TED2007/Day 4: Bill Stone on Traveling Far Without the Fuel to Come Back

Closing morning at the TED2007 conference in Monterey, California, with two sessions. I've blogged most of the speakers on the LunchOverIP blog. What follows are my unedited running notes from Bill Stone's speech:

Explorer Bill Stone is one of those guys that go where others haven't yet: he has founded and led for almost 30 years the US Deep Caving Team (cave exploration - that's him in the picture at right) but he's also an inventor of underwater mapping systems, of autonomous robotic spacecrafts, and wants to mine resources on the Moon.  He takes the audience in an awesome tour of the underworld. Technology has enabled humans to go to places that were previously unexplored and unknown. We can now descend thousands of meters under the Earth, relatively without risk. When he picks people for his team, he looks for competence, discipline, endurance and strength, "but we also value esprit de corps". The deeper you go, the more you run into a conflict with water (underground waterfalls, lakes, siphons). Next year he plans to lead an expedition to the deepest cave of the Americas -- Sistema Cheve in Mexico. It has already been explored down to more than 1 km deep, but they plan to take the exploration to a depth of 2600 meters, 30 km from the entrance of the cave, with the lead crew remaining underground for 30 days straight.
Stone is also involved in the exploration of space, in particular the planned autonomous exploration (by robots) of the sub-surface oceans of Europa, one of the Moons of Jupiter. Because of this hypothesized ocean beneath the ice sheet that covers its surface, Europa is considered one of the most likely places in the solar system to possibly host primitive forms of extraterrestrial life.

Exploring these oceans in space can only be done by autonomous (robotic) probes of course, capable of automated detection, mapping, etc. Which are being developed and tested. For example for the exploration of the world's deepest known water-filled sinkhole, Cenote Zacatón in Mexico, at a depth of 1000 meters. He shows a clip of the first fully autonomous robotic exploration underground -- producing a 3D rendering of a gigantic underground cave.

By 2016 Stone expects a probe to be sent into Europa. "By 2019 we may have the first evidence of extraterrestrial life". There are three underpinnings for working in space: requirements for transport and places to stay in orbit (both of which are under development), and the final missing piece: a refueling station on orbit. If it existed, it would change all space travel planning and design. Because everything you do in space, you pay by the kilogram. Bringing a bottle of water in orbit costs 10'000 dollars. For further space exploration, we need to figure out ways to move large volumes of payload across space. Stone mentions a little known mission launched by Pentagon 13 years ago to the Shackleton crater on the south pole of the Moon, the floor of which could potentially contain huge quantities of hydrogen in water or ice form.

The traditional approach to space exploration, says Stone, has been to carry all the fuel you need, and to carry everybody back in case of emergency. But to prime the pump, boldness is required: "the first expeditionary team must travel to Shackleton crater without the fuel to come back, and produce it there. It can be done in 7 years, and I intend to lead that expedition. There was a time when people did bold things to open new frontiers. We have collectively forgotten that. Now we are at a time when boldness is required again".

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TED sessions of the day:

On doing big and bigger things for love

On traveling far without the fuel to come back

(A word of disclosure: I'm the European Director of TED)