Speaker 1: NASA has a punch list of eight hundred problems that
Speaker 1: must be solved before the first mission to Mars is launched.
Speaker 1: Very few of them have to do with problems of
Speaker 1: human psychology or really even of human survival, which is
Speaker 1: the subject of this experiment that I wrote about called SHAPEA.
Speaker 2: This particular experiment began with rather intriguing announcement on the
Speaker 2: NASA website.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a little bit like the Wonka Factory.
Speaker 1: The Golden Ticket that you know, four civilians would be
Speaker 1: chosen to go to Mars Asterisk, not really Mars, but
Speaker 1: a habitat that was built on essentially a stage set
Speaker 1: to look exactly like what they expect the first mission
Speaker 1: to Mars to look like. And it generated enormous excitement
Speaker 1: and people from all over the country rushed to apply.
Speaker 1: They wanted the Golden Ticket to live out. In most cases,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of childhood fantasy of space exploration
Speaker 1: to see if they could withstand psychologically the challenges of
Speaker 1: living away from the rest of the everyone else they've
Speaker 1: ever known or met.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Tech Stuff the story. I'm Os Voloshin, and
Speaker 2: each week we bring you an in depth interview with
Speaker 2: one of the brightest and farthest seeing minds in.
Speaker 1: And about tech.
Speaker 2: Karen, I'm excited to bring you this interview with Nathaniel Rich.
Speaker 2: When we ask people to come on the show, it's
Speaker 2: always because one or other of us has been fascinated
Speaker 2: by something they've said, something they've done, or something they've written.
Speaker 3: Well, Nathaniel kind of had me at Mars asterisk me too.
Speaker 2: You can't really understand tech today without understanding or at
Speaker 2: least investigating the dreams and the fantasies of the tech titans.
Speaker 2: Colonizing space is such an important touchstone for Elon Musk
Speaker 2: and Jeff Bezos in particular, and also mentioned by Trump
Speaker 2: his inauguration as quote the pursuit of our manifest destiny.
Speaker 3: He said, put stars and stripe. What did you say,
Speaker 3: put red, white, and blue? Are stars and stripes on
Speaker 3: Mars Mars?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, when I came across this article in the
Speaker 2: New York Times magazine under the headline can humans withstand
Speaker 2: the psychological torture of Mars? I had to know more.
Speaker 2: In fact, I remember reading it just getting goosebumps, and
Speaker 2: so I kind of wanted to talk to Nathaniel about
Speaker 2: how realistic the dreams of getting to Mars are and
Speaker 2: what some of the practical dare I say, technical steps
Speaker 2: required to achieve the mark?
Speaker 3: Before you get too excited, can you just tell me
Speaker 3: who Nathaniel Rich is?
Speaker 1: Sorry?
Speaker 2: Nathaniel is an author. He's written novels like The Mayor's Tongue,
Speaker 2: Odds Against Tomorrow, and King Zeno, but also nonfiction books
Speaker 2: primarily about the environment, such as Losing Earth, A Recent
Speaker 2: History and Second Nature Scenes from a World Remade. One
Speaker 2: critic actually said Rich is a gifted caricaturist and a
Speaker 2: gifted apocalypse. It's his talent for describing the apocalypse which
Speaker 2: brought him, in some ways to reporting on the Mars
Speaker 2: June Alpha project, which I asked to about why did you
Speaker 2: decide to write the piece?
Speaker 1: The NASA part of it was almost came secondarily. I
Speaker 1: had become obsessed with this history of isolation research, and
Speaker 1: particularly by this incredible story of a man named Michel
Speaker 1: Sifrey who had launched a series of cave experiments to
Speaker 1: test the endurance of people in isolation, in environments where
Speaker 1: they're completely cut off from the world. And so he
Speaker 1: had run a series of these experiments that culminated with
Speaker 1: this experiment by the first female participant in the series,
Speaker 1: who was this woman named Veronique Legwyn was in the
Speaker 1: late eighties, and she went underground and ended up setting
Speaker 1: the record at the time as one hundred and eleven
Speaker 1: days underground. And she kept a journal and she wrote
Speaker 1: about everything she was thinking about and feeling, and ultimately
Speaker 1: what happened was she went a little bit insane, but
Speaker 1: also had these moments of great euphoria and enlightenment. And
Speaker 1: it's a tragic story though, because she came out finally
Speaker 1: and after being celebrated and becoming a kind of national
Speaker 1: celebrity for a period of time, entered into this great
Speaker 1: depression and ultimately killed herself within a year. And she
Speaker 1: had said before her death something to the effect of,
Speaker 1: you know, I never was more alive than I was
Speaker 1: down and underground when I was all by myself. And
Speaker 1: that led me into a whole obsession with these types
Speaker 1: of experiments, and I wanted to see if anyone was
Speaker 1: doing these things now, because they're on one level, they're
Speaker 1: completely unethical because basically what you'd expect happens, which is
Speaker 1: most people struggle and often lose their whole on reality
Speaker 1: and I found that no one was really doing these
Speaker 1: experiments for that reason except for NASA, who had continued
Speaker 1: under the guise of this Martian project.
Speaker 2: So on the one had NASA putting out the cool applicants,
Speaker 2: but on the other hand, they had to build Mars
Speaker 2: or at least a motion colony on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had to build or actually print using a
Speaker 1: three D printer, a habitat, which is, by the way,
Speaker 1: how they will do it. When we get to Mars.
Speaker 1: You can't travel thirty three million miles with a house,
Speaker 1: you know, of towing a half behind you. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they can't quite do that, or they don't have the
Speaker 1: technology to do that. It's not efficient. And so what
Speaker 1: they will do is they will just lug a three
Speaker 1: D printer up there and use Martian rock regolith as
Speaker 1: ink for this three D printer.
Speaker 2: So they'll tone the sand into cement somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they can do that. They do that on
Speaker 1: this planet too, And there are you can find online
Speaker 1: some habitats that have been built, some houses that have
Speaker 1: been built this way, not using Martian rock obviously, but
Speaker 1: terrestrial rock. And they will construct this house. It's a
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred square foot habitat, and they built it in
Speaker 1: a warehouse at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and
Speaker 1: it's their four little bedrooms and a lounge and you know,
Speaker 1: a small indoor garden and some computers and desks and
Speaker 1: like a little relaxation space. And that seventeen hundred foot
Speaker 1: habitat was where they were going to send four people
Speaker 1: for more than a year.
Speaker 2: And this habitat resembles exactly what they intend to build
Speaker 2: on Moss when they get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure subject to change, and I suppose part
Speaker 1: of this experiment was to determine whether this particular model
Speaker 1: would work best. But yeah, this is the plan.
Speaker 2: And the kind of simulated colony in the Johnson Space
Speaker 2: Center had quite a romantic name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mars Dune Alpha is the name of the habitat,
Speaker 1: and the mission is named Shapeah, which is I guess
Speaker 1: NASA's idea of a sexy name.
Speaker 2: And so okay, So the call goes out for some
Speaker 2: volunteers to go to Mars dun Alfa. One of the
Speaker 2: people who sees the advertisement is Nathan Jones. Who's Nathan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nathan Jones is in many ways the most fascinating
Speaker 1: figure for me in reporting the piece. He's an emergency
Speaker 1: room physician from Springfield, Illinois, father of three boys, married,
Speaker 1: and Nathan was like basically everyone I spoke to for
Speaker 1: the story, was a kind of self professed NASA geek
Speaker 1: or ass and had always dreamed of doing something special,
Speaker 1: bigger with his life. He was obsessed with space travel
Speaker 1: and when he saw this posting, he applied immediately and
Speaker 1: then told his wife, who was I think as safe
Speaker 1: to say as it was a.
Speaker 2: Pault the sequence that seems a little all speaking as
Speaker 2: Americ man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't. I wouldn't have flied in my house.
Speaker 1: But he was unique actually in that he was the
Speaker 1: only one of the finalists who had children, and as
Speaker 1: the father of two small children myself, I felt for
Speaker 1: the family. And he was fully aware he was going
Speaker 1: to miss out on a lot. You miss a year
Speaker 1: with your children, you're missing a lot, and you come
Speaker 1: back and the children look like different people. So there
Speaker 1: was another dimension of an emotional challenge with him. But
Speaker 1: he was determined to do it.
Speaker 2: And how did he prepare?
Speaker 1: He prepared very dutifully by him and his wife had
Speaker 1: a whole series. I was fascinated by this, a whole
Speaker 1: series of preparations that they did. He wrote little letters
Speaker 1: to that he placed around the house in secret hiding
Speaker 1: spots that the kids and his wife, Casey might find
Speaker 1: over the course of the year. Sometimes little like notes
Speaker 1: of encouragement, like he put a note in the fuse
Speaker 1: box for like the first time the lights went out
Speaker 1: and said, you know you can do this. I trust you,
Speaker 1: just flipped this switch. And so they're all these sort
Speaker 1: of sweet and for somewhat poignant point.
Speaker 2: It's almost like the script of a movie where somebody
Speaker 2: knows they're going to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's but the poignancy is somewhat compromised. I
Speaker 1: found by the fact that it was all a contrived scenario.
Speaker 1: He wasn't that that's that there's a kind of beathos
Speaker 1: to the fact that, well, he wasn't actually going to Mars.
Speaker 1: It's not quite the Matthew mcconnae Interstellar where he's missing
Speaker 1: his children for this major mission. He's just going to
Speaker 1: sit on a stage set for a year. But that
Speaker 1: tension between the kind of absurdity of the whole proposition
Speaker 1: and then the real emotion that attended every aspect of
Speaker 1: this process, for me, that was really the heart of
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 2: All you have to do is watch the video of
Speaker 2: him about to go into the Man's dun alfa. What
Speaker 2: did you feel when you watched somebody you spent time
Speaker 2: with his source in such distress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was striking. He had predicted it. But sure enough,
Speaker 1: when it came time to enter this habitat, they had
Speaker 1: this dramatic ceremony. They were filmed right in front of
Speaker 1: the main portal, which is basically just a door. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like some major like you're entering a submarine or something,
Speaker 1: but they were at a They gave a little press
Speaker 1: conference and each one of them had to give a talk,
Speaker 1: give a little statement, and he broke down. He couldn't
Speaker 1: finish it because he was so overcome by the thought
Speaker 1: of saying goodbye finally to his family for this long
Speaker 1: period of time.
Speaker 4: But I believe that tomorrow will only be possible because
Speaker 4: we step into marsdo now but today, and with that
Speaker 4: in mind, I also want to take a moment to
Speaker 4: sincerely thank the great many people who've worked tirelessly in
Speaker 4: so many countless hours to get us to this point. Also,
Speaker 4: thank you to our families and friends for their sacrifices.
Speaker 4: We see, we know those sacrifices. We couldn't be here
Speaker 4: without your love and support. Sorry, Sorry to my wife
Speaker 4: and kids.
Speaker 2: I love you, the moon. I'm sorry Mars and back.
Speaker 1: And it's very moving and upsetting and sort of sweet
Speaker 1: and horrible in some ways as well. It's something that
Speaker 1: he brought upon himself. But I think what's key to
Speaker 1: understand is that everybody in the mission, from the administrators
Speaker 1: to the participants, felt very certain that what they were
Speaker 1: doing was a critical next step towards this wonderful dream
Speaker 1: of humanity's next chapter. They felt that there is no Mars,
Speaker 1: there is no exploration of Mars unless you have the
Speaker 1: shapea experiment. I'm not convinced that's true at all. I
Speaker 1: mean I wrote about that, but they certainly were, and
Speaker 1: so they did feel that they were sacrificing, making a
Speaker 1: major personal sacrifice towards achieving a great goal for all
Speaker 1: of humanity.
Speaker 2: Which may have kept them safe. And the woman you
Speaker 2: mentioned at the beginning, the French woman who took her
Speaker 2: own life, does she have that same sense of mission.
Speaker 1: That's a great point. There is some commonality, and that
Speaker 1: there was this idea that they were on a kind
Speaker 1: of different frontier of human psychology. And but yes, it's
Speaker 1: not it was. I don't think it was quite as ennobling,
Speaker 1: or the stakes were quite as high as you see
Speaker 1: with NASA and all the trappings of NASA.
Speaker 2: And also she was totally alone, whereas Nathan had three companions.
Speaker 1: Right right, And so there's some distinctions there, although I
Speaker 1: will say that in the long history of experiments in
Speaker 1: which people are together in isolation, they suffer. Also, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it's not quite as extreme, but you know, in
Speaker 1: conducting the research for the piece, I spoke with a
Speaker 1: bunch of psychiatrists and historians of science and historians of psychology,
Speaker 1: and I learned that the definition of isolation is not
Speaker 1: necessarily being alone. It's being removed from your normal life
Speaker 1: and from the people close to you. So you can
Speaker 1: be in isolation with other people, and in fact, many
Speaker 1: of the same psychological effects are experienced whether or not
Speaker 1: there are you're with other people. You're cut off from
Speaker 1: the people who are most important to you.
Speaker 2: When I think about the history of space movies is
Speaker 2: obviously the famous Houston. We have a problem. Could Nathan
Speaker 2: and co stay in touch with homebase and even with
Speaker 2: their families while they were in Mars dun Alpha.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that they were very scrupulous about imitating the reality,
Speaker 1: the expected reality, which is that there's this time lapse
Speaker 1: for any communication from Mars because it's far away and
Speaker 1: you're dealing with the limits of the speed of sound
Speaker 1: and technology, and so there's something it depends on where
Speaker 1: it is in the orbit, but essentially there's like a
Speaker 1: twenty nine minute lapse, and so you can't have a conversation,
Speaker 1: any kind of normal conversation, but they can send messages.
Speaker 1: But the other problem is that every form of electronic
Speaker 1: communication from the habitat has to go through the same channel.
Speaker 1: So that includes any kind of data that the habitat
Speaker 1: is sending back to Earth about I don't know, oxygen
Speaker 1: levels or what's happening in the experiments, or any kind
Speaker 1: of computer connections. And so that's sort of the best
Speaker 1: case scenario, and that actually the lag can be much longer,
Speaker 1: and the larger the audio file or the text file,
Speaker 1: the computer file, the longer it takes. So sending a
Speaker 1: short video, even in low resolution, could take days, where
Speaker 1: sending a one line text message maybe takes only half
Speaker 1: an hour or so. So they could communicate, but only
Speaker 1: in this clipped way with all of these ellipses essentially
Speaker 1: between communications. So if there's an emergency, say back at home,
Speaker 1: they couldn't just start having a conversation with them. Now,
Speaker 1: in reality, since they were on a stage set, they
Speaker 1: could break the experiment at any time if someone just
Speaker 1: like I don't know, cut off their finger or something,
Speaker 1: but they would try to they would do anything to
Speaker 1: avoid breaking the experiment. So yeah, they were reduced to
Speaker 1: these sort of intermittent text messages essentially that would be
Speaker 1: relayed at unpredictable intervals.
Speaker 2: How did you choose the headline? Feel story?
Speaker 1: I don't choose the headlines. I'm not allow I don't.
Speaker 1: I can consult on them, and I can say this
Speaker 1: one's worse than the other one.
Speaker 2: But the headline the New York Times magazine went with
Speaker 2: was can humans withstand the psychological torture?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's pretty good, I can't headline yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And that's also what it's about, basically, can we can
Speaker 1: people survive this? Because most of what NASA has been
Speaker 1: asking over the course of its space program is can
Speaker 1: we physically get people into space? Can we physically put
Speaker 1: them on another planet. Very little thought has been given
Speaker 1: into can human beings once they're there survive psychologically, emotionally,
Speaker 1: And that's that's what this experiment is, at least ostensibly about,
Speaker 1: and it's definitely what the story is that I wrote
Speaker 1: about when.
Speaker 2: We come back. More from Nathaniel rich on why we're
Speaker 2: so obsessed with going to Mars and how historically attitudes
Speaker 2: towards Mars have always revealed deeper cultural undercurrents. How close
Speaker 2: is NASA to putting humans on Mars. They've been predicting
Speaker 2: for many years that it's just around the corner. They
Speaker 2: keep pushing back the window.
Speaker 1: Even a few years ago, I think by twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: they had predicted that it would be no later than
Speaker 1: the end of the twenty twenties. I think now it's
Speaker 1: they're looking more to the middle of the next decade.
Speaker 1: But they are full speed ahead, and I think they're
Speaker 1: very confident that they will get people to the planet
Speaker 1: in a fairly short amount of time. The technical problems
Speaker 1: that lay before them that we referenced are not seen
Speaker 1: as intimidatingly difficult. They're just math problems to be worked out.
Speaker 1: Is the sense that I got from speaking with one
Speaker 1: of these senior propulsion engineers. So there is, and there
Speaker 1: has been for quite a while within NASA, quite a
Speaker 1: lot of optimism that this is going to happen. It's
Speaker 1: going to happen pretty soon.
Speaker 2: And why why mos Well.
Speaker 1: That's the million dollars, that's the million dollar question. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different rationales. The main ones you
Speaker 1: hear from NASA is it represents scientific progress. It's the
Speaker 1: next step for human exploration of the universe, and certainly
Speaker 1: human progress in this space exploration. There's also the rationale
Speaker 1: that through the kind of innovation that's necessary to put
Speaker 1: people on Mars or to reach any new milestone in
Speaker 1: the space expeditions, that there will be some kind of
Speaker 1: unpredictable benefits, technological benefits that can be applied for all
Speaker 1: of humanity, so that maybe they'll invent new materials or
Speaker 1: new types of devices that can then make our life
Speaker 1: on Earth easier. And there are plenty of examples I
Speaker 1: think of that in the past. And then there's a
Speaker 1: kind of political rationale, which is to say that we
Speaker 1: need to do it before someone else does. There's a
Speaker 1: national pride on the line.
Speaker 2: I mean, is this like in the sixties when JFK
Speaker 2: wanted to put a man on the moon first. Is
Speaker 2: there a parallel to the sixties in that respect?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say not only is there a parallel,
Speaker 1: but I think NASA and its whole frame of thinking.
Speaker 1: If you can speak of something the size of an agency,
Speaker 1: the size of NASA as a personified in some way.
Speaker 1: But I think the whole enterprise is really stuck in
Speaker 1: the sixties, if not the fit nineteen fifties one is created.
Speaker 1: So it's very much it's you know, you see this
Speaker 1: sort of vestigial almost cold war mentality that I think
Speaker 1: informs all almost every aspect of the whole enterprise.
Speaker 2: What does it say to you that in the sixties
Speaker 2: it was the president JFK sort of outlining this national
Speaker 2: mission to put a man on the moon, and now
Speaker 2: in the twenty twenties it's El Musk and to a
Speaker 2: certain extent, Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you can learn all you need to
Speaker 1: know about a culture or a society by studying its
Speaker 1: attitudes about Mars. You know, it's certainly now it's dominated
Speaker 1: by a kind of there are a few different strands.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of private enterprise strand but that is
Speaker 1: often including in the case of Musk, closely alloyed with
Speaker 1: a libertarian fantasy of a lawless world in which people
Speaker 1: can stake their claim a kind of wild West and
Speaker 1: not have regulation and oversight. There are groups of Mars
Speaker 1: enthusiasts out there that are very much explicitly libertarian ideologues
Speaker 1: who hope to start a libertarian society on Mars. So
Speaker 1: that exists if you go back to the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: where at this very different place in our culture, obviously
Speaker 1: in society, a place of tremendous global cooperation relatively that
Speaker 1: gave birth to the entire sort of modern space race,
Speaker 1: even though you have a competition between the Cold War powers.
Speaker 1: But you can even go back further and if you
Speaker 1: look at the late nineteenth century when Chaparelli, a Milanaisy astronomer,
Speaker 1: observed that there were canals on Mars. There was this
Speaker 1: great fascination for decades about are people living on Mars?
Speaker 1: Are Martians building canals? And it was very much an expression.
Speaker 1: You can find very clear a correlation between the kind
Speaker 1: of excitement of the industrial age and there was a
Speaker 1: period where people were competing with Mars to build more
Speaker 1: canals as fast as possible, as also, of course, during
Speaker 1: the same period of the digging of the sus Canal.
Speaker 1: So this was you know, this is the New York Times.
Speaker 1: This is not just some like weird thing. Is this
Speaker 1: is at the time generally accepted that we're in this
Speaker 1: race against the Martians. So it's always been a kind
Speaker 1: of repository Mars for the kind of subconscious of the
Speaker 1: culture that observes it. And I think that's true today,
Speaker 1: and I think as our society changes, probably our view
Speaker 1: of Mars will change in tandem with it.
Speaker 2: You've written that future Mars voyages will have to want
Speaker 2: to travel to Mars more than almost anyone else in
Speaker 2: the world. They'll have to embrace the knowledge that for
Speaker 2: at least five hundred and seventy days, they will be
Speaker 2: the most isolated human beings in the history of the universe.
Speaker 1: Yes, they will have to, because that's what they're signing
Speaker 1: up up for.
Speaker 2: What will that do to them?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: I think a distinction has to be made between the
Speaker 1: kind of person who wants to be an astronaut and
Speaker 1: wants to go on a mission like this, like the
Speaker 1: people I wrote about, like Nathan Jones. But then once
Speaker 1: we start talking about a permanent settlement or colonies, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a very different group of people. So you
Speaker 1: have this sort of kind of zealot astronauts, who are
Speaker 1: you perfectly fit, who are the most stable people you've
Speaker 1: ever met, enormous reserves of self concentration and self reliance
Speaker 1: and all the rest, and then the rest of us, right,
Speaker 1: and for colony to exist, it has to look very different.
Speaker 1: And a major criticism that I encountered in researching the
Speaker 1: piece from close watchers of the NASA program is that
Speaker 1: even if this experiment has some value to predict the
Speaker 1: ability of say, astronauts to survive in this setting, it
Speaker 1: will have no value for the rest of us, who,
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of other considerations would have to
Speaker 1: be made. And so we're certainly not at the stage
Speaker 1: where we're asking can people have families up there? Can
Speaker 1: people give birth? There's some major biological challenges there. What
Speaker 1: happens if someone gets sick, what happens if someone misses home,
Speaker 1: you know, enters a depression, none of that. We're nowhere
Speaker 1: near those kinds of questions yet. But I think that's
Speaker 1: if they continue to hit these benchmarks. That's where this
Speaker 1: is ultimately heading.
Speaker 2: So when you wrote the piece, Nathan and co in
Speaker 2: the mod's habitat, and since oublication, they've of course come back.
Speaker 2: Do you know what the experience was like for Nathan.
Speaker 1: No, they're basically sworn to secrecy. And this was the
Speaker 1: level of secrecy that shrouded just about every aspect of
Speaker 1: this experiment was somewhat astounding. Orse for me, it was
Speaker 1: as it reporting the story, at least talking to the
Speaker 1: NASA people and to some extent the participants themselves, you'd
Speaker 1: think I was investigating I don't know, Abu grab or
Speaker 1: something like. The way that it was talked about extremely confidential. Now,
Speaker 1: their justification was that they want to run the experiment
Speaker 1: multiple times, and they don't want prospective applicants to know
Speaker 1: anything about what they're going to do. They don't want
Speaker 1: to because it would, I guess, diminish the value of
Speaker 1: what they find if people already know, like these are
Speaker 1: the kinds of things they're going to do when we're there,
Speaker 1: or this is what happened to people. It struck me
Speaker 1: as slightly ridiculous because, on the one hand, very similar
Speaker 1: experiments have been conducted many times including by NASA, and
Speaker 1: those results are public.
Speaker 2: So the results. NASA haven't published any results of this.
Speaker 1: Not that I'm aware of, no, and you know they
Speaker 1: release these very anodyne statements.
Speaker 2: It's a success.
Speaker 1: Everyone had a great time.
Speaker 2: And you put the story in the context of the
Speaker 2: history of isolation research. But more specifically, it seems like
Speaker 2: this particular simulation of life on Mars has happened multiple
Speaker 2: times in the past and is also been replicated multiple
Speaker 2: times right now all around the world. Can you kind
Speaker 2: of describe the spread of this type of experiment being run?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it depends on how narrowly you want
Speaker 1: to define the experiment. But NASA has been doing some version,
Speaker 1: conducting some version of this experiment since before NASA was
Speaker 1: even called NASA. I mean, they had some of the
Speaker 1: early first astronauts did isolation experiments. They would put them
Speaker 1: in little pods for long periods of time time, sometimes
Speaker 1: in fairly brutal configurations and sometimes completely in isolation, especially
Speaker 1: back in the fifties when they thought that astronauts would
Speaker 1: have to be propelled in tiny little vessels for months
Speaker 1: at a time into outer space. But there was another
Speaker 1: similar experiment called high Seas, which was the subject of
Speaker 1: a really fascinating book by the writer Kate Green, who
Speaker 1: was one of the original crew members they ran that experiment,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think a dozen times. That was
Speaker 1: a similar idea in a habitat that was built on
Speaker 1: Mona Loa Mountain in Hawaii, and it was four people
Speaker 1: or sometimes six put into this environment for months at
Speaker 1: a time. And Green writes very elegantly and movingly about
Speaker 1: the experience and on the kind of madness of it
Speaker 1: and what it did to her life. The book Once
Speaker 1: upon a Time I Lived on Mars, it's called And
Speaker 1: then there was a crazy experiment called Mars five hundred
Speaker 1: that was inistered by the Russian agency called which has
Speaker 1: a name that I love, called the Institute of Biomedical Problems.
Speaker 1: So of course that's who did this completely barbaric experiment
Speaker 1: where they locked six male crew members together for five
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty days.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: That was in twenty ten and eleven, in a kind
Speaker 1: of fake spacecraft on a fake Mars, and that was
Speaker 1: pretty well studied and people participants lost their hair and
Speaker 1: lost weight. But then there's NASA. They have something like
Speaker 1: a dozen different versions of this going on at all times.
Speaker 1: There are all different configurations, different amounts of time, different
Speaker 1: number of participants.
Speaker 2: So if you lost, you say to NASA, why do
Speaker 2: you need to keep doing that?
Speaker 1: Yes, that was one of my big questions. Why do
Speaker 1: we keep doing this? And don't we know what happened?
Speaker 1: Even before the NASA history, there's this whole other history
Speaker 1: of people doing similar isolation experiments, and their official answer was, yes,
Speaker 1: we've done similar some experiments, but actually there's no substitution
Speaker 1: for this is far closer to the expected reality and
Speaker 1: experimentally scientifically, all of the previous experiments are essentially useless
Speaker 1: and this is the only one that will matter. Now,
Speaker 1: if you believe that, you also have to then wonder well,
Speaker 1: And this is what some of the people that study
Speaker 1: that's pointed out to me. Yes, okay, this experiment, even
Speaker 1: if it's its exact simulation, a perfect simulation of what
Speaker 1: the first Mars expedition is going to be, you're only
Speaker 1: testing a group of four people eve an n of four, right,
Speaker 1: it's experimentally speaking, and so the statistical value of this
Speaker 1: experiment is close to nil. You'd have to run this
Speaker 1: experiment thousands of times for it to be statistically reliable,
Speaker 1: and of course they're not going to do that. So
Speaker 1: even if you grant them this sort of scientific argument
Speaker 1: that this experiment is unlike all the other ones, even
Speaker 1: though they all basically have the same results, it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually have much scientific value unless they would do it
Speaker 1: a million, you know, fifty times or a thousand times.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where the probability charts cut off, but
Speaker 1: as it stands, they're probably going to do it one
Speaker 1: or two more times, at which point they'll be ready
Speaker 1: to hurl people up to Mars.
Speaker 2: But from that point of view, was this about understanding
Speaker 2: if humans can withstand isolation or was this some we
Speaker 2: talked to the beginning about the technical problems NASA has
Speaker 2: to solve or was this Were there any technical problems
Speaker 2: they were looking to solve with this?
Speaker 1: That was probably the That was the point where I
Speaker 1: was most I mean, there's something that's where I sort
Speaker 1: of laughed in the reporting, although it's kind of horrible. So, yes,
Speaker 1: the official line is where we want to test the
Speaker 1: human side of this. We have all these divisions doing
Speaker 1: the science and the technology, and this is the human
Speaker 1: research side, And in fact, there is a human research
Speaker 1: division within NASA that was administering the experiment. However, they
Speaker 1: were partnered with two other divisions, and the division that
Speaker 1: oversaw the whole experiment was actually run by someone named
Speaker 1: Rachel McCauley, who is a propulsion engineer. She's the one
Speaker 1: who decides which rocket will do the job best, and
Speaker 1: in order to make that determination, she needs to nail
Speaker 1: down a bunch of variables. And one of the main
Speaker 1: variables is how much weight needs to be carried by
Speaker 1: the rocket ship. And so what that means is, of
Speaker 1: course the weight of the people, but also how much
Speaker 1: food do they have to take? And so when I
Speaker 1: talked to her, she was like, very blithely kind of
Speaker 1: dismissive of the whole human psychological aspect of the thing,
Speaker 1: and instead she focused on how much food are they
Speaker 1: going to eat? Like, what's the weight? How much waste
Speaker 1: are they going to produce? And once I have those figures,
Speaker 1: I will know exactly what kind of propulsion device to use.
Speaker 1: And so then I went, you a little bit dubious, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I was like, what, no, I mean, I
Speaker 1: believed her because she was running the experiment. She's a
Speaker 1: solid propulsion systems engineer, and so then I went back
Speaker 1: to the sort of human research people and they're like, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's all about human psychology. But in fact the person
Speaker 1: they were reporting to, the person who was running the
Speaker 1: whole thing, said that was not the case. And so
Speaker 1: actually I think if you follow the money, you start
Speaker 1: to wonder, well, is this whole human aspect side of
Speaker 1: it part of the marketing And it's frankly irrelevant to
Speaker 1: what NASA's real concern is, which is, yeah, how many
Speaker 1: pounds of food do we need to put on this thing?
Speaker 2: She's stay with us for more for Nathaniel Reach on
Speaker 2: why dreams of Mars and dreams of AI are inextricably linked,
Speaker 2: and why some techno optimists theorize that humans would evolve
Speaker 2: into AI powers martians. There was a part of your
Speaker 2: story that pretty stuck out to me was that NASA's
Speaker 2: chief research scientist, Dennis Bushel said that as colonizing mass
Speaker 2: becomes more feasible, colonists themselves will evolve into martians.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Did that surprise you?
Speaker 1: Yes, although a little bit. It was surprised me to
Speaker 1: see him write about that so openly. Yes, This chief
Speaker 1: scientist at the Langley Research Center who had been I
Speaker 1: think he recently retired, had been a NASA for sixty years,
Speaker 1: and he published this sort of opus about the institutional
Speaker 1: view of deep space exploration, and he said, what I
Speaker 1: think a lot of scientists have predicted is that if
Speaker 1: people are able to survive on Mars for any extended
Speaker 1: amount of time with oxygen and all the rest, that
Speaker 1: ultimately their bodies will change. That over time because of
Speaker 1: the radiation exposure, because of the reduced gravity, that there
Speaker 1: will be real physiological changes to their bodies. That there's
Speaker 1: no way out of that. So essentially one of the
Speaker 1: kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there
Speaker 1: long enough so that people evolve into Martians and they
Speaker 1: look different and they probably have elongated heads and maybe
Speaker 1: different diets and all the rest.
Speaker 2: Of it evolved means of course natural selection. Survived are
Speaker 2: the fittest on Moss exactly.
Speaker 1: If we're talking about a generational no, it's a generational shift. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, they have to solve things like inconvenient things
Speaker 1: like procreation on Mars and all the rest of that.
Speaker 1: But yes, that's the long term view, is that we
Speaker 1: won't have to solve every problem perfectly because people will
Speaker 1: just start to there'll be natural selection and they'll be
Speaker 1: forced to evolve into these other Martian creatures, and that
Speaker 1: seems to be NASA's view.
Speaker 2: There's another piece you wrote in The New York Times recently,
Speaker 2: which was a review of Ray Causwell's book The Singularity
Speaker 2: Is Nearer. Can you talk about who Ray Causwell is
Speaker 2: that book and how viewing that book syncs up with
Speaker 2: your writing on this experiment.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kurzweil is a kind of god of Ai, who's called
Speaker 1: the Godfather of Ai, who is for many decades has
Speaker 1: been predicting the rise of artificial intelligence and ultimately the singularity.
Speaker 1: But yes, his idea is that there will be nanobots
Speaker 1: powered by artificial intelligence that we will inject into our bodies,
Speaker 1: and that they will swim through our bloodstream into our
Speaker 1: brains and connect our neocortex to the cloud, linking us
Speaker 1: up to the I guess the Internet are really like
Speaker 1: the global repository of all human information civilization, and so
Speaker 1: at that point when we're just kind of wired into intelligence,
Speaker 1: electronic intelligence, that for him is a singularity, and he
Speaker 1: thinks that's coming very soon, basically by the end of
Speaker 1: the decade.
Speaker 2: Well, but there's something to me which is very striking
Speaker 2: in the sense that Ray caswild this year the godfather
Speaker 2: of AI, on the one hand, and on the other hand,
Speaker 2: Dennis Bushnell, the NASA Chief Scientist, are both saying in
Speaker 2: one way or another that within our lifetimes, the technological
Speaker 2: future will mean that we no longer conform to the
Speaker 2: current definition of what it is to be human.
Speaker 1: Yes, although I think you'd be hard pressed to find
Speaker 1: a definition that would admit that would be universally agreed
Speaker 1: to on what it means to be human. True, now,
Speaker 1: we are already and that's part of kurz Wells's argument,
Speaker 1: is that we already outsourced so much of our mind
Speaker 1: and identity to technology that we rely on the Internet
Speaker 1: to remember things for us, our digital record, a lot
Speaker 1: of our powers are only possible through technology, and if
Speaker 1: we were just put in the wilderness, most of us
Speaker 1: wouldn't be able to survive a couple of weeks. But yes,
Speaker 1: both of these visions of they're both kind of these
Speaker 1: technologically optimistic views of the world. There's this kind of
Speaker 1: viscerally disturbing aspect to them, which is that they require
Speaker 1: us to reimagine physically what will look like, you know,
Speaker 1: even putting aside all the sort of mental psychological aspect
Speaker 1: of it, that we're going to be morph into these
Speaker 1: other different kinds of creatures that are going to be
Speaker 1: like physically in some ways unrecognizable. And Kurzwill has this
Speaker 1: whole thing about how soon people be able to design
Speaker 1: their own bodies the way you can design like a
Speaker 1: virtual avatar, and that we can well have people have
Speaker 1: wings and tusks and whatever you want, you know, feathers,
Speaker 1: and that part of it tends not to be spoken
Speaker 1: aloud or advertised as much as the part about, you know,
Speaker 1: improving our intelligence. But I think what was striking to
Speaker 1: me about Kurzweil's book and what I wanted to write
Speaker 1: about is let's not forget the part where he the
Speaker 1: prerequisite for all of these future predictions is that we're
Speaker 1: injecting microscopic robots into our brains and our bloodstream. Let's
Speaker 1: not lose track of that part of it. So that, yes,
Speaker 1: I think you're right to draw a kind of parallel
Speaker 1: with the Mars visions. They tend to collide in the
Speaker 1: realm of artificial intelligence. It's not surprising that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: you know, is obsessed with both Mars and Ai.
Speaker 2: You use the phrase earlier on a conversation about mourning,
Speaker 2: and one of the pieces of Coswill's book that you
Speaker 2: draw out is him talking about basically making an Ali
Speaker 2: version of his father who passed away in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: to be able to talk to him about music. And
Speaker 2: one of the other things I noticed in the piece
Speaker 2: about Mars was the crop garden in the Mars Dune
Speaker 2: Alpha colony, which wouldn't be for eating, but rather for
Speaker 2: the mental health of the participants. You know, it's I
Speaker 2: guess it makes me think of that whole sort of
Speaker 2: cliched thing about the fisherman who becomes a millionaire and
Speaker 2: then returns to where he lived to fish. The craving
Speaker 2: for the kind of things which are the touchstones of
Speaker 2: what we think about as our human experience also is
Speaker 2: present in these future fantasies.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. That's another major point of convergence I think, is
Speaker 1: this that once you peel back this techno optimistic fantasy
Speaker 1: of how things are going to be, you find this
Speaker 1: deep sense of longing for how things once were. Only
Speaker 1: see it in Kurzwell, where after hundreds of pages of
Speaker 1: talking about all the wonders of this new technology, all
Speaker 1: the conveniences, and how we can travel, have beach holidays
Speaker 1: without leaving our houses through virtual reality and all the
Speaker 1: rest of it. His ultimate goal is to reanimate his
Speaker 1: dead father, who was a composer not of some renown
Speaker 1: and a conductor in New York. And he's already gone
Speaker 1: so far as to program an AI version of his
Speaker 1: father that trained on his father's letters and writings and
Speaker 1: personal documents and his music. In the pages of the book,
Speaker 1: there's a transcript of a conversation that Kurswell has with
Speaker 1: his dead father, and that to him is that's his
Speaker 1: great hope, is to bring back his dad. In the
Speaker 1: same way in Mars, I was struck by the mournful
Speaker 1: quality of this whole enterprise, and everyone I asked, every
Speaker 1: sort of expert I interviewed, I asked us, there's something,
Speaker 1: there's something just a little bit upsetting about all of this,
Speaker 1: like what you know, And they all kind of many
Speaker 1: people kind of agreed, but they couldn't put their finger
Speaker 1: on it until I spoke to this one historian of
Speaker 1: isolation experiments, Mattius at Cornell, and he said this thing
Speaker 1: that for me is the heart of the story, and
Speaker 1: to some extent it's the heart of the Kurzwell and
Speaker 1: even aistor, which is the urge to try to recreate
Speaker 1: a perfect world, is always going to be about rehearsing
Speaker 1: what we got wrong here. He told me, we're not
Speaker 1: chasing Mars, We're mourning Earth. That struck a chord with me,
Speaker 1: because I feel like that is the through line here,
Speaker 1: that there's this attempt to chase something that we've lost.
Speaker 1: And you know, for Mattias, he was talking about essentially
Speaker 1: a world ruined by climate change and environmental degradation, and
Speaker 1: that the ultimate fulfillment of the Mars fantasy, at least
Speaker 1: in our age, seems to be to terraform the planet
Speaker 1: and create a kind of idyllic second Earth that won't
Speaker 1: be marred by all the mistakes that we've made here.
Speaker 1: And the Ai fantasy has the same component. It's you know,
Speaker 1: we'll all be young and beautiful and free of sin
Speaker 1: in a way, and that I think that's true, and
Speaker 1: I think that's I think we lose something when we
Speaker 1: just assume that all of these stories are about what
Speaker 1: the way they're advertised. It's like progress. I think it's
Speaker 1: also there's a kind of a morning of something that
Speaker 1: we've lost that we're trying to get back, and we
Speaker 1: don't quite know how to do it, and so we're
Speaker 1: trying to build a fancy news sports car to get
Speaker 1: us there, but we can't.
Speaker 3: The thing that I found the most interesting about this
Speaker 3: piece that you did was this idea that, like, isolation
Speaker 3: is not about being alone. Yes, isolation is about being
Speaker 3: away from community, absolutely, and you can be with the
Speaker 3: community of people in a place that isn't home and
Speaker 3: be very isolated.
Speaker 2: Well, not for nothing, you know. One of the questions
Speaker 2: I didn't ask Nathaniel, but which I kind of wish
Speaker 2: that I had, was this interest in isolation research, Like
Speaker 2: we are constantly bombarded with this idea of the loneliness epidemic,
Speaker 2: and like even though we're more connected, we're more isolated
Speaker 2: than ever. And I was wondering if there was a
Speaker 2: kind of another text s thread that I actually didn't
Speaker 2: pull on that perhaps should have done about you know,
Speaker 2: why this cultural moment is so interested in isolation.
Speaker 3: That's right, And I think that, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think about it all the time when I'm sitting
Speaker 3: at home on the couch on my phone, feeling incredibly
Speaker 3: connected to people and like how I could survive that way,
Speaker 3: but also questioning like do I want to live that
Speaker 3: way right, you know, and sort of how do I
Speaker 3: force myself out of that?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: That really has nothing to do with going to Mars Asterisk.
Speaker 2: But you are somebody who grew up as a lover
Speaker 2: of science fiction. Your father was a science fiction aus. Yes, so,
Speaker 2: I mean some people like to be very dismissive of
Speaker 2: muscum Bezos and their dreams of space.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I think they are two characters who are probably can
Speaker 2: deal with the bit of stick. But I don't think
Speaker 2: it's wrong to dream and even plan about space exploration.
Speaker 3: Well. I think part of it is a colonizer's instinct,
Speaker 3: But I also think this idea of like what is
Speaker 3: outside of our reach is always something that will fascinate
Speaker 3: writers of science fiction, will always fascinate even you know,
Speaker 3: the most practical technologists, because it's something that in a
Speaker 3: certain way is a fantasy. Like even the idea of
Speaker 3: like having to bring a three D printer to Mars
Speaker 3: because we can't lug certain things there. I mean, these
Speaker 3: are such far out concepts, you know.
Speaker 2: I find them exciting. I find them exciting and I think,
Speaker 2: but I also did find it very tragic, this idea
Speaker 2: of like the compulsion to repeat these quite damaging experiments,
Speaker 2: of sending people to simulate life on Mars and hurting
Speaker 2: them in the process in their life on Earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, we just had Trump, on day one
Speaker 3: of his second term, simultaneously make an executive order to
Speaker 3: drop out of the Paris Climate Accords and declare that
Speaker 3: we will launch astronauts into space and I quote plant
Speaker 3: the stars and stripes on the planet Mars. Wow. So
Speaker 3: this twinning of saying goodbye to Earth and embracing Mars
Speaker 3: actually feels very salient and very right. Now.
Speaker 2: Well, that's true. But all of this leaves me the
Speaker 2: question about you. Is there anything that could be done
Speaker 2: that I could offer to induce you to spend three
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty days in assimulated Mars.
Speaker 3: Now, I went to space camp.
Speaker 2: You'll remember, or maybe, but I do remember.
Speaker 3: Now I did go to space camp. I am intellectual
Speaker 3: will explorer. I am not a physical explorer.
Speaker 2: You're not a psycho one either, No, I'm.
Speaker 3: Definitely not a psychoope. And I did. I found the
Speaker 3: story of the woman was at leguinea really really tragic
Speaker 3: And I do think that what's interesting is that in
Speaker 3: moments of you know, innovation or exploration, we do test
Speaker 3: people's psychological limits. Do we have to? I don't know,
Speaker 3: you know, but I think that for me personally, I
Speaker 3: am not compelled by living for that long outside of
Speaker 3: the sort of my normal life, No are you?
Speaker 2: No, No, I'm not. But that sense that we talked
Speaker 2: about of these experiments in some ways being a kind
Speaker 2: of psychological mourning for what we're losing. You did make
Speaker 2: me think about environmental degradation. And you know, there are
Speaker 2: these I've seen these kind of techno fantasy illustrations of
Speaker 2: like what life on Mars might look like, and they're
Speaker 2: basically these biospheres into which you have crammed, like the
Speaker 2: Swiss Alps, the Grand Canyon, the Mediterranean Sea, like beautiful animal.
Speaker 3: I also just think we're still human beings right well
Speaker 3: now for now, But you know, we project all of
Speaker 3: our fantasies still in the world of the creature comforts
Speaker 3: that we want. Do I want to ski on Mars?
Speaker 3: I guess right, because I like skiing here.
Speaker 2: You know, it makes you remember just how wonderful, you know,
Speaker 2: this earth of ours is. And what I loved about
Speaker 2: this interview and took away from it is when you
Speaker 2: play out the fantasy and when you actually ask, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the chief research scientists at NASA, what this
Speaker 2: looks like in the future. It's not just going to Mars.
Speaker 2: It's evolving into a new species with different shape of head,
Speaker 2: with a different reaction to radiation. And what that says
Speaker 2: to me is, this is not just you know, going
Speaker 2: on a fun trip. This is essentially saying that there's
Speaker 2: going to be a fundamental categorical shift in US as
Speaker 2: a species in order to colonize Mars. And it's just
Speaker 2: a very weird and I find disturbing thought.
Speaker 3: Again, not something I would do.
Speaker 2: That's a good place to leave it. That's it for
Speaker 2: Tech Stuff Today. Today's episode was produced by Sina Ozaki,
Speaker 2: Eliza Dennis, Victoria Dominguez, and Lizzie Jacobs. It was executive
Speaker 2: produced by me Oswaaloshin, Kara Price, and Kate Osborne for
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