TED Talks Daily - How to build in space — for life on Earth | Ariel Ekblaw

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Is space the “final frontier” — or the perfect place to revolutionize life on Earth? Space architect Ariel Ekblaw reveals how self-assembling structures could build orbiting real estate in space dedicated to solving humanity’s greatest dilemmas on Earth, leading to scientific and medical breakthroughs only possible in zero gravity.Want to help shape TED’s shows going forward? Fill out our survey! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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pocket. If you can think it, Gemini can help create it. Learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Support for this episode comes from Airbnb. Winter always makes me dream of a warm getaway. Imagine this. Toes in the sand, the sound of the waves, and nothing on the agenda except soaking up the sun. I think of myself in the Caribbean, sipping of the waves, and nothing on the agenda except soaking up the sun. I think of myself in the Caribbean, sipping on a frozen drink and letting my troubles melt into the sea. Maybe Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, St. Lucia? Lots of possibilities for me and my family to explore. But vacations always fly by too quickly. I was planning my next getaway

when I realized my home will be sitting empty while I'm away. That's why I've been thinking about hosting on Airbnb. It'll allow me to earn extra income and could help me extend that trip just a little longer. One more sunset, one more amazing meal, one more day to unwind. It sounds like the smart thing to do, and I've heard it's easy to get started. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca. You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. So at the TED conference in Vancouver this past April,

there was a huge geometric dome right outside of the main theater. Inside were cushions, plants on the walls, even a microscope. It was very cool. This was a large mockup of a space home. Yep, you heard that right. It was designed by space architect Ariel Ekblau

and her team. I don't wanna give too much else away, so I'll just say this. In her talk, she shares why space is not just a frontier for exploration, but also a platform for solving humanity's biggest challenges. Ariel says we must rethink how we live on Earth

and beyond for the betterment of human community and survival. And make sure to come back to this feed later this afternoon. Ariel and I actually got to sit down after her talk to hear more about the work and ideas she shared on stage. I once had a professor ask me, why in the world do we spend so much money on space exploration in the face of so many pressing challenges here on Earth? It's a good question, and a tough one for me. Should we be building a future life in space?

I want to argue yes and tell you how. I do believe in the future. Should we be building a future life in space? I want to argue yes and tell you how. I do believe in the beauty of space exploration for the sake of new knowledge, because the little that we do know about our universe pales in comparison to what we do not yet know. And in some ways, it's in my blood. My parents are both pilots,

my dad was an A-10 fighter pilot, and my mom was one of the first women to ever fly for the United States Air Force. And 14 years ago, I floated in microgravity like an astronaut for the first time. This inspired me to work in aerospace for the rest of my life. But space exploration does so much more than just inspire. Our space program has routinely delivered breakthrough innovations. The Apollo program gave us the foundation of modern computing. The International Space Station gave us Lasik eye surgery,

contributed to that amazing technology. And now, new technologies are coming online to enable lifesaving biotech in orbit and even deliver energy from space. What makes all of this possible? In the last 15 years, the cost to get to space has dropped dramatically, from over $50,000 a kilogram in the NASA shuttle era

to now under $200 a kilogram with SpaceX's Starship coming online. This is remarkable. This is like FedEx. If you can ship something around the world, you can ship it to space. But the precursor space station, where so much of this amazing work has been taking place,

the International Space Station, it's getting old, it's very cramped, and worse, it's about to be shut down. It's going to be decommissioned in 2030-2031. We need new infrastructure, and we need it fast. Unfortunately, current in-space construction is quite slow, difficult and dangerous. All of the pieces of the International Space Station

were assembled over 15 years by astronauts doing incredibly courageous and risky maneuvers in bulky spacesuits, basically building some of the most advanced technology known to humankind by hand. This hand-built method doesn't scale. basically building some of the most advanced technology known to humankind by hand. This hand-built method doesn't scale. Even if the cost to go to space dropped even more dramatically tomorrow, we only have room for about 14 humans in orbit, period.

The bottleneck isn't rockets anymore, it's real estate. And we need a new solution for how to build in orbit and scale up space infrastructure for the public good. Nine years ago, I started working on this problem. Could we learn from nature, from plants and proteins that self-assemble at a small scale and adapt us to the grandest scales in space? We know that when you're in free fall around a planet, you have the sensation of zero gravity.

In that environment, forces like magnetism can bring together vast objects with ease. So first at MIT and now at Aurelia Institute, my team and I have invented a system to do just this, to grow space structures in orbit using autonomous robotic self-assembly. I have invented a system to do just this, to grow space structures in orbit using autonomous robotic self-assembly. The idea behind the method

is to allow us to build reconfigurable space stations that are bigger than our biggest rockets. Based on my MIT PhD, we use electropermanent magnets, very special strong magnets that bring the modular tiles together to dock to rendezvous. Essentially think about space Legos with magnets that click, click, click, click into place. Tesserae, what we call the space habitat, is a self-assembling structure. So we ship the modular parts to their destination, wherever they're meant to be, and once the tiles or the modules arrive,

they build themselves. So we don't require astronauts or even robotic arms to go out and do slow or risky spacewalks and space maneuvers. And from there, after the tiles have come together to form one buckyball, multiple buckyballs can dock to form a larger space station. And the best part is that we have tested this in-space to form one buckyball, multiple buckyballs can dock to form a larger space station. And the best part is that we have tested this in space twice.

Michael Lopez-Alegria, on orbit inside the International Space Station, helping us test the code and the timing and the pacing for dynamic robotic self-assembly in orbit. From here, we build and fly and test. We iteratively prototype. We simulate the physics to be able to fine tune the construction method. And last year, we built a human-scale mock-up of our space habitat, and we brought it on a road show

across the country. What we hope to communicate to the public with these interiors is a life worth living in space, or at least worth commuting to. Once we're in space, we can use the really unique environment of the vacuum, of microgravity, to manufacture things that can't be made on Earth.

In low-Earth orbit, we're working with partners to use the TESS array construction technology to assemble large-volume, high-throughput biotech factories. It turns out that in microgravity, protein crystals grow differently, certain types of tissues grow faster or mature better, and we can even do novel drug discovery in a way that we can't do under the conditions of Earth gravity.

We know that certain key biological samples behave differently in space, particularly when they're floating. So whether it's exceptional quality organoids for testing Alzheimer's drugs or cancer drugs, or artificial retinas that would cure macular degeneration, these therapies would be made in space, stabilized, and brought back down to Earth. A little bit further out, between Earth and the Sun,

we're working to see if we can help start-up energy companies self-assemble thousands of solar panels in orbit, above the atmosphere. Now, what this would allow us to do is capture raw, unfiltered sunlight and beam it anywhere on Earth, even at night. This is like a flashlight from space, and it would fundamentally solve the storage problem for solar power,

allowing us to deliver abundant green energy to the surface of the Earth. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. These are some of the most responsible ways that we could use space technology in service of Earth. My team and I have been working on an idea passionately,

known for decades in science fiction as off-worlding. Not off-worlding the humans, but off-worlding the heavy industry. We could let Earth recover as a garden planet for generations to come and use space infrastructure to do that off-worlding. And this future is a lot closer than you may think. While space travel definitely feels rarefied, and in many ways it certainly still is,

I bring dozens of people with me every year into microgravity on parabolic flights. This is how NASA trains astronauts, affectionately known as the vomit comet. It's more fun than it sounds. And this is how we are training the new space generation. We're building architecture to welcome more people to orbit, whether it's for a long weekend to see the planet from space

for the first time, or maybe for a career scientist to commute for a decade to work on a major breakthrough. Rockets like Starship enable us to dream really big, to be able to get enough mass of tesseray tiles and enough people into orbit to be able to fundamentally scale up space infrastructure for the public good. We know that the business case for space is here.

Governments are investing in space-based solar power, companies are investing in zero-g biotech, and in the next 10 years, we believe that we will be able to deploy our first modularly self-assembling space habitat and contribute to a trillion-dollar space economy. that we will be able to deploy our first modularly self-assembling space habitat and contribute to a trillion-dollar space economy. And one of the best things we could do with this infrastructure is harness it for the profound benefit of life on Earth.

Because fundamentally, space exploration isn't about escaping Earth. In 1968, Bill Anders took this iconic photograph, now lovingly referred to as Earthrise, and he famously remarked, we came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is we discovered the Earth. Bill's comment reminds us

that space exploration is about building an aspirational future for humanity wherever we are, on Earth, in orbit around Earth or beyond. Access to space is cheap enough now and available enough. We need to update our conception of the possible. If we invest now in space infrastructure, if we invest now in space infrastructure, if we invest now in space architecture, new paradigms for how we can build infrastructure in space, we can profoundly expand humanity's horizons

while still protecting the heritage of our priceless planet. We don't have to pick one or the other. Someday, we will live on Mars. Someday, we will travel outside of the confines of our solar system. But until then, let's put space to work for Earth. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. That was Ariel Ekblah speaking at TED 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarma-Nivon. It was mixed by Christopher Fazy-Bogan.

Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. This episode is sponsored by Sell-Off Vacations. You know how sometimes a single experience, one moment, one place, can shift your perspective entirely? Travel does that. It moves us not just physically but emotionally, even spiritually. We deserve those moments. That's where Sell-Off Vacations comes in. For over 30 years, they've been helping Canadians travel happy,

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Gemini helps me brainstorm ideas, summarize emails, even plan out my day. All just by holding the power button. For example, let me show you how easy it is. Gemini summarized my unread emails. Re, away next week. Jonathan confirmed with Elise Hu about rescheduling a meeting. Reminder, development committee meeting tomorrow at 12 p.m. central time. It's super helpful for staying on top of things without feeling overwhelmed. Or when I needed a quick dinner plan, I snapped a photo of what I had in my fridge and Gemini gave me recipe ideas.

It's like having a research assistant right in my pocket. If you can think it, Gemini can help create it. Learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. Your door to big deals is on DoorDash right now. Sign up for DoorDash and enjoy a free Big Mac on your first McDonald's order of $20 or more. Only on DoorDash now until June 15th. Terms apply.