Huai-Chen Chang | TEDxTokyo 2012
Huai-Chien (Bill) Chang has his head way above the clouds. A PhD student at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science, he helped launch the Consortium of Extreme and Space Settlements (CESS) in spring 2011. The mission of the students, professors and space experts in CESS is to discover how to make hostile environments habitable, including Earth’s harshest planetary surfaces and those of other planets. (With people planning to colonize Mars by April 2023, we’re already behind the ellipse on this.) A Red Cross humanitarian mission volunteer since 2010, Bill’s current endeavor is something called the U.P. Omni-rescue project—a plan to deliver supplies using ICBM rockets to isolated areas during massive disasters. He’s also a member of the Japan Space Elevator Association. When he can, Bill talks to local students about space architecture, hoping to inspire them to look to the skies and dream of living off-planet.