Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking either and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks of the future and says, sailors fighting in
Speaker 1: the dance hall. Oh man, look at those caben go.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Focaban, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to be answering a question that
Speaker 1: came in from a podcast listener via Facebook. Yeah, Benjamin
Speaker 1: wrote to us and said, I have a question. In
Speaker 1: the movie Mission to Mars and a lot of other
Speaker 1: sci fi movies, the characters have a special device built
Speaker 1: in their suit to analyze and display the composition of
Speaker 1: their surroundings or the atmosphere composition. I would like to
Speaker 1: know if such a device already exists or not yet.
Speaker 1: So good question, Benjamin, And actually the answer was not
Speaker 1: as straightforward as I would have thought. I thought I
Speaker 1: could just google this and and be like, Yep, there
Speaker 1: it is. You know, we've already talked about the Star
Speaker 1: Trek tricorder, which we were talking specifically about. It's it's
Speaker 1: medical uses, right, the ability to scan a patient for
Speaker 1: potential illnesses or injury. Right, but of course what the
Speaker 1: tricorder can also do is after you've beamed down to
Speaker 1: a planet and you're standing there with no helmet on,
Speaker 1: it will tell you if you can breathe the air right,
Speaker 1: which is important information that you probably should have gathered
Speaker 1: before beaming down. Well, well that's the other cool thing.
Speaker 1: And stuff like Star Trek they can they can, you know,
Speaker 1: roll on up to a planet and say, like analyze
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and then they'll come back with this detailed
Speaker 1: analysis instantaneously of exactly what is composing this planet. Probably
Speaker 1: also give you Nielsen ratings for what the indigenous population
Speaker 1: of that planet are watching at any given time. The
Speaker 1: Star Trek technology is is pure magic. This planet is
Speaker 1: still stuck in reality TV. Keep going. Okay, so Warp
Speaker 1: twenty the prime directive holds sway in such situations. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I figure we should sort of expand the question
Speaker 1: a little bit, not just about analyzing the atmospheric composition,
Speaker 1: but generally the state of institute environmental sensors, the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that can tell you the conditions on an
Speaker 1: alien surface or a planet, any place astronauts might want
Speaker 1: to go and generally answer the question should I take
Speaker 1: my suit off or would that be a bad idea?
Speaker 1: All right, and you watched this movie, so you can
Speaker 1: actually see how the sensors are being used. Right. I
Speaker 1: was thinking one of you might have seen it, but
Speaker 1: neither of you have seen it. Right now, Okay, So
Speaker 1: Mission to Mars was a Brian de Palma's sci fi
Speaker 1: thriller that came out in the year two thousand and
Speaker 1: it was I believe, part of a spate of Mars movies.
Speaker 1: That other one with Val Kilmer I think it's called
Speaker 1: Red Planet. It's the same sort of thing we see
Speaker 1: in Hollywood all the time, right where you you see
Speaker 1: a batch of films that are all more or less
Speaker 1: looking at the same kind kind of ideas. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: kind of confluence of theme that I'm never sure whether
Speaker 1: it's purposeful or competitive or I have a feeling it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where they hear, oh, such and
Speaker 1: such studio as making a volcano movie, will will make
Speaker 1: a volcano movie. So yeah, all of these Mars movies
Speaker 1: from two thousand got pretty terrible reviews. But do you
Speaker 1: think it was justified? Well, I don't want to get
Speaker 1: too far into my own opinion. I will say that
Speaker 1: I did find some things about the movie kind of funny,
Speaker 1: such as that I don't know, maybe this is really
Speaker 1: the case at some point, but the like Mars exploration
Speaker 1: vehicles had you know, product logos on them. They said,
Speaker 1: like Pin's Oil and Kawasaki not if we're going the
Speaker 1: route of the Mars one colony. That seems like it
Speaker 1: could actually happen. Well, you know, honestly, I mean, like
Speaker 1: if it lets us get more space exploration in there,
Speaker 1: I'm for it, Like like like NASA, Like why aren't
Speaker 1: we doing this? You're emerging NASA and NASCAR, so you
Speaker 1: have like the slim Jim Landers, the Budweiser buggy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm okay with it. I think it would be great.
Speaker 1: I honestly, that's one thing that I don't think is
Speaker 1: that far fetched considering the privatization of space exploration, right,
Speaker 1: But who's there to look at it? I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess if you're filming the whole thing anyway, anyway, we
Speaker 1: should move on because this isn't a brand extension. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's more of your problem that like Penn's
Speaker 1: Oil is the wrong sponsor. It should be like dippin
Speaker 1: dots the space ice cream or something. Honestly, guys Mors
Speaker 1: is an untapped market. Yeah, so issues of plot and
Speaker 1: characterization asides. A lot of critics had problems with it. Strangely,
Speaker 1: I think I read that it was kind of popular
Speaker 1: among a lot of French critics. But here's the basic
Speaker 1: plot of the movie. There is one Mars expedition. It's
Speaker 1: the first manned mission to Mars, and the characters go
Speaker 1: there and they're doing some science. They're attempting to begin
Speaker 1: a colonization effort, and something goes horribly wrong. There's a
Speaker 1: second team that is sent as part of a rescue mission,
Speaker 1: and that's the basic set up of the story. Got okay,
Speaker 1: So I figured it would be good to go roughly
Speaker 1: in order because I was taking some notes while I
Speaker 1: was watching the movie about different environmental sensing moments in
Speaker 1: the film, and one of the first things I noticed
Speaker 1: that I thought was kind of interesting was that early
Speaker 1: in the movie, there's a part where they use a
Speaker 1: passing satellite that's in orbit around Mars to scan for
Speaker 1: radiation levels at a base camp on the surface of
Speaker 1: the planet. And I thought, but before we even get
Speaker 1: to the in suit sensors, that was an interesting question
Speaker 1: to me alone, is that possible? Can you scan for
Speaker 1: radiation on the surface from orbit? Now, there's some issues
Speaker 1: I have. First of all, you have to define radiation
Speaker 1: because radiation on its own could mean lots of different stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess if they're looking for harmful radiation,
Speaker 1: they're looking at nuclear radiation. But largely when we talk
Speaker 1: about radiation, we're talking about electromagnetic radiation. A lot of
Speaker 1: that you could pick up remotely because you could have
Speaker 1: sensors that detect various electromagnetic radiation levels. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of ways you could do that with
Speaker 1: a satellite. I guess what they're they're probably thinking of
Speaker 1: is ionizing radiation, right, That is trickier. Um, So you
Speaker 1: there are ways you could remotely since radiation, either directly
Speaker 1: or indirectly, But most of the ones I am familiar
Speaker 1: with are more immediate to sense radiation, Like like it's
Speaker 1: more of a of a device you wear in order
Speaker 1: that will alert you when you start to encounter dangerous
Speaker 1: levels of radiation. Yeah, yeah, it's it's an even from
Speaker 1: a few feet away. In most cases, it's it's anything
Speaker 1: that is directly interacting with your sensor. Right there. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: you have to be pretty close and we'll give some
Speaker 1: reasons for that. First of all, radiation is caused by
Speaker 1: nuclear decay or you can have cosmic radiation, so that
Speaker 1: you know, this will cause substances to give off these
Speaker 1: high energy particles. And that's the kind of nuclear radiation
Speaker 1: way think of when we think, you know, the dangerous
Speaker 1: stuff that that could give you radio asian poisoning. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: cosmic radiation alone is really dangerous, and we've talked about
Speaker 1: how if you were on Mars you would be prone
Speaker 1: to because they don't have Mars, they the planet. Those
Speaker 1: people on Mars, they don't They don't have the benefit
Speaker 1: of a magnetosphere, a magnetic field that would repel cosmic radiation,
Speaker 1: nor do they have a strong enough or a thick
Speaker 1: enough atmosphere to help absorb that energy. So yeah, people
Speaker 1: who astronauts who would be on the surface of Mars
Speaker 1: would be vulnerable to this kind of radiation already. So
Speaker 1: presumably they're not scanning for that because they would already
Speaker 1: be aware of the potential for encounters with cosmic radiation. Now,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about nuclear radiation, do we you know
Speaker 1: here on Earth we would use something like a Geiger counter.
Speaker 1: Um and there is always a level of background radiation.
Speaker 1: When you're on Earth. You're always exposed to radiation everywhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's certain things that are in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere that are radioactive. But life evolved on Earth in
Speaker 1: this environment, which means that we have a certain capacity
Speaker 1: to deal with radiation naturally. It's when those levels go
Speaker 1: beyond that background level where we start to encounter problems.
Speaker 1: Right when we start to have larger doses of radiation
Speaker 1: that can be harmful. But if you're working, let's say
Speaker 1: in a granite building, you actually are working in an
Speaker 1: area that has a higher level of background radiation than
Speaker 1: someone who works and say a log cabin. Because granite
Speaker 1: is slightly radioactive. Now we built these things, you know
Speaker 1: it is, yes, and also it's not dangerously radioactive like
Speaker 1: bigger hunks of of uranium in there or plutonium. Then yes,
Speaker 1: then you've got some other issues to worry about. Maybe
Speaker 1: you need to look into that quarry. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: we now have these devices Geiger counters that are really isful.
Speaker 1: Geiger owners detect radiation. They have an inert gas inside
Speaker 1: a tube, so the gas itself normally has no charge.
Speaker 1: When that gas encounters something one of these high energy particles, uh,
Speaker 1: like even a high energy photon, the gas begins to
Speaker 1: ionize and conduct an electrical charge. But that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like that would work at a distance, especially from orbit. No,
Speaker 1: this is something that you would have to be close
Speaker 1: enough for those high energy particles to affect that that gas.
Speaker 1: And there are different types of radiation, and some of
Speaker 1: them travel really long distances and some of them don't.
Speaker 1: So for example, gamma radiation, that's this really high energy
Speaker 1: radiation that can travel quite a long way. We're talking
Speaker 1: like gamma rays, X rays. That sort of stuff falls
Speaker 1: into this category, uh that you know you could scan
Speaker 1: for from a distance. Actually you wouldn't have to be
Speaker 1: right there to find it. But alpha radiation and beta radiation,
Speaker 1: which are also hazardous at least potentially hazardous. You they
Speaker 1: don't those those and ie particles don't travel very far.
Speaker 1: We're talking a few feet in the case of alpha radiation,
Speaker 1: We're talking inches less than a foot, and it's still
Speaker 1: very hazardous stuff. You don't want to come into contact
Speaker 1: with it. You certainly don't want to breathe it in.
Speaker 1: But you wouldn't be able to detect it directly with
Speaker 1: a Geiger counter until you were right there. Yeah, nowation
Speaker 1: fries exactly. Now there are there's some other things we
Speaker 1: should mention. Alpha radiation is pretty low energy. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have enough energy to penetrate the skin. However, if you
Speaker 1: were to breathe it in, yeah you don't, you could
Speaker 1: cause massive problems for you. Any kind of way of
Speaker 1: bringing it into your body. You've got some serious issues. Um.
Speaker 1: Beta radiation can penetrate a little more than alpha radiation can.
Speaker 1: But still, if you have a decent kind of space suit,
Speaker 1: you would be protected from this sort of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and a guy your counter would alert you to the
Speaker 1: presence of that kind of stuff too, so you would know,
Speaker 1: all right, I don't want to once once the meter
Speaker 1: starts clicking, uh, beyond a certain level, you know that
Speaker 1: you don't want to go any further in that direction
Speaker 1: because it's bad times for you. But again, really tricky
Speaker 1: to detect remotely because these these particles aren't traveling very far.
Speaker 1: So how do you detect the presence? Maybe you don't
Speaker 1: look for the direct evidence. Maybe you look for indirect evidence. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen some research that's working on getting more distant
Speaker 1: detection of this kind of stuff by by looking for
Speaker 1: say like free electrons in the air due to gamma
Speaker 1: radiation or due to ultraviolet air molecules caused by fluorescing
Speaker 1: nitrogen atoms due to alpha radiation UM. The hitches that
Speaker 1: we're still talking about really short distances, like maybe four
Speaker 1: meters that's about thirteen feet for that gamma radiation, and
Speaker 1: maybe fourty centimeters that's like sixteen inches for for the
Speaker 1: alpha radiation UM and and the other double bind here
Speaker 1: is that would probably need to know the atmospheric composition
Speaker 1: in order to make that detection work. Now, for something
Speaker 1: like the actual planet of Mars, knowing the atmospheric composition
Speaker 1: isn't that big of a deal because we've already got
Speaker 1: instruments down there so we know about it. But if
Speaker 1: we're talking about this, this hypothetical situation in which we're
Speaker 1: rolling up on a planet and going like, Wesley, tell
Speaker 1: me how much nitrogen this planet has in its atmosphere,
Speaker 1: that's a little trickier. Right, Well, that's a good transition
Speaker 1: to our next point. So I'd say, with the remote
Speaker 1: sensing of radiation, the point right now would be that
Speaker 1: we don't know how that would be done. Maybe there
Speaker 1: is a way, I don't know, but we haven't found it.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the surface of the planet,
Speaker 1: we get a lot more specific with the kind of
Speaker 1: things we're looking for. So imagine you are an astronaut
Speaker 1: walking around on the surface of Mars. Say you're Gary Sneeze.
Speaker 1: I'm usually gee sometimes I am too. And you find
Speaker 1: a cavern or something like that, and you want and
Speaker 1: you go inside it, and you say, I wonder if
Speaker 1: now that I'm in this cavern or enclosed area, the
Speaker 1: conditions are safe for me to take my helmet off
Speaker 1: and just just experience the fun of breathing in a
Speaker 1: fresh breath of Mars. So so somehow this cavern has
Speaker 1: has got a pocket of breathable atmosphere. Might let's say, okay,
Speaker 1: good point. Let's reimagine this and say it's in fact
Speaker 1: a room that was previously part of an astronaut's habitat,
Speaker 1: And now you don't know if the conditions inside this
Speaker 1: habitat have been maintained properly, and you don't know if
Speaker 1: it's safe to remove your helmet and get a fresh
Speaker 1: breath of you know, a couple of years old. Astronaut
Speaker 1: b oh, right, you don't have you don't have necessarily
Speaker 1: working computer systems in the environment that would tell you
Speaker 1: what the levels at least should be. Let's let's say
Speaker 1: that you're completely blind in this situation as far as
Speaker 1: what the conditions are, right, So there would be a
Speaker 1: bunch of things you need to check for, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the main ones would be the gases present
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere and the pressure at which they're present. Well,
Speaker 1: I think we'll get to that one more in the
Speaker 1: last part, because that's sort of the big question. Other
Speaker 1: things that that I see happening in the movie Mission
Speaker 1: to Mars that they're testing our temperature for one thing
Speaker 1: that takes the temperature in the suit. That seems like
Speaker 1: a pretty easy one. Pretty the thermometers are really useful.
Speaker 1: They are They're pretty common. You can you can send
Speaker 1: that information directly to a digital readout. It will show
Speaker 1: up on the little screen on Gary Sinie's wrist and
Speaker 1: he says, ah, yes, it is twenty five degrees c.
Speaker 1: That is that is fine. Now if if I'm not
Speaker 1: Gary sineee, but I still have his wrist, is that
Speaker 1: still did you cut off his wrist. And let's just
Speaker 1: say that I like into my possession. I'm not a
Speaker 1: very nice ass. Don't necessarily mean that I remove the wrist,
Speaker 1: but somehow I have it. I think this is why
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to go to Mars. That's fair, Okay?
Speaker 1: With Gary Sinee specifically, For example, there are parts in
Speaker 1: the movie where they have an instrument that say checks
Speaker 1: for radiation and then checks I made notes here, also
Speaker 1: seismic and they mentioned the phrase anonometer steady one of
Speaker 1: those things. Even all right, well, I can answer some
Speaker 1: of this. So so if you're using like a rover
Speaker 1: to check for these things, which I think is what
Speaker 1: they're using, they roll a rover up to something. So
Speaker 1: we'll get back to Gary Sinise's wrist in a minute. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there there's some big questions. A lot of our
Speaker 1: conversation is going to focus on those questions, but we
Speaker 1: wanted to save that for the end because there's a
Speaker 1: ton of it. So if we're looking at a rover
Speaker 1: sending a rover out to to get some readings for us,
Speaker 1: first of all, that would make a whole lot more
Speaker 1: sense because a rover, you know, obviously even if if
Speaker 1: it should fall to some sort of of malfunction or
Speaker 1: it is damaged in some way, it's not a person
Speaker 1: all right, Right, rovers are pretty great canaries because you can, yes,
Speaker 1: not have to worry about its livelihood, and they're they're
Speaker 1: probably not going to be affected by radiation the same
Speaker 1: way people are. It will be able to continue to operate. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you could put instrumentation on a rover that would give
Speaker 1: you lots of useful information. Right. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you wanted the rover to roll up to some feature
Speaker 1: on the surface of Mars and check for radiation, well
Speaker 1: we've already talked about that. It's pretty simple. You can
Speaker 1: have a Geiger counter, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: would just monitor it remotely. You would have something that
Speaker 1: would that would record the Geiger counters findings and then
Speaker 1: you'd say, okay, well that spot is dangerously radioactive, we
Speaker 1: should not go there. Okay. What about seismic activity, very simple, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: seismic activity. Essentially you're looking for movement on the ground, right,
Speaker 1: looking for seismic waves. Yeah, So as long as the
Speaker 1: rover has a chance to sit down for a second
Speaker 1: plant plant itself, then that one's yeah, that's that One's easy.
Speaker 1: You could have an accelerometer on there, or you could
Speaker 1: even have one of the seizom seismometers that we tend
Speaker 1: to use, things like and and these really pretty simple
Speaker 1: stuff like imagine you have a suspended weight that is
Speaker 1: able to move freely relative to a stable frame. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: when the frame starts to move, that weight will, because
Speaker 1: of inertia, move at a different rate than the rest
Speaker 1: of the frame. And it's through that difference that you're
Speaker 1: able to tell how much movement is going on in
Speaker 1: the relative environment. That's how a regular one here on
Speaker 1: Earth would work. Uh, you might just have a digital
Speaker 1: accelerometer on there that would detect movement. The important thing here,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Lauren, is the rover itself would
Speaker 1: have to be stationary at that point. You know, you
Speaker 1: couldn't take readings as it's moving because it would be
Speaker 1: corrupting its own data. So assuming that you could have
Speaker 1: it stop and planned itself nice and firmly so that
Speaker 1: it could it could do these readings, I don't see
Speaker 1: a problem with that one either. Okay, here's another environmental
Speaker 1: datam it takes. They say anonometer steady. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what that was. When anonometer, I'm picturing some thing that
Speaker 1: looks like a scene enemy, right, Yeah, anemometer and important.
Speaker 1: But an anemometer is is a device for measuring wind speed. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's I mean, it's like the most basic of things.
Speaker 1: Like if you've ever looked at one of those scientific
Speaker 1: weather vanes, it tends to have a little kind of
Speaker 1: pin wheel type thing that's uh, horizontally mounted, not vertically,
Speaker 1: so it's got usually like little cups and that it
Speaker 1: will spin around in a circle when the wind is blowing,
Speaker 1: and the speed of that rotation. We end up converting
Speaker 1: that into figuring out how hard the wind is blowing?
Speaker 1: Wind speed is that how we we interpret that? Right,
Speaker 1: So it's essentially a conversion you do of revolutions per minute,
Speaker 1: and then you you factor and how hard the wind
Speaker 1: is blowing. So again, as long as you're not moving,
Speaker 1: because if you're moving forward, then you're obviously generating your
Speaker 1: own right, right, you're moving through an atmosphere, you would
Speaker 1: be fouling the readings. But if it were stationary, then
Speaker 1: it could certainly take that reading. What a stable reading
Speaker 1: would be I don't necessarily know, except to maybe say
Speaker 1: that the wind is blowing at a continuous speed, or
Speaker 1: maybe it was just in the script. Yeah, calling it
Speaker 1: calling it stable is not terribly meaningful. You would need
Speaker 1: to have a speed associate with it. You could say
Speaker 1: no wind, but that's different from stable. Stable to me
Speaker 1: means that it's turning at a There there are a
Speaker 1: lot of lines in this movie kind of like we
Speaker 1: are ago that we're just kind of like there's just
Speaker 1: some just some jargon that's gone in to make it
Speaker 1: sound science art. Okay, but we we've done our little
Speaker 1: rover detour, sorry to tease, and then go down that road.
Speaker 1: Now we're coming back to Gary Sinise's wrist. Well should
Speaker 1: his wrist monitor? Right? So, as we mentioned, he can
Speaker 1: look down at his space suit and there's little monitor
Speaker 1: mounted on his arm that has a bunch of tabs
Speaker 1: along it. I actually paused the movie and saw what
Speaker 1: the different tabs were. One says oxygen, one says environment,
Speaker 1: and one says med, one says thrust. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that's all about, and then the other one seemed
Speaker 1: to be about calms. So med I assume is medical
Speaker 1: of some kind, and we can talk about that in
Speaker 1: a minute. Oxygen and environment. Those tabs seem to show
Speaker 1: atmospheric composition outside the suit and also atmospheric pressure. So
Speaker 1: so oxygen in this case, isn't his space suits oxygen supply?
Speaker 1: You think? No, I mean, well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: that might be what that tab shows, but environments certainly
Speaker 1: would be the external environment. So yeah, because I would
Speaker 1: my first assumption would be anything that says oxygen would
Speaker 1: be the the space suits oxygen supply. Environment would be. Well,
Speaker 1: anyway he's using seeing these tabs might not mean anything
Speaker 1: at all. He'd be like they told the visual effects guy,
Speaker 1: make it look technical, right, Yeah, you're rust is good? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't Maybe he's like a big fan of the
Speaker 1: time warp. Well they have little suit jet packs. It
Speaker 1: could have something to do with that. There you go,
Speaker 1: There you go. Surely no one is going to pause
Speaker 1: this movie right on the screen and deconstruct on all
Speaker 1: of these buttons. Anyway, take on one. It'll be great
Speaker 1: to all use science fiction filmmakers out there, because we
Speaker 1: will watch your movie and we will pause the screen. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's focus on those environmental conditions. This seemed to
Speaker 1: be the core of what Benjamin was actually asking, so
Speaker 1: things like the pressure, the temperature, all these atmospheric conditions,
Speaker 1: and especially the composition of the gases and the environment
Speaker 1: outside the suit. Is it feasible to have a suit
Speaker 1: that gives readings on all these things in real time?
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have to get to atmospheric composition last.
Speaker 1: But when you're talking about a lot of these conditions,
Speaker 1: the there is definitely yes. Oh sure, yes, some of
Speaker 1: these are are incredibly I mean, on the grand scale
Speaker 1: of things, simple, yeah, And so obviously we have machines
Speaker 1: on Earth that can do all these things, but the
Speaker 1: question is could it fit on an astronaut suit and
Speaker 1: work fast enough to operate in real time? So the
Speaker 1: first thing I want to talk about is the pit boy. Man.
Speaker 1: I love the Fallout games so much. The pit boy
Speaker 1: is incredibly useful in those. I don't have as much
Speaker 1: experience with fall I have played a little bit of
Speaker 1: Fallout too. I enjoyed it, but I never finished it.
Speaker 1: Follow Out three and Fallout New Vegas are some of
Speaker 1: the best games ever. But I might be biased. I've
Speaker 1: watched other people playing, but I haven't haven't played it myself. Okay,
Speaker 1: so anyway, I'm aware of what the pit Boy is
Speaker 1: it's a it's a little risk mounted display and uh
Speaker 1: and so instead of having like a heads up display
Speaker 1: like you might and say Halo or something like that,
Speaker 1: you can you can go into this screen and it'll
Speaker 1: display you know, your your your health stats and your
Speaker 1: inventory and stuff like that and skill levels. You know,
Speaker 1: the way everybody is is able to like I can
Speaker 1: quickly look and see how what my skill level in
Speaker 1: I don't know, reading is. I would love to have
Speaker 1: a wrist mounted monitor that quantified my skills and things
Speaker 1: like lock picking andressed. But anyway, anyway, yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a personal electronic device and it's wrist mounted.
Speaker 1: It's got a little monitor and it gives you important information.
Speaker 1: So people have actually made real life versions of these.
Speaker 1: So one that was just kind of for fun but
Speaker 1: is definitely worth mentioning because it looks so cool is
Speaker 1: in this custom prop artist named Zachariah Perry Cruz designed
Speaker 1: a really cool looking real life prop version of the
Speaker 1: pit Boy and the property created originally just showed screens
Speaker 1: from the game and it also had an audio amplifier.
Speaker 1: But that that's cool enough, Well, that's adorable, But what
Speaker 1: if you could actually make a version of this that
Speaker 1: was useful in space and in hostile planetary conditions like
Speaker 1: in the game. Well you can because some people did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so in UH space Apps, which is the International
Speaker 1: Space Applications Challenge, it's an organization that encourages sort of
Speaker 1: SI tech hackathons, they issued a challenge called Space Wearables
Speaker 1: Fashion Designer to Astronauts, which was quote to design wearable
Speaker 1: clothing and accessories that could be useful for space travelers
Speaker 1: and or the engineers and technicians involved with ground processing
Speaker 1: spacecraft and rockets. So it's a it's a sci fi
Speaker 1: wearables kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, and uh. One team
Speaker 1: involved in this, Team Reno, I believe right. Um responded
Speaker 1: by by, I mean they're obviously fans of the Fallout
Speaker 1: series the way that you are, Jonathan, because they were like, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to create the Pitboy three thousand, and that's
Speaker 1: what they did. In their own words, quote, Team Reno
Speaker 1: is bringing a piece of sience fiction to life by
Speaker 1: creating a functioning pit Boy three thousand from the popular
Speaker 1: game Fallout. The goal was to bring environmental sensors in
Speaker 1: an easy to use cuff device that could help a
Speaker 1: where determine if their environment is safe or quote, is
Speaker 1: it safe to take my helmet off? Well, we've visited
Speaker 1: that question earlier today, and I like that they decided
Speaker 1: to go this route because clearly a lot of people
Speaker 1: have already been very interested in the tricorder approach and
Speaker 1: this helps differentiate their their device from all the medical
Speaker 1: tricorders that are in development right now. Right So, Team
Speaker 1: Renoe designed a working wrist mounted pit boy with the
Speaker 1: display I believe based on an iOS application who was
Speaker 1: designed to mimic the pit Boy screen from Fallout the
Speaker 1: user interface, and supposedly it would report with accuracy relative humidity, altitude, latitude,
Speaker 1: and longitude atmospheric pressure, and that pressure is one of
Speaker 1: the things that was in the movie, not in Fallout,
Speaker 1: but in Mission to Mars. Ambient temperature temperature is another
Speaker 1: one object temperature using infrared thermometer, so I guess that's
Speaker 1: the air versus a specific object and radiation. So they
Speaker 1: also apparently wanted to add like a heart rate monitor
Speaker 1: and wireless communications, but they didn't finish these during the
Speaker 1: hackathon time frame, although they would certainly be pretty easy
Speaker 1: to toss in there. Sure, so the sensor hardware was
Speaker 1: a Texas Instruments Sensor tag, which includes temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure,
Speaker 1: an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer or a magnetometer
Speaker 1: magnetometer mag magnetometer. I've said that word on this podcast
Speaker 1: before and I never get it right. It's okay, we
Speaker 1: we will continue to mispronounce words to our hearts content. Okay.
Speaker 1: The radiation was also detected via a separate Geiger counter,
Speaker 1: and this is great, but it does to answer one
Speaker 1: big question, which is atmospheric composition. That was still the
Speaker 1: one that was at the core of Benjamin's question and
Speaker 1: the one that's kind of lingering, like is that possible?
Speaker 1: Can you make a suit that easily and and reliably
Speaker 1: measures the gases around you and tells you what elements
Speaker 1: are in them? Yeah, it's really a lot harder than
Speaker 1: stuff like say Star Trek has led us all to believe.
Speaker 1: It was really only during the late eighties and early
Speaker 1: nineties that we developed the satellite equipment and computer technology
Speaker 1: necessary to monitor Earth's atmosphere. Um, this was during the
Speaker 1: Ozone kind of scare. I mean, I don't want to
Speaker 1: say scare because it's it's certainly a very legitimate issue.
Speaker 1: But uh, right around when we started paying attention to
Speaker 1: what was going on with the climate and pollution in
Speaker 1: the ozone. Right, Well, there's certainly a difference that's important
Speaker 1: to make between scanning, say, the atmospheric composition of a
Speaker 1: planet from beyond and measuring just the gases ambiently around
Speaker 1: a person and uh, and in order to check out
Speaker 1: a planet. You know, I think anytime you are going
Speaker 1: to go to a planet, you're probably going to spend
Speaker 1: the time necessary to scan the heck out of it
Speaker 1: before you actually set foot on it and take your
Speaker 1: helmet off. Now and now, in the case of of Mars,
Speaker 1: you know, we obviously have a lot of information already,
Speaker 1: both from using Earth based technology and sending probes that
Speaker 1: have started to really sample the atmosphere. In fact, we've
Speaker 1: got other ones that are either there now or on
Speaker 1: the way that our purpose that that's their purpose, is
Speaker 1: to really study the Martian atmosphere. But we're able to
Speaker 1: do some of this just using things like telescopes and
Speaker 1: um spectrometers. Right. But of course, as we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: I guess the specific thing we're asking about is not
Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the planet as a whole, but in
Speaker 1: specific local conditions, like you go into a habit tax that.
Speaker 1: I don't know of any certainly not a handheld device
Speaker 1: that could do this. I know of handheld devices that
Speaker 1: could detect the presence of particular things like carbon monoxize,
Speaker 1: but I don't know of any that could give you
Speaker 1: a full reading of the entire composition of the air
Speaker 1: within a like let's say we walked into a Martian stadium. Well,
Speaker 1: but what about something like like mass spectrometers? I mean,
Speaker 1: we have those on Earth sure, and and they can
Speaker 1: analyze a sample of stuff pretty good. I love how
Speaker 1: these things work. So a mass spectrometer, So let's let's
Speaker 1: tell tell the difference between spectrometer and a mass spectrometer.
Speaker 1: A regular spectrometer, like just a standard spectrometer. What it's
Speaker 1: doing is it's looking at the light that is being
Speaker 1: reflected off of a planet. In this case, we could
Speaker 1: also look at light from a star and be able
Speaker 1: to tell you what constitutes that star, like how much
Speaker 1: of it is hydrogen versus helium? That kind of thing
Speaker 1: right share because it takes the incoming light and splits
Speaker 1: it through either prison them or some other mechanical means
Speaker 1: into it's it's constituent electromagnetic spectrum and then analyzes those
Speaker 1: things and goes like, well, if that's there, then that
Speaker 1: means nitrogen. If that's there, then that means helium. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It kind of gives you an idea of what's there
Speaker 1: and at what concentrations in general. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: like a uh, you know, you don't get a pie
Speaker 1: chart necessarily, but you get an idea of the things
Speaker 1: that are there, and so we can do that right now.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have done that. That's where we end
Speaker 1: up coming up with these statements about whether or not
Speaker 1: a planet that's in that Goldilocks zone has anything on
Speaker 1: it that we might think could potentially support life. But
Speaker 1: even then, it's it's it's sort of an overall bird's
Speaker 1: eye view is not far enough satellites eye view of
Speaker 1: what's going on. So mass spectrometers, though, instead of looking
Speaker 1: at the light just directly, what they do is you
Speaker 1: take a sample of whatever material you want to study.
Speaker 1: So if it's gas or whatever, uh, you then end
Speaker 1: up vaporizing it. If it's not gas, you vaporize it
Speaker 1: and you ionize it. So you have added enough energy
Speaker 1: where you now have charged particles which then gets sped
Speaker 1: through magnetic field, and as they zoom through, the magnetic
Speaker 1: field actually actively separates these different particles into their constituent components,
Speaker 1: and a detector at the end of the mass spectrometer
Speaker 1: will be able to determine which chemicals, what what elements
Speaker 1: were in that composition, and it will give you an
Speaker 1: idea of how much of each one happened to be
Speaker 1: in that composition. And Uh, they are not tiny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was going to say, obviously we have these machines,
Speaker 1: but the question is could you fit one on a suit?
Speaker 1: Uh No, No, not not as not as far as
Speaker 1: I right now. MS, as far as I'm aware, they're
Speaker 1: all like anywhere from well, I mean, the one that
Speaker 1: I have in my head is from like the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and is like car sized. I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: they're more like refrigerator size cabinet side. So out of
Speaker 1: all the ones I have personally seen, they've all been
Speaker 1: quite large, like there's something that fit in a lab
Speaker 1: or something that can fit on a sizeable satellite. Uh.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean to say that that maybe there aren't
Speaker 1: smaller ones out there that I'm just not aware of
Speaker 1: but I'm curious to see how far miniaturization can take
Speaker 1: us with this particular technology. Well, I actually did a
Speaker 1: little investigation along these lines because I realized, well, the
Speaker 1: Mars Science Laboratory, you know, the Curiosity rubber uh mission,
Speaker 1: is taking atmospheric readings, and so I wanted to look
Speaker 1: at what equipment they have and what the profile and
Speaker 1: that was so the MSL featured the Sample Analysis at
Speaker 1: Mars suite, which combined a mass spectrometer, Like we just
Speaker 1: talked about a gas chromatograph which works together with the
Speaker 1: mass spectrometer. I think that they worked together by separating
Speaker 1: the different chemical constituents of the air and then analyzing them.
Speaker 1: And then also it had a tunable laser spectrometer, and
Speaker 1: these things together were used to analyze the chemical composition
Speaker 1: of the Martian atmosphere and the Martians soil. So, according
Speaker 1: to the MSL mission homepage, the s A M suite
Speaker 1: took up quote more than half of the science payload
Speaker 1: on board the Mars Science Laboratory rover. Okay, so what's
Speaker 1: the science payload? Yeah, I looked that up. I found
Speaker 1: a NASA press kit for the mission that said that
Speaker 1: the science payload was a hundred and sixty five pounds
Speaker 1: or which would mean that the sample analysis suite weighted
Speaker 1: at least eighty three pounds or thirty eight kilograms. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if all that equipment would be necessary
Speaker 1: if you weren't doing soil but only atmospheric analysis. But
Speaker 1: if we just assume for a minute that we're using
Speaker 1: the whole S a M suite, that's a lot of
Speaker 1: weight to to a space suit. Yeah, but then again,
Speaker 1: something that weighs eight three pounds on Earth only weighs
Speaker 1: thirty one point five pounds on Mars. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe that is feasible, especially if you assume that the
Speaker 1: S a M is carrying equipment that would not be
Speaker 1: necessary just for testing the atmospheric composition. Sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're still carrying like something the size
Speaker 1: of a mini fridge on your back, I'm guessing, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound fun to me, not at all. But
Speaker 1: not to mention the fact that you would have to
Speaker 1: what I guess you would put this on, I mean
Speaker 1: because because it part of your suit. I guess if
Speaker 1: it's part of your suit that it's gonna wait, it's
Speaker 1: gonna weigh eighty three pounds before you talking about Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean once you're on Mars would be fine, but
Speaker 1: it would be really super heavy before you got there, right,
Speaker 1: I mean if this was something that you put on
Speaker 1: before you left your spaceship. So let's say that you've
Speaker 1: got a special suit, probably in near zero gravity on
Speaker 1: your spaceship, right, but when you get on your rocket
Speaker 1: back on Earth, maybe there's different suits. Maybe that's what
Speaker 1: I was thinking. You would have to have different suits
Speaker 1: because otherwise heavy. Yeah, so I guess the bottom line was, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We we went down some interesting rabbit trails,
Speaker 1: but in the end, we don't know. YEA, there is
Speaker 1: a suit that can analyze atmospheric composition in real time.
Speaker 1: That was the other question was how fast can I
Speaker 1: do it. I don't have any information that would indicate
Speaker 1: it would take a very long time to analyze a
Speaker 1: gas sample from a planet, But I don't really know
Speaker 1: how long that would take. It might not be feasible
Speaker 1: to just continuously update this information in real time. You
Speaker 1: might have a limited number of scans, or it might
Speaker 1: take a little while for it to tell you what
Speaker 1: the air around you is like. Uh, But Anyway, if
Speaker 1: there are any atmosphere scientists or NASA geeks out there
Speaker 1: who can help us with a more definitive answer, please
Speaker 1: right in. We would love to hear it. I think
Speaker 1: the I think the answer is, if you're Gary Sinise
Speaker 1: and you're going to Mars, make sure you have a
Speaker 1: lesser known actor going with you. And you have that
Speaker 1: lesser known actor, take his or her helmet off first,
Speaker 1: observe their reaction, and then make your own decision. And also,
Speaker 1: if you're Gary se apparently, watch out for Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: because he's out for your wrists. Just one, just the one,
Speaker 1: whichever one has the read out on it. Okay. If
Speaker 1: I wanted to follow up on one more of the
Speaker 1: mission to Mars, tabs and display, which is the one
Speaker 1: that said thrust, No, it's the one that's the one
Speaker 1: that said med okay, But clearly if the wrist has
Speaker 1: been detached, then that one's going to have some very
Speaker 1: negative readoubts. Right, So let's talk biomedical sensors and suits,
Speaker 1: all right, because that sounds really important. Also, so I
Speaker 1: found in there was a Kansas State University press release
Speaker 1: that detailed how researchers at that University. We're working across
Speaker 1: disciplines to help design a future space suit that would
Speaker 1: include bio since ors to monitor the medical and physiological
Speaker 1: conditions of the wearer, so to combine those readings into
Speaker 1: one electronic system and then sort of contact the space
Speaker 1: station or home base via radio transmission. And they would
Speaker 1: be keeping track of things like muscle activity with electromyographic sensors,
Speaker 1: or they would be able to track movement with accelerometers.
Speaker 1: They would track your pulse in, your blood pressure and
Speaker 1: blood oxygen saturation, and your breathing rate which could be
Speaker 1: measured with a sort of belt around your chest. And
Speaker 1: another interesting fact they said is that they're trying to
Speaker 1: power the suit elements without using batteries, which they said
Speaker 1: could be dangerous because the oxygen rich gas composition inside
Speaker 1: the space suit. I guess that would be because the
Speaker 1: oxygen makes batteries a fire hazard. Well, yeah, I have
Speaker 1: sort of spark inside an oxygen rich environment. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we're talking here about where the primary gases oxygen
Speaker 1: as opposed to in our atmosphere of our sphere. Where
Speaker 1: like that than any kind of spark would ignite our
Speaker 1: entire atmosphere, which sounds like a Bond villain plan. Actually no, wow,
Speaker 1: it does, right, So because of that, they're planning on
Speaker 1: trying to power it using body heat. That was fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this sounds like the best of all like wearable sport
Speaker 1: technology that I've heard of except for space exploration. Um so,
Speaker 1: oh that's really cool. Yeah, it's brainy and it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's incorporating that same technology that we're seeing in
Speaker 1: uh in, in various wearables. Now that you know, now
Speaker 1: that we're seeing that kind of thing miniaturized to a
Speaker 1: point where you can have it in a tiny, relatively
Speaker 1: tiny form factor, there's no reason not to incorporate that
Speaker 1: into something like a space suit because it's not it's
Speaker 1: not measurably adding to the mass or the weight of
Speaker 1: your payload, right right. And actually, going back to our
Speaker 1: note about medical tri quarters, then you know that kind
Speaker 1: of research and technolog you would absolutely plan to the
Speaker 1: sort of things. So it's all working together great. So, Benjamin,
Speaker 1: the final answer to your question is pretty much everything
Speaker 1: on the readout on the on the Astronauts suit in
Speaker 1: the movie we think is totally feasible, In fact, in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases completely simple. The only one that
Speaker 1: we're not so sure about his atmospheric composition can be done.
Speaker 1: But the question is is it too heavy now? And
Speaker 1: if somebody again, if somebody out there knows the answer,
Speaker 1: let us know. I think I think it is completely
Speaker 1: feasible to have a direct link like radio transmission link
Speaker 1: between your wrist read out and say your spacecraft that
Speaker 1: can do readings. But again, that would not that wouldn't
Speaker 1: apply to something like a new environment you enter into,
Speaker 1: like a new room. But you could at least get
Speaker 1: live readings from the spacecraft from anything any of its sensors,
Speaker 1: and have that display on your wrist. So some things
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily need to have incorporated on your space suit.
Speaker 1: You would just need have a communications system so that
Speaker 1: you could get the readouts from your spacecraft. Still not
Speaker 1: helpful if you're going to walk into what is now
Speaker 1: an abandoned astronaut habitat and figure out whether or not
Speaker 1: it's safe to breathe, that's not going to help you there.
Speaker 1: That's why you got to bring your lesser known actor
Speaker 1: with you. So yeah, I have to thank you very
Speaker 1: much for sending that question in. This was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to to look into. Uh, we we love
Speaker 1: this kind of science fiction stuff and we love learning
Speaker 1: about it because you know, this was this one was
Speaker 1: a research heavy episode and and those can be a
Speaker 1: lot of fun for us. We don't necessarily need to
Speaker 1: do them all the time, but we really enjoyed this one,
Speaker 1: so thank you again. And if you guys out there
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future episodes, maybe you've got some
Speaker 1: other science fiction e idea and you're wondering is this feasible?
Speaker 1: Is it just pure fantasy? Write us let us know
Speaker 1: what you want to hear about. We'll be glad to
Speaker 1: tackle that. Look into it for you. You can write
Speaker 1: us at our email address that is f w Thinking
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com, or drop us a
Speaker 1: line on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. At Twitter and
Speaker 1: Google Plus, we are FW thinking. Just search fw thinking
Speaker 1: and Facebook will pop right up. Send us a message
Speaker 1: there and we will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this topic in the future of technology,
Speaker 1: visit forward thinking dot com. Brought to you by Toyota.
Speaker 1: Let's go Places