time because for institutional space, you need a very special personal position. You have to accept that politicians are always right. And I did not do so.

You have to accept that the space in itself is and the institutional space is is not really characterized by contents, but more about what is the next job we can do. And therefore, that's the reason why I said the why question is for me the most important. So so I Before you hit that then, you said accept that the politicians are always right. That's a that's a bombshell in my head. So what do you mean by that?

Yeah. The the the the institutional space, in all countries of this world, they are following what the politicians are saying. That's my observation. And if the politicians are saying, earth observation is very important, they do earth observation. If they say, pioneering is very important, they do pioneering. So the institutional space is not really defining its way by itself. In some cases they do, but normally they, they don't do it.

And I tried to really to look first to the right question and then say, okay, after I have answered the right right question, then to look how and what to do. And this, of course, is not always directly in the same directions as politicians believe. There is one additional point which I have to mention at this time, Science and especially space science are not calculated in political terms.

I got several times when I proposed something, politicians were asking me, do you really complete this within my term as minister, within my term as whatever? Yep. And this is There was no there was no value to it. It was just did it have a political value? Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And this is for me maybe that was my biggest mistake in my whole life that I never accepted that. I I What would you have done what would you have done differently if you had accepted it?

Yeah. I just want to say because there there there would be big differences. The the big difference would be, when I shave myself in the morning, I could not look into the mirror if I followed them Because that would be that would not be Jan Werner. And this is really a problem because you you can say it in a positive direction. You have to be very flexible in this institutional space. You can also say it in a negative way. You have to be a follower and not a leader.

So do you feel that you had I mean, it's I'm trying to summarize the entire term. Do you feel you had impact, or you feel you were the tail being wagged by the dog? I had impact. I was lucky enough that in some areas, I had really an impact. In some areas, the impact came either never or later. And this was during my whole life. It was not only in space, but in space, it was extreme. It was also before that, when I was a president of a university.

And so so I had some, ideas not only created by myself. Sometimes the ideas came from my coworkers or other people, and I believed, okay, this is a very good idea, which brings us forward because it, it answers part of our open questions. But then I had to learn that, in this publicly financed frame, it's very difficult to get really disruptive ideas realized.

And, so you see that what you hear is, that I have, of course, some positive feelings about my past, but at the same time, I think, I was not successful enough because some of the ideas I had, I could not realize. Well, this is not this is not far off. We, I, you might note, Mamber. I'm trying to think of his first name. Mamber from Nanoracks. Yeah. He grew up he grew up at the same time as my mom did, so we we ended up doing an interview.

And he said on there, one of the biggest mistakes or one of the biggest challenges to the ecosystem of Beyond Earth is agencies. He said instead of into organizations working to improve their performance and and go to markets, what they do is they form their company, and then they try to sell everything to the agency. And he said, there is no air industry. There is no water industry. There they don't have industries, but we've classified this as space.

So every country wants to have one, and every time they do it, it actually diminishes the possibilities of moving forward. That was his take. His take was right with some modifications. I this when I was at ESA, I tried to define 5 roles of ESA. Five different roles. Number 1 is to be a research and development agency. This is what NASA is. This is what, EASA is. This is what the national agencies are. Fine. Excellent.

And through this through this research and development, they are also, doing management of missions, paying industry to deliver some parts, and then, the the the whole structure is developed and produced. This is only one role, and this is a role which does not fit from my point of view as the unique role for the future. There are 4 other roles which are as as important as the first one. The second one is to be a partner of industry.

So not to be above industry, not to be the one who is saying together, no. You have to do something for me, but to say, we let's do it together. Public private partnership. This is something ESA is doing, but not to the amount I would like to see it. The third one is to be a customer because our system of space has changed dramatically. We are talking about industry 4.0 in industry in general terms. We could also talk about space 4.0. Space 1.0 would be astronomy or astrology.

Space 2.0 is a race in space, and also the Soyuz Apollo times. Space 3.0 is some opening for international cooperation like the International Space Station, but now we are in a different world, in a in a there is a shift of paradigm. Space 4.0 with artificial intelligence, with disruptive ideas, with also commercialization. And in this role, in this different, space 4.0 frame, to be a customer is a very important role. And the the fourth role is to be an enabler.

Space agencies should understand themselves to enable things, especially agencies, which are not only working, on a smaller country, but a big country like the United States of America or like, ISA for whole Europe to enable, different industries to enable different regions or countries to, have their specific space activities. And the last one is to be a broker, to combine different capabilities either in the space or even in the non space sector.

So and from this perspective, an agency should not be a self fulfilling administration with a very strict and, and clear administration, etcetera, but it should be an agile, flexible organization being ready to focus on different roles at the same time. Yeah. So let's try the first point that you made, which was more and the name was Jeffrey Mamba. It couldn't come it didn't come into my mind.

The the first one is the challenge that you had that you didn't understand about politics and politicians and where they go. And now you've outlined the 5 ways that a that I'm not gonna call it an agency, but this organization should be operating. Do you feel that this will happen? Because as, who was it? Charlie Bolden said, we're adding more and more agencies. So we're making it more complicated and more challenging to create what you just defined. Yeah. You're right.

This is this, Charlie is right. It's an issue. When I was traveling, around our tiny globe and giving, talks to students, I had always, I did a small survey all the time. Out the interest, which which field is for them the most interesting field. Is it earth observation? Is it navigation and so on and so on. And then I ask also, what is your idea about space agencies?

Would you like to see in future regional agencies, national, national agencies, agencies for a continent or one global space agency? And it's interesting. The ma the vast majority of students in all countries, even China, even Japan, even the US were saying one global space agency. That was a clear demand and shows that the the young people are looking for the global perspective. But still, for me, we have to define what is what is an agency.

And for me, an agency, as I try to line out, the outline is, more than just, an in an administration which gives money, and does, and does some, management to get the mission, flying. It's much more. It's it's it should be a customer. It should be an enabler. It should be a program. I mentioned it. So now now that you're out of it in the in the in a new role different role, not saying new. Different role.

What if you're you were to give me advice, because I'm trying to navigate this too, trying to learn. If you're gonna give me advice to help to get from the political side to what you're articulating, what should what should I what should we do? Because I that's it it seems so far from the realities of today that I I would like to know how you would say how would you would plan this out? I believe it's not that far. In, I think it was in 2018 or 19 in Colorado Springs.

I was heading a a panel discussion moderating a panel discussion of, space agencies leaders. And there were agency, heads of agencies of bigger ones and smaller ones. And I asked exactly the same question, which is behind your question. I asked them, what about in 25 years, what about, space agencies? There there was one leading a rather big, agency saying nothing will change. We will have exactly the same situation as today, What space agencies are doing.

Another 2 were saying no, no, no, it's not like that in 25 years. Most of the space activities will be something like commodities, for instance, earth observation or, telecommunication, which is already more or less commercial. So we will we will change what we are doing. We will have a different setup. And then there were 2 heads of agencies, which said we don't need an agency in 25 years. Space is then really part of, the ecosystem of our world. It's it's not a specific area.

It is just one area, and we don't need space agencies at that time. And I believe between the second and the third, answer, there will be the reality. My personal opinion was when I started at DLR, the German Aerospace Center, I showed a picture, PowerPoint picture to people showing what will happen in the future. And I moved a lot of the different topics like navigation, earth observation, telecommunication, more and more to the commercial market.

I still at that time thought that security, that, exploration and science will remain public. Now I have to change my mind because we see also that private companies are entering into the exploration area. They are also entering into the science area. And so maybe security is one thing where still the national interest is so strong that, that will not be given directly to industry.

But, if you look to, what is going on in, for instance, in, in science, then of course, many of these instruments, which are used to do science are not produced by the scientists themselves. They come from industry. Now, some specific instruments might come from the scientists and that's the same for space. We will see in the future that, also in science, industry will be, just a company which is offering to the agencies as a customer, scientific missions.

While you're talking about this, I'm thinking back when we first when project Moon Hat first became initiated, one of the constructs that I tried to outline is that the ecosystem, while it seems very small, that everybody tends to says they know each other, I would say it's not very small. It's actually very large.

If there's a company in Guangzhou that makes gaskets that go into a rocket and they go let's say they're a $20,000,000 a year business, but they only get a an order once a year for a $100,000, and that becomes the, the product, and they're part of the space ecosystem. The, I people would sometimes get it, but I remember someone from the European Space Agency, which was interesting.

I said to her I said I told her the scenario, and she said, well, David, if you look at it that way, then the space industry is huge. And I said, yeah. Kind of it is. There are a lot of individuals who are servicing all forms of the industry, whether it be training or software or hardware. It could be creating a part, might not be their primary application.

But the more that there's opportunities for companies to be able to use part services throughout the ecosystem, it will become an integral part of our everyday life. No different than this call might be using a satellite. I I went downstairs. I had some food. It was freeze dried. There were, you know, firefighters wear outfits that came come from the from inventions through beyond Earth activities. So I think we'll we shall see that integration happen.

But on the political side, don't you think those politicians will fight back? It might be. But, I mean, this point you mentioned is very important. So NASA, called it the cuts that we take really things directly off the shelf that this is really also part of the future of space. And I believe this is true. We don't need to certify each screw, And this has to be understood. The politicians see in the agencies a part of their power and therefore it's, they love agencies.

I will give you another example. You see my son, his PhD was about carbon fibers and, fixings of carbon fiber structures to other material. And he used screws for that. Okay? So he fixed the carbon fiber material with screws to some metallic structure. In his thesis and he investigated about the behavior of this carbon carbon fiber reinforced part. In his PhD examination, one of the professor asked him, so can you tell us more about the screws you were using?

What was the the material, what was the young modulus, what was they did not ask, but what was the color and so on and so on. They they asked about these screws. And my son said, I did not care. I took them off the shelf Yep. Which is for a scientific examinations, a rather brave answer. So this But he was right. It was right, and he was right because it was not about the screws.

It was about the carbon fiber behavior, and that does not it has no relation to, in this case, to the behavior of the single screw. If the screw fails, then it's a different story, but the screw did not fail. So he was right in giving this answer, And I believe this is the same for space. We should not look into space as a totally different industry where each and everything is different, even the color of the screws. That's not the right view.

And therefore, we can have in space more and more also companies which are not so far not active in space. And this means also a shift of paradigm towards commercialization. If you look to Elon Musk, for instance, what he is using, not all the parts are really coming from space and, were certified for space at the very beginning.

Of course, if you go to a higher risk, area like human space, transportation, you have to be careful, but in other areas, you one should be brave enough in to focus on the on the main aspects and not on the each and every time part. We do that already in in high risk scenarios.

You if you're gonna build a submarine, if you're going to build up a rig on a platform rig, if you're going to build a structure that's 30 stories high, you have to have certain characteristics of the types of materials you use, the type of design you use, but that's normal. That's a that's a normal approach is there are certain strengths, materials Yeah. That work better than others. I I completely agree with you.

I so I'm I'm trying to I think you I don't know if I said this in our pretalk, not today, but earlier, is that we have to get past the point that believing space is an industry. Space is not an industry. It's a geography. And when someone like Paragon, Grant Anderson from Paragon, I'm assuming you know him, Grant is in life support, but he's in life support in the geography, a low earth orbit, medium earth orbit, all the way out to the moon or even to Mars.

He's in the geography, but he could also be life support in a hospital. He could be life support underwater. And so Yeah. If we take this word, are you in the space industry? No. You're in the telecommunications industry, and you're using spaces you're using low earth orbit as a tool. And I think if we can change that verbiage, then you won't say someone wants, well, I'm in the space industry, and I'm in the and you don't say you're in you're in the automotive industry.

You're not in the it doesn't even compare. You're not in the air industry. You're not in the water industry. You're not in the land industry. You're in the construction industry. You are in the, yacht building industry. We take this term, and I think it helps to I think it separates individuals more than it does unites them the way you're discussing. You you're right. You're right. There's one small disagreement, which we have, which you had also in the previous discussion.

You call space geography and just the geography. And I said, and you, said this is not right. I see also space as an infrastructure, not the satellites as infrastructure. Like on, the streets, an infrastructure, not the cars. And therefore I I I agree with that as an add on to it. So I would say I think you I would say space is not an industry. It's a geography and can be built into an infrastructure. Exactly. Okay. Then we then we are in agreement.

Yeah. This is That's that's actually I I actually I love that, and I'm going to I don't hope you don't mind. I'm going to use that and say that we kind of collectively created this because that helps a lot. Right. And, therefore, we always have to look what are the special conditions of this geography. Number 1, what are special requests coming from using it as an infrastructure? Yes. But this is not, that means space is totally different and there must be a space industry.

We, as you mentioned, we have no air industry. We have no soil industry. We we have no water industry. We have industry working in water. Make we have industry. We call them, lane industry or It could be filtration systems. It could be scrape. It could Exactly. There's so many, but those are the industries. Like, you don't say I'm in the it's the car industry because you make cars, but you don't make air. And there's also there is no the we really don't have an air agency.

We don't have a land agency in the same city. Land agencies we have, but different way different way. Yeah. And we don't have a water industry in the same way. Yeah. And this was by the way, that's what you what you mentioned that argument earlier and in the discussion I I was explaining from Colorado Springs. Also, though, so one of this agency, leader who said we don't need an agency in 25 years said exactly the same.

He said, we do not have agencies for all other areas, so why should we have one for space? He said exactly that one. And that's and to me as a non, I I'm gonna say non beyond earth to say, if you hear I use the word beyond earth. I use that because I'm trying to be more precise in the in the definition of where we're working or talking about. When I say space, to me, in my head, it rattles. Like, we're not talking about anything that's concrete.

So this individual in 25 years, the hope is individuals will understand that you really can't have a day on earth. You can't live a day on earth without interacting with innovations that came directly from your mobile phone, cordless power tools, whatever. You can't that were offshoots of innovations that came out of, or people who left a job and went to work for somebody else and used what they learned to create a a new form of mouse or a cup or something else.

Our lives are integrated into the beyond Earth ecosystem. It's just it is. We can't even think about Yeah. But for this development, in order really to understand that space is just not only just, it's in geography and an infrastructure. Of course, a lot of work has to be done. And maybe for that purpose, agencies can be helpful by really being enablers. I come back to the roles by being enablers by being partners of, industry, being a customer of industry and being a broker.

So because this geography space needs special development. And there I see for the next upcoming years, I see also a very strong role of agencies, but this role should look to really the changing, the shift of a paradigm and should not stay in the past. I mean, NASA did a great, job with all these, support of private companies. Eiza is on that path as well, and I believe this, has to be accelerated. Okay. So great great segue.

I I've got this question that jumped into my head, and I I really want your honest opinion on how to get here. And I know you're not saying non honest answers. More direct. We we have teams all over the world helping us. We have structural engineers all the way through to accounting firms. I mean, the the range is very diverse. And we don't go after or interact to some degree with agencies. We don't spend the time with them. We don't spend with military. We are looking purely commercial.

That's where we spend our focus. We're very quiet in terms of what we're doing because we just wanna do the work. Now if we were to interact with, and let's use your your home base, the European Space Agency, and we didn't want them to dominate us, we didn't want them to dictate the rules, we didn't want them to say, well, you can't work with Russians. Well, there's a difference between Russians and Russian government. Well, you can't work with the Chinese, which we've heard from people.

I said, well, wait. Wait. Wait. Are you confusing the Chinese government with 1,400,000,000 Chinese people who are amazing? I've worked there. They're great people everywhere. And so we kind of avoid them. If we were to interact with them to get them to understand what you just outlined besides sharing the video the audio, How would you suggest if we came to you, we could get that participation where you're not using politics to move us and geopolitics to interact? But you actually said, yeah.

We would like to we would like to be a part of this, and we will do our share. How do you do that? I I have no, real, solution for that. Okay. Thank you. Because I I was trying during all my time as being a head of, German Aerospace Center or the, European Space Agency, I was always trying to communicate that cooperation is an enabler and, competition is a driver. And this holds true for regional areas, as well as for the global areas.

And I don't see any reason why I should not cooperate with people around this tiny globe. Now people are saying in that moment, wait, wait, wait. The the human rights in China, you cannot work with China because of human rights. That that's a very quick answer which you get immediately. Absolutely. And I lived in Hong Kong for 10 years, so I Okay. Preferred that a lot.

Now the question is, let's, assume that all the other countries have the same human rights and the same values, which they don't have. Even within Europe, we have quite different, different, understanding of values, etcetera. But let's, let's assume for a moment, let's assume the whole world, except China and North Korea, have the same values and understanding of human rights. Do you believe that then isolation of China and North Korea will solve the issue? No. Of course not.

Isolation never helps. So therefore, one has to find, ways of cooperating to enable things, but and not by forgetting your personal values. I also believe one should not put their own value values just under the national values or the continental values or whatever. So I'm I'm not fighting for European values. First of all, I'm fighting or I'm convinced about my own values. Lucky enough, they they are more or less equal to the European values, but this is, just by chance.

This is not, by decision. And then if I see people with different opinions, that's fine. If they have different values, which I believe are very bad for humans, and that might happen, then I will not isolate this person. I will try to convince him or her about my opinion. And the best how you can do it is through cooperation. There there's 7,450,000,000, 7,600,000,000, 7,600,000,000 people today.

The challenge that, in my head, and I I won't speak for others, is we don't know individuals globally don't know enough about the other cultures to understand why some decisions are made, how they got there, what their belief structures are, how they interact. The it's when when you go visit a country and you go on a tour and you come out, you didn't go to the country. You you you had a glimpse of it.

But to understand the culture and to understand how decisions are made, that's something that humans I I don't know why we it's been so challenging in my lifetime to see individuals when they do argue these points to not say, wait. Wait. Wait. There's an interconnectedness here. There are reasons or nonreasons for things happening. Explore more, find more, learn more. And it it's a a gut reaction that, you know, you're not gonna deal with the Chinese, are you? Of course we are.

Of course, we are. And then what do you mean? They say, where are you coming from? Will the Chinese do this? I said, do all Chinese do that? What's the government? And you have to separate people, governments, decisions, regions. Not every German's the same, and I could say that because my father was German. Not every Luxembourg is just the same. Never not every, French person is the same. I don't with your accent.

And I believe, David, what is important, you also have to question your own system, your own values. And maybe my values today are different to the values I had some 20 years ago. And I hope that they are different because that means that I'm still able to learn. And I hope that in 10 years, time it will be again, if I'm still alive, there will be again, as a set of values, I believe people, the the values of people define really the value of a person.

But this is a personal decision and not a global decision and not a global, value evaluation. I I the when I first landed in Hong Kong maybe this is somewhat useful. When I first landed in Hong Kong, I this person took me in. Her name is Hazel, and she was absolutely amazing. And one day, we were sitting in her kitchen, and I looked at her because I was trying to get a framework of her thinking. And I said to her, if you were to give a police report, how would you give it? And she looked at me.

Now in Western culture, I'm going to assume, at least where I grew up, United States, it's hair color, it's height, it's, you know, blonde hair, blue, white, and whatever. You'd give this list. And she said, well, number of eyelids. One eyelid, 2 eyelids, no eyelids. So my mind is blown at this point. The first thing she's defining is eyelids. She said then the shape of the face, is it round? Is it oval? This is the bridge of the nose.

And I had to stop and think if if before hair color was around, the society she lived in, most people had black hair. So the definitions of how she looks at the world, what she sees, I had to understand that to be a better person living in Asia. And you have to give up your own thoughts to make room for others. I think that's what you're kind of inferring is you have to you have to be able to connect. And to make what you're saying happen, going back to the question I asked, how do you do it?

And you said you don't know, which I appreciate that, is that's what we're working on in our project, and I appreciate your candidness, your your directness with that answer. So let's because I I I love this conversation. I think there's gonna be so much more. The why. The why. It's the number one. That was that was my feeling. We should come back to the why. So So So we're starting at why. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.

I like this was and thank you, Jan. This is exactly the conversation I personally wanna be having with someone like you who's seen it from your perspective. So thank you. So let's go to why. Why are we going to space? And, there are different answers in different cultures. So for instance, if you ask a typical American, he might answer because of pioneering, because of being the first, something like that. You will not hear the same from European. Again, it's it's a stereotype.

It's, not each and every one, but in more in general terms. I had a discussion with that about, with Charlie Bolden several times because, when he had his asteroid redirect redirect mission, I asked him also the why question. And he said, pioneering. Pioneering, Jan. You have to understand it's pioneering. And we would be the first one. And I said, I I understand, Charlie.

But for us, in order to convince also, the German taxpayer and also the government, we need to have a better answer than just pioneering. And this is for all the different missions, it's the same. So why why do we go to space? There's a general answer. This is because humans always try to get beyond, from the caves, out of the caves, from a continent to another continent. But this is not a sustainable, answer.

And, by the way, it it will give us also some issues in space because, okay, ISS moon and then Mars is really far beyond. So therefore, we have to answer them the why for each and every mission. What can it be? It can be discovery, just general discovery. It's a good reason, because discovery is really what people are doing. It can be, it can be using the this geography to understand our earth better. For instance, climate change and other things.

It can be that we are using this geography because of its special environmental situation of microgravity, which is good for experiments. So there are several areas, where you can use space activities. You can also use it, in a in a way of politics as a geopolitical tool or let's say space geography. Use it to make some, cooperation, which is which have which has a geopolitical geopolitical effect.

Because while we are talking, we know that on earth, we have some tensions between Russia, the US, Europe, etcetera, etcetera. But still we have in the ISS, we have Russian, cosmonauts, American astronauts, and the European astronauts. So it is obvious that space is also bridging earthly crisis. And, then we have also the situation that, you'd, if we are realizing a very complicated space missions, like the Apollo mission to go to the moon or others.

Now with James Webb to go to l 2 to observe the universe or whatever you you see these all of these missions, are really fascinating. Nobody can deny that space missions are fascinating. And if you have something which is fascinating, this is already for people. It's a positive move in their brain. And from, fascination, the next step is to think about it. That means inspiration. And then you go from inspiration to motivation. You say, okay.

And this was by the way, the way I approached space, I used all these, space activities. I observed what was going on with Soyuz, with, Sputnik, with, Lunar hot with, Apollo, etcetera, etcetera. And I said, wow, people on earth are creating spacecraft, which are able to land on the moon. So if this, if, if people can do so, why should I not be able to create things, which was never done before? Or to go when no one has gone before, but I mean, also on earth, also on earth.

And this was the reason I selected for myself to become a civil engineer. So it's motivation. And then you have a chain from from fascination to inspiration to motivation, and, of course, finally, transpiration. This is always the same. So these are the why there are answers for the why questions. And the why questions should be answered in each and, every case again.

When, you do something, on earth or you do something, in the in space, you should answer the question why, especially if you are using public money. So you probably gotten this question before. I've never heard you speak, so I don't have that, your answer. One of the questions with our project is and I've had this more in audiences than I have personally, like, 1 on 1 or small groups, is why are we wasting all this money on space?

There's plenty of challenges here on Earth that we could be spending our time on. I know you've gotten it, so I just wanna hear your reply because I have my own. Yeah. So I asked that question. So I I got the question several times. Yeah. Yes. I know it's you can't you can't be in need of something without it. Yep. It's okay. When I was in front of the space ministers in 2019, you know, that ISA the ISA director general has to go to his ministers every 3 years to get money.

And I was thinking, well, how should I convince these ministers who normally do a totally different job? Say, I'm not thinking about space. They are research ministers here, and they might be, economy ministers in another country. So how can I convince them? And what we did, we did a survey. 1st, we asked European citizens, how much money would you like to give to space per year? And the people said something like €270 per citizen per year. They would that was the the answer from the survey.

Now if you compare this number with this number which, which John F. Kennedy asked in the sixties for the Apollo program. He said, I believe 50¢ per week. If you calculate that, you come to and you take the inflation into account, you come to roughly the same amount. So John F. Kennedy was right. Now that's what the people say they would like to love to to give. Now then I told the minister, so now I give you the number which will which we will spend if you say yes to all my proposals today.

And it's about €8 per citizen per year. €8. Now tell me another technology, whatever it is, another activity which you can really build by €8 per citizen per year. There is not so much. Now that that's it's a ridiculous there are a lot of things that could be used for, but it does justify the claim that, Yes. And there is and by the way, this is first of all the number crunching only. But then we go into the details.

People are saying, yeah, but for cancer research, we have to do need to, we have to do more. Yes. We have to do more. And we do a lot of, a lot more of that in space. We are investigating space, in space in this special geography with micro g investigating the development, of, cancer cells in order to develop better medicine. We are doing it. We are doing for the for the for the COVID crisis, COVID 9 COVID 19. And you know that these mRNA vaccine, they have to be in a very special environment.

It's called lipid. And this one was also investigated in space. So it is also even the COVID vaccine has some direct relation to the ISS research. And so on, I could give you hundreds of examples from the research. But then, look to other areas. So for instance, you have the climate change, which will be a major challenge for humans. And it's not only the climate in 100 years. It's also the weather, which is changing. And we all know that weather forecast is so important for our daily life.

So without space, it will not work without space activities and so on. And so I could give hundreds of examples where space is not just something beyond all what we are doing daily day by day, but it's part of our life. And as you said earlier, it's part of the geography which which we are using. So when you said it, even though it was only €8, did they say, okay. We'll just give you the money? I can tell you they spent exactly the amount which I asked for.

Okay. So they were willing They gave me they gave me even, 2% more, which I got some criticism afterwards that I did not ask for enough money. But this would not be Jan Werner. Jan Werner would not ask for a 100 if he needs only 50. Should have asked for more. Yes. So are you artic are you saying that a rational argument is what individuals need to be able to understand the value proposition that's being proposed? People need both. People need rational arguments, but also a good narrative.

But the narrative should not be the dominating part because the rationale should be the dominating part. But, underline, how should I say, supported by a good narrative? You can, for instance, when, when an astronaut is telling us stories, how he sees the world, the earth from space, he is the, the fragility, the beauty and so on and so on. This is a narrative. It's not irrational.

The rational one comes from from, spacecrafts, or from satellites measuring the temperature and the methane and, what the wind and so on. But in addition, the narrative of, astronauts telling, you see this thin atmosphere around our globe and the beauty of the sea and the beauty of the desert and blah, blah, blah, this together makes a really convincing story. And especially in the part of institutional, space, we need convincing stories based on rational plus narrative.

In the commercial world, it's maybe different. This is the area which are trying to discover since I left, ISA, I'm now active and supporting several small startup companies. And I learned a lot because there you have also have to look not not just for a rational and why are we doing it, but also, of course, from the economic point of view for a company. I am surprised at how many individuals pay absolutely no attention to what goes on beyond Earth.

And I am not again, I came into this this long story too, but I came into this from the side. I didn't come in, wanting to be a part of the Beyond Earth ecosystem. And these individuals, what they see and what they hear about is not what you just talked about. What they hear is what, a a rover was on Mars, or we're gonna try to do gastro asteroid mining. They hear about the or they see the the space tourism scenarios that are happening when it's you hear the well, those are for the billionaires.

These are the toys for the billionaires. Yeah. You'd the messaging my point is the messaging that's getting to the person who's not paying attention is far away from what you just described. Even though it's all true, but it's not the messaging. But if I give a talk, and I do that quite frequently even now in the COVID times, I always try to have both the rational and the emotional part. For instance, when I explain people, did you ever think about where the water comes from on earth?

You might say, yes, I have it in the kitchen, but this is not a good answer to the question. So the the earth was in its past, it was so hot that probably there was no water, but we have a lot of water. Two thirds of the of the surface is covered by water. Where does the water come from? Isn't that an interesting question? And I mean, I believe curiosity is also something which is in all people, especially when they are young.

Some forget about curiosity when they learn too much in school and in in the company, but curiosity, what is what what is driving humanity? And therefore, if you raise a question, did you ever think about where does the water come from? This is already in from my experience in a public presentation, a very nice question. It is. And then you say and now we try to find out what is the reason? How where does the where where does the water whether this water really comes from comets?

And then you have them on a path, and then you can say, yes. We went there. Of with a mission Rosetta. We went to a comet. We landed on a comet. We investigated the comet. And interesting enough, yes, there is water on this comet. Now the simple answer is water comes from comets. Wait, wait, wait. There is there is hydrogen in on earth. Everybody should know what hydrogen is. It's, it's a proton and an electron.

Now you have also hydrogen where you have, in addition to the proton, you have a neutron in the core and even 2 neutrons still hydrogen. Now this is heavier hydrogen and you can do water with the light hydrogen and with the heavier hydrogen. It's a little bit complicated, the story, but now let's have a look to the comet. What type of water is there? Is it with the heavy hydrogen or with the light hydrogen?

And interesting enough, the relation between the the the heavy water and the light water is totally different on than it is on earth. Now what does it mean? We we did not find the answer for the question. This opens more questions, and and I believe this is a typical example. And, yes, it's it takes a little bit in a in a talk, but so far, I found that this is really interesting for everybody.

Also when you're saying, okay, everybody heard about, the big bang and, that the, the, the, the universe is expanding. And then you go into dark energy theory and etcetera. It's also fascinating. Okay. You have to give also the the rationale at the next time that using earth observation, we can forecast the weather. We can help in case of, any catastrophe, be it an earthquake or be it an avalanche or whatever. So you have to balance out the rational and, the narrative and the curiosity.

I'm I would believe you know Ron Levin? Yes. I know him. Ron and I, my first time I visited Israel, I was set up a meeting with, from Ofer Lapid with, Ron. We were having a drink, a coffee or something in a restaurant, and he said, do you know how we get to all the Israeli children? And this is, not not it's Christians, Jews, Muslims, whomever's in school. It's not just one group. Is every year we have a hackathon. We bring together about 250 experts.

They hackathon how they would teach students, and every year in every school, we send individuals in to talk to the children.

And if you think about it, if you're 4 years old and you hear something that no one else in the world is learning about, and in 5 years old, you hear it, and 6 years old, and 7 years old, and 8 and 9 and 10, when you come out the other end of the pipe, if there is one pipe of, education, you have a whole new set of questions to be able to ask about the potential future, not only of beyond Earth, but even new materials or ways of living or interactions or psychology or movies or And

this is the main secret of good education. You have to put not knowledge into the people, but you have to teach them to go beyond all existing levels of, of knowledge. This is the secret of what people are calling education. I believe the word is not so good, but this is really where it starts really to create the future. If we give the spirit to young people that they are supported by going beyond all existing knowledge. Well, if if I love that you asked the question.

I do similar types, not as scientific as yours, to try to get individuals who argue, why are you spending time on this? That's one of the big questions. You could be spending your time on so many other things. Why this? And I use a a questioning philosophy too. I will say, well, what do you do for a living? Well, I run a business, or I'm a lawyer, I'm a this. And I'll say, why do you do that? Why don't you become a farmer? I I don't wanna be a farmer. What are you doing to improve Earth?

I and no answers. Well, if you walk someone through a series of why did you get there, why are you doing this, they'll realize that they're doing it for reasons that they don't even realize, and you open up doors for exploration of conversation. So I I like that you took it you took it very scientific. I know a lot of individuals who have challenges with proton, electron, neutron, heavier hydrogen, the difference between heavy and light.

I know that would be very challenging for a lot of individuals, but the questioning, a good question is worth its weight in gold or whatever currency you wanna say. So to so the why for you with everything you're saying, why why for you personally? And you talked about the why of all this. Why for you personally do you want this? Why I want to have space activity? Yeah. Why do you wanna have beyond earth activity? And and what to you, what's the definition in your lifetime?

What would you like to see? Why? For me, really, the why is curiosity. But I know that this is not sufficient for all people. I mean, for politicians, curiosity is only they are curious about results of the next election. So for me, curiosity is really one. I I you can you can, you can, how should I, you can bring me to a question, far away from all what I did so far. If you really get my curiosity, then I'm really interested. I I'm and this is not only technical aspects.

So so So if your curios curiosity is the underlying driver. Yes. Yes. Would you like to see in your lifetime? And we have a 45 year plan. So our plans go out 45 years. What would you like to see you said you're 60, how old did you say? 67. 67. 6. 67. So we go 5 years so much. I always use it for 40 years. So that's too long. Too long. Okay. So let's let's put 20 on top. So you're 87. What would you like to see in these 20 years happen? With regard to space?

With regard to Yeah. Beyond beyond Earth. Yes. Beyond or or Earth even. Whatever you wanna see because I don't I don't disconnect them. The only reason I'm in for me, I'm involved in this to to improve how we live on earth for all species where we have 6 mega challenges. We're defining what we want to solve on earth. You could tell me what your paradigm is. Yeah. So, I, of course, I could mention now a lot of very challenging missions.

Mhmm. But for me, the main aspect is really that we are trying to use the space as a geography to really, come to solutions for what is called the sustainable development goals of the UN. Because we have challenges on earth. And it's it's so broad. It's hunger at first. It's, people being poor people. So, you know, all of this. So there are these 17, sustainable development goals. I always believe that there was one missing. This is, handling the migration. It's not in.

I was always surprised that that would be 18 then. What they can do is they could take off number 17, which is to do the 16 and substitute in this one. Yeah. That would be possible. Or to put it as the eighteens in because, 18 is even better for for any picture. The the challenge in my the challenge in my mind with the 17 SDGs, which I'm glad that individuals are working on it, is Yes, sir. To have a target of no hunger, no poverty is a real challenging. It it's too massive.

And then there are definitions in there. For example, there's one that says strong institutions. Yeah. And I would argue that US, Russia, Germany, China, These are strong institutions. So they there's a lack of definition, and it depends on your perspective. What is the For me for me, the sustainable development goals should not talk about nations, should not talk about institutions, should be just focused on the on a peaceful and good living of the individual. Very simple. Very simple.

And for that purpose, I I I hope to see in the next years that we are developing something. So I'm really right now, we see this conflict, Ukraine and Russia. Yep. And, this is this is a typical example where I maybe I'm too stupid. I don't understand the problem. I don't understand the problem. And, yeah, one has to solve the issue. I don't know. You see, I I'm I did also the mediation for the Frankfurt airport.

K. They wanted to have a new runway, and they were they were, of course, opponents saying, no. No. No. No. No. Oh, no runway. And some people are saying, oh, we need a new runway. So how does how do you solve such a question? And you can then try to when I explain it, you can try to transfer it to the Ukraine, Russia, conflict. So how do you solve this issue? You make a survey, how many people are against or in front, or you are looking like politicians are always looking for compromises.

They say, okay, that means you don't build a build a full runway, but only half the length. Or what do you build? You see that it doesn't work. No. And therefore, we, at that time, I learned about an example where you can understand what you have to do. If you have one orange and 2 people would like to have the orange, what do you do? Compromise would be to cut the orange into half, But that means none of the 2 gets what he or she wants to have. Only 50%. This is a compromise.

It works in many fields. It works when you there is a salary discussion between the companies and the unions, but it doesn't work for, for instance, for political conflicts. I think compromises is just a compromise. Now a real real result can be found if you ask the people, why, why do you want to have the orange? What would you like to do with the orange? And then one would say, this is more or less simple, naive. I want to eat the fruit. The other might say, ah, there is some oil in the skin.

I want to have the oil out of the skin. And suddenly, you have an an a solution which gives both 100% of what they want to have. Now in reality, in many cases, this you will not find this clear 100% solution. But asking first, what is your intention? What would you like to have? And then look for a solution is better than just to to say, do you want to have the orange? I don't know whether I was clear what I meant. No. No. No. Actually, I'm laughing, Yohan.

I'm laughing because there are so many parallels for certain things that I do that mirror what you do, and we've never written that. For example, one of the challenges having worked with the CEOs of, you know, companies like Mereskin, Infosys, and Wipro, is I will say the the most powerful tool in your arsenal is asking the right question. It's easier to give an answer.

Yeah. But if you can find the right question, if you can really dig and ask the right one and use the first one was, do you would you want an orange? Well, yeah, of course, I do. So everybody wants, but that's not the right question. Exactly. Spend enough time on the question, the answers appear. And so come to the right question. That's the point. Yeah. You you you you're you're using some of the terminology, and I I think you know I wrote a small book, paid to think.

And in there, I talk about the power of the question, and it's not a philosophical book. There's a lot of tools, but one of them is you have to ask and learn to ask the correct answer. So I love that you did this, and it makes perfect sense. You found the answer in their answers. Yes. And for the airport, there was a solution What? Because the people, the communities, they wanted to have silent nights. And the the the, the airliners, they wanted to have more opportunities to fly.

So what we did is we built a new runway and a night flight ban for the whole airport. And you have something like the orange. Again, it's not it's not 100%, but close enough, much better than a compromise to build only half a runway. Yeah? It's it's a perfect solution because everybody can go home. I don't wanna use this term, but it's the only one that comes to mind, winning. Yeah. They went home with what they wanted.

And in the end, it doesn't matter when individuals will say, well, I do this for the community. Well, the reality is is you still are doing it for yourself, and that answers the question you have or the thirst you have to do something not for yourself, but for community. So you're still answering the same question, but you're defining it as, no. It's all about community. Well, really, you made this choice because for you, you're answering your own question.

How do I fulfill my you my my being, my nest, my person? So perfect. I I love it. And the example you gave is fabulous. So what about then, I think, where the how? Yeah. So the the the how and the who the how and the who is very, very important. So we have the why. Now the next point is the what and the how. So what are we doing and how are we doing it? So let's, say, okay. We want So wait. Wait. Wait. You have a what in there now?

Yeah. The the the what why the what and the how is is for me more or less very, very, very close at least. Very close. Well, I'm just I'm again, I think you I think I told you I take notes. So so we have a what. We're gonna we're gonna answer what and how. Yes. So what and how. So if you learn now, if you why, if you answered your why question, let's say, I want to really, to understand, the climate situation. And this is the point, the reason I'm doing some space activities.

Then, of course, the what what and how comes immediately. You say, okay. We put some satellites in orbit, which can measure the, the methane or the sea level rise or whatever. And the the how is an more a trivial answer to that. So in this case, the what and how is rather simple. Now, if you look to other areas, for instance, through geopolitical points, then, the what and the how is, again, it's linked, but it, you can say, I want to have astronauts in space.

That would be the what and the how would be that we put them together with different nations. So therefore, the what and how is really very close. And, yeah, that's that's the point. So the what and the how, is for me that what is normally done in all these agencies and etcetera. But for me, the the why has to be answered first. Yeah. You you had tossed out the 25 year mark. And, again, I won't go into it, but I actually use 25 years all the time.

The 20 the how to get to the 25, meaning and let me let me give you a scenario. It might not be right, the condition.

A conflict between agencies, conflicts between countries that are happening at the moment, discrepancies on what the future should be in terms of low earth orbit, medium earth orbit, high earth orbit, how many satellites, the should you have this, this these systems being created with tens of thousands of satellites, the robots taking satellites and throwing them into further orbits. So you have those conflicts.

You have the political conflicts that are happening on the ground between individuals. There's currency. There's sea level water rise that's happening that could could alter a lot of these or whether it could changes that are happening. There's a lot of these things going on. So if you were to get the how in 25 years to this new future, which is you the title is an unknown future where we can thrive. How do we get from here?

And you probably have a lot of other things going on in your head that are going on. How do you get from here to there? Through personal responsibility and ethics. I don't trust rules as a major instrument to, to regulate. I know that they, that they are there. Yes. And yes. But to be very blunt without, even without a law, I would never kill another person. I don't need the law for bidding me to kill somebody.

And this means for the how I hope that we will see in the future that this massive ideas of having constellations with 10 thousands of satellite without at the same time solving the issue of space debris, This should not be, realized. So we need for the how in that respect, also ethics and moral and responsibility to avoid that we have really too much debris in space. This is my personal naive positions. I do accept if, politicians come up with a regulation for that.

But I'm, I'm not so sure that they will be fast enough because, mass, the masks and the Bezos, and now also Europe, they want to have, constellations with thousands of satellites. And you know, that we had already, accidents in space uranium and cosmos. We had a nearby accident between, Starlink and ESA satellite, Aelos. So, therefore we have to avoid that.

We are really coming to what is called the Kessler syndrome that we have so much so many debris particles in space that there is no no life, no good life for satellites any longer. So therefore Yeah. How do you get so your personal responsibility, like, is one issue or one topic. Yep. And yet there are people who will kill people, and there will be people who will maim people, and there will be people who put people in slavery. So we have to include them as the human species. Unfortunately.

Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. And, Marie Bajah, when we were starting our conversation to do an interview, he was talking about space debris, and maybe I'm naive. I said, I I don't I don't wanna do a talk on space debris. And like I did with you, we talked, we talked, we talked, we talked, we talked, we talked, and we called it space environmentalism. With even space environmentalism as the topic, We're still going in that direction.

We're still headed, you know, 200 kilometers per hour smack into exactly what you're saying would happen. But I I have the feeling that the the world is changing in a positive way in that direction. So there is now more paying more attention to this, especially in Europe. The space debris discussion is very strong. We see a lot of startups looking to this area.

So, that means for instance, there's a small company, a startup, which is creating artificial intelligence to avoid collisions of satellites in space from Portugal. There's there are companies now building up, capabilities of, removal of, satellites or in orbit servicing. Like in Japan, I know a company which did already some tests in that direction. So I've read about them too. Yes. Yeah. So we really see that this is going forward And this is good.

Now for me, the situation of future should be that whenever a satellite is launched, one of 3, conditions have to be fulfilled. 1 of 3. Number 1 is they have onboard an automatic deorbiting system, which is independent of the major of the main, space main satellite operation. So totally independent operation which which allows the orbiting, if either after lifetime or if there's any problem with the satellite.

Number 1. Number 2, that they have a contract with a company which guarantees that in case that the satellite is not any longer operating securely, that this company will bring down the satellite. That they show that they have this contact. And number 3 is, something like we have with bottles and stuff like that.

A deposit to give a deposit to an agency or to another trustful organization that in case the satellite is not brought down after operation that the deposit can be used and this not must not be a deposit in cash, but a guarantee that then this money is used to, to bring it down. So I believe this should be the basis for future and this should be always also in public discussed because you're right without a regulation, it might be difficult.

But to get a a global regulation for that is also difficult. So maybe Yeah. That that's that's where I'm going. My head is saying we can't agree on small things. There's we can't agree on fishing rights. We can't agree on land rights. We can't agree on what's happening in the deforestation of the rainforest or the doomsday cliff and what's happening and will the impact of sea level water rise. We can't agree on any of these topics globally. Why should we why should we yeah.

Why should we agree here? I can tell you that many companies which are now launching satellites, if you ask them, especially if you ask them in public, they will react and tell you that they have, done something in order to avoid, to create new space debris. This is already already something which did not happen 10 years ago. So it's, it's right. Even Elon Musk is saying all his satellites have the possibility to to, secure the deorbiting. So he is saying that already, which is good.

And so we have to have good examples to make it, available for Orca. I think I I love it, yet there's a simplicity to this. If in fact, you there there is no standard and you have multiple countries doing the this type of work with different individuals, like I said, who see the their see the number of eyelids. They see the world differently, and their conclusion is we're just adding another 15,000, and we don't have the same money, so we're gonna skimp on this.

Yeah. All you need, at least in my knowledge of this, you would know a far more than I, would. All you need is one satellite to smack into another satellite, and you need to have one of them happen every few weeks, and we create a disaster zone around Earth. That's right. And, therefore, we have to fight against it. I I didn't we have when I was the DG of ESA, I defined, space debris removal mission. And this one is will be realized, I think, in 2 years' time.

It takes a little bit longer than I wanted, but, again, that's not the point. So the interesting thing was, this, mission, the idea of a small start startup was because we we opened them. We told them you can take whatever you like in space, which is owned by ESA, and you bring it down. Please select one part. And, you know, we have in Europe, we have the Vega launcher and we have the Ariana launcher.

The Vega launcher is a smaller launcher, and sometimes the Vega launcher brings 2 satellite at once in space. Okay. Between the 2 satellites, there is an adapter called Vespa, not like the Italian, motorbike. So it's Vespa. It's it's this adapter for Vega. Now, their idea was because from previous, Vega launches, there are some Vespas flying around the earth. So their idea was to bring down one of these Vespas. And we said fine, and they gave us a price tag for that.

And we said we were all lucky and happy and very nice. We have a good solution. We are we can be lucky. Now then I looked in detail into this mission, which they are planning, and what they were planning was that it should be launched by a Viga launcher as a secondary payload. That means 2 spacecraft on the same Viga launcher Yeah. Of course, with a Vespa in between. So they would launch in order to get 1 Vespa down.

At the same time, they would they would bring 1 Vespa up, which is not really convincing. And therefore, I said, we will not pay you for that mission because you are not reducing the space debris, and that was the target. So what is done right now that they have they will do it. They will bring down a Vespa which is in space already. And for the Vespa which is on board of this flight, they will have an automatic independent, deorbiting propulsion system.

So with this single launch, we will have space debris removal, space debris, avoidance. And by the way, it's also it's a way where ESA is a is just a customer. We'll also have a shift of paradigm concerning the contract. So one can do it in space agencies. We come back to the question we had at the beginning. Yeah. Space agencies can be a front runner or supporter of those types of ideas.

And next time, it will be another company which will provide the same thing because they know this is something which is good. I I love the idea, yet I think you in a few times we've spoken, you probably know my mind is racing, and I'm saying, okay. Well, we're bringing on new space agencies, whether it be our friend Val who just did the last podcast. And then he brilliant podcast, and and they have 230 people working in their environment.

Then you've got the Indian Space Agency, and you've gotten Japan, and all of these have their own whys. All of them have their own hows. And the coordination between them, I'd like to be optimistic. Yet I it's hard for me to say that this will be a ubiquitous, a very normalized way of doing business. I think they'll always be rogues. Yes. And that rogue makes it a challenge. But if it would be easy, I would never I would never try to work in this area. It's I think it's it's hard.

You know, it's, again, it's on f Kennedy. It's it's very hard. So so let me let's take it a little further because we could talk about satellite. In 25 years, and not to be a futurist, what do you as a pragmatic person and we're still on the how and the what, so I'm trying to figure this out. What would be the end in 25 years? What do you see, and how do we get there? I believe that we will see this space debris avoidance much faster.

Within 25 years, I will I I strongly believe that we will have also some new ideas how to remove debris. I mean, to remove satellites, the technology is more or less, close to be realized, but we don't have good solutions for the smaller parts for smaller particles. So I believe that within the next 25 years, we will have also a clear space debris removal concepts.

And I hope that we will have, in this very special geography, and I take your term again, that we will see the, circular economy and recycling also taking place in this geography, not only on the surface of the earth, but also in space. Because many of the things we have over there are still, well, they still, have a big value of financial value. So so so what In orbit in orbit servicing, in orbit recycling, I hope that this is something we will see.

You so we're talking about robotics taking satellites, reusing them Right. Or reusing parts or doing sub sub, a, low earth orbit manufacturing of satellites using pieces. It also leads itself to the other side, which is the apprehension, destruction, and all the other parts that could happen, not trying to always be negative. But there that same technology could be used on the No. No. On the what was that just recently? And I don't know how true this is because I don't But I yeah.

Yeah. Anti sat anti ASAT, that that was that happened. All the big countries did ASAT, right, experiments. And I don't understand if I would be the politician in one of these countries, I would never give a single euro, a single dollar, a single ruble for, for developing a robot to destroy a satellite. Why not? Because you see, I'm a civil engineer. A small piece of concrete is enough to destroy a satellite. I don't, I don't need a robot for that. Not at all.

So therefore, I don't see the danger that a robotic spacecraft is used for destructive purposes because that's, that's, that's not necessary. If you want to be destructive in space, take a, take a ball of concrete and just eat it. That's all. It's excellent. But this, so it says the military use of this geography is of course, an issue, and I hope that, this will not really go to Star Wars.

We have, there are people who call me about Project Moon Hut, and I've had these conversations because we do not address. We we do not approach military or agencies or governments in that way. And, wow, these individuals have thoughts about how, you have to have a full military within the moon earth ecosystem. You have to have military on the moon. We have to make sure that they're military. There's military. That's how that's what's kept us safe. There's the argument, not just from Americans.

These are from people all over the world. While the seas have been safe because the Americans have been able to keep the seas safe, but we beyond Earth is not gonna be that way, and we have to have strong military up there. And there are a lot of people who believe this. Yeah. But, 1,000,000 of flies, eat shit, and is it the right way? Yeah. No. You cannot you cannot argue just because many believes the same or many, do the same that this is right.

So therefore okay, therefore, I believe this this is just wrong. We don't believe in I don't believe in it either, and I also have a a a re recent observation I had made about what you're talking about to some degree. I read the book Steven Jobs by Isaac man Isaac son. Isaac man? Isaac son. And you'd have this company. There's only 5, 6 people in it called Apple, and they took on companies like IBM. And everybody said they wouldn't be able to succeed. They wouldn't be able to win.

And IBM now has about 270, 300,000 employees. I mean, they're not a small company, and they they're involved in a lot of activities. But when was the last time you used the letters IBM, and when was it the last time you said Apple? That these small little startups, these thoughts transition into some can transition into something large. And that's why I I wanted you on the program. I wanted to talk to you. Actually, it was not the program.

It was just talking, is to hear how you we take it from where we are today and not do what happened in 1969, 70, 71 where everybody said, we're gonna make it. It's gonna happen. This is the world. We are going to be living on the moon. We're gonna be living on Mars, and every this this beyond Earth ecosystem was beside itself. This was it. And I spoke in Luxembourg on the 50th anniversary to this space organization. They expected 500 people to show and about 60 did.

And what's the say in 50 years we won't be in the same position? So I'm kind of this unknown future where we can thrive. How do we get from here to there talking politics, talking the challenges that we're facing on earth and being pragmatic, and then still make it? How? How do we get around the obstacles without just thinking it's all gonna happen serendipitous by itself? It's going to happen randomly. This will just happen. How do you how do you do that?

Yeah. The keyword is of call of course, leadership. But behind leadership is not the understanding of hierarchy and, leading by power, but leading by contents. So that's my my clear I'm convinced about that. Also, my experience is sometimes a different one. So I see that politicians, can decide just by their formal power and not by their personal, knowledge.

This makes my me a little bit dizzy sometimes, but I still believe that good arguments, good, rational, and as we said earlier, at the same time, a good narrative will can lead to a really a good future. Is do you see it out there right now? If if I would answer no right now, then I should, commit suicide immediately because my whole life was going like that. And I did everything wrong in my life. If I say, no to request, I believe it is possible. Not always 100%.

Sometimes it takes a little bit longer. But, at the same time, it is very much satisfying if you can, succeed, by, rational and by, narrative that you can really then realize something which was not done before. And for instance, this mission, I told you about space debris. When I started this, in ISA, I had a lot of people, enemies, even fighting against it, but the narrative international was convincing finally. So it's, it's possible like that.

And there I have some hope, not only some of them. I have a big big hope that we can go like that. I I have hope. That's what that's what we wake up every day and do. So I was looking to yours. So the who, because that kind of ties into this. Yep. Who's gonna do this? Or how you Who is What is your who? The the who is, the has several, several levels. First of all, all these moral things and ethical things, which we discussed, of course, the who is done by the people who are the good people.

So to say the good guys. And the other thing is, in space, I'm really convinced that the WHO should be always the human kind, not just an American or a German or a Japanese, but humankind. So, my hope is that we come to a situation that the WHO is really done together, is performed together. This does not mean that all missions and everything has to be done in cooperation. But if you look to my idea of the Moon Village, then we come really to the WHO.

The Moon Village was first when I decided it or when I proposed it very beginning, I said we should have a multi partner open concept on the moon. Multi partner open concept sounds very complicated. It's not complicated. That means many partners should look to have some joint activities on a very special place, and this is the moon. So it's not a plan. It's not a project. It's an overarching concept.

And, so maybe different countries, different organizations, different companies have different capabilities, and they bring their capabilities together in a joint activity, in a joint concept, not in a joint program or plan. And then a journalist told me, mister Werner, it sounds, rational behind it. I see the rational, but there is no good narrative. You have to have a narrative and the narrative is, the moon village because a village is especially is exactly what it should be.

So in a village, different players come together. Maybe somebody who is, wants to have wants to create a restaurant as an engineering office, another one, maybe an undertaker. I don't know. So, by having these different competences together, this is number 1, which is a part of a village. And the other hard thing is to look for a special location, and the location is a moon.

So moon village is not, something which people misunderstood that I want to send all humans to the moon, colonization of moon. That's not the case. So it is multipartner open concept, and I I would think the Moon Village shows as an example what I mean with who. How is the Moon Village moving forward? Very much. Because what we saw in the past, the last years, that whenever there was some activity of a country, it was openly, communicated.

Now you could see, for instance, with the with the NASA, the the activities with SLS and also, with the outpost close to the moon, we see that this idea of having, something together, it's not only NADA, it's the Europeans, it's Canada, Japan, etcetera. So we are very close to this idea. It's not as open as I hoped. So for instance, China and India are not directly part, of this story, but it's close enough. Are you still actively engaged involved in it?

What do you mean with In the Moon Village because I I I I haven't I know of several people who are on the advisory or the committee. There is there is an there is an there is now a a Moon Village Association, which formed on this idea, and I'm very happy that it was formed. And I don't have to be the master of that, that activity. And I'm very I I do know, if you go down the list, there's some of the people I think we've interviewed on this podcast.

Several of the people we've had, Mankins and there's quite a few. Which is good. Which is good. So this Moon Village idea has already, sucks its success. So it's not any longer a vision of the future. It is already real reality from my point of view because people are coming together. The Moon Village Association is one example. This is more the the soft part of the example, but also the hard part is the gateway.

And, these activities, these are the the hard facts, which, really realizes the the multi partner open concept. Again, it's an open concept. It's not a closed door. That's that's different. It's not only just one mission or so. I have to look back when I met, and I actually can do that right now because I met Charlie Bolden at a it's called Renaissance weekend. And I met him when he spoke about this gateway and the concept that they were looking at.

And I met Charlie back in oh, wasn't that long ago. Charlie Bolden. Oh, that's his group. He was at NASA at that time. I met him back in 2016, That's when I first heard about this concept that he had thrown some slides up saying this is where he was gonna go. So, yes, there's, there are there are some activities there. Yeah. And the gateway is now now the next step is, of course, to go down to the surface of the moon.

This is just, again, a small step for manna, giant leap for mankind, but it's not that important whether it's in the by in the close to the moon or whether it's on the surface of the moon, whether it's with robotics or with astronauts. It doesn't make that big difference. The idea is it should be multipartner. Many partners from different from different origin, companies, public organizations, blah blah blah. And, it should be an open situation and not a closed shop.

This is the that part is still difficult. When I you know, when the Augustin Commission was formed under Barack Obama to discuss about the future of ISS, they interviewed me, and they asked me, what about your idea about the future of ISS? And this was and I asked I answered it with the who question. I said, well, let's open the hatches. I know not to the, you know what I mean? Let's open the hatches for India and China. And they immediately said it was a telephone interview.

Maybe the connection was wrong. Can you repeat, please? And I said, yes. India and China. And I said that also in public in public events frequently when we had, at the IAF, the IAC discussions with the heads of agencies. I always said the Chinese were there and the American, they said, let's work together. It's there is no reason not to work together on the ISS.

But There is there is coming into Project Moon Hut, I didn't know anything about the fact that how how many things the Russians did first. I mean, it's it's absolutely incredible. And when the space shuttle was decommissioned, how did everybody get to the International Space Station? They got up through the Russian Soyuz. Yes. So there there's so much collaboration going on in the background, yet the world doesn't I'm not gonna say the world. That's a bad way to say it.

I would say that the information of how we've existed and how we've been able to thrive has not gotten out there. The messaging has just not been complete. And going back to my comment, which I there are 1,400,000,000 Chinese. I have worked in Asia for years. They are great people. Yes. Be careful of how we define. So what we've done, Jan, which is a little bit different, is we don't go after those. We go after individuals and organizations, and they come on board.

They start there's a individual just yesterday. He's out of Luxembourg. We're setting up an office in Luxembourg, and this guy works for a company called GQT. They're a fund management business, and he said, I'm in. I wanna participate. And we've got people in Japan, and we've got people I don't know if we have anybody in India. We have people in Hong Kong. We have people in the UK. We have people in South Africa.

And we we're we're just looking at it as people instead of organizations or companies. And when you get the people and you get the right people, you expand even your Kiara. The the the next interview, I think she's next. Kiara, thank you for for introducing me to her, but I will never forget you. She is excellent. Well, you when I asked you if there's anybody else to be interviewed, I think you you said it in in just a few words.

Yep. You said I want to introduce you to the, the not the smartest. You said now I'm not it's escaping me. The, yeah, the brightest person I know. Yep. Those were your words. And Yep. I I mean, wow. Now Kiara and I have had maybe 3 conversations. We're we're looking that's when you bring the people together.

If you go after the companies, the company if you go after the people first, the network, second, organizations, and then capital third, you get amazing people, and we're we're collecting them on our team. So you you were very thankful very helpful in that respect. So thank you for that introduction. No. No. That was, it's very logic for me.

Well, you know, when you ask a question like that, anybody you could have said, well, you should interview this person and this person and this person, but you did you could you know enough to give 10 people, but you didn't. You said the one the person you should have talked to is Kiara. She is the brightest person I know. Yeah. And I that's that says a lot. So going back to this unknown future, we can end with some type of thing here, the the unknown future where we can thrive.

What is your what's your Okay. I will tell you something in that direction. I'm using this quote from Antoine frequently. And I believe really this is the best word also for the end of our discussion today, David, because yes, we can have visions. We can have ideas. We can try to realize something here and there. But if you look back in history, when people discussed, in the sixties of last century about the future of cities, It did not realize like that.

It is not that we are going in, in, 4 dimensions through our cities of different levels. It's not, there were other things which were not, not foreseen. And so therefore, I'm always using this very simple quote of Saint Exupery. And I think this is really the fundamental understanding of me as a person, what I did in my past, what I'm trying to do in, right now. It is one should not want to predict the future, but to make it possible. Can't fix yesterday. You can only create tomorrow.

Absolutely. Absolutely. This has been fantastic, John. I I appreciate you coming on the program, and I appreciate you taking the time to think about what you would be sharing with us today. So, I wanna thank everybody else out there who's taking the time out of your day to listen in, and I do hope that you've learned something today that will make a difference in your life and the lives of others.

Again, the Project Moon Hat Foundation is where we look to establish a box with a roof and a door on the moon through the accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem, then to take the endeavor, the paradigm shifting thinking, and the innovations in turning back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. Never said this before, but maybe I should have. You go to www.projectmoonhut.org. In the top right hand corner, there are 3 videos.

We always suggest that people watch video 1 and video 3, and you'll get a better understanding of what we're working on. So, Jan, what is the single best way for people to get a hold of you? What do you mean? To get If they wanted to connect with you, they wanted to email you, how would they They can email me. They can email me. That's very simple. It's Werner, w o e r n e r, at acatech.de. That's simple. But I'm also in the in the, the telephone register, so no problem.

I'm I'm a transparent person, so it's easy to get me. Well, I definitely appreciate you being on. If you're looking to connect with me, you can reach me at [email protected]. You can connect to us on Twitter at project moon hut or directly to me at atgoldsmith. You have we are on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook. We're on Instagram, so you can catch us on those as at least platforms. We don't put a lot of information out. We're we're doing the work in the background.

And that said, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening.