All language subtitles for The Science of Interstellar

Humans are natural born explorers.

We charge into uncharted territory
and seek out the unknown.

We've mapped nearly every
inch of Mother Earth..

..and left tracks on the Moon.
But to set foot on another planet,

to travel beyond our solar system,
that is a dream for the future.

A dream that comes to life in
the feature film Interstellar.

We must think not as
individuals, but as a species.

We must confront the reality
of interstellar travel.

The film Interstellar deals with the quest
for new worlds and the faith of humanity.

Sound like the stuff of science fiction?
Maybe.

But the foundations of this film
are rooted in real science,

thanks to the involvement of a
renowned astrophysicist Kip Thorne.

In Interstellar, one of the
most important features is

the way that science is
totally embedded in the film.

There is some wild things in here.

Beyond fantasy and fiction, this
is the real science of Interstellar.

Space travel has been a staple of
the movies from the very beginning,

but the feature film Interstellar has
a unique pedigree.

It was inspired in part by
the work of Kip Thorne,

an authority on astrophysics,
gravitational waves

and the warping of spacetime,
he is also an executive producer on the film.

In Interstellar, real science was built into
the fabric of the film from the outset.

The other major players in this film,
they all respected the science

and they worked with me to see if
the science was well incorporated.

Can you tell me what the... the easiest
definition of what a singularity is?

Kip and myself meshed well in terms of trying
to use current thinking,

current scientific understanding
to drive the narrative

-It lies in between, this
is a place where curvature

of space and time gets infinitely high.
So we're good, okay.

And we just hope that the
research that we've done

and the conversations that
I'd had over the years

with Kip and that Chris had
had with Kip informed the

narrative, and that the
audience would feel that.

Why simply imagine,
fantasize about things that

might happen in space or
an interstellar journey?

Why not actually look at
the real science there?

-It's an Indian surveillance drone!
Interstellar takes place in the future

where living conditions on Earth threaten
the survival of humanity.

Now you need to tell me
what your plan it is to

save the world. -We're not
meant to save the world,

we're meant to leave it.

One of the things that the
film explores is do we

belong on Earth and should
we be staying on Earth,

and if there is anything else that there
should we be exploring there. - Here we go.

In the film the crew seeks
a new place to call home.

A planet that can sustain life.
Human life.

-We're not gonna to make it!
Yes you are.

Sounds like a job for the
explorers of tomorrow. But

the search for another Earth
is happening right now.

Astrophysicist Natalie Bataglia is
a passionate planet hunter.

you think the only way
that we're really going

to really understand our
place in the galaxy

is by looking at this broad picture and
understanding the diversity of all planets.

20 or 30 years ago we
didn't know of any other

planets orbiting normal
stars like our own Sun.

Natalie has helped rewrite
that story as a misison

scientist for NASA's
Kepler space telescope

Kepler's objective is very
simple: it's to determine

the fraction of stars in
our galaxy that harbour

potentially habitable oversized planets.

And what makes a planet
potentially habitable?

The one ingredient that
we think is common to all

life forms is this
requirement of liquid water.

So that's why we look for
planets that have rocky

surfaces where water can
pool and that are receiving

the right amount of energy from the star
where the water wouldn't be locked up in a

frozen state because the
planet is so cold, nor would

it be evaporated away because
the planet is too hot.

We call it the Goldilocks zone,
where liquid water could potentially exist.

Launched in 2009, Kepler
stared at one small

patch of the Milky Way
for four years straight.

Compared to stars, planets are too tiny
for Kepler to spot...

but it can detect their shadows.

Every planet orbiting an illuminous object
is casting a shadow out into space

and the Kepler spacecraft
makes use of that fact.

Waiting for a planet in
it's orbit about the star

to pass directly between
the disc of the star and

the spacecraft, and the
telescope perceives that

as a dimming of light.

This simple method has
revealed 1000's of exoplanets.

Planets orbiting other
stars in our galaxy.

What we've learned so far
is that literally every

star in our galaxy has
at least one planet.

There is an amazing diversity of exoplanets
out there and we've found very exotic worlds.

200 lightyears away there is a Saturn sized
planet orbiting not one, but two stars.

So if you were living
on a world like

Kepler-16b, you would see
in the sky two stars

rising in the east setting
in the west, continuously

changing position as
they orbit one another.

This is an artist rendition
of the planet Kepler-10b,

it's orbiting 23 times
closer to its parent star

than Mercury is to our own Sun.
So this star-facing

side is just being blasted
by this stellar radiation.

Creating temperatures in excess of
that required to melt iron.

The planet has an entire hemisphere larger
than the Pacific Ocean, which is an ocean,

but it's not an ocean of water.
It's an ocean of molten lava.

Not an attractive destination. But Kepler
recently found as a possible second home.

This is an artist concept of the Kepler-186
planetary system.

Five planets orbiting this M-type star
and the outermost planet is Kepler-186f.

Our first discovery of an Earth-sized planet
in the habitable zone of a normal star.

When I think about Kepler-186f,
I try to imagine it as a real place

because it is a real place.

We know that it could be rocky, same size
as Earth so I do imagine a rocky surface...

We don't know that it has a liquid ocean,
but we can certainly imagine one.

And then, all of a sudden
in your imagination you

eternalize the existence
of this world out there,

that there is a place that could
be very, very much like Earth.

So, when do we set sail for these
distant shores? Reality check.

Kepler-186f is nearly three quadrillion miles
(~4.8 quadrillion km) from Earth.

Otherwise put five hundred
light years away.

That's a journey 500 years
at the speed of light.

But no thing can travel as fast as light.
At best, our spacecrafts are

thousands of times slower. Even the
spaceships in Insterstellar don't come close.

So how do they reach new worlds
beyond our solar system?

They take a walk on the warp side
of space and time.

The science of Interstellar

-You have no idea when you're coming back.

Couldn't you have told her you were
going to save the world? -No.

I'm coming back.

When we journey to a far off place we travel
not just in space but also in time,

as we move into the future.

Until about a century ago scientists believed
that space and time were entirely separate.

Theoretical physicist Sean Caroll explains
how Albert Einstein overturned that idea.

One of Einsten's great insights was that
space and time were related to each other,

where you had space and you had time, Einsten
says: "Actually, there's only one thing

which we call spacetime."
-And then he says

"this spacetime thing,
it's not just the stage

on which all the action plays out.
It's an act for itself."

Spacetime can change, it can move,
it can bend and it can warp.

Einstein's theory of relativity states
that spacetime is like a flexible fabric.

The objects embedded in it: the Sun, planets,
even us, warp that fabric.

And the consequence of that warping is what
we call gravity.

The more massive the object,
the more spacetime is warped

and the greater the gravity.

We feel gravity. The flexibility of
spacetime is harder to grasp on a gut level

but it's effects are measurable.

As Sean demonstrates, the greater the
gravity, the more slowly time flows.

For example, if I were on the ground floor
with a clock, a super accurate atomic clock,

and a twin of mine was up
on the top floor of the

building with an equally
accurate atomic clock,

if we later on compared them, mine would've
ticked off fewer seconds.

On the gorund floor, Sean
experiences slightly

more gravity than his
twin on the top floor.

He also experiences slightly
less time than his twin.

The difference is tiny, but real.
And there are practical applications.

For example, the GPS system
is a very, very precise set

of clocks on satellites
orbiting around the Earth.

and that orbit is in a slightly different
gravitational field than we are in down here

so the fact that time moves
differently here on the

surface of the Earth than
in the satellite orbit,

is very very important to getting
the GPS to work correctly.

Time on a GPS satellite
clock advances faster

than the clock on Earth
by about 38ms per day,

so the system's computers correct for that.

Motion also affects our
experience of spacetime.

-The best way to say
this just staying still

means that you experience
the most time that you can.

Moving around and doing things

means you experience less time.
-Let's revisit Sean

at the wheel of his car and
his twin on a park bench.

If you move out of your
car, and then you come

back, compared to the
person who stayed behind

your clock that you took
with you on that journey

will have experienced a
little bit less time

than the one who stayed behind.

We normally move too slowly
to notice the effect.

But if Sean could drive
near the speed of light,

he could race across the
USA and back again a

million times and experience
less than a second

of time, while the twin he left behind would
endure hours of waiting for Sean's return.

In other words, Sean would've travelled into
the future compared to his twin.

This means things may get tricky in years
to come, as we build faster spaceships.

The closer we get to the
speed of light, the more out

of sync we'll become with
those we leave behind.

But the warping of
spacetime may also provide

shortcuts that could make
interstellar travel a snap.

Wormholes: they're a staple of science
fiction, but they're based on real science.

Einstein's relativistic
laws govern the warping

of space and time and
they say that wormholes

might exist, they could exist.
So this dates all the way back to 1916.

The wormhole's a particular way that
space and time can be curved.

It's like adding a little tube that
connects two parts of space.

The basic idea is that if you're an ant, and
you live on the surface of the apple,

the surface of the apple
is your entire universe.

You can go around the outside
through the universe

itself, or you can go
through the wormhole.

But Einstein's equations also predict that if
wormholes do form in nature, they may be

sub-atomic in size and exist for only
fractions of a second before closing off.

Theoretically, what
would it take to keep a

wormhole open and make it
big enough to acommodate

a spaceship. -It turns
out that in order to

pull the wormhole open
so it doesn't crunch off

and kill you when you try to go through,
then you have to have the wormhole threaded

by a negative mass or negative energy,
Einstein says mass and energy are equivalent.

Almost all the forms of matter we know have
positive mass and exert gravity.

Negative mass would
exert anti-gravity and

repel the walls of a
wormhole to keep it open.

Strangely, it is true
that negative energy can

exist, and it's been
created in the laboratory

but only in very tiny amounts.

It would take vast quantities to prop open
a wormhole big enough for a spaceship,

But just maybe, in the
future, engineers will

devise advanced technologies
to do just that.

Today's it's an educated
guess, maybe I should say a

half-educated guess, that
wormholes can not exist

in our universe, but we're
far from sure of that.

- The truth is, we just
don't know right now.

We don't understand the
laws of physics well enough

to say for sure wether or
not wormholes are possible.

But since they're not impossible,
they're fair game for a filmmaker.

I was very excited about the idea of focusing
on a family who would be the pioneers,

who would experience some
of the extraordinary

features of astrophysics,
particularly the idea

of a wormhole that would allow us
to travel to distant stars.

To create a wormhole based
on real science, visual

effects supervisor Paul
Franklin turned to Kip Thorne.

The topolar image of what a wormhole might
look like is literally just a hole in space.

Generally it sits on an invisible surface,
you can see stuff sliding down the sides

and disappearing down the
drain as it were. And

right in that first
conversation Kip showed me

an image of that kind of
classical fantasy image

of these things and said
"This is all wrong!"

"This is not how it is."

Kip worked out the scientific
equations that define the

wormhole and sent it to
Paul's animators in London.

And so for the movie I
built a mathematical model

wormhole based on Einstein's
relativity equations.

Paul, Kip and myself, we
discussed "Okay, we'll

visualize the hole, we'll
simulate it exactly

as your calculations say."
-And Paul Franklin and

his team, they were
thrilled to get algorithms

that were the latest, most interesting and up
to the minute. -Now we go to the other one.

The wormhole is a three-dimensional hole
in space, and what do you get if you take

a circle, sweep it out in three dimensions?
You get a sphere.

So the wormhole almost feels like
a crystal ball hanging in space.

I don't think anybody ever
really done this kind

of visualization before.
This is really unique.

First time for me, as well
as for you and the audience.

- Absolutely, yes.

In Interstellar, crew
members take a giant

leap of faith when they
plunge into a wormhole

You can't just think about your family, now
you have to think bigger than that.

-I am thinking about my family and
millions of other families.

Beyond that wormhole, the
crew will enter the realm

of the most extreme
objects in the universe:

black holes.

From Earth, the starry sky may seem
a realm of timeless calm.

But when we aim our most advanced
tools at the universe, they capture displays

of monstruous power and violence.

Galaxies collide, cosmic clouds of gas and
dust spew radiation. Stars explode and die.

For a filmmaker, space is full of dramatic
possibilities. When you venture out into

a story about a man against the elements,
when that journey is interstellar,

the possibilities for visualizing the threat
against our protagonist

become very much more exotic. Deep, deep
space gives you a very fresh approach.

- Exactly.

One of the greatest challenges for a crew
on an interstellar voyage

will be to nagivate the
dangers of black holes.

Black holes were predicted
by Einstein's equations, but

physicists question wether
they could really exist.

The black hole is a strange beast.
If this were

a black hole, then instead
of a rubber surface

it would have a surface
that is made of

absolutely nothing except
warped space and time.

It's a place where gravity is so strong that
if anything falls into the black hole,

it can never get back out. If you fall in,
you can't send signals back out,

light can't get out from the interior.

See, you might ask: how
did that ever happen? In

outer space you can get
so much mass together

like in a super-massive
star, that the gravity

does become stronger and
stronger and stronger,

and eventually the pressure that matter
exerts on itself can't keep up.

And everything collapses,
there's a big explosion, some

of the stuff is blown away
but the rest of it collapses

into a black hole.

A black hole that spins on its axis drags the
very space around it into a whilring motion

that pulls stars and planets into orbit.

Closer in, gravity increases like a riptide.
At a boundary called the event horizon

the gravity becomes so
extreme that nothing can

escape being pulled into
the heart of the beast

and lost forever.

Black holes are simple, and yet
they have a lot of character.

It's almost like they can
take on personalities, umm,

they can be picky eaters,
they can be energetic.

And what you're seeing and
describing is really how

the black hole interacts
with the environment.

UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez is an
expert on black hole detection.

She played a key role investigating what
had long been a scientific hunch.

That a huge black hole lives at the centre
of the Milky Way. -It's looking good.

Astronomers knew the
heart of our galaxy was

buzzing with gas, dust
and millions of stars.

Some powerful force appeared
to be driving this hubbub.

Could it be a black hole?

Ground telescopes just couldn't produce
sharp images of the region,

when the technique called adaptive optics
vastly improved the view.

So this is what it looks like before you use
the advanced technology, it's a blurry mess

and now you can see the individual stars
with the adaptive optics turned on.

So each point of light here is associated
with an individual star.

Andrea put that technique to work at
the Keck observatory in Hawaii.

This is a roadmap.

- And she and her team began to track the
stars at the centre of the Milky way.

And that's the centre of our galaxy.

The very first year that we
took the data was in 1995.

Then we go back to the
telescope in '96,

and then we take our second image, and you
have two pictures. We can compare them,

- Andrea wanted to see if the stars were
orbiting a single source of gravity, but

stars can take years to complete an orbit.

So it was really important
that we kept going, and

by 2000 we finally started
to see the star's curve.

In other words, the gravitational influence
of the black hole had made those stars

go from straight lines to starting to bend.

The measurements were precise enough
to see that curvature. -Year by year,

Andrea and her team built their case.
This animation represents 20 years of work

and it tells you that it is a black hole, and
exactly how massive it is.

Andrea's painstaking
project revealed a monster

with more than 400
million times the mass

of our Sun at the centre of our Milky Way.

Today, scientists are hunting
black holes with new tools.

CalTech astrophysicist Fiona Harrison
scans the skies with New Star,

a telescope that looks at the universe
in high energy X-rays.

The black hole itself doesn't emit light, but
dust and gas falls onto the black holes

and in doing so heats up,
and it emits X-rays.

New Star captures black holes in
a process of feasting on matter,

and the telescope is spotting
it all over the place.

- It's really only
10 or 20 years ago

that we thought black holes were rare. We now
know that every galaxy, like our Milky way,

has a massive black hole at its heart.

so rather than being just curiosities
they're actually fundamentally important to

why the universe is the way it is.

So, is the Earth at risk of getting swallowed
by a black hole?

Even though we have black
holes sprinkled throughout

the galaxy, we're at
absolutely no danger.

It's a common misconception
that black holes might

suck the Earth. Well, there's
no sucking going on,

it's just normal gravity.
It's just when you get very close to it

that there's a region from
which even light can't

even escape, and the Earth
is not gonna do that.

But what if a spaceship
had a close encounter?

What if an astronaut
dove in feet first?

-In the simplest
descriptions of this, the

descriptions you'll find in
most books that you read

you're simply stretched from head to foot,
and squeezed from the sides by tidal forces

'spaghettified' as it's well often said,
you're spaghettified if you fall in

and you're destroyed.
That's the standard story.

The truth is, all the
laws of physics that we

know break down in the
heart of the black hole.

Physicists are still working on exactly
what happens there.

That's the gravity where there is no...
When we talk to a physicist,

we will often say 'it's the gravity' lie.
-So you've been lying to us all these years.

-You know how these things go: there are lies
and there are 'lies'. - I know, but now...

The movie Interstellar deals
with physics that is well

understood, well established,
it deals with physics

where we make educated
guesses and we're almost

sure but not a 100%
sure of our guesses.

And it deals with physics
at the frontiers of

human understanding where
we have to speculate

and when you get beyond those frontiers,
Interstellar works hard to align itself with

the best speculations our
scientists can imagine.

Interstellar mines that gray area
where new ideas percolate

and taps deep into questions
about the nature of the universe.

In Interstellar, telescopes on Earth first
detect the presence of a wormhole

it shows up as a gravitational anomaly
that distorts the view of space.

We made the wormholes have all that
strong gravity. -But what then?

Cuz then you have a
reason for your...

- I just, I feel uncomfortable
with the wormhole

having that much gravity.

-When I first began working
with Christopher Nolan, he

wanted the wormhole to have
a rather gentle gravity,

so we discussed how big the
wormhole should be and

we agreed that it should
be just barely big enough

that it could be seen from
Earth through the bending

of light around the wormhole
by it's warped space.

-Kip Thorne worked out just the right gravity
for Interstellar's wormhole.

Using equations based on Einstein's
theory of general relativity.

-As we've learned, that
theory states that

objects warp space and
time, creating gravity.

It also predicts that
when objects move they

generate a pulse that
propagates through spacetime

a bit like waves through the water.

These gravitational waves
have never been directly

observed. They would be
small and hard to detect

unless they were generated by
a massively violent motion.

Like the birth of the universe.

Physicists developed their Big Bang theory
in part by observing that today

the universe is expanding.

Galaxies are moving away from each other
like raisins in a rising loaf of bread

which suggests that in the distant past,
the universe must've been much smaller.

-If you wind the movie backwards, in the past
everything was closer together

and you plug that idea into the equations
that Einstein gives us.

And there's a moment which we now know
was about 14 billion years ago,

when everything was on
top of everything else,

when the density of stuff in the universe
was apparently infinitely big.

Then a powerful force triggered
an expansion of space itself.

Faster than the speed of light,
a theory called Cosmic Inflation.

And the theory said that
this Inflation should've

taken fluctuation from
the shape of space

and amplify them, so they got much stronger.

And they've become
gravitational waves, producing

ripple from the fabric
of space and time.

If we could detect those
ripples today, it would

help us understand how
the Big Bang - banged.

-The trick was always how were we going to
measure such a thing.

And that led us to propose and develop this
very specialized experiment

which one of my colleagues refered to
gleefully as a wild goose chase.

CalTech physicist Jamie Bock works
in experimental cosmology.

Experimental cosmology
is building experiments,

trying to get back
to the dawn of time.

-You need a hand with that?
-The focus of his latest

experiment was the oldest
light in the universe.

The faint afterglow of the Big Bang.

Physicists have mapped this cosmic microwave
bacground across the universe.

If the birth of the universe
produced gravitational

waves, they would've warped
this primordial light

and cause it to be polarized or curled in
a specific direction.

-If one could measure the
polarization and then

not only measure, but
look at its pattern,

there might be kind of
a swirly pattern that

would be an indicator
of gravitational waves.

Jamie and his team designed a series
of small super-sensitive telescopes

that they installed where the skies
are crystal clear. At the South Pole.

The South Pole is the closest that we can get
to outer space to make our measurements.

For eight years the team's
telescope scanned a

patch in the sky, measuring
minute differences

in the temperature of the cosmic
microwave background, and a pattern emerged.

-Our results reported
that we see this swirly

pattern of polarization
that's consistent with

what you expect from gravitational waves.

So they didn't really see the gravitational
waves from the early universe,

they saw this polarization pattern that was
precisely what was predicted,

except they were stronger than expected.

Ok, this is like, going on immediately after
the Big Bang when the universe was a

trillionth of a trillionth of
a trillionth of a second old.

So it's seeing almost the
creation of the universe.

-The finding must be confirmed
by other experiments.

If it holds up, this will
be the first evidence

for detection of the
gravitational waves

predicted by Einstein.

To contemplate the mysteries of space,
time and the universe

can make a person feel mighty small.

Maybe it's best to lower our sights,
hunger down and focus on planet Earth.

But that's not really an option for you,
namely in the long run.

Interstellar depicts a future where
living conditions on Earth are grim.

There's only one solution.

-Now you need to tell me
what your plan it is to

save the world. -We're not
meant to save the world,

we're meant to leave it.

This blue oasis is the only place we know
that supports life.

But that could change in a flash.

February 15th, 2013

A meteor shining brighter than the Sun
shrieks across Siberia.

It's a rock 65 feet in diameter,
and when it explodes in mid-air

it releases more than 20 times the energy
of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

No one was killed, but more than
a thousand people were injured.

Asteroids have struck Earth before.
Some 65 million years ago,

a monster 6 miles wide may have wiped out
half the species on Earth.

Remember the dinosaurs? A similar
impact, or worse, could happen anytime

and turn our Blue Marble
into a lifeless rock. In the

meantime, perhaps a greater
threat to the planet

is us.

And the bottom line? Earth
can not sustain us forever.

In a few billion years, our Sun will expand
as it begins to die.

And our planet will be toast.

But there's good news. Unlike the dinosaurs,
we can leave Earth.

T minus 10, 9... Ignition sequence start!
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Zero!

Zero left. lift off of
space shuttle Atlantis.

-Today nearly 600 people
have traveled to space.

During the shuttle era, Marsha Ivins
made the trip five times.

-In order to record all of this, we have
created this wiring nightmare here.

-At Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
she checks in on an old friend.

Looking at Atlantis hanging here, it's a
surreal kind of experience to think...

I flew that into outer space. It's still
something that I have a hard time believing.

And it makes me feel good that people still
have a wonder and an amazement and a pure joy

for the fact that we did fly
this vehicle into space.

-For Marsha, each mission was as
breathtaking as her first.

-I looked up overhead, and
here was this black sky

and this blue Earth. It all hits you at that
point: "I am not on the planet anymore."

And every astronaut who has flewn has
come back and said the same thing.

As you circle the Earth,
you do not see natural

borders and boundaries that
separate the countries.

And all of the wars, and the angst and
the strife that tear this planet apart

seem so insignificant from that view.

-To me space travel, space exploration has
always represented the ultimate frontier.

It's of the absolute extremities of what
human experience is, and it's all about

trying to in some way define
our place in the universe.

-40 sec away from the Apollo 11 lift off.
-I remember growing up as a kid

and we were both fascinated by
this impulse to fly.

This impulse to build unimaginable machines
and use them to blast off into.. into space.

-Having fired the imagination
of a generation,

pulls into port for
the last time.

-The space shuttles were
retired in 2011 after

traveling more than a
half billion miles.

Space exploration demands enormous resources.

The kind that government agencies
like NASA can marshal.

Recently, some new players entered the fray

I really think we're at a dawn of a new
space era, and it's one where

commercial companies play
a much stronger role.

NASA's not out of the
picture, they're very much in

the picture, but it's not
all a NASA design system.

In 2002, Elon Musk started
his own rocket company.

A decade later, under
contract of NASA

SpaceX became the first
private company in

history to carry supplies
to and from the ISS.

Now SpaceX is tackling an
even greater challenge.

-I started SpaceX with the idea of
trying to revolutionize space transport.

And critical to that is
full and rapid reusability

of the rocket. The big
issue with rocketry today

is that you get one use out of the rocket,
and then it smashes down into the ocean

or warms the plains of Siberia,
and you can't use it again.

If you can, in fact,
land a rocket safely and

then reuse it with a
minimal amount of effort

then you can dramatically reduce the cost
of both for space transport.

SpaceX is currently developing a fully
and rapidly reusable launch system.

And that will take Elon closer to
a more ambitious goal:

to help send crews to establish
a colony on Mars.

Not an issue for the faint-hearted.

If anybody wants to go to Mars,
their desire for adventure

would have to overcome the desire
for comfort and safety.

-The colony on Mars could be the next
giant leap for human kind.

-It's such a fundamental idea
when you think about it,

it's just the decision that has to be made
in terms of how you view the...

the human race's place in the universe.
We are to stay here on Earth,

or we leave and we journey
through the galaxy?

-We'll find a way, we always have.

To create the look and
the space technology of

Interstellar, Christopher
Nolan took a clean design.

-We didn't want to have anything that felt
purely decorative.

We wanted to approach it from a much,
much more functional point of view,

just be as convincing as possible, looking at
NASA technology that already exists today

and the ISS, these kind of things
were our influences.

-There's no telling how space technology
will evolve in the years to come,

we may be decades away or longer
from establishing a colony on Mars.

or a permanent habitat in
orbit around the Earth.

But people around the world are
dreaming of that next step.

At a recent space conference, NASA
and the International Space Society

hands out awards to dozens
of forward-looking designs.

So, a sustaining settlement
for 20,000 people.

A moon base that mines
minerals from lunar soil.

A fleet of robots that clean up space junk.

-But of course this is really hard,
because we're burning fuel...

-There's not a single PhD among
the prize-winning designers.

These are middle and high school students
from around the world.

One of these kids may
stand on Mars some day,

or make a breakthrough
in propulsion systems.

Or start a revolution in astrophysics.

To inspire their kind of enthusiasm
is the hope of the Interstellar team.

-I would love the kids to
watch and get excited about

the possibilities of space
travel and exploration.

-I would hope that this
film introduces many people

to science that might have
not have gotten curious

about this kind of science
in any other way.

-I think it would be really thrilling if
people got some sense from this film,

these ideas are worth thinking about.

-The interplay between science and sci-fi
springs from a deep-seeded creative drive.

To make sense of the unknown...

to engineer new worlds...

to dream up a better future...
we'll find answers where we always have.

Just beyond the next horizon. (thanks vvb)