 Welcome to the MIT Media Lab Space Initiative kickoff event. Space is a perfect thing to launch at this time. And the great thing about space is most of space is trying to figure out what the problem is. It's the sense of wonder. Is there some other super intelligence out there that actually can know more than we can? But space also challenges us with some of the hardest engineering and design problems. The most amazing thing that anyone can possibly do is explore space. There's nothing as challenging or inspirational. That's why I'm so excited to be teaming with Kyoya Ito and the rest of the Media Lab in their space initiative. The very first step we took was to salvage four jet engines from a junkyard to strap them to a welded frame and to start writing software that taught us how to take off and land vertically. Now what is it going to take to go from early exploration missions to everything that's been going on at Mars to date to actually getting to a self-sustaining city on Mars? We believe the final frontier is actually going to be opened by manufacturing. It actually needs a reason for us to go, a reason for us to do important things in space. We've started to discover planets around other stars only 20 years ago and now we're already discussing and searching for signs of habitability, signs of life. What we want to do in this idea of beyond the cradle is to leverage this different perspective as new vantage point to shift our understanding of planetary system and life. Anyone who wants to join, again exploration, then there's a way to collaborate because we need everyone. The influence that fantasy and science fiction has on us and then we on it is an ongoing cycle. Write stories, make movies, do science fiction because all of that feeds back into actually making the real science. So instead of trying to bring the computer into the physical world to the audience, we're now going to bring the filmmakers and put them inside the computer. We're going to need everything from structures to communications to sensors to clothing to entertainment. And we're in a new era where because the cost of being involved with satellite engineering and even the rocket community, the cost is coming down and so now we're going to see more and more ways for the average person to contribute to space and to have an idea and to see it come forth. Everybody in this room has things to contribute and that we need to actually look beyond who we think people are. If you want to accelerate the opening of the spigot of the space frontier, there is a place for you in this great adventure.