What Do We Do When We Get to Mars?: Afshin Khan at TEDxWSU 2014

Colonizing Mars is humankind's biggest endeavor of the 21st century. It would take the effort of a few thousand or million people to achieve that goal successfully. While aerospace companies are working really hard to build better and efficient rockets and propulsion systems, we must also be thinking about highly innovative and not-thought about before engineering systems of producing energy and food, recycling waste and water on a barren planet with a very thin atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, high cosmic radiation and one third of our usual gravity. As Elon Musk says, "Mars is a fixer-upper of a planet. But we can fix it!"

Bio- I'm a biotechnologist by training, an Astrobiologist by choice, en-trepreneurial by inherent qualities and working to become an Astro-naut for Mars. Currently I'm involved in Astrobiological Research to characterize extremophiles living in a natural asphalt environment. My goal is to work towards the next step in Space Exploration, to develop technologies for deeper space travels, bio signature detection and building sustainable ecosystems with the help of Biology, Engineering and Design. I aspire to be a leader in innovative planetary engineering for terraformation and space travel. That's my life's moonshot endeavor.

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