Original subtitles

ROBERT BALLARD: I've dedicated my life to exploring the unknown.

I've been places no one else has ever gone.

I've seen life no human eye has ever seen.

It's my passion.

I found the Titanic.

God damn!

I've survived crushing depths

and a rogue wave.

But even after 50 years at sea,

I'm as fascinated with the deep

as I was on my very first expedition.

You want to know my most important discovery?

Well, it's the one I'm about to make.

I'm Dr. Robert Ballard.

Come with me into the alien deep.

NARRATOR: Earth may be racing toward a crisis

of epic proportions.

Some say our planet is being stretched thin.

Oil costs are on the rise.

Climate change could turn fertile cropland into dust.

And rising sea levels may flood our shorelines,

destroying millions of homes.

We need solutions,

and some believe the only place left to look

is outer space.

BUZZ ALDRIN: The world leader that announces to his nation

that he is making a commitment to permanence on another planet,

he's going down in history better than Moses,

Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar.

Man, this is the biggest thing

that inhabitants of the earth have ever done.

NARRATOR: But not everyone agrees.

BALLARD: We're not going to live in outer space.

That's a complete bunch of baloney.

We're running out of room on land.

We have no other option but to move out onto the ocean.

NARRATOR: Dr. Robert Ballard has spent his career

exploring the ocean depths.

BALLARD: Watch your water depth right now.

NARRATOR: He's seen our oceans radically changed

in his own lifetime.

And he's very concerned.

BALLARD: I'm not really worried about the planet.

Earth will survive us.

The question is whether we as a species survive.

The odds are not in our favor.

NARRATOR: Ballard thinks the human race

is heading toward catastrophe.

And he's not alone in his belief

that the time to do something about it is now.

BILL NYE: If you don't keep looking out,

if you don't keep looking up,

if you don't look beyond what you see at first,

I'll tell you, from an evolutionary standpoint,

you're going to run out of resources.

Humans that don't look out, that don't want to explore,

don't last.

NARRATOR: The question is,

do we follow the sci-fi dream of escaping a dying Earth

and building a colony elsewhere?

Or do we search for solutions right here at home?

ALDRIN: Stephen Hawking, he made a statement,

the earth has 200 years to establish an off-planet species

or we will be destroyed.

Either from terrorism, A-bombs, the plague,

all these kinds of things can wipe out humanity.

NARRATOR: Hawking poses a challenge

that many space advocates-

Buzz Aldrin among them-

would love to answer.

ALDRIN: This cookie wants to go to Mars.

NARRATOR: But Ballard isn't ready to give up on planet Earth just yet.

Not surprisingly,

he sees the oceans as the key to our survival.

BALLARD: I believe in the concept of KISS.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Imagine the resources we would discover-

living resources, mineral resources,

oil and gas, new pharmaceuticals,

and equally important, a place to live.

NARRATOR: For decades, Ballard and his oceanographer colleagues

have been fighting to pull people's attention

away from the heavens.

BALLARD: We've been conditioned-

God is up there, heaven is up there,

the devil's down there.

NARRATOR: The luster of space has cast the oceans into shadow.

NEIL ARMSTRONG: Houston, the Eagle has landed.

That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

MAN: And liftoff of space shuttle Discovery!

NARRATOR: Since the birth of the space program,

multi-million-dollar missions have headed into orbit,

while oceanographers have struggled for funding.

BALLARD: The oceans are getting lost in the shuffle.

We have the technology needed to explore them,

but there's just not enough people paying attention.

NARRATOR: The result is a vast portion of our world

that's virtually unknown.

The oceans cover 71% of our planet,

yet only 5% of it has been explored.

BALLARD: We know very little about what's down there.

It's amazing, you come to the water's edge,

and you're- and there it stops,

'cause you can't see into this murky water right now.

What's right out here?

Is there an Indian canoe right out here?

What's just beyond our reach?

And most people just stop at the shoreline

and they never question what's just feet away.

They'd rather go to outer space

than to go just in their own backyard and explore.

Do you really think we are going to move

the entire Earth's population to Mars?

We may explore it,

but the future of the human race is right here on planet Earth.

I can guarantee you this-

that once we map the ocean floor,

we are going to find a lot of new resources

important to our future.

NARRATOR: But mapping the ocean and searching for resources

is not as simple as it seems.

Above water, and even on Mars, it's a straightforward process.

Radar, which travels easily through the atmosphere,

measures the position and height of objects in the landscape.

Not so beneath our oceans.

Here, satellite imaging can only approximate

what is under the waves.

BALLARD: Mapping the planet from outer space

shows us where the main mountain ranges are.

But it certainly is nothing to drive by or to work by.

İt's like laying a wet blanket

over a very complex dinner table,

and then trying to figure out what's on the dinner table.

That's not the way to go.

It's dark down there, the pressure is extreme,

so that means we have to be clever

and dream up new and more creative ways of doing it.

Do you copy, over?

NARRATOR: Ballard thinks we can, and should,

make the bottom of what is now an alien deep

as familiar as the Grand Canyon.

Some of his colleagues are working hard to do just that.

Up in the rapidly thawing Arctic,

American oceanographer Larry Mayer and his team

are collaborating with Canadian crews

to map the continental shelf and uncover the hidden landscape.

The mission amounts to a multinational land grab-

with vast underwater resources at stake.

Oceanographer Larry Mayer is on the forefront

of ocean exploration.

It's expeditions like his that may help us find

submerged resources we might desperately need.

LARRY MAYER: We look out at the beach and think that's where the country ends,

but we have a 200-nautical-mile extension of that.

NARRATOR: In many places,

that extension is virtually unexplored,

yet it's territory America controls.

BALLARD: Half of the United States of America

is under the ocean.

And we have better maps of Mars

than half of the United States of America.

Little odd, don't you think?

NARRATOR: It's a situation Larry and his team

are trying to remedy.

Clearly laying out underwater borders now

means less chance of conflict later.

If oil, gas and minerals are found,

who actually controls the land, and hence the resources,

will be critical.

But what they're attempting is no easy feat.

45 days in the frigid Arctic,

where shifting ice, dense fog, and too much daylight

keep everyone on edge.

MAYER: The vessel's very isolated.

We are quite alone up there.

And if something very serious happened,

it's a long way back.

NARRATOR: Exploration goes hand-in-hand with risk.

İt's why so few people actually do it.

But the cost of doing nothing can also be risky.

NYE: You have to have somebody in your tribe

who is willing to go out and see what's over the next hill,

or beyond the next ridge.

[radio chatter]

MAN ON RADIO: Roger, we copy.

NARRATOR: That's hard enough on Earth,

but if that next ridge is on Mars,

the stakes get even higher.

ALDRIN: The first astronauts know

from the day they were selected

that their purpose is to live the rest of their life

on the surface of Mars.

So that's a qualification for application.

You must commit to living your life out on Mars.

That's shocking to people.

"Gee, you're not bringing people back?"

Well, now, wait a minute, the pilgrims on the Mayflower,

did they wait around Plymouth Rock for the return trip?

BALLARD: The pilgrims, well, they had a pretty good idea

of how they were gonna survive.

But that was on planet Earth.

Now how are we going to survive on Mars?

Turn it into another Earth?

It took our planet billions of years

before we could live here.

NARRATOR: These students of the Civil Air Patrol

aren't planning to wait that long.

They're taking part in a unique experiment

to test what life on Mars might be like for early explorers.

It may look a bit half-baked,

but this habitat in the Utah desert

gives the recruits a pretty good feel

for the challenges they'll face.

With resources limited by the high cost of getting payloads into orbit,

they'll need to explore, find water,

and prospect for minerals in the barren wasteland.

BALLARD: I just can't justify in my mind

spending the unimaginable amount of money it's going to take

to send a few people to Mars,

when the same amount of money could have a real impact

on the rest of us here on Earth.

NARRATOR: But some would argue Ballard is thinking too narrowly,

that space exploration is about more than just resources.

NYE: You cannot help but wonder

if there were once living things there.

Suppose you found microbes that are still alive on Mars.

It would change the world.

It would change your view of your place in space.

So we want to explore, to discover where we came from,

and then ultimately to ask new questions about are we alone?

BALLARD: Exploration of outer space

is absolutely an important thing to do,

but when it comes to feeding our families,

the oceans are where we need to turn.

NARRATOR: Far up in the northern hemisphere,

Larry Mayer and his team are already having success

discovering new territory and potential new resources.

MAYER: We know so little about the Arctic.

Every time we've gone out, each year we go out,

we find things totally unexpected.

NARRATOR: In 2003, Mayer made a huge discovery

while mapping north of Alaska.

Where satellite maps had shown only a vague shadow,

their imaging techniques revealed a 10,000-foot seamount

on what is considered the extended continental shelf

of the United States.

It's new territory we didn't even know we had!

MAYER: We're going out with a very, very special kind of mapping system,

a multi-beam echo sounder,

and instead of putting one big, large cone of sound out,

it puts out a number of small, little, very, very focused beams of sound

across this wide swath,

each one that measures very precisely

and very accurately the depth in that small area.

They provide much, much higher resolution images of what's going on.

We see all kinds of detail we couldn't see before.

NARRATOR: Mayer's maps turn a flat, blurry image

into a 3-D landscape of slopes and underwater formations.

These are underwater resources that can be explored

and exploited to provide for our growing population.

And that's where the true challenges

of working in the deep come into play.

Challenges of pressure and darkness

Ballard knows all too well.

BALLARD: My first dive in a deep submersible was in 1969.

I did it for a number of years,

but I'm glad I'm not doing it anymore.

The bad stuff is like fires.

Those are not nice.

So we had one at 9,000 feet once in a bathyscaphe.

And they forgot to turn on my emergency oxygen supply.

So that was fun.

You want to go down?

This is for three people.

And this doesn't have all the equipment in it!

And here we are.

My home away from home for a quarter century.

It's crazy.

It's two and a half hours down to 12,000 feet

in one of these things.

Two and a half hours back up.

Five hours a day, you're just commuting.

You're not doing anything but commuting.

Freezing cold.

Potentially getting killed.

NARRATOR: That's been the nature of ocean exploration.

And it looks a lot like its deep-space equivalent,

with one exception.

Traditionally, space organizations

start with unmanned probes,

and work their way up to manned missions

for specially trained astronauts.

But in the ocean,

Ballard is trying to do just the reverse.

BALLARD: I've had a lot of close calls in deep diving submarines

to know that there's definitely a better way of doing it

that's a lot safer and less expensive.

MAN ON RADIO: Control van, we are good to go onto the bridge, over.

NARRATOR: This is Dr. Robert Ballard's futuristic vision

of deep-sea exploration-

his Inner Space Center.

It's a model he believes will soon allow us

to know the oceans, the way we already know the land.

BALLARD: If I can sneak in here and see what's going on...

NARRATOR: With live satellite feeds

from research vessels around the world,

Ballard can monitor multiple expeditions at once.

BALLARD: Yeah, can they zoom down?

WOMAN: We are all around...

and we have found some new hydrothermal vents.

And the height of some of them is four meters tall.

BALLARD: Okay, so it looks like

you're moving away from that target.

WOMAN: Yeah, we are going to mark this area

in order to see how many they are.

NARRATOR: By tapping into on-call scientists

all over the world,

he can have an expert looking at a new discovery

within a half an hour of hearing about it.

WOMAN: So you have everything that you want.

MAN: Yeah, that would be great.

BALLARD: The world's going to be wired.

And there will be no place on our planet

less than a fraction of a second away.

WOMAN: We are going to do the sub link,

and you will be there to...

BALLARD: And so we will be able to move our spirit out of our body.

I mean, that's what this room is all about.

That's what our technology is all about.

It's about decoupling your spirit from your body.

It's avatar.

You literally beam yourself somewhere else.

It's Star Trek, "Beam me down, Scotty.”

NARRATOR: It's a novel idea,

and it works both in the ocean and in space.

But if we're going to explore a place like Mars

in a truly meaningful way,

will robots be enough?

Planetary scientist Dr. Pascal Lee is not so sure.

He's convinced that on Mars, success lies in human hands,

and he's committed to putting them there.

If we are to send manned missions to Mars,

current technology will need to make some great leaps forward.

PASCAL LEE: For rockets, we need new materials.

We'll have students in universities

working on the problem.

It will take a big effort

that will be really a big investment in our society,

in ourselves.

NARRATOR: Lee is working on the next generation of spacesuits

that will allow astronauts to survive and work

on the red planet.

His designs are a far cry from the heavy suits

used by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

ARMSTRONG: Are you getting the TV picture now, Houston?

HOUSTON: Neil, yes, we are getting a TV picture.

You're in our field of view now.

NARRATOR: When they landed on the moon,

Neil and Buzz were outfitted for the worst case scenario.

ALDRIN: What a desolate, godforsaken place this is.

No atmosphere.

No sound.

What we're looking at hasn't changed

in hundreds of thousands of years.

NARRATOR: The Apollo astronauts' spacesuits

protected them from these extremes during moonwalks,

but the men had to put on and take off the suits

inside the spacecraft.

This posed a problem,

because lunar dust on the suits

permeated every surface of the lander.

They'll need a better solution

if they hope to set up an outpost on Mars.

LEE: The Martian dust, for all we know,

is potentially very toxic for humans.

And so we really do not want the astronauts

to be inhaling or ingesting any Martian dusts.

NARRATOR: Lee has designed a protective suit

with a unique entry system.

MAN: Okay, you're going to grab this handle,

and you're going to swing it out to the outside.

You're going to reach up and grab this thing

and push it up hard.

LEE: This way you can just climb into the spacesuit

in shirt sleeves, close the doors behind you,

you unlatch, and off you go.

You're walking on Mars.

MAN: Okay, now grab this handle and pull down.

Right here.

Okay, give it a good pull down.

NARRATOR: The suit and the dust from the surface

stay outside the vehicle,

keeping the inside clean and safe.

LEE: This is a tangible step, it's a small step,

but it's a tangible step that we're taking

towards getting humans to Mars.

You can't go to Mars unless you go through this step,

and we're taking it.

Do you feel comfortable? Can you do work?

Does it feel heavy to you?

MAN: Not really.

LEE: Not really? Can you see around well?

Got good visibility?

MAN: Is it too high in your crotch? Little tight?

MAN: Little bit, yeah.

MAN: Well, actually, there's no adjustment there.

You're stuck.

NARRATOR: After some initial indoor testing,

Lee's team heads out to the simulated surface

of the red planet.

They'll be trying out the new entry system,

as well as the astronauts' ability to move around

in the new suits.

BALLARD: It's the same struggle

whether you're in space or underwater.

If you're putting people there,

you need all kinds of bulky life support systems.

We're tough and we're smart,

but we're just not made to live in those kinds of environments.

NARRATOR: Lee thinks the most astronauts could carry on Mars

is 150 pounds, which would feel like 60.

LEE: The weight of the suit is really the biggest challenge.

Right now, the spacesuits that we use

weigh 300 pounds on the earth.

If you are to walk around on Mars in that suit,

it would still have a felt weight of about 125 pounds.

And 125 pounds would not allow you to be effective

as an explorer.

All right? We all set?

WOMAN: Yeah, we got it.

LEE: Ready to go, sounds good.

MAN: What do you read?

MAN: 51, yeah.

NARRATOR: After many hours of walking, drilling,

and getting into and out of the suits,

Lee is pleased with the results.

But he knows this is just the beginning

of a long, arduous journey to Mars.

LEE: The 21st century will see humans reach another planet.

But the truth is, we still have a lot of things to work out technically

before we're ready to go to Mars.

NARRATOR: And that, says Ballard, is the problem.

With the triple threat of food, energy,

and living space shortages looming,

we don't have time to overcome $0 many basic hurdles.

BALLARD: The challenges of getting the first people on Mars

might be doable in my lifetime.

And don't get me wrong,

it will be an incredible feat of human accomplishment.

But in terms of practical value to mankind,

I think investing in the exploration

and eventual colonization of the world's oceans

makes a lot more sense.

NARRATOR: Ballard believes the oceans are our best-kept secret.

And the foundations for our success there

have already been laid.

Not like in space, where almost everything we do,

we'll be doing for the very first time.

BALLARD: I have to go and feed the chickens.

That's one of my duties and responsibilities.

Hi. How are you guys, huh?

Chow time.

Here's a peach, you'll love that.

NARRATOR: Ballard's chickens eat better

than millions of humans.

Food costs have almost doubled in the last decade,

and we're running out of room to grow more crops.

BALLARD: I'm looking at my children,

my grandchildren and their children.

I'm looking out four or five generations.

The resources aren't there.

If you think of the earth as a baseball field-

we grow most of our food not on the entire field,

not even on the infield, but on the pitcher's mound.

NARRATOR: It's because much of Earth isn't fit for farming,

and the rest of the planet is ocean,

which is why Ballard believes we need to figure out

how to grow crops in the water.

In China, they've been doing it for centuries.

With 1.3 billion mouths to feed,

it's become a matter of necessity.

BALLARD: It's only logical that

you would turn more and more to the sea

to feed the growing population of the planet.

NARRATOR: These aren't fishermen- they're farmers.

Bobbing in the Yellow Sea just off China's northern coast

are some of the world's largest aqua farms.

On the bottom, they harvest shellfish.

It's hardly high-tech.

This diver's grandfather may have worn this same suit.

A lifeline of air tethers him

as he plunges some 20 feet below the surface.

While he works below on the bottom,

other farmers are harvesting at the surface.

They're gathering forests of kelp,

which can be processed into food,

animal feed or medicine.

It's not science fiction,

it doesn't require sleek, fancy equipment,

but it's making a difference.

BALLARD: Primitive as it is,

it's covering a lot of real estate,

and it's producing a lot of food.

One criticism is that you do it close to land in shallow water,

and you really are polluting the coastal zone with it.

Another criticism is that it's an eyesore.

You see it. It doesn't look pretty.

But if ancient Chinese practices can point the way,

it's only a matter of time

before modern technology catches up.

Especially when you're motivated by a looming food crisis.

NARRATOR: 5,000 miles away, a high-tech experiment

is attempting to take sea farms to the next level.

Biologist Neil Sims is hoping to change the way we fish.

NEIL SIMS: We have to move towards where we're culturing our seafood.

BALLARD: We have to move from a hunter-gatherer society

to a farming and herding society.

SIMS: Right, and we did this on land 10,000 years ago.

Why is it so hard for us to do it on water?

NARRATOR: Four months ago,

Sims and his team took on that challenge,

off the Big Island of Hawaii.

They're helping sea farms break free from the shore.

SIMS: The goal of the project

is to be able to grow fish in the ocean

without any measurable footprint.

And we need to be doing it out in the open ocean

where there is a complete disconnect

in terms of this pen and the coastal ecosystems.

NARRATOR: By raising his fish inside a cage

that drifts far offshore,

Sims keeps them in pristine water all the time.

BALLARD: Barbed wire transformed farming on land,

and this is the ocean equivalent.

SIMS: Get in the water here, take this line from Gavin,

sport it around onto the port side of the cage,

keeping the hose in there

and keeping the fish away from the door.

Okay?

We're just getting set to pump the fish.

We've got the cage raised,

we've got the fingerling delivery boat,

the Kona Kampachi is backed up onto the cage,

the Machias is still holding us into the current.

This is where things could go horribly wrong.

They're very vulnerable at that very high density,

so the focus all this morning has been fish first.

We've now successfully stocked the aqua pod

with 2,000 Seriola rivoliana,

which is the Latin name for the Kona Kampachi.

It's a native fish here, to these waters,

it's usually found on the deep reef.

Pull the hose out and close the gate, okay?

So now the challenge for us here,

for the next 10 months of grow-out,

is to keep these fish fed, keep them healthy,

and keep them here, in the eddies,

in the back of the Big Island.

NARRATOR: Sims is taking an entrepreneurial gamble.

Ballard wants to see if the risk is paying off.

BALLARD: Oh, that feels very good.

We're going to raise it now, take a look,

and then put it back down and then feed them, right?

Are they pretty conditioned on knowing when that's going to be?

SIMS: Oh, yeah, that's why I'm a bit worried now.

They're sitting there sort of strumming their fingers

saying, "Come on, it's breakfast time. Where's breakfast?"

NARRATOR: On this scale, the fish ball is losing money.

But if these Kampachi thrive,

Sims hopes to create hundreds of bigger enclosures

to make the project viable.

BALLARD: That was fun.

I love your fish.

I want to eat one, is that all right?

SIMS: Oh, yeah, they're meant for eating.

BALLARD: I like the fact that

you haven't been playing with their genetics at all,

you're not feeding them hormones,

and you're not doing a lot of things

that are actually done on land.

So, the fact that they're in a natural habitat,

and also the fact that it's mobile.

You're moving it around.

We're in 12,000 feet of water,

we've got the whole ocean flushing through here,

and so I like everything I see.

NARRATOR: By moving the fish pen out to sea,

Sims hopes to turn the ocean into a more natural farm,

one that minimizes the impact on shoreline ecosystems.

BALLARD: Clearly, it's a great start.

But we still have a ways to go.

We need to scale it up to commercial levels

if we want to feed a lot of people

in a sustainable, healthy way.

But that's possible in the ocean.

You're not gonna get that in outer space.

NARRATOR: That's not to say the space advocates

aren't going to try.

MAN: Five, four, three, two, one.

We have ignition and liftoff!

ALDRIN: Sooner or later,

a mature, wise society ensures their survival

by establishing a foothold on another location.

I believe that this nation should commit itself

to permanence on the planet Mars within two to three decades.

Let's build the place so that when people first get there,

it's a hotel, it's a five-star hotel.

NARRATOR: Even a more primitive settlement

would be a daunting goal.

A permanent base on Mars in 20 to 30 years,

when all we have there at the moment

is a handful of rovers covered in space dust.

Experts estimate it could cost as much as $450 billion

just to put the first humans on Mars.

LEE: You have to carry everything you will need

all the way to Mars,

and so the lighter your spacecraft

and everything you carry with you, the better.

BALLARD: That means food, shelter,

building, farming, and mining supplies.

At $10,000 a pound to get it into outer space,

I'm not seeing a very good return on our investment.

NARRATOR: Just feeding four astronauts

for the three years it should take to get to Mars

would cost many millions of dollars.

That's a lot of Big Macs back home.

And growing food locally on Mars could be an iffy proposition.

LEE: One obstacle that we are concerned about

regarding the growth of plants on Mars and food

is that the Martian soil seems to be super-oxidizing.

It's very corrosive.

NARRATOR: Not a farming paradise,

but on the other hand,

the red planet may offer some unique opportunities.

ALDRIN: It rotates, a little slower than the Earth.

It rotates once in 24 and 1/2 hours.

It's pretty much like the earth.

And there's ice at the poles.

We can see that.

One pole has carbon dioxide, the other has water ice.

Gee, that's a pretty good place.

NARRATOR: Mars also has about a third of Earth's gravity-

meaning water might linger longer near plant roots

to help them grow.

But there's still the atmosphere to worry about,

and despite our science fiction visions

of glass and steel habitats, and biodomes of gardens and farms,

the reality is likely to be a lot less exciting.

Mars-food resources, zero.

Population, zero.

Earth-population, seven billion, and growing fast.

Here again, Ballard sees little in space

to compete with the oceans.

BALLARD: I am convinced the greatest living space

that's underutilized on our planet

is the surface of the sea.

I think the human race will move out onto the ocean and live.

NARRATOR: We may have to.

The polar ice caps are melting,

and the speed of the oceans' rise has doubled.

Every year, there's more water and less dry land.

BALLARD: Will everyone want to move out on the ocean? No.

Does everyone want to be a farmer out in the Midwest? No.

But a very significant number of people will want that option.

NARRATOR: In fact, a large number of people

are already living on the ocean, and have been for generations.

Off a small island in Vietnam,

hundreds of families live as pioneers on this new frontier.

It's the ocean equivalent of a village on Mars,

but a lot less expensive.

3,000 limestone formations shield Cat Ba Island

from violent storms that often hit the bay.

BALLARD: There's areas where people have never stood on land.

They've spent their whole life on boats.

NARRATOR: Vo and his wife, their children and grandchildren,

all grew up in the village of Cong Dong.

They're here because the ocean feeds them.

BALLARD: They're taking their scraps

and they're feeding them to the fish that live in their house.

Look at all these kids- off to school.

Being picked up by the maritime equivalent of the school bus.

This is very logical, very natural,

and they look like pretty happy kids to me.

NARRATOR: It's a lifestyle choice

that may soon grow more popular, and more comfortable.

Like the Chinese aqua farms, these boathouses may foreshadow

a practical, higher-tech solution

to future crises.

In Galveston, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico,

a team of visionaries thinks they've already figured out

how to live on the ocean.

They're hoping to bring the boat villages of Vietnam

into the 21st century...

...turning an old oil rig into a city at sea.

BALLARD: The technology of living out on the ocean

has been perfected by the oil industries.

We know how to move people out onto the ocean,

we know actually how to live in relative comfort.

You don't get seasick on these rigs.

They're huge, vertical columns of steel,

and the ocean can't move them.

The first people that will really move out

in any significant numbers will be the farmers.

Just like homesteaders, these are seasteaders.

NARRATOR: Engineers from the Seasteading Institute

are imagining an extreme makeover.

BALLARD: Howdy.

Well, let's dream. What do we have here?

This is a futuristic conversion of this platform.

Now, when it was operational, how many people lived out here?

GREG CASTLEMAN: About 80 people.

BALLARD: Now in this final concept,

how many people are you thinking would be...

GEORGE PETRIE: About 300 people.

BALLARD: About 300 people.

Well, let's take a look. Show me around.

PETRIE: This is the main deck of the rig.

All of these yellow columns

and the structure on the deck is going to go,

and it will be replaced by just open deck area

with sun lounges and tables and chairs and a coffee shop

and topped by a magnificent glass pyramid.

BALLARD: The interesting thing that people don't realize

is how many people already live out on the gulf.

What would you say the total population out on the gulf is?

It's got to be many thousands.

CASTLEMAN: Probably about 20,000 people.

BALLARD: 20,000 people are already out there,

so it's not a stretch, I mean, that's the point.

How many people are living on the moon?

CASTLEMAN: About zero last time I checked.

BALLARD: Right. How many people are living on Mars?

We already have thousands and thousands of people

living in the future already.

PETRIE: Technically, it's a solved problem.

BALLARD: Exactly.

PETRIE: The idea is to transition

from an industrial workplace environment

where people go to live a month at a time,

to a lifestyle.

BALLARD: So this is not something that's a great stretch.

I actually see this happening within my own lifetime.

We have the energy, we have the food, we have the nutrients,

all the things that you need to sustain life,

of course are in the ocean.

That's where most of life lives.

Wow, this is quite different, Graham.

NARRATOR: Ballard's even seeing advances in the vehicles

that might get us around.

BALLARD: This is an airplane!

NARRATOR: Though he still believes

the future of deep ocean exploration will be unmanned,

he jumps at the invitation

to try out the latest manned prototype

from sub designer Graham Hawkes.

Unlike most submarines, which wallow like blimps,

Hawkes' Super Falcon flies through the water like an F-16.

GRAHAM HAWKES: We'll follow a contour around

and I'll give you a time.

It'll be 10 minutes down.

NARRATOR: They'll be sticking close to the surface,

which is fine by Ballard.

He's had more than his share of near-disasters down deep.

BALLARD: Crashing is always nasty.

Did that at 20,000 feet in a bathyscaphe.

That wasn't very nice.

Almost didn't make that one.

But we're not going to do any of that today.

MAN: Do you want me to put this on for you? BALLARD: Yeah.

MAN: Checklist is complete. Ready to seal hatches?

BALLARD: Absolutely.

MAN: So what was that like?

BALLARD: Very different, very different.

Yeah, I've made lots of dives,

but that was not a dive, that was a flight.

It was pretty cool.

Very, very different.

NARRATOR: Though the Super Falcon is still experimental,

it's easy to see how useful it could one day be.

BALLARD: If we are ever going to master the oceans

the way we've mastered the skies,

it's vehicles like this that are gonna play a part.

I can see future generations of this vehicle

being used to move researchers, workers, even families

through the underwater world.

It will definitely change the way we get around in the future.

NARRATOR: Just one more tool to help us navigate

what Ballard hopes will be our home turf of the future.

And one more reason

he thinks Earth will always be our very best option.

BALLARD: Think of how bad things really have to get

here on Earth before a move to Mars really makes any sense.

Even the worst spot on Earth has a lot more going for it

than the best spot on Mars.

So a lot would really, really have to go wrong here

before that becomes even a viable option.

NARRATOR: Ultimately, time may make our choices for us.

Fuel supplies are limited.

The population is exploding.

Temperatures are rising,

and so is the ocean.

BALLARD: We need to manage it

just like we manage our own country.

Some of it we farm and herd,

others we set aside for sanctuaries, others are parks.

There's so many different ways

we could be better utilizing the ocean than we are right now.

NARRATOR: What we can't do, says Ballard,

is give up on our planet.

'Cause if we screw this one up,

what makes us think we'll do better somewhere else?

BALLARD: We're setting up our kids for a great disappointment

to think that they're going to live on Mars.

I think that's dishonest.

They're not going to live on Mars.

ALDRIN: I like him. I love the guy.

But nobody elected Bob Ballard president of the oceans.

NARRATOR: At the top of a dormant volcano in Hawaii,

Dr. Robert Ballard is as close to Mars as he ever wants to get.

BALLARD: We're not going to leave this planet.

We're not going to do the Superman deal

of messing up Krypton.

And, by the way, he went to a pretty nice planet.

[laughs]

No, we're not going to transform Mars into Earth.

We're going to live on Earth.

We're going to try to live in harmony with Earth.

We're going to move out onto the surface of the oceans.

No.

Clear as a bell to me.

Should be as clear as a bell to you.