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Oh! The Places We’ll Go
At some point in the future, I believe, people will look back at this period of discovery and exploration the way we look at the adventures of Marco Polo and Columbus.
We are at the dawn of a new age. As far as we have come, it is just the beginning. My two worlds, space and gaming, are both focused on exploring the possibilities. Some of these worlds are real, some are created, and some are in between. I can’t predict the future—nobody can—but I am trying to help build it.
When my dream of going into space was temporarily derailed by a doctor, I became determined to do it myself. That’s why I initially got involved in the privatization of space. There were only two space-faring nations on earth then, and if you had asked anyone what it would require to mount a private expedition into space, they would have told you it was impossible. They would have pointed out that NASA requires hundreds of thousands of employees and a multibillion-dollar budget to run America’s space program. Indeed, the usual response to bringing it up was laughter.
But I’ve always believed that one day space travel will be led by private industry. That’s been the history of most exploration. Columbus was sponsored by Spain, but by Darwin’s day it was private industry mounting expeditions. In fact, throughout history both governments and private corporations have offered large prizes to encourage invention and exploration. For example, the Orteig Prize of $25,000 was offered in 1919 to the first person who flew nonstop between New York and Paris; after several other adventurers had died trying in the attempt, it was won in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh. Since that time there have been similar smaller prizes offered for feats like flying a hot-air balloon around the globe, but nothing has been created in the last half century to compare to the Orteig Prize. And then I met Peter Diamandis and heard his vision for the X-Prize.
I really do believe that my friends and I have fundamentally changed the future of human space exploration. In less than a decade the concept that private industry would make space travel possible went from being laughable to being everyone’s prediction for the future. Things like asteroid mining and private telescopes have become the next possibility. The Google Lunar X-Prize will put more private vehicles on the moon to take up residence near my rover. There’s no question that low-earth orbit and near-earth exploration have already turned from being government run to being almost the exclusive purview of private industry. The next question is what will happen with more ambitious expeditions.
Our next objective must be Mars. My good friend and the scientist/CEO I have the most respect for on this planet, Elon Musk, already has rockets flying cargo to the ISS, and is building a vehicle called the Red Dragon to take humans there. The Russians are planning a trip as well, although budget issues have hampered them. So odds are that the first trip outside the earth’s gravity is going to be accomplished by private industry.
How will NASA fit into this? My own belief is that it should be the responsibility of the government to open new territories. The main reason for the government to go somewhere is to discover if there is potential value there. We have been to the moon, we know what is there, and industry can either take advantage of what’s there or they can’t. But the government doesn’t have to continue going back. If there is value it should be up to private industry to exploit it, because that allows the government to continue to pursue more speculative goals. Those are the kinds of risks I believe government should be taking.
Living on Mars would quickly expose a human to their lifetime radiation limit. Beyond that are the giant gas planets, and it’s not clear why we would want to go there. But there are some amazing moons around Jupiter and Saturn that might be interesting to explore. If we are looking for volunteers to go on one of these voyages, I’m raising my hand. If I could be one of the first colonizers on Mars, I would do it. And in the best of all possible scenarios, my family would go with me.
The Garriotts’ Chariots
When my wife, Laetitia, and I first began dating, she made it clear to me that she had no interest in going into space. No way, no how. As her grandfather was the first planetary geologist—the Cayeux crater on the moon is named after him—one might believe she would obviously have an interest in going. And one would be wrong. She made it clear to me that she loved life on earth far too much to leave it behind or take the risks inherent in space exploration.
But then she added that there was also no way that I was going back into space. As a father, she reminded me, I have obligations here on earth that take precedence for now.
I suspect we are probably one of the first couples to argue seriously about whether or not we would go into space. I do want to go back one day, and I suspect she may change her mind about it.
She has already come a long way. In 2011, we went to Russia for a series of official celebrations surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight. By the time we were ready to return to the U.S., Laetitia had become the youngest person to complete neutral buoyancy training in Star City. She spent over an hour in this deep pool with a full-size mock-up of the space station, in full cosmonaut gear, executing with determination and great poise every task the control center threw at her. She was so impressive the Russians suggested that if the European Space Agency selection team had been there, she would be preparing to board a flight.
Laetitia smiled and thanked the Russian team, but she reminded me that she still loved life on earth way too much.
But for the first time she understood my passion, and had begun to feel it herself. And I had now shared with her a practical side of the joy of space exploration—one that she rates to this day as among one of her pinnacle life experiences—and that was very special to me.
Given her family background it isn’t surprising that Laetitia has always been intrigued by the mysteries of space. But if she wasn’t going to travel in space, as other women have done, she still intended to have an impact. As I learned a long time ago, if access to space is to become readily available, significant changes have to be made in safety and cost. And pioneering those changes is the path she has taken.
Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is famed for “the rocket equation,” the essential theory that has formed the foundation of the first half century of space exploration. But in The Spaceship, published in 1924, he proposed that the most efficient manner of going into space would not be to use chemical propulsion, as we do now, but rather to beam energy—electromagnetic rays of short wavelength—to a spacecraft.
It’s the stuff of science fiction—and working with a team of Caltech scientists on it is what Laetitia has set out to do. The company she cofounded, Escape Dynamics, has proved it is possible, building a prototype thruster that operated when energy from the electric grid was converted into a microwave beam and beamed to a thermal thruster, which generated a highly efficient thrust. The feat was not small. Their successful experiments made the cover of Aviation Week magazine. Scientific American described their beamed-energy propulsion concept as a “World Changing Idea” that could enable microwave-powered space planes and aircraft-like operations to reach orbit. Although the cost of completing the research and design made the concept economically impossible, causing the company to close, Escape Dynamics had proved that microwave propulsion not only is feasible, but in fact is capable of efficiency and performance surpassing traditional chemical rockets. That is a huge step into the future—and in response NASA has added beamed-energy propulsion to their roadmap.
Laetitia has actually become more of an expert than I am. And if this work did not change her personal comfort zone about going into space, it clearly was opening a new path into space for me and many others.
Whether or not I manage to go again, or whether Laetitia goes with me, I am confident our children will travel in space. If I have to, I’ll lock them in a tin can and shoot it up myself.
Where in the Universe?
I enjoy thinking about permanence. Under my mother’s tutelage, three decades ago I made a necklace and a chain and put it on. I still haven’t taken it off. Part of the reason for that, of course, is that I didn’t know how to make a clasp—but I suspect I would have left it on permanently anyway. So for me it’s fun to speculate that someday my eighth-generation descendants will note while looking back at earth from wherever humanity has spread by then, that yes, their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Owen Garriott was the 63rd person to go into space and that I, his son, was the 483rd person to travel in space, and therefore our family of spacefarers helped build the foundation for our space society.
My descendants are going; the only question is where. The sensible assumption is that we will go wherever we need to go in pursuit of life in any form. It is almost impossible for me to believe that there isn’t life on other planets. I’ve spent considerable time recently speculating about the possibility that at one time life existed on Mars. It’s the only other planet in our solar system that is in the Goldilocks zone, meaning it once had an atmosphere and liquid water. It had a magnetic field that offered some protection. And there is more and more data being reported that allows non-experts like me to imagine how or why life may have existed on Mars.
Based on the evidence, I have answered that question about life on Mars to my own satisfaction—but that answer seems to change based on the day you ask me, or even the time of day. For a long time I believed that because there had once been water on Mars, it was reasonable to assume that where there is water there is life. And Mars formed about the same time earth did, so if life is common in our universe, it is likely it would have been there too. “Life” in this instance does not mean little green men but rather trace amounts of microbes. While visiting the thermal vents on the ocean floor with my father, we discovered unknown life forms capable of surviving in that extraordinary heat and pressure, so I at least accept the possibility that life forms could survive on Mars.
I have spent my life being fascinated by the history of life on earth: Life began when two planetary bodies collided, or a small planetoid hit the early forming earth, and spewed out a bunch of the earth’s crust, which became our moon. The earth at that time was completely molten, so if life had existed before that—which is doubtful—it was eradicated. But when the earth and moon began to cool, as soon as there was a crust on earth and rains began to fall and create the oceans, life effectively began.
That surprised me. If life is that springy, if it will manifest that quickly, it’s very likely that there was life on Mars. There was water on Mars for long enough. So I began gathering additional data. Mars is only a third of the size of the earth, and it turns out that Mars lost its magnetic field, its atmosphere, and its liquid surface very quickly, in just a couple of hundred million years. There has been life on earth for over 4.6 billion years, so if Mars had a liquid surface for only 200 million years, I’m not sure that was enough time for life to appear. All of a sudden I wasn’t so confident.
I began trying to find out how long it was after our oceans came into existence that life on earth began. It turned out to be immeasurably close to the beginning, within 100 million years. And the length of time that Mars had a liquid surface would just fit into that span of time. So maybe there was time. Every little bit of data flipped me back and forth. One thing is for certain, we are going to Mars, and when we get there, we’ll be able to make a pretty good determination as to whether or not life existed. Meanwhile, we are searching the skies, hunting for evidence of some form of life on other planetary bodies. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, Oh, the places we’ll go.
Entertaining New Ideas
Here on earth I expect to continue creating new worlds of entertainment. I believe the gaming world, like space travel, is just in its infancy. The promise as well as the potential of this art form goes well beyond players shooting bad guys. A major criticism of computer games is that they encourage young people to sit alone in a dark room instead of going outside and doing something active with friends. And I think that criticism is fair when applied to early video games. The first two decades of this amazing digital age were very much like the early years of television, when people migrated from being outside doing whatever they were doing to sitting passively inside in front of a box. While video games are a little less passive than watching TV, that criticism is probably valid; people do need to interact with other real people. But I also believe that online games are now reversing that trend in a really important way.
Throughout history we have lived in tribes of several hundred people who banded together in some form of community to survive. As societies grew, of necessity they formed new tribes. People lived close to their jobs, and those jobs often were in the same or related industries. So mill towns and coal towns developed, as well as the service businesses needed to provide support. People were brought together by sharing a common experience, and people got to know their neighbors, who were often part of the same social group.
That changed drastically with the creation of a commuter society, as cars and mass transit expanded the distance people could travel easily and quickly. People had much less in common with their neighbors than they once did. The commuting lifestyle most Americans led geographically separated people with common interests. What computer networks do, what social networks do, is take people who have found themselves displaced from their tribe and give them a way to get back together. They have made it possible for them to find their tribe online.
While it is not unreasonable to describe early offline games as working against social bonding, online communities have now become a unique and effective means of forming social coalitions. MMORPGs in particular have brought people with common interests together. That’s going to continue, but what will evolve is the environment in which these relationships are fostered and played out. Way, way in the future there will be the Matrix-style plug in, and slightly sooner there will be a simple, transparent version of the holodeck of the Star Trek experience, while in the very near future we’ll get to play with goggles and data gloves. As a creator of virtual experiences, I am fascinated by what this path holds.
Anyone working in the gaming industry is also in the business of predicting the near future. Because of the time it takes to make a game, we have to predict which platforms will be popular. That means we need to know what hardware is going to be readily available three years from the day we start making a game; and when you’re talking about technology, three years is an eternity. So in our industry we make very high-stakes stabs in the dark.
I do have some sense of where we’ll be in the distant future. The next long-term step is the continued development of virtual reality technology. Early in my career I was very optimistic about this coming soon. I thought people would be able to sit in a room and, through this amazing technology, believe they were in a projected world and interact with it. A joystick or data gloves would allow them to have contact with virtual items in that space. So for many years I bought every virtual reality device that came out, hoping we were getting closer to that day. But, unfortunately, we still haven’t reached the first stage of virtual reality. The level at which my senses are completely fooled, and I forget that I’m not in the real world, is still far away.
Imagine the possibilities. Having a version of the Enterprise’s holodeck in your playroom, for example. A system that would enable you to play a perfect game of tennis—against Björn Borg. Or bat against Sandy Koufax. Or explore the surface of Mars. Or that would let me take you through my haunted house without actually having to build the house. The experiences that we will be capable of programming will enhance and enrich lives in ways that are not yet unimaginable.
Obviously the storytelling possibilities are going to be amazing. What started as paintings on the wall of a cave have become the color of history; we describe entire civilizations through the few of their stories that have been passed down to us. And new technology will enhance the way we will tell the great stories of our civilizations, both real and imagined. We’ll be able to put players inside the games that I have been creating for my entire career: Britannia really will be a place you can go. Most exciting to me is that while the technology will evolve, well-told stories will always be the foundation of the experience.
These changes are already happening incrementally. Until recently, for example, people couldn’t play MMOGs unless they were online—that’s what that O represents. When I was on an airplane, for example, I couldn’t play my own game. But I wanted to be able to play anywhere, at any time. A lot of people like to play solo anyway; they frankly don’t give a flip about who else is online, they themselves just want to play. And like many people, I find myself playing games on mobile devices more and more. So when we were developing our latest game, Shroud of the Avatar, we incorporated technology that allows people to play offline; as soon as they go online it updates the permanent changes to the cloud. In addition, if two people want to play together, they can directly connect with each other instead of meeting in the cloud. But while there may be only two people playing together, they will still see what others are doing. If somebody builds a new shop that sells great swords, for example, those two players will be able to walk inside and buy a sword. This is a minor technological advance, a step in the right direction.
One evening at the Explorers Club in New York, I was sitting with the late astronaut Scott Carpenter, the second man to orbit the earth, and I said to him, not at all facetiously, “I know what you’re known for, but I want to know what other contributions you’ve made toward advancing the space program, other than being the second guy.”
It was obvious he liked the question. “I’ll tell you what I believe my contribution was,” he said. “Of all the original astronauts I was the hardest-core engineer. We had a bunch of young engineers building these rockets all of us would fly in the Mercury program. While a lot of us were test pilots, I was the strongest engineer. And so I was the person who was always digging through the output of those bright young engineers and going to the furthest detail of perfection. We were all putting our lives on the line when we climbed aboard these machines, we all knew there was a lot of inherent risk, so what we did not want to do was compound that inherent risk with engineering mistakes.” Scott Carpenter was the strongest proponent of all the checks and balances that ensured the engineering discipline was as tight and strongly managed as humanly possible.
I have thought long and hard about my own contributions in the past and how to continue to make contributions in the future. Clearly my contribution to space travel has nothing to do with the fact that I actually got to go, it’s what I did in order to be able to go. It’s what Laetitia is continuing to do. It is likely that in the distant future no one will be playing my games, but the concepts and features that I have championed have already made a lasting impact.
Here’s what I know: I want to continue doing what I have been doing, which is deriving great joy from creating experiences. I want to continue exploring the earth and space in search of the wonders that await us all. And I want you to spend your life in pursuit of what fascinates you. It will be there . . . the question is, will you notice, will you stop and take a look?