DMITRIY TSELIAKHOVICH:
Thanks a lot, everyone.
I'm Dmitriy.
I'm a co-founder
of Escape Dynamics.
We started the company
with the moon shot vision
of opening space for
large-scale exploration.
And so the huge problem that
drives and motivates our team
is enabling affordable,
reliable, and efficient access
to space.
Why space access today
represents a huge problem--
well, first of all it costs
about $5,000 to $10,000
to put anything useful--
a kilogram of useful
payload into orbit.
It's very risky.
About four out of
every 100 rockets
fail to put payload into
desired trajectories.
And it's very inefficient.
If we think about a rocket
today, about 2% of it
is useful.
The rest is fuel and structure.
And what's more important
is that the structure
is non-reusable.
We are throwing away basically
the vehicles every time we fly.
The cost, the
complexity, and risk,
they are linked to the lack
of innovation in this field.
Think about the
computer in 1950's.
And this is the computer today.
There are orders of magnitude of
price-performance improvement.
And now think about rockets.
There has been very
little changed--
very little innovation.
It is pretty much linear.
It used to be very
expensive and risky.
And it still is.
It prevents us from
tremendous opportunities.
This is the problem.
We are locked from amazing
opportunities present in space.
A single nickel-iron asteroid
has more rare earth elements
than we've ever mined in
the industrial history.
And companies like
Planetary Resources
are designing ways to
bring those opportunities
into our economic ecosystem.
But to enable
this, we need to be
able to fly into
space affordable,
and whenever we want,
and efficiently.
Space has already
demonstrated giant potential
to change lives of people.
It's estimated that
more than $5 billion
has been saved by putting
geospatial technology to use
to save fuel, to increase
the fuel efficiency.
And now, imagine
what will be possible
if we can deploy thousands
of low-earth orbit satellites
to provide geospatial
technology and telecommunication
to the developing world.
Most importantly,
what excites me
is that space is the
frontier for exploration.
We are genetically
designed to explore.
The scientific opportunity
of space are enormous.
With Hubble Space Telescope
with the Kepler mission,
we know that there are thousands
of planets around other stars.
Now, imagine that we can put
several dozens of Hubble Space
Telescope and build an
interferometer in space.
This technology will enable
us to see with our own eyes
the planet around other stars.
This is pretty much
the only way for us
to see the planet
with our own eyes.
How we as a society
will change when
we see habitable planet
around a different star?
So this becomes possible
when we go and explore--
when we transcend this
frontier and create technology
that allows us to go
there efficiently enough.
We ask the question, how
do we make it possible?
Our moon shot became
creating a system that
is completely different
from the rockets today--
an airplane-type
operation that can
fly into orbit
from the space port
and come back-- fully reusable,
single-stage to orbit system.
This was the question that
we posed as the company.
How do we make the space
launch not a few percentage
points better, how do
we completely transcend
the paradigm-- make it
10x or more more efficient
and make the system
fully reusable?
It became pretty clear early on.
And during my
studies at Cal Tech
and later at the
Singularity University,
I've been analyzing what
are the possibilities there.
And it became very clear
that chemical combustion
and the systems we use today
cannot accomplish this job.
We needed to new paradigm.
We needed to transcend
what we do today.
And so we came up with the
concept of external propulsion,
which closed both physics
and apparently can
close the economics.
In this case, instead of
carrying all the energy
on board of the vehicle,
we are delivering energy
in the form of a microwave beam
to the vehicle as it ascends.
The energy comes
from electric grid.
So electricity is transformed
into microwaves, and output
from the phased array
of microwave antennas,
delivered to the
vehicle as it ascends.
So we are providing all the
energy needed for launch
from the ground in
the microwave beam.
This completely changes the
way the vehicle functions.
We do not have
combustion, so it's safer.
And it is much more
efficient, because we're not
carrying energy on board.
So our efficiency
percentage points
go from 2% of useful
payload to above 20%.
It also changes the economics.
Now the complexity and
risk is left on the ground.
And the system is scalable
from the ground up.
We want more payload,
we put more antennas
on the ground-- we put
more meters on the ground.
And it also offers
an opportunity for us
to make the system powered with
eventually renewable energy,
because the energy
comes from the grid.
So the breakthrough technology
that's needed for the system
to work is wireless
energy transfer--
safe, reliable, and efficient
wireless energy transfer.
And that's what my
team, we've been focused
on this problem for two
and a half years now,
finding ways to make
wireless energy transfer
to be safe and efficient.
We calculated and tested
efficiency of power beaming.
And we believe that 10% to
30% efficiency is possible,
depending on what
receivers we use.
The key challenges
here is making
this affordable, and
efficient, and safe.
And so the breakthrough
components of this technology
is making high-power
microwave transmitters
that take energy from
the grid and output them
in microwaves economical.
And we discovered very
early on that today it
costs millions of dollars
to buy a single meter.
And by putting the
innovation in, and bringing
this technology in house, and
making a number of efficiency
improvements, we are
dropping the cost close
to an order of magnitude now.
So we are building
this technology
into that will allow
us to convert energy
efficiently int microwaves.
The next big question
is, can we really
do the power beaming over tens
and hundreds of kilometers
safely and efficiently?
If you think about
the typical antenna
and you try to
beam power upwards,
there is a significant
horizontal component
that would either fry a human
or be basically very unsafe.
And so what we came up
with is the radon system
that suppresses or completely
eliminates the silos.
We also obviously thought
about the simple questions
like what happens if a
bird flies into the beam?
And this is actually
very simple problem
to resolve and eliminate.
For two years we've been
designing safety interlocks
that allow the
system to be safe.
And obviously, we are
working on the conversion.
So once we have unlimited
energy on the vehicle,
we need to convert it
efficiently into thrust.
And the interesting thing,
that there is multiple ways.
If you have unlimited energy
on the vehicle as it flies,
there are many, many ways to
convert it into propulsion.
We are working on
thermal thrusters,
so we built a heat exchanger
that receives that energy
and heats the fuel--
hydrogen, for example--
that flows through
the heat exchanger
and then is exhausted in thrust.
There are also approaches to
couple it directly into plasma.
There are many ways.
Once you've got unlimited
energy on the vehicle,
there is no limit of
how much innovation
we can bring into the
new propulsion concepts.
And so to create this, we
established the lab currently
in Colorado.
And we are building and testing
all of those technologies.
It all comes together
into this moon shot vision
of making the space
launch more efficient,
making the space
launch more economical.
We believe that we can reduce
the cost of space access
by one or two
orders of magnitude,
because we are changing
the economics of flight,
because we are
transferring the complexity
and cost on the
ground, and because we
are making the vehicles
more efficient.
We know that we
can build vehicles
that will be fully reusable
and can be operated in the way
as airplanes are operated today.
And we also look
forward to transitioning
airspace and flight in
general from combustion
to potentially renewable
energy and to much more
efficient systems.
We've been flying in the
atmosphere for 100 years.
We've been flying
outside of the atmosphere
for about six decades now.
And we've been using
the same technology.
I think it's pretty
naive to think
that we've reached the limits
of technological innovation.
There's clearly
something better,
something that transcends
the way we do this.
And I believe that this
technology has the potential
to be the next step of
technological innovation
of flight.
I know that with
this technology, what
will be possible is
pretty much unlimited.
We know that once we
are able to fly to space
and open this frontier
for economic expansion
and for scientific exploration,
what we will get out of it
is much more than
just economics.
We will get
excitement, and we will
get people passionate
about this, to explore.
I know that one
day, I will wake up
and I will see this
picture out of my window.
And I know that because of the
technology we are building,
hundreds of people will be
able-- millions eventually--
of people will be
able to do the same.
We are not doing this alone.
We are looking and we are
working with phenomenal people.
This is a complicated problem,
very much worth solving.
And so solving this problem
is what fascinates me.
This is our moon shot.
And I look forward to solving
this moon shot with you.
Thank you.
