Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: Is space tourism a vision worth chasing, or just capitalism with a rocket strapped on — and who really pays the highest price? In Room #873 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme “Pioneering Spirit with brAIn,” the group digs into billion-dollar private-equity bets, the environmental cost of a joyride to orbit, osteoporosis research from astronaut bone loss, and why curiosity might be the oldest business model there is. Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A wonderful good morning to you. Today we’re talking about space tourism, under our umbrella theme Pioneering Spirit with Brain — vision or capitalism, and who actually pays the highest price? That’s the question, or those are the questions, we want to look into today, and with that we can basically open up this morning’s round right away. I think with space tourism, it’s not even about expert knowledge or anything like that, but simply, to some extent, about what you might have picked up here and there, in the media too, and how you personally feel about it. And there are certainly different opinions on this too, which we can bring in from various perspectives, to see, in this exchange, what’s actually behind it, what the different perspectives, pros and cons, and so on are, so we can dig a bit deeper into the topic. And just a quick side note — the day after tomorrow we’ll also have the topic of space travel. That means it’s not about space travel in general today, but that we’re really setting this aspect, space tourism, the tourism side of it, as our focus for today’s exchange, and then we’ll look at certain more general aspects of space travel the day after tomorrow. So you’re all very warmly invited to join in and get into the exchange, to see what perspectives come together and where the room develops today. And just a reminder for everyone, the room is being recorded for the entire time and will be published afterward. So anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. And then we have three small room rules — a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason is welcome to use the chat instead — I’ll check in on it now and then to pick up on things. And with that I’ll gladly mute myself and see who’d like to open up the round with me this morning. I’ll gladly repeat this for anyone who’s just joined the room — today’s topic is space tourism. We want to look at, is it vision or capitalism, and who actually pays the highest price? I mentioned that the day after tomorrow we’ll also talk about the aspect of space travel — so today is really about this tourism aspect. And yes, I’m just waiting for someone to join in with their views, perspectives, so we can get started. What do you think are the pros and cons? Do you find it cool? Would you maybe do it yourself, in inverted commas, question mark? And with that I’ll gladly mute myself again and see who’d like to open up the round with me this morning. Just a reminder again, at the latest at quarter past, if nobody has joined by then, we’ll close the room again.
And yes, wonderful that Erik is joining. A wonderful good morning, Erik. What do you say about this topic?
Yes, good morning. Well, I find it, I find it really exciting, and I’ve thought about it — if I had the opportunity, I think I’d love to take a space flight myself. The opportunity, of course, is always a question of how you define it, but a long time ago I heard a talk by Ulf Merbold, and other reports online too, about the experience of seeing Earth from a greater distance, with that black background and so on — that seems to have quite an impact on how you subsequently judge the problems and life on Earth, and especially the connections in how we treat the environment and so on. So this experience itself must really be quite profound. And in that context, I also think that space tourism, depending on how you look at it — well, the term itself I find a bit negatively connotated at first, because “tourism” kind of implies you’re doing it without much purpose, just for fun. But I do see possibilities there to sharpen our perspective too, or, what I’d also mention in this context — there’s this thing SpaceX is supposed to carry out with the Starship that’s currently being developed — the idea of a space tourism mission, or let’s say a mission to fly, called Dear Moon, where various people, artists too, and influencers, are supposed to get the opportunity to fly along for free, to circle the moon, with the underlying idea, or the thought, of gaining new inspiration from it, and creating quite abstract art that then provides added value and opens up new perspectives. And yes, that would be my starting point on the topic.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much, and I find that especially an interesting aspect you’re bringing up, because we talked in one of the rooms about how, for example, the mere fact that we have the option to travel to other countries also gives us, on one hand, the opportunity to get to know other cultures and so on. And at the same time, in that context, we also talked about how it represents a kind of broadening of horizons, so to speak. And that’s why I find this aspect, or this perspective, that you just laid out really, really exciting too, with this bridge to, say, artists, influencers, and so on, to possibly offer inspiration for art specifically. But it also means, for others too, regardless of whether they’re artists or influencers, that such an “experience,” in inverted commas, does something to a person, and that it’s maybe not just from the perspective of “what does this do to our climate” and similar — that’s a different level of discussion happening here — but that it also opens up quite different perspectives on the topic, in the sense of “what does this actually bring someone in the first place?” And that’s why I find it really exciting that you started with this aspect, not with the negative connotation, so to speak, but with a completely different angle. Thank you for that, dear Erik. And Jürgen has joined us. I’m curious what Jürgen has to say about this topic. Good morning, Jürgen.
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Good morning, Erik, and everyone in the room. Let me tell you what triggered me to come up on stage — actually, for me it’s more the topic you announced for a few days from now, about space exploration in general, but it was power, doing, that you brought up. And I’ll provoke a little here by saying, space tourism will come, as surely as amen in church, because I see a parallel. A look into history — I’m a fan of that — often opens your eyes. And I see this space exploration, including its byproduct, space tourism, as a clear parallel to the exploration of our planet, our first exploration of our planet in the 16th century, especially by the Spanish and Portuguese, which led to the division of the globe between these then-great powers. So it was about power. It was about power, and about very trivial motivations behind that power, quite literally. Namely, there was a need for the growing population to open up corresponding food reserves, and with this reservoir of people — to put it bluntly, clearly not out of altruism — to have them available for war deployment in a certain mass. And now I think it’s quite exciting to apply this to our current time. We’re opening up a new world — I won’t get into who’s actually doing the opening up right now, with what motivation, that’s more the topic for next time. But this opening-up is happening, and with a vengeance. And I’ll say it anyway — mainly by China, the USA, Japan, and the ESA, but only to a proportionally small extent — and as a new key player on the horizon, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have now appeared. Anyone interested in this particular area got that as a news item recently. So, to not draw this out any further, I’ll say — this space tourism is, for me, in inverted commas, a byproduct, in the same way tourism developed over the last years, decades, centuries in this world — if it’s cheap enough, and if it succeeds, which is obviously the case, in motivating people through their most basic instinct, namely curiosity. And that’s something Erik already brought up too, with the topic of influencers. Thank you for that, dear Erik. That’s exactly the point — that a potential gets awakened here, to reawaken curiosity in all of us, and at some point deliver a corresponding economic feedback for this development work that a lot of people are currently doing. That’s it from me on this topic. Thank you for listening.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And what I also find really, really exciting in this context — I don’t remember which area of the US it was, but at some point I heard that, I don’t know, you can apparently buy a plot of land on the moon or something, and I got curious and started researching whether that’s actually true, or just some kind of gimmick. And it turns out there’s actually someone in the US who has even filed a patent for this, and so on, claimed it as property or something, and it actually got approved. Still, there’s disagreement about this, since there’s apparently an agreement between countries that when other planets or similar get explored, this is all supposed to serve “science” and doesn’t belong to anyone, or something like that. And still, dear Jürgen, I’m totally with you that, at the latest once it’s no longer just something like “this costs a lot of money and we only get there under very specific conditions,” but once it’s expanded to the point where it basically becomes the norm, where it becomes easier to get there, foreseeably cheaper, and so on — at that point this agreement probably won’t hold anymore, and different power dynamics will come into play and take hold, because of course that’s also an opportunity for those who have power to secure power as quickly as possible, and then turn that into capital, in inverted commas. So I find this aspect really exciting — it made me think of this American businessman who’s already doing business with this today, in inverted commas, selling some kind of certificates and apparently doing pretty well with it too. So it seems to be flourishing there too. Today that doesn’t mean you actually own real property, but just using it as a gag already shows what possibilities there are. So just playing with this curiosity, in inverted commas, and on the other hand already thinking entrepreneurially about how to monetize it, and maybe create something extraordinary that might get used as a gift for special occasions by many people. So you can see how quickly this monetization happens too. And right now it’s still, in a lot of places, I’d say, an idea or a vision for the future, where we can already quite imagine, since the first steps have been taken toward space tourism, that it’ll be offered and used in different ways in the future too, and what kind of chain reactions, in inverted commas, will come from that. And Stefan has joined us too. A wonderful good morning, dear Stefan. What do you say about this topic?
Good morning, Yasemin, hello Erik and Jürgen and everyone else in the room. Yes, humanity and space — a fascinating topic. I think, even though our focus is space tourism, which I’ll say something about in a moment, I think generally about how we humans, over the past decades, with all these events, what people have already accomplished in space, or on the moon, or on Mars. I think it’s an incredibly exciting, wonderful topic, which I’d first divide, positively, into two categories for myself — one being this dreamy view, this infinite, fascinating quality that space has. Because it’s not just about space tourism, heading toward the moon or Mars or wherever, but I think generally it’s also about the fact that a lot of people, besides space tourism, also really have research situations there for their ventures. If we think back to the first space tourist, who I believe, at the beginning of the millennium, had to put over 20 million on the table, so to speak, to get shot into space, or be allowed to fly along. And by now it’s gotten to the point where Virgin Atlantic — Virgin Galactic, I mean — offers flights starting at $400,000. And the question, of course, still remains, even though I’d of course always like to question the fascination and the meaningfulness of it — it’s of course a huge environmental mess, to put it that way, what’s happening there, or what might be planned for the future. We shouldn’t hide the fact that it has an impact on the atmosphere. And there are comparisons, based on facts too, that we’d need to send off several thousand cruise ships to offset, environmentally speaking, two or three space flights. Or, comparatively, the damage that results from it. But that’s a different aspect for now. I think it’s primarily also about looking at it from an economic perspective — how many billions of euros, dollars, and other currencies get invested in really, really ambitious projects, all the way to this very, very peculiar SpaceX space elevator project, or a company that’s raised several billion in the US and wants to set up a private space station, a colony, so to speak, there. These are all really, really exciting projects, where of course you know you probably won’t get to experience it yourself. But just the excitement of following along with all these aspects, I think that’s still the interesting part. And my memories of Challenger, Discovery, Columbia, and whatever else, of course also with all these tragic accidents that happened. I think, all the way back to 1969, the moon landing and so on — humans simply have this need to understand what’s happening around Earth, beyond our home planet.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And I really wouldn’t want to exclude this environmental aspect, because I think it’s actually a relevant question in this context too. So on one hand it’s relatively clear that it has an impact on the climate and so on, and on the other hand, if we just look historically and make comparisons up to today, even though we have discussions about climate and so on in various places, whether it’s ships or planes and so on, that doesn’t necessarily lead to it being stopped, or done less, or anything like that. I’m really curious what you all have to say about that from this perspective, because it does give the impression, again with this “power” aspect, that the topic of economics, of making capital, so to speak, obviously pushes other aspects of consideration into the background. Jürgen, go ahead.
Yes, thank you, Stefan, for your remarks — that would’ve triggered me anyway, because you brought up two aspects. But dear Yasemin, now let’s cast the net a bit wider than just tourism, and talk about space in general. So, one initial thought, from you, Stefan — I’ll interpret this in relation to a topic we had recently, investments, risk capital or private equity investments in startups. We recently had this topic under the umbrella “Innovative Minds of Startups.” And I looked up how much startup money has flowed into this idea, this vision, which is increasingly becoming reality, over the past years. And I found a statistic that, over the past ten years, roughly a quarter of a trillion dollars has flowed into private equity — note, not government funding, but private equity companies. A quarter of a trillion. And of that, believe it or not, 75 percent went to the US and China. Europe participates in a range of roughly 5 to 6 percent of the whole. That alone is already quite telling for me. So for me, interpreting this from an economic standpoint, this startup volume is a clear indicator of where this journey is heading. So, for the byproduct of space tourism too — it will come. That’s my opinion, at least. That’s how it’ll be. And the signal from economics, and also from the interests of the various power poles on our globe, shows who’ll be calling the shots there. And the second thing, dear Stefan, was your reference, thankfully, to the environmental impact, and I don’t want to go too deep into that, but this report I read really triggered me massively. It was about elements — elements of physics. A key aspect for pollution, and also for costs, is the payload per kilogram, or rather, the effort required to shoot one kilogram of payload into orbit. And that currently sits, just to give you a sense of it, at around $23,000 to $25,000 for the common alternatives, especially SpaceX rockets. And now, this is where we get to the topic of pioneering spirits — people are currently developing, and this is already quite concrete, there are already test stations for this, a way to use a centrifuge to eventually fling these rockets into orbit in a propulsion-neutral way. That means I no longer need fuel, and I also don’t have the environmental impact from the enormous combustion residue of the fuel. All in all, for me, it’s happening. It’s happening both from an economic perspective and from a scientific perspective, in terms of pioneering spirits implementing things, thinking in visions and acting toward goals. This is actually, for me, the prototypical topic right now, where you can really derive what’s always driven our humanity forward, and the reason we’re where we are today. Without that, we wouldn’t move forward. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much. Erik, Stefan, I wanted to tie back in at various points here. Go ahead, Erik.
Yes, there are a few points to tie back to. I also think it’s important, this view against the backdrop of history and the course of tourism so far. It basically emerged through the availability of mobility. People used to know their own country, or even less, their own village, or whatever their structures were, and the more mobility became available, the more people traveled around out of curiosity. And Jürgen, you called it a byproduct — it is, of course, a product that emerges because these mobility options get developed. But I also think that tourism can contribute a significant part to the financing needed to continue this development. And we see, for example, in connection with planes or ships, global mobility, that this actually underpins our prosperity today too, because you can transport goods, and also gain insights from this research and development, which then also become essential for other everyday products too. And in that context, tourism is also an important source of revenue, I think. And that, this would be my prediction, will play out similarly in the field of space travel too — of course also similarly with the environmental topic. We’ve been burning fossil fuels diligently for a long time, or still are, to shape our mobility. Now there are, in Germany people don’t quite know this yet, but there are newer ideas for how to get around using renewable methods too. That doesn’t work yet in space travel unfortunately, but who knows, that can develop further there too.
Yes, great, thank you, thank you so much. Stefan, you wanted to add something too, and then afterward we’ll gladly welcome Marc into our round too.
Yes, well, I actually just wanted to say, following up on all the projects that are happening, that — let me pick up the aspect of communication within these projects, from NASA too. People have always seen NASA as a bit of a dusty institution, after various space projects that didn’t really work out, or got discontinued. And people kind of lost their connection to it. But the younger generations have a really, really strong connection to it, because they consume a huge amount of what gets published by SpaceX, for example. They get millions of viewers when some rocket launches, or some test gets carried out. The documentaries get watched. NASA has set up excellent communication channels. On every PlayStation, every Xbox in the world, there are apps from SpaceX or NASA, just like GoPro and so on, or Red Bull, which all have their own programs, because they’ve recognized that these communication channels toward the younger generation are enormously important, and that naturally generates new interest too, because that was NASA’s biggest problem — that public interest had waned after a lot of failures, and they simply couldn’t push through these billions in government funding anymore in that form. And this new generation of ventures out there, they of course have very ambitious projects on one hand, but they also manage to raise billions in funding. And that’s always really, really astonishing, because you’re partly co-financing utopian projects where you don’t even know if they’ll ever lead to any kind of revenue. And that’s why this communication, how the marketing happens up to that point, is really, really intelligent, and it’s a lot of fun too. And I know this from my own experience — when my oldest watches all the SpaceX live streams, which regularly go live on their channel, and I see how many millions of followers are watching along at the same time, I find it interesting that this enthusiasm for developments in space is stronger among the younger generations than I can say for my own generation.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much. And I think this is exactly where the connections become clear again too. That means, the moment it’s no longer, in inverted commas, government-funded in the sense of research, progress, and so on, developing and researching something, but the moment, and this is very clearly visible here, entrepreneurs think entrepreneurially and take an interest in something — and you can apply this to other fields as a stand-in too — for example, Erik also brought up this financing aspect. That means tourism also has a goal here, so to speak, of raising capital too, to move forward faster with it, to work with that money again, in inverted commas, and then, with these newer possibilities of the internet, social media, and so on, to shape the communication, the storytelling, accordingly. I’m thinking, for example, of the documentary that’s on Netflix. Of course you’ll also find things on YouTube and similar platforms that are freely accessible. That means PR gets done here in a completely different, effective way, in inverted commas — not just to do PR for your own company, but also to direct humanity’s attention to it, to spark curiosity, and trigger a kind of chain reaction that then also has an effect in terms of moving forward faster. And especially when it’s not just one company, but several companies coming into play, similar to how various countries were once in a kind of competition, because it also has to do with, well, who’s first with XYZ, whether that’s space or other contexts — it also has to do with status symbols, it has to do with losing face, yes or no. So a whole lot of mechanisms are at play here if you look closely, and especially this competitive thinking, which arises here too and is present, also leads to an acceleration in developments in one place or another, and it’s really exciting to observe how this ultimately plays out. Marc, a wonderful good morning. You’ve joined us. What are your thoughts on this topic?
Good morning. I’d like to offer a completely different angle here — again focusing on the positive side of what can happen. When astronauts come back from space after spending a longer time there, they all suffer from muscle atrophy and bone loss. And in Germany, for example, osteoporosis is a really, really big problem — it causes costs of over three billion euros. And they work very, very closely with astronauts, medical development and research, because you can find remedies for why this happens, since this muscle atrophy, once astronauts are back on Earth, actually reverses itself again. And another thought that came to me regarding space tourism — there’s now also an American company, and the ISS is also being expanded, so in the near future there’ll actually be space hotels too, where you might be able to stay for a week, say. And that opens up completely new possibilities for research, because, as you probably know — I only learned this myself a year or two ago — medications and a whole lot of pharmaceuticals were actually only ever developed for men. Because at some point people said, well, the male body, there’s one kind of body, that’s the male one, so we won’t even bother developing medications for women too, it’ll work out fine anyway. And I’m really, really curious what happens if you have this incentive for people — if someone says, I’m willing to fly women into space specifically for a week or two, and then say, you don’t have to pay anything for this, instead you make yourself available, or rather, you can help science develop new medications. So the perspective I want to bring here is that I’m convinced medicine will make progress there too. In exactly which direction, I don’t know yet — probably nobody does. But that can also have effects on all of us, so that, if you only think of the environment and pollution, and that it’s just tourism and fun, it turns out to actually have something positive for a lot of people on Earth too, if you can use the insights gained from such a trip for the benefit of all people on Earth.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much, and that also shows that this has corresponding effects on various neighboring fields too, and with that also the opportunity to further advance research and development. So if we think about the very first people who left Earth, so to speak, you have to imagine that they basically had no idea at all — it’s worth becoming aware of this again — of how weightlessness, for example, would affect the body. That means people really had no idea what would actually happen, and how it would feel, and so on. That means, only through these people, who are now increasingly getting the opportunity to complete these — I’ll just call them — journeys, and bring back these experiences and insights, does research and development continue to move forward. It has effects on science, in that various instruments get taken along, on these journeys for example, to be able to take various measurements and so on, which ultimately have effects on us being able to calculate certain things here on Earth again. We just talked about health aspects, about medicine. So research and development actually happens accordingly in all these areas too. And so it’s not just that someone flies there and, at the same time, uses the opportunity to raise funds, in inverted commas, through this tourism aspect, but it ultimately also serves to keep moving forward, to learn more, and to create knowledge from these insights. And this knowledge is certainly not just for something like space tourism, ultimately, but this knowledge also gets used or transferred to other areas, and so on, or for planning in the direction of space travel in general. And as I said, we’ll have another topic on that the day after tomorrow, so we’ll take a closer look then. And I thought it was really nice, Erik, this connotation you started with — that space tourism, purely through the term “tourism,” might be negatively loaded for us at first, and that also has something to do with how it gets portrayed in the media. And at the same time it has a lot of really important, relevant aspects too. And when we look at this again the day after tomorrow, from this space travel perspective in general, one of the central questions will also be whether it isn’t really important for humanity in one place or another too. Because who knows today whether — it could well be that at some point we’ll reach a point where we’re glad all this research and development took place, and that we might find alternative options, should the case arise where we can no longer continue on Earth, in inverted commas, for whatever reason. So, worth keeping that in the back of your mind too. And that doesn’t have to be about climate, in the sense of us destroying our own world — there are also other space-related influences that could lead to things suddenly coming to an end, in inverted commas, from one day to the next. And here too, and we’ll look at this more closely in this space travel context too, there’s a lot of science, research, and development happening, where a whole lot of people are observing what’s happening out there in space, to make corresponding calculations, and protect Earth from possible external effects, which we can only influence because we’re able to make these “calculations” in the first place, to counteract them. I don’t know how aware people are of this if they don’t engage with these topics at all — that we’re simply exposed, to some extent, to natural dangers here too, even on Earth, that have nothing to do with humanity’s own actions, but are threatened from outside, in inverted commas, by nature, and that this actually gets counteracted regularly, whenever something moves toward Earth that actually poses a danger to us. So it’s exciting to look at it from this perspective too. Then I’d like to see if there are any other aspects you’d like to add — Erik, Jürgen, Stefan, Marc, you’d be welcome to do so now. I’d actually like to bring in a different aspect in a moment, which isn’t specifically related to space tourism, so let me first give you all the chance again to tie in here or there, if you’d like. Yes, Jürgen, go ahead.
Yes, just briefly, also regarding what Erik said, and the negative connotation of space tourism, the same goes for this topic, or the connotation of “byproduct.” I just wanted to point out that, in economics, the byproduct is actually the salt in the soup of an investment — that’s not, at least in our field, negatively connotated. A really prominent example of a byproduct is plastic, as a byproduct of oil. And this term, and this understanding of “byproduct,” can also be applied really well, I think, to today’s topic. It also promotes and demands, I’d say, a new kind of science — please don’t take this too literally — that of the networked thinker and visionary, no longer the blinkered kind, who thinks their vision and actions only within one very specific narrow scope, but someone who fundamentally pays attention to interfaces and connections, and that was also the quintessence of what you said, dear Marc, regarding osteoporosis. That’s exactly, for me too, a development of us humans and of humanity, that increasingly demands complexity, but also our networked thinking. Thank you.
Yes, great, thank you, thank you so much. I think a lot has come together again today too. And before we use today’s closing round to underline and wrap up one thing or another together, I’d like to give Stefan the opportunity, given the current occasion, to tie in here with a topic that also fits under this Pioneering Spirit with Brain umbrella. There’ll actually be a room on this too, which will be called Future Skills. That’s coming up in the next few days — I don’t have it memorized exactly when it’s on our schedule. We’ll take a look at that too, because it’s about how, for example, the requirements placed on us are changing, and so on. But since a production just happened, where I was invited as a guest by Stefan myself, I’d like to use this opportunity, because it’s just been made freshly accessible, to use this chance here on Clubhouse to share the link with you. I’ll do that in parallel in the background, pinning the link. And Stefan, maybe you’d like to briefly tell us a bit about this show, and why you basically made it, and what it’s about. And then we’ll warmly invite you all to listen in here too, and hear the various guests on this topic of Future Skills, which I was also part of. And yes, Stefan, I’ll gladly hand the floor to you, while I pin the link in the background at the same time. Would you like to share a few sentences on that with us?
Yes, very gladly. Just so people aren’t confused about why my profile isn’t, let’s say, linked to my agency in this form — when I joined Clubhouse, I actually had the private aspect in mind in the background, that I thought the app was great, and the idea behind it, and simply wanted to meet great people without this business background always being attached. But ultimately, of course, that can’t always be separated so cleanly. And in this case that’s actually a good thing, because this way I’ve naturally learned great things in this room too, and there’s been a wonderful exchange. And that’s also why the idea came about to invite Yasemin, with her expertise, to be part of this. Here’s what it’s about — I run a larger digital agency in North Rhine-Westphalia with various locations, and we produce branded entertainment. That means, first and foremost, my team and I build high-quality video content and digital platforms. And our focus has always been on creating added value, so that companies don’t advertise themselves or their products, but simply produce added value, and we then implement the whole thing editorially, at a high level. And one of these productions is called Daymond — that’s a combination of “Daily” and “Development” — where our idea was to say, we’re going into open communication, into a kind of smart community, and we really want to bring together people with expertise, with the widest variety of positions and perspectives, who really bring genuinely great, well-founded information and facts, in a pleasant, high-quality setting. And we always have various megatrends that we look at thematically. And if you get the chance to check out this site, which my team created, or rather, my company is responsible for the production — this time we’ve put the focus on the topic of Future Skills. And that’ll continue throughout the year in various sub-topics too, with bigger events also taking place, where we’re also working together with the state government, for the next project, and with AI NRW, for example, where we take a closer look at the topic of artificial intelligence in the context of Future Skills. But here the focus was, first of all, because our target audience is of course companies, institutions, but also really private individuals who want to engage with the topic — because Future Skills doesn’t just concern the world of work, but Future Skills is also personal development, a development our society is going through too. And that’s why we brought together all these facets there. And yes, as I said, I think the best way to see what came out of it is to check it out yourself, if you like. I find the interview with Yasemin especially interesting, because, of course, coming from the neuroscientific angle, but also with this motivation that always comes from Yasemin, and with fact-based positions, where you really know it’s not just some opinion, but genuinely well-founded results you can actually work with. And Future Skills is an incredibly important topic that, regardless of generation, we should all engage with, because it’s not just about the work models of tomorrow, but also, generally, what skills, abilities, specifications, and key competencies we’ll need in the future. And by “future” I actually mean right here, right now, if you will. Yes, the rapid development in the AI space has shown that too. But there are of course a lot more facets, around collaboration and critical thinking, and really, really interesting aspects. We’ve invited wonderful guests for it, and I’d be really, really happy if you’re interested in this topic and want to check us out.
Yes, great, thank you, thank you so much. And I think it wasn’t just really fun, but it was also very, very professionally prepared and produced, and the result too — I think that’s really wonderful. And also this aspect of relevance that Stefan just brought up. And I think it’s a wonderful format that gets made accessible here, where you can look at these topics from various perspectives too. And so, a very warm invitation to you all, just click on this link and check out the site. And more guests will be invited there too, and interviews conducted. So do keep checking back on these pages — not just because the interview with me happened to run there. I’m sure that’s exciting too, but I also find it really exciting to see the other guests here too, and open up these different perspectives. So I think it’s a really, really wonderful format, and I think it’s great that there are actually companies out there offering possibilities like this, and that the production here has been entrusted to Stefan, who really does a very, very good job with it. So, do check it out. You’re warmly invited to browse around the site a bit, and also watch past episodes, talks, for example. And the format is quite varied too, ranging from multiple guests exchanging ideas at once, to individual interviews, or also the five questions answered by the experts. So really, really exciting, I think. And with that, let’s move into today’s closing round, and see what we’d like to note down or highlight for today. In the order Erik, Jürgen, Stefan, Marc, and then I’ll gladly announce the room, or the room topic, for tomorrow. Erik.
I’d like to throw in a few distances to close out. So with an airliner, classic intercontinental tourism, you’re at about 30 kilometers of altitude. Space tourism right now is somewhere around 80 to 100 kilometers, and the ISS is 400 kilometers away.
Thank you, Jürgen.
Yes, first of all, thank you very much, Stefan, for the invitation, which I’ll very gladly accept, and one lighthearted remark from me to close. Dear all, I’d give my last shirt to see the Earth rise. So I would, if I could afford it — right now I can’t — but I’d do everything to still experience that. Thank you, and have a nice day.
Oh, great, thank you, thank you so much. By the way, Siavash also wrote in the chat that he’d like two tickets. So we already have ticket orders coming in too. Stefan?
Yes, I’ve already set up a crowdfunding page for Jürgen in parallel. No, but of course it’s always a bit of a situation where you not only have to put the money on the table, but also have to consider that you’re only allowed to fly along under certain health conditions — that’s still classically the case, that you actually have to bring certain health prerequisites with you. But regardless of that, of course, whether we had The Little Prince read to us as kids, or read it to our own kids later, this fascination, this infinite quality, this thing you can’t quite fully grasp either, this fascination with space — we should definitely hold onto that. I can only recommend, also with an eye on this — I watched the Apple event yesterday, of course, naturally, and the first new product in ten years from Apple was unveiled there, the Vision Pro, a mixed reality headset, if you will, which really offers some very, very exciting possibilities, where people always say, well, what am I supposed to do with the headset, but first take a look at what kind of product this is, and what it means, and how I might use it in various situations. And that’s exciting, because whether I buy this headset myself — it’s quite expensive, we’ll have to see — but I think I’ll do it at some point. And I already know which app I’ll download first, namely the NASA app, because with this mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, I think I’ll get the best feeling using this space app. And so, yes, stay tuned and let yourselves be fascinated by space, and by all the projects out there.
Yes, wonderful, thank you, thank you so much, and let me use this opportunity to advertise something a second time, in inverted commas. We’ve talked about the fact that a knowledge base is in development, and I already mentioned that the first version is already up on the website, and of course it’ll keep living and growing. So if you go to my first-name-last-name dot com, so yaseminyazan.com, you’ll find, up in the tabs, a knowledge base. And something wonderful is meant to grow there too, to create connections between topics. It all runs in the background of course, and needs some time too. And especially since you just brought up the headset and mixed reality and so on, I’d like to take this opportunity to already announce something — it’s still being reviewed by the author. Dr. Franz Hütter recently not only gave us his expert knowledge as part of an expert interview, but has now also written up a text on it, so to speak, and it’s been up since yesterday evening. He’ll certainly look it over once more, in inverted commas, to give his final approval, but since he submitted the text himself, I don’t think there’ll be any major changes now — it’s more design details we’re still coordinating. And that’s why I’d like to invite you again, not just to check out the knowledge base, but specifically, since the topic just came up, anyone who’d like to dig into this a bit more and doesn’t have much background knowledge on it yet, I’d invite you to check out the letter “E” — Extended Reality, XR for short. There the various terms in this context get explained, with examples too, and so on. And I think that’s really exciting for anyone who hasn’t engaged with these topics yet and is looking for a first approach to it. And so I think it’s wonderful that people like Dr. Franz Hütter are contributing to help this knowledge base really flourish. And a lot of other topics are already up there too. As I said, it’s the first draft, and it’ll keep developing further. So it’s always worth checking back and seeing what’s new. Yes, Marc.
Now I’ve got it. On space tourism, I’d like to add that this also includes space technology, and without this space technology, satellites for example, our modern life here wouldn’t even be possible anymore. That makes us vulnerable to leverage, and that’s also the reason why Europeans are once again very deliberately focusing on space technology.
Yes, great, thank you, thank you so much. I think it’s really exciting, after that long initial pause we had getting started, to see which aspects actually all came together in the end, with different perspectives. And it also shows again all the interconnections with other topics, the networking and chain reactions. So I find that really exciting. And we already touched on the climate topic today too, so it makes sense, as a next step, to start tomorrow with environmental technologies and climate change, to look at what environmental technologies actually exist in general, and how they actually affect this climate change — do they even have an effect, or what are we actually discussing here? What impact do they actually have? And to bring together one thing or another, based on what we pick up in the media, what we might have already engaged with ourselves on certain aspects, and in a shared exchange see which direction the room develops in tomorrow. And with that, I’m really looking forward to tomorrow. You’re all warmly invited to join again at 8am, when we look at the topic of environmental technology and climate change, and I wish you, for now, a wonderful day, whatever you have planned today. With that, until then.
