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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted

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Speaker 1: the American flag on the Moon while an estimated six

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million people tuned in. It was an

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Speaker 1: incredible moment, and frankly, when I watch videos on YouTube,

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Speaker 1: I still get a little choked up watching it. That said,

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Speaker 1: it turned out that getting the flag there and raising

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Speaker 1: it on the Moon was a real hassle, and it's

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Speaker 1: a pretty good illustration of the kinds of hassles that

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Speaker 1: we experience when we send humans to space. For starters,

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Speaker 1: there was this big political brew haha, which is a

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Speaker 1: great word really that hopefully I pronounced correctly over what

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Speaker 1: kind of flag or flags to put up there. So

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Speaker 1: some folks wanted to bring loads of tiny flags, one

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Speaker 1: for every nation currently recognized on Earth. But the US

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Speaker 1: Congress felt like if the US was footing the bill,

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Speaker 1: then it was an American flag that needed to go up,

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Speaker 1: and funding for the Apollo program appeared to be contingent

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Speaker 1: on this. Oh, it's a US flag that was planted

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Speaker 1: on each of the Apollo missions that made it to

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Speaker 1: the Moon. But the US had to be careful to

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Speaker 1: let everyone know that planting the flag was just a

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Speaker 1: symbolic gesture and was not their way of showing the

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Speaker 1: world that the Moon now belonged to the United States

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Speaker 1: because that would have broken recently established international law. All right,

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Speaker 1: so the politics was complicated. The next problem was how

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Speaker 1: to get the flag up there and how to make

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Speaker 1: it look good in space. The first problem for making

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Speaker 1: it look good was that there is no atmosphere on

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Speaker 1: the Moon, so if you hang the flag, it's just

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Speaker 1: gonna like sadly droop down and look super not majestic.

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Speaker 1: So they had to adjust a flag pole that one

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Speaker 1: telescope so that it wouldn't take up a lot of

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Speaker 1: space and they could just expand it out. And then

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Speaker 1: it also had to have a bar along the top

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Speaker 1: that would hold the flag up so that you could

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Speaker 1: see the stars and stripes better. It's really expensive to

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Speaker 1: send stuff to space, and it's really cramped inside of

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Speaker 1: the spacecraft, so they had to make it as light

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Speaker 1: as possible, and because space was limited inside the lunar lander,

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Speaker 1: they had to attach it to the outside of the

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Speaker 1: lunar lander. That meant that it was going to be

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Speaker 1: exposed to space when the lunar lander was coming down

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Speaker 1: to the Moon. And it was going to get super hot,

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Speaker 1: so they had to create this insulated container to make

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Speaker 1: sure that the flag wouldn't get sort of burned up

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Speaker 1: as it was entering the Moon. All right, So now

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Speaker 1: they've got it to the Moon, and even then there

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Speaker 1: were problems. So spacesuits are pressurized, and so it's not

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Speaker 1: like wearing a normal pair of gloves. It's like a

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Speaker 1: pair of gloves that sort of pushes against every movement

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Speaker 1: that you tried to make. So they had to make

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Speaker 1: the flag easy to get out and put up. But

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Speaker 1: once they got up there, the ground was more compact

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Speaker 1: than they thought it was going to be, so the

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Speaker 1: astronauts couldn't get the flag down as far as they wanted.

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Speaker 1: And because of that, and because they ended up putting

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Speaker 1: the flagpole maybe a little bit too close to the

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Speaker 1: lunar lander, when they took off to return, you know,

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Speaker 1: for their trip back to Earth, buzz Aldrin looked out

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Speaker 1: the window and saw that they had knocked over the

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Speaker 1: American flag. That appeared to have happened about half of

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Speaker 1: the time, because if you look at pictures now of

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Speaker 1: the Moon where those flagpoles should be, we see shadows

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Speaker 1: cast by flagpoles in areas where Apollo twelve, sixteen, and

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Speaker 1: seventeen put flags, So those three are probably still standing,

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Speaker 1: but the rest of the flagpoles probably have fallen over,

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Speaker 1: and the flag itself is probably a mess. The flags

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Speaker 1: were just run of the mill flags, which cost only

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Speaker 1: five dollars and fifty cents. And if you've seen a

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Speaker 1: flag that's been left out on a flagpole for years,

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Speaker 1: you've probably noticed that the sun's radiation has started to

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Speaker 1: make the colors fade. The flags on the Moon have

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Speaker 1: had about fifty years of exposure to solar radiation in

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Speaker 1: the vacuum of space, so there's probably not much red

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Speaker 1: or blue anymore. It's probably white. But also maybe the

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Speaker 1: flags have disintegrated by this point. Because the Moon has

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Speaker 1: temperature swings that go from over one hundred degrees celsius

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Speaker 1: to less than one hundred and fifty degrees celsius near

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Speaker 1: the equator as you go from day to night. That

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Speaker 1: stuff's really hard on equipment, so the flags are likely

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Speaker 1: disintegrated by now. Dennis Lakaruba, whose company sold the flag

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Speaker 1: to NASA, said I can't believe there would be anything left.

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Speaker 1: I gotta be honest with you. It's gonna be ashes cause, look,

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Speaker 1: the space environment is tough and we're planning on returning

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Speaker 1: to the Moon. The Artemis one mission orbited the Moon

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Speaker 1: without a crew in twenty twenty two. Artemis two is

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Speaker 1: expected to leave no sooner than September twenty twenty five,

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Speaker 1: and it will take a crew around the Moon without landing,

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Speaker 1: sort of like what we did with Apollo eight. Artemis

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Speaker 1: three is expected to happen no earlier than September twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty six, but this one's going to actually land humans,

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Speaker 1: including the first woman on the Moon, and they're heading

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Speaker 1: to the lunar South Pole. So on today's episode, we're

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the kinds of challenges we're

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Speaker 1: going to experience on the Moon as we move towards

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Speaker 1: setting up things like research stations, mining operations, and maybe

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Speaker 1: eventually permanent human habitats. Welcome to today's show. It's going

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Speaker 1: to be hard to work and live on the Moon.

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Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist.

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Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Wiersmith. I'm a parasitologist. Daniel. What have you

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Speaker 1: been up to this week?

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Speaker 2: Well, in addition to doing my research at serin I'm

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Speaker 2: also a professor, which means I teach, and this week

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Speaker 2: I've been preparing my new class for this fall, where

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Speaker 2: I'm talking about life in the universe, Does it exist?

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Speaker 2: Where is it? How can we find it? Basically, I'm

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Speaker 2: talking about aliens.

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Speaker 1: Nice. That sounds awesome. So is it a lecture class

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Speaker 1: or a conversation? I bet that would be some really

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Speaker 1: awesome conversations.

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Speaker 2: It's supposed to be a lecture, but I'm going to

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Speaker 2: make a kind of conversational and it's for non majors,

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Speaker 2: so we're talking like dance majors and artists and all

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Speaker 2: sorts of fun folks.

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that sounds like so much fun. Can

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Speaker 1: I take your class? Never mind, I don't want to

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Speaker 1: go back to school.

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Speaker 2: I'll give you an A and I'll have about you. Kelly.

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Speaker 2: What's your week been like?

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Speaker 1: So? I recently took over as vice president for the

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Speaker 1: American Society of Parasitologists. So I've been doing some like

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Speaker 1: organizational stuff that's not super exciting. But I also have

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Speaker 1: been studying the reproductive behaviors of male small mouth bass.

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Speaker 1: So one of my things that I do as an

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Speaker 1: ecologist is I work on questions related to managing fish populations.

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Speaker 1: And so we're working on some papers about bass reproduction.

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Speaker 1: So I've had my head underwater all week.

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Speaker 2: So why small mouth and not large mouth bass or

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Speaker 2: medium mouth bass.

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Speaker 1: There are no medium mouth bass, which is best friend

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Speaker 1: of mine. But I have done work on large mouth

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Speaker 1: bass too. That work involved making the fish vomits that

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Speaker 1: I could see what they were eating. That was a

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Speaker 1: way smelier job than this one, although this one involved wetsuits.

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Speaker 1: And I'm going to tell you there's two kinds of

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Speaker 1: people in the world, those who pee in their wetsuits

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Speaker 1: and those who lie about it. And riding in the

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Speaker 1: van with the crew every day was not always a

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Speaker 1: lovely experience. And the van was like twenty years old

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Speaker 1: because ecologists can't afford anything nice.

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Speaker 2: Five minutes in and we're already talking about ar En.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast with a Biologist.

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Speaker 1: My husband has a timer actually when Biologist started together,

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Speaker 1: and he keeps track of how long it takes for

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Speaker 1: us to start talking about poop, which we're gonna do

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Speaker 1: on today's episode at some point.

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Speaker 2: I bet, which we're gonna do absolutely except it's going

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Speaker 2: to be poop in space and anyway, Welcome to the

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Speaker 2: podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, in which we talk

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Speaker 2: about poop in space and poop on Earth and everything

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Speaker 2: out there in the universe. We like to explore the deepest,

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Speaker 2: darkest questions about how everything works, including tiny little particles

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Speaker 2: and fruit bats and everything in between.

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Speaker 1: Fruit bats are awesome.

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Speaker 2: So in the intro, Kelly, you told us about how

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Speaker 2: terrible it's going to be to live on the Moon,

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Speaker 2: all the challenges, how hard even was to get an

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Speaker 2: American flag to fly on the Moon. And my first

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Speaker 2: question is like, well, why are we even thinking about it?

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Speaker 2: Why is NASA planning to go back to the moon.

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Speaker 2: Why are people talking about building a particle collider on

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Speaker 2: the moon. Why does Jeff Bezos want to go to

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Speaker 2: the moon. Why don't we just stay home?

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, there's so many different answers to that question.

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Speaker 1: One of the big answers, like, the reason we went

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Speaker 1: to the Moon in the first place is probably prestige. So,

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Speaker 1: you know, humanity seems to have decided that being able

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Speaker 1: to get to a place like the Moon and keep

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Speaker 1: people alive is a great way to show how amazing

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Speaker 1: your economy is, how amazing your scientists are and to

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Speaker 1: just get the whole world sort of impressed with you,

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Speaker 1: and so that's probably part of why we're going back.

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Speaker 1: But there's also a bunch of small companies who are

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Speaker 1: hoping to make some profits off of the Moon. So

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Speaker 1: there's already people who are sending as of loved ones

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Speaker 1: to the Moon, which is a bit of a controversial thing.

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Speaker 1: There are people who don't feel like we should be

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Speaker 1: littering the moon with the ashes of humans, but there's

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Speaker 1: a company that's working on doing that already.

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Speaker 2: And is that a nice thing to do for somebody?

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Speaker 2: Or you like, I'm ejecting you from the planet because

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Speaker 2: I didn't like you in life, So.

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Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to be a nice thing. I

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Speaker 1: think Jean Roddenberry, the guy who did Star Trek, was

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Speaker 1: the first person, or was one of the first people

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Speaker 1: to have his ashes sent to space. They haven't made

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Speaker 1: it to the moon, but you know, I think it

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Speaker 1: would be great if you could go to the Moon

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Speaker 1: in life, But it's much cheaper and easier to send

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Speaker 1: a small quantity of your ashes to space.

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Speaker 2: Are you thinking, Gene Roddenberry literally went where no man

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Speaker 2: had gone before.

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Speaker 1: Well, I mean he was with a shuttle crew surrounded

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Speaker 1: by men and maybe some women at that point in

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Speaker 1: the shuttle program, and then I think he came back.

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Speaker 2: To you know, speaking of Urine. That's how I always

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Speaker 2: interpreted the Star Trek thing. To go where no man

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Speaker 2: has gone before always made me think of like I'm

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Speaker 2: peeing where nobody has ever peed before.

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Speaker 1: You know, as a biologist, my brain actually never went

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Speaker 1: with Aeron. I'm surprised.

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Speaker 2: Oh well, I'll just ruined Star Trek for you.

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Speaker 1: No, that's okay, I'm still good with Star Trek. It'll

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Speaker 1: be fine.

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Speaker 2: So tell me, is this desire to go to the

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Speaker 2: moon do you see it as like a natural extension

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Speaker 2: of you know, colonialism and exploration five hundred years ago

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Speaker 2: when the Spanish were sending out their ships, they also

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Speaker 2: wanted to like claim New Spain for the king and

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Speaker 2: you know, find resources and gold and exploit people. Is

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Speaker 2: this like a natural extension of it or is it

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Speaker 2: like a difference in kind?

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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so that could be a whole episode

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Speaker 1: on its own. There's a book that just came out

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Speaker 1: called Ground Control by Savannah I forget her last name,

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Speaker 1: But that's enough information for you to find that book,

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Speaker 1: and she tackles that question head on. I think it's complicated.

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Speaker 1: So one thing that's nice is that when you go

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Speaker 1: to the Moon, for example, there's already international law saying

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Speaker 1: you can't you know, America can't land plant a flag

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Speaker 1: and say the Moon belongs to us. But there is

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Speaker 1: a lot of ambiguity and international law about what you

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Speaker 1: can do with the resources once you're there. So could

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Speaker 1: Blue Origin, for example, extract water from the Moon and

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Speaker 1: create a gas station on the Moon by splitting it

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Speaker 1: into hydrogen oxygen, which is propellant for rockets, and then

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Speaker 1: sell that back to people. The US interpretation of international

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Speaker 1: law is that the answer is yes. But I think

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of other countries who would disagree. Or

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Speaker 1: I think China and Russia would disagree until they were

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Speaker 1: able to do the same thing, and then they would agree,

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Speaker 1: but they don't want to be the second country to

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Speaker 1: be able to do that. So it's complex. So there's

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Speaker 1: no people, so at least you don't have the problems

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Speaker 1: with dispossession in GENOCIDEA.

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Speaker 2: It could be aliens. There could be aliens.

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Speaker 1: On the moon.

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Speaker 2: We didn't know until we went, you know, and the

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Speaker 2: same is true with Mars. Right, Lanning people on Mars

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Speaker 2: is complicated for that reason.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think microbes on Mars are way more

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Speaker 1: likely than microbes on the Moon, and that I think

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Speaker 1: does make it complicx. But there are folks who argue

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Speaker 1: that the US, for example, being able to get to

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Speaker 1: the Moon before everyone else is sort of like we

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Speaker 1: benefited from colonization and from you know, exploiting various peoples

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Speaker 1: and that's how we got this far ahead. And now

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Speaker 1: we're going to be the first ones to get the

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Speaker 1: resources and we're not going to share it with people,

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Speaker 1: and that's like colonization sort of continuing to benefit the colonizers.

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Speaker 1: It's complicated. I think international law fixes some of these problems,

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Speaker 1: but I'd like to see more clarity to make sure

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Speaker 1: that everybody benefits from space a little bit more clearly.

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Speaker 1: But let's get back to the science.

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Speaker 2: Well, I have a very like twelve year old opinion

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Speaker 2: on this, which is it excites me to hear about

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Speaker 2: people going to the Moon in Mars and beyond because

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Speaker 2: I want to know what's out there, right, and I

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Speaker 2: feel like eventually we have to explore the universe, and

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Speaker 2: eventually has to start somewhere, and they should probably start

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Speaker 2: with the moon because it's the closest thing and that's

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Speaker 2: a baby step. And so I like hearing about like

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Speaker 2: concrete progress towards our eventual future as a galactic species.

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Speaker 2: You know, a big reader of science fiction, and so

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Speaker 2: it feels like if you can't even get to the moon,

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Speaker 2: you're not going to get anywhere. So that's my like,

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Speaker 2: you know, as a twelve year old view of going

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Speaker 2: to the moon.

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Speaker 3: Amen.

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Speaker 1: No, I totally agree with you. So my husband and

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Speaker 1: I wrote a book called The City on Mars, and

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Speaker 1: it's all about space settlements. And the reason we took

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Speaker 1: this project on initially was because we're both sci fhi

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Speaker 1: nerds who love the idea of humans living in space.

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Speaker 1: We just want to see it done right. And it's

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Speaker 1: kind of complicated and those complications. We're not going to

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Speaker 1: talk too much about the legal complications or the ethical

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Speaker 1: complications today, more of the like challenges that the lunar

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Speaker 1: environment poses when you're trying to work just do something

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Speaker 1: like plant a flag on the moon. Even something that

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Speaker 1: simple is complicated.

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Speaker 2: Even peeing on the moon is going to be hard.

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Speaker 2: So we were curious what folks out there thought about

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Speaker 2: life on the moon. Is it going to be a rosy,

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Speaker 2: relaxed retirement home where people can live out their cushy

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Speaker 2: lives or is it going to be brutish and short

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Speaker 2: and difficult. So I asked our listeners to comment on

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Speaker 2: the question what is the biggest challenge for living on

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Speaker 2: the Moon. If you'd like to participate for future episodes,

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Speaker 2: please write to us to questions at Danielankelly dot org

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Speaker 2: and will happily add your voice to the choir. So

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Speaker 2: think about it for a minute. What do you think

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Speaker 2: is the biggest challenge for living on the Moon. Here's

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Speaker 2: what a bunch of our listeners thought. I'd say it's

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Speaker 2: some combination of food and water having to be replenished,

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Speaker 2: most likely from Earth. Also bone loss due to low gravity.

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Speaker 2: I think radiation is going to be the main one

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Speaker 2: that we'd have to pay attention to, and living deep

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Speaker 2: underground doesn't seem like the most glamorous way to be

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Speaker 2: exploring a new body.

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Speaker 1: I would say probably the cost of keeping supplies.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, I would say cost.

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Speaker 4: There are so many ridiculous challenges facing humans on the Moon,

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Speaker 4: and almost every one of them is a single point

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Speaker 4: failure like radiation, exposure, or access to food and water.

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Speaker 4: So it's tough to choose, but I'm going with supplying oxygen.

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Speaker 5: I guess that would be the lack of any life

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Speaker 5: supporting ecosystem. Radiation is going to be a big problem.

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Speaker 6: But also I hear there's really difficult dust, which is

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Speaker 6: kind of like asbestos, I think, very dangerous to inhale

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Speaker 6: and also just damages everything. I can't see it being

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Speaker 6: a huge problem humans living on the Moon. We've already

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Speaker 6: got the International Space Station a few hundred years, few

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Speaker 6: trillion dollars, and some clever engineers.

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Speaker 5: I guess they would have to find a source of

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Speaker 5: water on the Moon because bringing it from Earth would

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Speaker 5: be incredibly heavy, and trying to recycle it from PSDD

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Speaker 5: on the space station just doesn't seem as if it

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Speaker 5: would be enough.

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Speaker 3: Well, top of mind is what to do with all

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Speaker 3: the cheese realistically? Actually how to deal with all of dust,

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Speaker 3: since I'm not aware of any room bus that can

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Speaker 3: handle it really well.

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Speaker 2: I think the.

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Speaker 7: Biggest challenge our humans living on the Moon will be

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Speaker 7: I think.

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Speaker 2: The dust over there, because it's charged, it gets everywhere.

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Speaker 6: Mental health and growing food is the biggest obstacles to

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Speaker 6: long term survivability on the Moon.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's temperature variations because there's no atmosphere. That sun

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Speaker 2: is going to heat up the surface really quickly and

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Speaker 2: make it really warm, and then it's going to cool

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Speaker 2: off doing night breathing, not floating away, lack of resources

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Speaker 2: to farm water, all that stuff. I think without the atmosphere,

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Speaker 2: meteors are going to come in and just ping the

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Speaker 2: surface of the Moon there, which is why it is

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Speaker 2: already so pock marked.

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Speaker 1: I probably guess the fact that you don't have all

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Speaker 1: the things you have on Earth would be the biggest

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Speaker 1: problem living on the Moon, like oxygen, water, radiation shielding,

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Speaker 1: that's my guest.

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Speaker 2: I think the hardest thing would be defined the nearest box.

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Speaker 1: It's a level way away.

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Speaker 2: Surviving the radiation environment. So it's going to force them underground.

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Speaker 7: The right the aditional water, it's probably going to be

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Speaker 7: the regulars. The moon soil, it is just corrosive sticks

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Speaker 7: to everything. It's probably going to cripple every mission that

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Speaker 7: goes up there for an extended period of time.

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Speaker 2: So nobody mentioned the thing I expected, which is, you

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Speaker 2: know the issue of being lactose intolerant and living on

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Speaker 2: a ball of cheese.

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Speaker 1: If the moon were made of cheese, that would solve

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Speaker 1: a lot of our food problems that we're going to

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Speaker 1: have on the moon. Although how old is the moon, Daniel.

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Speaker 2: Oh, the moon is billions of years old, so it's

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Speaker 2: going to be very Gorgonzola.

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Speaker 1: All right, that would really narrow the pool of folks

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Speaker 1: who would want to go to the Moon. I'm guessing

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Speaker 1: that would be a whole different set of problems.

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Speaker 2: It's going to be a sharp cheese for sure. So

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Speaker 2: tell me what you thought about these answers. Really, it

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Speaker 2: seems like our listeners are kind of aware of a

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Speaker 2: lot of difficulties for living on the moon.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I was impressed. Actually, it seems like they've got

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Speaker 1: a lot of facts about the moon. Honestly, they had

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Speaker 1: a lot more knowledge about the Moon that I had

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Speaker 1: before I started this book about the settling Space. So

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Speaker 1: I was impressed a lot of the problems that they mentioned.

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Speaker 1: We're going to be going over today and we could

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Speaker 1: have a whole show called the Moon kind of Sucks

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Speaker 1: that could have like five or six different seasons. But

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Speaker 1: we're going to just pick a couple of Kelly's favorite

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Speaker 1: moon problems. But before we get into my first problem,

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Speaker 1: what did you think about the listener answers?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought they were great. I love that people

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Speaker 2: really think about the problems of living on the Moon,

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Speaker 2: and I hope it means that they really appreciate how

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Speaker 2: cushy and wonderful life is here on Earth. No radiation issues,

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Speaker 2: we got nice weather, food is easy to grow. Man,

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Speaker 2: life here is great. So you may be anti Moon,

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Speaker 2: I hope that means you're also pro Earth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Earth is where you find all the

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Speaker 1: interesting parasites and wasps like that might not work for

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Speaker 1: most people, but man, the idea of moving to a

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Speaker 1: place where there's zero chance that I could, like find

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Speaker 1: a wasp species that hasn't been identified by science yet,

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Speaker 1: I'd be pretty bummed out about that.

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure most people include wasps on the pro

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Speaker 2: list for Earth, but you know, everybody's got their own thing.

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Speaker 1: I study the ones that are like too small to sting,

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Speaker 1: but I've helped describe two new was species, you know,

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Speaker 1: new to science. But but anyway, I hate yellow jackets.

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Speaker 2: All right, So tell us what is the number one

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Speaker 2: big pain in the butt for living on the Moon.

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Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that you can necessarily pick the

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Speaker 1: biggest problem. But the problem that was complained about a

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Speaker 1: lot by the astronauts and that seems particularly like a

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Speaker 1: pain in the rear and to me is regolith. So

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Speaker 1: regolith is the name for like the dirt that covers

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Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon. So on Earth, when you've

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Speaker 1: got dirt, we have wind and rain and these things

402
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Speaker 1: sort of roll our pebbles and they become nice and

403
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Speaker 1: smooth because of that. On the Moon, not only do

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Speaker 1: you have no wind and no water because it's in

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Speaker 1: the vacuum of space, but it just keeps getting hammered

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Speaker 1: by stuff from space, which kind of keeps shattering, and

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Speaker 1: then the heat like fuses things together again, and then

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Speaker 1: the temperature swings come and they shatter things into pieces,

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Speaker 1: and so it becomes super tiny and super sharp. So

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Speaker 1: it's like having all of these little like glass knives

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Speaker 1: on the surface. Astronaut John Jung referred to them as

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Speaker 1: tiny razor blades and was really worried about breathing them in,

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Speaker 1: which is a totally legit concern because on Earth we

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Speaker 1: have a disease called stone grinder's disease, where people were

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Speaker 1: like grinding stone and breathing in the tiny little sharp pieces,

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Speaker 1: it gets stuck in their lungs and causes scars and

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Speaker 1: it's hard to breathe. And so we're going to really

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Speaker 1: have to worry about like where this regolith goes and

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Speaker 1: make sure it's not in our habitats.

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Speaker 2: So you're saying this kind of weird word regolyth, Right,

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Speaker 2: this is a funny thing, And I guess it just

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Speaker 2: means like the dusty little bits on the outside of

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Speaker 2: a planet, right, because Earth also has regolith, right, This

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Speaker 2: what we call soil here on Earth, I think geologists

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Speaker 2: technically call regolith. It's like any sort of like dusty

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Speaker 2: little bits on the outside of a planet. And I

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Speaker 2: think that's kind of interesting that like planets have like

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Speaker 2: rock and then on their edges they're kind of like

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Speaker 2: covered in fine detail. I think that's sort of fascinating,

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Speaker 2: and it was interesting to learn more about like where

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Speaker 2: that comes from, Like why do we have regolith anyway?

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Speaker 2: You know, why isn't the Moon just like a big rock?

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Speaker 2: And why isn't the Earth just like a big rock?

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Speaker 2: You said, like Earth has water and wind, And I

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Speaker 2: think you're right, that's like a real source of the regolith.

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Speaker 2: Like on Earth, why do we have soil, right, because

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Speaker 2: we have weathering processes, But on the Moon we don't,

438
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:23,359
Speaker 2: right as you said, And the regolith actually comes from

439
00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:26,639
Speaker 2: like those asteroid impacts. It's it's really fascinating that this

440
00:21:26,760 --> 00:21:31,720
Speaker 2: is like shards of collisions, you know, Yeah, real tactile

441
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:35,320
Speaker 2: physical debris from a collision, and that's all there is.

442
00:21:35,680 --> 00:21:38,159
Speaker 2: The Only way to make regolith on the Moon is

443
00:21:38,200 --> 00:21:43,320
Speaker 2: to have this like destructive process that creates shrapnel basically, right,

444
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:46,160
Speaker 2: it's all shrapnel, super tiny shrapnel.

445
00:21:46,400 --> 00:21:48,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean the destructive process I think also includes

446
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:52,280
Speaker 1: the like changing of temperatures and the expanding and the shrinking.

447
00:21:52,760 --> 00:21:56,040
Speaker 1: But so I think regolith means something like blanket of

448
00:21:56,119 --> 00:21:59,600
Speaker 1: dirt or something like that. I was talking about geologists

449
00:21:59,600 --> 00:22:01,200
Speaker 1: the other day and I was like, what's the difference

450
00:22:01,200 --> 00:22:06,200
Speaker 1: between regolith and soil and dirt? And he just went

451
00:22:07,000 --> 00:22:09,280
Speaker 1: ugh and change the subject.

452
00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:14,600
Speaker 2: That's one of those like meteor, meteorite, asteroid. Like the

453
00:22:14,720 --> 00:22:17,560
Speaker 2: words are always a mess, right because everything is historical,

454
00:22:17,600 --> 00:22:18,919
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, we used to call it this

455
00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:20,919
Speaker 2: and then we discovered that doesn't make any sense. But

456
00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:23,360
Speaker 2: we try to shoehorn this thing back in the names

457
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:24,200
Speaker 2: always nonsense.

458
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:26,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nature doesn't care that humans would really like

459
00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:30,600
Speaker 1: to categorize things exactly. But I think that a lot

460
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:33,200
Speaker 1: of geologists would say that on Earth we have dirt

461
00:22:33,200 --> 00:22:36,480
Speaker 1: and soil, and that like that definition wraps up the

462
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:39,040
Speaker 1: fact that there's microbes in there and so it's like

463
00:22:39,080 --> 00:22:42,600
Speaker 1: a living thing. And regolith I've only ever heard it

464
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:45,439
Speaker 1: referred to as like places where we think it's just

465
00:22:45,560 --> 00:22:48,520
Speaker 1: dead dirt that's jagged and awful.

466
00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:51,119
Speaker 2: So you would say Earth doesn't have regolith.

467
00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:54,680
Speaker 1: I this is the first time I've heard the word

468
00:22:54,720 --> 00:22:57,879
Speaker 1: regolith applied to the Earth. Okay, but I'm not a geologist,

469
00:22:57,920 --> 00:23:00,639
Speaker 1: so I'm not gonna like bet any money on. But

470
00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:01,679
Speaker 1: that's my understanding.

471
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:05,119
Speaker 2: Geologists write in and tell us how wrong we are. Yes,

472
00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:07,000
Speaker 2: but the important point is that the surface of the

473
00:23:07,000 --> 00:23:08,920
Speaker 2: Moon is very different from the surface of the Earth.

474
00:23:09,000 --> 00:23:12,119
Speaker 2: Right Earth, we have this nice cushy soil because of

475
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:16,080
Speaker 2: microbes and water and wind and the moon whatever, those

476
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:19,200
Speaker 2: little bits are are very very different and very very painful.

477
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:22,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they mess up equipment. Like astronauts would complain that,

478
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:24,240
Speaker 1: you know, they'd have these things on their wrists that

479
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:25,800
Speaker 1: would tell them like what they were supposed to be

480
00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:28,440
Speaker 1: working on when and if they got dirt on it

481
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:31,320
Speaker 1: and they rubbed it off, it would scratch the surface

482
00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 1: and then they couldn't read it anymore. And so if

483
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: you can imagine, like you know, people talk about wanting

484
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 1: to process tons and tons of this regolith so that

485
00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:41,000
Speaker 1: they can extract for example, there's a little bit of

486
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:43,120
Speaker 1: water in there, maybe you'd want to extract. That would

487
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:45,720
Speaker 1: be a real pain. There's helium three that people talk

488
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:48,680
Speaker 1: about extracting. That's a whole different show on why I

489
00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:51,280
Speaker 1: think that's a bad idea. But the idea is, if

490
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:53,920
Speaker 1: you're processing all of this stuff, your equipment is going

491
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,119
Speaker 1: to be constantly like rubbing against this sharp, abrasive stuff,

492
00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:58,800
Speaker 1: and it's going to wear down. So that's going to

493
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:02,879
Speaker 1: make it tough, and stuff clings so it's electrically charged,

494
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: and it would cling to space suits. So space suits

495
00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:08,000
Speaker 1: are supposed to be white so that you don't overheat. Daniel,

496
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 1: maybe you can explain the physics of why that works.

497
00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:11,840
Speaker 1: But they would like a lot of them fell over

498
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 1: because it's like low gravity is fun but still hard

499
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:17,560
Speaker 1: to move in, and so they'd fall over and they'd

500
00:24:17,600 --> 00:24:19,520
Speaker 1: like sort of turtle around for a while trying to

501
00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:22,160
Speaker 1: get back up. They'd stand up just coated in regulith.

502
00:24:22,160 --> 00:24:24,760
Speaker 1: And so now they're gray and they're like absorbing more

503
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:28,440
Speaker 1: heat and it's electrically charged. Why is it electrically charged,

504
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 1: physicist friend.

505
00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:33,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fascinating that it's electrically charged. And one

506
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:36,200
Speaker 2: reason basically is that the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere,

507
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:39,160
Speaker 2: So the environment just above the surface is very, very

508
00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 2: different on the Moon than it is on Earth. You know. So,

509
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:45,399
Speaker 2: like we talked about the Moon being impacted by asteroids

510
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 2: and creating this regolith, the Earth is also impacted by asteroids,

511
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:50,440
Speaker 2: but you know, we have an atmosphere which is like

512
00:24:50,440 --> 00:24:53,040
Speaker 2: a big cushy blanket that absorbs all of those and

513
00:24:53,080 --> 00:24:55,399
Speaker 2: turns them into nice streaks in the sky. And so

514
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:57,760
Speaker 2: that's why we don't have the same kind of debris,

515
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:00,880
Speaker 2: and the same thing affects the charge of the surface.

516
00:25:01,400 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 2: So the Moon is actually electrically charged, but one side

517
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 2: is positive and the other side is negative. It's really weird.

518
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 2: So one side, the side that's facing the Sun, those

519
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:14,160
Speaker 2: photons make it all the way down to the surface

520
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:16,840
Speaker 2: and they kick electrons off the surface. This is just

521
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 2: called like the photoelectric effect. Electrons and material will absorb

522
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 2: photons and get kicked out, so photons make the sun

523
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 2: side of the Moon be positively charged because they're kicking

524
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,359
Speaker 2: off the electrons. But there's also this plasma sheath that

525
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:35,119
Speaker 2: surrounds the Moon, and the interaction of that sheath with

526
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 2: like the solar wind, all the particles coming off the

527
00:25:37,520 --> 00:25:40,680
Speaker 2: Moon push electrons to the back side of the Moon

528
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:43,239
Speaker 2: where they stick. So the backside of the Moon is

529
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:46,560
Speaker 2: covered in extra electrons and the front side, the solar side,

530
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:50,440
Speaker 2: doesn't have enough electrons. So the whole Moon is electrically charged,

531
00:25:50,480 --> 00:25:53,400
Speaker 2: including this recolith. But it's different on either side. It's

532
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 2: really weird.

533
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:56,600
Speaker 1: Is it going to be harder to operate equipment on

534
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: one of those sides? Would it be like more likely

535
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: to short because of this electrical charge? Or is electrical

536
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:04,560
Speaker 1: charge in either direction equally bad.

537
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:09,240
Speaker 2: Electrical charge is equally bad in other direction for static electricity,

538
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 2: like the stuff will cling to you, but it does

539
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 2: change how you might take advantage of this charge. There

540
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 2: are folks who are trying to make levitating gliders like

541
00:26:18,000 --> 00:26:21,480
Speaker 2: drones that can fly in the moon using electrostatic repulsion

542
00:26:21,760 --> 00:26:23,479
Speaker 2: because you can't have like a helicopter on the Moon

543
00:26:23,520 --> 00:26:27,440
Speaker 2: there's no atmosphere. But if the surface is like negatively charged,

544
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:30,959
Speaker 2: you could make a negatively charged glider that floats above

545
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,159
Speaker 2: the surface, and that'd be a lot nicer than like

546
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 2: rolling across all this regolith. There's actually folks who are

547
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 2: building this technology.

548
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, two questions. I've never heard of this,

549
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:42,840
Speaker 1: all right, So first is there really enough charge to

550
00:26:42,960 --> 00:26:46,440
Speaker 1: levitate and move an item an object? And then two

551
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:49,119
Speaker 1: does that charge get used up when you pass over it?

552
00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: Probably not right, Yeah, So there.

553
00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 2: Are folks who are doing this on Earth. They have

554
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:55,280
Speaker 2: a special chamber they've been testing this stuff with, and

555
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:58,159
Speaker 2: you can't levitate a whole lot like so far, they

556
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 2: were able to levitate a one killer gram flyer about

557
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:05,320
Speaker 2: a centimeter above a moon like surface using like fifty

558
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:08,760
Speaker 2: kilovolt source. So you know, these are like macroscopic quantities.

559
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:11,159
Speaker 2: This is not like a wasp or something. You know,

560
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:13,880
Speaker 2: a kilogram is like a squirrel, So you can basically

561
00:27:13,880 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 2: fly a squirrel across the surface of the Moon. And no,

562
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:18,879
Speaker 2: it doesn't use it up like it can be static.

563
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:24,400
Speaker 2: You could have something hovering essentially infinitely long using electrostatic repulsion. Right,

564
00:27:24,400 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 2: it's stable the way like the Moon's orbit is stable,

565
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 2: or on the Earth you could hover stably without expending

566
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:32,080
Speaker 2: any energy over an electrically char surface.

567
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:36,960
Speaker 1: I think that our mascot should be a squirrel hovering

568
00:27:37,160 --> 00:27:38,159
Speaker 1: in a little spacesuit.

569
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:42,160
Speaker 2: It's so cute. But is it peeing in that space shoot?

570
00:27:42,240 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 2: Is really the question.

571
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:45,640
Speaker 1: It either is or it's lying about it.

572
00:27:48,119 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 2: There you go.

573
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 1: There's so many ecologists who are going to be writing

574
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: me telling me, they're like, we actually don't be in

575
00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: our wetsuits. You're you're sullying our good name. But anyway,

576
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,919
Speaker 1: all right, so this reguleth you could write on it.

577
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:03,119
Speaker 1: That would be sweet, But that wasn't helpful to the

578
00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:06,160
Speaker 1: astronauts when they were walking around, and a bunch of them,

579
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 1: like John Young was reporting that, you know, he went

580
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 1: out there the first day, got covered in dust, and

581
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: then when he was trying to put his spacesuit back

582
00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: on the next day, like the dust had gotten into

583
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: all of the seals, and so he was having trouble

584
00:28:16,800 --> 00:28:19,480
Speaker 1: getting like the helmet ring fastened well enough so he

585
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:21,199
Speaker 1: could make sure that he wasn't going to get exposed

586
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 1: to the vacuum of space, and on Apollo fourteen, al

587
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,119
Speaker 1: Bean and Pete Conrad actually got like so much dust

588
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 1: on their spacesuit that when the lunar lander like went

589
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:33,480
Speaker 1: back up and went to dock with the main spacecraft

590
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 1: that was going to take them back to Earth, the pilot,

591
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 1: who was Dick Gordon, was like, no, y'all, ain't bringing

592
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:43,360
Speaker 1: that junk into my spacecraft. You have to get naked

593
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:47,160
Speaker 1: and so before and so what they said naked in

594
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:49,560
Speaker 1: the biography and I don't know, presumably that means down

595
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: to their skivvies, but anyway, they had to take off

596
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:54,720
Speaker 1: their clothes before they were allowed to get back in

597
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:57,560
Speaker 1: because Dick Gordon did not want to be breathing in

598
00:28:57,600 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: these tiny razor blades, which totally makes sense to me.

599
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:04,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's fascinating. You were talking earlier about how

600
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 2: this makes the astronauts' suit go from white to gray,

601
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 2: which is a big issue in regulating their temperature. I

602
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 2: think a lot of people misunderstand sort of how temperature

603
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 2: works in space. They imagine space is cold, and so

604
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:16,960
Speaker 2: we probably need like a big blanket, right, But there's

605
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 2: something surprising about space, which is is actually harder in

606
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 2: space to cool down than it is here on Earth.

607
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 2: Right here on Earth, the way you cool down is

608
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 2: that there's air. Wind comes by and steals your heat. Right,

609
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:30,880
Speaker 2: you're losing heat to the air around you. You heat

610
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 2: up the air around you, and then wind comes by

611
00:29:32,520 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 2: and blows that away. You got to do it again

612
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 2: and again. So that's why a blanket is useful, or

613
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 2: a jacket or whatever. But there's no air on the

614
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 2: Moon for you to lose your heat too. The only

615
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:44,200
Speaker 2: way to lose your heat is to radiate it away

616
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 2: to glow. Everything out there in the universe that has

617
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:49,040
Speaker 2: a temperature is glowing. Like if you put on infra

618
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 2: red goggles and look at your friend, you would see

619
00:29:51,320 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 2: them glowing. They're giving off photons, and out in space,

620
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:57,120
Speaker 2: that's the only way to give off energy. So it's

621
00:29:57,120 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 2: important to regulate your temperature. Like electronics on the space

622
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 2: station can overheat because it's harder to lose that energy

623
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 2: to cool down in space. So it's really important if

624
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,240
Speaker 2: you're going to reflect the energy back, if you're going

625
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:10,560
Speaker 2: to stay white, to not be covered in regolith.

626
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:13,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Soviets sent a rover on the Moon. They

627
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 1: think that it got too close to like a crater,

628
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: and it knocked a little bit of regolith on. I

629
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 1: believe partly it covered one of their solar panels. But

630
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:23,520
Speaker 1: the bigger problem was that there was a little heating

631
00:30:23,600 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 1: unit inside and with that little bit of insulation from

632
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 1: the regolith, the whole thing overheated and then it wouldn't

633
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:32,360
Speaker 1: work anymore. And so yeah, radiating your heat off in

634
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:33,840
Speaker 1: space is a big problem.

635
00:30:33,560 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 2: All right. So the Moon is covered in death dust,

636
00:30:36,240 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 2: which you don't want on you and you don't want

637
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 2: to breathe and really really wants to stick to you.

638
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 2: Is there anything good we can say about this death dust?

639
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 2: They're positive about regulith.

640
00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: There is, But you know what, let's keep the listeners

641
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:52,320
Speaker 1: on their toes and we'll take a break and then

642
00:30:52,320 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 1: we'll get back to that. Okay, So before the break,

643
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:14,560
Speaker 1: Daniel wanted to know if there's anything good about the

644
00:31:14,560 --> 00:31:18,400
Speaker 1: regolith other than its ability to levitate very cute squirrels

645
00:31:18,400 --> 00:31:20,400
Speaker 1: wearing space suits on the lunar surface.

646
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:22,680
Speaker 2: You know, I'm pro universe. I don't want to just

647
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 2: be down in the moon. I'm always looking for, you know,

648
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 2: the bright side of the moon.

649
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, well, I have a friend who says that

650
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: I'm relentlessly pessimistic about space. So it's good that I

651
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: have you as a foil.

652
00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 2: To it, right, I'll try to be your yang.

653
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: Yeah that's excellent. But okay, so let's talk about some benefits.

654
00:31:42,520 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 1: So you can pile and you don't want the regolith

655
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: in your habitat, but the regolith being on your habitat

656
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 1: has some benefits. So when I first started thinking about

657
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 1: habitats in space, I had imagined these like glass domed

658
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:00,600
Speaker 1: habitats where you're like looking out at the star. But

659
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 1: as I was looking at proposals for actual habitats in space,

660
00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:07,719
Speaker 1: almost all of them included being buried under meters of

661
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:11,920
Speaker 1: this regolith. And I know, right, so, sad, Wait.

662
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 2: What's the point of being in space if you're just underground?

663
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:16,720
Speaker 2: I mean, you could live underground here on Earth.

664
00:32:16,920 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: You were supposed to be the optimistic one, Daniel.

665
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 2: I guess even if you're on the moon. If you're underground,

666
00:32:24,880 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 2: you know you're on the moon, you feel closer to

667
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 2: the cosmos or something something like.

668
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 1: And they'll probably be like portholes you can look out

669
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: of every once in a while, and the space walks

670
00:32:34,800 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: would still be cool. So one of the nice things

671
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: about having that regolith is that, as we mentioned already,

672
00:32:40,800 --> 00:32:43,400
Speaker 1: the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere like you have on Earth,

673
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:47,840
Speaker 1: so the radiation in space hits the surface, and we

674
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: don't really understand this radiation very well. So the fifty

675
00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: years of data that we have from astronauts orbiting the Earth,

676
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: all of those astronauts were orbiting within the magnetic field

677
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 1: that are our planet creates, and that shuttles a bunch

678
00:33:03,320 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 1: of the space radiation to the poles where you get

679
00:33:05,320 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 1: the auroras, which are beautiful, and then a lot of

680
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:09,479
Speaker 1: the rest of the radiation that gets through gets sort

681
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,560
Speaker 1: of stopped by our atmosphere. So we don't get hit

682
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: by a lot of the space radiation, and neither do

683
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:17,720
Speaker 1: our astronauts. So most of the data that we have

684
00:33:17,920 --> 00:33:20,440
Speaker 1: comes from the twenty four men who went to the

685
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: Moon for like two weeks, not a lot of data.

686
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:27,720
Speaker 1: There's reason to suspect that this radiation causes cancer, but

687
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: it's different than the kind of radiation we get on Earth.

688
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: And when you provided us comments on the book, one

689
00:33:33,920 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 1: of the things that was interesting was I thought that

690
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 1: we knew that galactic cosmic radiation came from stars and

691
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 1: other galaxies exploding and then sort of like the shrapnel

692
00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:45,640
Speaker 1: is heading towards us. But you said, we're not actually

693
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: sure where that comes from. Can you tell us more?

694
00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:52,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fascinating. You know. One way we can

695
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 2: learn about what's going on in the universe is just

696
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:57,080
Speaker 2: picking up the messages that come to Earth. And mostly

697
00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 2: that's photons, Like we see distinct galaxies because they send

698
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 2: us light, and we see other stars because they send

699
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 2: us light. But there are other kind of messengers. We

700
00:34:05,880 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 2: can also get messengers from distant galaxies and from other

701
00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 2: parts of the galaxy and from other parts of the

702
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 2: Solar System that are little particles, you know, like protons

703
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 2: and electrons and sometimes even like iron nuclei. And it

704
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 2: turns out space is filled with this stuff, and a

705
00:34:21,080 --> 00:34:23,360
Speaker 2: lot of it's a mystery. Like some of it, we understand,

706
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:25,720
Speaker 2: a lot of the radiation that's in our Solar System

707
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 2: comes from the Sun, and stars don't have to explode

708
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 2: to send us little bits of stuff, Like the Sun

709
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:33,040
Speaker 2: is pumping out solar wind. This is part of what

710
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 2: contributes to the plasma sheath around the Moon. It's not

711
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,480
Speaker 2: just generating photons, but it's shooting out electrons and protons

712
00:34:39,520 --> 00:34:42,399
Speaker 2: and all sorts of massive particles are coming out of

713
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 2: the Sun. So if you're out there in the Solar system,

714
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:48,800
Speaker 2: you're going to be exposed to this stuff very high speed,

715
00:34:49,040 --> 00:34:52,760
Speaker 2: like tens of kilometers per second for these tiny little bullets.

716
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,759
Speaker 2: So definitely probably bad for you. But that's just our Sun.

717
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:57,960
Speaker 2: And you know, we don't even really understand our Sun

718
00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:00,600
Speaker 2: very well. We have models of the solar radiation and

719
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 2: a lot of them don't really agree in detail with

720
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 2: what we see coming from the Sun because we don't

721
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,480
Speaker 2: understand the physics of what's happening inside the Sun. And

722
00:35:07,520 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 2: then as you look at higher and higher energy particles,

723
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:12,680
Speaker 2: like particles going faster and faster, a lot of these

724
00:35:12,680 --> 00:35:15,319
Speaker 2: are generated outside of our Solar system. They come to

725
00:35:15,400 --> 00:35:18,400
Speaker 2: us from nearby stars, or from the center of the galaxy,

726
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 2: or from other galaxies. But the very highest energy ones

727
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 2: that are super crazy, like where a single particle has

728
00:35:25,040 --> 00:35:28,319
Speaker 2: as much energy as like a Major League baseball, these

729
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 2: things we don't understand at all, Like there's nothing in

730
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 2: the universe we know about that's capable of creating particles

731
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:37,400
Speaker 2: at that speed. But we see them and they hit

732
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 2: the Earth and we know they're out there, So there's

733
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:42,320
Speaker 2: a lot of mystery about what out there is pumping

734
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 2: out really weird particles. We call them cosmic rays when

735
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:47,879
Speaker 2: they hit the Earth and create showers when they're in space.

736
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:51,400
Speaker 2: They're an important source of radiation that can kill people. Yeah.

737
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:53,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you get hit with what is it called

738
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,200
Speaker 1: a solar flare where you get a bunch of stuff

739
00:35:57,239 --> 00:35:58,880
Speaker 1: from the Sun all at once, they could kill you

740
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 1: pretty quick. As far as I understand, we don't understand

741
00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: what like slow chronic doses over the course of a

742
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:08,200
Speaker 1: life will do in terms of cancer or cognitive declines

743
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: or anything like that.

744
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 2: And we haven't studied because it's basically unethical. It's like,

745
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,440
Speaker 2: you know, put somebody in a particle beam, see what happens. Well,

746
00:36:15,560 --> 00:36:17,239
Speaker 2: we know it's going to be bad, we just don't

747
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:18,840
Speaker 2: know how bad or how quickly.

748
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:23,399
Speaker 1: Right, Well, Brookhaven National Lab recently got a thing that

749
00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: can simulate galactic cosmic radiation, so we're getting some data

750
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: on like what it does to rodents. But there's all

751
00:36:29,239 --> 00:36:31,920
Speaker 1: kinds of reasons that rodents are different than humans. Like

752
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:35,600
Speaker 1: I think if radioactive particle stops in you, it releases

753
00:36:35,640 --> 00:36:37,200
Speaker 1: a lot more energy than it would if it just

754
00:36:37,200 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 1: passed through you. So rodents, the fact that they're small,

755
00:36:41,000 --> 00:36:43,320
Speaker 1: you'd expect the particles to be less likely to stop

756
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:45,280
Speaker 1: in them than they would if they went through a human.

757
00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: That's just one of many reasons why rats are not humans.

758
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 1: So it makes these things complicated, so we don't understand

759
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:54,439
Speaker 1: it well. So if you were sending me out there,

760
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: I would want to be shielded from it so that

761
00:36:56,880 --> 00:36:58,440
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't know what was happening at all.

762
00:36:58,760 --> 00:37:01,239
Speaker 2: So what's the best way to shield ourselves from all

763
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,760
Speaker 2: this crazy death bullets from space?

764
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:07,280
Speaker 1: The most common proposal right now, because it would require

765
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:09,560
Speaker 1: the least energy and would probably be easiest with the

766
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:12,600
Speaker 1: materials at hand, is to just take regolith and pile

767
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 1: meters of it on top of the habitat, so the

768
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: radiation hits the regolith and stops before it gets to

769
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:21,080
Speaker 1: your habitat. And like everything about space is complicated, so

770
00:37:21,120 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: if it hits the habitat, you have to worry about

771
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:26,359
Speaker 1: like this thing called spallation, which I'm sure Daniel you

772
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:28,480
Speaker 1: know all about, but I'll try to explain it. So,

773
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:31,840
Speaker 1: like where a radioactive particle hits something and then breaks

774
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: into a bunch of new kinds of particles. So you

775
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 1: essentially get sprayed with like a shower of new radioactive stuff,

776
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:39,320
Speaker 1: which in some cases can be worse than the stuff

777
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:41,560
Speaker 1: that was heading towards your habitat in the first place.

778
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:44,280
Speaker 1: So you don't want it to get to your habitat

779
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 1: at all. Is that reasonable, Daniel?

780
00:37:46,239 --> 00:37:48,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's really reasonable. And you know, here's the

781
00:37:48,640 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 2: chance for me to be the optimistic. It sounds to

782
00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:54,920
Speaker 2: me like death dust can save us from the death particles, right,

783
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 2: so like two deaths make life. It's like a negative

784
00:37:57,680 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 2: one squeared or something.

785
00:37:58,840 --> 00:38:00,919
Speaker 1: No, that that counts as a good outcome on the moon.

786
00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:04,319
Speaker 2: That's good. That's good, all right, So we can use

787
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 2: the regulator we pilot on top of our habitat. It

788
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 2: can protect us from this cosmic radiation. And there's lots

789
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:12,920
Speaker 2: of it already there, it's easy to access. That sounds

790
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:14,799
Speaker 2: great except the fact that it's going to ruin our

791
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:17,120
Speaker 2: cosmic view from our moon living room.

792
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 1: Right, But it's also it's going to help you with

793
00:38:19,239 --> 00:38:22,280
Speaker 1: some more stuff. So the moon, especially near the equator,

794
00:38:22,320 --> 00:38:25,719
Speaker 1: has intense temperature swings. So at the equator you go

795
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: from negative one hundred and thirty degrees celsius to one

796
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty degrees celsius during the day. That is

797
00:38:32,320 --> 00:38:35,080
Speaker 1: bad for humans, but that's also bad for equipment. So

798
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: like you get a lot of equipment that expands and

799
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 1: contracts as it goes from hot to cold and overtime.

800
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:43,279
Speaker 2: Why are there such extreme swings on the Moon? I mean,

801
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:45,759
Speaker 2: the Moon is about the same distance from the Sun

802
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:48,760
Speaker 2: as the Earth is Why are the extreme so severe

803
00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:49,319
Speaker 2: on the moon?

804
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 1: Because the Moon lacks an atmosphere to buffer those temperature changes,

805
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: and so when you're in the cold, you are in

806
00:38:55,640 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: the cold. There's no sunlight to keep you warm, and

807
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: there's no heat that was absorbed and maintained to be

808
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 1: slowly released at night by the atmosphere. Does that sound

809
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:06,279
Speaker 1: is that? Is that right?

810
00:39:07,400 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's just another reason why

811
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:13,600
Speaker 2: it's nice to have an atmosphere because it buffers you

812
00:39:13,640 --> 00:39:15,080
Speaker 2: from this stuff. As you said, it holds in a

813
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 2: lot of heat that absorbs during the day. The Moon

814
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:20,960
Speaker 2: actually has a tiny little atmosphere, like people say it

815
00:39:20,960 --> 00:39:23,680
Speaker 2: has no atmosphere, and technically that's true because what they

816
00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:26,840
Speaker 2: call it is an exosphere. There are some particles floating

817
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 2: above the moon. It's not like zero pure vacuum, but

818
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 2: it's not enough for the particles to actually like hit

819
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:34,360
Speaker 2: each other or ever bounce, so they call it an

820
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 2: exosphere instead of an atmosphere. To have an atmosphere, you

821
00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:39,880
Speaker 2: have to have enough density the particles are like interacting

822
00:39:39,880 --> 00:39:43,240
Speaker 2: with each other. So there certainly are some particles around

823
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 2: the moon, but not enough to provide really any temperature buffer. So, yeah,

824
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 2: the temperature swings are pretty extreme. And as you were saying,

825
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 2: that's gonna be pretty bad fear equipment, isn't it.

826
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, was that our first well, actually moment, I wonder

827
00:39:56,600 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 1: if we should track those. Yeah, it's fun to have

828
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:02,000
Speaker 1: someone else knows something about it and can can add

829
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:05,359
Speaker 1: some more knowledge than what you had. So yeah, these

830
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: temperature extremes bad on equipment, and also those like low

831
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:12,880
Speaker 1: temperatures are just bad period. So I was reading the

832
00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: Resources series, like this series about resources in space and

833
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 1: how you can use them and what's up there by a.

834
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: Bidescu and Zacne and Zacney pointed out in one of

835
00:40:21,640 --> 00:40:26,359
Speaker 1: his chapters that when temperatures get cold enough, you reach

836
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: this point for some metals called the ductile to brittle transition.

837
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:33,240
Speaker 1: So often when you've got a metal, like if something

838
00:40:33,239 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 1: hard hits it, it just kind of dense and bends in,

839
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 1: but it still maintains its overall structure.

840
00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 2: Is that what ductile means. It's like bendy and soft.

841
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 1: Yes, I hadn't actually thought about that, but yes, that

842
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: is what ductile means. Okay, So then otherwise it's brittle,

843
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: so it's more like a rock, like if you hit it,

844
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:50,960
Speaker 1: it's more like lid acrack and kind of fall apart.

845
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 1: And one of the ideas for why the Titanic sank,

846
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:58,160
Speaker 1: even though it was this great engineering marvel, is because

847
00:40:58,239 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: it was cold enough that the metal it was made

848
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,239
Speaker 1: have had hit its ductile to brittle transition. So when

849
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 1: it hit the iceberg, instead of kind of like just

850
00:41:05,320 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: denting in a little bit, which they were hoping that

851
00:41:07,680 --> 00:41:10,200
Speaker 1: the metal hull would do whenever it hit a hard object,

852
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:12,200
Speaker 1: instead it just kind of like cracked.

853
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 2: Oh, so it went from like aluminum foil to glass.

854
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:17,920
Speaker 1: Basically, they should have had more lifeboats. That's the real thing.

855
00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:20,120
Speaker 1: That was the real problem. They didn't have enough life

856
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:21,680
Speaker 1: boats for the people on the ship.

857
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:23,879
Speaker 2: But well, really they needed bigger doors, so you could

858
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 2: fit two people on those doors. I mean, that's really

859
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:27,080
Speaker 2: the problem with the Titanic.

860
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:29,480
Speaker 1: That was the problem for Rose and Jack. That's true.

861
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:31,080
Speaker 1: I don't know if that would have helped everybody, but

862
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:32,399
Speaker 1: it would would have saved one of them.

863
00:41:32,440 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 2: Every little bit helps Kelly, every little bit.

864
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: All be honest, it looked like there was enough room

865
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: for both of them on there to me.

866
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 2: All Right, we're not going to answer that question on

867
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:42,399
Speaker 2: today's episode. Okay, but you're saying that stuff on the Moon,

868
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 2: if it gets really really cold, is going to be

869
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 2: dangerously brittle, and it's just going to break more easily

870
00:41:47,320 --> 00:41:49,000
Speaker 2: rather than like bending if it gets bumped.

871
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:51,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might depend on the materials that you're using,

872
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:52,800
Speaker 1: So you're just gonna have to be careful about this

873
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:54,800
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So it's just it's got extra layers

874
00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 1: of complication relative to doing things like mining and construction

875
00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:00,080
Speaker 1: on Earth. So there's going to be that extra layer

876
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: of complication. And so if you've got regolith, it's going

877
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,719
Speaker 1: to buffer these temperature swings and so you're not going

878
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:08,560
Speaker 1: to get as cold or as hot, which is going

879
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: to be good for the humans. It's going to be

880
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:12,120
Speaker 1: good for the equipment, and it's going to be good

881
00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:15,320
Speaker 1: for your heating and cooling bills, which is going to

882
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:17,680
Speaker 1: be important because it's going to be hard to generate

883
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 1: power in space.

884
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:21,520
Speaker 2: All right. So living on the surface of the moon

885
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:24,959
Speaker 2: pretty terrible. But living under the surface of the Moon

886
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 2: protects us from not having an atmosphere and the swings

887
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:30,720
Speaker 2: in temperature and lets us turn the terrible death dust

888
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:33,520
Speaker 2: into something positive. But that doesn't mean that living on

889
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,719
Speaker 2: the Moon is still going to be easy. Let's take

890
00:42:35,719 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 2: a break and when we come back, we'll talk about

891
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:39,399
Speaker 2: how to pay for and how to power it all.

892
00:42:56,360 --> 00:43:00,360
Speaker 1: All right, So, speaking of your electric bills, is the

893
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:04,280
Speaker 1: power in space going to come from? So On Earth,

894
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:07,319
Speaker 1: as of twenty twenty two, sixty percent of our electricity

895
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:11,720
Speaker 1: comes from fossil fuels, and fossil fuels come from prehistoric

896
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:14,320
Speaker 1: animals and plants that have been buried underground for a

897
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 1: really long time. Geologists are probably going to be really upset,

898
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 1: but that's all I'm going to say on this matter.

899
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:23,640
Speaker 1: And so unless the Moon has some huge surprises in

900
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:26,240
Speaker 1: store for us, we're not going to be using fossil

901
00:43:26,280 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: fuels on the Moon.

902
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:29,439
Speaker 2: You're saying there's almost no chance that there's a bunch

903
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 2: of dead aliens buried in the Moon that turn into

904
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 2: convenient fossil fuels for us.

905
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 1: I'm saying it's unlikely and we shouldn't bank on it.

906
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 1: We should have another plan ready, all right.

907
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:39,520
Speaker 2: If you're going to send your kids to the Moon,

908
00:43:39,520 --> 00:43:42,520
Speaker 2: you should probably not bank on dead alien dinosaurs.

909
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, agreed, agreed, all right.

910
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 2: But that's not the only way to get power, right,

911
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:48,160
Speaker 2: So what about some other ways to get power in

912
00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 2: the moon.

913
00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: So some other renewable methods that we use on Earth

914
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 1: are also out of the picture. So there's no flowing water,

915
00:43:53,800 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 1: so there's no you're not gonna have any dams, there'll

916
00:43:55,840 --> 00:44:00,879
Speaker 1: be no hydropower. Wind power requires wind. With only an

917
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 1: exosphere and not an atmosphere, you don't have enough wind.

918
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:07,280
Speaker 2: You got solar wind, but that's not enough to generate

919
00:44:07,320 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 2: any energy either.

920
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not going to work. And geothermal

921
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:15,200
Speaker 1: energy requires heat drawn from deep underground, and the Moon

922
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:19,359
Speaker 1: is geolologically pretty quiet. We said silent, and we had

923
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:21,960
Speaker 1: someone in our book correct us and say, well it's

924
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:25,879
Speaker 1: it's quiet, it's not silent. There's still some stuff going on. So, Okay,

925
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:29,640
Speaker 1: it's a quiet moon, not silent. So if I were

926
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 1: sending my kids to the moon, which I would never do,

927
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 1: I would hope that they had some nuclear power. And

928
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:39,480
Speaker 1: nuclear power is something that a lot of folks are

929
00:44:39,520 --> 00:44:42,800
Speaker 1: not super comfortable with for a variety of reasons. Concerns

930
00:44:42,800 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: about using the products for making nuclear weapons, concerns about

931
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:48,439
Speaker 1: what happens with the waste when it's gone, concerns about

932
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:51,880
Speaker 1: what happens if a nuclear power plant like explodes. And

933
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,359
Speaker 1: I could go off on a long tangent about why

934
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:56,400
Speaker 1: I think nuclear power might be better than things like

935
00:44:56,440 --> 00:44:59,600
Speaker 1: coal power, but I'm going to contain myself slightly, and

936
00:44:59,640 --> 00:45:02,320
Speaker 1: I'll know that not everybody has problems with the nuclear power.

937
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:05,840
Speaker 1: For example, France's electrical grid is about seventy percent nuclear,

938
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:10,200
Speaker 1: so and they're not glowing too green over there. But

939
00:45:10,680 --> 00:45:13,760
Speaker 1: it's a different question entirely when you're launching those nuclear

940
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:18,360
Speaker 1: materials into space, because those nuclear materials that you're gonna

941
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: need if your rocket explodes on the way up to space, now,

942
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 1: maybe that nuclear stuff has been spread all over the

943
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:28,479
Speaker 1: area where the explosion happens. So for example, all.

944
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:30,879
Speaker 2: Right, hold on, because I think there's an assumption here, right,

945
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:33,200
Speaker 2: You're saying we can't do fossil fuels in the Moon

946
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:35,200
Speaker 2: because there are no fossil fuels in the Moon. Now

947
00:45:35,239 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 2: you're talking about nuclear power on the Moon, and I

948
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:40,200
Speaker 2: think you're assuming that we can't find fuel for nuclear

949
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:41,799
Speaker 2: power on the moon. We still have to bring it

950
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:44,799
Speaker 2: with us. And for fossil fuels, that's obviously absurd. You

951
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 2: can't bring enough fossil fuel because it's not energy dense enough.

952
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:51,760
Speaker 2: But uranium, for example, very very energy dense, tiny amount

953
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:54,280
Speaker 2: of it can power things forever. I love the story

954
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 2: for example that like these days, when they build nuclear

955
00:45:56,520 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 2: power submarines, they don't even think about refueling. They just

956
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 2: build in the lifetime of fuel. It never refuels, like yeah, boom,

957
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:06,480
Speaker 2: it's done. That's pretty awesome. It's just like a real

958
00:46:06,560 --> 00:46:10,840
Speaker 2: demonstration of the incredible energy density of uranium. But is

959
00:46:10,880 --> 00:46:13,040
Speaker 2: there no uranium to be found on the Moon? Why

960
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:14,680
Speaker 2: do we have to launch it from the Earth.

961
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:17,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. There is plenty of material

962
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:21,279
Speaker 1: on the Moon to run nuclear power plants. It's just

963
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:23,840
Speaker 1: going to be really difficult to extract. So it's in

964
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 1: sort of like low concentrations in various areas, so you'd probably,

965
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:29,080
Speaker 1: for example, have to process a bunch of regoliths to

966
00:46:29,160 --> 00:46:32,920
Speaker 1: extract the nuclear fuel from it. And so if we're

967
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 1: going to have people living on the Moon for a

968
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 1: very long time, I think eventually we would want to

969
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:40,319
Speaker 1: figure out how to extract those materials to refuel or

970
00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:44,600
Speaker 1: start nuclear power plants. But initially, if you want to

971
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: get space research station or mining operation or habitat off

972
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 1: the ground, you're gonna want to bring the nuclear power

973
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: plant with you just to get things moving.

974
00:46:54,600 --> 00:46:57,760
Speaker 2: And so you're saying it's dangerous to launch a rocket

975
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:01,640
Speaker 2: with uranium or plutonium in it, because sometimes rockets go boom.

976
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:04,799
Speaker 1: Yes, and you can be careful about how you pack it.

977
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:09,440
Speaker 1: But so, for example, we have these radio isotope heater units,

978
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:12,880
Speaker 1: and so this is not really using radioactive materials to

979
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 1: generate energy, but just to generate heat so that on

980
00:47:15,320 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: those cold space nights, the equipment doesn't like just freeze up,

981
00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:24,560
Speaker 1: and you use stuff like plutonium, americium and polonium. Did

982
00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:26,799
Speaker 1: I say that right? Americium?

983
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:28,840
Speaker 2: I've never known how to pronounce that, and I've always

984
00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 2: been terrified that I would be asked to on a podcast,

985
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:33,440
Speaker 2: and so now you're living my nightmare.

986
00:47:33,920 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: All right, Well, set us letters if I got it wrong,

987
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: and let us know how I should have said it right.

988
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 1: And so these things they undergo radioactive decay, and when

989
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 1: that happens, they release heat, and the heat helps sort

990
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:50,520
Speaker 1: of buffer the swing into super cold temperatures when robots

991
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:53,960
Speaker 1: are working on the Moon in shadowed areas. But the

992
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:58,760
Speaker 1: Soviets launched the lunkat Moon rovers and they had planned

993
00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: on powering one of them with polonium two ten. And

994
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, the rocket that was bringing the

995
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 1: rover up exploded and it spread polonium over various parts

996
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:15,360
Speaker 1: of the USSR bad, right, yes, bad, not good, And

997
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:17,600
Speaker 1: then you can scale up. So the next more sort

998
00:48:17,640 --> 00:48:21,360
Speaker 1: of complicated way to use radioactivity to power things is

999
00:48:21,360 --> 00:48:26,040
Speaker 1: called a radio isotope thermoelectric generator. So essentially you just

1000
00:48:26,080 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: sort of add a thermo couple to get a little

1001
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:30,800
Speaker 1: bit of energy out of all the stuff that's happening.

1002
00:48:30,840 --> 00:48:32,839
Speaker 1: So you still get some heat and you get a

1003
00:48:32,960 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 1: little bit of power, but like for two kilograms of plutonium,

1004
00:48:37,280 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 1: you get enough power to run a laptop. So this

1005
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:42,280
Speaker 1: is not like a super great way to get energy.

1006
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 1: It's not going to be enough to run like a

1007
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 1: whole research station. So what we're gonna need are many

1008
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:50,839
Speaker 1: nuclear fission reactors. This is where you're like actually making

1009
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:54,399
Speaker 1: a fission reaction happen. You sort of can control how

1010
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 1: much power you can make the reaction happen faster or

1011
00:48:56,760 --> 00:48:58,920
Speaker 1: slower to sort of modulate the amount of heat that

1012
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:02,160
Speaker 1: you get. And we have some experience with these. So

1013
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:05,240
Speaker 1: the US in nineteen sixty five sent up a satellite

1014
00:49:05,280 --> 00:49:08,640
Speaker 1: we called SNAP ten A and it had a nuclear reactor.

1015
00:49:08,760 --> 00:49:12,120
Speaker 1: After forty three days, it kind of like stopped working

1016
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:17,600
Speaker 1: and so it's still orbiting the Earth somewhere. But the

1017
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:20,440
Speaker 1: Soviets were way more comfortable with this technology. They launched

1018
00:49:20,440 --> 00:49:23,400
Speaker 1: over thirty and when they were done with these satellites,

1019
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: they used the rest of the fuel to push them

1020
00:49:25,719 --> 00:49:27,839
Speaker 1: up into like a graveyard orbit. So there's a bunch

1021
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:30,760
Speaker 1: of nuclear reactors, like over thirty of them probably still

1022
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 1: orbiting the Earth. But one of them didn't make it

1023
00:49:34,120 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 1: to the graveyard orbit. Cosmos nine fifty four accidentally descended

1024
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:42,080
Speaker 1: back to Earth and it ended up falling over and

1025
00:49:42,120 --> 00:49:45,279
Speaker 1: breaking up over Canada and spreading nuclear material over a

1026
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:48,880
Speaker 1: large swath of Canada, so you need to be careful

1027
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 1: with this stuff.

1028
00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 2: But it's sort of amazing that they can make nuclear

1029
00:49:52,160 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 2: reactors that's small. People imagine nuclear reactors. They're thinking like

1030
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 2: three mile island. These like huge concrete domes like are

1031
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:03,080
Speaker 2: really massive. Operation. Remember that they've made these things small

1032
00:50:03,160 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 2: enough to have like for them on an aircraft carrier

1033
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 2: or a couple them on a submarine. So you know

1034
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 2: when it's really important for like the military, scientists and

1035
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,360
Speaker 2: engineers are really good at making things tiny, and so

1036
00:50:14,640 --> 00:50:17,840
Speaker 2: space can also benefit from this, right, like launching these reactors,

1037
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 2: they really can be pretty small. But you're right, they

1038
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:22,759
Speaker 2: still have to have radioactive materials in them, and so

1039
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 2: it's still dangerous to send these things up. But you

1040
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:27,319
Speaker 2: know the US has done this also, right, Like some

1041
00:50:27,400 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 2: of our rovers on Mars are nuclear powered.

1042
00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:34,080
Speaker 1: I don't think they're fission reactors, but the two simpler

1043
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:37,239
Speaker 1: versions that we talked about initially, those have been sent

1044
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:39,719
Speaker 1: in rover. Yeah, that's right by the US, but we

1045
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 1: haven't sent nuclear fission reactors past the orbits around the Earth.

1046
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:44,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

1047
00:50:45,120 --> 00:50:46,360
Speaker 1: I think we're going to need you if we're going

1048
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: to have research stations and habitats and folks are working

1049
00:50:49,280 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 1: on it. So in twenty fifteen, this group created the

1050
00:50:53,560 --> 00:51:00,440
Speaker 1: Killo power reactor using Sterling technology yeh or krusty advertise

1051
00:51:00,560 --> 00:51:03,400
Speaker 1: emphasize the y at the end. These authors are awesome.

1052
00:51:03,440 --> 00:51:06,040
Speaker 1: They always make sure that the acronyms of their projects

1053
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:10,440
Speaker 1: match up with something in the Simpsons. So they also

1054
00:51:10,480 --> 00:51:14,600
Speaker 1: have the demonstration using flat top fissions, which is dough

1055
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:17,120
Speaker 1: I think was the name of the beer in the Simpsons,

1056
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:21,760
Speaker 1: and the fission reactor Integrated Nuclear Kinetics Code or FRINK,

1057
00:51:21,880 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: which I think was the scientist and anyway, so what's

1058
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:28,919
Speaker 1: actually important is they were able to make a little

1059
00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:32,040
Speaker 1: reactor that could probably power something like thirty US households,

1060
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:35,160
Speaker 1: and they're working on scaling this up and making it

1061
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:37,280
Speaker 1: portable so that it could go to the moon on Mars.

1062
00:51:37,280 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 1: So this is a technology that people are working on

1063
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:41,920
Speaker 1: and we're just going to have to figure out safe

1064
00:51:41,960 --> 00:51:44,400
Speaker 1: ways to make sure that even if a rocket does explode,

1065
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:48,680
Speaker 1: god forbid, that we've like clad the materials well enough

1066
00:51:48,719 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: so that they would not be likely to break up

1067
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 1: and scatter over land or something like that.

1068
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 2: All right, So nuclear power from a physics perspective totally

1069
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:58,440
Speaker 2: works on the Moon and is a good source of energy,

1070
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:00,840
Speaker 2: and we have plenty of fuel here on Earth. The

1071
00:52:00,920 --> 00:52:03,279
Speaker 2: challenge is just getting the fuel from here to the

1072
00:52:03,320 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 2: Moon without killing everybody on the planet or causing.

1073
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:08,239
Speaker 1: Cancer, and making sure we can run these reactors in

1074
00:52:08,280 --> 00:52:10,319
Speaker 1: the space environment, which is a complicated place to work.

1075
00:52:10,320 --> 00:52:11,560
Speaker 1: And then you have to make sure that you set

1076
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:13,839
Speaker 1: it up far enough away from everybody so that you're

1077
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: not hitting them with doses of radiation. And so it's

1078
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:21,200
Speaker 1: this nice, reliable method that actually hasn't been proven in

1079
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:23,759
Speaker 1: space yet in the way you would need to set

1080
00:52:23,840 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: up a habitat. But another kind of power generating technique

1081
00:52:29,000 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 1: that we have a lot more experience with is solar.

1082
00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 2: We're talking about all the sunshine we're getting on the

1083
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:35,080
Speaker 2: Moon and how difficult it is because he's everything up.

1084
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:37,319
Speaker 2: Why don't we just use solar power that cover the

1085
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:38,400
Speaker 2: Moon in solar panels.

1086
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:41,279
Speaker 1: So what's the problem, Well, solar on the Moon has

1087
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:43,080
Speaker 1: some of the same problems that we have with solar

1088
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:46,840
Speaker 1: on Earth, which is that when it's nighttime, you don't

1089
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: get the solar power. And on Earth we solve that

1090
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:53,600
Speaker 1: problem with batteries, but on the Moon. That one night

1091
00:52:53,680 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 1: on the Moon is equivalent in time to two weeks

1092
00:52:57,040 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 1: on Earth. And so the battery packs that you would

1093
00:53:00,560 --> 00:53:04,280
Speaker 1: need are going to measure in the thousands of tons probably,

1094
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,200
Speaker 1: and I'm not actually sure we have the battery technology

1095
00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 1: ready to keep a habitat going for two weeks through

1096
00:53:10,120 --> 00:53:10,879
Speaker 1: a lunar night.

1097
00:53:11,480 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 2: Wait, so you're saying a lunar night is two Earth

1098
00:53:14,160 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 2: week long, Like, if you're on the Moon, you see

1099
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:18,799
Speaker 2: the sun for two weeks and then you don't see

1100
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 2: the sun for two weeks. Yes, doesn't that depend on

1101
00:53:21,600 --> 00:53:23,120
Speaker 2: where you are on the Moon or something.

1102
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I should have said at the equator. That's

1103
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,279
Speaker 1: important and we're going to get to that eventually. Thank

1104
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:32,279
Speaker 1: you for helping with my setup. Yeah. And these solar panels, like,

1105
00:53:32,320 --> 00:53:35,240
Speaker 1: you can't just go to lows and pick up solar panels.

1106
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 1: These are solar panels that are going to have to

1107
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: be able to survive those massive temperature swings in this

1108
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:42,480
Speaker 1: super harsh environment. So it's going to be sort of

1109
00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:44,000
Speaker 1: harder to make these, and they're going to need to

1110
00:53:44,000 --> 00:53:47,640
Speaker 1: be able to survive meteorite strikes. That horrible regolith when

1111
00:53:47,640 --> 00:53:50,279
Speaker 1: you go to brush it off after it sticks, that's

1112
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:52,800
Speaker 1: going to mess them up also, So it's going to

1113
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:55,719
Speaker 1: be complicated, but there's an area where it's going to

1114
00:53:55,719 --> 00:53:58,520
Speaker 1: be less complicated. So if you go to the poles.

1115
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: The poles on the Moon are nice because the Earth

1116
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 1: is more tilted than the Moon is. The Moon has

1117
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:06,200
Speaker 1: a lesser tilt. So if you're at certain parts on

1118
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 1: the Moon, you're getting perpetually grazed by the sunlight. So

1119
00:54:09,920 --> 00:54:11,920
Speaker 1: you're not getting hit by it straight on, but you're

1120
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: getting sort of grazed off the side. And if you're

1121
00:54:14,880 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 1: up on a rim, for example, where some of the

1122
00:54:16,680 --> 00:54:20,239
Speaker 1: craters are, then much more of the time you will

1123
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 1: be getting at least some sunlight. And so these areas

1124
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:25,719
Speaker 1: are known as the peaks of eternal light, but they

1125
00:54:25,719 --> 00:54:28,759
Speaker 1: should probably be more like the peaks of pretty much

1126
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:31,320
Speaker 1: eternal lights. I think there's there's a spot where you

1127
00:54:31,320 --> 00:54:33,880
Speaker 1: can get like ninety percent of the time there's solar power,

1128
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:36,880
Speaker 1: so that helps a lot with these battery problems.

1129
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:40,319
Speaker 2: But this is underlying issue that you're talking about, which

1130
00:54:40,360 --> 00:54:44,239
Speaker 2: is batteries or I guess equivalently transmission, and that's that

1131
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:46,759
Speaker 2: like solar power, you have the power when the sun

1132
00:54:46,800 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 2: is shining on the panel, and you don't have one,

1133
00:54:48,560 --> 00:54:51,000
Speaker 2: it's not shining on the panel, and so you need

1134
00:54:51,040 --> 00:54:54,160
Speaker 2: power regularly. But I guess my question is like, yeah,

1135
00:54:54,160 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 2: I guess you could use batteries, like use solar panels

1136
00:54:57,040 --> 00:54:59,160
Speaker 2: to charge at batteries and then draw off the batteries.

1137
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:02,320
Speaker 2: Why not just like have a ring of solar panels

1138
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 2: around the equator. Some of them are always going to

1139
00:55:04,200 --> 00:55:05,520
Speaker 2: get sunlight, some of them are going to be in

1140
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:08,880
Speaker 2: the darkness, and then just you know, have wires. Basically,

1141
00:55:08,880 --> 00:55:11,480
Speaker 2: why not just transmit the energy from the bright side

1142
00:55:11,480 --> 00:55:12,919
Speaker 2: of the moon to wherever you are.

1143
00:55:13,280 --> 00:55:16,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is another option that could totally work. It's complicated,

1144
00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:19,760
Speaker 1: and I think you want to do things as simple

1145
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,239
Speaker 1: as you can initially, and most of the proposals that

1146
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:26,080
Speaker 1: I've seen involve going to the craters first, rather than

1147
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:28,839
Speaker 1: creating this system of solar panels orbiting the Moon that

1148
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 1: transmit power down. But that is totally another option.

1149
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:35,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well I was thinking even just on the surface.

1150
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:38,879
Speaker 2: But ye, power transmission is tricky, right, you generate power

1151
00:55:38,920 --> 00:55:40,160
Speaker 2: on the other side of the Moon, you got to

1152
00:55:40,200 --> 00:55:42,000
Speaker 2: get it here. You're going to lose a lot of

1153
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:44,880
Speaker 2: that energy and then you've got to maintain this like

1154
00:55:45,239 --> 00:55:48,520
Speaker 2: moon size structure. There are some people who are talking

1155
00:55:48,560 --> 00:55:51,720
Speaker 2: about building a particle collider around the equator of the Moon,

1156
00:55:52,400 --> 00:55:55,240
Speaker 2: because hey, why not we always want one more particle collider,

1157
00:55:55,239 --> 00:55:58,759
Speaker 2: bro And that's one of the challenges is powering it

1158
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:02,279
Speaker 2: and maintaining that whole thing. A moon size structure is

1159
00:56:02,360 --> 00:56:04,200
Speaker 2: not a small thing to keep running.

1160
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:07,000
Speaker 1: And what's the benefit of having it on the Moon?

1161
00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:08,760
Speaker 1: Does the lower gravity help or something.

1162
00:56:09,680 --> 00:56:12,760
Speaker 2: No gravity doesn't affect particle colliders at all because particles

1163
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:15,560
Speaker 2: are so small they have basically no gravity. It's just

1164
00:56:15,760 --> 00:56:19,200
Speaker 2: hard to find space on Earth for such a large device.

1165
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:21,080
Speaker 2: You need a lot of people to sign off, and

1166
00:56:21,200 --> 00:56:23,959
Speaker 2: you're running a tunnel under their backyards. And there aren't

1167
00:56:24,000 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 2: so many objections on the Moon. So it's not like

1168
00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:28,799
Speaker 2: a practical or a great idea. It's just sort of

1169
00:56:28,800 --> 00:56:31,920
Speaker 2: like something people talk about sometimes got anyway. So you're

1170
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:34,600
Speaker 2: talking about solar panels on the Moon, and you're saying

1171
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:38,560
Speaker 2: difficult because you can't just use like generic solar panels.

1172
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:41,440
Speaker 2: They're also going to get like destroyed by radiation and

1173
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 2: by recolith So do we have any kind of solar

1174
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:46,640
Speaker 2: panels that will actually work and like last for more

1175
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:47,839
Speaker 2: than five seconds on the Moon.

1176
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:51,799
Speaker 1: Well, we have attached solar panels to rovers on the

1177
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:54,080
Speaker 1: Moon and Mars and they've powered our rovers for a while,

1178
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 1: so we have figured out how to make this work.

1179
00:56:57,320 --> 00:56:59,200
Speaker 1: And one of the other nice things about being at

1180
00:56:59,200 --> 00:57:02,840
Speaker 1: the poles is that rather than having these massive temperature swings,

1181
00:57:03,239 --> 00:57:07,239
Speaker 1: it's always just really cold. So at the poles, like

1182
00:57:07,239 --> 00:57:10,400
Speaker 1: for example, at uh there's this ridge between the Shackleton

1183
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:14,440
Speaker 1: and the de Gerlache. Oh my gosh, go ahead, everybody

1184
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:16,360
Speaker 1: right in and tell me how I totally killed the

1185
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 1: name of that crater, because I'm sure I destroyed it.

1186
00:57:19,040 --> 00:57:22,520
Speaker 1: But it has like average summer temperatures around negative seventy

1187
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:26,200
Speaker 1: degrees celsius, which is about like ten degrees colder than

1188
00:57:26,240 --> 00:57:29,760
Speaker 1: the average Antarctica temperature. But at least it's not swinging

1189
00:57:29,920 --> 00:57:31,960
Speaker 1: as much, so at least you just your plan for

1190
00:57:32,000 --> 00:57:34,520
Speaker 1: the cold. You insulate, you heat, and at least you're

1191
00:57:34,520 --> 00:57:38,720
Speaker 1: not dealing with the extremes. But the peaks are only

1192
00:57:38,760 --> 00:57:41,919
Speaker 1: about one one hundred billionth of the lunar surface, which

1193
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:47,960
Speaker 1: is like two tennis courts. You can like spread it

1194
00:57:48,000 --> 00:57:49,920
Speaker 1: out a little bit. If you're willing to like bring

1195
00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: longer poles and lift your solar panels up a little

1196
00:57:53,160 --> 00:57:55,919
Speaker 1: bit higher. You'll get sunlight more of the time that way.

1197
00:57:56,880 --> 00:57:59,400
Speaker 1: But it's not a lot of land, less than two

1198
00:57:59,440 --> 00:58:01,360
Speaker 1: tennis courts. So when you hear about the fact that

1199
00:58:02,040 --> 00:58:04,560
Speaker 1: China and the US both want to go to the

1200
00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:08,640
Speaker 1: poles because this area is great. Also, this is one

1201
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: of the only places you can find ice, there's a

1202
00:58:11,880 --> 00:58:13,920
Speaker 1: lot of geopolitical things to worry about in terms of

1203
00:58:13,920 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 1: whether there's going to be a scramble for these particularly

1204
00:58:16,360 --> 00:58:20,720
Speaker 1: great spots. So we got to three of the problems.

1205
00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:22,880
Speaker 1: Getting that water and using that water is going to

1206
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:27,120
Speaker 1: be a real pain. Lack of an atmosphere, temperature, swings, radiation.

1207
00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 1: That regolith is not good for growing things in like

1208
00:58:32,080 --> 00:58:34,160
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, roots are going to have trouble

1209
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 1: growing in tiny razor blades. There's also not enough carbon

1210
00:58:38,280 --> 00:58:41,560
Speaker 1: or like nitrogen and phosphorus. In fact, I think the

1211
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:44,240
Speaker 1: most concentrated sources of carbon, and this will bring us

1212
00:58:44,280 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 1: full circle. One of the most concentrated sources of carbon

1213
00:58:48,440 --> 00:58:51,560
Speaker 1: on the Moon are the ninety six bags of feces

1214
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:56,040
Speaker 1: in vomit left behind by the Apollo astronauts' base poo

1215
00:58:56,840 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: base poo. But technically that stuff still belongs to so

1216
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:03,240
Speaker 1: you are not allowed to start growing your veggies. In

1217
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:07,440
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong's long lost bowel movements, I'm sorry lest.

1218
00:59:07,200 --> 00:59:10,440
Speaker 2: You kick off an international incident over space poo. Wow,

1219
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:13,560
Speaker 2: that's right, all right. So there's lots of reasons why

1220
00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 2: living on the Moon is going to be difficult. There

1221
00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:19,520
Speaker 2: sounds like there's some potential engineering solutions in some of

1222
00:59:19,560 --> 00:59:22,600
Speaker 2: these cases, but it's definitely not a place where people

1223
00:59:22,600 --> 00:59:25,240
Speaker 2: can look forward to retiring very soon. But tell us

1224
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 2: a big picture. Are we excited about going to the moon?

1225
00:59:27,960 --> 00:59:30,280
Speaker 1: I am excited about going to the Moon? I mean, like, yes,

1226
00:59:30,320 --> 00:59:32,960
Speaker 1: these are big problems, but they're exciting problems to solve,

1227
00:59:33,640 --> 00:59:35,000
Speaker 1: and I think the Moon is going to be a

1228
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:37,120
Speaker 1: great place where we can learn the stuff that we

1229
00:59:37,200 --> 00:59:40,840
Speaker 1: need to settle frankly better places like Mars. So we

1230
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:42,760
Speaker 1: can't figure out how bad is it that the Moon

1231
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same gravity as the Earth, because Mars

1232
00:59:44,920 --> 00:59:47,400
Speaker 1: also doesn't have as much gravity as the Earth, how

1233
00:59:47,440 --> 00:59:50,640
Speaker 1: bad is that radiation? It does burying yourself in regulus

1234
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:53,200
Speaker 1: solve all of the radiation problems, like it is a

1235
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:57,400
Speaker 1: great close, kind of easy to get to, place to

1236
00:59:57,480 --> 00:59:59,440
Speaker 1: go to learn a lot of the stuff that we're

1237
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:01,280
Speaker 1: going to need to know if we want to live

1238
01:00:01,320 --> 01:00:03,760
Speaker 1: and work in space. More So, I'm excited. I'm glad

1239
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:06,400
Speaker 1: we're going back. I hope it doesn't kick off any

1240
01:00:06,440 --> 01:00:11,080
Speaker 1: geopolitical incidents, but I'm excited. Are you excited?

1241
01:00:11,560 --> 01:00:13,840
Speaker 2: I am excited. I think in the history of humanity,

1242
01:00:13,880 --> 01:00:15,640
Speaker 2: we've solved lots of problems, from like how do we

1243
01:00:15,640 --> 01:00:17,880
Speaker 2: get over that mountain? To how do we build something

1244
01:00:17,960 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 2: that floats over that ocean? And where do we find

1245
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:22,720
Speaker 2: food on the journey? And all sorts of stuff, and

1246
01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 2: people have died and it's been painful, but we've always

1247
01:00:26,240 --> 01:00:28,320
Speaker 2: figured it out, and because there always have been people

1248
01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:31,000
Speaker 2: who just want to go and want to know and

1249
01:00:31,040 --> 01:00:33,320
Speaker 2: want to see it and are willing to risk their

1250
01:00:33,360 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 2: lives and to die to help push the envelope forward.

1251
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:39,040
Speaker 2: And so I'm excited that there are people out there

1252
01:00:39,120 --> 01:00:41,360
Speaker 2: willing to do it. I personally don't want to go

1253
01:00:41,480 --> 01:00:44,320
Speaker 2: to the moon or ever leave the surface of the Earth,

1254
01:00:44,440 --> 01:00:47,440
Speaker 2: but I'm very grateful for those explorers among us, and

1255
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 2: we're going to help us take the first steps to

1256
01:00:49,120 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 2: being a galactic civilization one day.

1257
01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:54,160
Speaker 1: I love it all right, Daniel. This has been so

1258
01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:56,520
Speaker 1: much fun, and thank you so much to the listeners

1259
01:00:56,520 --> 01:00:59,200
Speaker 1: for tuning in. Feel free to email us at questions

1260
01:00:59,200 --> 01:01:02,280
Speaker 1: at Daniel and dot org to tell us about all

1261
01:01:02,280 --> 01:01:05,240
Speaker 1: the words we mispronounce and to give us your thoughts

1262
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:07,360
Speaker 1: on the episodes or other topics you might want to

1263
01:01:07,360 --> 01:01:08,080
Speaker 1: hear us talk about.

1264
01:01:08,120 --> 01:01:11,880
Speaker 2: I have a great week everyone.

1265
01:01:16,120 --> 01:01:19,960
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1266
01:01:20,000 --> 01:01:22,400
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1272
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:37,440
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1273
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1274
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1275
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