Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: show that looks at the future and says, the sun
Speaker 1: is always shining and the air smells like warm rubier
Speaker 1: and the towels are also fluffy. I'm Jonathan Strickland and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And we don't have Lauren in the
Speaker 1: studio today. She's actually taking the day off, but she'll
Speaker 1: be back for future episodes, so don't worry about that now, Joe,
Speaker 1: I understand that you wanted to talk about a couple
Speaker 1: of movies. Um, something about running quietly or silent running.
Speaker 1: So that's the way I know. That's the movie about
Speaker 1: the Jamaican Bob sled team, right yeah, yeah, Um, a
Speaker 1: really jaunty song. It was just lots of fun. They
Speaker 1: had a great Jamaican version of Talking Heads Wild Wildlife.
Speaker 1: It's great. Oh yeah, uh, no, way that that was
Speaker 1: a great movie. A cool running you're thinking of, but um,
Speaker 1: silent running. It was a movie from the seventies. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: the science fiction environmental horror kind of yeah yeah. Bruce
Speaker 1: dern Um and uh one of the things that's featured
Speaker 1: in this movie is it's got a bunch of spaceships
Speaker 1: that are out in orbit around the planets Saturn, and
Speaker 1: they've got forests in them. In fact, they're lists in space.
Speaker 1: They're the only place that has forests at that time, because,
Speaker 1: as I recall, part of the plot of that movie
Speaker 1: is that all the plant life on Earth has died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think part of the plot is that
Speaker 1: they're they're going to use these forests that are being
Speaker 1: preserved on spaceships to sort of reforest the Earth later. Um,
Speaker 1: then later on there's there's a big conflict, but that's
Speaker 1: just part of the premise. And so that's a really
Speaker 1: interesting concept that you could have a forest that's not
Speaker 1: on the Earth. I mean, why not? Yeah, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the idea, what is a forest need? Well, there's quite
Speaker 1: a few things. Obviously, you need energy. You have to
Speaker 1: have some sort of energy coming into the system to
Speaker 1: provide the energy for the plants to grow. You would
Speaker 1: need some form of nutrients for the plants you consume,
Speaker 1: like carbon dioxide and water basically, yeah, probably some other
Speaker 1: probably some kind of soil nutrients, right, some source soil nutrients.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you're going hydroponic, you have to
Speaker 1: have something, right, it's not uh, you know, the water
Speaker 1: and sunlight or facsimile of sunlight wouldn't be quite enough.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you'd have to provide a lot of those
Speaker 1: same sort of things that you would find here on Earth.
Speaker 1: There's no reason, you know, automatically, why you can't have
Speaker 1: a forest somewhere else, assuming that you have access to
Speaker 1: these basic resources. So how would we make a forest
Speaker 1: in space to to have one like this movie? Well,
Speaker 1: I'd say the answer to that movie could be another
Speaker 1: great movie, a Polyshore classic known as Biodome. By great movie,
Speaker 1: you mean one of the movies that has one of
Speaker 1: the lowest ratings from critics ever like it often in
Speaker 1: there's critics worst films ever made, lest you see it like,
Speaker 1: often paired with with the phrase literally the worst movie
Speaker 1: of all time, right right, which is it's up against
Speaker 1: some stiff competition. But yeah, I have I have not
Speaker 1: seen this film. Well I actually haven't either, but I'm
Speaker 1: aware of the concept. Yeah, I've I've certainly heard the
Speaker 1: pop culture references to it, and I read the synopsis
Speaker 1: and that was enough for me. Yeah. So, but the
Speaker 1: idea biodome, so here The story is not about space.
Speaker 1: It's about constructing an artificial structure of some sort here
Speaker 1: on Earth to house various types of environments or biomas.
Speaker 1: The idea that we would have under one sealed roof
Speaker 1: where there's no exchange of um of anything other than
Speaker 1: energy from the interior to the excellent exchange of matter. Yeah. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: when I say matter, then I have to also say
Speaker 1: that matter in all its forms, right, not just solid matter,
Speaker 1: but gases as well, so or and even liquids. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to get water from outside. The idea is
Speaker 1: that everything is supposed to be completely self contained and
Speaker 1: be sort of a miniature version of what the Earth is,
Speaker 1: because if you look at the Earth, it has what
Speaker 1: we call closure from at least one aspect, which is
Speaker 1: that matter aspect. Yeah, the material aspect. So the Earth
Speaker 1: has energy going in and energy coming out. It's got
Speaker 1: sunlight coming in um and and that's basically the source
Speaker 1: of all the life on Earth is that energy. Maybe
Speaker 1: you could make an exception for like hydrothermal like bacteria
Speaker 1: that live at the bottom of the ocean, maybe UM.
Speaker 1: But but by and large, pretty much all life on
Speaker 1: Earth comes from the sun. Um. And then you've got
Speaker 1: energy going out also, which is just radiant heat basically,
Speaker 1: and maybe you could say like the light that gets
Speaker 1: reflected back off of the Earth. So the idea here
Speaker 1: being that that energy can come in and out of
Speaker 1: the system. But by and large, matter is pretty much
Speaker 1: what we have here and it's what we're gonna have
Speaker 1: in the future. It's not going anywhere except I mean,
Speaker 1: I suppose you could counting meteors and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: but that that's an extremely tiny Yeah, it's a minuscule
Speaker 1: It's so so tiny that we couldn't even really express
Speaker 1: it in a meaningful percentage. Same thing for the matter
Speaker 1: that we shoot off into space. If we, for example,
Speaker 1: the fact that we landed a lunar lander on the
Speaker 1: surface of the Moon and left a lunar rover on there,
Speaker 1: or the Mars rovers like we're cross pollinating, that there's
Speaker 1: such that. Yeah, that represents such an incredibly tiny amount
Speaker 1: of mass compared to the rest of Earth that you
Speaker 1: can safely say that matter is a closed system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is why some people might think about the
Speaker 1: Earth as a spaceship, right that it's it's something that's
Speaker 1: traveling through space and it's it's materially contained. Well, how
Speaker 1: small do you think we could make a materially contained system? So,
Speaker 1: in other words, we would have to create some form
Speaker 1: of system that would have regenerative life support on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for life. I left that part out. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you could just have like an asteroid hurdling through space.
Speaker 1: But if we wanted to live somewhere, how small could
Speaker 1: that materially contain system be. Could it be smaller than
Speaker 1: a planet? Could it be small enough to say, be
Speaker 1: something that we could launch? So, in other words, could
Speaker 1: we have a ship kind of like the ones that
Speaker 1: are in silent running, but ones that derive most of
Speaker 1: their life support from the forests that are on board
Speaker 1: that ship. As opposed to being a preservation method, this
Speaker 1: would actually be a life support system, right, because you
Speaker 1: could think about the ecosystems that we have here on
Speaker 1: Earth as a sort of life support system for this
Speaker 1: spaceship that we live on the planet. Um. We get
Speaker 1: all the material energy we need from it, so the
Speaker 1: chemical energy we get from food, um, and it recycles
Speaker 1: our waste in a way that doesn't just like accumulate
Speaker 1: and kill us, right right, which I mean obviously these
Speaker 1: are these are intrinsic for life to work. Right. If
Speaker 1: you didn't have this kind of um symbiotic relationship between
Speaker 1: multiple organisms and ecosystems, then life would not be possible
Speaker 1: for any prolonged time. It would eventually it would end
Speaker 1: up creating toxins that would kill itself unless it's somehow
Speaker 1: adapted to be resistant to those toxins. So it's it's
Speaker 1: by studying the Earth where we can learn more about
Speaker 1: how these different systems work with each other that allow
Speaker 1: us to kind of hypothesize about regenerative life support systems,
Speaker 1: which is going to be absolutely necessary if we ever
Speaker 1: want to explore space on any meaningful level beyond just
Speaker 1: the immediate surroundings. Right. Well, I mean supplies run out,
Speaker 1: don't they? Yeah, I mean we're if we're going to
Speaker 1: load up a spaceship and travel to a dis don't star. Um.
Speaker 1: How much oxygen can you pack to breathe? How much
Speaker 1: food can you to take with you? Um? Eventually, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about long term exploration, you're going to have
Speaker 1: to find a way to make the molecules that you
Speaker 1: take with you work more than once. Right, And this
Speaker 1: is absolutely important because of course the further away you go,
Speaker 1: the more you have to take with you. The more
Speaker 1: you take with you, the heavier your ship is. The
Speaker 1: heavier your ship is, the more fuel you make or
Speaker 1: you need so that you can get to where you're going,
Speaker 1: more fuel you need to get where you're going, the
Speaker 1: heavier your ship is. It becomes this really cyclical problem.
Speaker 1: So it's absolutely imperative to find a solution to it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're imagining this spaceship that has um bio regenerative
Speaker 1: compact capacity. It has an environment that takes care of
Speaker 1: its own matter, that feeds itself and recycles its own waste.
Speaker 1: Has anybody ever actually done an experiment to see if
Speaker 1: we can build something like this, and obviously it would
Speaker 1: have to be sort of in a in a sealed,
Speaker 1: closed experimental chamber to simulate what it would be like
Speaker 1: to be in a spaceship. The answer to that question
Speaker 1: is yes, several people have attempted to do this. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the fact I already knew that spoiler, well
Speaker 1: that's okay, I actually knew that Silent Running wasn't about
Speaker 1: the Jamaican Bob's led team, So uh, peak behind the curtain. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the the there are lots of people who
Speaker 1: have tried this. In fact, the early stages were well
Speaker 1: before we got to a point where we were going
Speaker 1: to seal someone into a room and say have fun breathing. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was because because we had to prove certain things
Speaker 1: were actually possible, For example, the direct relationship between breathing
Speaker 1: out carbon dioxide and having plants absorbed that and release oxygen.
Speaker 1: No one was really sure if we could create an
Speaker 1: artificial environment where that would become a viable possibility. Because
Speaker 1: we knew that that was the actual process us of
Speaker 1: respiration and um, the relationship between plant life and animal life,
Speaker 1: but we weren't sure that we could leverage that, and
Speaker 1: so there were a lot of experiments early on before
Speaker 1: we got to even this sort of enclosed space that
Speaker 1: were necessary, but that led to more extreme experiments. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first I've heard of, the first person I've heard
Speaker 1: of to propose this idea is an old friend of ours,
Speaker 1: Konstantine Silkovski. Remember that name, sky guy behind the space elevator,
Speaker 1: right right. Um, so he was a he was a Russians. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was absolutely a genius idea box. Um, he was
Speaker 1: a Russian. Da Vinci and in in nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: he had this paper the Exploration of Cosmic Space by
Speaker 1: Means of Reaction Devices, So that that's sort of proposed
Speaker 1: that you could put humans and plants in a in
Speaker 1: a symbiotic relationship to sustain space exploration. And the Soviets,
Speaker 1: because at the time that we're talking about where the
Speaker 1: space race comes into play, it was the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: The Soviets were very much interested in exploring this in
Speaker 1: a very real way, not just they did they build
Speaker 1: some kind of crazy bunker, So of course they did.
Speaker 1: They built three of them in fact, or really they
Speaker 1: built one, and then they kept on expanding the project.
Speaker 1: The original one was really to explore a bioregenerative life
Speaker 1: support system specifically for cosmonauts, which probably would come into
Speaker 1: play for something like a lunar colony or Martian colony
Speaker 1: down the line, be really useful for some place like that.
Speaker 1: Uh and UH. It was originally a twelve cubic meter
Speaker 1: space that could hold one person, hold and support one
Speaker 1: person and uh. At that time it was a sealed chamber,
Speaker 1: and they had a second chamber that was connected to
Speaker 1: it via air ducts that contained a special kind of
Speaker 1: algae in it. And that algae would end up generating
Speaker 1: the oxygen necessary for the person inside to breathe. They
Speaker 1: called this a system that achieved twenty percent closure, meaning
Speaker 1: that of the needs of that human being were met
Speaker 1: by the actual environment itself. However, that's small potatoes, right
Speaker 1: that you still your needs. Yeah, so they still needed
Speaker 1: to have food and water brought into the person because
Speaker 1: they're just there was no way of recycling the water
Speaker 1: necessarily at that point or there, and the algae, while useful,
Speaker 1: was not tasty. I was going to say, I'd imagine
Speaker 1: that while I'm sure you can sustain human life eating
Speaker 1: only algae, that's got to take a psychological toll. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how. When you say sustain, I think
Speaker 1: maybe you'd stay alive, but you wouldn't want to keep
Speaker 1: being alive, Like, I don't know that. I don't know
Speaker 1: that health wise it would be a very wise uh
Speaker 1: choice over a long term. But at any rate, they
Speaker 1: were able to boot set up to between eight and
Speaker 1: eight closure, and they did that through creating water recycling systems. Now,
Speaker 1: water recycling systems are incredibly important in space exploration today.
Speaker 1: In fact, if you read about the water recycling systems
Speaker 1: aboard the International Space Station. They are phenomenal. They're capturing
Speaker 1: water in just about every way you can imagine and
Speaker 1: then recycling it. So that would become something that continues
Speaker 1: to be important, and we'll probably chat a little more
Speaker 1: about that later. And now, these early stages of the
Speaker 1: Soviet bios project, that's what it was called. They were
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, right, and so a few years
Speaker 1: after the first experiment they decided to expand it a
Speaker 1: little bit. They ended up creating a slightly more sophisticated
Speaker 1: bios UH system. They added the second chamber, which they
Speaker 1: called the phytotron, and this was allowing the the person
Speaker 1: inside the main chamber to grow higher levels of plants,
Speaker 1: mainly wheat and a few other vegetables were possible, and
Speaker 1: the idea was that this way they could get more
Speaker 1: of their food from that closed system, as well as
Speaker 1: the oxygen that they needed to breathe. And because they're
Speaker 1: recycling more of their water, they could didn't need to
Speaker 1: replenish water as frequently, So that ended up being a
Speaker 1: pretty big advance in the bios approach. But then they
Speaker 1: decided to go all out with BIOS three Last three
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. Right yep, nineteen seventy two cost one
Speaker 1: million of roubles, which at that time was about one
Speaker 1: million US dollars. Yeah, so, um, it was underground, undergrown bunker,
Speaker 1: so already pretty exciting. Uh well, but maybe bunker is
Speaker 1: misleading because you don't usually think of a bunker as
Speaker 1: being um like sealed stainless steelmatically steal um. So what
Speaker 1: they're trying to do here is what we were just
Speaker 1: talking about, is to seal off all exchange of gases.
Speaker 1: Now you can, it's hard to do this perfectly. In fact,
Speaker 1: we we still can't really do it perfectly, but they
Speaker 1: were trying to do the best they could to make
Speaker 1: sure air wasn't getting in or out. They also wanted
Speaker 1: to prevent any sort of pathogens from passing through and
Speaker 1: either making the the well the cosmonaut equivalence, because this
Speaker 1: really was for the cosmonaut program, although the I don't
Speaker 1: think that's necessarily what they called the people who were
Speaker 1: inside this buyos. But anyway, they wanted to limit any
Speaker 1: pathogen exchange. So they would also hold these experiments chiefly
Speaker 1: in the winter, which cut down a lot of it,
Speaker 1: and also after the first experiment, they decided to increase
Speaker 1: the air pressure slightly on the inside of this. Uh
Speaker 1: this this hermetically sealed metal box. You can think of it.
Speaker 1: It's a huge box, I mean comparatively speaking, But they
Speaker 1: tried to increase the air pressure so that that would
Speaker 1: also keep pathogens out by you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: pressing outwards. Yeah, positive, exactly exactly. So that was really
Speaker 1: important because they didn't want that to end up compromising
Speaker 1: the experiment. It was actually fourteen by nine by two
Speaker 1: and a half meters in size, which is about three
Speaker 1: fifteen cubic meters of space, and had four compartments. Each
Speaker 1: compartment had a doorway that could lead out to the
Speaker 1: outside world that could be opened within about twenty seconds
Speaker 1: in case of emergency. Although none of those doors, to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, where ever needed. No one ever needed to
Speaker 1: escape the BIOS three, But I mean it was important
Speaker 1: that they had that obviously, in case something did go
Speaker 1: castrophically wrong. Um. Each of the doors also had a
Speaker 1: seal on it screening of biodome. Uh. Now, the BIOS
Speaker 1: three program was fortunately over by the time Biodome came out. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they each of the doors also had rubber
Speaker 1: gaskets it would seal against the um the doorway. That way,
Speaker 1: you could actually seal off one compartment from the other
Speaker 1: three compartments, and originally um one compartment was used for
Speaker 1: just the crew, that's the crew's work and living quarters. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other three compartments were meant for well, two of
Speaker 1: them were originally were phytotron's where they could grow food
Speaker 1: and the and the third one was for algae. Now
Speaker 1: it's important noting something that's a little bit odd about
Speaker 1: this environment because using fightertron's they're using artificial light to
Speaker 1: sustain the plants they're growing, which makes perfect sense because
Speaker 1: if you're going out in space, then you're pretty much
Speaker 1: you're going to have to create artificial light. You're just
Speaker 1: especially if you're traveling further out of the Solar System
Speaker 1: and you're not able to angle your ships that you
Speaker 1: can harness the Sun's energy for your to to you know,
Speaker 1: feed your plants, to give your plants the energy they
Speaker 1: need to grow. So it for the purposes of a
Speaker 1: program that could eventually, at least in theory, be poored
Speaker 1: it over to space exploration, it made perfect sense that
Speaker 1: they had to use artificial lighting. That is something else
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about a little bit later to when
Speaker 1: we talk about the pros and cons of this approach,
Speaker 1: or at least I'll be able to chat about a
Speaker 1: little bit. But the other interesting thing I thought was
Speaker 1: that after the first experiment, they decided that the third
Speaker 1: chamber where they had put the algae uh was really needed.
Speaker 1: It needed to be converted over to higher plants. That
Speaker 1: in fact, three chambers with higher plants would provide enough
Speaker 1: oxygen for the entire crew, but more importantly, would also
Speaker 1: provide enough food because they found out that just with
Speaker 1: two compartments and the algae there, there wasn't enough food
Speaker 1: being produced, enough edible material being produced for the crew
Speaker 1: to just you know, sustain themselves on that. And there
Speaker 1: were still some there's still some issues with the food
Speaker 1: as I as I understand Joe, well, I mean, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of issues with food when you're talking
Speaker 1: about trying to create a system that's closed to outside
Speaker 1: material interference. For one thing, Um, we don't always think
Speaker 1: about this, but when you're growing food, not all all
Speaker 1: of the material that grows is edible. I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you so let's say you're trying to grow wheat,
Speaker 1: I mean a huge part of the wheat plant is
Speaker 1: not the grain that's delicious, it's this stalk junk. But
Speaker 1: what are you going to do with that? Um? So
Speaker 1: that that presents a problem. UM. So you could try
Speaker 1: to say, like breed wheat that has a shorter stalk
Speaker 1: or something like that, but you're still going to be
Speaker 1: left with. Um these problems of materials that are hard
Speaker 1: to deal with in this environment because you can't eat them,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to just throw them away, you know,
Speaker 1: because they're part of your material wealth. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: so that's one problem. Another problem, not really a problem,
Speaker 1: but in this particular experiment, you know, they didn't achieve
Speaker 1: perfect closure from the outside because they had to import,
Speaker 1: as I'm to understand, some canned meat because they were
Speaker 1: participants would not go without their their canned meat, good
Speaker 1: old cane meat. Uh. They had sixty they had sixty
Speaker 1: three square meters where that for a growing space. That
Speaker 1: that's how much space there was aside for growing, which
Speaker 1: is about si square feet. And they found that that
Speaker 1: was enough to supply them with all the oxygen they
Speaker 1: would need for the three crew members. There there was
Speaker 1: only enough room for three people. UM. And they did
Speaker 1: this experiment three times, and so it's not like this
Speaker 1: was an enormous space. But then typically your spacecraft tend
Speaker 1: to have fairly small cruise as well, so again it's
Speaker 1: not like it's that um that far off from the
Speaker 1: way the space exploration race went, So it made sense
Speaker 1: from that perspective. Now, granted, this does mean that you
Speaker 1: would have to dedicate a certain amount of space in
Speaker 1: your spacecraft for growing things, and that alone is you know,
Speaker 1: that's a huge consideration obviously, right, I mean spaces is
Speaker 1: the space within a spacecraft is at a premium space.
Speaker 1: Outside of a spacecraft not so much. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of it, but inside of spacecraft not some there's there's
Speaker 1: quite a little bit of it. Yes, thank you Joe
Speaker 1: for backing me up on that line. It is Grinn
Speaker 1: and Ammy. So I was just thinking about space and
Speaker 1: how it's inherently funny. It's well's always funny when you're
Speaker 1: talking about because we are using the same word for
Speaker 1: to describe the the amount of area around you within
Speaker 1: a spacecraft as well as the region that's outside the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: So there it gets to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: confusion of terms. But anyway, what was interesting at least
Speaker 1: according to a paper that we both read. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: want to give a shout out to this. It's an
Speaker 1: older paper. We're using it for historical information. So it
Speaker 1: was from the journal Bioscience. It's called BIOS three Siberian
Speaker 1: Experiments and Bioregenerative Life Support, and that's by Salisbury, Gittlson,
Speaker 1: and Lissowski. Uh and so that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: our history on this is coming from. Yeah, the according
Speaker 1: to that paper, the outcome was pretty interesting. The crew
Speaker 1: reportedly suffered no ill effects, at least not physically, due
Speaker 1: to being put up in this little chamber for extended periods.
Speaker 1: You know, they held up, They held up all right,
Speaker 1: and they did see that the micro flora on the skin,
Speaker 1: mucous membranes, and the intestines of the people who were
Speaker 1: inside the cruise that were inside these the bios experiments
Speaker 1: they changed significantly. However, there were no pathological effects, meaning
Speaker 1: that no one got sick from it. However, it's just
Speaker 1: one of the things that you look at the skin,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, things have definitely changed. One of the
Speaker 1: qualifiers there is yet um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: we don't really know is what the long term effects
Speaker 1: of having changes to the the flora, you know, flora
Speaker 1: that inhabit our bodies, so like microflora on the skin,
Speaker 1: but also say, like gut flora. What happens when, um,
Speaker 1: a long term environmental change, say a trip on a
Speaker 1: spacecraft fundamentally changes your gut flora. Is that going to
Speaker 1: cause you illness or or damage in the long run
Speaker 1: in digestion? Right, Because these these guys and women there
Speaker 1: were there was at least one woman in this experiment
Speaker 1: and one of the three experiments. UM, they were in
Speaker 1: the this isolation for like months at a time, but
Speaker 1: a true space exploration mission could last last several months,
Speaker 1: up to several years, up to even longer, depending on
Speaker 1: how far out we're talking and how fast we're going.
Speaker 1: So it's that's definitely something that we still don't know
Speaker 1: the answers too, because you know, we've only got limited
Speaker 1: amount of data. The other interesting outcome that I saw
Speaker 1: in the experiment was that they said the quality of
Speaker 1: the air, food, and water remained unchanged during the entire experiment,
Speaker 1: So you didn't have any deterioration of the quality of
Speaker 1: water or food or air. Uh, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: it remains sealed for months at a time. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. But that's not the only experiment we've
Speaker 1: ever scene with trying to seal people away and recreate
Speaker 1: in ecological environments on Earth, right. No. In fact, there
Speaker 1: was an extremely high profile experiment um that was known
Speaker 1: as the biosphere two. Hold on, Hold on, Joe, what
Speaker 1: happened to biosphere one? Uh that's a little joke. Uh well,
Speaker 1: actually it's not a joke. It's deadly serious. Biosphere one
Speaker 1: is this old planet Earth because the concept of the biosphere,
Speaker 1: we haven't always had this, you know, it's a more
Speaker 1: recent idea actually that oh yeah, everything that we have
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's a closed, contained system that self sustaining
Speaker 1: based on feedback loops of energy and material use. So
Speaker 1: Earth is our biosphere one. Can we reproduce an Earth
Speaker 1: that's sealed materially to the outside environment. They sort of
Speaker 1: tried to do that with with the bios experiments in Russia,
Speaker 1: but as we said, they had like um energy coming
Speaker 1: in you know, uh, they had the artificial lighting, and
Speaker 1: they had they had potted meat well and then then
Speaker 1: you know, the intent on that was to create this
Speaker 1: regenerative life support system, but not to mimic actual environments
Speaker 1: you would discover on Earth. Right. So the one The
Speaker 1: Biosphere Too, was a project that was based in Oracle, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and on the desert. If you see it, it's gigantoid.
Speaker 1: It's um. It's like a couple of football fields, big um.
Speaker 1: And it encompassed I think it was seven different Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it had had savannah, UM, it had desert. It
Speaker 1: was actually it was like a fog desert, which is
Speaker 1: like the Atacama Desert in South America. So that's a
Speaker 1: desert with that's not necessarily a hot desert, but like
Speaker 1: it's it's defined it's defined by its level of dryness
Speaker 1: really the fact that there's not you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's precipitation that defines a desert, not the temperature. Um.
Speaker 1: So there was the fog desert um. And then had
Speaker 1: an ocean with a coral reef. It had fresh water
Speaker 1: and saltwater marshes um. And then it had just like
Speaker 1: intensive agriculture sections. And one thing that was interesting was
Speaker 1: that these little micro farms and there apparently were very productive. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then it had tropical rainforest. And then of course
Speaker 1: they just said like the human habitats the people live,
Speaker 1: and there were eight people well, so there were a
Speaker 1: couple of experiments. Um. So the project in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways has been regarded as a failure, and one
Speaker 1: of the reasons is that it cost two hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars and there were a lot of controversies once the
Speaker 1: project was underway. What was the actual purpose of this project,
Speaker 1: because I mean, obviously the bias one was about creating
Speaker 1: a life suppose, so this was not as narrowly focused
Speaker 1: on space exploration as the Russian bios experiments, where a
Speaker 1: lot of this was about getting a better understanding of
Speaker 1: the ecosystems on Earth. And so whereas the BIOS system
Speaker 1: was very stripped down. It was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: what's the bare minimum we can put in here and
Speaker 1: keep people healthy. You know, we can grow like these
Speaker 1: eight plants or whatever, um and and and we can
Speaker 1: survive on that. Here they were trying to create sort
Speaker 1: of rich closed systems. So it was still open to energy,
Speaker 1: closed to matter, but they brought in all kinds of plants,
Speaker 1: all different kinds of animals, species in total um and
Speaker 1: so obviously there that's not as practical in the near
Speaker 1: term in terms of space exploration. Maybe maybe in the
Speaker 1: far future you could have a really rich, you know,
Speaker 1: forest and all in deserts and stuff on a spaceship,
Speaker 1: but that's not very practical in the near term. Sure,
Speaker 1: I like the idea of a science fiction series where
Speaker 1: there are seven ships carrying the various ecosystems and the
Speaker 1: story follows the poor jerks who drew the desert chip
Speaker 1: or who drew the Antarctic a ship which would be desert.
Speaker 1: That's that's true. Yeah, that would be one of the
Speaker 1: desert ones. Okay, Yeah, so I mean these guys like
Speaker 1: the drew the bottom of the ocean hip. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: just just constantly wearing scuba gear. But but anyway, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: getting back to the biosphere, to actual projects. You said
Speaker 1: that a lot of people viewed it as a failure.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that. Yeah, So there were
Speaker 1: a couple of experiments. The first experiment went from until
Speaker 1: nine and this was in a lot of ways a
Speaker 1: really impressive undertaking because their goal was to seal eight
Speaker 1: human beings into the biosphere too for this long period
Speaker 1: of time and and see if they could sustain life
Speaker 1: and keep these ecosystems healthy and learn what we could
Speaker 1: from them. So they were farming, they were you know,
Speaker 1: studying what was happening in the ecosystems in terms of
Speaker 1: the chemistry, the atmosphere and all this stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That one of the things is that apparently during this
Speaker 1: first experiment, the CEO two levels would just go up
Speaker 1: and down wildly, and they could just watch, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the feedback on what was happening. So I'm sure that
Speaker 1: was a little bit scary. Sure, yeah, I mean carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide levels go up too high, of course that becomes toxic. UM.
Speaker 1: And of course they didn't have it as bad as
Speaker 1: you might if you were in a spaceship like this.
Speaker 1: I think they can leave exactly if the worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: they could open up the door. And part of the
Speaker 1: controversy about what was going on is that UM apparently, uh,
Speaker 1: there was some suspicion that uh, at least one member
Speaker 1: had been like let out of the experiment and then
Speaker 1: let back in for medical reasons, UM, and and you
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to do that. Another an issue was that
Speaker 1: apparently there were factional disputes between the people who were
Speaker 1: living in the biosphere, that there there were some political issues.
Speaker 1: Lord of the flies. No no, no, no, there were
Speaker 1: no murders, but apparently not everyone got along, and they
Speaker 1: had disagreements over the management and and the way research
Speaker 1: was done within the facility, and these became very pronounced,
Speaker 1: and that there were people who were like not on
Speaker 1: speaking terms. It's odd you would think that they the
Speaker 1: the methodology would have been agreed upon before you had
Speaker 1: actually set foot inside the biosphere. Well, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a long experiment as part of the problem. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that's interesting is that research is coming
Speaker 1: back now and well we can actually look at the
Speaker 1: way these people were behaving within the biosphere bostphere two uh,
Speaker 1: to study what might happen to astronauts on a long mission,
Speaker 1: because they're going to be in the same circumstances. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's probably easy to get along something with somebody
Speaker 1: for a month or something because well, you know, you're
Speaker 1: a professional and you you know, but after a certain
Speaker 1: period of time, you know, just feelings creep in. Well,
Speaker 1: especially like when you talk about the astronauts and the
Speaker 1: space exploration missions. Even going on a prolonged stay aboard
Speaker 1: the International Space Station, everyone has very specific duties and
Speaker 1: they've undergone years of training so that they are able
Speaker 1: to carry those duties out under what most of us,
Speaker 1: I think would consider to be really harsh circumstances. And
Speaker 1: I imagine that sort of discipline helps a lot because
Speaker 1: you can focus on that sort of thing. If we're
Speaker 1: talking about eventually getting to a point where we're looking
Speaker 1: at colonizing other planets, then we we've moved beyond the
Speaker 1: people who are aboard the spacecraft have undergone years of
Speaker 1: training and have very specific duties to any Porsche club
Speaker 1: who gets put aboard this ship, and eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't have that discipline, then I would imagine
Speaker 1: that also complicates things. Yeah, another problem with the first
Speaker 1: mission is just lots of the animals died, you know,
Speaker 1: like pollinating insight, Like the bees died. Uh. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a huge problem. That's a huge problem. They had some
Speaker 1: stowaways too. They had like an invasive ant species that
Speaker 1: I think wasn't supposed to be in there, but they
Speaker 1: ended up sort of taking over that insect niche and so,
Speaker 1: but all of these things are interesting because we're learning
Speaker 1: to what to watch out for if we were to
Speaker 1: actually launch something like this in the future, right, and
Speaker 1: and clearly the the biosphere too was not designed ever
Speaker 1: to be a kind of space uh colony, and not
Speaker 1: designed to be launched in the space right or or
Speaker 1: even erected, say on a on a place like the
Speaker 1: Moon or on Mars, because it wasn't designed to withstand
Speaker 1: that kind of harsh environment. No, though a lot of
Speaker 1: things about its design are super smart. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the things is, so, like you had heating and cooling
Speaker 1: throughout the day because of the sunlight, the variable sunlight,
Speaker 1: and that would cause expansion of the gases inside. So
Speaker 1: what do you do about that in the bubble right?
Speaker 1: So I they had some kind of really complex system
Speaker 1: of of like tanks, Yeah, tanks that would absorb the
Speaker 1: expanding gas, and so you could vent it. You could
Speaker 1: vent it into the tanks so that you maintain the
Speaker 1: same pressure inside the dome, and then when it starts
Speaker 1: to cool down, you could start to pull gas back
Speaker 1: in from that. You haven't exchanged gases, it hasn't gone
Speaker 1: to the external atmosphere, but you're able to maintain a
Speaker 1: level pressure within the dome itself. Yeah. Um. Another problem
Speaker 1: with the first mission is that there was a little
Speaker 1: bit of an oxygen. Oh. Yeah, they turned out that
Speaker 1: the oxygen levels were decreasing. Yeah, they had unexpected decreases
Speaker 1: in oxygen concentration. If you're if you're bioexchangers, your plants
Speaker 1: and your animals are just not balanced right, and you're
Speaker 1: producing too much carbon dioxide, you should see those numbers
Speaker 1: going up as your oxygen comes down. But they weren't
Speaker 1: really seeing that. So it turned out what the problem
Speaker 1: was was they had like concrete structural features inside the
Speaker 1: building that we're just sequestering gases, and so that was
Speaker 1: causing major problems for the atmospheric composition inside the dome
Speaker 1: and uh, and there were there were stories about they
Speaker 1: you know, they couldn't concentrate having well. And so the
Speaker 1: thing is that sleeping trouble. You you would think if
Speaker 1: you see oxygen levels going down and carbon dioxide levels
Speaker 1: are not also going up. He was the first thing
Speaker 1: you would think is that, oh, we've got a leak.
Speaker 1: Something is leaking out for some reason. Carbon dioxide is
Speaker 1: not you know, increasing. But if it's leak, why is
Speaker 1: the oxygen not going down further way? Is it why?
Speaker 1: I don't know how you'd explain it. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I'd just be confused. Well, I would definitely be
Speaker 1: confused due to the lack of oxygen, but I would
Speaker 1: hope that someone would have figured it out. And of course,
Speaker 1: like you pointed out, like it was the actual structure
Speaker 1: itself absorbing carbon um, which you know, you could argue, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we could figure out a way of doing that
Speaker 1: as a carbon sink that. Yeah. But despite all of
Speaker 1: the controversies and all the things that did go wrong,
Speaker 1: they did stay in there for two years. UM. They
Speaker 1: lost a good bit of weight. They went on a
Speaker 1: low calorie diet while they were in there to live
Speaker 1: on the food that they farmed. UM. Though I read
Speaker 1: that there apparently some health benefits of that, like you know,
Speaker 1: they had good blood pressure and interesting. But there actually
Speaker 1: was a second mission, ok, yeah, second mission UM in nine,
Speaker 1: another group went in there to try it again, but
Speaker 1: that mission was cut short basically because of management disputes
Speaker 1: and the control of the facility changing hands basically, And
Speaker 1: so the Biosphere two left a bad taste in everybody's
Speaker 1: mouth that it kind of tainted this area of research
Speaker 1: because of all the controversies and things that went wrong, UM,
Speaker 1: and and the disputes and especially I think the the
Speaker 1: people the people aspect the drama, right, it had it
Speaker 1: had nothing to necessarily to do with the science. It
Speaker 1: had more to do with some of the I mean,
Speaker 1: there was I'm sure there was some scientific concerns as well,
Speaker 1: but the majority of the concerns arose because humans are
Speaker 1: human and and sometimes we get a little wacky um.
Speaker 1: And so it's weird that it's this thing that mainly
Speaker 1: is remembered as something that just went really wrong, like
Speaker 1: we you know, it was a failed experiment, and in
Speaker 1: some ways that's correct, but we also learned a lot
Speaker 1: from it. Sure, yeah. And and that's the thing is
Speaker 1: that we're using that kind of information to try and
Speaker 1: design new types of technologies, new systems, not only to
Speaker 1: study the you know, the various ecosystems, but also with
Speaker 1: this in mind, just like the Soviets, did you know,
Speaker 1: half a century ago the idea of using this as
Speaker 1: some sort of regenerative life support system and it you know,
Speaker 1: we've seen this kind of fuel a lot of research
Speaker 1: in various fields, things like genetic modification, where you start
Speaker 1: to look at ways where you can genetically modify plants
Speaker 1: so that more of the plant is edible, or that
Speaker 1: you start looking at the in a relationship between plants
Speaker 1: and animals where maybe you know you have animals included
Speaker 1: in your in whatever biosphere type thing you would have,
Speaker 1: let's say for space exploration, you include certain animals not
Speaker 1: because you plan on using them as a food source,
Speaker 1: but because of their in a relationship with some of
Speaker 1: the other stuff you're that's in the dome. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the food that you're growing, maybe there's a lot of
Speaker 1: it that you can't eat, but this other animal can eat,
Speaker 1: and then that animal might be a food source for
Speaker 1: yet another animal that you could then that humans are
Speaker 1: eating you. Right. That leads to UM one of the
Speaker 1: questions I want to talk about, So like, what are
Speaker 1: the questions that are involved in designing a regenerative biological
Speaker 1: system to keep life alive if we're traveling in space
Speaker 1: or colonizing another planet. Um. One of the important questions is,
Speaker 1: well do you go for simplicity or complexity? Um? So simplicity,
Speaker 1: what are the advantages there? Well, when you have simplicity
Speaker 1: in a system, you have a lot of control. So
Speaker 1: if you want to send people to Mars and all
Speaker 1: they have with them is algae, you can do that.
Speaker 1: You can survive on algae Clorella vulgarist that's what they
Speaker 1: used in the early bios experiments. Um, and that'll that'll
Speaker 1: give you air. You can eat it, and you can
Speaker 1: you're ready to go. But it doesn't have all of
Speaker 1: these benefits that complexity would provide. So you know, not
Speaker 1: only just the psychological benefits, but if you're telling you
Speaker 1: long term you need you need a lot more complex
Speaker 1: materials than what one food source is going to give you. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But then again, when you have all that complexity, you
Speaker 1: encounter some of the problems that we saw with like
Speaker 1: the interaction between different species in Biosphere two, where you
Speaker 1: had lots of things just dying. And it's harder, harder
Speaker 1: to manage a complex ecosystem and to anticipate how it's
Speaker 1: going to behave it's more unpredictable, and only that, but
Speaker 1: it requires more energy to support. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you've got if you've got a fairly diverse amount of
Speaker 1: life forms on whatever you know, vessel you are in,
Speaker 1: so that you have this kind of luxury of choice,
Speaker 1: and the complexity is is the supportive ecosystem, even if
Speaker 1: you've figured it all out where everything's playing along nicely
Speaker 1: and you don't have to worry about well, chucks, this
Speaker 1: one life form that we brought on board that we
Speaker 1: thought was going to be really beneficial turns out to
Speaker 1: be destructive to this other one that we didn't even know.
Speaker 1: We didn't even understand the relationship that would happen when
Speaker 1: these two things came aboard the same in the into
Speaker 1: the same system. Even if you were able to avoid
Speaker 1: all of that, you would still have to pour energy
Speaker 1: into the system to have it continue to work. Right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's an energy sink here too that you
Speaker 1: have to consider, like where is that energy coming from,
Speaker 1: how do you generate it, how do you regenerate energy?
Speaker 1: Are you able to harness things like solar energy? You know,
Speaker 1: and other other considerations. That's a big one. There's something
Speaker 1: I wonder also, I mean, I wonder if a complex
Speaker 1: enough ecosystem just displays emergent behavior, meaning that even if
Speaker 1: you put all the same numbers of the same species
Speaker 1: and a test module and ran it a bunch of times,
Speaker 1: you still wouldn't be able to predict what would happen
Speaker 1: the next time. And on top of that, you know,
Speaker 1: we have this other problem, which is right now, we
Speaker 1: can't we can't really simulate gravity on a on a
Speaker 1: large scale. Yes, that's a big one. Yeah, there's there
Speaker 1: are a lot of species that may not do so
Speaker 1: well in a micro gravity environment. So like the pigmy
Speaker 1: goats you're using to get the goat cheese that you're
Speaker 1: going to use to make the you know, pizza that
Speaker 1: it takes you eight months to put together. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just have this image them now. Every time I milk
Speaker 1: the goat, I fly across to the other side of
Speaker 1: the biosphere. Yeah, gowered in craft propulsions. That isn't that
Speaker 1: deleted scene from gravity? But uh yeah, the I mean
Speaker 1: these are we're laughing about. But these are actual problems obviously,
Speaker 1: Like if you wanted to pursue this, even if you
Speaker 1: were able to solve all these other issues that we
Speaker 1: still don't fully understand that, you know, we could work
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff out on Earth, right, We
Speaker 1: could do some more experiments akin to biosphere too, with
Speaker 1: very strict controls, and in fact, there are people who
Speaker 1: are working on things like that. We could do more
Speaker 1: of those and learn more about how these systems interact
Speaker 1: with one another. Before we were to incorporate into any
Speaker 1: kind of space faring model. But even then there are
Speaker 1: other things we have to worry about that we can't
Speaker 1: recreate here on Earth. Yeah, and another interesting question I
Speaker 1: think is what do you do with these uh so
Speaker 1: called deadlock substances? You know, that's when you're producing molecules
Speaker 1: that you I just don't know how to use this.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't reclaim this easily. Um So in
Speaker 1: the bios experiments, you know, they'd say like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so what do you do with like wheat stalks? Maybe
Speaker 1: at some point you're just gonna have to like burn things.
Speaker 1: And then what do you do with the ashes? Here's
Speaker 1: what I say. You use use a high intensity plasma
Speaker 1: to break them down to their constituent atoms, and then
Speaker 1: you do plasma gasification, elasma gasification, plasma gasification, and then
Speaker 1: you can at least create a sin gas fuel that
Speaker 1: you might be able to run generators on that will
Speaker 1: provide the light for everything else. Jonathan, you should email
Speaker 1: NASA about this. Yeah, I'm serious. That's a good idea. Well,
Speaker 1: the only problem is that, of course you do eventually
Speaker 1: run out of matter, like you have to, you would
Speaker 1: have to restock you. It's note like matter is magically
Speaker 1: making itself over and over and over again. Every time
Speaker 1: you would do that, you'd be like, well, if I'm
Speaker 1: just using this a sin gas and then I'm venting
Speaker 1: off anything that is toxic, and I can't you know,
Speaker 1: use that anywhere. Eventually I am using this as a
Speaker 1: fuel source, not just a regenerative life support system. It's
Speaker 1: actually that kind of that kind of defeats the purpose
Speaker 1: of the biosphere, right, which is to be just to
Speaker 1: be matter closed. Right, you would you would be you
Speaker 1: wouldn't You would not have a hundred percent closure because
Speaker 1: you would actually have matter being reduced over time, right,
Speaker 1: so in the sense that you would no longer be
Speaker 1: able to use that. It's obviously you can't really create
Speaker 1: or destroy matter or all you can do is you know,
Speaker 1: maybe converted into energy, um, but or you're venting it
Speaker 1: off into space. So so yeah, it would not it
Speaker 1: would not work in a true, really long term. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about like we were shooting for another star system
Speaker 1: somewhere in the Milky Way. I mean that would be
Speaker 1: you know, you would eventually run out of fuel. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: We've talked about the psychological effects of having these plants around. Uh,
Speaker 1: mostly in terms of eating. You know, like it's just
Speaker 1: got to be psychologically better for you to be able
Speaker 1: to eat carrots and potatoes and stuff like that than
Speaker 1: just allergy. Um. But I imagine there's a psychological effect
Speaker 1: to having a certain kind of environment to right, I
Speaker 1: would imagine something just from personal experience. I mean, if
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a tree in a long time, I
Speaker 1: get kind of depressed. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm the same way.
Speaker 1: If I haven't seen a humpback whale in a long time,
Speaker 1: I start thinking I need to go to either Alaska
Speaker 1: or Hawaii, depending upon the season. But a lot of
Speaker 1: tree deficiency can be made up for with pygmy goats. Yes,
Speaker 1: if you stack three pygmy goats end to end and
Speaker 1: then just tell one of them to just kind of
Speaker 1: sway a little bit, as if there were a breeze,
Speaker 1: everything's cool. Actually, you know what, videos of piggy goats
Speaker 1: definitely do help me with my tension. So maybe there
Speaker 1: is something to what you're saying. But if one of
Speaker 1: those fainting goats falls in a spaceship, no one's there
Speaker 1: to hear, it doesn't make a sound. I think if
Speaker 1: I think it just floats, right, just because we still
Speaker 1: have we don't have artificial gravity yet, so it would
Speaker 1: just be one of them floats. But that wouldn't make
Speaker 1: it would just be you've destroyed the oldest riddle on Earth.
Speaker 1: It would just be a stiff goat flying by not moving. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're obviously getting a little loopie here, but no, this
Speaker 1: was a cool thing to talk about because you know,
Speaker 1: we have direct evidence of you know, we have the
Speaker 1: experiments that people have conducted to varying degrees of success.
Speaker 1: There's also the Mars one initiative where they're talking about
Speaker 1: having a Mars colony. By was it like or something,
Speaker 1: we are not done with biosphere research. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a lot more of this research on
Speaker 1: Earth before we can really instantiate this kind of system
Speaker 1: in space. And that's that's part of what the Mars
Speaker 1: one Colony would be doing. Like they they talked about
Speaker 1: putting people in uh, you know, kind of a sequestered
Speaker 1: environment not only to simulate what it would be like
Speaker 1: on Mars, but two as a proof of concept that
Speaker 1: in fact, these habitats they plan on making under the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars would actually support life. They're planning on
Speaker 1: using hydroponics, right, Yeah, they're using mainly hydroponics, and that
Speaker 1: would be the source of the oxygen the ongoing regenerative
Speaker 1: life support system for the people there. So that's another
Speaker 1: good question, is do you go hydroponics or do eco soil?
Speaker 1: Obviously hydroponics is a lot easier, but the question is
Speaker 1: whether or not it actually will produce the right amounts
Speaker 1: of not just oxygen but food. Well, yeah, and the
Speaker 1: questions about I think there are questions about whether the
Speaker 1: kind of soil we have on Earth helps produce healthy
Speaker 1: gut flora. And it's also another good question because again,
Speaker 1: these are questions that we out of answers too, because
Speaker 1: it takes so relieve Earth. We've got to figure out
Speaker 1: why Earth is good well, and it's just stuff that
Speaker 1: takes so much time to answer, right, It's not like
Speaker 1: it's not like you could run an experiment in a
Speaker 1: week and have a definitive answer. These are things that
Speaker 1: we're talking long term effects on people, and that requires
Speaker 1: a level of commitment that's difficult to do. So maybe
Speaker 1: this Mars one thing I'm still very skeptical about whether
Speaker 1: or not they'll reach their goal But my hope is
Speaker 1: that even if they never launch off of Earth, that
Speaker 1: if they're very much sincere in going forward with their plan,
Speaker 1: they will at least do some experiments here on Earth
Speaker 1: that could end up being really beneficial down the line.
Speaker 1: So that's my hope. I mean, really, I hope that
Speaker 1: I'm just proven totally wrong and that they've got everything
Speaker 1: together and they actually managed to do what they say
Speaker 1: they're going to do. That would astound me and delight me.
Speaker 1: But you know what, that's a good thing. We should
Speaker 1: actually mention that we do plan on doing an episode
Speaker 1: about terraforming, and some terraforming being a sort of larger
Speaker 1: scale version of what we're talking about. Instead of taking
Speaker 1: a small bit of Earth and closing it up on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon or Mars or space station,
Speaker 1: why not just turn Mars into another Earth. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: we've done so well with this one. So, uh, that's
Speaker 1: just a little snark. I'm actually an optimist. Yeah, guys, Well,
Speaker 1: this has been a fun conversation about this topic, and
Speaker 1: we're going to end up obviously revisiting this in other
Speaker 1: episodes where anything where we're talking about long term space
Speaker 1: exploration or terraforming it'll come back into play. But we
Speaker 1: really wanted to tackle this one mostly to uh to
Speaker 1: kind of dare one another to actually endure the poly
Speaker 1: Shore movie. Well, we'll get back to you on whether
Speaker 1: either of us actually um does that or maybe Lauren
Speaker 1: What's the Future of Biodome sequels? Yeah, not good as
Speaker 1: it turns out, um, but yeah, maybe we can convince
Speaker 1: Lauren to watch it while while she's away. So guys,
Speaker 1: remember go to f W Thinking dot com. That's the
Speaker 1: website where we've got all the videos, the podcast, blog posts, articles,
Speaker 1: things that are really cool, everything about the future that
Speaker 1: you want to know. Go visit that site and remember
Speaker 1: you can find us on Twitter and Facebook. We have
Speaker 1: to handle f W Thinking. Come join the conversation. We
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. We want to hear what
Speaker 1: you want to what you're excited about in the future.
Speaker 1: Let us know we want to talk about it and
Speaker 1: we will top you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking
Speaker 1: dot com brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places