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TED Talks Daily

How to build in space for life on Earth | Ariel Ekblaw

30 May 2025

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 19.336 Unknown

Tiesitkö, että joka neljäs yli 40-vuotias mies kokee virtsan karkailua? Se on todella yleistä, mutta siitä ei silti juuri puhuta. Tenamen suojat on suunniteltu erityisesti miehille. Huomaamattomat, varmat ja luotettavat. Ota tilanne haltuun Tenamenin avulla.

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29.427 - 50.808 Elise Hu

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. So at the TED conference in Vancouver this past April, there was a huge geometric dome right outside of the main theater. Inside were cushions, plants on the walls, even a microscope. It was very cool.

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51.533 - 80.845 Elise Hu

This was a large mock-up of a space home. Yep, you heard that right. It was designed by space architect Ariel Ekblad and her team. I don't want to give too much else away, so I'll just say this. In her talk, she shares why space is not just a frontier for exploration, but also a platform for solving humanity's biggest challenges. Ariel says we must rethink how we live on Earth and beyond for the betterment of human community and survival.

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80.845 - 109.212 Ariel Ekblaw

Ja varmista, että tulet takaisin tänne myöhemmin. Ariel ja minä tuli sitoutumaan, että kuulemme enemmän työtä ja ideoita, joita hän kertoi taustalla. Minulla oli aiemmin opettaja, joka kysyi minulle, miksi maailmassa kulutamme niin paljon rahaa maailmansopimuksen kanssa, kun taas on niin monia vaikeita haasteita täällä maailmassa.

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110.343 - 133.546 Ariel Ekblaw

It's a good question and a tough one for me. Should we be building a future life in space? I want to argue yes and tell you how. I do believe in the beauty of space exploration for the sake of new knowledge, because the little that we do know about our universe pales in comparison to what we do not yet know.

133.681 - 162.807 Ariel Ekblaw

ja joissain tapauksissa se on minun elämässäni. Isäni ovat molemmat pilottajat, isäni oli A-10-pilottaja, ja isäni oli yksi ensimmäisistä naisista, jotka voivat soittaa Yhdysvalloissa. Ja 14 vuotta sitten soittin mikrogravitiin, kuten astronautti, ensimmäistä kertaa. Tämä inspiroi minut työskentelemään aeroalassa koko elämäni elämän jälkeen. Mutta ilmaisuudistus tekee niin paljon parempaa kuin vain inspiroida.

163.347 - 188.288 Ariel Ekblaw

Our space program has routinely delivered breakthrough innovations. The Apollo program gave us the foundation of modern computing. The International Space Station gave us LASIK eye surgery, contributed to that amazing technology. And now new technologies are coming online to enable lifesaving biotech in orbit and even deliver energy from space.

188.997 - 206.48 Ariel Ekblaw

What makes all of this possible? In the last 15 years, the cost to get to space has dropped dramatically, from over $50,000 a kilogram in the NASA shuttle era to now under $200 a kilogram with SpaceX's Starship coming online.

206.699 - 232.957 Ariel Ekblaw

This is remarkable. This is like FedEx. If you can ship something around the world, you can ship it to space. But the precursor space station, where so much of this amazing work has been taking place, the International Space Station, it's getting old, it's very cramped, and worse, it's about to be shut down. It's going to be decommissioned in 2030, 2031. We need new infrastructure, and we need it fast.

Chapter 2: How is space architecture evolving to solve Earth's challenges?

240.348 - 269.542 Ariel Ekblaw

All of the pieces of the International Space Station were assembled over 15 years by astronauts doing incredibly courageous and risky maneuvers in bulky spacesuits, basically building some of the most advanced technology known to humankind by hand. This hand-built method doesn't scale. Even if the cost to go to space dropped even more dramatically tomorrow, we only have room for about 14 humans in orbit, period.

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270.537 - 294.331 Ariel Ekblaw

The bottleneck isn't rockets anymore, it's real estate. And we need a new solution for how to build in orbit and scale up space infrastructure for the public good. Nine years ago, I started working on this problem. Could we learn from nature, from plants and proteins that self-assemble at a small scale and adapt us to the grandest scales in space?

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294.888 - 321.736 Ariel Ekblaw

We know that when you're in free fall around a planet, you have the sensation of zero gravity. In that environment, forces like magnetism can bring together vast objects with ease. So first at MIT, and now at Aurelia Institute, my team and I have invented a system to do just this, to grow space structures in orbit using autonomous robotic self-assembly.

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322.85 - 347.993 Ariel Ekblaw

The idea behind the method is to allow us to build reconfigurable space stations that are bigger than our biggest rockets. Based on my MIT PhD, we use electropermanent magnets, very special strong magnets, that bring the modular tiles together to dock, to rendezvous. Essentially think about space Legos with magnets that click, click, click, click into place.

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348.938 - 378.453 Ariel Ekblaw

Tesserae, jota kutsumme maatalouteen, on yksityiskohtainen rakentaminen. Käsittelemme modulaatioita paikoilleen, johon heidän pitäisi olla, ja kun tilaat tai modulaatiot tulevat, ne rakentavat itseään. Meidän ei tarvitse astronautteja tai jopa robotit, jotka käyvät laajassa tai riskiässä maatalouksessa ja maatalouksissa. Sitten, kun tilaat ovat tulleet yhdessä yhdellä pukkipaikalla, muutama pukkipaikalla voidaan pukkipaikalla rakentaa isompi maatalouteen.

379.533 - 395.851 Ariel Ekblaw

The best part is that we have tested this in space twice. Michael Lopez-Alegria on orbit inside the International Space Station, helping us test the code and the timing and the pacing for dynamic robotic self-assembly in orbit.

395.851 - 412.085 Ariel Ekblaw

Tämän jälkeen me rakennamme, menemme ja testaamme. Me prototyypioidamme, simulaamme fysiikkaa, jotta voimme huomioida rakennusmetodin. Ja viime vuonna me rakensimme maailmanlaajuisen maahanmuuttajamme muokkaamisen, ja tuomimme sen maailman ympäristöön.

412.49 - 441.177 Ariel Ekblaw

What we hope to communicate to the public with these interiors is a life worth living in space, or at least worth commuting to. Once we're in space, we can use the really unique environment of the vacuum, of microgravity, to manufacture things that can't be made on Earth. In Low Earth Orbit, we're working with partners to use the Tesserae construction technology to assemble large-volume, high-throughput biotech factories.

441.734 - 462.777 Ariel Ekblaw

On tapahtunut, että mikrogravityössä proteiinikristalleja kasvaa eri tavalla, tiettyjä tyyliä kasvaa nopeammin tai kasvaa paremmin, ja voimme edes tehdä uusia sääntöjärjestelmiä tavalla, jota emme voi tehdä maailman gravityön tilanteissa. Tiedämme, että tärkeät biologiset sammut ovat erilaisia maailmassa, erityisesti kun ne sopivat.

Chapter 3: What technologies enable self-assembling structures in space?

479.686 - 500.695 Ariel Ekblaw

A little bit further out, between Earth and the sun, we're working to see if we can help start-up energy companies self-assemble thousands of solar panels in orbit, above the atmosphere. Now, what this would allow us to do is capture raw, unfiltered sunlight and beam it anywhere on Earth, even at night.

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500.695 - 522.278 Ariel Ekblaw

This is like a flashlight from space, and it would fundamentally solve the storage problem for solar power, allowing us to deliver abundant green energy to the surface of the Earth. Thank you. These are some of the most responsible ways that we could use space technology in service of Earth.

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522.582 - 543.423 Ariel Ekblaw

My team and I have been working on an idea passionately, known for decades in science fiction as off-roading. Not off-roading the humans, but off-roading the heavy industry. We could let Earth recover as a garden planet for generations to come and use space infrastructure to do that off-roading.

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543.727 - 571.317 Ariel Ekblaw

This future is a lot closer than you may think. While space travel definitely feels rarefied, and in many ways it certainly still is, I bring dozens of people with me every year into microgravity on parabolic flights. This is how NASA trains astronauts, affectionately known as the vomit comet. It's more fun than it sounds. And this is how we are training the new space generation.

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571.317 - 600.899 Ariel Ekblaw

We're building architecture to welcome more people to orbit, whether it's for a long weekend to see the planet from space for the first time, or maybe for a career scientist to commute for a decade to work on a major breakthrough. Rockets like Starship enable us to dream really big, to be able to get enough mass of tesserae tiles and enough people into orbit to be able to fundamentally scale up space infrastructure for the public good.

600.899 - 622.06 Ariel Ekblaw

We know that the business case for space is here. Governments are investing in space-based solar power. Companies are investing in zero-G biotech. And in the next 10 years, we believe that we will be able to deploy our first modularly self-assembling space habitat and contribute to a trillion dollar space economy.

622.06 - 651.17 Ariel Ekblaw

One of the best things we could do with this infrastructure is harness it for the profound benefit of life on Earth. Because fundamentally, space exploration isn't about escaping Earth. In 1968, Bill Anders took this iconic photograph, now lovingly referred to as Earthrise, and he famously remarked, we came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is we discovered the Earth.

652.537 - 664.484 Ariel Ekblaw

Bill's comment reminds us that space exploration is about building an aspirational future for humanity wherever we are, on Earth, in orbit around Earth or beyond.

664.923 - 694.285 Ariel Ekblaw

Access to space is cheap enough now and available enough, we need to update our conception of the possible. If we invest now in space infrastructure, if we invest now in space architecture, new paradigms for how we can build infrastructure in space, we can profoundly expand humanity's horizons while still protecting the heritage of our priceless planet. We don't have to pick one or the other.

Chapter 4: How can space exploration lead to breakthroughs in biotechnology?

718.957 - 744.893 Elise Hu

If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faisy-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.

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744.893 - 749.737 Elise Hu

Olen Elise Hu, olen takaisin huomenna uuden idean tehtävän tehtävän. Kiitos kuuntelusta.

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761.853 - 780.905 Unknown

Tiesitkö, että joka neljäs yli 40-vuotias mies kokee virtsan karkailua? Se on todella yleistä, mutta siitä ei silti juuri puhuta. Tenamen suojat on suunniteltu erityisesti miehille. Huomaamattomat, varmat ja luotettavat. Ota tilanne haltuun Tenamenin avulla.

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781.613 - 809.592 Unknown

On the TED Radio Hour. Don't you hate it when leftover cilantro rots in your fridge? I have to tell you, cilantro is like my nemesis. Food waste expert Dana Gunders says that's just a hint of a massive global problem. Food waste has about five times the greenhouse gas footprint of the entire aviation industry. Ideas about wasting less food. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Listen and subscribe to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.

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