Exploring Mars With Robots and Humans
In this engaging and accessible lecture, captured live, Scott discusses his role as the first Mars Program Director (aka “Mars Czar”) and the growth of the program.
Enjoy the DVD of the lecture at home!
Recorded: January 7, 2019
Post Production by: Per Hoel Productions LLC
Recorded by: Delbert McClinton – Sandy Beaches Cruise 25
C 2019 Scott Hubbard
Media Courtesy of: SpaceX, NASA/JPL/Caltech, NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, NASA/JPL/Arizona State, NASA/JPL/Cornell
POPULAR SPEECH TOPICS:
Following the Water: The New Mars Exploration Program
This talk describes the exploration of Mars with particular emphasis on the last 20 years. I demonstrate how I restructured the Program after the failures in 1999 and highlight all the successes since then. The scientific story that traces the clues to ancient and modern water is compelling. As a management and engineering study, I show how a truly integrated decade long program of projects was created.
Exploring Mars with Humans and Robots
A companion lecture to “Following the Water”, this talk extends my success with NASA's robotic program to my thoughts on sending humans to Mars in the next 15-20 years.
The Emerging Entrepreneurial Space Industry
Here I examine the so-called "new space" entrepreneurs such as Branson's Virgin Galactic, Musk's SpaceX, the Google Lunar X-Prize and others. Drawing on a study I conducted with 7 Stanford MBA students, I place the new field in both a technical and business context. The excitement of combining entrepreneurship with space exploration has many younger people very enthused.
The Search for Life in the Universe
Beginning with a description of the new field of Astrobiology (where I was one of the founders) I outline the current and planned future missions that are searching for the "fingerprints of life" throughout the cosmos. The projects include both space missions with the solar system as well as astronomical searches for the "pale blue dot" of earth like planets elsewhere.
Additional Topics Include:
The Columbia Shuttle Disaster: Personal Reflections and Lessons Learned
As the sole NASA representative on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), I was in a unique position. I describe the 7 month odyssey leading to impact test I conducted that established the definitive physical cause of the tragedy and then summarize the organizational findings. I am often asked to extend the lessons learned to other complex high risk efforts.
Watch an overview of the lecture here.
Review an outline of my presentation here.
Lunar Prospector: Managing a Very Low Cost Mission
One of the few great successes of the "faster, better cheaper" era, I provide a scientific, engineering and management overview of NASA's last mission to the moon in 1998. Not only was the entire project completed in less than two years for less than the cost of a typical Hollywood movie, but we found strong evidence of water ice at the poles of the Moon.
The Future of Space Exploration
This talk examines trends that I anticipate for the next 50 years, from the need to study climate change at the regional scale, to supercomputers that will soon rival the human brain in complexity, to personal space travel, to the implications of so-called entaglement. Entanglement is a demonstrated quantum mechanical effect that Einstein despised as "spooky action at a distance".