Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Pay there and WelCom to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says the seed
Speaker 1: is always greener and somebody else's lake. I'm Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren voc
Speaker 1: obamb is not with us today, but she will be
Speaker 1: joining us again next week. Hopefully my brain will also
Speaker 1: be joining us next week. Where is it right now,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you my brain is. It's under the sea, buddy.
Speaker 1: It's under the sea down, or it's wetter, or at
Speaker 1: least I've heard it's better. I've actually never been under
Speaker 1: the sea. What Well, I've swam in the sea. I
Speaker 1: guess I've like dunked my head on. Okay, I was
Speaker 1: about to say, like, how have you managed to do that? No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've never been to the bottom of the ocean. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean depends on what part of the ocean you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Two, right, because when you're waiting in your
Speaker 1: feet are on the sand, right, Okay, but not you
Speaker 1: don't mean to any significance. Actually, I am an aqua knot.
Speaker 1: I went to the beach one time. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about aqua nuts today, and aqua nuts are uh there.
Speaker 1: There are people working with NASA to develop technologies and
Speaker 1: processes and various strategies for dealing with deep space situations
Speaker 1: and and tech and tools, but we have to be
Speaker 1: able to do it here on Earth because you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to test something to make sure that
Speaker 1: it can withstand the rigors of space, or that it
Speaker 1: needs to uh, that needs to be useful within a
Speaker 1: space environment, it's pretty tricky to do here on Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing We've actually talked about a bunch of
Speaker 1: times before in various ways. It turns out to be
Speaker 1: very difficult to simulate space on Earth cheaply and safely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got you know, we've got lots of different environments
Speaker 1: that various uh the NASA uses in various emulations of
Speaker 1: space environments. Things that Mars colonists pretending to be Mars
Speaker 1: colonists out in the middle of the desert somewhere right
Speaker 1: or Antarctica or something like that. But still they've got
Speaker 1: Earth gravity, they've got air. Yeah. Yeah, if they were
Speaker 1: to take their helmet off, they would not suddenly, you know,
Speaker 1: turn into Ronnie Cox total recall. They would they would
Speaker 1: not do that. So there's there's also another way of
Speaker 1: simulating a space environment that does bring into account some
Speaker 1: of those issues that you would encounter actually out in space,
Speaker 1: and that would be doing this underwater. Underwater has several
Speaker 1: of the aspects of space. For one, we obviously need
Speaker 1: equipment so that we can continue to breathe while we're there.
Speaker 1: And we can't just remove a helmet and be perfectly fine, right,
Speaker 1: so we have to we have to sort of like
Speaker 1: practice dawning the e v A suit and uh, and
Speaker 1: dealing with that. It has unusual pressure conditions, though I'd
Speaker 1: say actually going in the opposite direct from what we'd
Speaker 1: be dealing with in most of our environments would be
Speaker 1: going into in space. So like if you go to
Speaker 1: the Moon or space walk or the surface of Mars,
Speaker 1: you're going to be dealing with an unusually low pressure environment. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dealing with the bottom of the ocean is an unusually
Speaker 1: high pressure environment, but still you're dealing with different pressure conditions.
Speaker 1: And also you have buoyancy, yeah, yeah, and buoyancy can
Speaker 1: help simulate a low gravity environment. So whether you're you know,
Speaker 1: you can add some weight to your your suit which
Speaker 1: will allow you to simulate different low gravity environments. Infect
Speaker 1: NASA does this all the time, and they do this
Speaker 1: through a program called NEMO in E E M O.
Speaker 1: So this is going to be the main focus of
Speaker 1: today's podcast. Yeah, we're gonna be looking at the NEMO
Speaker 1: program and what it does and you know how it works, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: What does NEMOS stand for? You know, it stands for truth,
Speaker 1: and it stands for science and the American way. American way.
Speaker 1: It stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all about using the undersea environment to simulate
Speaker 1: space in various ways. And uh, it's pretty cool what
Speaker 1: they do and how they do it and where they
Speaker 1: do it. Uh, And it's it's a clever engineering way
Speaker 1: to say, well, how can we test out these things
Speaker 1: here on Earth. We're not spending money and potentially putting
Speaker 1: people's lives at risk out in space where we don't
Speaker 1: know for sure this is gonna work. How can we
Speaker 1: be reasonably sure it works by simulating it here? And
Speaker 1: it's pretty Based on the name, I'm going to guess
Speaker 1: that they operate out of a globe trotting giant underwater
Speaker 1: submarine that is disguised to look like in our wall.
Speaker 1: Or either that or they, you know, are constantly being
Speaker 1: berated by an overly anxious father. You can't go out there, Nemo,
Speaker 1: that's the ocean. No, neither of those things are true.
Speaker 1: It is, in fact takes place at a laboratory and
Speaker 1: undersea laboratory. Oh, that's pretty cool. Called Aquarius now. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm fairly certain that we at least alluded to Aquarius
Speaker 1: when we talked about underwater hotels. Uh. So, underwater hotels,
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about how there are only a couple
Speaker 1: of those that exist, and they are very limited. There.
Speaker 1: It's like a one it's like a one room thing.
Speaker 1: In one case, it was a underwater observatory meant for
Speaker 1: divers that wasn't intended to be an underwater hotel, but
Speaker 1: had been repurposed as one. You've definitely talked about Aquarius
Speaker 1: on tech stuff. I think I've heard you talk about. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Aquarius is the underwater facility that at one point
Speaker 1: um was located off the coast of the US Virgin Islands.
Speaker 1: That's originally where it was when it was built back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three. And it was originally called the
Speaker 1: George F. Bond. Bond was a physician and saturation diver.
Speaker 1: Saturation and divers. That's where you are diving to a
Speaker 1: point where you're the the oxygen, your blood all gets dissolved,
Speaker 1: and then you can hang out in a pressurized um
Speaker 1: environment that's at the same pressure as the ambient pressure
Speaker 1: of the water around you, and you just you hang out.
Speaker 1: You do science, you observe stuff, and it means you
Speaker 1: can also go in and out of the water without
Speaker 1: any sort of decompression because you are already at the
Speaker 1: that ambient pressure. You you've uh become um. You have
Speaker 1: adapted to it. However, if you want to go back
Speaker 1: up to the surface, you've got to go through decompression
Speaker 1: before you can do it, or else you will get
Speaker 1: the bends. So I understand that this guy studied how
Speaker 1: pressure affects the human body. Yeah, he was actually a
Speaker 1: physician and a diver. And uh he was a specialist
Speaker 1: in undersea and hyperbaric medicine and m passed away. Uh ine.
Speaker 1: So this facility when it was at the US Virgin Islands, Uh,
Speaker 1: it suffered some damage. Mostly it was for one thing.
Speaker 1: There's just wear and tear where stuff grows on it
Speaker 1: and everything. And yeah, if you ever seen one of
Speaker 1: these underwater like labs or facilities, they look like heck,
Speaker 1: they're just covered with junk and barnacles and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like some sort of pristine like super
Speaker 1: villain layer or something like that. It's hard to clean
Speaker 1: the exterior of an underwater habitat, and you might not
Speaker 1: even want to write like you might be. You might
Speaker 1: be wanting it to to you know, not interfere with
Speaker 1: the various biome as much as possible. In anyway, it
Speaker 1: was damaged because of Hurricane Hugo. It moved through the
Speaker 1: area and caused some damage to the facility, so it
Speaker 1: was airlifted out. It was actually you know, detached and
Speaker 1: sent off to Wilmington, North Carolina, where it was refurbished
Speaker 1: and redeployed, but this time off the coast of Key
Speaker 1: Largo in the Florida Keys. So that's where it is now.
Speaker 1: Well wait, now is this a hotel these days primarily
Speaker 1: or do they use it for science? This one's used
Speaker 1: for science. This is a science one. Uh, not the
Speaker 1: same one as the one that was used as a hotel.
Speaker 1: So this one was until fairly recently. It was owned
Speaker 1: by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAH, and
Speaker 1: specifically NOAH had the National Undersea Research Program as the
Speaker 1: administrator administrator for the lab. But in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: NOAH decided to sell the Aquarius Laboratory. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a time where people were
Speaker 1: worried that it would mean that the the scientific endeavors
Speaker 1: would come to an end because NASA is just one
Speaker 1: entity that uses this undersea laboratory. It's used for all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff from studying climate change, biology experiments, diving
Speaker 1: and medicine experiments, and also NASA uses it for the
Speaker 1: simulations of space, so it's used for lots of stuff.
Speaker 1: Forged at LEE, the Florida International University took ownership of
Speaker 1: the laboratory in two thousand and thirteen out to NASA.
Speaker 1: They allow NASA to continue to do their NEMO projects.
Speaker 1: So I wonder what's it like inside? It's cozy, first
Speaker 1: of all. First of all, to get there, you have
Speaker 1: to swim down to reach the actual facility. You're swimming
Speaker 1: down around forty seven ft, which about fourteen meters. That
Speaker 1: is not the bottom of the ocean. That's on the
Speaker 1: ocean floor there. The ocean floor is actually further down.
Speaker 1: It's at sixty two ft below the surface, or just
Speaker 1: under nineteen meters down. That's where the base plate is.
Speaker 1: So you can think of the base plate as being
Speaker 1: kind of the anchor point. Uh. And then the facility
Speaker 1: itself is on some struts uh. And there is actually
Speaker 1: a a an area called um a wet porch which
Speaker 1: is or or also known as the the moon pool.
Speaker 1: The moon pool is an opening inside the floor of
Speaker 1: the facility. Uh. And you just pop up through that.
Speaker 1: And because the facility itself is pressurized at the ambient
Speaker 1: pressure of the ocean, you can just go from underneath
Speaker 1: you you pop under this one divide, go up through
Speaker 1: the moon pool, and then you're inside the facility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy. You don't even need a door.
Speaker 1: But because of the pressure condition Yeah, the pressure keeps
Speaker 1: the water out. It's just like if you were to
Speaker 1: turn a bucket upside down and put it down into
Speaker 1: the water. The air is going to keep the water
Speaker 1: from coming into the bucket, right. So it seems like
Speaker 1: it would be really unfortunate if the facility got turned
Speaker 1: upside down. That would not be good. Yeah. There there
Speaker 1: are many things that would be not good if you
Speaker 1: were in this facility, like structural weakness would be not
Speaker 1: good too, or if you lost the connection through your
Speaker 1: life support buoy. Yeah, because this is not a the
Speaker 1: lab doesn't receive electricity through an onboard generator. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have just oxygen tanks supplying the oxygen. It's
Speaker 1: connected biblical cord. Ye. Yeah, exactly, It's gonna a biblical
Speaker 1: cord that connects to a buoy that floats on the surface,
Speaker 1: and it's through that that it receives electricity and oxygen
Speaker 1: so that the people down below will be able to survive. Obviously,
Speaker 1: that is an important part of doing science, is the
Speaker 1: surviving part. Otherwise it's hard to continuously make observations and
Speaker 1: test them. Uh. It's right next to a coral reef,
Speaker 1: and the science projects performed there can sometimes involve things
Speaker 1: like studying coral reef life cycles. If it's not the
Speaker 1: NASA ones, but the others projects that happen in there.
Speaker 1: As for the facility itself, you win inside of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you would have about four square feet or thirty seven
Speaker 1: square meters of space to wander around. UM. The the
Speaker 1: wet porch area is actually at and add on to
Speaker 1: the um to the facility. It's kind of bolted on.
Speaker 1: It's a squared off area that's bolted onto the end
Speaker 1: of this almost it almost looks like a pill, like
Speaker 1: a gel kept style pill. It kind of looks like
Speaker 1: that in shape. It's almost cylindrical UM. And part of
Speaker 1: that is because that curved wall structure is very sound
Speaker 1: and helps, uh distribute the pressure from the water so
Speaker 1: that you don't have these structural weakness points. Right, just
Speaker 1: makes sense. So, uh, the main entry is through that
Speaker 1: wet porch. There's also a hatch as well in case
Speaker 1: they need it. But also it also that's important for decompression.
Speaker 1: You know, they have to be able to to if
Speaker 1: they need to go back to the service, they have
Speaker 1: to go through. I think it's sixteen hours of decompression
Speaker 1: before they can leave. Yeah, because otherwise you get the bends.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you can read, Yeah, I'm sure you can. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were they were talking about like I actually watched
Speaker 1: they insist to be bored part of the sis. Like
Speaker 1: you get a ball in the cup, the balls attached
Speaker 1: to the string strings at Boring. You've got it for prayer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they they Actually I watched videos of some of the
Speaker 1: guys who were down there for one of the previous
Speaker 1: NEMO projects. By the way, the reason why we're even
Speaker 1: talking about this is on July. The twentieth NEMO project
Speaker 1: takes place starts on July, but that means there have
Speaker 1: been nineteen other ones, And actually was NEMO nineteen that
Speaker 1: I saw videos from that that crew. One of the
Speaker 1: members of the crew took a whole series of videos
Speaker 1: and they are awesome. They're great. They show you around
Speaker 1: the facility, they talk about the science they perform and
Speaker 1: the experiments they're doing to test space procedures and tools,
Speaker 1: and it's really interesting to get, you know, an inside
Speaker 1: look at this. But it is really tiny. There are
Speaker 1: six bunks, so only six people can stay down here
Speaker 1: at a time, and they may stay there for up
Speaker 1: to three weeks and ago, so three weeks of being
Speaker 1: down in this little can with five other people and
Speaker 1: you can't go up to the surface unless you first
Speaker 1: go through six hours of decompression. Uh. That sense of
Speaker 1: isolation is an important part of what they're doing, because
Speaker 1: when you're in space, you are also isolated. So this
Speaker 1: it's not just about testing the equipment and the processes
Speaker 1: and the tools, but human psychology to test. You know,
Speaker 1: is this something we should consider doing because look at
Speaker 1: the stress it puts on people, and what are the
Speaker 1: best ways of dealing with that stress and are there
Speaker 1: ways that can help decrease it so that this sense
Speaker 1: of isolation isn't overpowering or causing anxiety. Really interesting stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and you also have windows, so you can actually see
Speaker 1: outside and see the little fishy swim by. Not the
Speaker 1: operating system, No you don't. I mean you could have
Speaker 1: a computer that's running on Windows, but no, I mean
Speaker 1: that the actual facility itself has portals that you can
Speaker 1: look through and see the beauteous fishies as they swim by,
Speaker 1: and possibly say Disney tunes to you. If you have
Speaker 1: ocean madness, just kind of like space madness, but it's underwater.
Speaker 1: Uh so that's the kind of madness you have to
Speaker 1: wait sixteen hours to escape it exactly, which it sounds
Speaker 1: like some of the flights I've taken in the past. Uh.
Speaker 1: The undersea environment does serve as an analog for space.
Speaker 1: Like we said, it's a hostile environment. So just like space,
Speaker 1: you have to have protective gear on in order to survive.
Speaker 1: You've got to psychologically get used to the hostile environment, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very important. Just as the isolation is a factor,
Speaker 1: so is the factor of you've got to get used
Speaker 1: to the fact that you are in a place where
Speaker 1: without your equipment working properly, you will die. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's something that you have to be
Speaker 1: able to deal with. Obviously, navigating underwater is not easy,
Speaker 1: nor is traveling around in space. They've talked about how
Speaker 1: sometimes you encounter a current that's so strong that it's
Speaker 1: like walking against a really powerful wind, which could potentially
Speaker 1: be something that you would encounter on an alien world,
Speaker 1: depending upon where you're going. Um. They also say that,
Speaker 1: you know, they want to test the basic tasks that
Speaker 1: would be really simple on a normal planet, right, Like, like,
Speaker 1: let's say we're on Earth, because we are, and we
Speaker 1: wanted to dig a hole, Give me a shovel, I
Speaker 1: can dig a hole, and assuming that the ground is
Speaker 1: not so hard that I can't shovel, Actually I kind
Speaker 1: of doubt your whole digging abilities. You know, I will
Speaker 1: test that after this episode, But uh, give me a
Speaker 1: shovel and kill me. I can't not threatening to kill you.
Speaker 1: So so at any rate, Uh, you know, it may
Speaker 1: something that might be easy on the surface of Earth
Speaker 1: could be incredibly difficult in other situations. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you're on a a low gravity environment, how hard
Speaker 1: would it be to get a course a soil sample,
Speaker 1: not coral sample, but a soil sample from that planet,
Speaker 1: which would be a typical science experiment that you would
Speaker 1: expect astronauts to do on a different planet, like on Mars.
Speaker 1: So they've tested this by giving an aqua knot, which
Speaker 1: is what they call the the crew that goes down
Speaker 1: to Aquarius to test this kind of stuff. Uh, They've
Speaker 1: given an aquanaut of shovel. They wait the aquanaut down
Speaker 1: to the appropriate level that will simulate the amount of
Speaker 1: gravity they would experience on whatever destination they have in mind,
Speaker 1: and say, all right, here's the location you need to
Speaker 1: go to. We need a soil sample from that location
Speaker 1: using this shovel as your tool. And then they observe
Speaker 1: to see does it work? Is it hard? How difficult
Speaker 1: is it? Is there some way of making that easier
Speaker 1: for people when they do go to Mars. So that
Speaker 1: they're able to perform the science without it being you know,
Speaker 1: despite the tools, instead of because of the tools. They
Speaker 1: want to make sure that the tools are useful and
Speaker 1: not an impediment. Yeah, and I'm sure it's got to
Speaker 1: be similar to extra vehicular activity in space and that
Speaker 1: you're dealing with like hard time limits and stuff. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You you are only able to stay out there as
Speaker 1: long as your oxygen right supply is able to give
Speaker 1: you oxygen. So the people who are on these e
Speaker 1: v as, the extra vehicular activities, the same thing that
Speaker 1: they call them out in space. They refer to anything
Speaker 1: that requires you to go outside of the aquarious laboratory
Speaker 1: as an e v A, And there could be dozens
Speaker 1: of them within a span of a full NEMO project
Speaker 1: like the one I looked at for NEMO. I think
Speaker 1: it was fifteen or sixteen. There were like twenty two
Speaker 1: e v as planned over the course of it. That's
Speaker 1: a lot. But you are limited by the amount of
Speaker 1: oxygen that you have with you, just as you would
Speaker 1: be in space. Uh. You know, sometimes you might have
Speaker 1: an umbilical cord attaching you back to the um, to
Speaker 1: the to the laboratory, just as you could have a
Speaker 1: spacecraft that had that same sort of feature to it,
Speaker 1: but even so you're still limited. So that's important. And
Speaker 1: it's built in so that when these these tasks are
Speaker 1: are transferred from the undersea environment out into space, NASA
Speaker 1: can be reasonably sure that the astronauts will be able
Speaker 1: to complete them in the time necessary to do so.
Speaker 1: If it takes too long to do then it needs
Speaker 1: to either be redesigned or abandoned. Yeah, that's crazy. It's
Speaker 1: something that I think most people have never even thought
Speaker 1: about when it comes to space missions, Just like, how
Speaker 1: do you estimate how long it's going to take to
Speaker 1: do something in space? And and we're talking about everything
Speaker 1: from complex maneuvers like they they have, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they have essentially the equivalent of the jet packs that
Speaker 1: that astronauts would use in space to move around, but
Speaker 1: they have the water version, like everything from something as
Speaker 1: complex as that to something as simple as moving through
Speaker 1: a hatch, just to test to make sure that the suits,
Speaker 1: which are designed to be as close to space suit
Speaker 1: technology as possible, uh, and the hatch itself are designed
Speaker 1: such a way that the astronauts can easily move through them. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if they can't then that's a problem. Something needs to
Speaker 1: be redesigned, either on the suit or on the hatch
Speaker 1: or both. And that's why they have these really extensive tests,
Speaker 1: is to test everything from the people, to the equipment
Speaker 1: to the actual methodology they're using. One other thing that
Speaker 1: happens in space is that you know, the further way
Speaker 1: from Earth get, the longer it takes for messages to
Speaker 1: get from Earth to you and from you back to Earth. Right.
Speaker 1: We saw this with the Curiosity rover landing. We people
Speaker 1: talked about how the rover had been on the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars for several minutes, but we didn't know if
Speaker 1: it had landed successfully. So while we're waiting to find out,
Speaker 1: it was already happily sitting not happily because I didn't
Speaker 1: have emotions, but it was sitting there safely on the
Speaker 1: surface of the planet. But we had no way of
Speaker 1: knowing because it took time for the information to travel
Speaker 1: from Mars to get to Earth. It could only travel
Speaker 1: the speed of light. So while I say only in
Speaker 1: the speed of light is the best thing in the universe,
Speaker 1: that's still a limiting factor. And so in order to
Speaker 1: simulate that, NASA puts in essentially artificial delays in communications
Speaker 1: and builds that into the various missions. So if people
Speaker 1: aboard the aquarious lab need to talk to mission control,
Speaker 1: there's a delay, and there's a delay in the message
Speaker 1: coming back. It teaches people to be very concise and
Speaker 1: very specific when they are communicating, because if what they're
Speaker 1: saying is not clear, they have to wait sometimes up
Speaker 1: to twenty minutes for them to receive the message saying
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that, and then you have
Speaker 1: to do it again, and keeping in mind that the
Speaker 1: other people are waiting ten minutes from when they said
Speaker 1: it before it gets to you, and then another ten
Speaker 1: minutes for your reply to come back. It's very It
Speaker 1: indicates the need for clear, concise communication, and it teaches
Speaker 1: like NASA how to make these sort of communications more effective.
Speaker 1: You know that that's a class they should teach in college.
Speaker 1: They've got technical writing, business writing, creative writing, but they
Speaker 1: don't have communications styled for interplanetary radio transmission. Obviously I
Speaker 1: would fail that course a little at uh So, the
Speaker 1: very first NEMO project began on October twenty one, two
Speaker 1: thousand one, and like I said, we're moving up on
Speaker 1: NEMO twenty now, so, uh, you know, was it like
Speaker 1: being there? If you watch those videos, you'll get a
Speaker 1: good feel for it. But like I said, it's tight quarters.
Speaker 1: You've got six months. They're stationed at one end of
Speaker 1: the Aquarius lab um, and you might have somewhere in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of twenty to twenty five different v as
Speaker 1: planned for the duration of your mission. They're depending on
Speaker 1: and that could last as long as three weeks. Ah,
Speaker 1: you would end up testing out lots of different variations
Speaker 1: of the same stuff because really you're trying to gather
Speaker 1: as much information as possible about things that will potentially
Speaker 1: used in space. So there have been NEMO missions where
Speaker 1: really it's been all about testing the same space suit
Speaker 1: and slightly different configurations to find out which one is
Speaker 1: the best one and under various circumstances. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's important. It is. It sounds incredibly tedious and it
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, you're underwater, like you're surrounded by by
Speaker 1: amazing marine life, because you're not that far off the
Speaker 1: coast of Key Largo. It's not like you're in a
Speaker 1: desolate ocean environment. So I'm sure there's lots of stuff
Speaker 1: to be like Oh that's awesome, but yeah, exactly like,
Speaker 1: oh really that's right down the street. Um, but no,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's more about like, you know, you try
Speaker 1: out your space suit and one configuration, and then you
Speaker 1: try it on a different one, see if that makes
Speaker 1: any difference. Tried on the different on see if that
Speaker 1: makes any difference. Then you do it with different weights
Speaker 1: because that's too similar different gravity, and it maybe that
Speaker 1: a space suit for the Moon is not as ideal
Speaker 1: on Mars. Eight You might find that one design works
Speaker 1: really well for Moon gravity, which is one six of
Speaker 1: the Earth's gravity, and others might be better for Mars,
Speaker 1: which I think is one third if I'm not mistaken
Speaker 1: of our gravity. And so it's really important as you
Speaker 1: test out all these different variations, right. Um. So once
Speaker 1: you've you know, that's just one part of it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's the communications part that I talked about, the isolation part,
Speaker 1: uh well, and these mundane tests are really critical because
Speaker 1: you want to make absolutely certain that every decision you
Speaker 1: make when you're sending people out on a space mission,
Speaker 1: particularly something like going to Mars, that every decision made
Speaker 1: is going to is not going to to endanger the
Speaker 1: success of the mission and the safety of the crew.
Speaker 1: So things that like a hatch shape or size, they
Speaker 1: want to make sure that it's it's economically uh wise,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't want to They don't want to
Speaker 1: make a three pronged space door where you could drive
Speaker 1: a hum vy through it, because you need to have
Speaker 1: one astronaut go through. But at the same time, you
Speaker 1: don't want it to be small where your suit is
Speaker 1: catching on it when you're trying to get through, or
Speaker 1: shaped in a weird way. So these tests are while
Speaker 1: their mundane are really important. Also, there's a thing called
Speaker 1: the center of gravity rig which is a fancy way
Speaker 1: of saying a backpack where you could put weights in
Speaker 1: different parts of the backpack to change the center of
Speaker 1: gravity of an aqua ut um. And that helps NASA
Speaker 1: designed space suit equipment that's both useful and safe by
Speaker 1: you know, checking to see how this affects an aquanot's
Speaker 1: ability to walk around on the surface of the ocean floor.
Speaker 1: Ah and uh while we are looking a lot at
Speaker 1: space suits and vehicle designs that that's a big part
Speaker 1: of what NEMO programs are all about testing is you know,
Speaker 1: can can you get in and out of a vehicle
Speaker 1: effectively wearing this suit. Obviously finding out that it's not
Speaker 1: easy to do when you're on the surface of Mars
Speaker 1: is a little too late, right, So you want to
Speaker 1: be able to test that out, both the suit and
Speaker 1: the vehicle configuration, to make sure that that it all
Speaker 1: works together. Um, or you might want to just test
Speaker 1: how well you can maneuver and interact with different environments
Speaker 1: while wearing that space suit. This is similar to that
Speaker 1: idea of taking the shovel and trying to dig with it.
Speaker 1: Does the space suit get in the way? Does is
Speaker 1: the shovel design properly? Is there something else that needs
Speaker 1: to happen in order for this to be as easy
Speaker 1: as possible given the conditions that you have to work within.
Speaker 1: So it's actually a pretty huge challenge. Uh So, what
Speaker 1: specifically is going on this year's NEMO? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a fourteen day mission starting on July twenty,
Speaker 1: l I said, And the main purpose is to test
Speaker 1: the tools and techniques that could be used by astronauts
Speaker 1: who are visiting Mars. So, yeah, specifically looking at at
Speaker 1: a potential like if we are to send to Mars one,
Speaker 1: are the best practices that we need to follow, and
Speaker 1: this is NASA. NASA. That's kind of surprising because I
Speaker 1: don't know, I haven't gotten a lot of Uh, we're
Speaker 1: definitely sending people to Mars vibes from NASA. Well, there's
Speaker 1: been there's been talk about it for you know, for
Speaker 1: more than a decade. There's been well, really there's more
Speaker 1: for more than several decades. There's been talking of it,
Speaker 1: but there's been serious talk for more than a decade
Speaker 1: about about pursuing it, and it kind of we have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that goes well, yeah, and there
Speaker 1: are different departments within NASA, right, So it's you know,
Speaker 1: saying that NASA says blah blah blah is a little
Speaker 1: misleading because saying the US government says it may be
Speaker 1: in a single official who has no backing with anybody else.
Speaker 1: It's possible that that happens. But this is a case
Speaker 1: where NASA is also working with the European Space Agency
Speaker 1: to test a lot of different equipment. That's cool and
Speaker 1: it's so millennial because it's all wearable compute its. It's
Speaker 1: all things like like heads up displays, uh, tablets or smartphones,
Speaker 1: so you're seeing things like um, a space suit designed
Speaker 1: to go underwater right now, that has a tablet or
Speaker 1: smartphone type of device on one wrist, so that a
Speaker 1: pit boy, yes, essentially a pit boy, that's a good example.
Speaker 1: Or a heads up display, which, by the way, at
Speaker 1: least for Nemo nineteen, I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: the case for twenty Nemo nineteen. The heads up display
Speaker 1: Google glass. It's a pair of Google glass, but the
Speaker 1: idea being that it would give aqua nuts the ability
Speaker 1: to look at a series of steps without taking their
Speaker 1: eyes off the task at hand. So for an astronaut,
Speaker 1: you can understand this would be incredibly useful. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like thinking about the hollow lens right that you
Speaker 1: would be in a space environment, you're doing something important.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe you're setting down a drill so
Speaker 1: that you can put a nuclear bomb in this giant
Speaker 1: asteroid that's heading towards Earth. And that way, it has
Speaker 1: the list of instructions right in front of you, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to look away from the big drill
Speaker 1: that's drilling down into Uh. And it would really make
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis job much easier, That's what I'm saying. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe it could show you the lyrics to leaving on
Speaker 1: a jet plane, so that way you don't screw it up.
Speaker 1: If I'm going to continue the army getting references, that,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the extent of my army getting
Speaker 1: knowledge because I've never actually seen that movie. Oh you haven't. No,
Speaker 1: I have not. Well, if you've ever got like three
Speaker 1: and forty seven minutes to spend however long it is,
Speaker 1: if I just want to make my life seem that
Speaker 1: much longer by watching something I'm clearly not going to enjoy.
Speaker 1: So this is really cool. Though. The idea that they
Speaker 1: will be able to use this technology, and the reason
Speaker 1: why I say it's kind of the millennial approach, is
Speaker 1: that they're going to be using testing a lot of
Speaker 1: different apps as well to see which ones are going
Speaker 1: to make potentially make the missions more easy to um,
Speaker 1: the more eas easier to complete. Sure, because I mean,
Speaker 1: when we're going to space, you need to consider the
Speaker 1: effectiveness not just of hardware but of software, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what, if you're on that asteroid you want
Speaker 1: to play in words, you're gonna especially the Star Wars edition,
Speaker 1: which would be really apropos uh no, but seriously, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to be able to make sure the software
Speaker 1: is going to be useful. It's not just going to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you can do it this way. You
Speaker 1: wanted to make sense, you wanted to be intuitive, you
Speaker 1: wanted to be reliable. And it's also going to runnings
Speaker 1: two warp yes, yeah, And it's also supposed to stay
Speaker 1: in contact with other parts of the mission, and it
Speaker 1: incorporates those communication delays we talked about earlier. So when
Speaker 1: one person is using their equipment underwater and they're requesting
Speaker 1: guidance from mission control, there's going to be that delay
Speaker 1: because just as there would be if you were in
Speaker 1: space and you were really far away from Earth, you
Speaker 1: can't expect an answer to pop up immediately. So it's
Speaker 1: to test that as well, to make sure that this
Speaker 1: stuff is still useful even given the the UH the
Speaker 1: restriction of a communications delay. Communications delays are also very
Speaker 1: useful and that it teaches how to improvise right, Like
Speaker 1: you might you might have a problem that you have
Speaker 1: to address that you need some guidance on. You can
Speaker 1: do some maybe some quick work to address it, but
Speaker 1: you might need more guidance to actually solve it. Right.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of stuff that they are looking into
Speaker 1: as well. The idea like, well, these apps may be
Speaker 1: able to help some help in certain mission parameters, while
Speaker 1: mission control is working for a more permanent solution. Sure, um,
Speaker 1: it's clippy for space exploration. I see that you're trying
Speaker 1: to establish a Martian colony. Would you like some help?
Speaker 1: The commander of this mission is going to be Luca Parmitano,
Speaker 1: who is an astronaut who has spent one sixty six
Speaker 1: days aboard the International Space Stations of fourteen aboard. The
Speaker 1: aquaries should be pretty much easy pickings. That should be
Speaker 1: simple walk I'll walk in the ocean. Part Um and
Speaker 1: recent NEMO missions have also explored tools and techniques for
Speaker 1: astronauts who are attempting a landing on an asteroid. This
Speaker 1: one was really cool, the idea being that they use
Speaker 1: very little weight because they wanted to try and um
Speaker 1: uh simulate a micro gravity environment as close as possible,
Speaker 1: and it involved them planting kind of like sort of
Speaker 1: like harpoons or anchor points with ropes attached to them
Speaker 1: and creating pathways that way so that they would be
Speaker 1: able to to maneuver from one part of an asteroid
Speaker 1: to another. So if they wanted to do something like
Speaker 1: take a specific sample from a particular part of the asteroid. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously they're gonna need to figure out a way of
Speaker 1: maneuvering around there. How do you how do you get
Speaker 1: from one point to the other in a microgravity environment.
Speaker 1: That's what that test was all about. So when we
Speaker 1: get to the point when we're ready to do that,
Speaker 1: because of the the procedures established through the NEMO project,
Speaker 1: will have a better idea how to do that in
Speaker 1: a in a way that ensure success as closely as
Speaker 1: we possibly can. Uh, and that's really exciting. Uh. Those
Speaker 1: videos I talked about earlier, Uh, they were from NEMO nineteen. Uh.
Speaker 1: Andreas Morgenson or Morgenson I guess I should say, shot
Speaker 1: a series of videos while he was aboard the Aquarius,
Speaker 1: and they are great. He's he's enthusiastic. Um, he's funny,
Speaker 1: and he is uh just really genuine and showing what
Speaker 1: they're doing, why they are doing what they're doing. He's
Speaker 1: even self deprecating because he talks about how people think
Speaker 1: of astronauts as scientists. He's like, really, were lab technicians
Speaker 1: the scientist The scientists are back home and we're just
Speaker 1: the hands that do what the scientists want us to do.
Speaker 1: But we're the people the scientists have deemed expendable, right,
Speaker 1: We're Bruce Willis, And uh yeah, it's but it's really
Speaker 1: those videos. I cannot recommend them highly enough. They are
Speaker 1: really great, a great window into the training program, not
Speaker 1: even training, the simulation program um. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: are some people who say that you shouldn't even call
Speaker 1: them simulations, just call them missions, because they so closely
Speaker 1: mirror what is going on in space missions that to
Speaker 1: call them otherwise is disingenuous, which was pretty interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I think this is really cool. I had no idea
Speaker 1: about this program before we looked into it. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was one of those things that had popped up in
Speaker 1: my my news feed about how this was coming up
Speaker 1: on the twentie mission, and I thought, well, what the
Speaker 1: heck is that? When I looked into him, well, that
Speaker 1: makes sense, but I had never really heard of it before,
Speaker 1: and uh so I really wanted to go into more detail.
Speaker 1: And this is the sort of stuff that I find
Speaker 1: really inspiring, the idea of how can we as human
Speaker 1: beings engineer a situation to mimic something inherently dangerous so
Speaker 1: dangerous and so expensive and so difficult to do that
Speaker 1: there's not an easy way of testing that stuff right
Speaker 1: to make sure it's going to work, And I thought
Speaker 1: it was elegant way of doing it until you can
Speaker 1: just put yourself into the matrix, the matrix for space
Speaker 1: as close as we can get to. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: really interesting. Of course obviously if you are, you know,
Speaker 1: turning in at night aboard the Aquarius, you're not dealing
Speaker 1: with micro gravity anymore. You are, you know, in a
Speaker 1: two and a half atmosphere environment, just laying you can
Speaker 1: lay horizontal, you don't have to strap yourself into right. Also,
Speaker 1: use use of the toilet is slightly less complicated than
Speaker 1: is in space. I will say that the NEMO nineteen crew,
Speaker 1: one of them was from France, and he brought along
Speaker 1: with him French space food, so they were able to
Speaker 1: eat because most of the food they have was like
Speaker 1: camping food. They have there's a microwave on board. That's
Speaker 1: it for the cooking. There's microwave and then there's hot water.
Speaker 1: Those are your two options if you want to cook something.
Speaker 1: So they ended up bringing the cans of French space food.
Speaker 1: It was actually in ends with poll tabs um and
Speaker 1: they had to heat it using hot water, and so
Speaker 1: I was curious. It's like, I wonder what French space
Speaker 1: food is like quail. There was quail, there was salmon,
Speaker 1: there was some I can't remember what the dessert was,
Speaker 1: but it was very it was quintessentially French, and it
Speaker 1: was quite amusing to me. Anyway, those videos are all
Speaker 1: on YouTube. You can find those if you search for
Speaker 1: Nemo nineteen they'll pop up and I do highly recommend them.
Speaker 1: There's also he also recorded video logs of his training
Speaker 1: process before going aboard the Aquarius. So it's all there.
Speaker 1: It's very good to you know, check it out if
Speaker 1: you get a chance. If you guys have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes a Forward Thinking, you should write us.
Speaker 1: Are no addresses FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop us a line on Twitter, Google
Speaker 1: Plus or Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus. We are
Speaker 1: FW thinking at Facebook. Just search w Thinking of the
Speaker 1: search bar will pop right up and we will talk
Speaker 1: to you again, really sir. For more on this topic
Speaker 1: in the future of technology, I visit forward Thinking dot com.
Speaker 1: H brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places