The 21st Century Race For Space

Just a few hundred humans have witnessed this view.

Launch.

But there's promise of a new age of space travel.

For almost two decades, there's been a continuous human presence

on the International Space Station.

-Initiating to capture.

-Standing by.

Today, there are over 1,400 satellites in orbit

and more than 30 probes exploring

the outer reaches of the solar system.

Have you ever seen anything so sexy?

And now private companies,

set up by some of the world's most successful billionaires,

promise to dramatically open up space.

They want to send us there as tourists...

It was paradise!

..launch our heavy industry into orbit...

Our environment is not just the Earth.

Our environment is the solar system.

..and even send some of us to colonise another planet.

It is a step towards a space-faring civilisation.

It'll come as no surprise

for me to say I am a supporter of space flight.

I think it's the most wonderful, romantic endeavour.

I'm in the Martian groove!

So I'm excited by the prospect

of us becoming a space-faring civilisation.

A rocket factory...

But are these plans really possible now?

And if we are now embracing the final frontier,

what does this mean for the future of humanity?

..two, one, zero.

Going to space for pleasure might sound implausible.

But of the 550 or so humans that have left the Earth,

a few have bought a ride as space tourists.

With private companies now promising to send many more of us to space,

what will the experience be like?

We are on the way to...

..I think the most famous space tourist in the world.

Because he was the first space tourist in the world.

How are you? How are you, Dennis?

It was paradise!

In 2001, Dennis Tito paid Russia's space agency 20 million

to fly into the International Space Station

and spent eight days orbiting the Earth.

I mean, really, I think, actually, calling him a space tourist

is not doing him justice. I mean, that's an astronaut.

Wow, that's a nice house, isn't it?

DOORBELL RINGS

-Hi, Brian.

-Hello.

-My wife, Elizabeth.

-A pleasure to meet you, Brian.

-Very nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you, as well.

-Let's show you around.

Thank you very much.

This is the...

the drawing room.

As you may have noticed, it's a very English-style house.

Two-level library.

How many space tourists have their been?

-There have been seven in total.

-Seven?

And one person went twice.

The last person, he flew in 2009, and no-one has flown since.

Like all astronauts visiting the Space Station today,

the seven multimillionaire tourists

travelled on a Russian Soyuz rocket,

originally designed in the 1960s.

So this is the space room.

Yeah.

This is one of the suits I actually wore.

It's not a spacesuit, but it's more casual.

Do you like the term?

Cos several people have said they don't like the term space tourism.

They wish it had never been coined.

There's only one person I've ever known that likes it.

-And that's me.

-So you like the name?

Right.

But somehow, they don't like it. But I accept it.

I want to show you some of these pictures,

where you actually see the umbrella.

We put a little umbrella and a straw.

A fake drink, of course. We weren't drinking alcohol in space.

Having a lot of fun with the idea.

You don't hear much about this from the professional space flyers,

because they're professionals and they're astronauts and cosmonauts.

But the beauty of private space flight,

you can be goofy if you want to, and there's no-one to criticise you,

you're paying your own bill,

you're not having this trip on government money.

So there's a lot more freedom.

Which part of the experience was the most powerful?

Was it the views? Was it zero G? Was it the launch?

I spent 45 minutes, typically, every orbit,

which was a half an orbit, looking out the porthole.

And I would listen to opera

and I just never got bored looking out.

WOMAN SINGS OPERA MUSIC

It was just such an awesome experience

being off the planet

and being one of the privileged few humans to do this.

And it's never left me. I think of it every day.

Tito was able to spend tens of millions of dollars to get to space.

But there are plenty more who would like to go

if it were more affordable.

This commercial opportunity poses some important questions.

How do you feel about space tourism?

How do you feel about our resources,

intellectual, technical and physical,

being used initially to allow high-net-worth individuals

to travel into space and get a view of the Earth?

Is it really a stepping stone to the stars?

There's a place that's been leading the way in the development

of this more-affordable approach to space tourism.

Mojave is a dusty, little desert town two hours outside Los Angeles.

But it has a very special place in the history of aviation.

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in these skies back in the 1940s.

It doesn't feel like the kind of place

that should have a speed limit, does it?

Speed limit - Mach three!

The key to bringing the price of space down

is to develop a small-scale spaceship

that can be landed and reused over and over again.

Some of the early attempts here in the 1990s

might look more at home in the Wacky Races...

But then a local aircraft designer

came up with something he called SpaceShipOne -

a rocket-powered aeroplane designed to reach space.

His name is Burt Rutan.

-Ah!

-Hello.

-Burt.

-Brian.

-Morning. Hello, Brian.

I really want to order the Valkyrie because it's the best plane...

The XP-75's an amazing thing, but I don't want ham and two eggs.

A lot of people ask, why do we, the human race, want to fly into space?

Not fly an airliner, as everybody understands that,

but why do we want to push and push and push?

You know, I think it goes back...

all the way back to why we are different than the animals.

The animals live to survive.

Humans, on the other hand, live to explore...

..and to find out what's over that mountain.

You know, Columbus took off not knowing what was there.

Why aren't we out there,

wanting to go to the oceans on the moons of Saturn?

Rutan entered his SpaceShipOne into a contest called the X Prize,

which would award 10 million

to the first privately built, reusable spacecraft.

The start of space is usually defined

as an altitude of 100km.

Ten times higher than cruising airliners.

Reaching this frontier between the Earth's atmosphere

and the blackness of space,

but not completing a full revolution of the Earth,

is called suborbital flight.

It's well below orbital missions,

like the International Space Station,

which circles the Earth at 400km.

Test pilot Brian Binnie flew SpaceShipOne for the second flight

in its 2004 X Prize attempt.

To win, the craft had to prove its reusability

by reaching space twice in two weeks.

The rocket ride really wakes you up and the adrenaline starts flowing.

For each flight, SpaceShipOne was dropped in mid-air

from its mother ship and lit its rocket engine.

We start out, you know, "Hey, this is fun."

And there's fear.

But it comes back to fun again.

The spaceship blasted its way vertically upwards,

reaching an altitude of 102km on the first flight

and 112km on the second.

By far the best part of that whole experience

is when you shut that motor down.

It's as though you step across a line in an entirely new dimension

and this instant karma of weightlessness.

And it happens just like that.

And...you realise, at that point, you're in space.

And it's as though somebody's pulled back a stage curtain

for the benefit of your eyes only.

And you look up and there it is - this black void that is space.

Ah, it's a bit of a mystery.

It's a menace.

But you can also sense its majesty.

SpaceShipOne scooped the X Prize.

And Virgin entrepreneur Richard Branson

struck a licencing deal with Burt Rutan's company

to develop the design for a space tourism business.

How important was the X Prize?

Well, you know, governments haven't gotten us

space travel for the people.

They never tried to. They told us, but they never tried.

So I had this feeling that, once I did that,

once I took an average of, like, 35 people for three-and-a-half years

and did a manned space programme,

developed our own rocket motor,

we bought some components for it,

but we developed our own rocket motor,

my feeling was that, all of a sudden,

now everybody says, "Well, that is something that I can do."

We know what has to happen.

Suborbital space tourism must be, financially, extremely successful

because then it will spawn the competition for orbitals

and sending people to asteroids and Mars and so on.

Rutan's vision that we, as a species,

will extend our reach far into space is, for me, thrilling.

One of the companies developing suborbital tourism

as the first step towards this is Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.

Over 700 advance tickets to space have been sold

to what the company call their "future astronauts".

But it doesn't come cheap.

Currently, 250,000 a trip.

And the spaceship isn't ready yet for commercial operation.

We wanted to meet here to show you something pretty special.

We are preparing for a flight, as you know, on Thursday.

And we're pretty excited by that.

While they wait, future astronauts are invited to exclusive events

to see the spaceship's progress.

So, tonight, we're going to see what is inside,

behind these great, big hangar doors.

APPLAUSE

The evolution of Burt Rutan's design is called SpaceShipTwo.

Once released in mid-air from its large mother ship,

it will take up to six passengers on a suborbital flight

to an altitude of 110km.

Here, they will experience around four minutes of weightlessness

and be able to see the curvature of the Earth below

and the blackness of space above.

So, I'm going to pass out some champagne.

We'll have a toast to unity.

Thank you for being fantastic future astronauts,

for supporting us all the time and being wonderful.

-So, cheers!

-ALL:

-Cheers!

The early customers expected to fly to space back in 2010.

Hi, everyone. My name is Maureen Gannon.

I signed up to be a future astronaut, or just an astronaut,

in 2006, I believe,

before this one came along, so...

-Do you want to say anything?

-I love space!

-I love space!

-LAUGHTER

I'm Alan Mark.

I had no interest in space at all.

-Hi!

-LAUGHTER

And then I heard how fast this is going to go.

And that's what got me.

I love fast!

Fast!

-And when I heard how fast it was going, I said...

-LAUGHTER

The ticket holders aren't the only ones with a keen eye on progress.

Richard Branson has flown in overnight.

-Hi, Brian.

-Hi, Richard.

-Lovely to see you.

-How are you?

-Great.

-Do you want some toast?

-I'd love some toast, yeah!

We first met when I was filming in Madagascar,

and we share a passion for aviation.

He's here to see a test flight of SpaceShipTwo -

the latest in a long programme

to certify the craft for commercial use.

We try not to give dates

but, you know, we're hopeful that, by the end of the year,

we'll, um, finally be into space.

Morning! Morning, morning, morning, morning, morning!

It's already more than a decade

since SpaceShipOne first reached space.

And this timeframe may still be optimistic.

But the company employs 650 people

and has spent well over 600 million

trying to make commercial trips to space a reality.

Have you ever seen anything so sexy?

The pilot for SpaceShipTwo's test flight is Dave Mackay.

-All right, Brian, would you like to see the spaceship?

-I cannot wait!

OK, follow me.

Even the future astronauts aren't being allowed inside SpaceShipTwo,

as it's yet to be fitted out.

So, you're now in the captain's seat.

This is a manual flight-control vehicle.

So rods, cables, connecting the flight controls

to the actual surfaces on the wing.

-Can I turn it, or no?

-Yeah, sure.

So, if I go...

Oh, yeah, and of course it's very light at the moment

because...we're in a hangar!

-Yeah.

-And so, you just go down.

I can't tell you what a...

It's an experience.

Anybody who's watching this, who's an aviation geek,

will go, "Yeah, I just had to do that, didn't I?"

I had to do it! Thank you.

Two more spaceships are already being built on the site

to make up a fleet of three,

ready for use soon after testing is complete.

The design uses

the latest lightweight carbon-fibre composite materials.

-Should I do that?

-Yeah, go, go.

Ow!

It also needs to be incredibly strong

to cope with the stresses of space flights.

Windows are a potential weak point,

but space tourists are paying for the view.

So this is a window frame

that we haven't put into one of our new spacecraft yet.

So that's the main window, that's the size of it,

it's about 17 inches across.

Yeah, it's huge compared to an airliner window.

In a weightless environment,

you actually need to control where you are, relative to the window,

and hold yourself up to it,

so there will be a little finger-grab around the window.

You only need just a little bit, your first knuckle, almost,

to be able to get around.

And that's enough to hold yourself up against that window.

This SpaceShipTwo is in the finishing stage of its build.

But Virgin Galactic have been here before.

In 2010,

the aerospace company which designed and built the first SpaceShipTwo

began its test-flight programme.

It progressed from simple glide flights

to rocket-powered tests...

..and to raising the unique tail stabilisation system.

All was progressing well.

But during the last powered test,

on the 31st of October, 2014,

the control system allowed the co-pilot

to release the tail too early in the flight.

Within seconds, the spacecraft disintegrated.

The lead pilot was thrown clear of the cockpit

and managed to parachute to safety.

But the co-pilot was killed.

Our primary thoughts, at this moment,

are with the crew and family,

and we're doing everything we can, erm...

..for them now.

You know, I think a lot about, you know, the...

..that day, and to make sure that we learn as much as we can,

to make sure that our vehicle integrates the lessons from that,

so that it becomes a safer vehicle.

And this goes back through the history of aviation,

has made air flight or space flight safer, right?

And how do you make it safer?

You take that lesson and you integrate it into a future operation

and that's what we're trying to do.

Now, Virgin Galactic have taken over

day-to-day running of the entire project.

Over two years after the crash,

the new SpaceShipTwo is early in its flight-test programme.

Primed for today's flight,

only critical personnel are allowed near it.

There's no rocket engine attached yet,

so it won't blast its way into space.

Instead, Dave Mackay and his co-pilot

will assess how the craft handles

while on a glide from its mother ship back to Earth.

Virgin Galactic staff and their families have turned out to watch,

as the mother ship begins its climb to 50,000 feet.

-WOMAN:

-Oh, my gosh, she's already up!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Once its job is done,

the mother ship's pilots will fly back to base

to be reunited with the spaceship.

Do you have any nerves on these days?

Of course.

Because of what happened a couple of years ago,

I think, when you're going through a test programme,

it would be very strange not to have nerves.

And I'm sure that...

You know, I've just been up with all the families

and all their children, and they wouldn't be human

if they didn't have a little bit of some nerves.

Yeah, I'm nervous with them. But, er...

In the end, you can only test these things in the air

and see how they work.

The mother ship has reached the drop altitude,

and in SpaceShipTwo,

pilot Dave Mackay prepares to be released

for the glide back to Earth.

-MAN:

-Three, two, one...

-GASPING AND APPLAUSE

-There it goes!

Oh, there it is, yeah. I can see it.

SpaceShipTwo proves its gliding ability.

But the real test will be whether the rocket-powered flights,

due to start in a few months, can take it safely to space.

-Well done. That looked beautiful.

-Thanks, yeah.

I'm joining Branson as he visits the base in New Mexico,

from where Virgin Galactic's customers

will eventually fly to space.

The journey is a chance to ask whether this project

will really open up space for us all.

I suppose one of the problems at the moment is the expense level.

I mean, 250,000 or something like that is certainly not for everybody.

When do you think that future will unfold,

where it is routine for people to fly?

Er, the cost of our programme has been a lot more than we thought.

Once we've got our investment back

and once we've got, you know, a number of spaceships,

I think we can start seeing the price coming down.

And...

And, you know, one day, we could have 20 spaceships operating.

And then, you know, the price could come down to a level where, I think,

you know, there would be much, much, much more demand

than we can ever supply.

So I think an enormous amount of people

will be able to go into space.

But the place we're visiting stands as a reminder that, as yet,

no-one is flying on regular space tourism flights.

Oh, here she comes.

Spaceport America, the world's first commercial spaceport.

It was designed by the British architect Norman Foster

and cost over 200 million to build.

Around two-thirds of this was from the taxpayers

of the state of New Mexico.

Wow!

Look!

This looks like a spaceship has landed!

The initial construction of the spaceport was completed in 2011.

Lead tenants, Virgin Galactic,

plan to use a fleet of spaceships

to make daily flights to space from here.

But the hangar remains empty.

Apart from a model of SpaceShipTwo.

-That's just the most magnificent panorama.

-Yeah.

No, I mean, it was incredible that they agreed to build all this.

Virgin Galactic are paying an annual rent of over 1 million.

But without full operations,

the spaceport is being paid for by the residents of New Mexico

at around 500,000 a year.

Some in the state are growing tired of waiting

for the influx of space tourists and other paying tenants.

I suppose you've had a decade now from SpaceShipOne.

You know, I knew that space was difficult,

I knew that rocket science was difficult. Erm...

But, you know, I hadn't realised just how difficult it was.

While there will be more of a wait

for Virgin Galactic to start operations,

I think suborbital space tourism will inevitably become a reality.

It may feel a long way from creating a space-faring civilisation,

but space tourism isn't the only game in town

for commercial space companies.

Virgin also plan to slash the cost of launching small satellites.

An early project is to deliver communications infrastructure

to the remotest parts of the world.

And in Seattle,

there's a man spending 1 billion of his own money a year

on even more ambitious plans.

You know, I come by the space bug honestly.

As a kid, I was inspired by the giant Saturn V missions

that roared to life from these very shores.

Jeff Bezos has become the second-richest man in the world

through his canny ability to read the future.

Back in 1994,

he recognised the potential of the internet

and started an online sales company in his garage.

It's now the basis of his 80 billion fortune...

Amazon.com.

Just down the road from Amazon, Bezos also has a rocket company.

It's called Blue Origin,

after the colour of our home planet.

I think it might be through there.

But it's so secretive, it doesn't even have a sign outside.

Yes, this is it.

We're one of the first film crews ever to be allowed in.

A rocket factory!

Look at that - it's beautiful, isn't it?

A production line for rockets and capsules.

Blue Origin are developing a vertical rocket

with a passenger-carrying capsule

and, like Virgin Galactic,

hope to start taking tourists into space next year.

Rockets are harder to land than a space plane.

But they can send larger payloads deeper into space.

-Hi.

-Hello.

-Jeff.

-Brian. Very good to meet you.

-Pleasure. Nice to meet you.

How do you see the... our future in space unfolding?

We need a dynamic entrepreneurial explosion in space,

just as I've witnessed over the last 20 years on the internet.

Thousands of companies and tens of thousands of start-ups,

doing interesting things online.

The reason that could happen

is because they didn't have to do the heavy lifting infrastructure.

The heavy lifting infrastructure was already in place.

20 years ago, I was driving the packages to the post office myself

and I didn't have to build the internet, that already existed.

I didn't have to figure out how to transport parcels,

there was the Postal Service.

And so on and so on.

So, when heavy infrastructure is already in place,

then the creativity of thousands of people can be unleashed.

Right now, the price of admission is just so high

that not very many people get to exercise their creativity

in the domain of space.

One of the big problems

with lowering the cost of space launch today

is that we just don't get enough practice.

The most-used launch vehicles fly, you know, in a good year,

maybe 10 or 12 times a year

and you just never get truly great

at anything you only do 10 or 12 times a year.

So, one of the great things about tourism

is it could provide additional launches

to drive up the rate of practice.

And lift-off.

Developing their space tourism rocket

has already proved a useful practice ground for Blue Origin.

Boosters now at 250,000 feet.

You're going to see the landing gear deploy.

This is the aft section of the new separate vehicle.

So this section of the vehicle gets mounted onto the midsection.

In 2015, they made a ground-breaking step towards reusability.

Using its engine and autonomously controlled thrusters,

their rocket was landed back on its tail for the first time.

Welcome back.

The idea that we used to throw these away...

Yes, it's heartbreaking.

When you look at the precision of this aerospace quality hardware.

And it's obviously very wasteful, just financially.

But it's also heartbreaking to put so much work into something

-and then only use it once!

-Yes.

But what is all this practice for?

Blue Origin have started work building a rocket

that's more powerful than anything flying today.

The New Glenn will be capable of carrying

a payload of 45 tonnes into orbit.

And the company already has a contract to deliver satellites.

Could this be the next step towards the space infrastructure

that Jeff argues is necessary?

It seems to me that there's an element of a stepping stone in it,

in the sense that we're learning by practice

and you have an economic model

which allows you to build these factories.

That's exactly right.

But what are you hoping happens to our civilisation?

Is this...? Do you see it as a step towards a space-faring civilisation?

Yes. It is a step towards a space-faring civilisation.

We have sent robotic probes now to every planet in the solar system

and we know, without any shadow of a doubt, that Earth is the best one.

This is the best planet!

And we need to protect it,

and the only way to really protect it is to eventually, you know,

move heavy industry off Earth, and Earth can be effectively zoned,

you know, residential and light industry.

You hear it a lot. Why don't we solve the problems on Earth

-before we go into space?

-Right.

It's part of the solution.

You know, really, if you think about space,

it's a much better place to do heavy manufacturing.

In space, you have 24/7 solar power.

Resources in space are much vaster,

in terms of mineral resources and so on.

Every kind of element that you need is available in space

in very large quantities.

And so, over the next couple of hundred years,

that will allow us to both continue to have a dynamic,

expanding, growing, thriving, interesting civilisation,

but whilst still protecting this planet that we evolved on,

which is this jewel, this diamond of a planet.

This is a hugely ambitious and exciting vision.

It's hard to put a timescale on it becoming a reality,

but we do already have industry in space.

Over 1,400 satellites circle above us,

providing everything from land-use data to TV broadcasts.

And with the likes of Blue Origin

promising more-affordable access to space,

there are already start-up companies looking to capitalise.

What will tomorrow look like?

Our world is at its limits.

And yet we all want more.

And why not?

Why shouldn't the future be better than today?

But where will it come from?

Simple.

Our tiny planet sits in a vast sea of resources.

It's time someone seized the opportunity.

Deep Space Industries.

This company plans to mine resources in space.

And its chairman is Rick Tumlinson.

So, you're talking about space mining, essentially,

and refining those materials.

That sounds like science fiction.

Our business plan for deep space

is based on the fact that it's expensive to go into space.

So we're going to go out there

and harvest space resources,

so when they arrive, we've got their supplies.

Tumlinson believes there's already a market

to supply satellites and spaceships with resources found in space.

His company has major investment from the government of Luxembourg

and claims it will start delivering its services within a decade.

So, if we look at telecom satellites,

telecommunication satellites,

these are billion-dollar spacecraft.

Now, they have a need

to be able to keep them up there as long as possible.

So what about tug boats?

What about refuelling them?

What about being able to move them

from one orbit to another and doing things like that?

-So is this on-orbit servicing?

-On-orbit servicing, yeah.

Tug boat services, refuelling services.

These are the kinds of activities we're starting to look at right now

and there are real companies working on this.

Our company is one of them, but there are others, as well.

These companies plan to find resources on asteroids -

the rocky leftovers from the birth of our solar system.

There are millions of them,

ranging from a few metres to hundreds of kilometres across.

And some contain minerals

ideal for taking space industry to the next level.

Planetary Resources is a company

backed by Silicon Valley billionaires.

It is already testing satellites ready to prospect in space.

So a spacecraft like this, that size,

-would go to an asteroid in a few years, is the plan?

-Yeah.

This is the geologist

that we'll send out to the future mine site on a near-Earth asteroid.

Metallic asteroids really are going to be the stock

that we will build out all the infrastructure in space.

Build a space station, a habitat, start manufacturing,

being able to, you know, make more spaceships.

And how much of this is out there for us?

A mind-boggling amount.

So if we looked at all the metal on the asteroids in the solar system,

we're talking about enough metal

to build an 8,000-storey tall skyscraper

that would cover the entire surface of the Earth.

So that's a very, very big building indeed.

So it's...

So, imagining that,

so it's an 8,000-storey building

-across the entire surface area of the Earth?

-Yeah.

So I wouldn't recommend building it on the Earth.

I would build it in space.

-Yeah, but it's enough to build anything we want.

-Anything we want.

This may all sound rather far-fetched,

but these start-ups are attracting investment

from forward-thinking business minds for good reason.

It's been estimated that mining a single asteroid

could turn a profit of up to 30 billion.

And we are already able to land on fast-moving pieces of rock in space.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission did touch down on a comet.

But it wasn't trying to bring anything back.

And if you find space mining ambitious,

there's another billionaire entrepreneur

with an even bolder vision of our space-faring future.

Elon Musk made his fortune

setting up the online payment company PayPal.

He's become steadily more ambitious,

from his radical shake-up of the car industry

with his electric Tesla cars...

..to transforming the world's supply of rechargeable batteries

with the largest factory ever built.

And now, he wants to take us into space with his company SpaceX.

Three, two, one...

That is that first stage coming back down to land...

CHEERING

The company's milestones, like the

first landing of an orbital rocket,

have been witnessed by Tim Urban.

He was approached by Musk to write about SpaceX...

..and has the inside line on the firm's ambitions.

-Hello. Hi.

-Hey.

-Brian.

-Hey.

-Good to meet you.

-Good to meet you, very good to meet you.

-Yeah.

-What's that, by the way?

-This is a Space XPA, yeah.

I'll have a SpaceX.

One thing that struck me, cos we've...

I suppose what you might call the three big companies -

SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin.

SpaceX is unusual, isn't it?

What SpaceX does now, right, the way they pay the bills,

which is not their long-term goal,

just the way they pay their bills on the way to the long-term goal

is they just deliver stuff to space.

Since SpaceX began in 2002,

they've had their fair share of failures.

Most recently losing a rocket during a launch-pad test in 2016.

But they have succeeded in developing a reusable rocket system

that can put satellites into orbit

and a capsule that can dock with the International Space Station.

It looks like we got us a dragon by the tail.

It delivers Nasa's cargo - and soon their astronauts, as well.

And that's just the beginning of SpaceX's plans.

So there's what SpaceX does and then there's what it REALLY does.

Now, what it REALLY does is it innovates

to try to revolutionise the cost of space travel

in order to make humanity

a space-faring multi-planetary civilisation,

in order to build life insurance for the species

and bring us to another level as a species.

That's what it REALLY does, the big picture.

Musk believes that, in the long term,

it is inevitable that we will face an extinction event.

An asteroid strike or perhaps a worldwide pandemic.

Given this, he argues it only makes sense

to ensure that some of us are living on another planet.

And there's only one that's currently feasible...

Mars.

So the ambition is to build that rocket and send it to Mars...

-To travel.

-..in five years.

-Yes. And if it's going to do that,

then it has to do some flights around Earth first,

so it's probably going to be built in the next two years,

maybe three years.

Seven years, this takes off with the Neil Armstrong of Mars in it.

It's going to be the only thing we're talking about.

-This is an astonishing vision.

-It is.

And again, the scepticism, the cynicism I would have about it,

when I saw them land the rocket, I said,

"They're now innocent till proven guilty."

I am trusting SpaceX and their insane ambition

until I see otherwise,

because they keep doing what people say they can't do.

But the scepticism, I suppose,

even I, who am absolutely optimistic, think that...

I would be delighted if that thing were flying within five years.

This does sound like a highly ambitious timescale.

Not least because, to date, there's only one organisation

that has landed and operated anything successfully on Mars...

Nasa.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory

is responsible for all of Nasa's unmanned spacecraft and robots

beyond Earth orbit.

Its recent director, responsible for sending 24 missions into space,

is Dr Charles Elachi.

-I love coming here because I've grown up with this.

-Yeah.

You know, Voyager at Jupiter, Voyager at Saturn, new horizons...

-I can't stand here without looking at everything.

-Yeah.

No, it is an amazing feat for humanity,

for that matter, for our species.

I think the last few decades

we have visited every part of our solar system.

Dr Elachi oversaw the landing of their most recent rover,

named Curiosity, on Mars in 2012.

So Mars brings a different challenge because it's a very thin atmosphere.

Of course, you need the parachute,

but then we need to do the retro rocket...

..to slow us even further, and then it effectively hovers.

And then we do the sky crane...

..and slowly land the rover on the surface.

JPL's Mars rovers have sent back invaluable data

on the make-up of the planet's atmosphere and geology...

DRILL WHIRS

..and most significantly confirmed that there is ice on Mars,

meaning water would be available to support a future colony.

Nasa do have plans for humans to follow their rovers to Mars,

currently scheduled for the 2030s.

But could commercial companies beat them to it?

We know what it takes to land on Mars because, here at JPL,

we landed the last four missions successfully.

It's not easy. It's very challenging.

And then, when you move to the human,

it adds an additional challenge of the long travel.

I mean, you're talking about...

I mean, with today's technology, about two years a round trip.

If you want to send a human to Mars,

I think it's got to be a national endeavour,

you know, at the beginning,

because it really involves a significant amount of investment

and it's being done for both scientific and human exploration.

To move it to a profitable commercial endeavour,

it's going to take a while.

Essentially, what you're saying is

no company will make an investment to go and open up Mars

because it's just too expensive.

In the Earth's orbit,

the commercial sector can do most of the things

on Earth, and we rely on them.

The next step is going to be asteroids and the moon,

and I think we're almost there for the commercial sector

to able, step by step.

Going to Mars is still a big challenge.

Given the level of challenge that Mars presents,

I want to find out why Elon Musk is so convinced

that he can make us an interplanetary species

within such a short timescale.

The man who helped win him round to the idea back in 2000

is aerospace engineer and Mars exponent Robert Zubrin.

OK.

Here's my lab.

This machine here is one of the most important.

This is for making rocket fuel and oxygen on Mars

out of the Martian atmosphere.

Since the 1990s,

Zubrin's proposal of a lightweight live-off-the-land approach

to visiting Mars has influenced many, including Nasa.

So, this is really a lab aimed at ultimately colonising

and building bases,

-creating resources out of raw material and staying there.

-Yes.

This is...

..my invention for cleaning clothes in space.

I call it the vacuum cleaner.

It sucks out all the air, it boils off all the water and all the oil,

it explodes all the bacteria -

they're dead, the stuff is clean.

Some of Zubrin's ideas may seem unconventional...

..but it's his back-to-basics approach

that has proved so appealing.

Can you give us some indication of the difficulty

of humans going to Mars and then colonising it?

Because you've got these wonderful paintings on the wall.

This is a depiction of my mission plan for human exploration of Mars,

which is known as the Mars Direct Plan.

There's nothing in this that's fundamentally beyond our technology.

We're not talking about venturing into

new and unknown worlds of physics here.

We're talking about brass tacks engineering,

building systems of moderate size, flying them to Mars.

We do not need giant Battlestar Galactica spaceships.

How optimistic are you that this is,

that there's something different now, in 2017,

to the way the world was in, let's say, the year 2000?

In the year 2000...

..we knew about people like Elon Musk.

They were characters in science-fiction stories,

of the entrepreneur who would come along and make this happen.

Well, now those characters

have stepped out of science-fiction novels

and they are now...

..in the real world, doing this stuff.

Zubrin's zeal for finding a way to reach Mars

is driven by belief that it is the only option humanity has

to ensure its long-term survival.

And the worst idea that anybody has ever had

is that there is only so much to go around, OK?

And that, therefore, nations are all enemies of each other.

If we can get off this rock and see that the world we live in

is not this planet, this is not the world,

this is just one planet in a world of trillions of planets

and that there are unlimited resources available to us

if we maximise the reach of human creativity,

and therefore,

every nation is fundamentally the friend of every nation

and every person of every other person.

Having been inspired by people like Robert Zubrin,

Elon Musk does seem to be bringing our ability to reach Mars closer.

But there remains a significant barrier to establishing a colony.

How will we humans cope, physically and mentally?

Zubrin's Mars Society

has an experiment based on his Mars Direct Plan

deep in the Utah desert.

This is the road to a Mars analogue station.

What they're doing out here is they're simulating living on Mars

as closely as they can.

And so what they've done, apparently,

is that they've left a spacesuit

and a backpack and a helmet and a radio system

and all the things you would have if you're living on Mars,

out in the desert, and I've got to stop the car,

put it on and go into full simulation mode.

Because they live there for weeks at a time

and the job is to practise being a settler on Mars.

And, to be honest, it doesn't look too dissimilar to Mars.

Excellent.

I assume that, on the actual mission,

I will have been trained to do this.

Humans on a mission to Mars

would have to endure close confinement with their crewmembers,

along with extreme isolation from the rest of humanity.

-MAN:

-Hi, Brian. We see you walking towards us. Do you copy?

And the minimum mission length would be around two years.

Yes, I do copy.

You want me to approach the airlock and get in? Over.

Exactly. Over.

This crew habitation module

has been built to explore these psychological pressures,

as well as the practical challenges.

And the major donor to fund its construction?

Elon Musk.

I see you're all in the airlock and the door's closed,

so I'll start pressurisation, so three minutes.

The current inhabitants, engineering students from France and Belgium,

are two-and-a-half weeks into their three-week simulation.

In reality, on Mars, the air would be rushing in now,

the pressure would be rising.

Like every crew that stays,

they undergo psychological assessment throughout.

-Ah-ha!

-Welcome aboard.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you.

-Fresh air.

-Yeah!

The bottom deck is for experiments, equipment and other essentials.

So we only flush when strictly necessary.

On the top deck is the accommodation for the seven crew.

This is my room and, since I'm executive officer,

it's slightly bigger than the others, because I get the curve.

The others just have a wall, so...

-Oh, wow. Can I go in?

-Yeah. Sure, sure, sure.

You really get a sense...

It'd be a psychological challenge to live here for years, wouldn't it?

Also in the living area is an experimental plant nursery

tended by crew biologist Victoria.

Every day, we are happy to see this

because all over the station it's red, grey.

We don't have green things.

So it helps psychologically, as well, just to see plants growing,

-just seeing green?

-Yeah.

Life on Mars would be incredibly tough.

Temperatures on the Red Planet are regularly minus 80 degrees Celsius.

There's almost no oxygen

and humans would be bombarded by cosmic radiation.

And to think the Utah desert feels tough...

It is increasingly uncomfortable in a spacesuit,

which is the point of the simulation.

You get a real feel for how difficult it would be

to perform even quite simple tasks on the Martian surface.

The risks for anyone willing to go to Mars would be immense.

But if Elon Musk succeeds in his plans,

it could be ordinary citizens,

like these young scientists and engineers,

that are given the opportunity to go.

Do you think that your generation

is more interested now in Mars and in space flight

than the previous generation stretching back

probably to the end of Apollo?

If you just asked me to go into space for two years now,

I would say yes immediately.

Would anyone NOT do it?

Would anyone think that's a very long...

A three-year trip in something probably smaller than this

and rather more difficult than this, would anybody not do it?

I think it depends a lot on what's in the fine print of the contract.

Like, if it's a one-way mission,

I think a lot of us would give it a lot more thought.

If it's, like, come back with what probability

and also what is the exact duration of the mission.

That kind of parameters

will probably help everyone make a decision.

But I think, as of right now, if you said,

"OK, let's go, it takes two years."

Well...

Thanks.

-See you!

-Have a safe trip!

And lift-off.

Meeting the commercial space companies

and the young generation they're influencing

has been exciting and, I would say, inspiring.

I've seen engineering right at the cutting edge of our capabilities

driven by an ambitious and positive vision of our future.

Humanity, as a species, we HAVE to go into space,

I mean, in my view.

And so, that leaves you with only two options.

Either we need to expand out into the solar system

if we want to continue to grow,

or you have to enter a period of stasis.

And I know which of those two options I think is more interesting!

And our environment is not just the Earth.

Our environment is the solar system.

By expanding humanity's capability in this way,

we are assuring, or doing our best to assure,

the survival of our species and of our civilisation.

We're talking about commercial companies here,

whether they're into space tourism,

industry in space or sending us to Mars.

And, of course, they have an eye on making money.

As their projects develop,

it is vital that we ask searching questions,

but I've been struck by the conviction I've encountered.

And I think they are addressing

THE most important challenge of our time.

Having had the privilege of making this film,

speaking to so many of the people

who are trying to push the boundaries

and to try to turn us into a space-faring civilisation,

I would say that I am more optimistic than ever, actually,

about the future of the human race,

because I think we are on the verge

of finally leaving this planet

and making a home amongst the stars.

I really...

I really mean that. I think that's what I've learned.

And that is, surely, a wonderful thing.

It's a wonderful time to be alive.

Would you like to learn more about the UK's part

in the race into space,

or delve deeper into both human and robotic exploration?

Go to the website at the bottom of the screen

and follow the links to the Open University.