WEBVTT - Can we settle space? Should we? Have we really thought this through?

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<v Speaker 1>Hey, Kelly, where do you think your kids are going

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<v Speaker 1>to live when they grow up?

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<v Speaker 2>Well, right now, my oldest is saying she's going to

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<v Speaker 2>stay in the house and have fourteen cats and ten kids,

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<v Speaker 2>And I guess I'm hoping that she's not in my

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<v Speaker 2>house but when that happens. But I also don't want

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<v Speaker 2>her too far because I'd love to see her and

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<v Speaker 2>her many creatures as much as possible.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, what would be too far? Are we talking like

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<v Speaker 1>South America or Antarctica.

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<v Speaker 2>I'd make those trips, although I wouldn't be super excited

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<v Speaker 2>about Antarctica, but I suspect I'm going to be a

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<v Speaker 2>pretty determined grandparent.

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<v Speaker 1>What if they have grandbabies, like in near Earth orbit

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<v Speaker 1>on this space.

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<v Speaker 2>Station, I'd be a bit disappointed for her poor decisions,

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<v Speaker 2>because I'm not sure that that's safe yet. But if

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<v Speaker 2>that's what I have to do to see the grandkids,

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<v Speaker 2>and my love is unconditional, I'm in all right.

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<v Speaker 1>And what if they move to MI and have little

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<v Speaker 1>Martian babies?

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<v Speaker 2>Oh my gosh, I don't know. Maybe we should set

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<v Speaker 2>up a video link.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, it's good to know the limits of your love.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, No, there's Alpha Centauri is a good limit. But

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<v Speaker 2>you know what's worrying me is we're having this conversation,

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<v Speaker 2>and now I have to make sure that my kids

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<v Speaker 2>in the future and my grandkids don't listen to this

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<v Speaker 2>conversation because they're going to get ideas and they'll move

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<v Speaker 2>out deep into the solar system.

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<v Speaker 1>Right now, they know exactly how far they have to

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<v Speaker 1>move to.

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<v Speaker 2>Avoid grandparent visits. Yep, good luck kids.

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<v Speaker 1>Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor

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<v Speaker 1>at UC Irvine, and I hope my kids move far away.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm Kelly Weener Smith. I'm a parasitologist and adjunct Debt

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<v Speaker 2>Race University. And you know, I'd like my kids to

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<v Speaker 2>be close, but maybe not in the house.

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<v Speaker 1>I have lots of friends here whose kids graduate from

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<v Speaker 1>high school, go to college, and then move back home

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<v Speaker 1>in this neighborhood. They call that failure to launch.

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<v Speaker 2>That's a big thing. Now, Yeah, my kids can stay

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<v Speaker 2>with me as long as they need to.

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<v Speaker 1>Mm. I just feel like moving outside the influence of

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<v Speaker 1>your parents is part of growing up and becoming an

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<v Speaker 1>adult in the world.

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<v Speaker 2>You know, I did love it. I had so much

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<v Speaker 2>fun when I moved out.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

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<v Speaker 1>a production of iHeartRadio. My usual friend and co host,

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<v Speaker 1>Jorge can't be here today, but I'm very happy to

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<v Speaker 1>be joined by our regular guest host, Kelly Wingersmith. Kelly,

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<v Speaker 1>thanks very much for joining us.

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<v Speaker 2>It's a pleasure to be here as always. And you know,

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<v Speaker 2>today we're talking about maybe the best thing you've ever

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<v Speaker 2>talked about on the podcast, and so I'm particularly excited

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<v Speaker 2>about today's conversation.

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<v Speaker 1>That's right. Today we're not just talking about explaining the universe.

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<v Speaker 1>We're talking about exploring the universe, actually settling the universe,

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<v Speaker 1>sending humanity out to the rest of the cosmos to

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<v Speaker 1>infect it with our disease. And as a special bonus,

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<v Speaker 1>we have not one Wienersmith today, we actually have two

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<v Speaker 1>Zach wingers made welcome to the podcast as well.

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<v Speaker 3>Hey, Hello, I need some intro music.

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<v Speaker 1>What is your intro music? Is it sort of like

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<v Speaker 1>the Darth Vader theme song?

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<v Speaker 3>Is more of a more of a wrestling thing, I

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<v Speaker 3>would I would like what did the Macho Man have?

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<v Speaker 1>Well, regular listeners the podcast know Kelly, of course, and

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<v Speaker 1>some of you may also know Zach her less famous husband,

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<v Speaker 1>well known for a Saturday morning breakfast cereal.

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<v Speaker 3>Whatever made man.

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<v Speaker 1>And there's a reason we have Zach and Kelly on

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<v Speaker 1>the podcast together today, not just for marital therapy, but

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<v Speaker 1>because these two folks have written a fantastic and fascinating

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<v Speaker 1>book all about settling space and exploring the.

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<v Speaker 2>Cosmos, and it's finally almost of it.

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<v Speaker 1>How long have you guys been working on this book?

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<v Speaker 2>We did four years of research on the book, and

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<v Speaker 2>then it took a year between submitting the book and

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<v Speaker 2>it going to Prince. So we've been thinking about this

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<v Speaker 2>for like a decade between the two of us, and

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<v Speaker 2>we are ready to crush everyone's dream.

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<v Speaker 1>If you feel about this book the way I feel

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<v Speaker 1>about every paper I write that takes longer than a year,

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<v Speaker 1>then by the time it's ready to go out in

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<v Speaker 1>the world, I hate the thing and I never want

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<v Speaker 1>to see it again.

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<v Speaker 2>I was happy to get it off of my desk

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<v Speaker 2>when the time came, but I'm still pretty excited about it,

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<v Speaker 2>and that year in between sort of helped me get

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<v Speaker 2>excited about it again. What about you, Zach, Yeah, I

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<v Speaker 2>think you know.

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<v Speaker 3>So the amount of time between submitting a manuscript, you're

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<v Speaker 3>basically not allowed to touch and the time you get

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<v Speaker 3>to actually put the book out of the universe is

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<v Speaker 3>quite substantial. So the other thing is, you know, the

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<v Speaker 3>way publishing works now is you don't want to say

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<v Speaker 3>too much because you might get to say it in

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<v Speaker 3>some prominent place. So you kind of have you're sort

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<v Speaker 3>of like, you know, and gagged until the book comes out.

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<v Speaker 3>So it's getting to where it's exciting to talk about

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<v Speaker 3>this stuff again.

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<v Speaker 1>Awesome. So I hope we're catching you right in the

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<v Speaker 1>upswing where you're excited about these topics again, because I'm

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<v Speaker 1>very excited about it and I can't wait to talk

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<v Speaker 1>to you both about it. And so today on the podcast,

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<v Speaker 1>we'll be tackling the question can we settle space? Should

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<v Speaker 1>we settle space? Have we really thought this through? I

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<v Speaker 1>love the subtitles for your book. It really sets up

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<v Speaker 1>the whole conversation, the skepticism, the nerdy analysis of whether

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<v Speaker 1>this is something realistic. I really love the way you

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<v Speaker 1>guys tackle this.

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<v Speaker 2>I feel like by reading the last question we propose,

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<v Speaker 2>you pretty much know where we're going to fall on

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<v Speaker 2>the whole topic. But you know, we try to we're

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<v Speaker 2>still people who are excited about space settlement at the

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<v Speaker 2>end of the day.

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<v Speaker 1>And space settlement is something that's definitely in the zeitgeisten

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<v Speaker 1>has been for decades. Right, We've been hearing about the

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<v Speaker 1>possibilities of moving humans out into space. Elon Musk is

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<v Speaker 1>famous accelerating our ability to get into orbit, and so

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<v Speaker 1>this is something people have been thinking about. And so,

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<v Speaker 1>as usual on the podcast, before we dig into the topic,

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<v Speaker 1>I pulled our listeners to hear what they thought about

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<v Speaker 1>the possibilities of colonizing space, the Moon and Mars in

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<v Speaker 1>this case, actually walked around campus here at UC Irvine

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<v Speaker 1>where classes have recently started, and asked folks if they

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<v Speaker 1>thought it's important that we colonize space and whether we

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<v Speaker 1>will have the technology. So, before you hear these answers,

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<v Speaker 1>think to yourself for a minute, do you think we

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<v Speaker 1>should colonize space? Are we ready to do so? Here's

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<v Speaker 1>what people had to say, Sure, why not? Do you

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<v Speaker 1>think we're capable of doing it anytime in the near future? No? No,

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<v Speaker 1>how long do you think before we're ready?

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<v Speaker 4>The Moon? Probably under the years, I would say that

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<v Speaker 4>estate I don't know.

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<v Speaker 1>Finding the future, do you think humanity should colonize space?

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<v Speaker 1>The Moon? In Mars. No, because we kind of ruined

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<v Speaker 1>our planet already. Are you worried we're going to ruin

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<v Speaker 1>some more?

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<v Speaker 4>We will deserve too.

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<v Speaker 1>Do you think humanity should colonize space the moon in

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<v Speaker 1>Marsh Yeah? Definitely, Yeah, definitely Yeah. Cool. Why is that?

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah?

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<v Speaker 4>Because like you know, like you never know like what's

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<v Speaker 4>going to happen in the future, you.

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<v Speaker 1>Know, do you think we're ready? Do we have the technology?

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<v Speaker 4>Maybe NASA does, but we never know like what's going

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<v Speaker 4>to happen. Maybe they're like hiding something or at least

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<v Speaker 4>that's what I think. I think we should colonize like

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<v Speaker 4>those kind of financial What is NASA hiding?

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<v Speaker 1>Do you think?

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<v Speaker 3>I have no clue?

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<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I'm just undergrad student here, but probably like some

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<v Speaker 4>like super technology, you know, just came out that aliens

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<v Speaker 4>does exist.

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<v Speaker 1>The question is, do you think humanity should colonize space

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<v Speaker 1>the moon in Mars?

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah?

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<v Speaker 5>I think so. I think it's a good idea. So

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<v Speaker 5>if we're capable of doing it, I think it's not.

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<v Speaker 5>It's not a bad idea.

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<v Speaker 1>So do you think we are capable?

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<v Speaker 5>I think we will be very very likely because I mean,

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<v Speaker 5>we sure have the technology to go there.

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<v Speaker 1>It's just yeah.

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<v Speaker 5>So I guess if you asked me, in probably in

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<v Speaker 5>one hundred years, there will be people living in March Mars,

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<v Speaker 5>That's my guess.

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<v Speaker 1>Do you think it's important that humanity colonizes space, the Moon, Mars,

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<v Speaker 1>et cetera.

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<v Speaker 3>Eventually, yes, but not in the immediate future.

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<v Speaker 1>And do you think we'll have the capability the technology

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<v Speaker 1>to do it anytime soon?

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<v Speaker 3>Eventually?

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<v Speaker 1>Eventually? What does eventually mean?

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<v Speaker 3>I don't know.

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<v Speaker 1>Erudious all right, Zach Kelly, what do you guys think

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<v Speaker 1>about those answers?

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<v Speaker 2>Well, I'll note that I didn't share them with Zach

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<v Speaker 2>ahead of time, so he's unprepared. But I'm going to

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<v Speaker 2>go ahead and say that's his fault. So one of

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<v Speaker 2>the respondents said no, because we've ruined our planet already,

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<v Speaker 2>so we don't deserve it. And I got to say,

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<v Speaker 2>what as an ecologist, when I started telling people like, oh,

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<v Speaker 2>I'm writing a book about space settlement, many of them

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<v Speaker 2>immediately assumed that I was writing a book about how

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<v Speaker 2>we don't deserve it because we've destroyed our own planet,

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<v Speaker 2>And I almost felt guilty because that was not at

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<v Speaker 2>all my angle. I'm excited, and I think we should

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<v Speaker 2>you know. I hope we do it at some point,

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<v Speaker 2>but I hope we're just careful about it.

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<v Speaker 3>Zach.

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<v Speaker 2>When you talk to people, what is the response that

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<v Speaker 2>you usually get from people when you tell them that

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<v Speaker 2>you're reading a book about space settlements?

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<v Speaker 3>So I think, you know, the ecologist's example is good

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<v Speaker 3>because what we've found is what we should do in

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<v Speaker 3>space is almost like a roar shock test for your

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<v Speaker 3>view of the universe, you know what I mean. There

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<v Speaker 3>are these different strains. So there are people who are

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<v Speaker 3>very kind of techy libertarian, read a lot of hindline

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<v Speaker 3>Elon musk is is in this vein who think it's

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<v Speaker 3>not just that it would be cool to do it,

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<v Speaker 3>would be kind of like a thwarting of human ambition

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<v Speaker 3>to not do it. But then you also have feel

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<v Speaker 3>who are Yeah, I have this perspective that we have

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<v Speaker 3>kind of befouled the Earth and we're a sort of

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<v Speaker 3>you know, gross skurf on the surface of the planet

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<v Speaker 3>and ought not to extend ourselves to other planets. And

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<v Speaker 3>I think it's almost like you know how people say

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<v Speaker 3>science fiction is never about the future, it's always about

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<v Speaker 3>the present. I think what you think should be done

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<v Speaker 3>in space settlement kind of works the same way. What

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<v Speaker 3>you're often doing is really making rendering a sort of

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<v Speaker 3>judgment on how we're doing right this second. You know.

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<v Speaker 3>The deal is, of course space is actually a real

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<v Speaker 3>place that interfaces with actual reality, and so you know,

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<v Speaker 3>our book is hopefully it's an attempt to part from

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<v Speaker 3>it just being a sort of philosophical thing and talk

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<v Speaker 3>about what it would actually be like. But yeah, can

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<v Speaker 3>you say about the ecology thing my biggest rebuttal to that,

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<v Speaker 3>I mean, yeah, people tend to assume that we're going

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<v Speaker 3>to be like, yes, Elon mess is an idiot and

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<v Speaker 3>he's defiled Earth and will defile Mars, and I just

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<v Speaker 3>want to say, like that just fails to reckon with

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<v Speaker 3>how thoroughly terrible Mars is, Like unless you are one

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<v Speaker 3>of these people, and there are such people more than

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<v Speaker 3>I would have thought, who think like Mars as an

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<v Speaker 3>entity has agency like a person would. Unless you believe

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<v Speaker 3>something like that, it's bizarre because there's no part of

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<v Speaker 3>Earth that's even close to as bad as anywhere on Mars.

0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:45.800
<v Speaker 3>You couldn't make it as bad without like slamming the

0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:49.360
<v Speaker 3>Moon into Earth or something. So the idea of in

0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:51.880
<v Speaker 3>an ecological sense, messing up Mars is sort of absurd,

0:10:52.120 --> 0:10:53.840
<v Speaker 3>and the moon even more so. Yeah.

0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:55.839
<v Speaker 1>Well, one thing I think is really fascinating is hearing

0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:57.920
<v Speaker 1>about how your opinions have changed. I mean, if this

0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.520
<v Speaker 1>is like a war shark test for who you are

0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:02.560
<v Speaker 1>and what you think about where we are today, then

0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.520
<v Speaker 1>it's really interesting that you guys went from like vaguely

0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:09.240
<v Speaker 1>optimistic about space settlement to being you know, space cranks.

0:11:09.360 --> 0:11:12.640
<v Speaker 1>Essentially tell us a little bit about your journey, like

0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:14.960
<v Speaker 1>what book did you start out wanting to write? Did

0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:17.199
<v Speaker 1>you intend to write when you started this project? Oh,

0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:18.120
<v Speaker 1>so many years ago?

0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.880
<v Speaker 2>So we wrote soonish together and that was a book

0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:24.520
<v Speaker 2>about emerging technologies, and two of the technologies in the

0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.200
<v Speaker 2>book were cheap access to space and asteroid mining. And

0:11:28.240 --> 0:11:31.080
<v Speaker 2>after writing both of those chapters, we thought like, oh,

0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:35.200
<v Speaker 2>you know, maybe space settlements aren't that far away. So

0:11:35.320 --> 0:11:38.280
<v Speaker 2>if you can launch mass to space cheaply, then you

0:11:38.320 --> 0:11:40.439
<v Speaker 2>can send habitats with all the tech that you need

0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.800
<v Speaker 2>to keep humans alive in space. And if asteroid mining

0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:45.480
<v Speaker 2>is a thing, then pretty soon we're going to be

0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:49.160
<v Speaker 2>able to use resources from space to build our habitats.

0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:51.200
<v Speaker 2>And that's going to make things even cheaper, And so

0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:54.280
<v Speaker 2>we thought that this is something that could happen in

0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.720
<v Speaker 2>our lifetimes, and especially given all of the like pop

0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:00.439
<v Speaker 2>size stuff you read about space settlement and all rhetoric

0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:03.520
<v Speaker 2>from space advocates, we thought like, this is something that

0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:05.520
<v Speaker 2>we are one hundred percent prepared to do. We just

0:12:05.600 --> 0:12:07.160
<v Speaker 2>need to be able to afford to do it. So

0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:09.160
<v Speaker 2>we were going to write like the guide to what

0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:10.960
<v Speaker 2>the next couple of years are going to be like, like,

0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:13.480
<v Speaker 2>you know, how do you put together the first crew?

0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.040
<v Speaker 2>Should it be half male half female? How should you

0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:19.840
<v Speaker 2>know if you have an international crew, kind of sociological

0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:22.959
<v Speaker 2>stuff might they come up against? And what kind of

0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:25.320
<v Speaker 2>governance should you have for the first settlement on the moon.

0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:27.760
<v Speaker 1>And you were excited to see these things happen, right

0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:29.840
<v Speaker 1>You were like, ooh, let's figure this out. This would

0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:31.199
<v Speaker 1>be fantastic if it happened.

0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:32.880
<v Speaker 2>I guess I shouldn't speak for both of us, but

0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:35.920
<v Speaker 2>I was. I think it's beautiful. The idea of like,

0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:38.560
<v Speaker 2>you know, waking up on the Moon and seeing Earth,

0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.680
<v Speaker 2>you know, from the glass dome that you were sleeping

0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.720
<v Speaker 2>in or whatever, that all sounded amazing, and so I

0:12:44.840 --> 0:12:49.720
<v Speaker 2>was super excited, but every chapter that we started working

0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:54.120
<v Speaker 2>on we were like, oh, man, we don't know anywhere

0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:56.679
<v Speaker 2>near enough about this. So in the medicine chapter, we

0:12:56.679 --> 0:12:58.800
<v Speaker 2>were like, we really don't know how bodies are going

0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:01.200
<v Speaker 2>to respond to space. And then in the closed loop

0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:05.800
<v Speaker 2>ecology chapter, where you know, can you recycle the carbon

0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:07.959
<v Speaker 2>dioxide that you breathe out in the water, and how

0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.880
<v Speaker 2>do you get like a habitat that recycles stuff so

0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.000
<v Speaker 2>that you don't need more stuff flown in from Earth,

0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:15.880
<v Speaker 2>And we really don't know how to do that very well.

0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:18.160
<v Speaker 2>And then we got into the international law and we

0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.280
<v Speaker 2>were like, oh, my gosh, there's so much that isn't

0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:22.800
<v Speaker 2>figured out here, and it could create tons of conflict

0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.760
<v Speaker 2>if we start trying to settle now. And I could

0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:27.640
<v Speaker 2>just go on and on and on. Every chapter that

0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:31.079
<v Speaker 2>we thought, oh, we've probably figured this out, it turned

0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.160
<v Speaker 2>out that there's a lot of work to do, and

0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.400
<v Speaker 2>so we ended up, yeah, writing the book that we

0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:37.400
<v Speaker 2>wrote instead.

0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.120
<v Speaker 1>So you discovered that a lot of these things hadn't

0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:46.000
<v Speaker 1>really been explored thoroughly, or viewed with a skeptical lens,

0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:49.560
<v Speaker 1>or analyzed in detail. Essentially, it was all hidden under

0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.280
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of pro space fluff. Is that the sense

0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:53.880
<v Speaker 1>you got once you start digging into things?

0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:56.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, all of that, All of that is true.

0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:58.840
<v Speaker 1>So why is that, Zach? Why do you think nobody

0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:01.760
<v Speaker 1>has written this sort of like skeptical are we really

0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:04.520
<v Speaker 1>ready kind of book before? Why is it all sort

0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:06.880
<v Speaker 1>of pro space gloss over the details?

0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:09.680
<v Speaker 3>That's a good question, you know, I should say, first

0:14:09.720 --> 0:14:11.800
<v Speaker 3>of all, as we got close to press a couple

0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:14.240
<v Speaker 3>similar books not quite the same story coming out, I

0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.080
<v Speaker 3>do think there's a kind of growing analytical approach to

0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:19.280
<v Speaker 3>this problem. I will say, you know, it's hard to

0:14:19.280 --> 0:14:22.960
<v Speaker 3>know other people's motivations. I think the generous assumption is

0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:25.840
<v Speaker 3>that people don't tend to write pop technology books about

0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.400
<v Speaker 3>a thing you're not going to get generally speaking, right,

0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:34.280
<v Speaker 3>I was talking to a distinguished popular science author and

0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.320
<v Speaker 3>I said, you know, I was talking to him about it,

0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:39.400
<v Speaker 3>and you know, basically explained this whole thing that where

0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:41.160
<v Speaker 3>we're basically going to say it's going to be, it's

0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:43.520
<v Speaker 3>way harder than you expected, The timelines are much longer

0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:45.280
<v Speaker 3>than you expected, and there are even arguments for not

0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:49.280
<v Speaker 3>doing it outside of like extraordinary technological developments. He was like,

0:14:49.320 --> 0:14:52.640
<v Speaker 3>you can't do that you can't have a book for nerds.

0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:56.040
<v Speaker 3>That's like, sorry, nerds, you don't get the thing. And

0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:58.400
<v Speaker 3>so you know, the upshot of that is, if you

0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:01.440
<v Speaker 3>look as we did at the sort of corpus of

0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:04.080
<v Speaker 3>future casting books about space written going back to the

0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.160
<v Speaker 3>nineteen twenties, they tend to be about what problem space

0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:09.960
<v Speaker 3>is going to solve? Right. They're not critical in that

0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.800
<v Speaker 3>sense of saying, wait, maybe this problem is not worth

0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:16.080
<v Speaker 3>solving in a sort of boring economic sense, the kind

0:15:16.080 --> 0:15:17.560
<v Speaker 3>of analysis you would do if you were trying to

0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.760
<v Speaker 3>say drill and oil well, right, And so when you

0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:23.320
<v Speaker 3>don't have that voice in the room, there tend to

0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.800
<v Speaker 3>be major things that just get skipped. So like, for us,

0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.040
<v Speaker 3>a huge turning point which will sound like almost nothing

0:15:30.040 --> 0:15:31.680
<v Speaker 3>when you first hear it, but then you start thinking

0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:33.880
<v Speaker 3>about it, which is the surface of the Moon is

0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:37.760
<v Speaker 3>carbon poor, like extremely carbon poor. There's almost no carbon, right,

0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:39.280
<v Speaker 3>And so you have a nerd audience they know what

0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:43.080
<v Speaker 3>that means that you literally cannot have life. You have

0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:45.760
<v Speaker 3>to import carbon. Right. It's not like you need to

0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.760
<v Speaker 3>like sprinkle a little phosphorus or something, right, you have

0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.120
<v Speaker 3>to sprinkle the whole farm, Which is crazy when you

0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:52.960
<v Speaker 3>think that these you know, like if you look at

0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:55.920
<v Speaker 3>Saturn fives, like the biggest rocket ever built, it was

0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:59.160
<v Speaker 3>able to put this eeny weeny little thing on the moon. Right,

0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:01.000
<v Speaker 3>It's the idea that we're to scale up to where

0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:04.200
<v Speaker 3>we're delivering mountains and mountains just to be able to

0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.600
<v Speaker 3>grow apples or whatever is kind of crazy and so

0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:12.440
<v Speaker 3>like whatever, it could be solved, quote unquote, But why

0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:14.680
<v Speaker 3>isn't this the first thing in all these books about

0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.360
<v Speaker 3>space settlement, right? Why aren't questions like this number one?

0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.160
<v Speaker 3>Like these massive problems? And another huge one is radiation,

0:16:20.200 --> 0:16:22.600
<v Speaker 3>which there's a book called The Case for Space, or

0:16:22.640 --> 0:16:24.800
<v Speaker 3>is the Case from Mars. It's a huge book in

0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.920
<v Speaker 3>this sector by Robert Zubrin. It has a section on radiation.

0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.680
<v Speaker 3>It goes immediately as I recall into this idea of

0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.880
<v Speaker 3>hormesis hermeisis meaning when you get some of something, it

0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:37.840
<v Speaker 3>might actually be good, some of a little bad something

0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:40.000
<v Speaker 3>might be good in some circumstances, which is like a

0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.760
<v Speaker 3>bizarre response to the unknown results of massive doses of

0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:45.920
<v Speaker 3>non earth like radiation. But I think this is what

0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:47.880
<v Speaker 3>you would expect if most of the books are written

0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.600
<v Speaker 3>by advocates. They just don't want to linger on those problems.

0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:52.080
<v Speaker 1>You have this line in your book, which I thought

0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:54.480
<v Speaker 1>was a great singer. You say, quote much of the

0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:56.880
<v Speaker 1>discourse around why we should go to space and how

0:16:56.960 --> 0:16:59.640
<v Speaker 1>society will work when we get there remains mired in

0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:05.160
<v Speaker 1>un informed opinion and unrealistic fantasy. Ouch are you suggesting

0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:07.440
<v Speaker 1>that we should have like a boring economist in every

0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:10.399
<v Speaker 1>conversation to keep us like firmly rooted on the ground.

0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:15.399
<v Speaker 2>Yes, I mean there would be worse things. And I also,

0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:19.080
<v Speaker 2>just to be clear, we are generally very nice to

0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:21.800
<v Speaker 2>the space settlement community. We disagree, but we love them

0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.000
<v Speaker 2>very much. These people are our friends, and we're sorry

0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.119
<v Speaker 2>that we're wet blankets. But yes, the rhetoric could use

0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:28.960
<v Speaker 2>a bit of Well.

0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:31.480
<v Speaker 1>We're going to dig into all of your analysis of

0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.199
<v Speaker 1>what it's like to live in space and where we

0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:35.520
<v Speaker 1>could go, and what the real problems are in international

0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.920
<v Speaker 1>law and cannibalism and sex in space, on all these

0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.639
<v Speaker 1>really fun topics that you guys analyze. But before we do,

0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:43.600
<v Speaker 1>I just have one more question, which is, what do

0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:45.919
<v Speaker 1>you think the response is going to be from the

0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:49.760
<v Speaker 1>pro space settlement community when you call them uninformed and

0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:52.600
<v Speaker 1>unrealistic fantasizers about the future.

0:17:53.080 --> 0:18:00.600
<v Speaker 2>Ah okay, So I'll say that Daniel Dowdney came before us.

0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:02.640
<v Speaker 2>He wrote a book called Dark Skies, which is very

0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:06.760
<v Speaker 2>anti space settlement, and he has been called anti human.

0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.480
<v Speaker 2>And I watched a panel that was set up where

0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:12.840
<v Speaker 2>he was like invited to sort of like watch, but

0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:15.880
<v Speaker 2>they didn't ask him to suggest any names for people

0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:17.879
<v Speaker 2>to go on the panel, so it was just people

0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:22.760
<v Speaker 2>tearing apart his ideas for like two hours, and which

0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:25.760
<v Speaker 2>I thought there were plenty of good counter arguments that

0:18:25.840 --> 0:18:30.680
<v Speaker 2>weren't presented. But anyway, I am not super sure that

0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.800
<v Speaker 2>the community is going to be real kind to us.

0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.040
<v Speaker 2>But there's also plenty of people in that community who

0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.320
<v Speaker 2>are open to discussion, and so I'm optimistic that we'll

0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:41.879
<v Speaker 2>have lots of productive discussions with lots of people, but

0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:44.200
<v Speaker 2>no doubt there will be a subset of people who

0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:46.880
<v Speaker 2>are going to have really hate our guts.

0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:49.280
<v Speaker 1>Well, I hope you guys don't have to go into

0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:52.000
<v Speaker 1>hiding after this book. I think it's a good idea

0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:54.679
<v Speaker 1>to explore this constructively, and that in your book you

0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.040
<v Speaker 1>were balanced and fair and didn't just throw wet blankets

0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.000
<v Speaker 1>on these ideas suggested like actual ways forward and raise

0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.280
<v Speaker 1>the issues that we need to confront if we're going

0:19:03.320 --> 0:19:05.080
<v Speaker 1>to make this happen. So I think it's a very

0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.080
<v Speaker 1>positive and forward thinking book. But let's dig into the

0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:24.560
<v Speaker 1>details in a minute after we take this short break. Okay,

0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:27.359
<v Speaker 1>we're back and we're talking about the future of humanity

0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:30.960
<v Speaker 1>settling space. Should we can? We will we have the tech?

0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:33.560
<v Speaker 1>When will we have the tech? Is it possible to

0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.639
<v Speaker 1>live in space? With Zach and Kelly Windersmith, because they

0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:39.399
<v Speaker 1>just wrote a book about it, called A City on Mars,

0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:43.240
<v Speaker 1>which is out now from all excellent booksellers and also

0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:44.720
<v Speaker 1>less reputable booksellers.

0:19:45.200 --> 0:19:47.040
<v Speaker 2>Sorry, you can get it anywhere.

0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.000
<v Speaker 1>All right, So let's talk about what it's like to

0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:54.440
<v Speaker 1>live in space, because so far, almost every human who's

0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:58.000
<v Speaker 1>ever existed has lived in a very narrow slice of

0:19:58.040 --> 0:20:00.760
<v Speaker 1>the universe, very close to the surface of the Earth.

0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:04.000
<v Speaker 1>So tell us about what we know about living in space.

0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:06.480
<v Speaker 1>What is it like in terms of the environment for

0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.399
<v Speaker 1>human survival? And let's start with radiation. What are we

0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:11.680
<v Speaker 1>facing if you're going to live for an extended period

0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.280
<v Speaker 1>not in the atmospheric bubble of Earth.

0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:17.200
<v Speaker 2>Well, so this was one of the first eye opening

0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.400
<v Speaker 2>research topics for me. So we started with space medicine,

0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.760
<v Speaker 2>and I assumed, you know, okay, so the Soviets sent

0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:27.000
<v Speaker 2>up a bunch of solutes, and then the Soviet Union

0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.719
<v Speaker 2>slash rust Russia sent up Mirror, and then ISS has

0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.800
<v Speaker 2>been up there for like twenty years, and China has

0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.439
<v Speaker 2>now fielded three space stations in low Worth orbit, and so,

0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:39.800
<v Speaker 2>you know, I assumed that we would have a bunch

0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.440
<v Speaker 2>of data on how radiation impacts the human body, and

0:20:42.480 --> 0:20:46.000
<v Speaker 2>we'd have good answers to questions like does space radiation

0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.520
<v Speaker 2>cause cancer? And I should note that radiation in space,

0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.080
<v Speaker 2>as your listeners no doubt already know, is different than

0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:54.399
<v Speaker 2>the kind of radiation we tend to encounter on Earth,

0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:58.080
<v Speaker 2>and so we understand it even less well. But something

0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:00.399
<v Speaker 2>I should have realized but didn't occur to me until

0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.240
<v Speaker 2>I was reading these textbooks on space medicine, is that

0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.560
<v Speaker 2>all of our space stations have been orbiting the Earth

0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:11.119
<v Speaker 2>under the protection of Earth's magnetosphere, and so most of

0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.639
<v Speaker 2>space radiation is not reaching them. Maybe they have slightly

0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:17.720
<v Speaker 2>elevated levels, but a person living on the International Space

0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.200
<v Speaker 2>Station isn't necessarily giving us the data that we need

0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:23.720
<v Speaker 2>to understand how a person living on the Moon or

0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:26.080
<v Speaker 2>Mars is going to hold up under space radiation.

0:21:26.320 --> 0:21:28.479
<v Speaker 1>So where does space radiation come from? I mean, they

0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:31.320
<v Speaker 1>don't have like nuclear power plants melting down in the

0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:33.120
<v Speaker 1>middle of space. Where is this coming from?

0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:35.479
<v Speaker 2>It's coming from the Sun, and it's coming from well,

0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:36.920
<v Speaker 2>I really feel like this is a question.

0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:41.160
<v Speaker 1>For you then, right, So you're right, the Sun generates

0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:43.760
<v Speaker 1>a huge amount of radiation, you know, protons and electrons,

0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.760
<v Speaker 1>very high speed, the solar wind. People think about space

0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:50.040
<v Speaker 1>as empty, but it's really filled with high speed particles.

0:21:50.359 --> 0:21:52.399
<v Speaker 1>And as you say, the Earth is protecting us from that.

0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:55.879
<v Speaker 1>It's atmosphere and its magnetic field shields us from a

0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:57.840
<v Speaker 1>lot of that space radiation. So if you think about

0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.680
<v Speaker 1>radiation like Fukushima style, is not a whole lot of that,

0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:03.720
<v Speaker 1>but there's a huge amount of just solar wind, and

0:22:03.760 --> 0:22:05.959
<v Speaker 1>we feel that already down here on Earth. You know,

0:22:06.000 --> 0:22:09.600
<v Speaker 1>we get radiation from space that penetrates through the atmosphere

0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.040
<v Speaker 1>and as you go higher and higher, you're more exposed

0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:13.800
<v Speaker 1>to that radiation. So you know, one question I have

0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:15.600
<v Speaker 1>for you is like, is it possible to learn more

0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.160
<v Speaker 1>about this not just from astronauts on the space station,

0:22:18.280 --> 0:22:20.520
<v Speaker 1>but from like flight attendants who spend a lot of

0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:23.399
<v Speaker 1>time at higher altitude and are more exposed to that

0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:24.560
<v Speaker 1>radiation from space.

0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:27.520
<v Speaker 2>Well, so they're more exposed to that kind of radiation,

0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:29.879
<v Speaker 2>but they are they also more exposed to like the

0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:33.560
<v Speaker 2>galactic cosmic radiation like iron ions and stuff. Are those

0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:35.440
<v Speaker 2>also hitting the planes in space?

0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:38.200
<v Speaker 1>That's actually a really fascinating research question. We don't actually

0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:41.119
<v Speaker 1>know what component of the radiation the cosmic rays that

0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:44.480
<v Speaker 1>hit the Earth are, like iron nuclei versus just protons.

0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:47.200
<v Speaker 1>None of that actually makes it down to the surface.

0:22:47.240 --> 0:22:49.800
<v Speaker 1>They'll just slam into the atmosphere and then turn into

0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:53.199
<v Speaker 1>muons and other particles. So there's definitely no iron nuclei

0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:57.600
<v Speaker 1>like passing through the bodies of stewardesses and airplane passengers fortunately,

0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:00.640
<v Speaker 1>And so I guess your argument is that out there

0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:02.760
<v Speaker 1>in space, on the surface of Mars or on the Moon,

0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:05.800
<v Speaker 1>you have like no protection, so you're like really feeling

0:23:05.840 --> 0:23:08.640
<v Speaker 1>the brunt of raw space radiation itself.

0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:11.920
<v Speaker 2>And you're never escaping it. And also your habitat can

0:23:11.960 --> 0:23:14.520
<v Speaker 2>create different kinds of radiation, so when the radiation hits

0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:18.120
<v Speaker 2>your habitat, something called spallation happens where the particles break

0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:21.320
<v Speaker 2>into different kinds of particles that are also radioactive. And

0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:23.560
<v Speaker 2>so what kind of habitat you're living in, the shape

0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:25.359
<v Speaker 2>of the habitat, all this stuff is going to matter.

0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:28.119
<v Speaker 2>But with stewardesses for examples, you know, let's say they

0:23:28.119 --> 0:23:30.320
<v Speaker 2>are getting exposed to some of that radiation. You know,

0:23:30.320 --> 0:23:33.399
<v Speaker 2>they're exposed to it for parts of their lives, so

0:23:33.440 --> 0:23:35.680
<v Speaker 2>you know, they're working lives start at like what eighteen,

0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:38.280
<v Speaker 2>but maybe even older, and they're only up there part

0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:41.600
<v Speaker 2>of the time. And so we're talking about people who

0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:45.359
<v Speaker 2>are going to be like born on a planet and

0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:48.119
<v Speaker 2>exposed to radiation from the moment they're conceived, or you know,

0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:50.680
<v Speaker 2>from maybe even the game meats in their parents were

0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:54.720
<v Speaker 2>receiving radiation, and so that kind of accumulated dose over

0:23:54.760 --> 0:23:57.760
<v Speaker 2>an entire lifespan, maybe it's not going to be a problem.

0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:01.160
<v Speaker 2>Maybe we can design habitats that total keep the radiation out,

0:24:01.280 --> 0:24:03.280
<v Speaker 2>or maybe like we read this one review paper from

0:24:03.320 --> 0:24:06.960
<v Speaker 2>twenty eighteen that basically said, look, we don't even know

0:24:06.960 --> 0:24:10.480
<v Speaker 2>if space radiation causes cancer, but it's probably best that

0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:13.000
<v Speaker 2>we assume it could. And so like that's where we

0:24:13.080 --> 0:24:15.679
<v Speaker 2>are right now, Like it probably causes cancer, but we

0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:18.320
<v Speaker 2>don't even know. But I will note that most proposals

0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:21.320
<v Speaker 2>for habitats on the Moon are Mars or even rotating

0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:26.040
<v Speaker 2>space stations involve covering the habitat with meters of regalists.

0:24:26.080 --> 0:24:28.600
<v Speaker 2>So that's the like dirt, dusty dirt that you find

0:24:28.600 --> 0:24:31.000
<v Speaker 2>on the Moon and Mars. And the idea is that

0:24:31.040 --> 0:24:33.040
<v Speaker 2>if you're under a couple meters of that, it's going

0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:35.600
<v Speaker 2>to block the radiation before it gets to your habitat.

0:24:35.920 --> 0:24:38.239
<v Speaker 2>So that glass dome that I wanted to wake up

0:24:38.320 --> 0:24:41.440
<v Speaker 2>underneath and look at the Earth, you know, on my vacation,

0:24:41.960 --> 0:24:44.160
<v Speaker 2>that's not going to happen. I would be baked with radiation.

0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:46.080
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, there's a lot we don't know. And the

0:24:46.119 --> 0:24:48.760
<v Speaker 2>answer might be either it's fine or it's fine with

0:24:48.800 --> 0:24:51.200
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of engineering, but we don't have the

0:24:51.280 --> 0:24:53.120
<v Speaker 2>kind of data that we need right now to really

0:24:53.200 --> 0:24:57.000
<v Speaker 2>understand that. And there are so Brookhaven Laboratory now has

0:24:57.040 --> 0:25:01.320
<v Speaker 2>a new device that can make galactic cosmic radiation or

0:25:01.359 --> 0:25:04.000
<v Speaker 2>can mimic it, and so we're starting to be able

0:25:04.000 --> 0:25:06.800
<v Speaker 2>to get some better data on rodents. But even then

0:25:06.840 --> 0:25:09.280
<v Speaker 2>it's not like they're being exposed for their entire life

0:25:09.359 --> 0:25:12.040
<v Speaker 2>to the entire range of radiation that they're going to

0:25:12.080 --> 0:25:14.240
<v Speaker 2>get in space. So there's still a lot we have

0:25:14.359 --> 0:25:14.920
<v Speaker 2>left to learn.

0:25:15.320 --> 0:25:17.560
<v Speaker 1>So you're saying that the kind of habitats we're imagining

0:25:17.920 --> 0:25:20.240
<v Speaker 1>long term life on Mars or the Moon or in

0:25:20.280 --> 0:25:22.920
<v Speaker 1>a space station could end up like a horror movie

0:25:22.920 --> 0:25:25.920
<v Speaker 1>where everybody gets like horrible cancer and your faces melt

0:25:25.920 --> 0:25:27.520
<v Speaker 1>and all this kind of stuff that we just don't

0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:30.639
<v Speaker 1>know the answer to whether it's even possible for humans

0:25:30.680 --> 0:25:31.680
<v Speaker 1>to live in that scenario.

0:25:31.920 --> 0:25:34.800
<v Speaker 2>So I think face melting is probably off the table,

0:25:35.160 --> 0:25:38.080
<v Speaker 2>but maybe not. But well, I don't think that we

0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:41.880
<v Speaker 2>have to, you know, start with babies and see what happens.

0:25:42.119 --> 0:25:44.240
<v Speaker 2>Like I think we could go to the Moon and

0:25:44.280 --> 0:25:46.360
<v Speaker 2>set up a research station, and the Moon is only

0:25:46.359 --> 0:25:49.480
<v Speaker 2>a couple days away, so people could stay for a

0:25:49.520 --> 0:25:51.800
<v Speaker 2>couple months, and if there was any indicator that they

0:25:51.800 --> 0:25:53.560
<v Speaker 2>were having a problem, we could send them home, and

0:25:53.560 --> 0:25:56.359
<v Speaker 2>then we could send a different habitat type and try again,

0:25:56.720 --> 0:25:58.960
<v Speaker 2>and we could have rodent colonies out there. But it's

0:25:59.000 --> 0:26:02.000
<v Speaker 2>going to be a slope process to make sure, you know, like, Okay,

0:26:02.040 --> 0:26:04.159
<v Speaker 2>this amount of radiation is safe, and then that amount

0:26:04.160 --> 0:26:06.520
<v Speaker 2>of radiation is safe, and it'll be a long time

0:26:06.520 --> 0:26:08.880
<v Speaker 2>before you can convince me that it would be safe

0:26:08.920 --> 0:26:12.800
<v Speaker 2>to conceive and have babies in space without too much

0:26:12.840 --> 0:26:15.280
<v Speaker 2>extra risk. But somebody who read our book told us

0:26:15.320 --> 0:26:17.000
<v Speaker 2>we were being whips about that.

0:26:17.200 --> 0:26:20.480
<v Speaker 1>So and you're like, well, why don't you send your

0:26:20.520 --> 0:26:21.520
<v Speaker 1>grandkids to the moon.

0:26:21.600 --> 0:26:25.160
<v Speaker 2>Then they said they would because we did say that.

0:26:25.320 --> 0:26:27.440
<v Speaker 2>We did say that, and they were like, I totally would,

0:26:27.560 --> 0:26:30.000
<v Speaker 2>I'd do it. And I was like, wow, I'm glad

0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:31.520
<v Speaker 2>I'm not you're a child.

0:26:31.800 --> 0:26:33.720
<v Speaker 1>This is a great example for me. When reading your book,

0:26:33.760 --> 0:26:35.760
<v Speaker 1>I was very surprised that we just don't know so

0:26:35.880 --> 0:26:38.560
<v Speaker 1>much about what life will be like in space. Even

0:26:38.600 --> 0:26:40.200
<v Speaker 1>things that seemed like they might not be a big

0:26:40.240 --> 0:26:42.480
<v Speaker 1>deal could turn out to be a big deal because

0:26:42.480 --> 0:26:45.440
<v Speaker 1>we just don't know because we have such a littlemited experience.

0:26:45.520 --> 0:26:48.520
<v Speaker 1>I was really enjoying the section on micro gravity, for example, like,

0:26:48.560 --> 0:26:52.360
<v Speaker 1>what's it like to live in very little gravity your

0:26:52.400 --> 0:26:54.800
<v Speaker 1>whole life? I suppose we just don't know the answer

0:26:54.800 --> 0:26:55.440
<v Speaker 1>to that as well.

0:26:55.560 --> 0:26:59.240
<v Speaker 3>Basically, Yeah, So one thing a lot of people maybe

0:26:59.240 --> 0:27:03.199
<v Speaker 3>don't know is that the record consecutive spaceflight was I

0:27:03.200 --> 0:27:06.440
<v Speaker 3>think four hundred and thirty seven days, and down from

0:27:06.480 --> 0:27:09.479
<v Speaker 3>that there's something like a dozen people who've been up

0:27:09.520 --> 0:27:12.119
<v Speaker 3>for a year, and it's down from that. And I

0:27:12.119 --> 0:27:13.480
<v Speaker 3>don't have it offhand, but I think if you looked

0:27:13.520 --> 0:27:15.560
<v Speaker 3>it up, the majority of astronauts ever have been for

0:27:15.640 --> 0:27:17.520
<v Speaker 3>like on a matter of weeks, like they went on

0:27:17.520 --> 0:27:20.240
<v Speaker 3>on the shuttle or something. Right, So the amount of

0:27:20.280 --> 0:27:23.040
<v Speaker 3>longitudinal data, like we literally could not have it. No

0:27:23.080 --> 0:27:25.120
<v Speaker 3>one's gone up for a year and a half consecutively.

0:27:25.240 --> 0:27:26.879
<v Speaker 3>If you look at people who've gone up, like the

0:27:26.960 --> 0:27:29.280
<v Speaker 3>highest total is somewhere in the eight hundreds of days.

0:27:29.320 --> 0:27:31.560
<v Speaker 3>So even then you're talking about a really short amount

0:27:31.560 --> 0:27:34.920
<v Speaker 3>of time to get like good longitudinal data. Like Kelly said,

0:27:34.920 --> 0:27:36.960
<v Speaker 3>we're not talking about face melting for radiation, right, We're

0:27:36.960 --> 0:27:40.199
<v Speaker 3>talking about like long term effects. But we do know

0:27:40.600 --> 0:27:43.959
<v Speaker 3>that to come back to microgravity in particular, there are

0:27:44.000 --> 0:27:47.600
<v Speaker 3>reliable bad effects of microgravity. So when you go to space,

0:27:47.880 --> 0:27:49.800
<v Speaker 3>one thing we ended up not talking too much about,

0:27:49.840 --> 0:27:51.639
<v Speaker 3>even though it has a rich history, is a lot

0:27:51.680 --> 0:27:53.680
<v Speaker 3>of people get motion sickness. It's something it's called space

0:27:53.720 --> 0:27:56.240
<v Speaker 3>motion sickness, and they spend the first few days throwing up.

0:27:56.320 --> 0:27:57.719
<v Speaker 3>But We didn't talk about it too much because it's

0:27:57.760 --> 0:27:59.760
<v Speaker 3>not really a settlement problem. You do adjust to it.

0:28:00.119 --> 0:28:02.440
<v Speaker 3>The problems that show up when you stay longer are

0:28:02.440 --> 0:28:06.240
<v Speaker 3>things like rapid loss and bone density in some parts

0:28:06.240 --> 0:28:08.000
<v Speaker 3>of your body you lose I think the number we

0:28:08.040 --> 0:28:11.280
<v Speaker 3>had was one and a half percent bone density per month,

0:28:11.840 --> 0:28:14.320
<v Speaker 3>like an insanely fast rate of bone loss. And that's,

0:28:14.320 --> 0:28:16.879
<v Speaker 3>by the way, while astronauts are doing a huge amount

0:28:17.040 --> 0:28:20.359
<v Speaker 3>of exercise every day, right, very time consuming exercise every

0:28:20.400 --> 0:28:23.080
<v Speaker 3>single day, and there are other more subtle things obviously

0:28:23.119 --> 0:28:24.639
<v Speaker 3>you know coming with that is that you have a

0:28:24.640 --> 0:28:27.520
<v Speaker 3>lot of loss of muscle strength. Jerry Linninger was an astronaut.

0:28:27.560 --> 0:28:29.000
<v Speaker 3>He was on Mirror for about four months, and it

0:28:29.040 --> 0:28:30.679
<v Speaker 3>was a huge point of pride for him as a

0:28:30.760 --> 0:28:33.919
<v Speaker 3>kind of like muscly, slightly meat headed astronaut that he

0:28:33.960 --> 0:28:36.560
<v Speaker 3>was able to walk just barely when he got out

0:28:36.560 --> 0:28:39.320
<v Speaker 3>of the space station. But there are other things that happened,

0:28:39.320 --> 0:28:42.840
<v Speaker 3>so they're like Lininger described, when he got home to

0:28:42.920 --> 0:28:45.280
<v Speaker 3>his hotel room, he kind of freaked out a little

0:28:45.320 --> 0:28:47.640
<v Speaker 3>because in space, if you feel pressure on your back,

0:28:47.640 --> 0:28:49.640
<v Speaker 3>it means you're going to fling forward because it's it's

0:28:49.720 --> 0:28:51.760
<v Speaker 3>very Newtonian up there, right, So when he got down

0:28:51.760 --> 0:28:53.440
<v Speaker 3>in bed, he felt like he was going to go flying.

0:28:53.480 --> 0:28:55.440
<v Speaker 3>So he said he could only sleep once he had

0:28:55.520 --> 0:28:57.000
<v Speaker 3>kind of wrapped himself up in a blanket.

0:28:57.080 --> 0:28:58.800
<v Speaker 1>You you need to be swaddled like a baby.

0:28:59.360 --> 0:29:01.240
<v Speaker 3>I think it was more like tied down, but I

0:29:01.280 --> 0:29:02.680
<v Speaker 3>actually don't know. I don't remember what you do with

0:29:02.720 --> 0:29:04.719
<v Speaker 3>the blanket in particular. And then there are these more

0:29:04.760 --> 0:29:07.680
<v Speaker 3>subtle effects. Right, People often get dizzy, right because your

0:29:07.680 --> 0:29:10.640
<v Speaker 3>body on Earth is used to pumping blood against gravity

0:29:10.680 --> 0:29:13.520
<v Speaker 3>all day long, and in space there's no orientation. So

0:29:13.560 --> 0:29:16.400
<v Speaker 3>when you suddenly return to full Earth gravity, your body

0:29:16.440 --> 0:29:18.040
<v Speaker 3>is just not prepared to do this. I mean, it's

0:29:18.120 --> 0:29:19.880
<v Speaker 3>kind of amazing to me that your body does eventually

0:29:19.920 --> 0:29:22.840
<v Speaker 3>work it out. You don't just like die. And there

0:29:22.880 --> 0:29:26.920
<v Speaker 3>are other subtle things. Reliably, people lose vision, so they

0:29:26.960 --> 0:29:29.480
<v Speaker 3>actually for especially for older astronauts, you have to be said,

0:29:29.560 --> 0:29:32.120
<v Speaker 3>with these glasses that are adjusted, because it's anticipated your

0:29:32.160 --> 0:29:35.400
<v Speaker 3>vision will get worse, and it's not perfectly understood why.

0:29:35.440 --> 0:29:38.560
<v Speaker 3>But one possibility is that microgravity you experience this fluid shift.

0:29:38.600 --> 0:29:41.200
<v Speaker 3>Fluid shifts up in your body, especially the beginning. You

0:29:41.240 --> 0:29:43.920
<v Speaker 3>notably have what's called puffy face and chicken legs, as

0:29:43.920 --> 0:29:46.320
<v Speaker 3>one person described it, which is like kind of funny

0:29:46.320 --> 0:29:48.280
<v Speaker 3>but also kind of bad, maybe because it's possible what's

0:29:48.280 --> 0:29:51.200
<v Speaker 3>happening is it's causing nerve damage or reshaping of the

0:29:51.240 --> 0:29:53.480
<v Speaker 3>nerves that connect your eyes or something, which is like

0:29:53.560 --> 0:29:55.560
<v Speaker 3>bad enough, but it's also a little creepy because you worry.

0:29:55.560 --> 0:29:59.080
<v Speaker 3>There's like, you know, there's apparently equivocal evidence on cognitive

0:29:59.080 --> 0:30:01.600
<v Speaker 3>effects of space. We don't know if that's because of microgravity,

0:30:01.640 --> 0:30:04.200
<v Speaker 3>your radiation, or just who knows what. So, yeah, there's

0:30:04.240 --> 0:30:06.600
<v Speaker 3>a lot of stuff you wouldn't anticipate. In the particular

0:30:06.640 --> 0:30:09.360
<v Speaker 3>context of babies, it gets like extra freaky. I'm willing

0:30:09.400 --> 0:30:12.080
<v Speaker 3>to buy that a baby in ingestation is at least

0:30:12.080 --> 0:30:14.200
<v Speaker 3>in kind of a neutral buoyancy tank. But you know,

0:30:14.560 --> 0:30:16.400
<v Speaker 3>you try to imagine like a six month old trying

0:30:16.400 --> 0:30:18.920
<v Speaker 3>to have normal bone development and microgravity that would be

0:30:19.000 --> 0:30:21.680
<v Speaker 3>enormously scary. It's possible on the Moon, which is about

0:30:21.680 --> 0:30:25.040
<v Speaker 3>one six ers gravity, it wouldn't be so bad. But like,

0:30:25.760 --> 0:30:28.200
<v Speaker 3>to add more more data to this, we have I

0:30:28.200 --> 0:30:30.040
<v Speaker 3>think something like a grand total of ten days on

0:30:30.080 --> 0:30:32.640
<v Speaker 3>the Moon between all of the missions. You know, and

0:30:32.720 --> 0:30:35.280
<v Speaker 3>so like we really don't know, and that was of

0:30:35.360 --> 0:30:41.280
<v Speaker 3>course all full grown, like particularly fit men, and so

0:30:41.320 --> 0:30:43.840
<v Speaker 3>there are other things. But yeah, micro gravity is a

0:30:43.880 --> 0:30:46.000
<v Speaker 3>big open question and would take a long time to

0:30:46.000 --> 0:30:46.880
<v Speaker 3>get better data on it.

0:30:46.960 --> 0:30:49.000
<v Speaker 1>Well, I want to push back on your denial of

0:30:49.040 --> 0:30:52.840
<v Speaker 1>my face melting concern, because you're talking about like lower

0:30:52.880 --> 0:30:56.720
<v Speaker 1>bone density, weakened muscles, puppy eyes. To me, that sounds

0:30:56.760 --> 0:30:58.479
<v Speaker 1>like you know, that could lead to real face melting.

0:30:58.680 --> 0:31:01.640
<v Speaker 3>We could term the sweet of negative effects face melting.

0:31:01.640 --> 0:31:03.240
<v Speaker 3>What will call the whites and face melting.

0:31:03.640 --> 0:31:06.600
<v Speaker 1>Okay, there you go. But my real question is that

0:31:06.720 --> 0:31:08.880
<v Speaker 1>it seems like it might be hard to go to space,

0:31:08.960 --> 0:31:11.560
<v Speaker 1>have your body adapt to it, and then come back

0:31:11.600 --> 0:31:13.120
<v Speaker 1>to Earth. But what if you just do a in

0:31:13.160 --> 0:31:15.720
<v Speaker 1>a one way trip. Isn't it possible that kids who

0:31:15.800 --> 0:31:18.280
<v Speaker 1>grow up in space are totally adapted and can live

0:31:18.400 --> 0:31:20.760
<v Speaker 1>totally healthy lives in space with low bone density and

0:31:20.800 --> 0:31:23.520
<v Speaker 1>super long chicken legs or whatever. Is this about going

0:31:23.520 --> 0:31:25.240
<v Speaker 1>to space and coming back or is this about just

0:31:25.240 --> 0:31:26.400
<v Speaker 1>surviving in space?

0:31:26.840 --> 0:31:29.040
<v Speaker 2>I think it's about both. So you know, Mars has

0:31:29.120 --> 0:31:31.840
<v Speaker 2>forty percent of Earth's gravity. Maybe that will be enough

0:31:31.960 --> 0:31:35.240
<v Speaker 2>for normal development, Maybe not. So it's the same as radiation.

0:31:35.320 --> 0:31:38.680
<v Speaker 2>Maybe it'll be fine, maybe not. But you know, especially initially,

0:31:38.720 --> 0:31:40.479
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of stuff we're going to be figuring

0:31:40.560 --> 0:31:43.200
<v Speaker 2>out about Mars, like, you know, how can we live

0:31:43.280 --> 0:31:45.880
<v Speaker 2>up there sustainably? Can we create an economy, how do

0:31:45.960 --> 0:31:49.120
<v Speaker 2>we you know, create a society that has some freedom

0:31:49.440 --> 0:31:51.560
<v Speaker 2>and likes being up there. And you know, it's a

0:31:51.640 --> 0:31:54.400
<v Speaker 2>very delicate habitat. So if you have people who are

0:31:55.320 --> 0:31:58.000
<v Speaker 2>you know, angry or become terrorists, they could very easily

0:31:58.080 --> 0:32:01.760
<v Speaker 2>kill almost everybody. And so for a variety of different reasons,

0:32:02.320 --> 0:32:04.320
<v Speaker 2>you would like to be able to have the option

0:32:04.440 --> 0:32:07.760
<v Speaker 2>to bring people home, especially initially when this whole experiment

0:32:07.840 --> 0:32:10.440
<v Speaker 2>is starting. So if it turns out you have you know,

0:32:10.680 --> 0:32:14.160
<v Speaker 2>one hundred babies in the first generation at the settlement

0:32:14.520 --> 0:32:17.160
<v Speaker 2>and they decide, you know what, this isn't economically feasible.

0:32:17.200 --> 0:32:19.320
<v Speaker 2>We just can't make any money out here. We can't

0:32:19.320 --> 0:32:21.080
<v Speaker 2>pay to get the supplies shipped in that we need

0:32:21.120 --> 0:32:24.080
<v Speaker 2>from Earth because it's super expensive. What do you do

0:32:24.160 --> 0:32:26.920
<v Speaker 2>with those babies who are now stuck out there? And

0:32:27.000 --> 0:32:30.200
<v Speaker 2>so you know, yes, maybe a couple generations from now,

0:32:30.200 --> 0:32:33.200
<v Speaker 2>when we're like safely settled on Mars and it's sustainable,

0:32:33.480 --> 0:32:35.280
<v Speaker 2>and we know that, you know, we're going to be

0:32:35.280 --> 0:32:37.840
<v Speaker 2>able to stay out there permanently. Maybe it's not such

0:32:37.880 --> 0:32:39.560
<v Speaker 2>a big deal if they can't come back to the

0:32:39.600 --> 0:32:43.720
<v Speaker 2>cradle of humanity. But I can still imagine that being depressing.

0:32:43.920 --> 0:32:47.000
<v Speaker 2>I think Earth will always be I mean, Earth is beautiful.

0:32:47.080 --> 0:32:48.200
<v Speaker 2>I'd want to be able to visit.

0:32:49.840 --> 0:32:51.800
<v Speaker 1>And it might be that babies who are raised on

0:32:51.840 --> 0:32:54.360
<v Speaker 1>Mars have their faces melted. But maybe on Mars that's

0:32:54.400 --> 0:32:57.000
<v Speaker 1>seen as really attractive. But then they can't really adjust

0:32:57.080 --> 0:32:59.080
<v Speaker 1>back to life on Earth because you know, we're not

0:32:59.160 --> 0:33:01.320
<v Speaker 1>that into it. But speaking of that kind of topic,

0:33:01.560 --> 0:33:04.520
<v Speaker 1>self sustaining colonies, is it possible? Do we know if

0:33:04.560 --> 0:33:07.840
<v Speaker 1>it's even possible for humans to reproduce in space, Like

0:33:08.240 --> 0:33:10.560
<v Speaker 1>you know, the mechanics and the chemistry of it doesn't

0:33:10.560 --> 0:33:13.760
<v Speaker 1>all work in microgravity under high radiation. Do we know

0:33:13.840 --> 0:33:14.560
<v Speaker 1>anything about that?

0:33:14.880 --> 0:33:17.080
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, So the basic deal is we know almost nothing.

0:33:17.400 --> 0:33:20.480
<v Speaker 3>So one thing it's really important to understand about the

0:33:20.520 --> 0:33:24.600
<v Speaker 3>history of space science is that space stations are not fielded.

0:33:24.800 --> 0:33:27.680
<v Speaker 3>Because you know, the NSF sat down one day and said,

0:33:27.680 --> 0:33:30.400
<v Speaker 3>we're going to do a systematic program on space medicine.

0:33:30.480 --> 0:33:34.280
<v Speaker 3>They're fielded for geopolitical reasons, and then science gets done

0:33:34.280 --> 0:33:38.600
<v Speaker 3>in them, right. And so one result of that is

0:33:38.640 --> 0:33:40.960
<v Speaker 3>that you really don't have a lot of systematic data

0:33:41.000 --> 0:33:43.880
<v Speaker 3>on hardly anything. I think you can you can absolutely

0:33:43.920 --> 0:33:47.240
<v Speaker 3>trust objective readings on things like bone density that seems

0:33:47.280 --> 0:33:49.040
<v Speaker 3>like hard to mess up or fake. But when it

0:33:49.080 --> 0:33:52.440
<v Speaker 3>comes to reproduction, you know, if someone had said, you know,

0:33:52.440 --> 0:33:54.560
<v Speaker 3>when the first space station went up in nineteen seventy one,

0:33:54.600 --> 0:33:56.880
<v Speaker 3>suppose the Soviet Union had said, one of our major

0:33:56.920 --> 0:33:59.400
<v Speaker 3>goals is human reproduction in space. We're going to really

0:33:59.400 --> 0:34:03.640
<v Speaker 3>oriented around. You can imagine a world where they started

0:34:03.760 --> 0:34:08.040
<v Speaker 3>with I don't know, lizards or something and just sort

0:34:08.080 --> 0:34:11.279
<v Speaker 3>of worked their way up to more human like creatures

0:34:11.560 --> 0:34:14.960
<v Speaker 3>and not just having babies, but having generations in space,

0:34:15.480 --> 0:34:18.359
<v Speaker 3>and so that by now we would have this big

0:34:18.400 --> 0:34:22.560
<v Speaker 3>corpus of data on reliable effects on going to space

0:34:22.600 --> 0:34:26.200
<v Speaker 3>and microgravity on every stage of development. Right. And by

0:34:26.200 --> 0:34:28.560
<v Speaker 3>the way, you know, we usually often when this comes up,

0:34:28.600 --> 0:34:30.240
<v Speaker 3>to the extent it comes up at all, we talked

0:34:30.239 --> 0:34:31.879
<v Speaker 3>just about can you have a baby, But of course,

0:34:31.920 --> 0:34:34.799
<v Speaker 3>in order to have a sustaining settlement, that baby has

0:34:34.800 --> 0:34:36.359
<v Speaker 3>to be able to grow up to have babies, and

0:34:36.400 --> 0:34:38.520
<v Speaker 3>so that means they have to get through every stage

0:34:38.520 --> 0:34:41.839
<v Speaker 3>of development successfully as do their gam metes. Right, So

0:34:42.360 --> 0:34:44.359
<v Speaker 3>you know, we don't have that data. What we do

0:34:44.440 --> 0:34:47.040
<v Speaker 3>have is a pile of different experiments from you know,

0:34:47.080 --> 0:34:50.640
<v Speaker 3>different agencies, done on different stations for different amounts of time,

0:34:50.760 --> 0:34:53.359
<v Speaker 3>on different creatures, and it's very hard to look at

0:34:53.360 --> 0:34:56.040
<v Speaker 3>all this and resolve a picture other than a big shrug.

0:34:56.600 --> 0:34:59.960
<v Speaker 3>I will say there have been cases where bad stuff happened,

0:35:00.040 --> 0:35:02.080
<v Speaker 3>but it's literally a situation where you're talking like, we

0:35:02.120 --> 0:35:04.719
<v Speaker 3>have data from a rat and it didn't go well

0:35:04.719 --> 0:35:06.680
<v Speaker 3>for that rat, and it's sort of like, what can

0:35:06.719 --> 0:35:10.279
<v Speaker 3>you extrapolate from this meaningfully? So I would say, you know,

0:35:10.280 --> 0:35:11.719
<v Speaker 3>you're kind of in the position of saying, well, at

0:35:11.800 --> 0:35:13.640
<v Speaker 3>least a priori, there seem to be a lot of

0:35:13.680 --> 0:35:16.200
<v Speaker 3>reasons to be really really scared, a lot of reasons

0:35:16.200 --> 0:35:19.240
<v Speaker 3>to say I wouldn't want anyone having a baby in space.

0:35:19.719 --> 0:35:22.160
<v Speaker 3>So you know, we talked about bone loss stuff. We

0:35:22.200 --> 0:35:24.560
<v Speaker 3>don't know what that does to developing kids, babies, let

0:35:24.600 --> 0:35:28.440
<v Speaker 3>alone like teenagers. The atmosphere in space is really not

0:35:28.640 --> 0:35:30.920
<v Speaker 3>like Earth's because it's actually very hard, at least on

0:35:30.960 --> 0:35:33.640
<v Speaker 3>the iss to reproduce an Earth like atmosphere. So it's

0:35:33.719 --> 0:35:35.840
<v Speaker 3>very high in carbon for example, very high in carbonoxity,

0:35:35.920 --> 0:35:37.760
<v Speaker 3>much higher than anywhere on Earth. And there are probably

0:35:37.800 --> 0:35:40.880
<v Speaker 3>also like subtle outgassings from different pieces of equipment. We

0:35:41.000 --> 0:35:44.000
<v Speaker 3>tolerate higher levels of this stuff because people aren't there

0:35:44.040 --> 0:35:45.960
<v Speaker 3>that long, but we don't know what the effect is,

0:35:46.000 --> 0:35:47.720
<v Speaker 3>you know, to just depend on what kind of artificial

0:35:47.760 --> 0:35:50.080
<v Speaker 3>atmosphere you're able to create. You know another thing you

0:35:50.080 --> 0:35:52.520
<v Speaker 3>mentioned a second ago that you know, maybe in Mars

0:35:52.560 --> 0:35:55.239
<v Speaker 3>gravity people will be taller, and that's like a sci

0:35:55.239 --> 0:35:57.680
<v Speaker 3>fi thing, but actually we don't. You know, the bodies

0:35:57.680 --> 0:35:59.719
<v Speaker 3>are weird, right, They're made of all these tiny nanim

0:35:59.719 --> 0:36:03.360
<v Speaker 3>machines that have evolved over four billion years. It's possible

0:36:03.360 --> 0:36:06.040
<v Speaker 3>the response will be something totally unexpected to being in

0:36:06.040 --> 0:36:08.040
<v Speaker 3>that micro gravity environment, or nothing at all, and we

0:36:08.640 --> 0:36:09.239
<v Speaker 3>just don't know.

0:36:09.320 --> 0:36:10.520
<v Speaker 1>Face melting, for example.

0:36:10.680 --> 0:36:13.440
<v Speaker 3>I'm up to giving it a sixty percent chance.

0:36:13.280 --> 0:36:15.280
<v Speaker 1>All right, Zach, But this is a very highbrow answer.

0:36:15.440 --> 0:36:17.640
<v Speaker 1>I was asking a much more lowbrow question, which is

0:36:17.719 --> 0:36:20.799
<v Speaker 1>essentially like, do we have any data? Has anybody done it?

0:36:20.920 --> 0:36:21.480
<v Speaker 1>In space?

0:36:21.760 --> 0:36:24.239
<v Speaker 3>Nobody has. Well, there's a family dispute about this, I

0:36:24.239 --> 0:36:27.160
<v Speaker 3>should say, let me sketch the parameters of the dispute,

0:36:27.160 --> 0:36:30.560
<v Speaker 3>and then Kelly can say something wrong. So the thing

0:36:30.760 --> 0:36:33.200
<v Speaker 3>we absolutely agree on is nobody knows. It's not like

0:36:33.280 --> 0:36:35.920
<v Speaker 3>there is someone with you know, pictures you can look

0:36:35.960 --> 0:36:38.759
<v Speaker 3>upon the Internet. And then the question is like probabilities,

0:36:38.800 --> 0:36:41.160
<v Speaker 3>and I would rate the probability as quite low, and

0:36:41.200 --> 0:36:43.239
<v Speaker 3>I'm happy to explain that. But let me just say

0:36:43.280 --> 0:36:45.560
<v Speaker 3>it's quite low, whereas Kelly thinks the odds or at

0:36:45.640 --> 0:36:47.480
<v Speaker 3>least I don't know where we are. I'm at like

0:36:47.480 --> 0:36:49.160
<v Speaker 3>one to five percent that it's happened.

0:36:50.520 --> 0:36:53.520
<v Speaker 2>I don't know what percent I'm at, but I don't

0:36:53.520 --> 0:36:56.480
<v Speaker 2>know a coward's answer. See, okay, fifty to sixty percent.

0:36:57.440 --> 0:36:59.439
<v Speaker 1>Wow, who are we talking about here?

0:36:59.480 --> 0:37:01.400
<v Speaker 2>There has been I'm a husband and wife pair. So

0:37:01.400 --> 0:37:04.840
<v Speaker 2>they got married on the sly, didn't tell NASA, and

0:37:04.880 --> 0:37:09.600
<v Speaker 2>then they went up on the shuttle. Zach argues that

0:37:09.920 --> 0:37:11.799
<v Speaker 2>they're in a like tiny area, like you know, they've

0:37:11.800 --> 0:37:13.600
<v Speaker 2>got about as much space as you would in a bus,

0:37:13.640 --> 0:37:15.799
<v Speaker 2>and there's like six other people on the crew. It's

0:37:15.800 --> 0:37:17.120
<v Speaker 2>not like there's a lot of options for them to

0:37:17.160 --> 0:37:19.160
<v Speaker 2>sneak off and not be seen and not be caught

0:37:19.239 --> 0:37:23.520
<v Speaker 2>by the cameras and blah blah blah. But I gotta say, man,

0:37:23.600 --> 0:37:25.120
<v Speaker 2>if I was on a crew and there was a

0:37:25.160 --> 0:37:27.400
<v Speaker 2>married couple, I would be like, I just want you

0:37:27.440 --> 0:37:28.640
<v Speaker 2>to know that I'm going to be on the upper

0:37:28.680 --> 0:37:33.320
<v Speaker 2>deck for about You would make it so I would

0:37:33.320 --> 0:37:35.640
<v Speaker 2>make it so awkward. But they keep.

0:37:35.440 --> 0:37:37.360
<v Speaker 3>Coming up to them and being like, I'm just gonna

0:37:37.360 --> 0:37:41.120
<v Speaker 3>tell you that door closes. I'm not saying anything.

0:37:42.200 --> 0:37:47.040
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, And you know there have been opportunities, but you know,

0:37:47.120 --> 0:37:50.040
<v Speaker 2>I think Zach would would argue, and you know, of

0:37:50.080 --> 0:37:51.440
<v Speaker 2>course you don't have to be married to have sex.

0:37:51.520 --> 0:37:54.040
<v Speaker 2>Zach would argue that there's a lot like it's cramp spaces,

0:37:54.080 --> 0:37:55.799
<v Speaker 2>there's a lot of people there, there's a lot of

0:37:56.200 --> 0:37:59.960
<v Speaker 2>surveillance equipment. It would be hard to get any privacy.

0:38:00.080 --> 0:38:03.640
<v Speaker 2>And also, these people are super concerned about their careers

0:38:03.680 --> 0:38:06.000
<v Speaker 2>and if they get caught doing something like that in space,

0:38:06.239 --> 0:38:07.960
<v Speaker 2>they're not going to get sent up again. And so

0:38:08.120 --> 0:38:12.400
<v Speaker 2>these like highly career oriented people might not be willing

0:38:12.480 --> 0:38:15.360
<v Speaker 2>to risk their jobs. But you know, I'd say, I

0:38:15.360 --> 0:38:18.480
<v Speaker 2>went to grad school to study animal behavior, and it

0:38:18.600 --> 0:38:21.919
<v Speaker 2>would blow my mind to find out that no one

0:38:21.960 --> 0:38:25.319
<v Speaker 2>has taken advantage of, you know, being able to have

0:38:25.360 --> 0:38:26.120
<v Speaker 2>sex in space.

0:38:26.480 --> 0:38:28.800
<v Speaker 1>Well, it seemed to me like an important science frontier.

0:38:28.960 --> 0:38:31.200
<v Speaker 1>I mean, somebody's got to figure this out for the

0:38:31.239 --> 0:38:33.319
<v Speaker 1>future of humanity, right, I mean, if we are going

0:38:33.360 --> 0:38:36.000
<v Speaker 1>to ever live in space, then that's going to be

0:38:36.040 --> 0:38:40.040
<v Speaker 1>a necessary part of activity out there in space. All right,

0:38:40.080 --> 0:38:41.960
<v Speaker 1>So I want to dig more into these questions about

0:38:42.000 --> 0:38:44.600
<v Speaker 1>what life would actually be like in space, what it's

0:38:44.640 --> 0:38:47.040
<v Speaker 1>like to go to the bathroom where we might actually live,

0:38:47.200 --> 0:38:50.360
<v Speaker 1>is it legal? And can you eat people in space?

0:38:50.800 --> 0:39:05.800
<v Speaker 1>But first we have to take another quick break. Okay.

0:39:05.840 --> 0:39:08.160
<v Speaker 1>So we are back and we're talking about the nitty

0:39:08.239 --> 0:39:11.479
<v Speaker 1>gritty of living in space. A lot of people think

0:39:11.560 --> 0:39:14.360
<v Speaker 1>of space as a fantasya land where everything can come true,

0:39:14.600 --> 0:39:17.440
<v Speaker 1>where life in space solves all the problems of life

0:39:17.480 --> 0:39:19.839
<v Speaker 1>on Earth. But Zach and Kelly are here to tell

0:39:19.920 --> 0:39:22.200
<v Speaker 1>us that it's messy and gouey, and that your face

0:39:22.360 --> 0:39:24.600
<v Speaker 1>might or might not melt. Nobody knows.

0:39:25.360 --> 0:39:28.319
<v Speaker 2>Okay, sure, so tell us.

0:39:28.239 --> 0:39:30.319
<v Speaker 1>More about what life might be like in space. You

0:39:30.320 --> 0:39:32.960
<v Speaker 1>guys really dug into the details. I was amazed you

0:39:33.000 --> 0:39:35.799
<v Speaker 1>had such a careful analysis of like toilets tell us

0:39:35.840 --> 0:39:38.600
<v Speaker 1>about what it's like to use the toilet in space.

0:39:39.000 --> 0:39:42.080
<v Speaker 2>So when you read biographies or you hear interviews with astronauts,

0:39:42.160 --> 0:39:44.320
<v Speaker 2>the question that they tell you that they get asked

0:39:44.400 --> 0:39:47.440
<v Speaker 2>the most is what is it like using the restroom

0:39:47.440 --> 0:39:50.520
<v Speaker 2>in space? So it is apparently a very deeply human

0:39:50.640 --> 0:39:53.040
<v Speaker 2>thing to want to know what it is like to

0:39:53.160 --> 0:39:55.879
<v Speaker 2>use the restroom in microgravity. And one thing we can

0:39:55.920 --> 0:39:59.120
<v Speaker 2>tell you across all of the different vehicles that we

0:39:59.160 --> 0:40:02.960
<v Speaker 2>studied is that it has never been pleasant. So like

0:40:03.000 --> 0:40:06.719
<v Speaker 2>on the Apollo and the Gemini missions, they literally, you know,

0:40:06.760 --> 0:40:09.480
<v Speaker 2>for number two, they had a bag that they would

0:40:09.560 --> 0:40:11.920
<v Speaker 2>attach to their heiin knees and it had a little

0:40:11.960 --> 0:40:15.040
<v Speaker 2>like adhesive rim so it would stick a little bit better.

0:40:15.320 --> 0:40:17.000
<v Speaker 2>And then it had a little thing where you a

0:40:17.000 --> 0:40:19.040
<v Speaker 2>little finger cut they called it, so you could stick

0:40:19.040 --> 0:40:21.799
<v Speaker 2>your finger in there, because without gravity, nothing falls on

0:40:21.880 --> 0:40:23.680
<v Speaker 2>its own, so you'd have to nudge it in the

0:40:23.760 --> 0:40:26.719
<v Speaker 2>right direction. Yeah, so gross. And then they'd have to

0:40:26.719 --> 0:40:30.160
<v Speaker 2>put antibacterial tablets in there and sort of squish them

0:40:30.160 --> 0:40:32.920
<v Speaker 2>around to make sure that like, you know, the bag

0:40:32.960 --> 0:40:35.200
<v Speaker 2>the feces was being held in wouldn't explode in a

0:40:35.239 --> 0:40:38.920
<v Speaker 2>horrible scent, would like go everywhere. In fact, Frank Borman

0:40:39.719 --> 0:40:43.520
<v Speaker 2>was so uncomfortable with the procedure, which also had to

0:40:43.520 --> 0:40:46.120
<v Speaker 2>happen in a super tiny space with the guy who

0:40:46.160 --> 0:40:49.120
<v Speaker 2>you were in space with, like literally almost right next

0:40:49.120 --> 0:40:51.160
<v Speaker 2>to you, that he tried to make it for a

0:40:51.200 --> 0:40:56.160
<v Speaker 2>full fourteen days without going number two, and I think

0:40:56.280 --> 0:41:00.040
<v Speaker 2>he made it today eight and then he said a

0:41:00.160 --> 0:41:03.200
<v Speaker 2>gym level, I gotta go, man, And so anyway, it

0:41:03.239 --> 0:41:06.400
<v Speaker 2>was pretty gross. So now instead of fingercuts and baggies

0:41:06.440 --> 0:41:10.120
<v Speaker 2>with adhesives, we have vacuum systems and you usually have

0:41:10.200 --> 0:41:12.960
<v Speaker 2>one for urine and one for feces, but even then

0:41:13.040 --> 0:41:15.719
<v Speaker 2>you lose stuff. So like again, every vehicle that we

0:41:15.760 --> 0:41:19.320
<v Speaker 2>read about, there were stories about escapees sort of floating

0:41:19.360 --> 0:41:22.239
<v Speaker 2>off into the habitat on the shuttle. This happened so

0:41:22.320 --> 0:41:27.200
<v Speaker 2>frequently they became called brown trout floating around. And you know,

0:41:27.360 --> 0:41:30.960
<v Speaker 2>these systems break regularly and need to be fixed and

0:41:31.000 --> 0:41:34.360
<v Speaker 2>are pretty disgusting. I think Patty Whitson had a story

0:41:34.360 --> 0:41:36.319
<v Speaker 2>about needing to put a glove on and sort of

0:41:36.600 --> 0:41:39.080
<v Speaker 2>push the waist down to make you know, room to

0:41:39.080 --> 0:41:41.360
<v Speaker 2>get it all in the bag. So it's disgusting and

0:41:41.400 --> 0:41:44.319
<v Speaker 2>we haven't figured it all out yet. So on the

0:41:44.440 --> 0:41:48.480
<v Speaker 2>one of the recent SpaceX missions there was problem with

0:41:48.520 --> 0:41:50.880
<v Speaker 2>the toilet as well. This is one of the ones

0:41:50.920 --> 0:41:53.160
<v Speaker 2>where it was a bunch of tourists going around inspiration

0:41:53.280 --> 0:41:55.759
<v Speaker 2>for something like that. It was reported that there were

0:41:55.760 --> 0:41:58.440
<v Speaker 2>toilet problems. This is just a hard thing to deal with,

0:41:58.520 --> 0:42:00.800
<v Speaker 2>but it should get easier when you have some gravity

0:42:00.840 --> 0:42:04.399
<v Speaker 2>to sort of nudge the brown trout downstream. But yeah,

0:42:04.440 --> 0:42:07.800
<v Speaker 2>it's probably going to remain sort of a messy process

0:42:07.840 --> 0:42:08.960
<v Speaker 2>wherever we are in space.

0:42:09.120 --> 0:42:11.480
<v Speaker 1>But is this like a frontier issue where the first

0:42:11.520 --> 0:42:14.239
<v Speaker 1>generation has sort of a harder life than you know,

0:42:14.360 --> 0:42:17.080
<v Speaker 1>the wealthy folks back at home, and then eventually things

0:42:17.080 --> 0:42:19.880
<v Speaker 1>build up and life on Mars is a comfortable, pleasant

0:42:19.920 --> 0:42:22.719
<v Speaker 1>bathroom experience or is this something that's always going to

0:42:22.719 --> 0:42:24.560
<v Speaker 1>be a feature of living out of the well of

0:42:24.600 --> 0:42:24.959
<v Speaker 1>the Earth.

0:42:25.239 --> 0:42:27.160
<v Speaker 2>I think the first generation is going to have to

0:42:27.200 --> 0:42:31.000
<v Speaker 2>spend quite a bit of time interacting intimately with human

0:42:31.040 --> 0:42:33.440
<v Speaker 2>waste of all forms, because we're going to need to

0:42:33.520 --> 0:42:36.640
<v Speaker 2>learn to recycle that. So Zach mentioned already that there's

0:42:37.000 --> 0:42:39.920
<v Speaker 2>very little carbon on the Moon, So the carbon that

0:42:39.960 --> 0:42:43.400
<v Speaker 2>your body releases, you're probably going to want to find

0:42:43.400 --> 0:42:46.120
<v Speaker 2>some way to recycle that back into your garden and

0:42:46.239 --> 0:42:49.440
<v Speaker 2>maybe eventually will sort of perfect this process. And you know,

0:42:49.920 --> 0:42:52.719
<v Speaker 2>nowadays waste gets treated and most of us don't have

0:42:52.800 --> 0:42:55.520
<v Speaker 2>to see or experience it like at all. But I

0:42:55.520 --> 0:42:58.160
<v Speaker 2>think initially you're probably going to be pretty intimate with

0:42:58.200 --> 0:43:00.640
<v Speaker 2>your wasste until we figure out nice or systems for

0:43:00.680 --> 0:43:02.680
<v Speaker 2>handling this stuff. Was there anything you wanted to add

0:43:02.719 --> 0:43:03.360
<v Speaker 2>to that, Zach.

0:43:03.239 --> 0:43:05.560
<v Speaker 3>I would just say to directly answer the question, like

0:43:05.680 --> 0:43:08.920
<v Speaker 3>the wacky like poop stories are all from micro gravity.

0:43:09.239 --> 0:43:11.759
<v Speaker 3>I think plausibly on Mars, your waist knows to go

0:43:11.800 --> 0:43:14.040
<v Speaker 3>in the right direction. That's all you need, you know,

0:43:14.120 --> 0:43:16.160
<v Speaker 3>like like so it'll go a little more slowly. But

0:43:16.280 --> 0:43:18.480
<v Speaker 3>I would actually bet you'd be fine with like one

0:43:18.480 --> 0:43:21.719
<v Speaker 3>percent gravity. You really just need you need your poop

0:43:21.760 --> 0:43:23.840
<v Speaker 3>to know which way to go. And the vacuum is

0:43:23.880 --> 0:43:26.080
<v Speaker 3>just an imperfect way to do that because you have

0:43:26.160 --> 0:43:27.880
<v Speaker 3>to have like a part of the machine that is,

0:43:28.160 --> 0:43:30.880
<v Speaker 3>you know, providing that vacuum which you don't want the

0:43:30.880 --> 0:43:34.160
<v Speaker 3>poop to go into. Uh So, like for solid waste,

0:43:34.160 --> 0:43:35.719
<v Speaker 3>you have to have a net. And so you can

0:43:35.760 --> 0:43:38.560
<v Speaker 3>imagine like what complexity that adds to like waste management.

0:43:38.600 --> 0:43:41.279
<v Speaker 3>You have to like bag it and and stew it

0:43:41.360 --> 0:43:44.680
<v Speaker 3>and so. But probably I would guess on a plausible

0:43:44.719 --> 0:43:47.279
<v Speaker 3>Mars setup, where you've got some kind of gardening and

0:43:47.320 --> 0:43:49.799
<v Speaker 3>waste management set up, probably it's not as big a deal.

0:43:49.800 --> 0:43:52.080
<v Speaker 3>The bigger problem will just be that, like you know,

0:43:52.120 --> 0:43:54.000
<v Speaker 3>on Earth, of your toilet breaks down, you can just

0:43:54.040 --> 0:43:58.200
<v Speaker 3>go outside, whereas on Mars it better work.

0:43:58.600 --> 0:44:00.560
<v Speaker 2>I think that's less of an option in the city.

0:44:00.680 --> 0:44:02.360
<v Speaker 2>But in the country where we live.

0:44:02.400 --> 0:44:05.080
<v Speaker 3>I've seen some stuff in San Francisco, I don't know.

0:44:07.440 --> 0:44:10.200
<v Speaker 1>Urban decay. Well, let's get a little bit more concrete

0:44:10.320 --> 0:44:12.839
<v Speaker 1>about what we're talking about. You know, are we talking

0:44:12.880 --> 0:44:15.480
<v Speaker 1>about living in space stations or the moon. Let's walk

0:44:15.520 --> 0:44:17.640
<v Speaker 1>through the sort of the pros and cons of each scenario.

0:44:18.160 --> 0:44:21.640
<v Speaker 1>Should we aim to be building our own habitats that

0:44:21.680 --> 0:44:25.000
<v Speaker 1>float in space, like in space stations huge rotating rings?

0:44:25.000 --> 0:44:26.000
<v Speaker 1>Are those plausible?

0:44:26.239 --> 0:44:28.480
<v Speaker 3>So, just to give a little context, the idea of

0:44:28.680 --> 0:44:31.560
<v Speaker 3>giant rotating space stations has been kicked around in detail

0:44:31.600 --> 0:44:34.439
<v Speaker 3>at least since the nineteen twenties, but it really became

0:44:34.440 --> 0:44:36.200
<v Speaker 3>a big thing in the seventies. So have you've ever

0:44:36.239 --> 0:44:38.920
<v Speaker 3>seen these images of a city around the rim of

0:44:38.960 --> 0:44:42.000
<v Speaker 3>a giant wheel that like like the most awesome space

0:44:42.040 --> 0:44:45.880
<v Speaker 3>station images, there could be those ten to descend from

0:44:45.920 --> 0:44:50.640
<v Speaker 3>the nineteen seventies. And the reason they were arguably plausible,

0:44:50.680 --> 0:44:53.520
<v Speaker 3>we say, is that if you look at the seventies

0:44:53.520 --> 0:44:56.480
<v Speaker 3>in particular, the price of going to space has fallen

0:44:56.560 --> 0:44:59.200
<v Speaker 3>drastically by some measures, fallen by something like ninety nine

0:44:59.200 --> 0:45:02.560
<v Speaker 3>percent since the late fifties, from like roughly nineteen fifty

0:45:02.560 --> 0:45:04.920
<v Speaker 3>seven to nineteen seventy two. So if you plot that

0:45:04.960 --> 0:45:07.320
<v Speaker 3>as continuing, it's going to get a lot cheaper. Meanwhile,

0:45:07.440 --> 0:45:11.480
<v Speaker 3>there are these huge concerns about environmental damage. So there

0:45:11.480 --> 0:45:14.160
<v Speaker 3>are books like The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth,

0:45:14.160 --> 0:45:16.759
<v Speaker 3>which are predicting I think the population Bomb, like the

0:45:16.800 --> 0:45:18.719
<v Speaker 3>by the eighties, hundreds of millions of people will be

0:45:18.800 --> 0:45:21.200
<v Speaker 3>dying of famine. Obviously we know now they failed to

0:45:21.200 --> 0:45:22.839
<v Speaker 3>anticipate a bunch of things, But put that in your

0:45:22.880 --> 0:45:24.920
<v Speaker 3>head as you think about this. And then third, that

0:45:24.960 --> 0:45:27.600
<v Speaker 3>there are no serious renewables on the horizon, right, I mean,

0:45:27.600 --> 0:45:31.239
<v Speaker 3>there's hydro power, but not enough to offset things, and

0:45:31.360 --> 0:45:34.280
<v Speaker 3>that nuclear is starting to look like a political problem.

0:45:34.560 --> 0:45:36.880
<v Speaker 3>And so there's this idea that gets floated, most notably

0:45:37.080 --> 0:45:39.080
<v Speaker 3>by Gerard K. O'Neill that, well, what if we just

0:45:39.120 --> 0:45:40.920
<v Speaker 3>went to space, we will kind of solve everything. You

0:45:40.960 --> 0:45:43.400
<v Speaker 3>get access to limitless solar power all the time at

0:45:43.440 --> 0:45:45.839
<v Speaker 3>high intensity. You could do all your farming up there.

0:45:45.880 --> 0:45:49.000
<v Speaker 3>You can completely control the ecosystem. We can beam excess

0:45:49.040 --> 0:45:52.000
<v Speaker 3>power down to the energy needing Earth. And so it's

0:45:52.000 --> 0:45:54.279
<v Speaker 3>a sort of third way if you don't like these

0:45:54.280 --> 0:45:57.560
<v Speaker 3>sort of environmental doomers, but you're also seriously worried about

0:45:57.560 --> 0:46:00.560
<v Speaker 3>this stuff. Space is the way out with the ad bonus,

0:46:00.600 --> 0:46:03.120
<v Speaker 3>since again it's the like early seventies that you can

0:46:03.160 --> 0:46:05.480
<v Speaker 3>kind of check out of society and try out new governments,

0:46:05.520 --> 0:46:08.160
<v Speaker 3>you know, so it also appeals to sort of counterculture impulse.

0:46:08.200 --> 0:46:13.279
<v Speaker 3>The problem is it's basically just a bad idea. Like so,

0:46:13.320 --> 0:46:15.000
<v Speaker 3>a big problem about building these things is you have

0:46:15.080 --> 0:46:18.040
<v Speaker 3>to get an extraordinary amount of mass, probably millions of tons,

0:46:18.400 --> 0:46:20.759
<v Speaker 3>into a point in space somewhere, just to have a

0:46:20.760 --> 0:46:23.080
<v Speaker 3>relatively small number of people. And so you say, well,

0:46:23.080 --> 0:46:25.960
<v Speaker 3>where's that coming from, the usual answer, I think O'Neil's

0:46:25.960 --> 0:46:28.480
<v Speaker 3>answer was the moon. Other people have proposed asteroids. So

0:46:28.560 --> 0:46:30.400
<v Speaker 3>let's take the moon the way that you do this,

0:46:30.480 --> 0:46:32.200
<v Speaker 3>and there are a number of proposals that say this

0:46:32.280 --> 0:46:34.759
<v Speaker 3>is you build a mass driver on the Moon and

0:46:34.800 --> 0:46:38.640
<v Speaker 3>for your less you know, dorky audience. It's basically a

0:46:38.680 --> 0:46:40.600
<v Speaker 3>train if you want to visualize it, like a maglev

0:46:40.640 --> 0:46:42.960
<v Speaker 3>train that points up and eventually the track just goes away,

0:46:43.239 --> 0:46:45.760
<v Speaker 3>and so you can fling stuff of it just using energy.

0:46:45.800 --> 0:46:47.600
<v Speaker 3>You can fling into space because the Moon is low

0:46:47.640 --> 0:46:50.520
<v Speaker 3>gravity and has no atmosphere, and then your space station

0:46:50.640 --> 0:46:54.000
<v Speaker 3>construction site catches this stuff into kind of giant catchers

0:46:54.040 --> 0:46:57.600
<v Speaker 3>mitt and takes just sort of like pure mass, just

0:46:57.600 --> 0:46:59.319
<v Speaker 3>stuff from the surface of the Moon and converts it

0:46:59.360 --> 0:47:02.319
<v Speaker 3>to suburbs around a giant space wheel. And so that

0:47:02.400 --> 0:47:04.480
<v Speaker 3>the idea that this is going to be easier than

0:47:04.600 --> 0:47:07.640
<v Speaker 3>just staying on the Moon or even going to Mars

0:47:07.800 --> 0:47:08.720
<v Speaker 3>is just kind of crazy.

0:47:08.960 --> 0:47:11.040
<v Speaker 1>It does seem crazy to take the Moon apart and

0:47:11.080 --> 0:47:14.160
<v Speaker 1>then reassemble something which is just basically doing the job

0:47:14.200 --> 0:47:15.320
<v Speaker 1>the Moon is already doing.

0:47:15.760 --> 0:47:18.640
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, So to say why smart people believe this,

0:47:19.160 --> 0:47:21.480
<v Speaker 3>I do think, you know, part of it's that beguiling

0:47:21.560 --> 0:47:24.480
<v Speaker 3>promise of the limitless energy. There's also, like, you know,

0:47:24.800 --> 0:47:26.760
<v Speaker 3>suppose it is the case that you can't have babies

0:47:26.800 --> 0:47:28.600
<v Speaker 3>on Mars, like that forty percent gravity just won't do

0:47:28.640 --> 0:47:31.480
<v Speaker 3>it. It causes some weird metabolic thing. Who knows, well, then

0:47:31.520 --> 0:47:33.200
<v Speaker 3>you need full gravity, and then if you really need

0:47:33.239 --> 0:47:35.440
<v Speaker 3>to get off Earth, you have no option in the

0:47:35.440 --> 0:47:38.160
<v Speaker 3>Solar system, so you have to build these space wheels.

0:47:38.280 --> 0:47:40.960
<v Speaker 3>There are other purported benefits like that you could manufacture,

0:47:41.000 --> 0:47:43.600
<v Speaker 3>so for people who don't remember high school physics, as

0:47:43.640 --> 0:47:45.480
<v Speaker 3>you walk up the axis, like if you walk a

0:47:45.520 --> 0:47:48.719
<v Speaker 3>stairwell from the outermost floor of your spinning wheel to

0:47:48.719 --> 0:47:52.080
<v Speaker 3>the middle, gravity falls off linearly, so you can select

0:47:52.160 --> 0:47:55.640
<v Speaker 3>between zero and full Earth gravity or even extra Earth gravity.

0:47:55.800 --> 0:47:57.360
<v Speaker 3>So there's these ideas that it would be like a

0:47:57.400 --> 0:48:00.000
<v Speaker 3>manufacturing thing, but like the idea that would be economic

0:48:00.200 --> 0:48:02.759
<v Speaker 3>plausible just seems sort of any to us. And so

0:48:02.960 --> 0:48:04.759
<v Speaker 3>it's like an extra hard version of a thing we

0:48:04.800 --> 0:48:07.400
<v Speaker 3>already can't do. So it just seems unlikely.

0:48:07.680 --> 0:48:10.440
<v Speaker 1>So then what about colonies on the moon? The Moon

0:48:10.520 --> 0:48:12.799
<v Speaker 1>has access to a lot of sunlight and there's lots

0:48:12.800 --> 0:48:15.560
<v Speaker 1>of raw materials there. What's the issue with living on

0:48:15.600 --> 0:48:17.680
<v Speaker 1>the moon. Where on the moon is a good place

0:48:17.920 --> 0:48:19.399
<v Speaker 1>to build your space home?

0:48:19.760 --> 0:48:24.360
<v Speaker 2>So the moon has very small patches that are probably

0:48:24.400 --> 0:48:26.920
<v Speaker 2>what countries are going to fight over when we start

0:48:26.920 --> 0:48:29.640
<v Speaker 2>heading out to the moon. So on the poles you

0:48:29.680 --> 0:48:32.600
<v Speaker 2>get areas where you have these craters, and inside of

0:48:32.600 --> 0:48:36.640
<v Speaker 2>the crater there's water that's frozen, and it stays frozen

0:48:37.040 --> 0:48:39.839
<v Speaker 2>because it never gets exposed to sunlight. If it did

0:48:39.840 --> 0:48:42.640
<v Speaker 2>get exposed to sunlight, it would you know, vaporize and

0:48:42.880 --> 0:48:44.520
<v Speaker 2>end up in the vacuum of space, never to be

0:48:44.560 --> 0:48:48.160
<v Speaker 2>recovered by us again. But it's frozen, so it stays there.

0:48:48.200 --> 0:48:51.960
<v Speaker 2>And additionally, those rims, if you put solar panels on them,

0:48:52.280 --> 0:48:56.160
<v Speaker 2>you could get sunlight almost all the time, Whereas if

0:48:56.200 --> 0:48:59.400
<v Speaker 2>you're at the equator, you get two earth weeks of

0:48:59.480 --> 0:49:03.160
<v Speaker 2>daylight and then you get two earth weeks of nighttime,

0:49:03.800 --> 0:49:07.960
<v Speaker 2>and you would need an incredible number of battery packs

0:49:08.560 --> 0:49:10.919
<v Speaker 2>to be able to store enough solar power to get

0:49:10.960 --> 0:49:14.319
<v Speaker 2>you through that. But if you're at these areas where

0:49:14.320 --> 0:49:16.520
<v Speaker 2>you can put your solar panels up and almost always

0:49:16.520 --> 0:49:19.080
<v Speaker 2>get sunlight, then a lot of your energy needs have

0:49:19.239 --> 0:49:23.000
<v Speaker 2>been reduced. And so these are probably the spots where

0:49:23.000 --> 0:49:24.920
<v Speaker 2>you'd want to be, where you can get water and

0:49:25.000 --> 0:49:27.239
<v Speaker 2>where you can get some sunlight. But I'll note that

0:49:27.239 --> 0:49:30.319
<v Speaker 2>that water still has some like chemicals and stuff you

0:49:30.320 --> 0:49:31.960
<v Speaker 2>can't drink in there, and it's going to be very

0:49:31.960 --> 0:49:34.920
<v Speaker 2>hard to extract because at the temperatures you find in

0:49:34.960 --> 0:49:38.480
<v Speaker 2>these craters, water is more like a rock than anything else.

0:49:38.920 --> 0:49:41.040
<v Speaker 2>So it's going to be difficult to get your hands on.

0:49:41.080 --> 0:49:42.520
<v Speaker 2>You're gonna have to clean it up, and then you're

0:49:42.520 --> 0:49:45.840
<v Speaker 2>gonna have to recycle it very efficiently because there's not

0:49:46.520 --> 0:49:49.480
<v Speaker 2>a lot in there. So what was the lake that

0:49:49.520 --> 0:49:51.280
<v Speaker 2>we looked up, Zach Sartus Lake.

0:49:51.440 --> 0:49:55.560
<v Speaker 3>Sardis Lake, I think, was it Alabama or Minister.

0:49:56.239 --> 0:49:59.399
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so there's this human made lake called Sartus Lake

0:49:59.680 --> 0:50:02.600
<v Speaker 2>that has the same amount of water as what we

0:50:02.760 --> 0:50:07.000
<v Speaker 2>predict is on all of the Moon. And so you

0:50:07.080 --> 0:50:10.160
<v Speaker 2>can imagine pretty quickly if you don't use that carefully,

0:50:10.280 --> 0:50:12.080
<v Speaker 2>running out of it, and so you're going to need

0:50:12.120 --> 0:50:14.719
<v Speaker 2>to recycle it. And this is why we think proposals

0:50:14.719 --> 0:50:17.680
<v Speaker 2>for setting the Moon up as a gas station are,

0:50:18.080 --> 0:50:20.000
<v Speaker 2>you know, sort of robbing the future. So if you

0:50:20.080 --> 0:50:22.919
<v Speaker 2>take the water and you split it and you use

0:50:23.000 --> 0:50:26.000
<v Speaker 2>the oxygen and the hydrogen for rocket fuel, you can't

0:50:26.040 --> 0:50:28.200
<v Speaker 2>bathe with it or drink it anymore. It gets lost

0:50:28.200 --> 0:50:30.399
<v Speaker 2>in the vacuum of space, and there's not that much

0:50:30.440 --> 0:50:32.440
<v Speaker 2>there to begin with. So anyway, those are the places

0:50:32.440 --> 0:50:34.560
<v Speaker 2>on the Moon that you'd probably go to. There's not

0:50:34.719 --> 0:50:37.640
<v Speaker 2>a lot of them, but the moon remains awful, you know,

0:50:37.960 --> 0:50:41.440
<v Speaker 2>even at the poles. The temperatures aren't ideal. But perhaps

0:50:41.520 --> 0:50:44.880
<v Speaker 2>even more importantly, there's regolith everywhere. And the regolith is

0:50:45.040 --> 0:50:50.040
<v Speaker 2>like this thick layer of super jagged dust and glass

0:50:50.560 --> 0:50:54.600
<v Speaker 2>that clings to everything. It's electrically charged. It clings and

0:50:54.680 --> 0:50:56.880
<v Speaker 2>if you breathe it, we think it's possible that it

0:50:56.920 --> 0:50:59.560
<v Speaker 2>could scar your lungs over time and create something similar

0:50:59.600 --> 0:51:01.920
<v Speaker 2>to stone grinder's disease on Earth. So you're gonna have

0:51:01.960 --> 0:51:03.960
<v Speaker 2>to go to great lengths to make sure it doesn't

0:51:03.960 --> 0:51:06.319
<v Speaker 2>get in your habitat, which again is going to be

0:51:06.400 --> 0:51:08.840
<v Speaker 2>really hard because it clings to everything.

0:51:08.560 --> 0:51:11.040
<v Speaker 1>And that sounds like lung melting, which sounds pretty bad.

0:51:11.280 --> 0:51:13.080
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, So your face is gonna melt and your

0:51:13.120 --> 0:51:14.120
<v Speaker 2>lungs are gonna melt.

0:51:16.560 --> 0:51:19.160
<v Speaker 1>So most of the Moon is totally inhospitable, and a

0:51:19.239 --> 0:51:22.160
<v Speaker 1>tiny fraction of it is somewhat less inhospitable.

0:51:22.600 --> 0:51:25.480
<v Speaker 2>There's also the caves and the tubes on the Moon,

0:51:25.520 --> 0:51:27.359
<v Speaker 2>which I'm gonna let Zach tell you about because he

0:51:27.440 --> 0:51:28.680
<v Speaker 2>really geeks out about these.

0:51:29.040 --> 0:51:32.040
<v Speaker 3>Oh yeah, sure, so, like you know, again at the

0:51:32.080 --> 0:51:34.360
<v Speaker 3>intersection of still a bad idea, but it's super awesome.

0:51:34.600 --> 0:51:38.080
<v Speaker 3>The Moon has lava tubes. It's not really very seismically

0:51:38.080 --> 0:51:40.840
<v Speaker 3>active anymore, but it was in the past, and so

0:51:42.400 --> 0:51:45.400
<v Speaker 3>people of Earth may know that. If you go to Hawaii,

0:51:45.440 --> 0:51:48.920
<v Speaker 3>you can see lava tubes, these huge underground caves that

0:51:48.960 --> 0:51:53.200
<v Speaker 3>are like sort of cylindrical, and we talk about the

0:51:53.239 --> 0:51:55.800
<v Speaker 3>process by which these are made, but very loosely speaking,

0:51:55.800 --> 0:51:58.520
<v Speaker 3>you can imagine lava pushes through forms this sort of

0:51:58.600 --> 0:52:00.520
<v Speaker 3>vein shape and then goes on its way and leaves

0:52:00.520 --> 0:52:03.719
<v Speaker 3>behind this giant cave. Now you can imagine if that

0:52:03.760 --> 0:52:06.920
<v Speaker 3>process occurs somewhere where there's only one six as much gravity,

0:52:07.320 --> 0:52:09.040
<v Speaker 3>you get a much bigger cave. And there are some

0:52:09.239 --> 0:52:11.640
<v Speaker 3>estimates that you could have lava tubes on the Moon

0:52:12.080 --> 0:52:15.160
<v Speaker 3>that are hundreds of times larger than anything on Earth. Right, So,

0:52:15.160 --> 0:52:17.000
<v Speaker 3>if you're going to pick a sort of dream mission

0:52:17.239 --> 0:52:22.319
<v Speaker 3>for pure awesomeness, sending a little speedlunker bot to one

0:52:22.360 --> 0:52:24.839
<v Speaker 3>of these caves to just look is probably about as

0:52:24.840 --> 0:52:26.360
<v Speaker 3>cool as you can get. And it just happens to

0:52:26.400 --> 0:52:28.640
<v Speaker 3>be on our closest neighbor in space, and these are

0:52:28.680 --> 0:52:31.440
<v Speaker 3>desirable potentially for a space settlement because one of the

0:52:31.960 --> 0:52:34.080
<v Speaker 3>deep problems of space settlement is essentially you have to

0:52:34.120 --> 0:52:37.720
<v Speaker 3>create a little bubble that is protected from everything around you.

0:52:37.760 --> 0:52:40.600
<v Speaker 3>If there's a pre existing tube, you're not completely predicted.

0:52:40.640 --> 0:52:42.160
<v Speaker 3>But one of the ideas is you could go in

0:52:42.200 --> 0:52:45.359
<v Speaker 3>there with some kind of spray on ceilant, right or inflatable,

0:52:45.760 --> 0:52:48.399
<v Speaker 3>and just press it against those walls. And the cool

0:52:48.440 --> 0:52:50.880
<v Speaker 3>thing about that is you've created a really big bubble.

0:52:50.920 --> 0:52:54.120
<v Speaker 3>You might be talking about like literally thousands tens. I

0:52:54.160 --> 0:52:55.880
<v Speaker 3>didn't have to look at the numbers, but many words

0:52:55.880 --> 0:52:58.760
<v Speaker 3>of magnitude more than like a habitat that is built,

0:52:59.400 --> 0:53:02.200
<v Speaker 3>and once you seal it, you can just build in there, right,

0:53:02.239 --> 0:53:03.840
<v Speaker 3>you can just build a house. It doesn't have to

0:53:03.840 --> 0:53:06.600
<v Speaker 3>be designed for space other than in case of danger.

0:53:07.040 --> 0:53:09.840
<v Speaker 3>So those are potentially extraordinarily valuable. Yeah.

0:53:09.960 --> 0:53:11.680
<v Speaker 2>It also saves you from needing to deal with the

0:53:11.719 --> 0:53:14.719
<v Speaker 2>regolith because you're inside of a lava tube where that

0:53:14.760 --> 0:53:17.280
<v Speaker 2>has all been sort of like turned into a crust

0:53:17.320 --> 0:53:20.160
<v Speaker 2>by the lava, and it saves you from temperature swings.

0:53:20.320 --> 0:53:22.279
<v Speaker 2>It's just there's lots of reasons why it would be great,

0:53:22.280 --> 0:53:25.840
<v Speaker 2>but we're not good at moonwalking. Moon's plunking is another level.

0:53:25.960 --> 0:53:28.040
<v Speaker 1>All of the views from underground are not quite as

0:53:28.040 --> 0:53:30.320
<v Speaker 1>spectacular as you were suggesting earlier. Kelly.

0:53:30.480 --> 0:53:33.319
<v Speaker 2>Well, but you're gonna be covered by dirt anyway, right,

0:53:33.400 --> 0:53:35.840
<v Speaker 2>and so you know you might as well let the

0:53:35.920 --> 0:53:38.440
<v Speaker 2>tube protect you from radiation as opposed to needing to

0:53:38.520 --> 0:53:41.160
<v Speaker 2>pile regolith bags on top of your habitat.

0:53:41.520 --> 0:53:44.000
<v Speaker 1>And then what about Mars? In your book, you say

0:53:44.080 --> 0:53:46.120
<v Speaker 1>the only way you would believe that Mars would be

0:53:46.160 --> 0:53:48.880
<v Speaker 1>a good idea would be quote if you had no idea,

0:53:49.040 --> 0:53:54.240
<v Speaker 1>how thoroughly, incredibly, impossibly horrible Mars is. Why is Mars

0:53:54.320 --> 0:53:55.560
<v Speaker 1>it such a horrible place to live?

0:53:55.680 --> 0:53:57.680
<v Speaker 3>I should say Mars is? We do argue that it's

0:53:57.719 --> 0:54:01.320
<v Speaker 3>the least bad option. While being the least bad option,

0:54:01.400 --> 0:54:04.040
<v Speaker 3>it is a bad option. And so just to kind

0:54:04.040 --> 0:54:05.879
<v Speaker 3>of go down the line quickly, can I just say

0:54:05.880 --> 0:54:08.200
<v Speaker 3>the good stuff about Mars and then ruin it? So

0:54:08.640 --> 0:54:11.399
<v Speaker 3>the biggest virtue of Mars is that you know, the moon,

0:54:11.480 --> 0:54:14.879
<v Speaker 3>like we said, is pouring carbon, and Mars basically has

0:54:14.920 --> 0:54:16.880
<v Speaker 3>all the stuff you'd need. You know, if you've imagined

0:54:16.920 --> 0:54:20.040
<v Speaker 3>advanced civilization that can just perfectly move around elements however

0:54:20.080 --> 0:54:22.760
<v Speaker 3>they like because they have infinite energy and science and whatever.

0:54:23.000 --> 0:54:25.920
<v Speaker 3>The moon has all the stuff, right, and in addition,

0:54:26.040 --> 0:54:28.240
<v Speaker 3>it has an atmosphere. It's not much of an atmosphere,

0:54:28.280 --> 0:54:30.759
<v Speaker 3>it's about half a percent to a percent of Earth,

0:54:30.840 --> 0:54:32.759
<v Speaker 3>is very low pressure. But that atmosphere is made of

0:54:32.760 --> 0:54:37.160
<v Speaker 3>carbon dioxide. Right, So there's your carbon and oxygen. Humans

0:54:37.200 --> 0:54:39.080
<v Speaker 3>just can't get enough of it. We love it, so

0:54:39.800 --> 0:54:45.040
<v Speaker 3>that's pretty huge. The downsides are one, it's really far away, right,

0:54:45.160 --> 0:54:48.879
<v Speaker 3>A typical proposal is six months inbound. The only way

0:54:48.880 --> 0:54:51.480
<v Speaker 3>to really fix that is to have something more exotic,

0:54:51.560 --> 0:54:54.000
<v Speaker 3>like a fission or fusion reactor. And even if you

0:54:54.080 --> 0:54:56.280
<v Speaker 3>had that, you might still take the slow trip to concern,

0:54:56.400 --> 0:54:58.560
<v Speaker 3>you know, to just you know, bring more stuff. But anyway,

0:54:58.600 --> 0:55:01.399
<v Speaker 3>so it's far away, which which means at the longest length,

0:55:01.440 --> 0:55:03.400
<v Speaker 3>it takes something like twenty minutes to send a signal

0:55:03.440 --> 0:55:06.960
<v Speaker 3>each way, so forget live communication. I think the closest

0:55:06.960 --> 0:55:08.799
<v Speaker 3>it's something like three minutes, So it's still pretty bad.

0:55:09.080 --> 0:55:12.040
<v Speaker 3>So no live conversations with your loved ones ever. Again. Also,

0:55:12.239 --> 0:55:14.720
<v Speaker 3>you know, the surface is still really nasty and unlike

0:55:14.760 --> 0:55:17.320
<v Speaker 3>the Moon. It also has perchlorates, which are a hormone

0:55:17.320 --> 0:55:21.320
<v Speaker 3>disrupting chemical, So you know, circling back to questions about reproduction,

0:55:21.360 --> 0:55:23.960
<v Speaker 3>that would be interesting to find out what happens to

0:55:24.080 --> 0:55:27.080
<v Speaker 3>like a teenager swimming in hormone disruptors. So that's bad.

0:55:27.200 --> 0:55:30.520
<v Speaker 3>So one good thing is you have almost Earth like days.

0:55:30.800 --> 0:55:33.120
<v Speaker 3>I think it's like twenty four point seven hours, so

0:55:33.200 --> 0:55:36.880
<v Speaker 3>you do get sunlight. It's substantially dimmer than the sunlight

0:55:36.920 --> 0:55:39.680
<v Speaker 3>of Earth. But the bigger problem from an energy standpoint

0:55:39.840 --> 0:55:42.960
<v Speaker 3>is Mars has giant dust storms. Sometimes these dust storms

0:55:43.000 --> 0:55:44.759
<v Speaker 3>are so big. There's a story that one of the

0:55:44.760 --> 0:55:49.280
<v Speaker 3>Mariner probes is going toward Mars and suddenly Mars looks

0:55:49.320 --> 0:55:51.480
<v Speaker 3>like a flat surface and it turns out what had

0:55:51.520 --> 0:55:54.200
<v Speaker 3>happened is there was a worldwide dust storm. So you

0:55:54.239 --> 0:55:56.080
<v Speaker 3>try to imagine what that's like on the surface. Is

0:55:56.160 --> 0:55:59.040
<v Speaker 3>just like the sky is like biblical, right, like no

0:55:59.120 --> 0:56:01.920
<v Speaker 3>more sky for you, So forget your solar panels. You

0:56:02.160 --> 0:56:05.319
<v Speaker 3>better have really good batteries or a nuclear reactor or

0:56:05.360 --> 0:56:09.759
<v Speaker 3>something more exotic. And so you know, those are some

0:56:09.840 --> 0:56:11.839
<v Speaker 3>of the problems. There's also the stuff we've discussed before,

0:56:11.880 --> 0:56:14.920
<v Speaker 3>like microgravity and extra radiation, but you know, it is

0:56:14.960 --> 0:56:17.160
<v Speaker 3>the best game in town. Everywhere is not just worse,

0:56:17.200 --> 0:56:20.960
<v Speaker 3>but like wildly worse. So it is extraordinarily dangerous and bad,

0:56:21.080 --> 0:56:24.640
<v Speaker 3>and there's not an obvious economic payoff, but everywhere else

0:56:24.760 --> 0:56:25.160
<v Speaker 3>is worse.

0:56:25.760 --> 0:56:28.719
<v Speaker 2>And Mars has a lot of water, and so that yeah,

0:56:28.760 --> 0:56:29.359
<v Speaker 2>that's also good.

0:56:29.440 --> 0:56:32.560
<v Speaker 3>Oh I'm sorry, yes, yes, yeah, yeah. So crucially, you know,

0:56:32.640 --> 0:56:35.200
<v Speaker 3>the Moon has very little water. This is important to

0:56:35.280 --> 0:56:37.200
<v Speaker 3>us because you read articles sometimes that are like, what

0:56:37.239 --> 0:56:39.080
<v Speaker 3>are we gonna do with all the moonwater? Like it's

0:56:39.120 --> 0:56:40.680
<v Speaker 3>like a resource in a video game, you just have

0:56:40.719 --> 0:56:43.279
<v Speaker 3>all you want. But Mars actually does have plenty of water,

0:56:43.320 --> 0:56:46.239
<v Speaker 3>the poles of tons of water ice, and actually in

0:56:46.239 --> 0:56:48.200
<v Speaker 3>most places on Mars it looks like if you dig

0:56:48.239 --> 0:56:50.719
<v Speaker 3>down far enough there there's water in some form. So

0:56:50.800 --> 0:56:52.960
<v Speaker 3>like when you put that all together, it's not just

0:56:53.000 --> 0:56:55.160
<v Speaker 3>that you can drink and breathe. Like if you have carbon,

0:56:55.239 --> 0:56:59.200
<v Speaker 3>hydrogen and oxygen, at least in principle, you can make

0:56:59.280 --> 0:57:02.080
<v Speaker 3>a lot of the stuff humans need, including rocket propellant

0:57:02.480 --> 0:57:05.080
<v Speaker 3>and like fuel cells and things. So you really have

0:57:05.239 --> 0:57:08.799
<v Speaker 3>everything you need except like a reason to be there

0:57:08.880 --> 0:57:10.560
<v Speaker 3>is the tricky part. At the cost, it's going to

0:57:10.600 --> 0:57:11.080
<v Speaker 3>be well.

0:57:11.080 --> 0:57:13.440
<v Speaker 1>I also want to dig into the legal side of

0:57:13.480 --> 0:57:16.680
<v Speaker 1>thea that saying that quote ivides we and eat them.

0:57:17.240 --> 0:57:20.440
<v Speaker 1>What laws govern activities in space are on Mars.

0:57:21.120 --> 0:57:25.040
<v Speaker 2>So since nineteen sixty seven, space has been governed by

0:57:25.040 --> 0:57:27.560
<v Speaker 2>a United Nations treaty that goes by the shorter name

0:57:27.640 --> 0:57:31.680
<v Speaker 2>the Outer Space Treaty. And it says a lot of stuff,

0:57:31.720 --> 0:57:33.360
<v Speaker 2>and it says a lot of things vaguely, but for

0:57:33.400 --> 0:57:36.760
<v Speaker 2>the purpose of space settlement, the most important points are

0:57:37.080 --> 0:57:40.760
<v Speaker 2>no nation is allowed to appropriate any territory in space.

0:57:41.040 --> 0:57:44.000
<v Speaker 2>But it also specifies that people come from somewhere and

0:57:44.000 --> 0:57:46.760
<v Speaker 2>they are the responsibility of some nations. So you can't

0:57:46.800 --> 0:57:50.320
<v Speaker 2>just say, like, okay, the US can't claim the south pole.

0:57:50.120 --> 0:57:50.560
<v Speaker 3>Of the Moon.

0:57:50.720 --> 0:57:53.200
<v Speaker 2>And some people will argue that like okay, but Elon

0:57:53.360 --> 0:57:55.880
<v Speaker 2>Musk could because he's not a nation, he's just some guy.

0:57:56.280 --> 0:57:59.120
<v Speaker 2>But according to the Outer Space Treaty, he belongs to

0:57:59.160 --> 0:58:01.560
<v Speaker 2>the US. The US is responsible for what he does

0:58:01.640 --> 0:58:04.800
<v Speaker 2>up there, and so it's on the US if Elon

0:58:04.920 --> 0:58:07.960
<v Speaker 2>Musk goes up there and says, I am creating Muscow

0:58:08.440 --> 0:58:11.360
<v Speaker 2>and this is my new place to live, and so

0:58:11.480 --> 0:58:14.880
<v Speaker 2>you're not allowed to appropriate the land. But here's where

0:58:14.920 --> 0:58:18.360
<v Speaker 2>there's quite a bit of ambiguity. It's apparently unclear what

0:58:18.440 --> 0:58:20.680
<v Speaker 2>you can do with the resources that are up there.

0:58:20.760 --> 0:58:24.680
<v Speaker 2>So can Jeff Bezos go to those craters of eternal

0:58:24.760 --> 0:58:27.600
<v Speaker 2>darkness where you can find water and extract the water

0:58:28.120 --> 0:58:32.000
<v Speaker 2>and sell it to other people for rocket fuel? And

0:58:32.120 --> 0:58:35.600
<v Speaker 2>the answer to that is it's not really provided in

0:58:35.640 --> 0:58:37.560
<v Speaker 2>the Outer Space Treaty. And so countries are sort of

0:58:37.600 --> 0:58:40.840
<v Speaker 2>coming up with their interpretation of what the Outer Space

0:58:40.880 --> 0:58:45.000
<v Speaker 2>Treaty means. And in the US, Obama passed an act

0:58:45.080 --> 0:58:48.480
<v Speaker 2>that essentially said, the United States, if our citizens go

0:58:48.600 --> 0:58:52.160
<v Speaker 2>up there and extract resources and sell them, our interpretation

0:58:52.280 --> 0:58:55.440
<v Speaker 2>of the Outer Space Treaty is that that's okay. And

0:58:55.480 --> 0:58:59.480
<v Speaker 2>then Donald Trump released an executive order essentially saying the

0:58:59.520 --> 0:59:02.560
<v Speaker 2>same thing. So this is maybe the only thing that

0:59:02.600 --> 0:59:06.400
<v Speaker 2>Obama and Trump can agree on. And then the Artemis

0:59:06.480 --> 0:59:08.720
<v Speaker 2>Accords came out while we were writing the book. And

0:59:08.760 --> 0:59:12.240
<v Speaker 2>the Artemis Accords is sort of a NASA document that

0:59:12.280 --> 0:59:14.560
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of other countries have signed onto. I think

0:59:14.560 --> 0:59:17.080
<v Speaker 2>it's at around twenty now, and a bunch of other

0:59:17.120 --> 0:59:19.840
<v Speaker 2>countries have signed onto it, and it essentially says it

0:59:19.920 --> 0:59:23.480
<v Speaker 2>is our interpretation that it is okay to extract resources

0:59:23.520 --> 0:59:26.720
<v Speaker 2>and sell them. And in fact, NASA supported a company

0:59:26.720 --> 0:59:28.960
<v Speaker 2>that went up there and scooped a tiny bit of

0:59:29.000 --> 0:59:31.720
<v Speaker 2>regolith and then sold it to NASA for a token

0:59:31.800 --> 0:59:33.440
<v Speaker 2>fee of I think a dollar, And it was just

0:59:33.520 --> 0:59:36.120
<v Speaker 2>meant to set the precedent that a resource can be

0:59:36.160 --> 0:59:38.440
<v Speaker 2>collected by a company on the Moon and then sold,

0:59:38.520 --> 0:59:40.520
<v Speaker 2>and that the United States is okay with that. But

0:59:40.600 --> 0:59:42.720
<v Speaker 2>that is supposed to be a global commons. That was

0:59:42.760 --> 0:59:45.800
<v Speaker 2>point to the Moon is a global commons. All of

0:59:45.840 --> 0:59:48.960
<v Speaker 2>space is a global commons, and so other countries I

0:59:48.960 --> 0:59:51.840
<v Speaker 2>think would argue that as a global commons, if you

0:59:51.920 --> 0:59:56.040
<v Speaker 2>extract a resource, everybody should benefit from it. But that's

0:59:56.080 --> 0:59:58.800
<v Speaker 2>not actually specified by the Outer Space Treaty, so there's

0:59:59.000 --> 1:00:02.200
<v Speaker 2>a big fight over inter But we like to note

1:00:02.280 --> 1:00:05.960
<v Speaker 2>that the Moon and space in general is not like

1:00:06.440 --> 1:00:10.760
<v Speaker 2>a completely weird legal structure that is unlike anything you

1:00:10.840 --> 1:00:15.200
<v Speaker 2>see anywhere else. This is essentially what humanity has decided

1:00:15.280 --> 1:00:19.000
<v Speaker 2>to do when we end up with vast swaths of

1:00:19.120 --> 1:00:22.280
<v Speaker 2>land that technology suddenly opens up for us. So, for example,

1:00:22.320 --> 1:00:26.480
<v Speaker 2>Antarctica is managed by the Antarctic Treaty System, where a

1:00:26.480 --> 1:00:29.480
<v Speaker 2>bunch of countries come together, they agree, it's a global commons,

1:00:29.800 --> 1:00:31.880
<v Speaker 2>they decide what can be done with the resources, and

1:00:31.920 --> 1:00:35.240
<v Speaker 2>at the moment they've decided, you cannot extract any resources,

1:00:35.280 --> 1:00:38.120
<v Speaker 2>and in fact you cannot even look for them because

1:00:38.120 --> 1:00:39.960
<v Speaker 2>we don't want to start any trouble. And then the

1:00:39.960 --> 1:00:44.800
<v Speaker 2>deep seabed is managed by close the United Nations Convention

1:00:44.880 --> 1:00:46.560
<v Speaker 2>on the Law of the Sea. So we have a

1:00:46.560 --> 1:00:48.640
<v Speaker 2>couple of different global commons, a couple different ways of

1:00:48.640 --> 1:00:51.040
<v Speaker 2>managing them. But you know, it's unclear how things are

1:00:51.040 --> 1:00:52.080
<v Speaker 2>going to shape up in space.

1:00:52.400 --> 1:00:54.600
<v Speaker 1>So does that mean it is or is not legal

1:00:54.920 --> 1:00:56.440
<v Speaker 1>to eat your neighbor in space?

1:00:56.720 --> 1:00:59.480
<v Speaker 3>I can speak to that question. Yes, I should say

1:00:59.480 --> 1:01:01.200
<v Speaker 3>this is it's a short part of the book, but

1:01:01.280 --> 1:01:04.520
<v Speaker 3>we do something like an answer. So the short version

1:01:04.560 --> 1:01:07.160
<v Speaker 3>is it depends on what law you consider yourself to

1:01:07.160 --> 1:01:09.120
<v Speaker 3>be under, which probably has to do with what country

1:01:09.160 --> 1:01:12.320
<v Speaker 3>you're from or where you launched from, right, and it

1:01:12.360 --> 1:01:15.440
<v Speaker 3>actually varies by country. We're more familiar with the American

1:01:15.440 --> 1:01:18.520
<v Speaker 3>and British law, which in the US. This is beyond

1:01:18.560 --> 1:01:20.320
<v Speaker 3>what we have in the book. So I'm digging a

1:01:20.320 --> 1:01:21.800
<v Speaker 3>little deep for this, but I believe there's something called

1:01:21.840 --> 1:01:24.480
<v Speaker 3>the Holmes test. Which is this list of conditions which

1:01:24.520 --> 1:01:26.640
<v Speaker 3>basically says, look, if you want to like engage in

1:01:26.640 --> 1:01:29.880
<v Speaker 3>survival homicide, meaning kill some people so other people can live,

1:01:29.920 --> 1:01:31.640
<v Speaker 3>there has to be a set of conditions met. And

1:01:31.680 --> 1:01:33.640
<v Speaker 3>there are things like, you know, there has to be

1:01:33.680 --> 1:01:36.400
<v Speaker 3>no other option, and you have to have a random draw.

1:01:36.560 --> 1:01:39.560
<v Speaker 3>You can't like prefer the crew to the passengers. So

1:01:39.600 --> 1:01:41.560
<v Speaker 3>there's a set of criteria that have to be met

1:01:41.600 --> 1:01:44.800
<v Speaker 3>for it to be considered okay or at least potentially okay,

1:01:45.360 --> 1:01:48.280
<v Speaker 3>to engage in survival homicide. So, you know, there's not

1:01:48.360 --> 1:01:51.600
<v Speaker 3>a lot written about death and space generally it's never happened. Well,

1:01:51.640 --> 1:01:54.600
<v Speaker 3>I'm sorry, it's never happened other than just people suddenly

1:01:54.640 --> 1:01:56.800
<v Speaker 3>die during a situation where they can't be saved, right,

1:01:56.800 --> 1:01:58.880
<v Speaker 3>So there's never been a situation where like a guide

1:01:58.880 --> 1:02:00.920
<v Speaker 3>dies in the spaceship in and sort of crowded around

1:02:00.960 --> 1:02:02.720
<v Speaker 3>like geez, what do we do? And so there's not

1:02:02.720 --> 1:02:04.480
<v Speaker 3>a lot written on this. But we found a paper

1:02:04.560 --> 1:02:07.400
<v Speaker 3>from nineteen seventy eight by a guy named Robert Fritis,

1:02:07.400 --> 1:02:09.880
<v Speaker 3>who I think ended up being a nanotechnology guy, but

1:02:09.880 --> 1:02:11.920
<v Speaker 3>in seventy eight he was interested in this question and

1:02:11.960 --> 1:02:14.200
<v Speaker 3>it said you know, there's this movie and novel called

1:02:14.240 --> 1:02:16.920
<v Speaker 3>Maroon where there's three guys in space and there's something

1:02:16.960 --> 1:02:19.040
<v Speaker 3>goes wrong. There's not enough oxygen to save all of them.

1:02:19.120 --> 1:02:21.240
<v Speaker 3>The rescue ship will like get there in five hours.

1:02:21.720 --> 1:02:23.640
<v Speaker 3>They have four hours of oxygen. So if you're being

1:02:23.800 --> 1:02:26.280
<v Speaker 3>if we were ants, one of the ants would be like,

1:02:26.360 --> 1:02:29.000
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to go die. Problem solved. But we're not ants,

1:02:29.000 --> 1:02:31.680
<v Speaker 3>and so it's like a really nauseating question. And so

1:02:31.720 --> 1:02:33.520
<v Speaker 3>he actually kind of went through the literature of how

1:02:33.560 --> 1:02:36.720
<v Speaker 3>we think about this question legally, and the basic deal

1:02:36.800 --> 1:02:39.680
<v Speaker 3>is it's going to depend on where you're from. So

1:02:39.680 --> 1:02:41.440
<v Speaker 3>if you're in the ISS, the kind of funny thing

1:02:41.520 --> 1:02:44.920
<v Speaker 3>is the modules are kind of like quasi sovereign territory, right,

1:02:45.000 --> 1:02:46.760
<v Speaker 3>so the Japanese module is sort of like a piece

1:02:46.800 --> 1:02:49.520
<v Speaker 3>of Japan. So you know, we say you should sort

1:02:49.560 --> 1:02:51.560
<v Speaker 3>of call a lawyer. You should be like, what country

1:02:51.960 --> 1:02:54.000
<v Speaker 3>you know if I went to Japan or Russia? Would

1:02:54.040 --> 1:02:56.200
<v Speaker 3>I get a better deal if I have to eat somebody?

1:02:56.480 --> 1:02:59.360
<v Speaker 3>But yes, that's the law. In terms of like the

1:02:59.400 --> 1:03:01.919
<v Speaker 3>physical part, we found one guy who's willing to talk

1:03:01.920 --> 1:03:04.160
<v Speaker 3>about it, who was like weirdly detailed about how to

1:03:04.280 --> 1:03:07.280
<v Speaker 3>butcher a human and three D print a plastic knife

1:03:07.480 --> 1:03:09.880
<v Speaker 3>in space. His name is Eric's Seathhouse, and we advise

1:03:09.920 --> 1:03:15.720
<v Speaker 3>against bringing him on your crew. And that's my main

1:03:15.760 --> 1:03:18.480
<v Speaker 3>advice about eating your friends in space. To summarize. The

1:03:18.520 --> 1:03:21.520
<v Speaker 3>Outer Space Treaty obviously doesn't deal with cannibalism in space,

1:03:21.800 --> 1:03:24.160
<v Speaker 3>so you will probably be dealt with as a national

1:03:24.160 --> 1:03:27.000
<v Speaker 3>of some country. Preferably to keep it simple, don't eat

1:03:27.040 --> 1:03:28.840
<v Speaker 3>someone from some other country because it's going to be

1:03:28.840 --> 1:03:30.280
<v Speaker 3>an international incident.

1:03:31.480 --> 1:03:33.440
<v Speaker 1>That's going to complicate your life. So it sounds like

1:03:33.480 --> 1:03:36.200
<v Speaker 1>you guys have done a really deep dive into the

1:03:36.280 --> 1:03:38.680
<v Speaker 1>details of what it would be like, the logistics, the

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<v Speaker 1>legal side, where we would actually live. In the end,

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<v Speaker 1>how did you feel about it? I mean, you started

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<v Speaker 1>out optimistic and then you were a little disappointed in

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<v Speaker 1>how much people had explored this. On balance, in the end,

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<v Speaker 1>do you feel like this is something humanity should do?

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<v Speaker 1>But maybe deeper into the future that we're not ready yet,

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<v Speaker 1>but it's still something we should plan for, or maybe

1:03:58.720 --> 1:04:00.560
<v Speaker 1>we need to dig even deeper before we have an

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<v Speaker 1>answer even to that question.

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<v Speaker 2>So I think maybe Zach and I should both give

1:04:03.800 --> 1:04:06.680
<v Speaker 2>our answers in case we differ a little bit. I'd

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<v Speaker 2>say that I still think it's a beautiful idea. I

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<v Speaker 2>would love to see it happen at some point, but

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<v Speaker 2>I think we need to not push for it to

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<v Speaker 2>happen in our lifetimes. I will be personally very happy

1:04:17.720 --> 1:04:20.920
<v Speaker 2>if in my lifetime there is a research base on

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<v Speaker 2>the Moon where we get a better handle on creating

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<v Speaker 2>closed loop ecosystems, figuring out safety measures for adults and

1:04:28.000 --> 1:04:30.160
<v Speaker 2>the babies that we'd like to have one day. I

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<v Speaker 2>think there's a lot of work on geopolitics and international

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<v Speaker 2>law that I would like to see happen before we

1:04:35.760 --> 1:04:38.120
<v Speaker 2>end up with the scramble for territory. You know, in

1:04:38.160 --> 1:04:40.000
<v Speaker 2>the book, we talk about how the way the deep

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<v Speaker 2>seabed is managed could be a great way to manage

1:04:43.280 --> 1:04:46.000
<v Speaker 2>resources in space as well. So I'd love to see

1:04:46.000 --> 1:04:49.000
<v Speaker 2>some more work on stuff like that. So I'd like

1:04:49.040 --> 1:04:50.720
<v Speaker 2>to see it happen, but I'd like to see us

1:04:50.720 --> 1:04:53.880
<v Speaker 2>slow down and figure out, like step by step, what

1:04:54.040 --> 1:04:56.480
<v Speaker 2>needs to happen to do it safely, and then you know,

1:04:56.720 --> 1:04:58.480
<v Speaker 2>start to see that kind of stuff funding. I would

1:04:58.520 --> 1:05:01.480
<v Speaker 2>love it if Musk had not bought Twitter and Head

1:05:01.520 --> 1:05:05.440
<v Speaker 2>instead invested in closed loop ecosystems or research stations on

1:05:05.480 --> 1:05:07.960
<v Speaker 2>the moon or something. What about you, Zach, Yeah.

1:05:07.760 --> 1:05:11.800
<v Speaker 3>So I would say my view is that it's something

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<v Speaker 3>that we will eventually do entirely because it's awesome. I

1:05:17.400 --> 1:05:20.840
<v Speaker 3>think the economic arguments are quite weak. We discussed this

1:05:20.840 --> 1:05:21.960
<v Speaker 3>a little in the book. There's a lot of sort

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<v Speaker 3>of what you might call sociological arguments, like if we

1:05:23.920 --> 1:05:26.480
<v Speaker 3>don't do this, we're going to stagnate. There are arguments

1:05:26.520 --> 1:05:28.240
<v Speaker 3>that we're going to save the environment. There's no way

1:05:28.280 --> 1:05:30.200
<v Speaker 3>it's going to happen fast enough. There are all these

1:05:30.240 --> 1:05:32.000
<v Speaker 3>different arguments for why we ought to do it, and

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<v Speaker 3>we think they're basically no good. And I would also

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<v Speaker 3>add that there's an argument Daniel Duden is big on

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<v Speaker 3>this as there's an argument that we should just never

1:05:37.720 --> 1:05:39.680
<v Speaker 3>do it, because you know, people tend to say we

1:05:39.720 --> 1:05:43.920
<v Speaker 3>should colonize space to decrease existential risk, but actually they're,

1:05:43.960 --> 1:05:48.320
<v Speaker 3>you know, plausibly by getting that huge infrastructure above a gravity, well,

1:05:49.120 --> 1:05:52.000
<v Speaker 3>you're creating higher existential risk. So maybe it's never going

1:05:52.080 --> 1:05:53.640
<v Speaker 3>to be a good idea until like, you know, does

1:05:53.640 --> 1:05:56.600
<v Speaker 3>physics allowed tractor beams or something. You know, So there's

1:05:56.640 --> 1:05:59.320
<v Speaker 3>an argument there. I think you can imagine a world

1:06:00.000 --> 1:06:04.160
<v Speaker 3>it's some distant date where you know, we are such

1:06:04.200 --> 1:06:08.080
<v Speaker 3>an advanced, wealthy species that you could just go to

1:06:08.240 --> 1:06:10.080
<v Speaker 3>Mars to set up there, because it would be a

1:06:10.120 --> 1:06:11.800
<v Speaker 3>cool thing to do. Like you're going to send you

1:06:11.840 --> 1:06:14.160
<v Speaker 3>one hundred AI robots ahead of you. They're going to

1:06:14.200 --> 1:06:16.840
<v Speaker 3>set up a cabin and space launch is totally safe,

1:06:16.880 --> 1:06:19.560
<v Speaker 3>and Earth is so peaceful and harmonious that the idea

1:06:19.560 --> 1:06:24.000
<v Speaker 3>of like starting warfare between planets is unimaginable. And that world,

1:06:24.000 --> 1:06:26.280
<v Speaker 3>it's a great idea, It's wonderful. It's sort of like

1:06:26.320 --> 1:06:28.840
<v Speaker 3>in Star Trek they're just exploring around because exploring is

1:06:28.840 --> 1:06:30.640
<v Speaker 3>a cool thing to do, and all the old problems

1:06:30.680 --> 1:06:33.080
<v Speaker 3>have been solved. But I guess the big change for

1:06:33.120 --> 1:06:34.760
<v Speaker 3>me is I just I just don't buy any of

1:06:34.760 --> 1:06:38.760
<v Speaker 3>the arguments that there's a non esthetic reason to do Mars.

1:06:38.800 --> 1:06:41.560
<v Speaker 3>There just doesn't seem to be unless you're talking about

1:06:41.600 --> 1:06:44.520
<v Speaker 3>like a Kardish of you know, eighteen civilization that's got

1:06:44.520 --> 1:06:47.680
<v Speaker 3>to maximize every single photon in the universe. There's just

1:06:47.720 --> 1:06:49.360
<v Speaker 3>no good reason to do it. So to me, that

1:06:49.360 --> 1:06:51.560
<v Speaker 3>puts it on the scale of centuries. It requires a

1:06:51.560 --> 1:06:53.800
<v Speaker 3>better humanity and a much richer humanity.

1:06:53.920 --> 1:06:56.040
<v Speaker 1>Well, thank you guys very much for writing this book.

1:06:56.320 --> 1:06:58.720
<v Speaker 1>I know you described as something of a wet blanket,

1:06:58.720 --> 1:07:01.240
<v Speaker 1>but I actually think it's necessary to think about these

1:07:01.280 --> 1:07:04.720
<v Speaker 1>things carefully, to lay the groundwork to figure out what

1:07:04.760 --> 1:07:07.200
<v Speaker 1>the problems are actually going to be. That, if anything,

1:07:07.280 --> 1:07:09.040
<v Speaker 1>your book could makes it more likely that we do

1:07:09.120 --> 1:07:11.800
<v Speaker 1>figure this stuff out because people think about it carefully.

1:07:12.040 --> 1:07:15.040
<v Speaker 1>So from all the space nerds, thank you. You see

1:07:15.080 --> 1:07:20.000
<v Speaker 1>this book positively, and I encourage everybody out there to

1:07:20.000 --> 1:07:22.440
<v Speaker 1>get it. It's called a City on Mars? Can we

1:07:22.480 --> 1:07:24.919
<v Speaker 1>settle space? Should be settle Space? And how we really

1:07:24.920 --> 1:07:30.480
<v Speaker 1>thought this through. It's really exquisitely, deeply detailed and well researched.

1:07:30.680 --> 1:07:32.920
<v Speaker 1>These guys definitely know what they're talking about. And in addition,

1:07:33.120 --> 1:07:35.680
<v Speaker 1>it's really fun. I mean, obviously these two are very

1:07:35.680 --> 1:07:38.080
<v Speaker 1>funny people, and so you'll read it, you'll learn a lot,

1:07:38.160 --> 1:07:40.960
<v Speaker 1>you'll laugh a lot. I totally encourage you, and thank

1:07:40.960 --> 1:07:43.040
<v Speaker 1>you very much Zach and Kelly for joining us today

1:07:43.040 --> 1:07:45.880
<v Speaker 1>to talk about sex and space, poop in space, and

1:07:46.000 --> 1:07:46.680
<v Speaker 1>face melting.

1:07:46.880 --> 1:07:48.800
<v Speaker 3>Thanks so much, Daniel, I can do a whole episode

1:07:48.840 --> 1:07:49.880
<v Speaker 3>on face melting.

1:07:52.000 --> 1:07:56.600
<v Speaker 1>Collaboration, all right, Thanks again everyone for listening and tune

1:07:56.600 --> 1:08:07.040
<v Speaker 1>in next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

1:08:07.080 --> 1:08:10.520
<v Speaker 1>and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1:08:10.760 --> 1:08:15.960
<v Speaker 1>For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1:08:16.080 --> 1:08:18.439
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.