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Speaker 1: Hey Kelly, where do you think your kids are going

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Speaker 1: to live when they grow up?

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Speaker 6: Well, right now, my oldest is saying she's gonna stay

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Speaker 6: in the house and have fourteen cats and ten kids,

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Speaker 6: and I guess I'm hoping that she's not in my

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Speaker 6: house but when that happens.

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Speaker 3: But I also don't.

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Speaker 6: Want her too far because I'd love to see her

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Speaker 6: and her many creatures as much as possible.

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Speaker 1: Well, what would mean too far? Are we talking like

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Speaker 1: South America or Antarctica?

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Speaker 6: I'd make those trips, although I wouldn't be super excited

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Speaker 6: about Antarctico. But I suspect I'm going to be a

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Speaker 6: pretty determined grandparent.

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Speaker 1: What if they have grandbabies like in near Earth orbit

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Speaker 1: on this space.

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Speaker 6: Station, I'd be a bit disappointed for her poor decisions

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Speaker 6: because I'm not sure that that's safe yet. But if

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Speaker 6: that's what i have to do to see the grandkids,

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Speaker 6: and my love is unconditional, I'm in all right.

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Speaker 1: And what if they move to Mars and have little

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Speaker 1: Martian babies.

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Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I don't know.

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Speaker 6: Maybe we should set up a video link.

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

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Speaker 3: Yeah, no, there's alpha Centauri's a good limit.

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Speaker 6: But you know what's worrying me is we're having this conversation,

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Speaker 6: and now I have to make sure that my kids

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Speaker 6: in the future and my grandkids don't listen to this

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Speaker 6: conversation because they're going to get ideas and they'll move

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Speaker 6: out deep into the solar system.

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Speaker 1: Right now they know exactly how far they have to

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Speaker 1: move to avoid grandparent visits.

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Speaker 3: Yep, good luck kids.

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Speaker 7: Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at

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Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I hope my kids move far away.

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Speaker 6: I'm Kelly Weener Smith. I'm a parasitologist and adjunct Debt

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Speaker 6: Race University. And you know, I'd like my kids to

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Speaker 6: be close, but maybe not in the house.

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Speaker 1: I have lots of friends here whose kids graduate from

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Speaker 1: high school, go to college, and then move back home.

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Speaker 1: In this neighborhood, they call that failure to launch.

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Speaker 3: That's a big thing. Now, Yeah, my kids can stay

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Speaker 3: with me as long as they need to.

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Speaker 1: I just feel like moving outside the influence of your

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Speaker 1: parents is part of growing up and becoming an adult

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Speaker 1: in the world.

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Speaker 3: You know, I did love it. I had so much

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Speaker 3: fun when I moved out.

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Speaker 1: Well, welcome to the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,

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Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. My usual friend and co host,

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

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Speaker 1: be joined by our regular guest host, Kelly Wiersmith. Kelly,

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Speaker 1: thanks very much for joining us.

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Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to be here as always.

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Speaker 6: And you know, today we're talking about maybe the best

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Speaker 6: thing you've ever talked about on the podcast, and so

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Speaker 6: I'm particularly excited about today's conversation.

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

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Speaker 1: We're talking about exploring the universe, actually settling the universe,

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Speaker 1: sending humanity out to the rest of the cosmos to

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Speaker 1: infect it with our disease. And as a special bonus,

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Speaker 1: we have not one Wiener Smith today, we actually have

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Speaker 1: two zach Wingers. May welcome to the podcast as well.

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Speaker 5: There, Hey, hello, I need some intro music.

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Speaker 1: What is your intro music? Is it sort of like

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Speaker 1: the Darth Vader theme?

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Speaker 5: Song more of a more of a wrestling thing, I

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Speaker 5: would I would like what did the Macho Man have?

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Speaker 1: Well, regular listeners the podcast no Kelly, of course, and

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Speaker 1: some of you may also know Zach, her less famous husband,

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Speaker 1: well known for a Saturday morning breakfast cereal whatever made

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Speaker 1: in And there's a reason we have Zach and Kelly

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Speaker 1: on the podcast together today, not just for marital therapy,

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Speaker 1: but because these two folks have written a fantastic and

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Speaker 1: fascinating book all about settling space and exploring the cosmos.

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Speaker 3: And it's finally almost available.

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Speaker 1: How long have you guys been working on this book?

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Speaker 6: We did four years of research on the book, and

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Speaker 6: then it took a year between submitting the book and

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Speaker 6: it going to Prince. So we've been thinking about this

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Speaker 6: for like a decade between the two of us, and

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Speaker 6: we are ready to crush everyone's dream.

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Speaker 1: If you feel about this book the way I feel

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Speaker 1: about every paper I write that takes longer than a year,

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Speaker 1: then by the time it's ready to go out in

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Speaker 1: the world, I hate the thing and I never want

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Speaker 1: to see it again.

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Speaker 6: I was happy to get it off of my desk

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Speaker 6: when the time came, but I'm still pretty excited about it,

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Speaker 6: and that year in between sort of helps me get

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Speaker 6: excited about it again.

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Speaker 5: What about you, Zach, Yeah, I think you know. So

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Speaker 5: the amount of time between submitting a manuscript you're basically

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Speaker 5: not allowed to touch and the time you get to

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Speaker 5: actually put the book out of the universe is quite substantial.

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Speaker 5: So I think the other thing is, you know, the

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Speaker 5: way publishing works now is you don't want to say

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Speaker 5: too much because you might get to say it in

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Speaker 5: some prominent place, So you kind of have you're sort

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Speaker 5: of like you know, bound and gagged until the book

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Speaker 5: comes out. So it's getting to where it's exciting to

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Speaker 5: talk about this stuff again.

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Speaker 1: Awesome. So I hope we're catching you right in the

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

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Speaker 1: very excited about it and I can't wait to talk

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Speaker 1: to you both about it. And so today on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we'll be tackling the question can we settle space? Should

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Speaker 1: we settle space? Have we really thought this through? I

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Speaker 1: love the subtitles or your book. It really sets up

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Speaker 1: the whole conversation, the skepticism, the nerdy analysis of whether

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Speaker 1: this is something realistic. I really love the way you

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Speaker 1: guys tackle this.

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Speaker 6: I feel like by reading the last question we propose

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Speaker 6: you pretty much know where we're going to fall.

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Speaker 3: On the whole topic. But you know, we try to.

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Speaker 3: We're still people who are excited about space settlement at

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Speaker 3: the end of the day.

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Speaker 1: And space settlement is something that's definitely in the zeitgeisten

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Speaker 1: has been for decades. Right, We've been hearing about the

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Speaker 1: possibilities of moving humans out into space. Elon Musk is

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Speaker 1: famously accelerating our ability to get into orbit, and so

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Speaker 1: this is something people have been thinking about. And so,

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Speaker 1: as usual on the podcast, before we dig into the topic,

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Speaker 1: I pulled our listeners to hear what they thought about

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Speaker 1: the possibilities of colonizing space, the Moon and Mars in

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Speaker 1: this case, actually walked around campus here at UC Irvine

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Speaker 1: where classes have recently started, and asked folks if they

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Speaker 1: thought it's important that we colonize space and whether we

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Speaker 1: will have the technology. So, before you hear these answers,

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Speaker 1: think to yourself for a minute, do you think we

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Speaker 1: should colonize space? Are we ready to do so? Here's

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Speaker 1: what people had to say.

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Speaker 5: Sure, why not?

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Speaker 1: Do you think we're capable of doing it? Anytime in

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Speaker 1: the near future. No, No, how long do you think

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Speaker 1: before we're ready the moon?

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Speaker 8: Probably under the years, I would say that, I don't

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Speaker 8: know fighting.

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Speaker 9: In the future.

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Speaker 1: Do you think humanity should colonize space the moon in Mars? No,

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Speaker 1: because we kind of ruined our planet already. Are you

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Speaker 1: worried we're going to ruin some more we don't deserve too.

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Speaker 1: Do you think humanity should colonize space the moon in.

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Speaker 8: Marsh Yeah, definitely.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely yeah.

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Speaker 5: Cool.

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Speaker 1: Why is that?

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Speaker 10: Oh?

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Speaker 8: Yeah, because like you know, like you never know, like

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Speaker 8: what's going to happen in the future.

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Speaker 1: You know, do you think we're ready? Do we have

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Speaker 1: the technology?

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Speaker 8: Maybe NASA does, but we never know like what's going

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Speaker 8: to happen. Maybe they're like hiding something or at least

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Speaker 8: that's what I think. I think we should colonize like

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Speaker 8: those kind of.

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Speaker 1: Financial What is NASA hiding?

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Speaker 11: Do you think?

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Speaker 5: I have no clue?

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Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm just undergrad student here, but probably like some

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Speaker 8: like super technology, you know, just came out that aliens

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Speaker 8: does exist.

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Speaker 1: The question is, do you think humanity should colonize space

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Speaker 1: the moon in Mars?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so.

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Speaker 9: I think it's a good idea. So if we're capable

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Speaker 9: of doing it, I think it's not.

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Speaker 5: A bad idea.

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Speaker 1: So do you think we are capable?

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Speaker 9: I think we will be very very likely, because I mean,

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Speaker 9: we sure have the technology to go there.

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Speaker 1: It's just yeah.

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Speaker 9: So I guess if you asked me, in probably in

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Speaker 9: one hundred years, there will be people living in March Mars.

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Speaker 9: That's my guess.

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

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Speaker 1: et cetera.

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Speaker 5: Eventually, yes, but not in the immative future.

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Speaker 1: And do you think we'll have the capability the technology

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Speaker 1: to do it anytime soon?

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Speaker 5: Eventually?

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Speaker 1: Eventually? What does eventually mean?

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Speaker 5: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: He is, all right, Zach Kelly. What do you guys

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Speaker 1: think about those answers?

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Speaker 6: Well, I'll note that I didn't share them with Zach

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Speaker 6: ahead of time, so he's unprepared.

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Speaker 3: But I'm going to go ahead and say that's his fault.

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Speaker 6: So one of the respondents said no, because we've ruined

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Speaker 6: our planet already, so we don't deserve it. And I

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Speaker 6: got to say, what as an ecologist, when I started

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Speaker 6: telling people like, oh, I'm writing a book about space settlement,

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Speaker 6: many of them immediately assumed that I was writing a

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Speaker 6: book about how we don't deserve it because we've destroyed

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Speaker 6: our own planet, and I almost felt guilty because that

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Speaker 6: was not at all my angle. I'm excited, and I

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Speaker 6: think we should. You know, I hope we do it

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Speaker 6: at some point, but I hope we're just careful about it.

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Speaker 5: Zach.

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Speaker 6: When you talk to people, what is the response that

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Speaker 6: you usually get from people when you tell them that

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Speaker 6: you're writing a book about space settlements?

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Speaker 5: So I think, you know, the ecologist's example is good

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Speaker 5: because what we've found is what we should do in

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Speaker 5: space is almost like a roarshock test for your view

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Speaker 5: of the universe, you know what I mean. There are

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Speaker 5: these different strains. So there are people who are very

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Speaker 5: kind of techy libertarian, read a lot of hindline Elon

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Speaker 5: musk Is in this vein, who think it's not just

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Speaker 5: that it would be cool to do it would be

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Speaker 5: kind of like a thwarting of human ambition to not

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Speaker 5: do it. But then you also have feel who are Yeah,

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Speaker 5: I have this perspective that we have kind of befouled

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Speaker 5: the Earth and we're a sort of you know, gross

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Speaker 5: scurf on the surface of the planet, and ought not

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Speaker 5: to extend ourselves to other planets. And I think it's

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Speaker 5: almost like, you know how people say science fiction is

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Speaker 5: never about the future, it's always about the present. I

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Speaker 5: think what you think should be done in space settlement

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Speaker 5: kind of works the same way. What you're often doing

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Speaker 5: is really making rendering a sort of judgment on how

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Speaker 5: we're doing right this second. You know. The deal is,

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Speaker 5: of course space is actually a real place that interfaces

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Speaker 5: with actual reality, and so you know, our book is

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Speaker 5: hopefully it's an attempt to part from it just being

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Speaker 5: a sort of philosophical thing and talk about what it

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Speaker 5: would actually be like. But yeah, can you say about

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Speaker 5: the ecology thing my biggest rebuttal to that. I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 5: people tend to assume that we're going to be like, yes,

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Speaker 5: Elon Muss is an idiot and he's defiled Earth and

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Speaker 5: will defile Mars, and I just want to say, like

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Speaker 5: that just fails to reckon with how thoroughly terrible Mars is.

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Speaker 5: Like unless you are one of these people, and there

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Speaker 5: are such people more than I would have thought, who

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Speaker 5: think like Mars as an entity has agency like a

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Speaker 5: person would. Unless you believe something like that, it's bizarre

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Speaker 5: because there's no part of Earth that's even close to

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Speaker 5: as bad as anywhere on Mars. You couldn't make it

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Speaker 5: as bad without like slamming the Moon into Earth or something.

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Speaker 5: So the idea in an ecological sense messing up Mars

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Speaker 5: as sort of absurd, and the moon even more so. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Well, one thing I think is really fascinating is hearing

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Speaker 1: about how your opinions have changed. I mean, if this

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Speaker 1: is like a ror shark test for who you are

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Speaker 1: and what you think about where we are today, then

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Speaker 1: it's really interesting that you guys went from like vaguely

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Speaker 1: optimistic about space settlement to being you know, space cranks.

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Speaker 1: Essentially tell us a little bit about your journey, like

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Speaker 1: what book did you start out wanting to write? Did

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Speaker 1: you intend to write when you started this project, Oh,

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Speaker 1: so many years ago.

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Speaker 6: So we wrote soonish together and that was a book

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Speaker 6: about emerging technologies, and two of the technologies in the

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Speaker 6: book were cheap access to space and asteroid mining. And

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Speaker 6: after writing both of those chapters, we thought like, oh,

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Speaker 6: you know, maybe space settlements aren't that far away. So

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Speaker 6: if you can launch mass to space cheaply, then you

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Speaker 6: can send habitats with all the tech that you need

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Speaker 6: to keep humans alive in space. And if asteroid mining

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Speaker 6: is a thing, then pretty soon we're going to be

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Speaker 6: able to use resources from space to build our habitats,

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Speaker 6: and that's going to make things even cheaper. And so

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Speaker 6: we thought that this is something that could happen in

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Speaker 6: our lifetimes, and especially given all of the like pop

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Speaker 6: size stuff you read about space settlement and all the

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Speaker 6: rhetoric from space advocates, we thought like, this is something

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Speaker 6: that we are one hundred percent prepared to do.

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Speaker 3: We just need to be able to afford to do it.

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Speaker 6: So we were going to write like the guide to

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Speaker 6: what the next couple of years are going to be, like, like,

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Speaker 6: you know, how do you put together the first crew?

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Speaker 6: Should it be half male half female? How should you

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Speaker 6: know if you have an international crew, kind of sociological

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Speaker 6: stuff might they come up against? And what kind of

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Speaker 6: governance should you have for the first settlement on the moon.

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Speaker 1: And you were excited to see these things happen, right,

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Speaker 1: you were like, Ooh, let's figure this out. This would

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Speaker 1: be fantastic if it happened.

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Speaker 6: I guess I shouldn't speak for both of us, but

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Speaker 6: I was. I I think it's beautiful. The idea of like,

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Speaker 6: you know, waking up on the moon and seeing Earth,

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Speaker 6: you know, from the glass dome that you were sleeping

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Speaker 6: in or whatever. That all sounded amazing and so I

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Speaker 6: was super excited. But every chapter that we started working on,

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Speaker 6: we were like, oh, man, we don't know anywhere near

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Speaker 6: enough about this. So in the medicine chapter, we were like,

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Speaker 6: we really don't know how bodies are going to respond

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Speaker 6: to space. And then in the closed loop ecology chapter,

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Speaker 6: where you know, can you recycle the carbon dioxide that

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Speaker 6: you breathe out in the water, and how do you

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Speaker 6: get like a habitat that recycles stuff so that you

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Speaker 6: don't need more stuff flown in from Earth, And we

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Speaker 6: really don't know how to do that very well. And

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Speaker 6: then we got into the international law and we were like, oh,

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Speaker 6: my gosh, there's so much that isn't figured out here,

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Speaker 6: and it could create tons of conflict if we start

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Speaker 6: trying to settle now. And I could just go on

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Speaker 6: and on and on. Every chapter that we thought, oh,

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Speaker 6: we've probably figured this out, it turned out that there's

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Speaker 6: a lot of work to do, and so we ended up, yeah,

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Speaker 6: writing the book that we wrote in ste.

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Speaker 1: So you discovered that a lot of these things hadn't

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Speaker 1: really been explored thoroughly or viewed with a skeptical lens,

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Speaker 1: or analyzed in detail. Essentially, it was all hidden under

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Speaker 1: a bunch of pro space fluff. Is that the sense

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Speaker 1: you got once you start digging into things?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, all of that, All of that is true.

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Speaker 1: So why is that, Zach? Why do you think nobody

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Speaker 1: has written this sort of like skeptical are we really

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Speaker 1: ready kind of book before? Why is it all sort

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Speaker 1: of pro space gloss over the details?

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Speaker 5: That's a good question, I should say, first of all,

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Speaker 5: as we got close to press a couple similar books

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Speaker 5: not quite the same story coming out. I do think

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Speaker 5: there's a kind of growing analytical approach to this problem.

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Speaker 5: I will say, you know, it's hard to know other

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Speaker 5: people's motivations. I think the generous assumption is that people

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Speaker 5: don't tend to write pop technology books about a thing

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Speaker 5: you're not going to get generally speaking, right, I was

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Speaker 5: talking to a distinguished popular science author and I said,

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Speaker 5: you know, I was talking to about it, and you know,

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Speaker 5: basically explain this whole thing that where we're basically going

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Speaker 5: to say it's going to be it's way harder than

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Speaker 5: you expected. The timelines are much longer than you expected,

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Speaker 5: and there are even arguments for not doing it outside

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Speaker 5: of like extraordinary technological developments. He was like, you can't

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Speaker 5: do that, you can't. You can't have a book for nerds.

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Speaker 5: That's like, sorry, nerds, you don't get the thing. And so,

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Speaker 5: you know, the upshot of that is, if you look

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Speaker 5: as we did at the sort of corpus of future

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Speaker 5: casting books about space written going back to the nineteen twenties,

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Speaker 5: they tend to be about what problem space is going

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Speaker 5: to solve?

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Speaker 9: Right.

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Speaker 5: They're not critical in that sense of saying, wait, maybe

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Speaker 5: this problem is not worth solving, in a sort of

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Speaker 5: boring economic sense, the kind of analysis you would do

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Speaker 5: if you were trying to say drill and oil. Well, right,

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Speaker 5: And so when you don't have that voice in the room,

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Speaker 5: there tend to be major things that just get skipped.

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Speaker 5: So like, for us, a huge turning point which will

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Speaker 5: sound like almost nothing when you first hear it, but

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Speaker 5: then you start thinking about it, which is the surface

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Speaker 5: of the Moon is carbon poor, like extremely carbon poor.

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Speaker 5: There's almost no carb right, And so you have a

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Speaker 5: nerd audience they know what that means that you literally

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Speaker 5: cannot have life. You have to import carbon. Right. It's

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Speaker 5: not like you need to like sprinkle a little phosphorus

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Speaker 5: or something, right, you have to sprinkle the whole farm.

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Speaker 5: Which is crazy when you think that these you know,

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Speaker 5: like if you look at Saturn fives, like the biggest

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Speaker 5: rocket ever built, it was able to put this eeny

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Speaker 5: weeny little thing on the moon.

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Speaker 10: Right.

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Speaker 5: It's the idea that we're going to scale up to

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Speaker 5: where we're delivering mountains and mountains just to be able

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Speaker 5: to like grow apples or whatever is kind of crazy,

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Speaker 5: and so like whatever it could be solved, quote unquote,

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Speaker 5: But why isn't this the first thing in all these

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Speaker 5: books about space settlement?

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Speaker 12: Right?

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Speaker 5: Why aren't questions like this number one? Like these massive problems?

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Speaker 5: And another huge one is radiation, which there's a book

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Speaker 5: called The Case for Space, or is the Case from Mars.

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Speaker 5: It's a huge book in this sector by Robert Zubrin.

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Speaker 5: It has a section on radiation. It goes immediately as

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Speaker 5: I recall, into this idea of hormesis hermesis meaning when

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Speaker 5: you get some of something it might actually be good.

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Speaker 5: Some of a bad something might be good in some circumstances,

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Speaker 5: which is like a bizarre response to the unknown results

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Speaker 5: of massive doses of non earth like radiation. But I

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Speaker 5: think this is what you would expect if most of

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Speaker 5: the books are written by advocates. They just don't want

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Speaker 5: to linger on those problems.

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Speaker 1: You have this line in your book, which I thought

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Speaker 1: was a great singer. You say, quote much of the

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Speaker 1: discourse around why we should go to space and how

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Speaker 1: society will work when we get there remains mired in

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Speaker 1: uninformed opinion and unrealistic fantasy. Ouch Are you suggesting that

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Speaker 1: we should have like a boring economist in every conversation

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Speaker 1: to keep us like firmly rooted on the ground.

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Speaker 6: Yes, I mean there would be worse things. And I also,

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Speaker 6: just to be clear, we are generally very nice to

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Speaker 6: the space settlement community. We disagree, but we love them

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Speaker 6: very much. These people are our friends, and we're sorry

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Speaker 6: that we're wet blankets.

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Speaker 3: But yes, the rhetoric could use a bit of Well.

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Speaker 1: We're going to dig into all of your analysis of

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Speaker 1: what it's like to live in space and where we

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Speaker 1: could go, and what the real problems are in international

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Speaker 1: law and cannibalism and sex in space on all these

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Speaker 1: really fun topics that you guys analyze. But before we do,

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Speaker 1: I just have one more question, which is, what do

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Speaker 1: you think the response is going to be from the

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Speaker 1: pro space settlement community when you call them uninformed and

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Speaker 1: unrealistic fantasizers about the future.

444
00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:23,359
Speaker 6: Ah Okay, So I'll say that Daniel Dowdney came before us.

445
00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:25,440
Speaker 6: He wrote a book called Dark Skies, which is very

446
00:20:25,480 --> 00:20:29,560
Speaker 6: anti space settlement, and he has been called anti human.

447
00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:33,280
Speaker 6: And I watched a panel that was set up where

448
00:20:33,280 --> 00:20:35,639
Speaker 6: he was like invited to sort of like watch, but

449
00:20:35,680 --> 00:20:38,680
Speaker 6: they didn't ask him to suggest any names for people

450
00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:40,679
Speaker 6: to go on the panel, so it was just people

451
00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:45,560
Speaker 6: tearing apart his ideas for like two hours, and which

452
00:20:45,600 --> 00:20:48,600
Speaker 6: I thought there were plenty of good counter arguments that

453
00:20:48,640 --> 00:20:53,480
Speaker 6: weren't presented. But anyway, I am not super sure that

454
00:20:53,520 --> 00:20:56,600
Speaker 6: the community is going to be real kind to us.

455
00:20:56,640 --> 00:20:58,840
Speaker 6: But there's also plenty of people in that community who

456
00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:02,120
Speaker 6: are open to discussion, and so I'm optimistic that we'll

457
00:21:02,119 --> 00:21:04,679
Speaker 6: have lots of productive discussions with lots of people, but

458
00:21:04,760 --> 00:21:07,000
Speaker 6: no doubt there will be a subset of people who

459
00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:09,080
Speaker 6: are going never really hate our guts.

460
00:21:10,760 --> 00:21:12,080
Speaker 1: Well, I hope you guys don't have to go into

461
00:21:12,119 --> 00:21:14,800
Speaker 1: hiding after this book. I think it's a good idea

462
00:21:14,920 --> 00:21:17,480
Speaker 1: to explore this constructively, and that in your book you

463
00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 1: were balanced and fair and didn't just throw wet blankets

464
00:21:20,840 --> 00:21:23,800
Speaker 1: on these ideas suggested like actual ways forward and raise

465
00:21:23,920 --> 00:21:26,080
Speaker 1: the issues that we need to confront if we're going

466
00:21:26,119 --> 00:21:27,880
Speaker 1: to make this happen. So I think it's a very

467
00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:30,879
Speaker 1: positive and forward thinking book. But let's dig into the

468
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Speaker 1: details in a minute after we take this short break.

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Speaker 1: If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the

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518
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Speaker 1: of cheese into your mouth or enjoy a rich spoonful

519
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Speaker 1: of Greek yogurt, you're probably not thinking about the environmental

520
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Speaker 1: impact of each and every bite. But the people in

521
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Speaker 1: the dairy industry are US Dairy has set themselves some

522
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Speaker 1: ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty

523
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Speaker 1: to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to

524
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525
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Speaker 1: drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most

526
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527
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528
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Speaker 1: irrigates the crops. How is US Dairy tackling greenhouse gases.

529
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from

530
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531
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Speaker 1: electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice

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536
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Speaker 1: dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more. Okay, we're

537
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,840
Speaker 1: back and we're talking about the future of humanity. Settling

538
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:22,879
Speaker 1: space should we can? We will? We have the tech.

539
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 1: When will we have the tech? Is it possible to

540
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: live in space? With Zach and Kelly Windersmith, because they

541
00:25:28,640 --> 00:25:31,320
Speaker 1: just wrote a book about it, called A City on Mars,

542
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:35,120
Speaker 1: which is out now from all excellent booksellers and also

543
00:25:35,240 --> 00:25:40,920
Speaker 1: less reputable booksellers. Right, you can get it anywhere, all right,

544
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:43,800
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what it's like to live in space,

545
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:47,640
Speaker 1: because so far, almost every human who's ever existed has

546
00:25:47,720 --> 00:25:51,040
Speaker 1: lived in a very narrow slice of the universe, very

547
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: close to the surface of the Earth. So tell us

548
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:56,200
Speaker 1: about what we know about living in space. What is

549
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:59,320
Speaker 1: it like in terms of the environment for human survival?

550
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 1: And let's start with radiation. What are we facing if

551
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: you're going to live for an extended period, not in

552
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 1: the atmospheric bubble of Earth.

553
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,120
Speaker 6: Well, so this was one of the first eye opening

554
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 6: research topics for me. So we started with space medicine,

555
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:15,720
Speaker 6: and I assumed you know, Okay, So the Soviets sent

556
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 6: up a bunch of Solutes, and then the Soviet Union

557
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:22,639
Speaker 6: slash Rush Russia sent up Mirror, and then ISS has

558
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:25,679
Speaker 6: been up there for like twenty years, and China has

559
00:26:25,720 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 6: now fielded three space stations in Low Worth orbit and so,

560
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 6: you know, I assumed that we would have a bunch

561
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:34,359
Speaker 6: of data on how radiation impacts the human body, and

562
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,920
Speaker 6: we'd have good answers to questions like does space radiation

563
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:41,439
Speaker 6: cause cancer? And I should note that radiation in space,

564
00:26:41,520 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 6: as your listeners no doubt already know, is different than

565
00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 6: the kind of radiation we tend to encounter on Earth,

566
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 6: and so we understand it even less well. But something

567
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 6: I should have realized but didn't occur to me until

568
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 6: I was reading these textbooks on space medicine, is that

569
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 6: all of our space stations have been orbiting the Earth

570
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:03,040
Speaker 6: under the protection of Earth's magnetosphere, and so most of

571
00:27:03,119 --> 00:27:06,560
Speaker 6: space radiation is not reaching them. Maybe they have slightly

572
00:27:06,600 --> 00:27:09,639
Speaker 6: elevated levels, but a person living on the International Space

573
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:13,120
Speaker 6: Station isn't necessarily giving us the data that we need

574
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 6: to understand how a person living on the Moon or

575
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:17,959
Speaker 6: Mars is going to hold up under space radiation.

576
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: So where does space radiation come from? I mean, they

577
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: don't have like nuclear power plants melting down in the

578
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 1: middle of space. Where is this coming from?

579
00:27:25,119 --> 00:27:27,399
Speaker 6: It's coming from the Sun, and it's coming from well,

580
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 6: I really feel like this is a question for you then.

581
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:33,720
Speaker 1: Right so you're right, the Sun generates a huge amount

582
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:36,439
Speaker 1: of radiation, you know, protons and electrons, very high speed,

583
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 1: the solar wind. People think about space as empty, but

584
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 1: it's really filled with high speed particles. And as you say,

585
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:45,360
Speaker 1: the Earth is protecting us from that. It's atmosphere and

586
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: its magnetic field shields us from a lot of that

587
00:27:48,359 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 1: space radiation. So if you think about radiation like Fukushima style,

588
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of that, but there's a

589
00:27:53,560 --> 00:27:56,159
Speaker 1: huge amount of just solar wind. And we feel that

590
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: already down here on Earth. You know, we get radiation

591
00:27:59,240 --> 00:28:02,320
Speaker 1: from space penetrates through the atmosphere, and as you go

592
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: higher and higher, you're more exposed to that radiation. So

593
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 1: you know, one question I have for you is like,

594
00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: is it possible to learn more about this, not just

595
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 1: from astronauts on the space station, but from like flight

596
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:13,680
Speaker 1: attendants who spend a lot of time at higher altitude

597
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:16,479
Speaker 1: and are more exposed to that radiation from space.

598
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:19,440
Speaker 6: Well, so they're more exposed to that kind of radiation,

599
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 6: but they are they also more exposed to like the

600
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 6: galactic cosmic radiation like iron ions and stuff.

601
00:28:25,119 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 3: Are those also hitting the planes in space?

602
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: That's actually a really fascinating research question. We don't actually

603
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 1: know what component of the radiation the cosmic rays that

604
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:36,399
Speaker 1: hit the Earth are like iron nuclei versus just protons.

605
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 1: None of that actually makes it down to the surface.

606
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,720
Speaker 1: They'll just slam into the atmosphere and then turn into

607
00:28:41,800 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: muons and other particles. So there's definitely no iron nuclei

608
00:28:45,320 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: like passing through the bodies of stewardesses and airplane passengers fortunately,

609
00:28:50,120 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: And so I guess your argument is that out there

610
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 1: in space, on the surface of Mars or on the Moon,

611
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:57,719
Speaker 1: you have like no protection, so you're like really feeling

612
00:28:57,720 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: the brunt of raw space radiation.

613
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:01,600
Speaker 3: Itself and you're never escaping it.

614
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:05,360
Speaker 6: And also, your habitat can create different kinds of radiation.

615
00:29:05,440 --> 00:29:08,640
Speaker 6: So when the radiation hits your habitat, something called spallation happens,

616
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 6: where the particles break into different kinds of particles that

617
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 6: are also radioactive. And so what kind of habitat you're

618
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 6: living in, the shape of the habitat all this stuff

619
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 6: is going to matter. But with stewardesses, for example, you know,

620
00:29:19,560 --> 00:29:21,800
Speaker 6: let's say they are getting exposed to some of that radiation.

621
00:29:22,080 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 6: You know, they're exposed to it for parts of their lives,

622
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:27,600
Speaker 6: so you know, they're working lives start at like what eighteen,

623
00:29:27,720 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 6: but maybe even older, and they're only up there part

624
00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 6: of the time. And so we're talking about people who

625
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 6: are going to be like born on a planet and

626
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:40,040
Speaker 6: exposed to radiation from the moment they're conceived or you know,

627
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 6: from maybe even the game meats in their parents were

628
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 6: receiving radiation, and so that kind of accumulated dose over

629
00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 6: an entire lifespan, Maybe it's not going to be a problem.

630
00:29:49,720 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 6: Maybe we can design habitats that totally keep the radiation out,

631
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 6: or maybe like we read this one review paper from

632
00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen that basically said, look, we don't even know

633
00:29:58,880 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 6: if space radiation causes cancer, but it's probably best that

634
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 6: we assume it could. And so like that's where we

635
00:30:04,960 --> 00:30:07,600
Speaker 6: are right now, Like it probably causes cancer, but we

636
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 6: don't even know. But I will note that most proposals

637
00:30:10,280 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 6: for habitats on the Moon are Mars or even rotating

638
00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:17,920
Speaker 6: space stations involve covering the habitat with meters of regalists.

639
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 6: So that's the like dirt, dusty dirt that you find

640
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:22,920
Speaker 6: on the Moon and Mars and the idea is that

641
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 6: if you're under a couple meters of that, it's going

642
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:27,520
Speaker 6: to block the radiation before it gets to your habitat.

643
00:30:27,800 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 6: So that glass dome that I wanted to wake up

644
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:33,360
Speaker 6: underneath and look at the Earth, you know, on my vacation,

645
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:36,680
Speaker 6: that's not going to happen. I would be baked with radiation. So, yeah,

646
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:38,600
Speaker 6: there's a lot we don't know. And the answer might

647
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 6: be either it's fine or it's fine with a little

648
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 6: bit of engineering, but we don't have the kind of

649
00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:45,720
Speaker 6: data that we need right now to really understand that.

650
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 6: And there are so Brookhaven Laboratory now has a new

651
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:53,880
Speaker 6: device that can make galactic cosmic radiation or can mimic it,

652
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 6: and so we're starting to be able to get some

653
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 6: better data on rodents. But even then, it's not like

654
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:01,960
Speaker 6: they're being exposed for their entire life to the entire

655
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:04,600
Speaker 6: range of radiation that they're going to get in space.

656
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 6: So there's still a lot we have left to learn.

657
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: So you're saying that the kind of habitats we're imagining

658
00:31:09,840 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 1: long term life on Mars or the Moon or in

659
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: a space station could end up like a horror movie

660
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:17,840
Speaker 1: where everybody gets like horrible cancer and your faces melt

661
00:31:17,840 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff that we just don't

662
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 1: know the answer to whether it's even possible for humans

663
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:23,600
Speaker 1: to live in that scenario.

664
00:31:23,840 --> 00:31:26,719
Speaker 3: So I think face melting is probably off the table,

665
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 3: but maybe not. But well, I don't.

666
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:32,880
Speaker 6: Think that we have to, you know, start with babies

667
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 6: and see what happens. Like, I think we could go

668
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:37,480
Speaker 6: to the Moon and set up a research station, and

669
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 6: the Moon is only a couple of days away, so

670
00:31:39,800 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 6: people could stay for a couple months, and if there

671
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 6: was any indicator that they were having a problem, we

672
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:46,240
Speaker 6: could send them home, and then we could send a

673
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 6: different habitat type and try again, and we could have

674
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:51,400
Speaker 6: rodent colonies out there. But it's going to be a

675
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 6: slow process to make sure, you know, like, Okay, this

676
00:31:54,080 --> 00:31:56,120
Speaker 6: amount of radiation is safe, and then that amount of

677
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:58,680
Speaker 6: radiation is safe, And it'll be a long time before

678
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 6: you can convince me that it would be safe to

679
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 6: conceive and have babies in space without too much extra risk.

680
00:32:05,560 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 6: But somebody who read our book told us we were

681
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 6: being whips about that.

682
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: So and you're like, well, why don't you send your

683
00:32:12,400 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: grandkids to the moon.

684
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:17,080
Speaker 3: Then they said they would because we did say that.

685
00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:19,080
Speaker 3: We did say that, and they were like, I totally

686
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 3: would I'd do it. And I was like, wow, I'm

687
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 3: glad I'm not your child.

688
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:25,640
Speaker 1: This is a great example for me. When reading your book,

689
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: I was very surprised that we just don't know so

690
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: much about what life will be like in space. Even

691
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: things that seemed like they might not be a big

692
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 1: deal could turn out to be a big deal because

693
00:32:34,400 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 1: we just don't know because we have such a little

694
00:32:36,520 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: limited experience. I was really enjoying the section on micro gravity,

695
00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 1: for example, like what's it like to live in very

696
00:32:43,280 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: little gravity your whole life? I suppose we just don't

697
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:47,320
Speaker 1: know the answer to that as well.

698
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 5: Basically, Yeah, So one thing a lot of people maybe

699
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 5: don't know is that the record consecutive space flight was

700
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 5: I think four hundred and thirty seven days, and down

701
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 5: from that, there's something like a dozen people who've been

702
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 5: up for a year, and it's down from that. And

703
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:05,200
Speaker 5: I don't have it offhand, but I think if you

704
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:07,280
Speaker 5: looked it up, the majority of astronauts ever have been

705
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:09,080
Speaker 5: for like on a matter of weeks, like they went

706
00:33:09,120 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 5: on on the Shuttle or something. Right, So the amount

707
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 5: of longitudinal data like we literally could not have it.

708
00:33:14,880 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 5: No one's gone up for a year and a half consecutively.

709
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 5: If you look at people who've gone up, like the

710
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 5: highest total is somewhere in the eight hundreds of days.

711
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 5: So even then, you're talking about a really short amount

712
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:26,800
Speaker 5: of time to get like good longitudinal data. Like Kelly said,

713
00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 5: we're not talking about face melting for radiation, right, we're

714
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 5: talking about like long term effects. But we do know

715
00:33:32,520 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 5: that to come back to microgravity in particular, there are

716
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 5: reliable bad effects of microgravity. So when you go to space.

717
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:41,720
Speaker 5: One thing we ended up not talking too much about,

718
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 5: even though it has a rich history, is a lot

719
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 5: of people get motion sickness. It's something it's called space

720
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 5: motion sickness, and they spend the first few days throwing up.

721
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 5: But we didn't talk about it too much because it's

722
00:33:49,680 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 5: not really a settlement problem. You do adjust to it.

723
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 5: The problems that show up when you stay longer are

724
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 5: things like rapid loss and bone density in some parts

725
00:33:58,160 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 5: of your body you lose I think the number we

726
00:33:59,880 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 5: have was one and a half percent bone density per month,

727
00:34:03,760 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 5: like an insanely fast rate of bone loss. And that's

728
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 5: by the way, while astronauts are doing a huge amount

729
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,279
Speaker 5: of exercise every day, right, very time consuming exercise every

730
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:14,960
Speaker 5: single day, and there are other more subtle things. Obviously,

731
00:34:15,040 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 5: you know coming with that is that you have a

732
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:19,440
Speaker 5: lot of loss of muscle strength. Jerry Linninger was an astronaut.

733
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:20,880
Speaker 5: He was on Mirror for about four months, and it

734
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:22,560
Speaker 5: was a huge point of pride for him as a

735
00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:25,839
Speaker 5: kind of like muscly, slightly meat headed astronaut that he

736
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 5: was able to walk just barely when he got out

737
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 5: of the space station. But there are other things that happened,

738
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:34,759
Speaker 5: so they're like Lininger described, when he got home to

739
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 5: his hotel room, he kind of freaked out a little

740
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 5: because in space, if you feel pressure on your back,

741
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 5: it means you're going to fling forward, because it's it's

742
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:43,680
Speaker 5: very Newtonian up there, right, So when he got down

743
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:45,360
Speaker 5: in bed, he felt like he was going to go flying.

744
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:47,360
Speaker 5: So he said he could only sleep once he had

745
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:48,920
Speaker 5: kind of wrapped himself up in a blanket.

746
00:34:49,000 --> 00:34:50,720
Speaker 1: You you need to be swaddled like a baby.

747
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 5: I think he was more like tied down, but I

748
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:54,600
Speaker 5: actually don't know. I don't remember what he did with

749
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:56,640
Speaker 5: the blanket in particular, and then there are these more

750
00:34:56,640 --> 00:34:57,320
Speaker 5: subtle effects.

751
00:34:57,400 --> 00:34:57,520
Speaker 1: Right.

752
00:34:57,560 --> 00:35:00,239
Speaker 5: People often get dizzy, right because your body on Earth

753
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:03,160
Speaker 5: is used to pumping blood against gravity all day long,

754
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 5: and in space there's no orientation, So when you suddenly

755
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 5: return to full Earth gravity, your body is just not

756
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:10,560
Speaker 5: prepared to do this. I mean, it's kind of amazing

757
00:35:10,600 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 5: to me that your body does eventually work it out.

758
00:35:12,239 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 5: You don't just like die. And there are other subtle things. Reliably,

759
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 5: people lose vision, so they actually, for especially for older astronauts,

760
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:22,200
Speaker 5: you have to be set up with these glasses that

761
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 5: are adjusted because it's anticipated your vision will get worse,

762
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:28,400
Speaker 5: and it's not perfectly understood why. But one possibility is

763
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 5: that microgravity you experience this fluid shift. Fluid shifts up

764
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:33,600
Speaker 5: in your body, especially at the beginning. You notably have

765
00:35:33,680 --> 00:35:36,280
Speaker 5: what's called puffy face and chicken legs, as one person

766
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 5: described it, which is like kind of funny but also

767
00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 5: kind of bad, maybe because it's possible what's happening is

768
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 5: it's causing nerve damage or reshaping of the nerves that

769
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 5: connect your eyes or something, which is like bad enough,

770
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 5: but it's also a little creepy because you worry. There's like,

771
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 5: you know, there's apparently equivocal evidence on cognitive effects of space.

772
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:54,160
Speaker 5: We don't know if that's because of microgravity, your aradiation,

773
00:35:54,400 --> 00:35:56,279
Speaker 5: or just who knows what. So, yeah, there's a lot

774
00:35:56,280 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 5: of stuff you wouldn't anticipate. In the particular context of babies,

775
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:01,759
Speaker 5: it gets like extra freaky. I'm willing to buy that

776
00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:04,320
Speaker 5: a baby in ingestation is at least in kind of

777
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 5: a neutral buoyancy tank. But you know, you try to

778
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:08,800
Speaker 5: imagine like a six month old trying to have normal

779
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 5: bone development and microgravity, that would be enormously scary. It's

780
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 5: possible on the Moon, which is about one six ers gravity,

781
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:18,439
Speaker 5: it wouldn't be so bad. But like, to add more

782
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 5: more data to this, we have I think something like

783
00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:22,760
Speaker 5: a grand total of ten days on the Moon between

784
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 5: all of the missions, you know, and so like we

785
00:36:25,200 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 5: really don't know. And that was of course all full grown,

786
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 5: like particularly fit men, and so there are other things.

787
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,800
Speaker 5: But yeah, micro gravity is a big open question and

788
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 5: would take a long time to get better data on it.

789
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: Well, I want to push back on your denial of

790
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:44,760
Speaker 1: my face melting concern, because you're talking about like lower

791
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 1: bone density, weakened muscles, puppy eyes, to me, that sounds like,

792
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:50,400
Speaker 1: you know, that could lead to real face melting.

793
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 5: We could term the suite of negative effects face melting.

794
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:55,160
Speaker 5: What we'll call it whites and face melting.

795
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,520
Speaker 1: Okay, there you go. But my real question is that

796
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:00,800
Speaker 1: it seems like it might be hard to go to space,

797
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:03,480
Speaker 1: have your body adapt to it, and then come back

798
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:05,040
Speaker 1: to Earth. But what if you just do a in

799
00:37:05,080 --> 00:37:07,640
Speaker 1: a one way trip. Isn't it possible that kids who

800
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:10,160
Speaker 1: grow up in space are totally adapted and can live

801
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 1: totally healthy lives in space with low bone density and

802
00:37:12,719 --> 00:37:15,439
Speaker 1: super long chicken legs or whatever. Is this about going

803
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: to space and coming back or is this about just

804
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:18,320
Speaker 1: surviving in space?

805
00:37:18,760 --> 00:37:20,960
Speaker 6: I think it's about both. So, you know, Mars has

806
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 6: forty percent of Earth's gravity. Maybe that will be enough

807
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:27,160
Speaker 6: for normal development, maybe not. So it's the same as radiation,

808
00:37:27,239 --> 00:37:30,600
Speaker 6: maybe it'll be fine, maybe not. But you know, especially initially,

809
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 6: there's a lot of stuff we're going to be figuring

810
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 6: out about Mars, like, you know, how can we live

811
00:37:35,200 --> 00:37:37,799
Speaker 6: up there sustainably? Can we create an economy? How do

812
00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:41,040
Speaker 6: we you know, create a society that has some freedom

813
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:43,440
Speaker 6: and likes being up there? And you know, it's a

814
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 6: very delicate habitat. So if you have people who are

815
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:49,920
Speaker 6: you know, angry or become terrorists, they could very easily

816
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:53,680
Speaker 6: kill almost everybody. And so for a variety of different reasons,

817
00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:56,240
Speaker 6: you would like to be able to have the option

818
00:37:56,360 --> 00:37:59,640
Speaker 6: to bring people home, especially initially when this whole experiment

819
00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:02,359
Speaker 6: is started. So if it turns out you have, you know,

820
00:38:02,560 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 6: one hundred babies in the first generation at the settlement

821
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 6: and they decide, you know what, this isn't economically feasible.

822
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,200
Speaker 6: We just can't make any money out here. We can't

823
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 6: pay to get the supplies shipped in that we need

824
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 6: from Earth because it's super expensive. What do you do

825
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:18,799
Speaker 6: with those babies who are now stuck out there? And

826
00:38:18,920 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 6: so you know, yes, maybe a couple generations from now,

827
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,120
Speaker 6: when we're like safely settled on Mars and it's sustainable

828
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 6: and we know that, you know, we're going to be

829
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 6: able to stay out there permanently, maybe it's not such

830
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:31,480
Speaker 6: a big deal if they can't come back to the

831
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 6: cradle of humanity. But I can still imagine that being depressing.

832
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,880
Speaker 6: I think Earth will always be I mean, Earth is beautiful.

833
00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:40,360
Speaker 6: I'd want to be able to visit.

834
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:43,719
Speaker 1: And it might be that babies who are raised on

835
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: Mars have their faces melted, but maybe on Mars that's

836
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:48,920
Speaker 1: seen as really attractive, But then they can't really adjust

837
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: back to life on Earth because you know, we're not

838
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,240
Speaker 1: that into it. But speaking of that kind of topic,

839
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:56,440
Speaker 1: self sustaining colonies, is it possible? Do we know if

840
00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:59,640
Speaker 1: it's even possible for humans to reproduce in space? Like,

841
00:39:00,160 --> 00:39:02,480
Speaker 1: you know, the mechanics and the chemistry of it doesn't

842
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: all work in microgravity under high radiation. Do we know

843
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: anything about that?

844
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:09,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, So the basic deal is we know almost nothing.

845
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 5: So one thing it's really important to understand about the

846
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:15,919
Speaker 5: history of space science is that space stations are not

847
00:39:16,040 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 5: fielded because you know, the NSF sat down one day

848
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:21,360
Speaker 5: and said, we're going to do a systematic program on

849
00:39:21,400 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 5: space medicine. They're fielded for geopolitical reasons and then science

850
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:29,799
Speaker 5: gets done in them, right, And so one result of

851
00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 5: that is that you really don't have a lot of

852
00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:35,120
Speaker 5: systematic data on hardly anything. I think you can you

853
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:38,480
Speaker 5: can absolutely trust objective readings on things like bone density

854
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:40,680
Speaker 5: that seems like hard to mess up or fake, but

855
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 5: when it comes to reproduction, you know, if someone had said,

856
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 5: you know, when the first space station went up in

857
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy one, suppose the Soviet Union had said, one

858
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 5: of our major goals is human reproduction in space. We're

859
00:39:50,920 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 5: going to really orientate around that. You can imagine a

860
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:58,640
Speaker 5: world where they started with I don't know, lizards or

861
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 5: something and just sort of worked their way up to

862
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 5: more human like creatures and not just having babies, but

863
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 5: having generations in space, and so that by now we

864
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 5: would have this big corpus of data on reliable effects

865
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 5: on going to space and microgravity on every stage of development. Right.

866
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:19,920
Speaker 5: And by the way, you know, we usually often when

867
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 5: this comes up, to the extent it comes up at all,

868
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 5: we talked just about can you have a baby, But

869
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 5: of course, in order to have a sustaining settlement, that

870
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 5: baby has to be able to grow up to have babies,

871
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:30,080
Speaker 5: and so that means they have to get through every

872
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:33,719
Speaker 5: stage of development successfully as to their gam metes. Right. So,

873
00:40:34,280 --> 00:40:36,279
Speaker 5: you know, we don't have that data. What we do

874
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 5: have is a pile of different experiments from you know,

875
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,520
Speaker 5: different agencies, done on different stations for different amounts of time,

876
00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:45,239
Speaker 5: on different creatures, and it's very hard to look at

877
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 5: all this and resolve a picture other than a big shrug.

878
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:51,920
Speaker 5: I will say, there have been cases where bad stuff happened,

879
00:40:51,920 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 5: but it's literally a situation where you're talking like, we

880
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 5: have data from a rat and it didn't go well

881
00:40:56,640 --> 00:40:58,600
Speaker 5: for that rat, and it's sort of like, what can

882
00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:02,160
Speaker 5: you extrapolate from this meaningful? So I would say, you know,

883
00:41:02,200 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 5: you're kind of in the position of saying, well, at

884
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 5: least a priori, there seem to be a lot of

885
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 5: reasons to be really really scared, a lot of reasons

886
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 5: to say I wouldn't want anyone having a baby in space.

887
00:41:11,600 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 5: So you know, we talked about bone loss stuff. We

888
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:16,280
Speaker 5: don't know what that does to developing kids, let babies,

889
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 5: let alone like teenagers. The atmosphere in space is really

890
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 5: not like Earth's because it's actually very hard, at least

891
00:41:22,760 --> 00:41:25,400
Speaker 5: on the ISS to reproduce an earth like atmosphere. So

892
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 5: it's very high in carbon for example, very high in carbonocity,

893
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 5: much higher than anywhere on Earth. And there are probably

894
00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:32,799
Speaker 5: also like subtle outgassings from different pieces of equipment. We

895
00:41:32,920 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 5: tolerate higher levels of this stuff because people aren't there

896
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:37,879
Speaker 5: that long, but we don't know what the effect is,

897
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 5: you know, to just depend on what kind of artificial

898
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 5: atmosphere you're able to create. You know, another thing you

899
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:44,440
Speaker 5: mentioned a second ago that you know, maybe in Mars

900
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 5: gravity people will be taller, and that's like a sci

901
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 5: fi thing, but actually we don't. You know, the bodies

902
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 5: are weird, right, They're made of all these tiny nanomachines

903
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:55,320
Speaker 5: that have evolved over four billion years. It's possible the

904
00:41:55,360 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 5: response will be something totally unexpected to being in that

905
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 5: microgravity environment, or nothing at all.

906
00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: We just don't know, face melting, for example.

907
00:42:02,560 --> 00:42:05,320
Speaker 5: I'm up to giving it a sixty percent chance.

908
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,200
Speaker 1: All right, Zach. But this is a very highbrow answer.

909
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:09,560
Speaker 1: I was asking a much more lowbrow question, which is

910
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 1: essentially like, do we have any data? Has anybody done it?

911
00:42:12,800 --> 00:42:13,360
Speaker 1: In space?

912
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 5: Nobody has done Well, there's a family dispute about this.

913
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:19,080
Speaker 5: I should say, let me sketch the parameters of the dispute,

914
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 5: and then Kelly can say something wrong. So the thing

915
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:25,120
Speaker 5: we absolutely agree on is nobody knows. It's not like

916
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:27,839
Speaker 5: there is someone with you know, pictures you can look

917
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 5: upon the Internet. And then the question is like probabilities,

918
00:42:30,719 --> 00:42:33,080
Speaker 5: and I would rate the probability is quite low, and

919
00:42:33,120 --> 00:42:35,160
Speaker 5: I'm happy to explain that. But let me just say

920
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 5: it's quite low, whereas Kelly thinks the odds are at

921
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:39,360
Speaker 5: least I don't know where we are. I'm at like

922
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 5: one to five percent that it's happened.

923
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:45,439
Speaker 6: I don't know what percent I'm at, but I don't

924
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 6: know a coward's answer. See, okay, fifty to sixty percent.

925
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:51,319
Speaker 1: Wow, who are we talking about here?

926
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 6: There has been a husband and wife pair, So they

927
00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 6: got married on the sly, didn't tell NASA, and then

928
00:42:56,920 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 6: they went up on the shuttle. Zach argues that they're

929
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:03,839
Speaker 6: in a like tiny area, Like you know, they've got

930
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:05,520
Speaker 6: about as much space as you would in a bus,

931
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 6: and there's like six other.

932
00:43:06,520 --> 00:43:07,319
Speaker 3: People on the crew.

933
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:08,960
Speaker 6: It's not like there's a lot of options for them

934
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 6: to sneak off and not be seen and not be

935
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 6: caught by the cameras and blah blah blah. But I

936
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 6: gotta say, man, if I was on a crew and

937
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:18,879
Speaker 6: there was a married couple, I would be like, I

938
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:20,040
Speaker 6: just want you to know that I'm going to be

939
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:22,239
Speaker 6: on the upper deck for about.

940
00:43:22,960 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 3: You would make it so I would make it so awkward.

941
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,480
Speaker 5: But they keep coming up to them and being like,

942
00:43:28,600 --> 00:43:31,880
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna tell you that door closes. I'm not

943
00:43:31,880 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 5: saying anything.

944
00:43:34,080 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 6: Anyway, And you know, and there have been opportunities, but

945
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 6: you know, I think Zach would would argue, yeah, you know,

946
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:43,359
Speaker 6: of course you don't have to be married to have sex.

947
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:45,960
Speaker 6: Zach would argue that there's a lot like it's cramp spaces,

948
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:47,719
Speaker 6: there's a lot of people there, there's a lot of

949
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:49,280
Speaker 6: surveillance equipment.

950
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 3: It would be hard to get any privacy.

951
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 6: And also, these people are super concerned about their careers

952
00:43:55,560 --> 00:43:57,920
Speaker 6: and if they get caught doing something like that in space,

953
00:43:58,160 --> 00:43:59,880
Speaker 6: they're not going to get sent up again. And so

954
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:04,280
Speaker 6: these like highly career oriented people might not be willing

955
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:07,279
Speaker 6: to risk their jobs. But you know, I'd say, I

956
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 6: went to grad school to study animal behavior, and it

957
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,839
Speaker 6: would blow my mind to find out that no one

958
00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:17,239
Speaker 6: has taken advantage of, you know, being able to have

959
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:18,000
Speaker 6: sex in space.

960
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:20,719
Speaker 1: Well, it seemed to me like an important science frontier.

961
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:23,080
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody's got to figure this out for the

962
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: future of humanity, right, I mean, if we are going

963
00:44:25,280 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 1: to ever live in space, then that's going to be

964
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,960
Speaker 1: a necessary part of activity out there in space, all right,

965
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:33,879
Speaker 1: So I want to dig more into these questions about

966
00:44:33,920 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 1: what life would actually be like in space, what it's

967
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:38,959
Speaker 1: like to go to the bathroom where we might actually live,

968
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:42,280
Speaker 1: is it legal? And can you eat people in space?

969
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 1: But first we have to take another quick break. When

970
00:44:49,200 --> 00:44:50,920
Speaker 1: you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth or

971
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 1: enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably not

972
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite.

973
00:44:58,160 --> 00:45:00,800
Speaker 1: But the people in the dairy industry are. US Dairy

974
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse

975
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:07,719
Speaker 1: gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working

976
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste,

977
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:14,359
Speaker 1: conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water,

978
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,479
Speaker 1: for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four

979
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 1: times the same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes

980
00:45:21,080 --> 00:45:23,880
Speaker 1: the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US Dairy

981
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:27,640
Speaker 1: tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn

982
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: the methane from maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns,

983
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: and electric cars. So the next time you grab a

984
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:35,759
Speaker 1: slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone. Know

985
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 1: that dairy farmers and processors around the country are using

986
00:45:38,520 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense

987
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:44,879
Speaker 1: dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit

988
00:45:44,960 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 1: usdairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.

989
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:51,200
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1014
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Speaker 10: There are children, friends, and families walking, riding on passing

1015
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Speaker 10: the roads every day. Remember they are real people with

1016
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1017
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1019
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Speaker 1: Okay, so we are back and we're talking about the

1020
00:47:29,640 --> 00:47:32,960
Speaker 1: nitty gritty of living in space. A lot of people

1021
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 1: think of space as a fantasya land where everything can

1022
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: come true, where life in space solves all the problems

1023
00:47:38,680 --> 00:47:41,399
Speaker 1: of life on Earth. But Zach and Kelly are here

1024
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: to tell us that it's messy and gooey and that

1025
00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:46,440
Speaker 1: your face might or might not melt. Nobody knows.

1026
00:47:47,160 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 3: Okay, sure, so tell us more.

1027
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:52,399
Speaker 1: About what life might be like in space. You guys

1028
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: really dug into the details. I was amazed you had

1029
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 1: such a careful analysis of like toilets, tell us about

1030
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: what it's like to use the toilet in So.

1031
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 6: When you read biographies or you hear interviews with astronauts,

1032
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 6: the question that they tell you that they get asked

1033
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:09,240
Speaker 6: the most is what is it like using the restroom

1034
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 6: in space? So it is apparently a very deeply human

1035
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:14,840
Speaker 6: thing to want to know what it is like to

1036
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:17,680
Speaker 6: use the restroom in microgravity. And one thing we can

1037
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:20,920
Speaker 6: tell you across all of the different vehicles that we

1038
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:24,759
Speaker 6: studied is that it has never been pleasant. So like

1039
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 6: on the Apollo and the Gemini missions, they literally, you know,

1040
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,320
Speaker 6: for number two, they had a bag that they would

1041
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:33,880
Speaker 6: attach to their heinknees and it had a little like

1042
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 6: adhesive rim so it would stick a little bit better.

1043
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:38,800
Speaker 6: And then it had a little thing where you a

1044
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 6: little fingercut they called it, so you could stick your

1045
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 6: finger in there because without gravity, nothing falls on its own,

1046
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 6: so you'd have to nudge it in the right direction. Yes,

1047
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 6: so gross, and then they'd have to put antibacterial tablets

1048
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:52,920
Speaker 6: in there and sort of squish them around to make

1049
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:55,400
Speaker 6: sure that like, you know, the bag the feces was

1050
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:58,080
Speaker 6: being held in wouldn't explode in a horrible scent, would

1051
00:48:58,120 --> 00:49:03,879
Speaker 6: like go everywhere. In fact, Frank Borman was so uncomfortable

1052
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:05,799
Speaker 6: with the procedure, which also had to happen in a

1053
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 6: super tiny space with the guy who you were in

1054
00:49:08,640 --> 00:49:11,440
Speaker 6: space with, like literally almost right next to you, that

1055
00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 6: he tried to make it for a full fourteen days

1056
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 6: without going number two. And I think he made it

1057
00:49:18,719 --> 00:49:22,759
Speaker 6: today eight and then he said to Jim Lovell, I

1058
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:25,840
Speaker 6: gotta go, man. And so anyway, it was pretty gross.

1059
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 6: So now instead of fingercuts and baggies with adhesives, we

1060
00:49:29,600 --> 00:49:32,800
Speaker 6: have vacuum systems, and you usually have one for urine

1061
00:49:32,920 --> 00:49:35,720
Speaker 6: and one for feces, but even then you lose stuff.

1062
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 6: So like again, every vehicle that we read about, there

1063
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 6: were stories about escapees sort of floating off into the

1064
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:45,120
Speaker 6: habitat on the shuttle. This happened so frequently they became

1065
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 6: called brown trout floating around. And you know, these systems

1066
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 6: break regularly and need to be fixed and are pretty disgusting.

1067
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:56,920
Speaker 6: I think Patty Whitson had a story about needing to

1068
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:59,280
Speaker 6: put a glove on and sort of push the waist

1069
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:01,359
Speaker 6: down to make you know, room to get it all

1070
00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:04,520
Speaker 6: in the bag. So it's disgusting and we haven't figured

1071
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 6: it all out yet. So on the one of the

1072
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:11,720
Speaker 6: recent SpaceX missions there was problem with the toilet as well.

1073
00:50:12,080 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 3: This is one of the ones where it was.

1074
00:50:13,040 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 6: A bunch of tourists going around inspiration for something like that.

1075
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:18,719
Speaker 6: It was reported that there were toilet problems. This is

1076
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:20,840
Speaker 6: just a hard thing to deal with, but it should

1077
00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:23,120
Speaker 6: get easier when you have some gravity to sort of

1078
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:27,600
Speaker 6: nudge the brown trout downstream. But yeah, it's probably going

1079
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:30,319
Speaker 6: to remain sort of a messy process wherever we are

1080
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:30,760
Speaker 6: in space.

1081
00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:33,320
Speaker 1: But is this like a frontier issue where the first

1082
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:36,080
Speaker 1: generation has sort of a harder life than you know,

1083
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: the wealthy folks back at home, and then eventually things

1084
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:41,720
Speaker 1: build up and life on Mars is a comfortable, pleasant

1085
00:50:41,719 --> 00:50:44,480
Speaker 1: bathroom experience or is this something that's always going to

1086
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: be a feature of living out of the well of

1087
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:46,799
Speaker 1: the Earth.

1088
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 6: I think the first generation is going to have to

1089
00:50:49,000 --> 00:50:52,800
Speaker 6: spend quite a bit of time interacting intimately with human

1090
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:55,279
Speaker 6: waste of all forms, because we're going to need to

1091
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,480
Speaker 6: learn to recycle that. So Zach mentioned already that there's

1092
00:50:58,840 --> 00:51:01,759
Speaker 6: very little carbon on the Moon, so the carbon that

1093
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 6: your body releases, you're probably going to want to find

1094
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:07,960
Speaker 6: some way to recycle that back into your garden and

1095
00:51:08,080 --> 00:51:11,279
Speaker 6: maybe eventually will sort of perfect this process. And you know,

1096
00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 6: nowadays waste gets treated and most of us don't have

1097
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,360
Speaker 6: to see or experience it like at all. But I

1098
00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 6: think initially you're probably going to be pretty intimate with

1099
00:51:20,040 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 6: your wasste until we figure out nicer systems for handling

1100
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:23,440
Speaker 6: this stuff.

1101
00:51:23,560 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 3: Was there anything you wanted to add to.

1102
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:27,120
Speaker 5: That, Zach, I would just say to directly answer the question,

1103
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:30,760
Speaker 5: Like the wacky like poop stories are all from microgravity.

1104
00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 5: I think plausibly on Mars, your waist knows to go

1105
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:35,839
Speaker 5: in the right direction. That's all you need, you know,

1106
00:51:35,960 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 5: like like so it'll go a little more slowly. But

1107
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 5: I would actually bet you'd be fine with like one

1108
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:43,560
Speaker 5: percent gravity. You really just need you need your poop

1109
00:51:43,600 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 5: to know which way to go, and the vacuum is

1110
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:47,920
Speaker 5: just an imperfect way to do that because you have

1111
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:49,680
Speaker 5: to have like a part of the machine that is,

1112
00:51:49,960 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 5: you know, providing that vacuum which you don't want the

1113
00:51:52,719 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 5: poop to go into. Uh So, like for solid waste,

1114
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 5: you have to have a net, and so you can

1115
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:00,400
Speaker 5: imagine like what complexity that adds to like waste management

1116
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 5: you have to like bag it and stew it and so.

1117
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 5: But probably I would guess on a plausible Mars setup

1118
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 5: where you've got some kind of gardening and waste management setup,

1119
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 5: probably it's not as big a deal. The bigger problem

1120
00:52:12,239 --> 00:52:14,320
Speaker 5: will just be that, like you know, on Earth, of

1121
00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:18,240
Speaker 5: your toilet breaks down, you can just go outside, whereas

1122
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:19,959
Speaker 5: on market it better work.

1123
00:52:20,440 --> 00:52:22,400
Speaker 3: I think that's less of an option in the city.

1124
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:23,919
Speaker 3: But in the country where we live.

1125
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:26,839
Speaker 5: I've seen some stuff in San Francisco. I don't know.

1126
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:32,040
Speaker 1: Urban decay. Well, let's get a little bit more concrete

1127
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:34,720
Speaker 1: about what we're talking about. You know, are we talking

1128
00:52:34,719 --> 00:52:37,319
Speaker 1: about living in space stations or the moon. Let's walk

1129
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:39,400
Speaker 1: through the sort of the pros and cons of each scenario.

1130
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:43,480
Speaker 1: Should we aim to be building our own habitats that

1131
00:52:43,520 --> 00:52:46,799
Speaker 1: float in space like in space stations, huge rotating rings?

1132
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:47,840
Speaker 1: Are those plausible?

1133
00:52:48,080 --> 00:52:50,319
Speaker 5: So, just to give a little context, the idea of

1134
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:53,400
Speaker 5: giant rotating space stations has been kicked around in detail

1135
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:56,239
Speaker 5: at least since the nineteen twenties, but it really became

1136
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 5: a big thing in the seventies. So if you've ever

1137
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:00,759
Speaker 5: seen these images of a city around the rim of

1138
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:03,840
Speaker 5: a giant wheel that like like the most awesome space

1139
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:07,719
Speaker 5: station images, there could be those ten to descend from

1140
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:12,440
Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies. And the reason they were arguably plausible,

1141
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,360
Speaker 5: we say, is that if you look at the seventies

1142
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:19,000
Speaker 5: in particular, the price of going to space has fallen drastically,

1143
00:53:19,000 --> 00:53:21,360
Speaker 5: by some measures, fallen by something like ninety nine percent

1144
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:24,560
Speaker 5: since the late fifties, from like roughly nineteen fifty seven

1145
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:27,320
Speaker 5: to nineteen seventy two. So if you plot that as continuing,

1146
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 5: it's going to get a lot cheaper. Meanwhile, there are

1147
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:33,720
Speaker 5: these huge concerns about environmental damage. So there are books

1148
00:53:33,760 --> 00:53:36,160
Speaker 5: like The Population Bomb and The Limits to Growth, which

1149
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,759
Speaker 5: are predicting I think the Population Bomb, like the by

1150
00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:40,839
Speaker 5: the eighties, hundreds of millions of people will be dying

1151
00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:43,480
Speaker 5: of famine. Obviously we know now they failed to anticipate

1152
00:53:43,480 --> 00:53:44,839
Speaker 5: a bunch of things, But put that in your head

1153
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:46,920
Speaker 5: as you think about this, and then third that there

1154
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:49,360
Speaker 5: are no serious renewables on the horizon, right, I mean

1155
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:53,080
Speaker 5: there's there's hydropower, but not enough to offset things, and

1156
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 5: that you know, nuclear is starting to look like a

1157
00:53:55,160 --> 00:53:58,080
Speaker 5: political problem. And so there's this idea that gets floated,

1158
00:53:58,080 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 5: most notably by Gerard K. O'Neil, that well, what if

1159
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:02,640
Speaker 5: we just went to space, we kind of solve everything.

1160
00:54:02,680 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 5: You get access to limitless solar power all the time

1161
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 5: at high intensity. You could do all your farming up there.

1162
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:10,840
Speaker 5: You can completely control the ecosystem. We can beam excess

1163
00:54:10,840 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 5: power down to the energy needing Earth. And so it's

1164
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:16,120
Speaker 5: a sort of third way if you don't like these

1165
00:54:16,120 --> 00:54:19,359
Speaker 5: sort of environmental doomers, but you're also seriously worried about

1166
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:22,360
Speaker 5: this stuff. Space is the way out with the added bonus,

1167
00:54:22,400 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 5: since again it's the like early seventies that you can

1168
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,320
Speaker 5: kind of check out of society and try out new governments,

1169
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:28,799
Speaker 5: you know, So it also appeals to a sort of

1170
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:33,800
Speaker 5: counterculture impulse. The problem is it's basically just a bad idea.

1171
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:36,680
Speaker 5: Like so, a big problem about building these things is

1172
00:54:36,719 --> 00:54:38,960
Speaker 5: you have to get an extraordinary amount of mass, probably

1173
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:42,279
Speaker 5: millions of tons, into a point in space somewhere just

1174
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:44,480
Speaker 5: to have a relatively small number of people, and so

1175
00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 5: you say, well, where's that coming from, the usual answer.

1176
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:49,040
Speaker 5: I think O'Neil's answer was the Moon. Other people have

1177
00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:51,799
Speaker 5: proposed asteroids. So let's take the moon. The way that

1178
00:54:51,880 --> 00:54:53,520
Speaker 5: you do this, and there are a number of proposals

1179
00:54:53,560 --> 00:54:55,799
Speaker 5: that say this is you build a mass driver on

1180
00:54:55,920 --> 00:54:59,120
Speaker 5: the Moon, and for your less you know, dorky audience,

1181
00:54:59,640 --> 00:55:01,799
Speaker 5: it's it's basically a train, if you want to visualize it,

1182
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:03,840
Speaker 5: like a maglev train that points up and eventually the

1183
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:06,480
Speaker 5: track just goes away, and so you can fling stuff

1184
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:08,560
Speaker 5: of it just using energy. You can fling into space

1185
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:10,799
Speaker 5: because the Moon is low gravity and has no atmosphere,

1186
00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:14,480
Speaker 5: and then your space station construction site catches this stuff

1187
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 5: into kind of giant catchers mint and takes this sort

1188
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:20,239
Speaker 5: of like pure mass, just stuff from the surface of

1189
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 5: the Moon and converts it to suburbs around a giant

1190
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:25,160
Speaker 5: space wheel. And so that the idea that this is

1191
00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:27,520
Speaker 5: going to be easier than just staying on the Moon

1192
00:55:27,960 --> 00:55:30,560
Speaker 5: or even going to Mars is just kind of crazy.

1193
00:55:30,760 --> 00:55:32,840
Speaker 1: It does seem crazy to take the Moon apart and

1194
00:55:32,880 --> 00:55:36,000
Speaker 1: then reassemble something which is just basically doing the job

1195
00:55:36,000 --> 00:55:37,160
Speaker 1: the moon is already doing.

1196
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, So to say why smart people believe this,

1197
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:43,320
Speaker 5: I do think, you know, part of it's that beguiling

1198
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:46,319
Speaker 5: promise of the limitless energy. There's also like, you know,

1199
00:55:46,640 --> 00:55:48,600
Speaker 5: suppose it is the case that you can't have babies

1200
00:55:48,600 --> 00:55:50,400
Speaker 5: on Mars, like that forty percent gravity just won't do

1201
00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:53,319
Speaker 5: it. It causes some weird metabolic thing who knows, Well, then

1202
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:55,040
Speaker 5: you need full gravity, and then if you really need

1203
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 5: to get off Earth, you have no option in the

1204
00:55:57,280 --> 00:55:59,960
Speaker 5: Solar system, so you have to build these space wheels.

1205
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:02,759
Speaker 5: There are other purported benefits like that you could manufacture,

1206
00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:05,439
Speaker 5: so for people who don't remember high school physics, as

1207
00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:07,319
Speaker 5: you walk up the axis, like if you walk a

1208
00:56:07,320 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 5: stairwell from the outermost floor of your spinning wheel to

1209
00:56:10,560 --> 00:56:13,960
Speaker 5: the middle, gravity falls off linearly, so you can select

1210
00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:17,440
Speaker 5: between zero and full Earth gravity or even extra Earth gravity.

1211
00:56:17,640 --> 00:56:19,200
Speaker 5: So there's these ideas that it would be like a

1212
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 5: manufacturing thing, but like the idea that would be economically

1213
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:24,440
Speaker 5: plausible just seems sort of z any to us, And

1214
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:26,480
Speaker 5: so it's like an extra hard version of a thing

1215
00:56:26,520 --> 00:56:29,240
Speaker 5: we already can't do, So it just seems unlikely.

1216
00:56:29,520 --> 00:56:32,239
Speaker 1: So then what about colonies on the Moon. The Moon

1217
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 1: has access to a lot of sunlight, and there's lots

1218
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:37,400
Speaker 1: of raw materials there. What's the issue with living on

1219
00:56:37,440 --> 00:56:39,520
Speaker 1: the moon? Where on the moon is a good place

1220
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:41,239
Speaker 1: to build your space home.

1221
00:56:41,600 --> 00:56:46,200
Speaker 6: So the Moon has very small patches that are probably

1222
00:56:46,239 --> 00:56:48,680
Speaker 6: what countries are going to fight over when we start

1223
00:56:48,760 --> 00:56:51,480
Speaker 6: heading out to the Moon. So on the poles you

1224
00:56:51,520 --> 00:56:54,400
Speaker 6: get areas where you have these craters, and inside of

1225
00:56:54,440 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 6: the crater there's water that's frozen and it stays frozen

1226
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 6: because it never gets exposed to sunlight. If it did

1227
00:57:01,680 --> 00:57:04,480
Speaker 6: get exposed to sunlight, it would you know, vaporize and

1228
00:57:04,719 --> 00:57:06,360
Speaker 6: end up in the vacuum of space, never to be

1229
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:10,000
Speaker 6: recovered by us again. But it's frozen, so it stays there.

1230
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,799
Speaker 6: And additionally, those rims, if you put solar panels on them,

1231
00:57:14,120 --> 00:57:18,040
Speaker 6: you could get sunlight almost all the time, Whereas if

1232
00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:21,200
Speaker 6: you're at the equator, you get two earth weeks of

1233
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 6: daylight and then you get two earth weeks of nighttime,

1234
00:57:25,640 --> 00:57:26,680
Speaker 6: and you would.

1235
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:29,240
Speaker 3: Need an incredible.

1236
00:57:28,400 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 6: Number of battery packs to be able to store enough

1237
00:57:31,760 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 6: solar power to get you through that. But if you're

1238
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:37,400
Speaker 6: at these areas where you can put your solar panels

1239
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 6: up it almost always gets sunlight, then a lot of

1240
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:43,600
Speaker 6: your energy needs have been reduced, and so these are

1241
00:57:43,640 --> 00:57:45,760
Speaker 6: probably the spots where you'd want to be, where you

1242
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:48,440
Speaker 6: can get water and where you can get some sunlight.

1243
00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:50,600
Speaker 6: But I'll note that that water still has some like

1244
00:57:51,040 --> 00:57:53,200
Speaker 6: chemicals and stuff you can't drink in there, and it's

1245
00:57:53,200 --> 00:57:55,640
Speaker 6: going to be very hard to extract because at the

1246
00:57:55,680 --> 00:57:58,760
Speaker 6: temperatures you find in these craters, water is more like

1247
00:57:58,840 --> 00:58:01,560
Speaker 6: a rock than anything else, So it's going to be

1248
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:03,440
Speaker 6: difficult to get your hands on. You're gonna have to

1249
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 6: clean it up, and then you're gonna have to recycle

1250
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:09,680
Speaker 6: it very efficiently because there's not a lot in there.

1251
00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:12,120
Speaker 6: So what was the lake that we looked up, Zach

1252
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:13,000
Speaker 6: Sartus Lake.

1253
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:17,440
Speaker 5: Sartus Lake, I think was it Alabama or Minister.

1254
00:58:18,080 --> 00:58:21,240
Speaker 6: Yeah, so there's this human made lake called Sartus Lake

1255
00:58:21,560 --> 00:58:24,440
Speaker 6: that has the same amount of water as what we

1256
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:25,640
Speaker 6: predict is on.

1257
00:58:25,640 --> 00:58:26,360
Speaker 3: All of the Moon.

1258
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:31,000
Speaker 6: And so you can imagine pretty quickly if you don't

1259
00:58:31,080 --> 00:58:33,320
Speaker 6: use that carefully, running out of it, and so you're

1260
00:58:33,360 --> 00:58:35,480
Speaker 6: going to need to recycle it. And this is why

1261
00:58:35,520 --> 00:58:37,800
Speaker 6: we think proposals for setting the Moon up as a

1262
00:58:37,840 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 6: gas station. Are you know, sort of robbing the future.

1263
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 6: So if you take the water and you split it

1264
00:58:44,120 --> 00:58:46,920
Speaker 6: and you use the oxygen and the hydrogen for rocket fuel,

1265
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 6: you can't bathe with it or drink it anymore. It

1266
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:51,520
Speaker 6: gets lost in the vacuum of space, and there's not

1267
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:53,840
Speaker 6: that much there to begin with. So anyway, those are

1268
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:55,600
Speaker 6: the places on the Moon that you'd probably go to.

1269
00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 6: There's not a lot of them, but the Moon remains awful,

1270
00:58:59,200 --> 00:59:02,360
Speaker 6: you know, even at the poles. The temperatures aren't ideal.

1271
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:05,760
Speaker 6: But perhaps even more importantly, there's regolith everywhere. And the

1272
00:59:05,840 --> 00:59:11,080
Speaker 6: regolith is like this thick layer of super jagged dust

1273
00:59:11,160 --> 00:59:13,680
Speaker 6: and glass that clings to everything.

1274
00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 3: It's electrically charged.

1275
00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:17,840
Speaker 6: It clings and if you breathe it, we think it's

1276
00:59:17,920 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 6: possible that it could scar your lungs over time and

1277
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:23,240
Speaker 6: create something similar to stone grinder's disease on Earth. So

1278
00:59:23,240 --> 00:59:25,120
Speaker 6: you're gonna have to go to great lengths to make

1279
00:59:25,160 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 6: sure it doesn't get in your habitat, which again is

1280
00:59:27,640 --> 00:59:30,720
Speaker 6: going to be really hard because it clings to everything.

1281
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:32,880
Speaker 1: And that sounds like lung melting, which sounds pretty bad.

1282
00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:33,240
Speaker 5: Yeah.

1283
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:35,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, so your face is gonna melt and your lungs

1284
00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:35,920
Speaker 3: are gonna.

1285
00:59:35,640 --> 00:59:40,880
Speaker 1: Melt, so most of the Moon is totally inhospitable, and

1286
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:43,960
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of it is somewhat less inhospitable.

1287
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:47,320
Speaker 6: There's also the caves and the tubes on the Moon,

1288
00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:49,200
Speaker 6: which IM gonna let Zach tell you about because he

1289
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:50,520
Speaker 6: really geeks out about these.

1290
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, sure, so, like you know, again at the

1291
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:56,200
Speaker 5: intersection of still a bad idea, but it's super awesome.

1292
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 5: The Moon has lava tubes. It's not really very seismically

1293
00:59:59,800 --> 01:00:02,520
Speaker 5: ac of anymore, but it was in the past, and

1294
01:00:02,560 --> 01:00:06,680
Speaker 5: so people of Earth may know that. If you go

1295
01:00:06,720 --> 01:00:10,240
Speaker 5: to Hawaii, you can see lava tubes, these huge underground

1296
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:14,720
Speaker 5: caves that are like sort of cylindrical, and we talk

1297
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:16,920
Speaker 5: about the process by which these are made, but very

1298
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 5: loosely speaking, you can imagine lava pushes through forms this

1299
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:21,920
Speaker 5: sort of vein shape and then goes on its way

1300
01:00:21,960 --> 01:00:25,240
Speaker 5: and leaves behind this giant cave. Now you can imagine

1301
01:00:25,280 --> 01:00:27,840
Speaker 5: if that process occurs somewhere where there's only one six

1302
01:00:27,880 --> 01:00:30,520
Speaker 5: as much gravity, you get a much bigger cave. And

1303
01:00:30,560 --> 01:00:32,880
Speaker 5: there are some estimates that you could have lava tubes

1304
01:00:32,920 --> 01:00:35,640
Speaker 5: on the Moon that are hundreds of times larger than

1305
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:37,680
Speaker 5: anything on Earth. Right, So if you're going to pick

1306
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:41,480
Speaker 5: a sort of dream mission for pure awesomeness, sending a

1307
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:45,160
Speaker 5: little speedlunker bot to one of these caves to just

1308
01:00:45,320 --> 01:00:47,440
Speaker 5: look is probably about as cool as you can get.

1309
01:00:47,440 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 5: And it just happens to be on our closest neighbor

1310
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:52,240
Speaker 5: in space. And these are desirable potentially for a space

1311
01:00:52,240 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 5: settlement because one of the deep problems of space element

1312
01:00:55,080 --> 01:00:57,320
Speaker 5: is essentially you have to create a little bubble that

1313
01:00:57,440 --> 01:01:00,240
Speaker 5: is protected from everything around you. If there's a pre

1314
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:02,880
Speaker 5: existing tube, you're not completely predicted. But one of the

1315
01:01:02,920 --> 01:01:04,600
Speaker 5: ideas is you could go in there with some kind

1316
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 5: of spray on ceilant right or inflatable and just press

1317
01:01:08,240 --> 01:01:10,800
Speaker 5: it against those walls. And the cool thing about that

1318
01:01:10,920 --> 01:01:13,120
Speaker 5: is you've created a really big bubble. You might be

1319
01:01:13,160 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 5: talking about like literally thousands tens i I have to

1320
01:01:16,360 --> 01:01:18,520
Speaker 5: look at the numbers, but many words of magnitude more

1321
01:01:18,840 --> 01:01:21,760
Speaker 5: than like a habitat that is built and once you

1322
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:24,120
Speaker 5: seal it, you can just build in there, right, You

1323
01:01:24,120 --> 01:01:25,760
Speaker 5: could just build a house. It doesn't have to be

1324
01:01:25,760 --> 01:01:29,000
Speaker 5: designed for space other than in case of danger. So

1325
01:01:29,080 --> 01:01:31,600
Speaker 5: you know, those are potentially extraordinarily valuable yeah.

1326
01:01:31,800 --> 01:01:33,480
Speaker 6: It also saves you from needing to deal with the

1327
01:01:33,560 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 6: regolith because you're inside of a lava tube where that

1328
01:01:36,600 --> 01:01:39,120
Speaker 6: has all been sort of like turned into a crust

1329
01:01:39,160 --> 01:01:42,000
Speaker 6: by the lava, and it saves you from temperature swings.

1330
01:01:42,160 --> 01:01:44,080
Speaker 6: It's just there's lots of reasons why it would be great,

1331
01:01:44,120 --> 01:01:45,520
Speaker 6: but we're not good at moonwalking.

1332
01:01:45,600 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 3: Moon splunking is another level.

1333
01:01:47,760 --> 01:01:49,840
Speaker 1: All of the views from underground are not quite as

1334
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:52,120
Speaker 1: spectacular as you were suggesting earlier. Kelly.

1335
01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:55,160
Speaker 6: Well, but you're gonna be covered by dirt anyway, right,

1336
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:57,680
Speaker 6: and so you know you might as well let the

1337
01:01:57,760 --> 01:02:00,280
Speaker 6: tube protect you from radiation as opposed to need to

1338
01:02:00,320 --> 01:02:03,000
Speaker 6: pile regolith bags on top of your habitat.

1339
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:05,840
Speaker 1: And then what about Mars? In your book, you say

1340
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:07,960
Speaker 1: the only way you would believe that Mars would be

1341
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:10,720
Speaker 1: a good idea would be quote if you had no idea,

1342
01:02:10,880 --> 01:02:16,080
Speaker 1: how thoroughly, incredibly, impossibly horrible Mars is? Why is Mars

1343
01:02:16,120 --> 01:02:17,400
Speaker 1: it such a horrible place to live?

1344
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 5: I should say Mars is? We do argue that it's

1345
01:02:19,560 --> 01:02:23,160
Speaker 5: the least bad option, but while being the least bad option,

1346
01:02:23,200 --> 01:02:25,880
Speaker 5: it is a bad option. And so just to kind

1347
01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:27,720
Speaker 5: of go down the line, quickly can I just say

1348
01:02:27,720 --> 01:02:30,040
Speaker 5: the good stuff about Mars and then ruin it. So

1349
01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:33,200
Speaker 5: the biggest virtue of Mars is that, you know, the Moon,

1350
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:36,720
Speaker 5: like we said, is pouring carbon, and Mars basically has

1351
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:38,680
Speaker 5: all the stuff you'd need. You know, if you've imagined

1352
01:02:38,760 --> 01:02:41,880
Speaker 5: advanced civilization that can just perfectly move around elements however

1353
01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:44,560
Speaker 5: they like because they have infinite energy and science and whatever.

1354
01:02:44,840 --> 01:02:47,720
Speaker 5: The moon has all the stuff, right, And in addition,

1355
01:02:47,880 --> 01:02:50,080
Speaker 5: it has an atmosphere. It's not much of an atmosphere,

1356
01:02:50,080 --> 01:02:52,600
Speaker 5: it's about half a percent to a percent of Earth,

1357
01:02:52,680 --> 01:02:54,600
Speaker 5: is very low pressure, but that atmosphere is made of

1358
01:02:54,600 --> 01:02:58,960
Speaker 5: carbon dioxide, right, So there's your carbon and oxygen. Humans

1359
01:02:59,040 --> 01:03:00,920
Speaker 5: just can't get enough of it. We love it, so

1360
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 5: that's pretty huge. The downsides are one, it's really far away, right.

1361
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:10,680
Speaker 5: A typical proposal is six months inbound. The only way

1362
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:13,280
Speaker 5: to really fix that is to have something more exotic,

1363
01:03:13,400 --> 01:03:15,880
Speaker 5: like a fission or fusion reactor. And even if you

1364
01:03:15,920 --> 01:03:18,120
Speaker 5: had that, you might still take the slow trip to concern,

1365
01:03:18,240 --> 01:03:20,400
Speaker 5: you know, to just you know, bring more stuff. But anyway,

1366
01:03:20,440 --> 01:03:23,240
Speaker 5: so it's far away, which means at the longest length

1367
01:03:23,280 --> 01:03:25,200
Speaker 5: it takes something like twenty minutes to send a signal

1368
01:03:25,240 --> 01:03:28,760
Speaker 5: each way, so forget live communication. I think the closest

1369
01:03:28,760 --> 01:03:30,640
Speaker 5: it's something like three minutes. So it's still pretty bad.

1370
01:03:30,920 --> 01:03:33,880
Speaker 5: So no live conversations with your loved ones ever. Again. Also,

1371
01:03:34,040 --> 01:03:36,560
Speaker 5: you know, the surface is still really nasty, and unlike

1372
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:39,120
Speaker 5: the Moon, it also has perchlorates, which are a hormone

1373
01:03:39,160 --> 01:03:43,120
Speaker 5: disrupting chemical, So you know, circling back to questions about reproduction,

1374
01:03:43,200 --> 01:03:45,800
Speaker 5: that would be interesting to find out what happens to

1375
01:03:45,880 --> 01:03:48,880
Speaker 5: like a teenager swimming in hormone disruptors. So that's bad.

1376
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 5: So one good thing is you have almost Earth like days.

1377
01:03:52,640 --> 01:03:54,960
Speaker 5: I think it's like twenty four point seven hours, so

1378
01:03:55,040 --> 01:03:58,720
Speaker 5: you do get sunlight. It's substantially dimmer than the sunlight

1379
01:03:58,760 --> 01:04:01,520
Speaker 5: of Earth. But the bigger problem from an energy standpoint

1380
01:04:01,680 --> 01:04:04,800
Speaker 5: is Mars has giant dust storms. Sometimes these dust storms

1381
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:06,600
Speaker 5: are so big. There's a story that one of the

1382
01:04:06,600 --> 01:04:11,080
Speaker 5: Mariner probes is going toward Mars and suddenly Mars looks

1383
01:04:11,120 --> 01:04:13,320
Speaker 5: like a flat surface, and it turns out what had

1384
01:04:13,320 --> 01:04:16,040
Speaker 5: happened is there was a worldwide dust storm. So you

1385
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:17,920
Speaker 5: try to imagine what that's like on the surface. It's

1386
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:20,920
Speaker 5: just like the sky is like biblical right, like no

1387
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 5: more sky for you, So forget your solar panels. You

1388
01:04:24,000 --> 01:04:27,120
Speaker 5: better have really good batteries or a nuclear reactor or

1389
01:04:27,200 --> 01:04:31,600
Speaker 5: something more exotic. And so you know, those are some

1390
01:04:31,680 --> 01:04:33,680
Speaker 5: of the problems. There's also the stuff we've discussed before,

1391
01:04:33,720 --> 01:04:36,760
Speaker 5: like microgravity and extra radiation. But you know, it is

1392
01:04:36,800 --> 01:04:39,000
Speaker 5: the best game in town. Everywhere is not just worse,

1393
01:04:39,040 --> 01:04:42,800
Speaker 5: but like wildly worse. So it is extraordinarily dangerous and bad,

1394
01:04:42,920 --> 01:04:46,479
Speaker 5: and there's not an obvious economic payoff, but everywhere else

1395
01:04:46,600 --> 01:04:47,000
Speaker 5: is worse.

1396
01:04:47,560 --> 01:04:50,560
Speaker 3: And Mars has a lot of water, and so that yeah,

1397
01:04:50,560 --> 01:04:51,120
Speaker 3: that's also good.

1398
01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:54,400
Speaker 5: Oh I'm sorry, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, So crucially, you know,

1399
01:04:54,440 --> 01:04:57,040
Speaker 5: the Moon has very little water. This is important to

1400
01:04:57,120 --> 01:04:58,880
Speaker 5: us because you read articles sometimes that you are like,

1401
01:04:58,920 --> 01:05:00,680
Speaker 5: what are we gonna do with all the water, Like

1402
01:05:00,720 --> 01:05:02,400
Speaker 5: it's like a resource in a video game you just

1403
01:05:02,440 --> 01:05:04,800
Speaker 5: have all you want. But Mars actually does have plenty

1404
01:05:04,800 --> 01:05:07,640
Speaker 5: of water, the poles of tons of water ice, and

1405
01:05:07,680 --> 01:05:09,720
Speaker 5: actually in most places on Mars it looks like if

1406
01:05:09,720 --> 01:05:12,160
Speaker 5: you dig down far enough, there's there's water in some form.

1407
01:05:12,400 --> 01:05:14,640
Speaker 5: So like when you put that all together, it's not

1408
01:05:14,720 --> 01:05:16,480
Speaker 5: just that you can drink and breathe like if you

1409
01:05:16,520 --> 01:05:20,120
Speaker 5: have carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, at least in principle, you

1410
01:05:20,200 --> 01:05:22,960
Speaker 5: can make a lot of the stuff humans need, including

1411
01:05:23,040 --> 01:05:26,320
Speaker 5: rocket propellant and like fuel cells and things. So you

1412
01:05:26,480 --> 01:05:30,240
Speaker 5: really have everything you need except like a reason to

1413
01:05:30,240 --> 01:05:32,040
Speaker 5: be there is the tricky part. At the cost it's

1414
01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:32,920
Speaker 5: going to be well.

1415
01:05:32,920 --> 01:05:35,280
Speaker 1: I also want to dig into the legal side of

1416
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,680
Speaker 1: the that's saying that quote divides we and eat them.

1417
01:05:39,080 --> 01:05:42,240
Speaker 1: What laws govern activities in space or on Mars.

1418
01:05:42,960 --> 01:05:46,840
Speaker 6: So since nineteen sixty seven, space has been governed by

1419
01:05:46,880 --> 01:05:49,360
Speaker 6: a United Nations treaty that goes by the shorter name

1420
01:05:49,440 --> 01:05:53,520
Speaker 6: the Outer Space Treaty. And it says a lot of stuff,

1421
01:05:53,520 --> 01:05:55,200
Speaker 6: and it says a lot of things vaguely, but for

1422
01:05:55,240 --> 01:05:58,600
Speaker 6: the purpose of space settlement, the most important points are

1423
01:05:58,920 --> 01:06:02,600
Speaker 6: no nation is allowed to appropriate any territory in space.

1424
01:06:02,880 --> 01:06:05,840
Speaker 6: But it also specifies that people come from somewhere and

1425
01:06:05,840 --> 01:06:08,600
Speaker 6: they are the responsibility of some nations. So you can't

1426
01:06:08,600 --> 01:06:11,640
Speaker 6: just say, like, okay, the US can't claim the south

1427
01:06:11,680 --> 01:06:13,680
Speaker 6: pole of the Moon, And some people will argue that

1428
01:06:13,840 --> 01:06:16,640
Speaker 6: like okay, but Elon Musk could because he's not a nation,

1429
01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:19,920
Speaker 6: he's just some guy. But according to the Outer Space treaty,

1430
01:06:20,240 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 6: he belongs to the US. The US is responsible for

1431
01:06:22,960 --> 01:06:25,720
Speaker 6: what he does up there, and so it's on the

1432
01:06:25,840 --> 01:06:28,680
Speaker 6: US if Elon Musk goes up there and says, I

1433
01:06:28,760 --> 01:06:32,919
Speaker 6: am creating Muscow and this is my new place to live,

1434
01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:36,080
Speaker 6: and so you're not allowed to appropriate the land. But

1435
01:06:36,160 --> 01:06:39,280
Speaker 6: here's where there's quite a bit of ambiguity. It's apparently

1436
01:06:39,400 --> 01:06:42,040
Speaker 6: unclear what you can do with the resources that are

1437
01:06:42,120 --> 01:06:46,080
Speaker 6: up there. So can Jeff Bezos go to those craters

1438
01:06:46,080 --> 01:06:48,960
Speaker 6: of eternal darkness where you can find water and extract

1439
01:06:49,000 --> 01:06:53,160
Speaker 6: the water and sell it to other people for rocket fuel?

1440
01:06:53,680 --> 01:06:57,400
Speaker 6: And the answer to that is it's not really provided

1441
01:06:57,400 --> 01:06:59,280
Speaker 6: in the Outer Space Treaty. And so countries are sort

1442
01:06:59,320 --> 01:07:02,080
Speaker 6: of coming up with if their interpretation of what the

1443
01:07:02,080 --> 01:07:06,360
Speaker 6: Outer Space Treaty means. And in the US, Obama passed

1444
01:07:06,400 --> 01:07:09,680
Speaker 6: an act that essentially said the United States, if our

1445
01:07:09,720 --> 01:07:12,640
Speaker 6: citizens go up there and extract resources and sell them,

1446
01:07:13,040 --> 01:07:16,280
Speaker 6: our interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty is that that's okay.

1447
01:07:17,120 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 6: And then Donald Trump released an executive order essentially saying

1448
01:07:21,240 --> 01:07:21,880
Speaker 6: the same thing.

1449
01:07:22,000 --> 01:07:24,960
Speaker 3: So this is maybe the only thing that Obama and

1450
01:07:25,000 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 3: Trump can agree on.

1451
01:07:26,920 --> 01:07:29,520
Speaker 6: And then the Artimist Accords came out while we were

1452
01:07:29,520 --> 01:07:31,960
Speaker 6: writing the book, and the Artemis Accords is sort of

1453
01:07:31,960 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 6: a NASA document that a bunch of other countries have

1454
01:07:35,200 --> 01:07:38,360
Speaker 6: signed onto. I think it's at around twenty now, and

1455
01:07:38,400 --> 01:07:40,000
Speaker 6: a bunch of other countries have signed on to it,

1456
01:07:40,040 --> 01:07:43,200
Speaker 6: and it essentially says it is our interpretation that it

1457
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:46,560
Speaker 6: is okay to extract resources and sell them. And in fact,

1458
01:07:46,680 --> 01:07:49,880
Speaker 6: NASA supported a company that went up there and scooped

1459
01:07:49,920 --> 01:07:52,520
Speaker 6: a tiny bit of regolith and then sold it to

1460
01:07:52,600 --> 01:07:54,760
Speaker 6: NASA for a token fee of I think a dollar,

1461
01:07:54,800 --> 01:07:57,040
Speaker 6: And it was just meant to set the precedent that

1462
01:07:57,120 --> 01:07:59,160
Speaker 6: a resource can be collected by a company on the

1463
01:07:59,160 --> 01:08:01,560
Speaker 6: Moon and then saw, and that the United States is

1464
01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:03,320
Speaker 6: okay with that. But that is supposed to be a

1465
01:08:03,320 --> 01:08:06,200
Speaker 6: global commons. That was point to the Moon is a

1466
01:08:06,200 --> 01:08:09,200
Speaker 6: global commons, All of space is a global commons, and

1467
01:08:09,280 --> 01:08:12,440
Speaker 6: so other countries I think would argue that as a

1468
01:08:12,440 --> 01:08:16,120
Speaker 6: global commons, if you extract a resource, everybody should benefit

1469
01:08:16,160 --> 01:08:19,519
Speaker 6: from it. But that's not actually specified by the Outer

1470
01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:22,720
Speaker 6: Space Treaty, so there's a big fight over interpretation. But

1471
01:08:23,120 --> 01:08:26,760
Speaker 6: we like to note that the Moon and space in

1472
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:31,559
Speaker 6: general is not like a completely weird legal structure that

1473
01:08:31,680 --> 01:08:34,880
Speaker 6: is unlike anything you see anywhere else. This is essentially

1474
01:08:35,000 --> 01:08:39,120
Speaker 6: what humanity has decided to do when we end up

1475
01:08:39,160 --> 01:08:43,040
Speaker 6: with vast swaths of land that technology suddenly opens up

1476
01:08:43,040 --> 01:08:46,640
Speaker 6: for us. So, for example, Antarctica is managed by the

1477
01:08:46,760 --> 01:08:49,599
Speaker 6: Antarctic Treaty System, where a bunch of countries come together,

1478
01:08:49,680 --> 01:08:52,479
Speaker 6: they agree, it's a global commons, they decide what can

1479
01:08:52,520 --> 01:08:55,000
Speaker 6: be done with the resources, and at the moment they've decided,

1480
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:58,160
Speaker 6: you cannot extract any resources, and in fact you cannot

1481
01:08:58,240 --> 01:09:00,720
Speaker 6: even look for them because we don't want to start

1482
01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:04,240
Speaker 6: any trouble. And then the deep seabed is managed by

1483
01:09:05,080 --> 01:09:07,479
Speaker 6: close the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

1484
01:09:07,800 --> 01:09:09,680
Speaker 6: So we have a couple of different global commons, a

1485
01:09:09,680 --> 01:09:12,000
Speaker 6: couple different ways of managing them. But you know, it's

1486
01:09:12,080 --> 01:09:13,920
Speaker 6: unclear how things are going to shape up in space.

1487
01:09:14,200 --> 01:09:16,439
Speaker 1: So does that mean it is or is not legal

1488
01:09:16,720 --> 01:09:18,280
Speaker 1: to eat your neighbor in space?

1489
01:09:18,600 --> 01:09:21,320
Speaker 5: I can speak to that question. Yes, I should say

1490
01:09:21,320 --> 01:09:23,160
Speaker 5: this is a short part of the book, but we

1491
01:09:23,640 --> 01:09:26,439
Speaker 5: do something like an answer. So the short version is

1492
01:09:26,479 --> 01:09:29,360
Speaker 5: it depends on what law you consider yourself to be under,

1493
01:09:29,400 --> 01:09:31,439
Speaker 5: which probably has to do with what country you're from

1494
01:09:31,920 --> 01:09:34,840
Speaker 5: or where you launched from, right, and it actually varies

1495
01:09:34,880 --> 01:09:38,000
Speaker 5: by country. We're more familiar with the American and British law,

1496
01:09:38,040 --> 01:09:40,760
Speaker 5: which in the US. This is beyond what we have

1497
01:09:40,800 --> 01:09:42,720
Speaker 5: in the book. So I'm digging a little deep for this,

1498
01:09:42,760 --> 01:09:44,960
Speaker 5: but I believe there's something called the homes test, which

1499
01:09:45,000 --> 01:09:47,280
Speaker 5: is this list of conditions which basically says, look, if

1500
01:09:47,280 --> 01:09:50,479
Speaker 5: you want to like engage in survival homicide, meaning kill

1501
01:09:50,560 --> 01:09:52,040
Speaker 5: some people so other people can live, there has to

1502
01:09:52,080 --> 01:09:54,240
Speaker 5: be a set of conditions met. And there are things like,

1503
01:09:54,720 --> 01:09:56,840
Speaker 5: you know, there has to be no other option, and

1504
01:09:56,920 --> 01:09:58,920
Speaker 5: you have to have a random draw. You can't like

1505
01:09:58,960 --> 01:10:01,960
Speaker 5: prefer the crews the passengers. So there's a set of

1506
01:10:02,000 --> 01:10:03,800
Speaker 5: criteria that have to be met for it to be

1507
01:10:03,840 --> 01:10:07,840
Speaker 5: considered okay or at least potentially okay, to engage in

1508
01:10:07,840 --> 01:10:10,679
Speaker 5: survival homicide. So you know, there's not a lot written

1509
01:10:10,720 --> 01:10:13,880
Speaker 5: about death and space generally, it's never happened. Well, I'm sorry,

1510
01:10:13,960 --> 01:10:17,080
Speaker 5: it's never happened other than just people suddenly die during

1511
01:10:17,120 --> 01:10:18,920
Speaker 5: a situation where they can't be saved, right, So there's

1512
01:10:18,920 --> 01:10:21,080
Speaker 5: no been a situation where like a guy dies in

1513
01:10:21,080 --> 01:10:23,120
Speaker 5: the space ship and everyone sort of crowded around like geez,

1514
01:10:23,160 --> 01:10:24,760
Speaker 5: what do we do? And so there's not a lot

1515
01:10:24,760 --> 01:10:26,960
Speaker 5: written on this, but we found a paper from nineteen

1516
01:10:27,080 --> 01:10:29,479
Speaker 5: seventy eight by a guy named Robert Fretis, who I

1517
01:10:29,479 --> 01:10:32,120
Speaker 5: think ended up being a nanotechnology guy, but in seventy

1518
01:10:32,120 --> 01:10:34,120
Speaker 5: eight he was interested in this question, and it said,

1519
01:10:34,160 --> 01:10:36,639
Speaker 5: you know, there's this movie and novel called Maroon where

1520
01:10:36,640 --> 01:10:39,120
Speaker 5: there's three guys in space and there's something goes wrong.

1521
01:10:39,160 --> 01:10:41,040
Speaker 5: There's not enough oxygen to save all of them. The

1522
01:10:41,080 --> 01:10:43,720
Speaker 5: rescue ship will like get there in five hours. They

1523
01:10:43,800 --> 01:10:45,760
Speaker 5: have four hours of oxygen. So if you're being if

1524
01:10:45,760 --> 01:10:48,160
Speaker 5: we were ants, one of the ants would be like,

1525
01:10:48,160 --> 01:10:50,840
Speaker 5: I'm going to go die. Problem solved. But we're not ants,

1526
01:10:50,840 --> 01:10:53,519
Speaker 5: and so it's like a really nauseating question. And so

1527
01:10:53,560 --> 01:10:55,360
Speaker 5: he actually kind of went through the literature of how

1528
01:10:55,400 --> 01:10:58,519
Speaker 5: we think about this question legally, and the basic deal

1529
01:10:58,600 --> 01:11:01,600
Speaker 5: is it's gonna depend on where you're from. So if

1530
01:11:01,640 --> 01:11:03,439
Speaker 5: you're in the ISS, the kind of funny thing is

1531
01:11:03,840 --> 01:11:06,800
Speaker 5: the modules are kind of like quasi sovereign territory, right,

1532
01:11:06,800 --> 01:11:08,559
Speaker 5: so the Japanese module is sort of like a piece

1533
01:11:08,600 --> 01:11:11,360
Speaker 5: of Japan. So you know, we say you should sort

1534
01:11:11,360 --> 01:11:13,479
Speaker 5: of call a lawyer. You should be like what country,

1535
01:11:13,800 --> 01:11:15,840
Speaker 5: you know, if I went to Japan or Russia, would

1536
01:11:15,840 --> 01:11:18,040
Speaker 5: I get a better deal if I have to eat somebody?

1537
01:11:18,320 --> 01:11:21,240
Speaker 5: But yes, that's the law. In terms of like the

1538
01:11:21,280 --> 01:11:23,559
Speaker 5: physical part, we found one guy who was willing to

1539
01:11:23,560 --> 01:11:25,880
Speaker 5: talk about it, who was like weirdly detailed about how

1540
01:11:25,920 --> 01:11:28,559
Speaker 5: to butcher a human and three D print a plastic

1541
01:11:28,640 --> 01:11:31,320
Speaker 5: knife in space. His name is Eric Seathhouse, and we

1542
01:11:31,360 --> 01:11:37,360
Speaker 5: advise against bringing him on your crew. And that's my

1543
01:11:37,400 --> 01:11:40,080
Speaker 5: main advice about eating your friends in space to summarize.

1544
01:11:40,200 --> 01:11:43,360
Speaker 5: The Outer Space Treaty obviously doesn't deal with cannibalism in space,

1545
01:11:43,640 --> 01:11:45,960
Speaker 5: so you will probably be dealt with as a national

1546
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:48,840
Speaker 5: of some country. Preferably to keep it simple, don't eat

1547
01:11:48,840 --> 01:11:50,640
Speaker 5: someone from some other country because it's going to be

1548
01:11:50,680 --> 01:11:52,120
Speaker 5: an international incident.

1549
01:11:53,320 --> 01:11:55,280
Speaker 1: That's going to complicate your life. So it sounds like

1550
01:11:55,320 --> 01:11:58,000
Speaker 1: you guys have done a really deep dive into the

1551
01:11:58,080 --> 01:12:00,439
Speaker 1: details of what it would be like the legit sticks,

1552
01:12:00,479 --> 01:12:03,760
Speaker 1: the legal side where we would actually live In the end,

1553
01:12:03,920 --> 01:12:05,479
Speaker 1: how did you feel about it? I mean, you started

1554
01:12:05,520 --> 01:12:08,280
Speaker 1: out optimistic and then you were a little disappointed in

1555
01:12:08,520 --> 01:12:12,040
Speaker 1: how much people had explored this. On balance, in the end,

1556
01:12:12,080 --> 01:12:14,720
Speaker 1: do you feel like this is something humanity should do,

1557
01:12:14,840 --> 01:12:17,599
Speaker 1: but maybe deeper into the future that we're not ready yet,

1558
01:12:17,880 --> 01:12:20,519
Speaker 1: but it's still something we should plan for, or maybe

1559
01:12:20,560 --> 01:12:22,360
Speaker 1: we need to dig even deeper before we have an

1560
01:12:22,400 --> 01:12:23,599
Speaker 1: answer even to that question.

1561
01:12:23,880 --> 01:12:25,599
Speaker 6: So I think maybe Zach and I should both give

1562
01:12:25,640 --> 01:12:28,439
Speaker 6: our answers. In case we differ a little bit, I'd

1563
01:12:28,520 --> 01:12:31,519
Speaker 6: say that I still think it's a beautiful idea. I

1564
01:12:31,560 --> 01:12:34,160
Speaker 6: would love to see it happen at some point, but

1565
01:12:34,240 --> 01:12:36,559
Speaker 6: I think we need to not push for it to

1566
01:12:36,600 --> 01:12:39,479
Speaker 6: happen in our lifetimes. I will be personally very happy

1567
01:12:39,560 --> 01:12:42,720
Speaker 6: if in my lifetime there is a research base on

1568
01:12:42,760 --> 01:12:44,920
Speaker 6: the Moon where we get a better handle on creating

1569
01:12:44,960 --> 01:12:49,680
Speaker 6: closed loop ecosystems, figuring out safety measures for adults and

1570
01:12:49,840 --> 01:12:52,000
Speaker 6: the babies that we'd like to have one day. I

1571
01:12:52,000 --> 01:12:55,560
Speaker 6: think there's a lot of work on geopolitics and international

1572
01:12:55,640 --> 01:12:57,519
Speaker 6: law that I would like to see happen before we

1573
01:12:57,600 --> 01:12:59,360
Speaker 6: end up with the scramble for territory.

1574
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:00,759
Speaker 3: The book, we talk.

1575
01:13:00,640 --> 01:13:03,639
Speaker 6: About how the way the deep seabed is managed could

1576
01:13:03,720 --> 01:13:06,880
Speaker 6: be a great way to manage resources in space as well,

1577
01:13:07,040 --> 01:13:09,759
Speaker 6: So I'd love to see some more work on stuff

1578
01:13:09,800 --> 01:13:11,640
Speaker 6: like that. So I'd like to see it happen, but

1579
01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:14,160
Speaker 6: I'd like to see us slow down and figure out,

1580
01:13:14,200 --> 01:13:16,720
Speaker 6: like step by step what needs to happen to do

1581
01:13:16,760 --> 01:13:19,160
Speaker 6: it safely, and then you know, start to see that

1582
01:13:19,200 --> 01:13:21,000
Speaker 6: kind of stuff funding. I would love it if Musk

1583
01:13:21,000 --> 01:13:25,000
Speaker 6: had not bought Twitter and had instead invested in closed

1584
01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:28,120
Speaker 6: loop ecosystems or research stations on the moon or something.

1585
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:30,439
Speaker 5: What about you, Zach, Yeah, So I would say my

1586
01:13:30,600 --> 01:13:35,200
Speaker 5: view is that it's something that we will eventually do

1587
01:13:37,120 --> 01:13:41,360
Speaker 5: entirely because it's awesome. I think the economic arguments are

1588
01:13:41,400 --> 01:13:43,240
Speaker 5: quite weak. We discussed this a little in the book.

1589
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:44,360
Speaker 5: There's a lot of sort of what you might call

1590
01:13:44,360 --> 01:13:46,519
Speaker 5: sociological arguments, like if we don't do this, we're going

1591
01:13:46,600 --> 01:13:48,960
Speaker 5: to stagnate. There are arguments that we're going to save

1592
01:13:49,000 --> 01:13:51,400
Speaker 5: the environment. There's no way it's going to happen fast enough.

1593
01:13:51,560 --> 01:13:53,320
Speaker 5: There are all these different arguments for why we ought

1594
01:13:53,360 --> 01:13:55,160
Speaker 5: to do it, and we think they're basically no good.

1595
01:13:55,320 --> 01:13:57,439
Speaker 5: And I would also add that there's an argument Daniel Duden,

1596
01:13:57,479 --> 01:13:58,880
Speaker 5: he's big on this, as there's an argument that we

1597
01:13:58,920 --> 01:14:01,200
Speaker 5: should just never do it, because you know, people tend

1598
01:14:01,200 --> 01:14:04,960
Speaker 5: to say we should colonize space to decrease existential risk,

1599
01:14:05,040 --> 01:14:08,120
Speaker 5: but actually they're you know, plausibly, by getting that huge

1600
01:14:08,439 --> 01:14:12,679
Speaker 5: infrastructure above a gravity well, you're creating higher existential risk.

1601
01:14:12,920 --> 01:14:14,479
Speaker 5: So maybe it's never going to be a good idea

1602
01:14:14,520 --> 01:14:17,439
Speaker 5: until like, you know, does physics allowed tractor beams or something,

1603
01:14:17,479 --> 01:14:20,040
Speaker 5: you know, so there's an argument there. I think you

1604
01:14:20,040 --> 01:14:25,479
Speaker 5: can imagine a world at some distant date where you know,

1605
01:14:25,520 --> 01:14:29,000
Speaker 5: we are such an advanced, wealthy species that you could

1606
01:14:29,120 --> 01:14:31,600
Speaker 5: just go to Mars to set up there because it

1607
01:14:31,600 --> 01:14:33,240
Speaker 5: would be a cool thing to do. Like you're going

1608
01:14:33,280 --> 01:14:35,519
Speaker 5: to send you one hundred AI robots ahead of you.

1609
01:14:35,560 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 5: They're going to set up a cabin and space launch

1610
01:14:37,880 --> 01:14:40,720
Speaker 5: is totally safe, and Earth is so peaceful and harmonious

1611
01:14:40,720 --> 01:14:43,639
Speaker 5: that the idea of of like starting warfare between planets

1612
01:14:43,680 --> 01:14:46,639
Speaker 5: is unimaginable. And in that world it's a great idea.

1613
01:14:46,640 --> 01:14:49,000
Speaker 5: It's wonderful. It's sort of like in Star Trek they're

1614
01:14:49,040 --> 01:14:51,280
Speaker 5: just exploring around because exploring is a cool thing to do,

1615
01:14:51,360 --> 01:14:53,840
Speaker 5: and all the old problems have been solved. But I

1616
01:14:53,840 --> 01:14:55,680
Speaker 5: guess the big change for me is I just I

1617
01:14:55,760 --> 01:14:57,960
Speaker 5: just don't buy any of the arguments that there's a

1618
01:14:58,040 --> 01:15:01,880
Speaker 5: non esthetic reason to there. Just doesn't seem to be

1619
01:15:02,320 --> 01:15:04,680
Speaker 5: unless you're talking about like a Kardish of you know,

1620
01:15:04,720 --> 01:15:08,360
Speaker 5: eighteen civilization that's got to maximize every single photon in

1621
01:15:08,400 --> 01:15:10,559
Speaker 5: the universe. There's just no good reason to do it.

1622
01:15:10,640 --> 01:15:12,640
Speaker 5: So to me, that puts it on the scale of centuries.

1623
01:15:12,720 --> 01:15:15,639
Speaker 5: It requires a better humanity and a much richer humanity.

1624
01:15:15,760 --> 01:15:17,880
Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys very much for writing this book.

1625
01:15:18,120 --> 01:15:20,559
Speaker 1: I know you described as something of a wet blanket,

1626
01:15:20,560 --> 01:15:23,080
Speaker 1: but I actually think it's necessary to think about these

1627
01:15:23,120 --> 01:15:26,559
Speaker 1: things carefully, to lay the groundwork to figure out what

1628
01:15:26,600 --> 01:15:29,040
Speaker 1: the problems are actually going to be. That, if anything,

1629
01:15:29,120 --> 01:15:30,880
Speaker 1: your book could makes it more likely that we do

1630
01:15:30,920 --> 01:15:33,679
Speaker 1: figure this stuff out because people think about it carefully.

1631
01:15:33,880 --> 01:15:36,880
Speaker 1: So from all the space nerds, thank you. You see

1632
01:15:36,880 --> 01:15:41,840
Speaker 1: this book positively, and I encourage everybody out there to

1633
01:15:41,840 --> 01:15:44,320
Speaker 1: get it. It's called a city on Mars can be

1634
01:15:44,320 --> 01:15:46,760
Speaker 1: settled Space should be settle space, and how we really

1635
01:15:46,760 --> 01:15:52,320
Speaker 1: thought this through. It's really exquisitely, deeply detailed and well researched.

1636
01:15:52,479 --> 01:15:54,759
Speaker 1: These guys definitely know what they're talking about. And in addition,

1637
01:15:54,960 --> 01:15:57,479
Speaker 1: it's really fun. I mean, obviously these two are very

1638
01:15:57,479 --> 01:15:59,680
Speaker 1: funny people, and so you'll read it, you'll learn a

1639
01:15:59,720 --> 01:16:02,559
Speaker 1: lot you'll laugh a lot. I totally encourage you and

1640
01:16:02,600 --> 01:16:04,559
Speaker 1: thank you very much Zach and Kelly for joining us

1641
01:16:04,600 --> 01:16:07,439
Speaker 1: today to talk about sex and space, poop in space,

1642
01:16:07,560 --> 01:16:08,479
Speaker 1: and face melting.

1643
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:10,639
Speaker 5: Thanks so much, Daniel, I can do a whole episode

1644
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:11,720
Speaker 5: on face melting.

1645
01:16:13,840 --> 01:16:18,400
Speaker 1: Collaboration. All right, Thanks again everyone for listening and tune

1646
01:16:18,439 --> 01:16:28,880
Speaker 1: in next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

1647
01:16:28,920 --> 01:16:32,320
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

1648
01:16:32,600 --> 01:16:37,760
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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01:16:37,920 --> 01:16:51,680
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you

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