WEBVTT - The Story: Mars, Asterisk w/ Nathaniel Rich 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:03.160 NASA has a punch list of eight hundred problems that 0:00:03.240 --> 0:00:08.200 must be solved before the first mission to Mars is launched. 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:12.560 Very few of them have to do with problems of 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:17.279 human psychology or really even of human survival, which is 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:21.640 the subject of this experiment that I wrote about called SHAPEA. 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:26.960 This particular experiment began with rather intriguing announcement on the 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:28.560 NASA website. 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:31.760 Yeah, it was a little bit like the Wonka Factory. 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:35.360 The Golden Ticket that you know, four civilians would be 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:40.199 chosen to go to Mars Asterisk, not really Mars, but 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.479 a habitat that was built on essentially a stage set 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:47.520 to look exactly like what they expect the first mission 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:51.519 to Mars to look like. And it generated enormous excitement 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.520 and people from all over the country rushed to apply. 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:58.640 They wanted the Golden Ticket to live out. In most cases, 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.480 I think it's kind of childhood fantasy of space exploration 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:07.640 to see if they could withstand psychologically the challenges of 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.920 living away from the rest of the everyone else they've 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:12.240 ever known or met. 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:19.959 Welcome to Tech Stuff the story. I'm Os Voloshin, and 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:22.440 each week we bring you an in depth interview with 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.240 one of the brightest and farthest seeing minds in. 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:26.160 And about tech. 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:34.640 Karen, I'm excited to bring you this interview with Nathaniel Rich. 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:37.039 When we ask people to come on the show, it's 0:01:37.080 --> 0:01:40.080 always because one or other of us has been fascinated 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.720 by something they've said, something they've done, or something they've written. 0:01:43.840 --> 0:01:47.280 Well, Nathaniel kind of had me at Mars asterisk me too. 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:51.160 You can't really understand tech today without understanding or at 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.400 least investigating the dreams and the fantasies of the tech titans. 0:01:55.760 --> 0:01:59.080 Colonizing space is such an important touchstone for Elon Musk 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.480 and Jeff Bezos in particular, and also mentioned by Trump 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:06.520 his inauguration as quote the pursuit of our manifest destiny. 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:08.519 He said, put stars and stripe. What did you say, 0:02:08.520 --> 0:02:10.600 put red, white, and blue? Are stars and stripes on 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:11.880 Mars Mars? 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.320 Yeah, So, when I came across this article in the 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:18.639 New York Times magazine under the headline can humans withstand 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:22.000 the psychological torture of Mars? I had to know more. 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.920 In fact, I remember reading it just getting goosebumps, and 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:27.520 so I kind of wanted to talk to Nathaniel about 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:30.639 how realistic the dreams of getting to Mars are and 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.600 what some of the practical dare I say, technical steps 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:35.040 required to achieve the mark? 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:36.600 Before you get too excited, can you just tell me 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:37.600 who Nathaniel Rich is? 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:38.080 Sorry? 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:42.320 Nathaniel is an author. He's written novels like The Mayor's Tongue, 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:46.720 Odds Against Tomorrow, and King Zeno, but also nonfiction books 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:50.120 primarily about the environment, such as Losing Earth, A Recent 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:54.680 History and Second Nature Scenes from a World Remade. One 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:58.720 critic actually said Rich is a gifted caricaturist and a 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:03.480 gifted apocalypse. It's his talent for describing the apocalypse which 0:03:03.560 --> 0:03:06.280 brought him, in some ways to reporting on the Mars 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:17.239 June Alpha project, which I asked to about why did you 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:18.120 decide to write the piece? 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:23.080 The NASA part of it was almost came secondarily. I 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:30.120 had become obsessed with this history of isolation research, and 0:03:30.200 --> 0:03:35.560 particularly by this incredible story of a man named Michel 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:41.320 Sifrey who had launched a series of cave experiments to 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:46.560 test the endurance of people in isolation, in environments where 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:48.680 they're completely cut off from the world. And so he 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.360 had run a series of these experiments that culminated with 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.520 this experiment by the first female participant in the series, 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.520 who was this woman named Veronique Legwyn was in the 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:02.040 late eighties, and she went underground and ended up setting 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.080 the record at the time as one hundred and eleven 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:07.880 days underground. And she kept a journal and she wrote 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.920 about everything she was thinking about and feeling, and ultimately 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:13.280 what happened was she went a little bit insane, but 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:19.359 also had these moments of great euphoria and enlightenment. And 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:22.400 it's a tragic story though, because she came out finally 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:25.960 and after being celebrated and becoming a kind of national 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:29.200 celebrity for a period of time, entered into this great 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:33.600 depression and ultimately killed herself within a year. And she 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.240 had said before her death something to the effect of, 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:38.680 you know, I never was more alive than I was 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:41.560 down and underground when I was all by myself. And 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.080 that led me into a whole obsession with these types 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:47.200 of experiments, and I wanted to see if anyone was 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:51.520 doing these things now, because they're on one level, they're 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:56.039 completely unethical because basically what you'd expect happens, which is 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:00.840 most people struggle and often lose their whole on reality 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:02.520 and I found that no one was really doing these 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:07.480 experiments for that reason except for NASA, who had continued 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.640 under the guise of this Martian project. 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:14.800 So on the one had NASA putting out the cool applicants, 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.160 but on the other hand, they had to build Mars 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:20.479 or at least a motion colony on Earth. 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:25.960 Yeah, they had to build or actually print using a 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:29.680 three D printer, a habitat, which is, by the way, 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:33.360 how they will do it. When we get to Mars. 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:37.000 You can't travel thirty three million miles with a house, 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:42.360 you know, of towing a half behind you. Yeah, so 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:43.960 they can't quite do that, or they don't have the 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:46.400 technology to do that. It's not efficient. And so what 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.160 they will do is they will just lug a three 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:54.440 D printer up there and use Martian rock regolith as 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.279 ink for this three D printer. 0:05:57.480 --> 0:05:59.599 So they'll tone the sand into cement somehow. 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:01.640 Yeah, and they can do that. They do that on 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:04.839 this planet too, And there are you can find online 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:06.919 some habitats that have been built, some houses that have 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:09.479 been built this way, not using Martian rock obviously, but 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:14.480 terrestrial rock. And they will construct this house. It's a 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:19.720 seventeen hundred square foot habitat, and they built it in 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:24.680 a warehouse at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:29.880 it's their four little bedrooms and a lounge and you know, 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:35.120 a small indoor garden and some computers and desks and 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:41.080 like a little relaxation space. And that seventeen hundred foot 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:45.320 habitat was where they were going to send four people 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:47.159 for more than a year. 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.760 And this habitat resembles exactly what they intend to build 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:53.760 on Moss when they get there. 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:58.280 Yeah, I'm sure subject to change, and I suppose part 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:02.560 of this experiment was to determine whether this particular model 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:05.640 would work best. But yeah, this is the plan. 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.679 And the kind of simulated colony in the Johnson Space 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:11.640 Center had quite a romantic name. 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.520 Yeah, Mars Dune Alpha is the name of the habitat, 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:20.120 and the mission is named Shapeah, which is I guess 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:21.920 NASA's idea of a sexy name. 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:27.160 And so okay, So the call goes out for some 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.600 volunteers to go to Mars dun Alfa. One of the 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:36.520 people who sees the advertisement is Nathan Jones. Who's Nathan. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:41.520 Yeah, Nathan Jones is in many ways the most fascinating 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:44.240 figure for me in reporting the piece. He's an emergency 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:50.880 room physician from Springfield, Illinois, father of three boys, married, 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:55.760 and Nathan was like basically everyone I spoke to for 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.360 the story, was a kind of self professed NASA geek 0:07:59.440 --> 0:08:05.280 or ass and had always dreamed of doing something special, 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.520 bigger with his life. He was obsessed with space travel 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:14.680 and when he saw this posting, he applied immediately and 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:18.200 then told his wife, who was I think as safe 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:19.200 to say as it was a. 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:22.960 Pault the sequence that seems a little all speaking as 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:23.640 Americ man. 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.960 Yeah, I don't. I wouldn't have flied in my house. 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:31.240 But he was unique actually in that he was the 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:35.600 only one of the finalists who had children, and as 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.719 the father of two small children myself, I felt for 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:42.680 the family. And he was fully aware he was going 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.280 to miss out on a lot. You miss a year 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.240 with your children, you're missing a lot, and you come 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:50.360 back and the children look like different people. So there 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:55.120 was another dimension of an emotional challenge with him. But 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:56.280 he was determined to do it. 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:57.559 And how did he prepare? 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:04.800 He prepared very dutifully by him and his wife had 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:07.280 a whole series. I was fascinated by this, a whole 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:11.079 series of preparations that they did. He wrote little letters 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:13.760 to that he placed around the house in secret hiding 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.040 spots that the kids and his wife, Casey might find 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:21.120 over the course of the year. Sometimes little like notes 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:24.720 of encouragement, like he put a note in the fuse 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:27.760 box for like the first time the lights went out 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.080 and said, you know you can do this. I trust you, 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.439 just flipped this switch. And so they're all these sort 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.600 of sweet and for somewhat poignant point. 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:37.720 It's almost like the script of a movie where somebody 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:38.520 knows they're going to die. 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.640 Yeah, and there's but the poignancy is somewhat compromised. I 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:48.920 found by the fact that it was all a contrived scenario. 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.439 He wasn't that that's that there's a kind of beathos 0:09:52.480 --> 0:09:55.720 to the fact that, well, he wasn't actually going to Mars. 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:59.120 It's not quite the Matthew mcconnae Interstellar where he's missing 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:01.840 his children for this major mission. He's just going to 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.360 sit on a stage set for a year. But that 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:07.720 tension between the kind of absurdity of the whole proposition 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:13.280 and then the real emotion that attended every aspect of 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.720 this process, for me, that was really the heart of 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:17.280 the story. 0:10:17.920 --> 0:10:19.800 All you have to do is watch the video of 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:24.880 him about to go into the Man's dun alfa. What 0:10:24.920 --> 0:10:27.160 did you feel when you watched somebody you spent time 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:29.720 with his source in such distress. 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:35.240 Yeah, that was striking. He had predicted it. But sure enough, 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:39.240 when it came time to enter this habitat, they had 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.840 this dramatic ceremony. They were filmed right in front of 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.280 the main portal, which is basically just a door. It 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:49.640 wasn't like some major like you're entering a submarine or something, 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:51.920 but they were at a They gave a little press 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:54.120 conference and each one of them had to give a talk, 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.080 give a little statement, and he broke down. He couldn't 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.760 finish it because he was so overcome by the thought 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.760 of saying goodbye finally to his family for this long 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:06.680 period of time. 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.400 But I believe that tomorrow will only be possible because 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:13.840 we step into marsdo now but today, and with that 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:16.120 in mind, I also want to take a moment to 0:11:16.160 --> 0:11:20.160 sincerely thank the great many people who've worked tirelessly in 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.720 so many countless hours to get us to this point. Also, 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:27.520 thank you to our families and friends for their sacrifices. 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:32.280 We see, we know those sacrifices. We couldn't be here 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:42.680 without your love and support. Sorry, Sorry to my wife 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:44.320 and kids. 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.839 I love you, the moon. I'm sorry Mars and back. 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.920 And it's very moving and upsetting and sort of sweet 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:55.720 and horrible in some ways as well. It's something that 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.200 he brought upon himself. But I think what's key to 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.800 understand is that everybody in the mission, from the administrators 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:07.959 to the participants, felt very certain that what they were 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:13.319 doing was a critical next step towards this wonderful dream 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:17.960 of humanity's next chapter. They felt that there is no Mars, 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.720 there is no exploration of Mars unless you have the 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:26.000 shapea experiment. I'm not convinced that's true at all. I 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:28.600 mean I wrote about that, but they certainly were, and 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:33.000 so they did feel that they were sacrificing, making a 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:37.440 major personal sacrifice towards achieving a great goal for all 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:38.560 of humanity. 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:41.440 Which may have kept them safe. And the woman you 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:43.679 mentioned at the beginning, the French woman who took her 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.080 own life, does she have that same sense of mission. 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.360 That's a great point. There is some commonality, and that 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.920 there was this idea that they were on a kind 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:59.400 of different frontier of human psychology. And but yes, it's 0:12:59.440 --> 0:13:02.160 not it was. I don't think it was quite as ennobling, 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:04.880 or the stakes were quite as high as you see 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.240 with NASA and all the trappings of NASA. 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:12.160 And also she was totally alone, whereas Nathan had three companions. 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:14.400 Right right, And so there's some distinctions there, although I 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.440 will say that in the long history of experiments in 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:22.920 which people are together in isolation, they suffer. Also, I mean, 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:26.040 maybe it's not quite as extreme, but you know, in 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:30.120 conducting the research for the piece, I spoke with a 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:34.559 bunch of psychiatrists and historians of science and historians of psychology, 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:41.760 and I learned that the definition of isolation is not 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:47.200 necessarily being alone. It's being removed from your normal life 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:49.720 and from the people close to you. So you can 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.600 be in isolation with other people, and in fact, many 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:57.840 of the same psychological effects are experienced whether or not 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:00.720 there are you're with other people. You're cut off from 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:02.440 the people who are most important to you. 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:05.520 When I think about the history of space movies is 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:09.040 obviously the famous Houston. We have a problem. Could Nathan 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:11.680 and co stay in touch with homebase and even with 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.400 their families while they were in Mars dun Alpha. 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:19.440 Yeah, so that they were very scrupulous about imitating the reality, 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:23.960 the expected reality, which is that there's this time lapse 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:28.000 for any communication from Mars because it's far away and 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:30.480 you're dealing with the limits of the speed of sound 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:34.760 and technology, and so there's something it depends on where 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:36.240 it is in the orbit, but essentially there's like a 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:42.280 twenty nine minute lapse, and so you can't have a conversation, 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.320 any kind of normal conversation, but they can send messages. 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:49.880 But the other problem is that every form of electronic 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:55.920 communication from the habitat has to go through the same channel. 0:14:56.240 --> 0:15:00.480 So that includes any kind of data that the habitat 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:02.840 is sending back to Earth about I don't know, oxygen 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:06.240 levels or what's happening in the experiments, or any kind 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.480 of computer connections. And so that's sort of the best 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:15.080 case scenario, and that actually the lag can be much longer, 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:18.360 and the larger the audio file or the text file, 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:21.040 the computer file, the longer it takes. So sending a 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.960 short video, even in low resolution, could take days, where 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:27.800 sending a one line text message maybe takes only half 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.440 an hour or so. So they could communicate, but only 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:37.400 in this clipped way with all of these ellipses essentially 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:42.320 between communications. So if there's an emergency, say back at home, 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:45.320 they couldn't just start having a conversation with them. Now, 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.400 in reality, since they were on a stage set, they 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:52.800 could break the experiment at any time if someone just 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:54.960 like I don't know, cut off their finger or something, 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:57.920 but they would try to they would do anything to 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:02.160 avoid breaking the experiment. So yeah, they were reduced to 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:06.880 these sort of intermittent text messages essentially that would be 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:09.000 relayed at unpredictable intervals. 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:11.680 How did you choose the headline? Feel story? 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.840 I don't choose the headlines. I'm not allow I don't. 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:18.720 I can consult on them, and I can say this 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:19.840 one's worse than the other one. 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:21.920 But the headline the New York Times magazine went with 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.640 was can humans withstand the psychological torture? 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.960 I mean, it's pretty good, I can't headline yes, yes, 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:34.360 And that's also what it's about, basically, can we can 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.640 people survive this? Because most of what NASA has been 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.880 asking over the course of its space program is can 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.640 we physically get people into space? Can we physically put 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:47.800 them on another planet. Very little thought has been given 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:53.440 into can human beings once they're there survive psychologically, emotionally, 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.760 And that's that's what this experiment is, at least ostensibly about, 0:16:58.160 --> 0:16:59.920 and it's definitely what the story is that I wrote 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:02.120 about when. 0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:05.000 We come back. More from Nathaniel rich on why we're 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:08.960 so obsessed with going to Mars and how historically attitudes 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:17.760 towards Mars have always revealed deeper cultural undercurrents. How close 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:22.000 is NASA to putting humans on Mars. They've been predicting 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:23.919 for many years that it's just around the corner. They 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.000 keep pushing back the window. 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:28.760 Even a few years ago, I think by twenty eighteen 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.320 they had predicted that it would be no later than 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:36.640 the end of the twenty twenties. I think now it's 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:40.760 they're looking more to the middle of the next decade. 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:44.280 But they are full speed ahead, and I think they're 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:48.560 very confident that they will get people to the planet 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.480 in a fairly short amount of time. The technical problems 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:55.800 that lay before them that we referenced are not seen 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:01.080 as intimidatingly difficult. They're just math problems to be worked out. 0:18:01.320 --> 0:18:03.360 Is the sense that I got from speaking with one 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:08.400 of these senior propulsion engineers. So there is, and there 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.359 has been for quite a while within NASA, quite a 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:13.199 lot of optimism that this is going to happen. It's 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:14.080 going to happen pretty soon. 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.160 And why why mos Well. 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:19.960 That's the million dollars, that's the million dollar question. I mean, 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:22.800 there's a lot of different rationales. The main ones you 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:27.560 hear from NASA is it represents scientific progress. It's the 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:32.240 next step for human exploration of the universe, and certainly 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:36.520 human progress in this space exploration. There's also the rationale 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:41.680 that through the kind of innovation that's necessary to put 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:43.840 people on Mars or to reach any new milestone in 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:48.000 the space expeditions, that there will be some kind of 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:53.040 unpredictable benefits, technological benefits that can be applied for all 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.439 of humanity, so that maybe they'll invent new materials or 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:59.880 new types of devices that can then make our life 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:02.800 on Earth easier. And there are plenty of examples I 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:06.800 think of that in the past. And then there's a 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.399 kind of political rationale, which is to say that we 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:12.320 need to do it before someone else does. There's a 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:13.880 national pride on the line. 0:19:14.200 --> 0:19:16.240 I mean, is this like in the sixties when JFK 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:18.480 wanted to put a man on the moon first. Is 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:20.880 there a parallel to the sixties in that respect? 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:23.200 Yeah, I would say not only is there a parallel, 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.320 but I think NASA and its whole frame of thinking. 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.639 If you can speak of something the size of an agency, 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:32.560 the size of NASA as a personified in some way. 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:35.639 But I think the whole enterprise is really stuck in 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:38.520 the sixties, if not the fit nineteen fifties one is created. 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.280 So it's very much it's you know, you see this 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:45.120 sort of vestigial almost cold war mentality that I think 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:47.960 informs all almost every aspect of the whole enterprise. 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:50.240 What does it say to you that in the sixties 0:19:50.280 --> 0:19:55.359 it was the president JFK sort of outlining this national 0:19:56.040 --> 0:20:00.160 mission to put a man on the moon, and now 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:03.040 in the twenty twenties it's El Musk and to a 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:04.360 certain extent, Jeff Bezos. 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:08.440 Yeah, I think you can learn all you need to 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.280 know about a culture or a society by studying its 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:16.560 attitudes about Mars. You know, it's certainly now it's dominated 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:18.920 by a kind of there are a few different strands. 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:22.840 There's a kind of private enterprise strand but that is 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:26.320 often including in the case of Musk, closely alloyed with 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:32.080 a libertarian fantasy of a lawless world in which people 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.040 can stake their claim a kind of wild West and 0:20:35.119 --> 0:20:39.840 not have regulation and oversight. There are groups of Mars 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:45.880 enthusiasts out there that are very much explicitly libertarian ideologues 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:48.720 who hope to start a libertarian society on Mars. So 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:51.280 that exists if you go back to the fifties and sixties, 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.199 where at this very different place in our culture, obviously 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:59.600 in society, a place of tremendous global cooperation relatively that 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:02.400 gave birth to the entire sort of modern space race, 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:04.960 even though you have a competition between the Cold War powers. 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.159 But you can even go back further and if you 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:14.960 look at the late nineteenth century when Chaparelli, a Milanaisy astronomer, 0:21:15.359 --> 0:21:17.919 observed that there were canals on Mars. There was this 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:21.639 great fascination for decades about are people living on Mars? 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:26.280 Are Martians building canals? And it was very much an expression. 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:30.160 You can find very clear a correlation between the kind 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:32.960 of excitement of the industrial age and there was a 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:35.960 period where people were competing with Mars to build more 0:21:36.000 --> 0:21:39.400 canals as fast as possible, as also, of course, during 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.399 the same period of the digging of the sus Canal. 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:43.680 So this was you know, this is the New York Times. 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:46.240 This is not just some like weird thing. Is this 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:48.560 is at the time generally accepted that we're in this 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.800 race against the Martians. So it's always been a kind 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:57.600 of repository Mars for the kind of subconscious of the 0:21:57.640 --> 0:22:01.360 culture that observes it. And I think that's true today, 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:04.240 and I think as our society changes, probably our view 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:06.880 of Mars will change in tandem with it. 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.960 You've written that future Mars voyages will have to want 0:22:11.000 --> 0:22:13.119 to travel to Mars more than almost anyone else in 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:15.600 the world. They'll have to embrace the knowledge that for 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:18.560 at least five hundred and seventy days, they will be 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:22.120 the most isolated human beings in the history of the universe. 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:26.560 Yes, they will have to, because that's what they're signing 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:27.520 up up for. 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:28.879 What will that do to them? 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:29.439 You know? 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:31.600 I think a distinction has to be made between the 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:35.080 kind of person who wants to be an astronaut and 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:37.280 wants to go on a mission like this, like the 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:40.560 people I wrote about, like Nathan Jones. But then once 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:45.600 we start talking about a permanent settlement or colonies, we're 0:22:45.600 --> 0:22:48.159 talking about a very different group of people. So you 0:22:48.280 --> 0:22:51.920 have this sort of kind of zealot astronauts, who are 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:54.960 you perfectly fit, who are the most stable people you've 0:22:55.000 --> 0:23:01.040 ever met, enormous reserves of self concentration and self reliance 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:03.360 and all the rest, and then the rest of us, right, 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:07.280 and for colony to exist, it has to look very different. 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:10.439 And a major criticism that I encountered in researching the 0:23:10.480 --> 0:23:13.560 piece from close watchers of the NASA program is that 0:23:14.440 --> 0:23:18.720 even if this experiment has some value to predict the 0:23:18.760 --> 0:23:23.119 ability of say, astronauts to survive in this setting, it 0:23:23.160 --> 0:23:26.280 will have no value for the rest of us, who, 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:28.720 you know, all kinds of other considerations would have to 0:23:28.720 --> 0:23:32.280 be made. And so we're certainly not at the stage 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:35.359 where we're asking can people have families up there? Can 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:39.439 people give birth? There's some major biological challenges there. What 0:23:39.520 --> 0:23:43.560