Moriba Jah is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He's also a major advocate for the "stewardship" of Earth and space.
Guest | Dr. Moriba Jah, Professor, The University of Texas at Austin [@UTAustin]
On Twitter | https://x.com/moribajah
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jahniverse/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/moribajah
Website | https://www.moriba.com/
Host | Matthew S Williams
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/matthew-s-williams
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Episode Notes
Moriba Jah is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He's also a major advocate for the "stewardship" of Earth and space. Through his world traveling and extensive experience with NASA, the Air Force Research Laboratory, and academia, he has earned a wide following as a champion for the sustainable use of space.
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
Celestial Steward | A Conversation with Moriba Jah | Stories From Space Podcast With Matthew S Williams
Moriba Jah
Matt: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Stories From Space. I'm your host,
Matt Williams, and joining me today is a very special guest, Marba Ja, a
professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University
of Texas at Austin, whose work history includes the Air Force Resource
Laboratory in Mars, jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he was a navigator in
several Mars missions.
He's also the director of UT Austin's Decision Intelligence Group, the holder of
the Miss Purley Dashell Henderson Centennial Fellowship in Engineering, and
the lead for the Space Security and Safety Program at the Robert Strau Center
for International Security and Law. He's a noted scientist, author and public
speaker.
A TED Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Fellow, a
Astronomy Society fellow. The list goes on. He's also a self-described celestial
steward promoting sustainability in space, space, traffic management, debris
mitigation, and space security. Moba, thank you for [00:01:00] joining us. It's
great to be here.
Now, obviously I have a lot of questions relating to your background, your
experience, your advocacy. However, what I wanted to, um, first of. You are a
self-described celestial steward. Can you tell us a bit about that? Because it does
speak to your whole mission statement as I understand it.
Moribah: Yeah. So I guess the way that I really came into this is, um, after,
after working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab for a number of years on Mars
missions.
My job there was as a spacecraft navigator, so really doing, uh, orbit
determination and prediction mostly for Mars missions. I took a trip to Maui in
2004 with my family at the time [00:02:00] for an ICS conference conference,
and during the nine days that we were on Maui. My family fell in love with the
place and on the way back to Pasadena, my, uh, spouse at the time told me in no
uncertain terms that, you know, my days at GPL were numbered.
'cause, you know, Maui needed to be home. And so I was able to, um, over the
next year or so, I was able to find a job on Maui working for the Air Force
Research Laboratory. So in 2006, relocated to Maui. I was the Astronomics leadat the Air Force Research laboratory there, and they have telescopes on top of
Mount Hala.
And, um, I had no idea how much stuff was in Earth orbit. And at the time,
[00:03:00] lo and behold, the Department of Defense was cataloging about.
26,000 objects ranging in size from cell phone, uh, to the largest objects. I guess
the near space station had already reentered by then and, um, in different orbits,
and only 1200 of the 26,000 were working and everything was trash.
And to me that was mesmerizing for, you know, 90, 90 some odd percent. Of all
human made stuff that we're tracking to be garbage and living on Maui, there's
all these micro climates and any sort of behavior that's unsustainable seems to
be more salient and looking at landfills, single use plastics exacerbated by
tourism and [00:04:00] debris in the ocean.
Juxtaposed with all the trash in Earth orbit that struck a nerve with me. And
along with that, seeing how native Hawaiian culture really, uh, embraces
interconnectedness and they see themselves. First and foremost as stewards of
things, not owners of land or anything like that. Um, and clearly they've been
displaced through colonialism.
So I think those things coming together planted some seeds for me in terms of
wanting to do something about the space environment, and. That's where my
path on environmentalism kind of began. But in a trip that I took some years
later with my son [00:05:00] to Alaska so that he could see where his name
came from.
Um, and by the way, his name's not McKinley. It's, it's, yes. So I took, I took
Denali to see Denali and, um. I saw very similar things in Alaska that I saw in
Hawaii and I had a call it a spiritual epiphany, and I felt that something was,
some presence was asking me to do everything that I could to prevent humanity
from completely forgetting our intergenerational contract of stewardship and the
interconnectedness amongst all things.
Behave from a place of empathy. And so those became my pillars and I became
a celestial steward.
Matt: Yes, that's [00:06:00] really illustrating the interconnectedness life here
on earth, or presence in space. It's quote, uh, one of my favorite lines from one
of them of my favorite people, uh, Dr. Proctor. She does, she does not really
recall the, or the origin of this quote, but solving for space solves for Earth.And that works the other way around, doesn't it? Absolutely. Lessons, yes. In
any case. So yes, orbital debris as, uh, my listeners are no doubt aware, I will be
doing a segment on that at some point there, because of course the numbers are
staggering. But the situation as it's stands to become. How, how exactly, uh,
how exactly would you describe the situation as it's evolving there and how the
likelihood it's gonna have to impact Earth?
Moribah: Well, I'll, I'll put it this way, right. I would first, um, encourage your
listeners to check out this thing that I [00:07:00] develop that University of
Texas at Austin, uh, where I'm faculty in the aerospace department called
Graph. I was able to. Kind of operationalize that in something called wayfinder
in one of my company's privateer space, headquartered on Maui.
So if you go to privateer dot, uh, wayfinder.privateer.com, you could see all
these dots that we're tracking. And so the thing is, earth orbital space is not
infinite. It's a finite resource. Uh, we put these robots in the sky that we call
satellites that do. Good things for us. We put them in very specific places, call
'em orbital highways, so just like their regular highways and then their shipping
lanes and their airways, their specific orbits.
And unfortunately, you know, we started launching things in 1957, uh, with
Split Nick [00:08:00] and every single thing that we launch, except for a couple
of them. Are, uh, single use base systems, meaning we send the stuff up, we put
it in an orbit. Eventually the gas tank goes to empty and it stays there for many,
many years, if not decades, centuries, or longer depending on the altitude.
And so what we do is because it's like a single use plastic equivalent. We just
launch another one and another one and another one. And then people from
many different countries are just launching whatever they want as frequently as
they can without any sort of global coordination or planning in how to utilize
this finite resource.
And so what we see is kind of this impending tragedy of the Cummins, where
we have a finite resource, we have an increasing number of [00:09:00]
participants. Utilizing the resource with disregard and how any single entity is
utilizing it, uh, consuming it without any sort of planning. And that means that
the carrying capacity of these orbits to allow us to have satellites that can
provide us with critical services and capabilities, internet communications and
whatnot, that caring capacity is gonna become.
Consume or saturated preventing us from utilizing orbital space. 'cause we're
gonna have to be dodging things so frequently that we can't get any science or,you know, uh, meaningful services out of it. So that's the path that we're
currently on. Mm-hmm.
Matt: In fact, I recall, uh, asking you question about this, not that.
Deorbiting space junk. How it also threatens [00:10:00] systems, ecosystems
and people here on earth and that there needs to be incentive. What I'm trying to
say is, uh, the strategies for cleaning up orbital debris right there, there are
several that are in development, but earth side, what needs to happen in order to
really help this problem from spiraling outta control.
Moribah: Yeah. Well, I look at waste management principles on land, ocean
and that sort of stuff, and when I do that, I see that there is the need to clean
things and then the need to stop producing more pollution. When it comes to the
stop producing more pollution, generally we embrace. Things call, uh, circular
practices and people also can [00:11:00] call these circular economies where we
prioritize the prevention of pollution through first and foremost, reuse and, and
recyclability.
And right now, like I said, everything that we launch in space pretty much
constitutes a single use space system. So we have a linear economy in space, so
that's adding junk. 'cause the, the end state, the destiny of everything that we
launch is to become garbage. That is the way we're doing business. That has to
change to where everything that we launch is no longer garbage at its end of
life, it can be recycled, it can be reused, it can be repurposed.
So that's where humanity needs to go next is. Reusable recyclable space
systems. Now the next run under reuse and recycling is [00:12:00] disposal. Uh,
if you can't reuse and recycle. And right now what we do is we abandon things,
stop working mostly because you run out of gas. They're just aimlessly in orbit
at the mercy of the space environment.
If, and they're, if they're in a sufficiently low earth orbit, then they will reenter
by natural causes and they go through a process of incineration in the
atmosphere, mostly polluting the atmosphere during the incineration, hopefully,
uh, completely burning up in the atmosphere to prevent any of them from
making it to the earth's surface.
But as you've seen and people can see through evidence, we have a growing
frequency of things being launched into the space [00:13:00] that are making it
back to the Earth's surface and, uh, not far from populated areas. When it comesto the cleaning part, it's much like trying to clean the oceans. The oceans will
never be absent.
Microplastics or any of these things. So space is very similar in that we need to
clean some of the objects that are currently consuming orbital capacity, capacity
needlessly, but orbital space will never look like it did in 1956.
Matt: Yes. In fact, uh, if certain. Uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Yeah. If
certain commercial space entities get their way, it's going to have mega
constellations up there, as well as, uh, interestingly enough, [00:14:00] uh,
private space stations, commercial space stations.
And yes, I would think this, this does present an opportunity for, from some
very serious, uh, litigation and, uh. Litigiousness. And in fact, you are also, uh,
an expert in space law and, uh, an advocate for that. Are you part of the, uh,
space Generation Advisory Council?
Moribah: So, yeah, so I'll say that. Uh, I'm not a space lawyer.
I play one on TV kind of thing. Um, I, I have, I have some knowledge of space
policy and I'm not part of the SGAC 'cause that's mostly for. Younger people.
Um, but I am part of the International Institute for Space Law. Uh, but I
participate as a, as a technical person, but not as a lawyer. But yeah, so I, I, but I
do, I am in the circles of policy and that sort of thing.[00:15:00]
Matt: Well, I imagine they love hearing from you the, uh, the young people. It
is s.
In addition to, uh, your advocacy, which is well established here for
sustainability in space recently, you've been rather outspoken about recent
trends in politics. The current administration, the, I don't wanna sound ic, but
the, uh, chaos that they have created and, uh, and also rather they're very
specific targeting of DEI.
I've also heard the term DEIA. How that pertains to not just, uh, the government
workforces, but also NASA and science and so forth. Yes. Now, in your
opinion, this, this has the obvious potential of setting space back by silencing or
dismissing diverse opinions and people with different perspectives. Is that fair
to say?[00:16:00]
Moribah: Yeah. Uh, that's extremely, uh, more than fair to say, and I'll say that
all of my work is really focused on two pillars. One of 'em is enshrined in issuesdealing with sustainability, land, air, ocean, and space and beyond. And the
other one. Social justice, justice and both, uh, present themselves when it comes
to space exploration and space activities.
And so
one of the things that I tell people is that power does not reside in controlling
outcomes, but rather in our ability to make choices. And so. The most powerful
[00:17:00] tend to be people that either try to convince you that you don't have a
choice to make or try to convince you that you're better off relinquishing your
choice making to them 'cause they can make the better choices for you.
Given that we can see evidence of where that has left us. That's no good.
Basically, when it comes to humanity being empowered to participate in space
exploration and space activities, we're far from that because those making
decisions are very few people, so they have all the power and they're making
decisions that the rest of us have to live with, and not just us, but.
Seven generations from now, the voices of the [00:18:00] unborn, uh, which is
criminal and the way that our current government has decided to go is away
from the empowering of humanity to participate in space access, exploration,
and activities. But to further cement the isolation of that power amongst very
few humans to the detriment of all of us.
And one of the things that I tell people, oh, they say, well, why is space
sustainability so important? When we have problems on the surface with we
need clean water, better education, all these things, and. My response to these
folks is that [00:19:00] satellites provide us with data, information, services, and
capabilities that are unique and that no other sources provide us.
We know more about ourselves because of satellites than by any other source of
information, the things that actually help us manage water. Energy, power, uh,
disaster areas, fires. The things that help us manage these things are all satellites
or going through space-based systems. So if we lose the ability to have satellites
because the pollution gets in the way of us being able to operate these things
and hinders their.
Ability to be operated. We lose a critical source of data and information that
now [00:20:00] has a cascading effect that compromises our ability to live
sustainably on the planet. So if space becomes an unsustainable, earth becomes
unsustainable just like that. That's its criticality. And so when very few people
are making all the decisions based on their myopic.Uh, self-serving, self-aggrandizing agendas. It's to the detriment of the rest of
humanity that has the responsibility. Not even the right humanity has the
responsibility to be the custodian of the environment that we are a part of
because we're not separate from that environment. And so. It's the, the, the
decisions of a few are arbitrarily removing us from being able to exercise
[00:21:00] our responsibility of custodianship and stewardship.
And, uh, I find that to be socially criminal. Mm-hmm.
Matt: And you, you touched on something here. I.
Uh, advocates for space and yes, astrophysicists, everybody in this field. I love
to ask them, how often do you get asked why space? Shouldn't we be fixing
Earth first? The attitude that these two things are separate, right? And, and we
can fund one or the other, but we can't do both. And yes, I think that illustrates it
very beautifully there.
And, uh, yeah, once again, shows that what we do in space is very much
connected to what we do on. Yeah. One thing I was very interested to see you,
you wrote not too long ago via LinkedIn about how human beings are not meant
for living on other planets, [00:22:00] other bodies in the solar system, et cetera.
Now, just to say that living and working in space is not something you think is
sustainable.
So what I
Moribah: feel is. Similarly to how people can go and can summit a place like
Everest. Similarly to how people can take a submersible and inspect the
Mariana Trench and these sorts of things, uh, and even put on scuba gear and
hang out on the bottom of the ocean and chill out with like sharks and stuff like
that.
These are places that, mind you, it's on a common planet. It's not someplace
else. These are places that we can visit. We could even work, but we can't live
permanently. [00:23:00] There is no permanent human settlement that's gonna
happen in the Mariana Trench. There's no permanent human settlement that's
gonna happen on the peaks of.
Himalayas and that sort of stuff for good reason. You don't have all the
resources there. We didn't evolve in those sorts of, uh, environments. So if we
can't do that on our own planet, why would we even begin to think that we cando it on a place where we did not evolve that doesn't have all these resources
where the radiation, the gravity.
Magnetic fields, all these things are, are either different or they're altogether
non-existent. Um, that's not, that's not a thing. So we can visit these places and
we should continue to explore. Visiting the places is just fine. Expanding where
humans can have a presence. [00:24:00] But in terms of permanence, that's
where I think that that's a science fiction novel, uh, at best.
And we're better served, in my opinion, to invest in the science and technology
that helps us create a species, probably mostly robotic, that can thrive and carry
the best parts of us in our consciousness to other parts of the universe, but not
homo sapiens, homo sapiens. Just like other hominids have through evolution,
we've had other hominids, Neanderthals and homo nati and these sorts of things.
Homo sapiens is not the end state of humans. It just happens to be where, where
we're at in our current evolution. Homo sapiens [00:25:00] doesn't make it in
space. Homo, homo, something else. Might, but not homosapien, in my opinion.
Matt: You, you said it just as I was getting ready to ask it there, you said it, um,
because of course the science fiction fan in me is a little disheartened to hear
that kind of stuff, although it makes perfect sense.
So you, would you agree that some form of transcendence, uh, augmentation.
Everything that the Singularitarian talk about, right? That is gonna be necessary
for humanity to actually live in space and, yeah,
Moribah: and I think
Matt: it's already, and then go to a vicious, yeah.
Moribah: Mm-hmm. It's already happening because the thing is we're already
incorporating more machine elements within our bodies whenever our heads,
right, we got this Neuralink thing or whatever.
Like there's already, we're already headed there. We're already trying to.
[00:26:00] Humanoids and these sorts of things. And we, we want the
humanoids to be as close as they can to us in terms of like ex facial expressions
and how they feel and like all these things, right? But they're not subject to the
same limitations and constraints that are human bodies are, uh, subject to.And can human consciousness reside in another? Frame or structure, that's not
the body that we have maybe. Uh, so yeah, I mean, so I think it's some sort of
synthesis between machines and what we currently know as homo sapiens. That
will be like the next thing.
Matt: Mm-hmm. You've said several quotable quotes, uh, during this interview,
sir.
And especially I, I love, uh, power resides not in controlling outcomes, but
making choices. [00:27:00] But everything you just said there, uh, that is, that is
hit me with another sci-fi moment here and I'm thinking, yeah, that's good
science fiction right there in terms of humanity's future in space. So if, if, again,
if I were to bottom line this.
Humanity, living and thriving on earth in a way that is sustainable in the future.
A population that's, you know, naturally come down to several billion, but not,
not double digits, and augmented humans and robots doing the work of off
world exploration and perhaps also resource, resource exploitation. That this is
the way if you had to.
Put money down on it. Is this the way the future is gonna be?
Moribah: Absolutely. And I think that, um, if humans are gonna have some
sort of, [00:28:00] let's say, permanence, uh, off of the planet, the, the
environment that the humans are in has to be pretty much, has to be replicated
nearly identically to what's here. So.
Unless we can build a, Noah's a equivalent. 'cause it's not just people, human,
human, the human experience. We, we didn't evolve isolated from trees, plants,
animals, uh, sm the smell of some manure. Uh, and by a farm. We evolved with
these things. To think that you can separate the human from. Plants and animals
and that we would thrive, I think is ludicrous.
There's no reason to believe that that could happen. And so unless we're ready
to transport cats, dogs, you know, VARs, all this other stuff, and have, uh, an
environment that replicates the one on earth [00:29:00] with something that
feels a lot like, like behaves a lot like gravity, behaves a lot like the magnetic
feel that we have behaves a lot like the radiation doses that we're used to taking.
Uh, behaves a lot like the air that we typically, you know, all that stuff. There
has to be a lot of behaves like, um, and we, we haven't even been able to
develop a behaves like on this planet. I mean, biosphere didn't even do that. Sothe thing is, we have to prove that we can, we can construct a behaves like here
before we even think that that's gonna be possible elsewhere.
Matt: Hmm. Yeah. And I, I've spoken to several people who are doing that
research and they completely and utterly agree with you. And in fact, they've
even said, used the term terraforming to define Yeah. The, the bio regenerative
living systems in [00:30:00] space. Yeah. And I thought that was very
interesting. Yes. No matter where we go, we're going to have to make it.
Moribah: Yeah. And I'll, I'll say this, yes, I'll say this. Um, and I, and I don't
have a whole lot of time left, but I'll say this, yes. Um, I, I am definitely a
proponent for terraforming. So some, some people say, oh, well, you know,
you, you, you are into sustainability and all sort stuff. I'm like, yeah, but I'm part
of the environment too.
And so the thing is, you know, when you talk to many indigenous people.
Because some people say, oh, the, the epitome of the, the epitome of the
environmentalist is to make no trace of their existence. Everything has to be
pristine. It's like, no, that's as if I was not part of the environment. The fact that I
exist needs to be accounted for.
I [00:31:00] exist and I, I need to exist and do things to make myself continue to
exist. So utilizing resources is not a bad thing. Utilizing resources in ways that
is unsustainable, that's not, that's, that's the bad thing. So to me, taking some
planet, uh, and, uh, changing it, modifying it in a way that allows us to exist and
as we know it.
If we have the agency to do that and do that in a way that is compassionate and
empathetic, we should do it.
Matt: Hmm. So yeah, the leave no trace rule, but more like the campfire rule or
Right. Campsite rule. Yes. Leave it better than you found it. Exactly. Excellent.
Well, yes, I, I think that's the perfect place for us to, to change here.
And, and obviously, thank you so much for taking time outta your very busy
schedule. [00:32:00] I, I hope to talk further about this, especially knowing
you're a proponent of terraforming is very, very near and dear to me. Awesome.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on and joining us here today, and I
think it goes without saying, I hope that we can do this again sometime because
I, there is such a wealth of things to talk about, and I, I, your, your answers have
only inspired more questions and, uh.And of course, yes. I I would very much, uh, love it if I could quote you on
multiple things you've said.
Moribah: Do do that as much as yeah, you have full freedom and, and, and
have at it. And we'll definitely sync up again, my brother. Thank you so much.