 So I will start with you, Madam Minister. Can you explain us why the Emirates are so much involved in space activities? What difference does it make in the next 50 years, whether you are involved in these costly, expensive activities, or if you are not as most countries of your size? Please. So good afternoon everyone. It's a pleasure being here with you. Thank you for the invitation and it's a pleasure to meet you for the first time as we lead both the space sectors and each of our respective nations. The space sector for the UAE, when we first advented into it, and it's a historic, I think, development over the course of the last 24 years where users of space technologies and in 2009, sorry, 2006, we transitioned into developers of such technologies, was for the core principle that we need to further diversify our economy. And if you need to further diversify your economy today, it means you need to have a strong base in science and technology. And what better and more challenging sector can you expedite the development of your technological capabilities in a short amount of time? And that's why the space sector was used from the get go. Now as we progress forward. So we're talking about 24 years of development from the space sector, from users of space technologies to developers of small satellite systems to developers of planetary exploration mission. We now look at the important factor that the space sector will play in our country's future. And that's the development of a private sector in space that adds on to our economy and then creates an amazing ripple effect to other sectors that utilize technologies. Today, we sit at a turning point where we have capable engineering capabilities to design and develop complex engineering systems. You require complex engineering systems, for example, to upgrade your existing industries. You require some skill sets that are available in the space sector not only to develop your own space and technology capabilities in the private sector, but you're also able to develop them across other strategic sectors that require those technological advancements. When we talk about the next 50 years for the UAE and the next 50 years for the space sector in the UAE, we're talking about the advent of the increase of demand for the private sector. And we come at an amazing time where the private sector is getting more and more traction and is able to push forward and it's the right time to enter into certain markets. So as we move forward, the role of the UAE's, the government of the UAE in the space sector is to develop the capabilities of the private sector and be able to transfer that knowledge and know-how and allow a lot of the capabilities that have been developed over the course of the last 20 years to start transitioning into the private sector. The private sector also requires a second primary component, demand. You need to start creating demand. So what we're doing with our future programs is to create business and provide contracts to the private sector to be able to flourish. So you're providing capabilities. You're ensuring that you have demand so that other sectors are taking on the products and services that are coming in from the private sector. You are upskilling your existing private sector by ensuring that they have access to contracts that allows them to deliver at higher and higher standards. And to bring all of that together you need to ensure that you're continuously challenging yourself and moving forward. The mechanism by which you challenge yourself is by bringing in exploration missions. If we talk about, that's the play on the private sector. Then you talk about the ripple effect. If I go back a step, we said that the primary objectives is to develop our science and technology capabilities. Space is quite aspirational. Living in a country that has sent a spacecraft to Mars is quite different than living in a country that hasn't done it. You've opened up an immense opportunities and we lived through this this year. We saw conversations changing in entire households in February of this year. We started this year with a skepticism of whether or not we're going to get to Mars. Come February, every single age group and every single household in this country spoke about the dangers of getting to Mars. That's a big conversation changer for you to be able to get scientific explanations and scientific objectives across and have the entire public root for it. For me, that was a monumental shift in creating the future generation which will then capture on the development of the future sectors. Because a window of opportunity was open. I was speaking earlier. This window of opportunity never existed for me. I never dared to say that I will work in the space sector one day. Let alone work on a mission to Mars. This is not something that I thought was possible for myself or for anyone in my generation. But today, my children grew up in a world which this was okay, it's normal. They lived through it. They lived through an astronaut being put into space. They lived through science being something that's normal that you can go into and study. They lived through sending a spacecraft to Mars when you knew that maybe there's a 50% chance only of succeeding. That gets me to my last point which this creates a nice driver for. Especially for you, like you said, nations that are adventing into technology. Technology is very risky regardless of what stream you're going on. Space is of course the next level of risk. You change and transform an entire mechanism of thinking by using the space sector where we've increased our appetite for risk and I've experienced this in my daily job where I can propose things that are quite risky and probably get approvals on it. Because we have a better understanding on how to capitalize on risk and develop a mechanism by which you develop programs and projects and be able to get the maximum impact out of it. And that general understanding and balance between risk-taking, between appetite for failure, between what it means for success is what is needed during any transition of any nation that's going from a current economy that it has that's based on natural resources to an economy that's based on knowledge an economy that has risk as an inherent DNA of what you're doing. And those are several factors that the UAE has gone into space and will continue to invest in space over the course of the next decade or two to ensure that we're able to have a very robust and organically developed science technology sector within the country. Thank you very much. So your approach implicitly means that for you one cannot become excellent in technology without the space dimension because after all you could say that you can specialize or invest in various dimensions of technology but not necessarily investing in space activity. So my understanding of your approach is that for you to be at the forefront of the understanding of technology and its implications implies the space dimension. That's a statement and a question at the same time but the other thing which is I want to ask you immediately is where do you draw the line between reality and dream? So you're... The answer on the first question is you can go about developing the science and technology sector within your country in different mechanisms. What space dimension brings in is speed by which you're able to develop capabilities because if you take developing a spacecraft such as a mission to Mars you get scientists that put to your requirements so you start creating opportunities for scientists to work in such areas and then you also marry that with almost every field of engineering from computer scientists and engineers like the two of us here mechanical engineers two people that are special in thermal systems and so on. You're able to electronics and so on so you're able to touch on multiple disciplines of engineering and use a new mechanism to do it so the space dimension adds speed of development into it which I think nations need to take into consideration especially if they don't have a lot of time to transition and transform. That's where that decision comes. Now where do you draw the line between science fiction I'm assuming and going to Mars for instance? The approach that we took I think maybe when I was announced in 2014 seemed unreal, I think up to this year for a lot of people that I had conversations off the record where it was unreal it was something that they classified as science fiction for us but the approach that we took in development of this mission and the direction that was given was a very well calculated one to not make it science fiction and that's how you manage the design and development of this mission the budget consideration the time consideration all these different factors that you surround the mission with and then we went down the dimension of working with a knowledge transfer partner to develop this and we worked together as one team so it's the methodology that you take in designing and developing those missions that move it from the realm of science fiction to the realm of possibilities and this is the mechanism that we've taken for several times and I myself I'm taking a lot of this into my portfolio within advanced technology because the question for us in the ministry of industry and advanced technology is how do you elevate your existing sectors by infusing technology so a lot of those learnings you can actually take there and how do you create new sectors that are based on technology within your economy the space program for us is touched on a lot of mechanisms to be able to do that so I hope another time we will bring here if we come back here for WPC maybe you have an idea of a panel with the minister of advanced technologies and the minister of tourism to develop an tourism in Mars on Mars wouldn't you classify that as science fiction just a question to you we will see