[ Applause ]
>> What is it about space?
Why are we so fascinated
by everything that we find
in the night sky?
We, I believe,
are creatures of light.
And some of you are going
to think that I'm misquoting
Yoda, when he said
"luminous beings are we,
not this crude stuff".
And I agree with him.
I agree with him,
but that's not what I mean.
I mean that we define so much
of our reality by what we see.
The light that comes
into our eyes shows us the world
immediately around us.
When we look
up at the night sky,
it's just a canvas of beauty.
But sometimes it takes a
visionary to take us beyond what
we see in our eyes.
In the late 1500's,
an Italian monk named Giordano
Bruno, took Copernicus' idea,
where Copernicus said
"we are not the center,
we are one of many planets
that go around the sun".
And he displaced us
from the center of the universe
to just be one of many
in the universe
so we could see him.
Bruno said, "wait a minute.
What if, we're not just one
of many planets?
What if all
of those other stars are
other suns?
What if all those suns,
if those stars,
what if they have planets?"
And it took a long time
to figure out if this was true
or not.
And about 390 years
after we burned Bruno
at the stake
for some a blasphemous idea,
I was on vacation
with my family.
My sister and I,
my older sister,
went down to the lake to look
up at the Milky Way,
and we still didn't know
if there are other planets
around other stars.
But now we know
that they are numerous.
Just this one spacecraft built
by NASA, the Kepler telescope,
has shown us 2,600 candidate
planets out there in the galaxy,
and they're using other
telescopes to find other
planets, and if you go
out in the summertime,
and you look up in the sky,
you'll see the summer swan.
It's a beautiful big cross,
nice easily recognizable
constellation,
and you hold your hand
up over the corner
of the summer swan, you'll cover
up those 2,600 planets.
And that's just the beginning.
I mean, imagine
if you'd calculate how many
planets there are
across the whole sky.
If just that little,
tiny patch has this many,
what is it about space?
We're one of many planets
in this solar system.
Our system is one
of many systems in this galaxy.
And our galaxy is one
of billions that we can see.
Over the last 100 years,
an interesting thing has
happened where the astronomers
looking out into space have seen
and discerned the physics
that goes on in stars,
where hydrogen
and helium are just bashed
together in an exploding star.
The creation
of higher elements happens,
where carbon is made,
where nitrogen is made.
Where the calcium that's
in your bones is made.
Every atom in your body was
created in an exploding star.
And over the last 100 years,
they've realized that all
that going on in stars is what
we see in the laboratory
when we do nuclear physics
in the lab,
but interestingly, okay?
They've recently been looking
up into space in the last couple
of decades and they've seen,
not just an atom here,
an atom there, they see a bunch
of atoms get together
and do something interesting.
Like make amino acids.
They see amino acids
in stellar nebula,
where new stars are being born.
Where new star systems are
being born.
And right now your body,
your entire being is programmed
by the amino acids in your DNA.
What is it about space?
There's a lot about space
that keeps us interested.
I'm really proud
of this picture.
This is one
of my favorite pictures from all
of the space exploration.
It's Mercury, it's the far side
of Mercury,
as I like to think about it.
In 1975, we flew a spacecraft
past Mercury.
We imaged one side.
And then in 2008,
I got to be a part of a team
of about 400 researchers,
engineers, technicians,
that took this picture
with the Messenger Spacecraft
when it first encountered
Mercury, and took the picture
of the side
that nobody had ever
seen before.
And it was really amazing
to be a part of this discovery
of what's out there in space.
I didn't help
to take this picture,
but I love this picture.
This is Saturn,
taken by the Cassini Spacecraft.
Imagine that you're Cassini.
And you've just flown
into the shadow of Saturn,
and the sun is on the far side.
And the sun's light just
illuminates these rings,
and the atmosphere itself
is glowing.
This is just a beautiful
picture, but that's not why I
like it so much.
I like this picture
because it's a picture of you
and me, and all of us.
When you're a billion miles
out in the solar system,
and you look back,
the rocky planets,
they just spin around the sun.
And so Cassini was able
to capture the little,
tiny dot there,
which is the earth.
Which is you.
What is it about space?
Space is about us.
Space is about you and me,
and where we came from.
Space is about this beautiful
globe that we live on,
and how it's not
necessarily unique.
And I don't know
when it's going to happen.
Maybe 5 years, maybe 10,
maybe 20, maybe 50,
but of these thousands
of planets that we're
discovering, when are they going
to look out with a telescope
and say, that green light
that we're seeing
from that planet looks just
like the chlorophyll that we see
in plants here on the earth.
And that transition
where you say astronomy
and physics
in the lab are not different.
When we see that light coming
from a planet somewhere else,
and it matches the light
that we see reflected off
of chlorophyll here,
we'll know that there's
chlorophyll on that planet,
and we'll know
that there's life elsewhere.
A lot of people thing
that the best
of space is behind us.
The moon race with Apollo,
and I think
that that's just wrong.
I think the best that we have
to offer in terms
of space exploration and going
out into the universe,
is yet to come.
Last year, I'm sorry,
in January,
Google published a video called
Zeitgeist 2012, 2 minutes
and 46 seconds of what you
and me, and the whole world
searched on.
In 2012, you saw the
Presidential election,
the Arab Spring,
you saw the Olympics,
you saw all the famous people
that passed in 2012.
And 9 of the clips
in this 2 minute
and 46 second video,
are about space.
The video begins and ends
with this man.
This is Felix Baumgartner.
He got in a capsule
in a spacesuit.
That suit was actually built
by the same company
that built some
of the spacesuits NASA used back
in the 60's.
He got in this capsule
under a helium balloon,
and he went up 26 miles
above the desert in New Mexico.
He flew up to the very edge
of space.
Felix is a bit of a daredevil.
He likes to jump out of things
from very high altitudes.
That's not my thing,
my wife likes to do that.
It's not my thing to do.
And what do you do
when you're 26 miles up?
You jump. [Laughing] Okay,
so he jumps,
and we all know what happens
when you jump
from a high altitude
in New Mexico.
[ Laughing ]
No. Felix was smarter than that.
Felix landed safely.
How did Felix land safely?
He had an excellent technical
team behind him,
and he had the funding
to make all those pieces come
together, and the patience
to wait for the weather
to be right
for the balloon launch,
so that he could jump safely.
And he did.
Who paid for this?
Back in the 60's,
an Air Force Colonial jumped
from 24 miles up.
Felix broke that record.
He went to 26 miles.
Felix also broke the speed
of sound, with just his body
plummeting towards the earth.
Red Bull paid for this.
Why did Red Bull pay for this?
[ Laughing ]
Because they knew
that you would watch.
And you did.
It was the most watched YouTube
event in history.
People are investing
in space right now.
The best is yet to come.
Richard Branson,
one of the most visionary people
in the planet,
has founded a company called
Virgin Galactic.
Their building a spacecraft
that's going to take people
in a suborbital flight.
Right now they have 500
customers signed up.
They're doing rocket testing
this year, the craft has done
some drop tests, 500 people.
One company is going
to double the number of people
that have been in space in all
of history, one company.
You, I can't afford it,
but perhaps you can.
[Laughing] Pay for a ticket
to go into space with this guy.
With his company.
They call it SpaceShipTwo.
Why do they call
it SpaceShipTwo?
Because SpaceShipOne is
where they're getting
their technology.
The technique,
in order to come back
into the atmosphere
and not burn up.
SpaceShipOne is hanging up here
in the Air and Space Museum
in the Milestones
of Flight Gallery.
SpaceShipOne was built,
funded privately, built,
flown into space 2004,
and won what was called the
Ansari X-Prize.
And the X-Prize Foundation,
it's a non-profit corporation
that gets people to say,
"we need to take this technology
to the next level".
And the X-Prize Foundation found
a family to fund a prize
for the first group
that would build a privately
funded spacecraft,
put it in suborbital flight
twice in a two-week period,
and Burt Rutan,
one of the best aircraft
designers in history,
built this craft, and they won
that prize.
There's another
technology-incentive prize
winner in this picture, though.
In the background,
you see the Bell X-1,
a government-built aircraft
that broke the speed of sound.
The first supersonic aircraft,
but you also see the Spirit
of St. Louis,
which won a technology incentive
prize with the first non-stop
flight from New York to Paris.
A man named Orteig said I want
to see that happen.
And after that, the businessmen
in St. Louis had funded this
project, saw an explosion
in the airline industry right
there in St. Louis.
I believe the best is
yet to come.
And here at Penn State,
we're trying
to be a part of that.
Leading a team of researchers,
staff, and students,
we are pursuing the Google Lunar
X PRIZE.
And this is a prize,
the first privately-funded
spacecraft to land on the moon.
We have taken a very deliberate
choice to be a part
of this growth,
the mission of the university,
research and service
for the world.
What is our future going to be?
We have to create our future.
And what is it about space?
Space is about us.
Space is about who we are
as a people,
and what better thing
for the university to do
than to say we're going
to be a part of this growth,
as all of humanity continues
to reach out into space.
I want to leave you
with this picture.
I think Bruno would
like this picture.
This is the plaque that was put
on the Pioneer Spacecraft
as it flew out into the solar
system in 1972.
It was launched.
It's no longer in communication
with us, but it's still cruising
away from our sun,
away from our system.
And here is represented the two
states of hydrogen,
the order of the planets
in our solar system,
the direction
to the different stars
that are nearby to us,
and where Pioneer came
from and us.
We are part of this.
We are part of the physics.
We are part of the biology.
We are part of the universe.
I think that's what it is
about space.
I think that's why people want
to be a part of space.
I think that every kid
that looks up into the sky
at night, they don't look up
and think that alien somewhere
deep inside;
they know that that is home.
And I think
that that's an idea
worth sharing.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
