- The first human may step foot on Mars in the 2030s
- The first starships could be small computer chips fired by laser beams, reaching nearby stars in 20 years
- Fusion power from seawater could provide unlimited energy without meltdowns or nuclear waste
- Mastering fusion power is a key step towards becoming a type 1 civilization
- Colonizing Mars is important as an insurance policy for the survival of the human species
- Terraforming Mars by raising its temperature by 6 degrees could melt the polar ice caps and create liquid water again
- Using solar satellites to beam sunlight onto the polar ice caps is a potential method for terraforming Mars

This is a clip from a conversation with Michio Kaku from Oct 2019. New full episodes once or twice a week and 1-2 new clips or a new non-podcast video on all other days. You can watch the full conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD5yc1LQrpQ
(more links below)

Podcast full episodes playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4

Podcasts clips playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

Podcast website:
https://lexfridman.com/ai

Podcast on Apple Podcasts (iTunes):
https://apple.co/2lwqZIr

Podcast on Spotify:
https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8

Podcast RSS:
https://lexfridman.com/category/ai/feed/

Note: I select clips with insights from these much longer conversation with the hope of helping make these ideas more accessible and discoverable. Ultimately, this podcast is a small side hobby for me with the goal of sharing and discussing ideas. For now, I post a few clips every Tue & Fri. I did a poll and 92% of people either liked or loved the posting of daily clips, 2% were indifferent, and 6% hated it, some suggesting that I post them on a separate YouTube channel. I hear the 6% and partially agree, so am torn about the whole thing. I tried creating a separate clips channel but the YouTube algorithm makes it very difficult for that channel to grow unless the main channel is already very popular. So for a little while, I'll keep posting clips on the main channel. I ask for your patience and to see these clips as supporting the dissemination of knowledge contained in nuanced discussion. If you enjoy it, consider subscribing, sharing, and commenting.

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, futurist, and professor at the City College of New York. He is the author of many fascinating books on the nature of our reality and the future of our civilization.

Subscribe to this YouTube channel or connect on:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman
- Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman
- Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

When do you think the first human will step foot on Mars?

I think it's a good chance in the 2030s that we will be on Mars.

In fact, there's no physics reason why we can't do it.

It's a very difficult and dangerous engineering problem, but it is an engineering problem.

And in my book, Future of Humanity, I even speculate beyond that, that by the end of the century, we'll probably have the first starships.

The first starships will not look like the Enterprise at all.

There'll probably be small computer chips that are fired by laser beams with parachutes.

And like what Stephen Hawking advocated, the breakthrough Starshot program could send ships, ships to the nearby stars, traveling at 20% the speed of light, reaching Alpha Centauri in about 20 years time.

Beyond that, we should have fusion power.

Fusion power is, in some sense, 1 of the ultimate sources of energy, but it's unstable.

First of all, stars form almost for free.

You get a bunch of gas, large enough, it becomes a star.

I mean, you don't even have to do anything to it, and it becomes a star.

Why is fusion so difficult to put on the earth?

Because in outer space, stars are monopoles.

They are poles, single poles, that are spherically symmetric, And it's very easy to get spherically symmetric configurations of gas to compress into a star.

And it's Like trying to squeeze a long balloon.

Take a long balloon and try to squeeze it.

You squeeze 1 side, it bulges out the other side.

Well that's the problem with fusion machines.

We use magnetism with the North Pole and the South Pole to squeeze gas, And all sorts of anomalies and horrible configurations can take place because we're not squeezing something Uniformly like in a star stars in some sense are for free Fusion on the earth is very difficult But I think it's inevitable and it'll eventually give us unlimited power from seawater.

So seawater will be the ultimate source of energy for the planet Earth.

Because we'll extract hydrogen from seawater, burn hydrogen in the fission reactor to give us unlimited energy without the meltdown, without the nuclear waste.

We have meltdowns because in the fission reactors, every time you split the uranium atom, you get nuclear waste, tons of it, 30 tons of nuclear waste per reactor per year.

It's hot for thousands, millions of years.

But you see, the waste product of a fusion reactor is helium gas.

Helium gas is actually commercially valuable.

And so the waste product of a fusion reactor is helium, not nuclear waste that we find in a commercial fission plant.

And that controlling, mastering and controlling fusion allows us to, converts us into a type 1, I guess, civilization, right?

Yeah, probably the backbone of a type 1 civilization will be fusion power.

We get our energy from dead plants, for God's sake, oil and coal.

But we are about 100 years from being type 1.

In fact, Carl Sagan calculated that we are about 0.7, fairly close to a 1.0.

The internet is the beginning of the first type 1 technology to enter into our century.

The first planetary technology is the internet.

On the internet already, English and Mandarin Chinese are the most dominant languages on the internet.

We're seeing a Type 1 sports, soccer, the Olympics, a type 1 music, youth culture, rock and roll, rap music, type 1 fashion, Gucci, Chanel, a type 1 economy, the European Union, NAFTA, what have you.

So we're beginning to see the beginnings of a type 1 culture

And inevitably it will spread beyond this planet.

So you talked about sending at 20% the speed of light on a chip into Alpha Centauri, but in a slightly nearer term, what do you think about the idea when we still have to send our biological bodies, the colonization of planets, colonization of Mars?

Do you see us becoming a 2 planet species ever or anytime soon?

Well, just remember the dinosaurs did not have a space program.

How come there are no dinosaurs in this room today?

Because they didn't have a space program.

We do have a space program, which means that we have an insurance policy.

Now I don't think we should bankrupt the Earth or deplete the Earth to go to Mars.

A settlement on Mars in case something bad happens to the planet Earth.

And that means we have to terraform Mars.

Now to terraform Mars, if we could raise the temperature of Mars by 6 degrees, 6 degrees, Then the polar ice caps begin to melt, releasing water vapor.

It causes even more melting of the ice caps.

So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And so once you hit 6 degrees, rising of the temperature on Mars by 6 degrees, it takes off.

And we melt the polar ice gaps And liquid water once again flows in the rivers, the canals, the channels, and the oceans of Mars.

Mars once had an ocean, we think, about the size of the United States.

How do we raise the temperature of Mars by 6 degrees?

Elon Musk would like to detonate hydrogen warheads on the polar ice caps.

Well, I'm not sure about that because we don't know that much about the effects of detonating hydrogen warheads to melt the polar ice caps.

And who wants to glow in the dark at night reading the newspaper?

So I think there are other ways to do it with solar satellites.

You can have satellites orbiting Mars that beam sunlight onto the polar ice caps, melting the polar ice caps.

Mars has plenty of water, it's just frozen.


Speaker 0: When do you think the first human will step foot on Mars?

Speaker 1: I think it's a good chance in the 2030s that we will be on Mars. In fact, there's no physics reason why we can't do it. It's an engineering problem. It's a very difficult and dangerous engineering problem, but it is an engineering problem. And in my book, Future of Humanity, I even speculate beyond that, that by the end of the century, we'll probably have the first starships.

The first starships will not look like the Enterprise at all. There'll probably be small computer chips that are fired by laser beams with parachutes. And like what Stephen Hawking advocated, the breakthrough Starshot program could send ships, ships to the nearby stars, traveling at 20% the speed of light, reaching Alpha Centauri in about 20 years time. Beyond that, we should have fusion power. Fusion power is, in some sense, 1 of the ultimate sources of energy, but it's unstable.

And we don't have fusion power today. Now, why is that? First of all, stars form almost for free. You get a bunch of gas, large enough, it becomes a star. I mean, you don't even have to do anything to it, and it becomes a star.

Why is fusion so difficult to put on the earth? Because in outer space, stars are monopoles. They are poles, single poles, that are spherically symmetric, And it's very easy to get spherically symmetric configurations of gas to compress into a star. It just happens naturally all by itself. The problem is magnetism is bipolar.

You have a North Pole and a South Pole. And it's Like trying to squeeze a long balloon. Take a long balloon and try to squeeze it. You squeeze 1 side, it bulges out the other side. Well that's the problem with fusion machines.

We use magnetism with the North Pole and the South Pole to squeeze gas, And all sorts of anomalies and horrible configurations can take place because we're not squeezing something Uniformly like in a star stars in some sense are for free Fusion on the earth is very difficult But I think it's inevitable and it'll eventually give us unlimited power from seawater. So seawater will be the ultimate source of energy for the planet Earth.

Speaker 0: Why? What's the intuition there?

Speaker 1: Because we'll extract hydrogen from seawater, burn hydrogen in the fission reactor to give us unlimited energy without the meltdown, without the nuclear waste. Why do we have meltdowns? We have meltdowns because in the fission reactors, every time you split the uranium atom, you get nuclear waste, tons of it, 30 tons of nuclear waste per reactor per year. And it's hot. It's hot for thousands, millions of years.

That's why we have meltdowns. But you see, the waste product of a fusion reactor is helium gas. Helium gas is actually commercially valuable. You can make money selling helium gas. And so the waste product of a fusion reactor is helium, not nuclear waste that we find in a commercial fission plant.

Speaker 0: And that controlling, mastering and controlling fusion allows us to, converts us into a type 1, I guess, civilization, right?

Speaker 1: Yeah, probably the backbone of a type 1 civilization will be fusion power. We, by the way, are type 0. We don't even rate on this scale. We get our energy from dead plants, for God's sake, oil and coal. But we are about 100 years from being type 1.

Get a calculator. In fact, Carl Sagan calculated that we are about 0.7, fairly close to a 1.0. For example, what is the internet? The internet is the beginning of the first type 1 technology to enter into our century. The first planetary technology is the internet.

What is the language of Type 1? On the internet already, English and Mandarin Chinese are the most dominant languages on the internet. And what about the culture? We're seeing a Type 1 sports, soccer, the Olympics, a type 1 music, youth culture, rock and roll, rap music, type 1 fashion, Gucci, Chanel, a type 1 economy, the European Union, NAFTA, what have you. So we're beginning to see the beginnings of a type 1 culture

Speaker 0: and a type 1 civilization. And inevitably it will spread beyond this planet. So you talked about sending at 20% the speed of light on a chip into Alpha Centauri, but in a slightly nearer term, what do you think about the idea when we still have to send our biological bodies, the colonization of planets, colonization of Mars? Do you see us becoming a 2 planet species ever or anytime soon?

Speaker 1: Well, just remember the dinosaurs did not have a space program. And that's why they're not here today. How come there are no dinosaurs in this room today? Because they didn't have a space program. We do have a space program, which means that we have an insurance policy.

Now I don't think we should bankrupt the Earth or deplete the Earth to go to Mars. That's too expensive and not practical. But we need a settlement. A settlement on Mars in case something bad happens to the planet Earth. And that means we have to terraform Mars.

Now to terraform Mars, if we could raise the temperature of Mars by 6 degrees, 6 degrees, Then the polar ice caps begin to melt, releasing water vapor. Water vapor is the greenhouse gas. It causes even more melting of the ice caps. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It feeds on itself.

It becomes autocatalytic. And so once you hit 6 degrees, rising of the temperature on Mars by 6 degrees, it takes off. And we melt the polar ice gaps And liquid water once again flows in the rivers, the canals, the channels, and the oceans of Mars. Mars once had an ocean, we think, about the size of the United States. And so that is a possibility.

Now How do we get there? How do we raise the temperature of Mars by 6 degrees? Elon Musk would like to detonate hydrogen warheads on the polar ice caps.

Speaker 0: Yes.

Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure about that because we don't know that much about the effects of detonating hydrogen warheads to melt the polar ice caps. And who wants to glow in the dark at night reading the newspaper? So I think there are other ways to do it with solar satellites. You can have satellites orbiting Mars that beam sunlight onto the polar ice caps, melting the polar ice caps. Mars has plenty of water, it's just frozen.

See all Lex Fridman transcripts on Youtube

Michio Kaku: Space Travel and Colonization of Mars | AI Podcast Clips