Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says the sunlight is
Speaker 1: going into the mountain. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and our other host, Lauren Vogelbaum is not with us
Speaker 1: in the studio today, but she will be back next time.
Speaker 1: So um, Joe. Yeah, when you are thinking about potential
Speaker 1: places that you would like to vacation, does the Red
Speaker 1: Planet ever make the list? Is that a euphemism for
Speaker 1: Las Vegas? Know that that would that would be like
Speaker 1: what happens on the Red Planet stays on the Red planet. Well,
Speaker 1: you might be more right than you know. It might
Speaker 1: be really hard for stuff to happen on the Red
Speaker 1: planet that gets off the Red Planet. I'm sorry, We're
Speaker 1: going to reference the movie Total Recall a lot of times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least Joe will I will I will attempt to
Speaker 1: keep a lid on it. Well, yeah, actually, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: spend this whole podcast trying not to talk exclusively about
Speaker 1: Total Recall, the one that takes place on Mars. I
Speaker 1: don't know what happens in the new one, I mean
Speaker 1: the old one, the good one. Yeah. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about Mars simply because there's this big
Speaker 1: anniversary that happened this year. Some guys went to uh,
Speaker 1: pretty distant neighborhood called the Moon. Oh I've heard of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Polo landing happened forty five years ago, and as
Speaker 1: part of the celebration for it, NASA published this this
Speaker 1: little report saying what comes next, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that really focused on was an attempt to actually
Speaker 1: send human beings to Mars for the first time. In fact,
Speaker 1: what they said is the first human being to set
Speaker 1: foot on Mars is alive today. Yeah. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: the first ones who will set foot on Mars are
Speaker 1: are currently walking around, which suggests that not only are
Speaker 1: they alive there at least three. Yeah. What age do
Speaker 1: you start walking? Oh? I started walking right right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was right around thirteen when I started walking. Before that,
Speaker 1: I was just carried everywhere like a pasha. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: at this point, um, we're talking about you know, according
Speaker 1: to NASA, assuming and and keep in mind that NASA
Speaker 1: publishes this kind of stuff in part to get support
Speaker 1: behind its its goals, right because it's it's government funded,
Speaker 1: so it has to get support so that it gets
Speaker 1: the funding necessary to do the science that we need
Speaker 1: to do. Of course, a lot of people don't like science, yeah,
Speaker 1: or they don't think it's like the idea of it,
Speaker 1: but they don't like paying for it, right. That's when
Speaker 1: it ultimately comes down to I'm not going to shy
Speaker 1: away from it. That's you know, some people are like, yes,
Speaker 1: I want us to go to Mars. No, I don't
Speaker 1: want that to be you know, any of my responsibility. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that's an issue, which that's part of what NASA
Speaker 1: is trying to to to address, saying, look, this is
Speaker 1: what this is a lofty goal and it's a goal
Speaker 1: worth having. And we'll talk more about wine a little bit. Well,
Speaker 1: let's uh take a minute before we get into NASA's
Speaker 1: new announcement and just look back on the idea of
Speaker 1: going to Mars, because this has been around for a while,
Speaker 1: but obviously we've never been it. Only you know, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't even take a full year to get there if
Speaker 1: you time the trip, right, would be some several months,
Speaker 1: probably eighteen months total from start to finish, like to
Speaker 1: get their land, wait for the right time to be
Speaker 1: able to come back. I'm not talking about a round trip,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about to get there, to get there okay,
Speaker 1: six months, Okay, Okay, that's not that bad. Why haven't
Speaker 1: we been to Mars yet? And maybe this discussion will
Speaker 1: help color our ideas about how we will get there
Speaker 1: in the future. I would guess one of the big
Speaker 1: things has got to be something we mentioned just a
Speaker 1: second ago. Money. Yeah, cost, money is a huge one.
Speaker 1: How how much would it actually cost to get to
Speaker 1: Marston I'm sure some people of gas. Okay, so here,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. We don't know, obviously, because we haven't
Speaker 1: sent anyone to Mars. We can't say if we had
Speaker 1: sent someone to Mars and then said, hey, can you
Speaker 1: tell you up all your receipts and let's know how
Speaker 1: much it was. Yeah, we stopped for coffee somewhere right
Speaker 1: between the Moon and Mars, and that added you know,
Speaker 1: if we ended up all the costs, then we could say, okay,
Speaker 1: this is how much it actually cost us to send someone.
Speaker 1: But not knowing means we have to make a lot
Speaker 1: of estimations, and those estimations are all over the place,
Speaker 1: right I mean seriously, all over the place. You're about
Speaker 1: to hear an amazing space. So Mars one, this is
Speaker 1: a this is a private venture. We talked about it
Speaker 1: briefly in our episode about going to the Moon versus
Speaker 1: going to Mars. We talked about the Mars one initiative.
Speaker 1: We can offer some opinions about Mars one and a bit,
Speaker 1: but I would say they have offered a somewhat low ball.
Speaker 1: They have aggressively priced their trip to Mars. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they say that to set the first of four, the
Speaker 1: first four astronauts of a group of I think it's
Speaker 1: like sixteen ultimately something like that. It's it's quite a
Speaker 1: few that will eventually get there. But the the first
Speaker 1: four to get to Mars and set them up, including
Speaker 1: all the equipment and everything necessary to keep them alive,
Speaker 1: would cost six billion dollars, and every subsequent mission of
Speaker 1: four more astronauts joining the ones who are already there
Speaker 1: would be four billion. Hm. That's pretty low when you
Speaker 1: compare it to say, the nineteen eighty nine plan that
Speaker 1: was proposed by NASA, which did not have a price
Speaker 1: tag associated with the actual plan. They laid out what
Speaker 1: the plan was and then other people based on what
Speaker 1: the plan was, estimated what the cost would be. So
Speaker 1: based upon NASA's plan, and I'll talk about what that
Speaker 1: was in a little bit too. Uh they cost They
Speaker 1: said that would cost about four hundred fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: It is pretty pretty big range between six billion to
Speaker 1: four hundred fifty billion. Yea, yeah, so, uh, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different reasons why those range of costs
Speaker 1: are so different. First of all, nine nine technology very
Speaker 1: different from current technology. Wait a minute, was that estimated
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine dollars? Also? Uh? Yeah, I imagine so,
Speaker 1: so we'd have to figure in inflation, which I did
Speaker 1: not do. But it may also be due to either optimism,
Speaker 1: like blind optimism if you want to be you know,
Speaker 1: really really kind of hardcore about this. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: May just again, when I say aggressive, it may be unrealistic.
Speaker 1: You might say that that the Mars one view may
Speaker 1: be unrealistic, which is all dependent upon your knowledge of
Speaker 1: everything that's going on and how how the world works. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't feel fully qualified to say that at all.
Speaker 1: I don't feel qualified to say it necessarily, but my
Speaker 1: gut is that it is unrealistic. Um. Whereas you might
Speaker 1: say that it was blind pessimism that cause people to
Speaker 1: say the NASA plan would have cost four fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Will never know because that plan was never put into action,
Speaker 1: so we can't really say one way or the other,
Speaker 1: but it does sound like to be pretty expensive. So
Speaker 1: there are other plans that fall between these two extremes,
Speaker 1: like the Mars Direct Initiative, which has said that it's
Speaker 1: planned to send people to Mars and come back, which
Speaker 1: is important but only cost thirty billion. The reason why
Speaker 1: I say it's important is that Mars One Initiative, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a one way ticket. You go to Mars, you're
Speaker 1: part of a Martian colony, and you may or may
Speaker 1: not ever have the opportunity to come back to Earth.
Speaker 1: You go knowing that there's the overwhelming possibility that that's
Speaker 1: where you spend the rest of your life. Uh. Because
Speaker 1: that that's what the whole focus of the Mars One
Speaker 1: Initiative is is to get people on Mars and to
Speaker 1: create a sustainable colony. Uh, not to have a place
Speaker 1: where people can go explore and then come back to Earth. Um.
Speaker 1: That's one way to keep the cost down because you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about building a launch system. Cap
Speaker 1: double of escaping Mars is gravity and taking people back
Speaker 1: all the way to Earth. Okay, but another thing is
Speaker 1: if you're talking about a mission that has a colony,
Speaker 1: so it has a crew, it's an ongoing mission and
Speaker 1: not just like you're sending a probe to do one job,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be talking about potentially unforeseeable ends and unknown costs.
Speaker 1: Right sure, yeah, because I mean unless you just say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're calculating the cost to dump them on the surface
Speaker 1: and then never spend any more money. Well, which I mean,
Speaker 1: can you can do the math for all? Right, here's
Speaker 1: the bare minimum of stuff we will need to accomplish this, right,
Speaker 1: this is. This is the amount of fuel will need.
Speaker 1: This is the amount of food and water and oxygen
Speaker 1: will need. Uh you know, this is this is the
Speaker 1: number of replacement parts we want in case there's something
Speaker 1: that goes wrong. You can go ahead and factor in
Speaker 1: all those things and try and come up with a budget.
Speaker 1: But stuff happens, right, Things things happen that you did
Speaker 1: not anticipate. Because that's the way the world works, or
Speaker 1: in this case, that's the way the universe works. Uh,
Speaker 1: so it means that you know, even if you come
Speaker 1: up with a budget that seems realistic, you can never
Speaker 1: really be sure until you've actually done the thing, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, just like one practical scenario is imagine you
Speaker 1: put the colony down, they're set up, and then a
Speaker 1: very crucial piece of equipment of their's breaks and they
Speaker 1: don't have a way to make another one. So you now,
Speaker 1: and what if their lives depend on this, you need
Speaker 1: to send another one to Mars. Keeping in mind that's
Speaker 1: going to take months and months, because you remember that
Speaker 1: six to eight months is all depended upon where Earth
Speaker 1: and Mars are in their respective orbits, right, it could
Speaker 1: be a lot longer if they're not in the optimal position. Yea.
Speaker 1: So also you got to remember that what if, what
Speaker 1: if it comes time for them to launch off of Mars,
Speaker 1: But that also coincides with the time when Mars has
Speaker 1: an enormous dust storm, which does happen on that planet,
Speaker 1: which could extend their need to stay on the planet
Speaker 1: for perhaps even up to you know, almost a year
Speaker 1: in order for the orbits to come into the right
Speaker 1: optimal position. Because that that orbit stuff that's really important,
Speaker 1: You've got to have the right amount of fuel to
Speaker 1: get to your destination. And if it turns out that, well,
Speaker 1: we couldn't launch the launch window. Now there's no way
Speaker 1: for us to make it back to Earth. If we
Speaker 1: were to launch today. We have to wait until we're
Speaker 1: back around to a point where the orbits are ideal
Speaker 1: for us to do it. Again. That's another you know,
Speaker 1: several months at the very least. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's there are a lot of things you have to
Speaker 1: take into consideration. Uh So, Yeah, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where again it's impossible to say, of course until
Speaker 1: after we actually do it. Of course, the even bigger
Speaker 1: thing than costs probably is the human risk. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are very serious dangers in going to Mars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's serious dangers just going into space, right, Like we're
Speaker 1: talking about serious dangers that go that are involved if
Speaker 1: you're just going into lower Earth orbit. And it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to say just because that's further than I've
Speaker 1: ever gone, but low Earth orbit is still relatively safe
Speaker 1: compared to anything that that travels outside of the Earth's
Speaker 1: gravitational field, which is very much a protective layer for us.
Speaker 1: So you first have all the dangerous associated with your
Speaker 1: average space launch. Those are all still at play, right,
Speaker 1: and you could have a critical failure all those things,
Speaker 1: but that, like you said, that could happen anytime you're
Speaker 1: leaving the atmosphere. That's just your baseline. So that's you
Speaker 1: already have that. And we've already determined that the risks
Speaker 1: associated with space launches are are not so great as
Speaker 1: to prevent us from actually doing them. We've just and
Speaker 1: and again when we talk about risks, this is also
Speaker 1: something that comes down to a a individual choice to
Speaker 1: There are people out there who are willing to take
Speaker 1: enormous risks if it means the chance to go to Mars,
Speaker 1: and to them, they may they may look at something
Speaker 1: that to another person and seems far too dangerous to undertake,
Speaker 1: and they'll say, no, I want to do this. So
Speaker 1: this is this also comes down to individual preference in
Speaker 1: some respects. But there are some things that are just unavoidable.
Speaker 1: Avoidable like cosmic rays, cosmic rays, solar radiation another one.
Speaker 1: We here on Earth are are very lucky. And in fact,
Speaker 1: you might say it's not that it's not luck, it's
Speaker 1: the reason why we're here. Yeah, we evolved done Earth,
Speaker 1: Earth protects us. Yes, uh, not sentiently necessarily, although there
Speaker 1: are people who say otherwise, Uh, yeah, there, but it
Speaker 1: has the Earth's atmosphere and it's magnetosphere both protect us
Speaker 1: from radiation. The the atmosphere largely protects us from solar
Speaker 1: radiation um, although also can help protect us from cosmic
Speaker 1: rays as well. The magnetosphere mainly protects us against cosmic radiation.
Speaker 1: Cosmic rays are really charged particles, right, They're not. They're
Speaker 1: not raised in the sense of like a science fiction
Speaker 1: ray gun. They are these charge particles that can really
Speaker 1: do some pretty very fast. Yeah, and they have a
Speaker 1: lot of energy in them, and they can seriously cause
Speaker 1: some problems if say a person were to encounter them. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, if you were to take a crew of
Speaker 1: people and put them out of Earth's magnetosphere, say on
Speaker 1: the way to Mars, suddenly they would be exposed. Right.
Speaker 1: They no longer have the the beneficial protection of the
Speaker 1: Earth's magnetosphere nor the atmosphere obviously, and so you have
Speaker 1: to figure out, well, how do we shield them from
Speaker 1: these these cosmic rays and the solar radiation that they
Speaker 1: will encounter as they move through the Solar system. How
Speaker 1: do we make sure that they are protected so that
Speaker 1: they don't suffer terrible health effects, either in the short
Speaker 1: term or in the long term. So how do how
Speaker 1: do we prevent that as much as possible? And it
Speaker 1: mostly means improvements in shielding, although there have been some
Speaker 1: other suggestions as well. Okay, so I've got another one. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you know how much exercise astronauts on the Internet
Speaker 1: Sational Space Station have to get. It's it's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like more than an hour a day,
Speaker 1: is No. They have to do tons of exercise, and
Speaker 1: even then they don't get stronger like you do when
Speaker 1: you exercise a lot. On that This is this is
Speaker 1: preventive therapy. They're trying to slow the onset of the
Speaker 1: deconditioning that naturally occurs when you live in a microgravity environment.
Speaker 1: What is that deconditioning, Well, it's muscle loss and its
Speaker 1: bone density loss, and those things are not nice, not
Speaker 1: good for your body. Muscle loss is easier to deal
Speaker 1: with than bone density loss, but neither are great. I
Speaker 1: mean it means that if you if you read up
Speaker 1: on astronauts and their experience, especially when they get those
Speaker 1: that spend a lot of time on the I s S,
Speaker 1: for example, the International Space Station. You'll hear about them
Speaker 1: going through lots of physical therapy when they get back
Speaker 1: in order to help offset any muscle loss or bone
Speaker 1: density loss that they've had while they're they were on board. Now,
Speaker 1: with bone dens that, you're kind of stuck, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: you you can't really offset that that much. So that's
Speaker 1: one thing you would have to do is plan for
Speaker 1: how do you deal with uh putting the stuff off
Speaker 1: or or or counteracting it as much as possible during
Speaker 1: the duration of the trip. Also, keep in mind that
Speaker 1: Martian gravity is thirty eight percent what Earth's gravity is,
Speaker 1: so even once you get there, the problem isn't totally solved.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's not, as it's not a severe thirty eight
Speaker 1: percent is still pretty good. You probably wouldn't suffer well,
Speaker 1: you certainly wouldn't suffer the same extent of bone loss
Speaker 1: as you would if you spent the equivalent amount of
Speaker 1: time in micro gravity. But it's still something to keep
Speaker 1: in mind. And you know, it's a little harder to
Speaker 1: um figure out how to exercise. I mean, what do
Speaker 1: you do you pack exercise equipment that's uh three times
Speaker 1: heavier than what it would be on Earth, so that
Speaker 1: it would feel the equivalent amount of weight when you
Speaker 1: lift it. You know, it's you can't really weighing down
Speaker 1: the spacecraft in order to do that. It is probably
Speaker 1: not the best idea because that increases the cost. Again,
Speaker 1: another thing is, so if you have extended space travel
Speaker 1: and you do wanna give give the astronauts something to
Speaker 1: help keep them healthy on this strip, what are your options?
Speaker 1: I mean, there aren't many. Basically, the only thing I
Speaker 1: can imagine is creating an artificial gravity spacecraft. We've we've
Speaker 1: discussed how you could do that, but we've also discussed
Speaker 1: why that's difficult because it would just involve lots and
Speaker 1: lots more building in space and shipping more and more
Speaker 1: materials up there. So yeah, the Mars direct approach is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's different from saying, let's let's make sure
Speaker 1: the astronauts have X amount of time per day to
Speaker 1: exercise so that they can counteract this these effects. And
Speaker 1: when they were actually when they would be traveling from
Speaker 1: Earth to Mars, they would, according to that approach, be
Speaker 1: in a rotating spacecraft. It would it would simulate gravity,
Speaker 1: and then that's how they would avoid muscle loss and
Speaker 1: bone density loss. Well, that does seem ideal for astronaut health.
Speaker 1: But my question is that seems yet again like that's
Speaker 1: going to be massively increasing your costs. And they were
Speaker 1: talking about you offset that specifically using the the the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle as a counterweight, and it's so okay. So
Speaker 1: instead of like a tourist or wheel, it would be
Speaker 1: like a tethered right, so you'd have a floor inside
Speaker 1: your spacecraft and then that would be spinning opposite a
Speaker 1: counterweight through a tether, yes, yes, and then you would
Speaker 1: you would end up severing that connection once you got
Speaker 1: to Mars, because really it's it's just acting as a
Speaker 1: counterweight in the first place. That makes sense. So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting approach. But you know, again, that's that's just
Speaker 1: one initiative. That's the one that was the thirty billion
Speaker 1: dollar approach. Um. That one was proposed by a person
Speaker 1: who used to work with NASA and is you know
Speaker 1: now kind of the head uh evangelist for this Mars
Speaker 1: direct initiative. Um. But we'll talk a little more about
Speaker 1: that in a bit. Also, the other thing that's dangerous
Speaker 1: about trip to Mars, and we're just Right now, we're
Speaker 1: just talking about the trip to Mars. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about how dangerous it will be once you get there. Um,
Speaker 1: the last bit is, uh, the actual arrival at Mars
Speaker 1: pretty dangerous because it's hard to land something on Mars um,
Speaker 1: largely because Martian atmosphere is very, very thin. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot to it. So uh, using a parachute
Speaker 1: will only slow you down so much you would think, oh,
Speaker 1: that's only the gravity, How hard could it be? Well,
Speaker 1: it's pretty you know, you're traveling at an incredible speed.
Speaker 1: You have to slow yourself down. Uh, and the parachute
Speaker 1: is not going to slow you down enough to have
Speaker 1: necessarily a safe landing with astronauts on board. Now, if
Speaker 1: I recall, I think when they landed the Curiosity rover,
Speaker 1: it had to have multiple different stages of deceleration in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Right, it had I'm just going off memory.
Speaker 1: I think it had parachutes and it had retrorockets. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: First it would it positioned itself so that the large
Speaker 1: surface area was facing the ground, which helps slow it down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it had a parachute that helps slow it down a
Speaker 1: little more. And then it used thrusters to counteract the
Speaker 1: falling and so it could lower itself down easily. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind, all of that was accomplished with pre programming,
Speaker 1: because it was fourteen minutes before we knew whether or
Speaker 1: not it worked, So it had been on the ground
Speaker 1: for fourteen minutes before we even knew that it managed
Speaker 1: to to land on Mars safely. Now, of course, with
Speaker 1: a human manned trip to Mars, that's not an issue.
Speaker 1: You would actually have people there who could uh interact
Speaker 1: with whatever uh spacecraft they had, so if they needed
Speaker 1: to make adjustments on the fly, they could, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to wait for commands back from Earth to do so.
Speaker 1: So there's that. But I mean, we've already managed to
Speaker 1: do it with an you know, a semi autonomous vehicle. Uh,
Speaker 1: So that is support for a Mars mission. Saying well,
Speaker 1: we we've accomplished what most people would say was, I
Speaker 1: think freaking crazy is an appropriate phrase. We managed to
Speaker 1: do it already, So that's that's kind of a check
Speaker 1: in the positive column. Right, Okay, But so once we
Speaker 1: get the astronauts to the planet, then everything is pretty easy, right, No,
Speaker 1: not at all? Nohere then atmosphere not to mention, it's
Speaker 1: not oxygen richly. You can't breathe it anyway. It's carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide rich not good for us, not at all. You
Speaker 1: get big, like you were talking about earlier big dust
Speaker 1: storms on Mars, so you can have gigantic dust storms
Speaker 1: that cover the whole planet. Not to mention, some of
Speaker 1: that dust on Mars is now believed to be highly
Speaker 1: toxic to humans. Like you wouldn't want to be You
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to get it stuck anywhere in your suit
Speaker 1: and bring it into the habitat. Yeah, that dust can
Speaker 1: have a lot of perchlorates and that which can can
Speaker 1: be very toxic. Um. You know, they were talking about
Speaker 1: stuff that has chlorine in it. Chlorine is a is
Speaker 1: a is toxic to humans. So yeah, anything where you'd
Speaker 1: be tracking that dustin or anything that could end up
Speaker 1: being uh uh, you know, not completely secure against it
Speaker 1: could end up creating severe health hazards. Mars is super
Speaker 1: cold to be kind of like living in Antarctica, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of. So the temperatures on Mars very depending upon
Speaker 1: where you are, kind of like on Earth. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: average temperature is about minus eighty fahrenheit, which is about
Speaker 1: minus sixty celsius, which is anyone who has been out
Speaker 1: on even a mildly cold day would say, wow, that's
Speaker 1: gotta be you know, that's gonna be almost instant death.
Speaker 1: That's so cold. Uh that. But again it varies. So
Speaker 1: if you're at the equator at noon, Mars might reach
Speaker 1: a high of about seventy degrees fahrenheit twenty celsius, which is,
Speaker 1: that's nice. That's a nice day. I would love that.
Speaker 1: But at the polls the low is about minus two
Speaker 1: hundred twenty five fahrenheit or minus one fifty three elsius.
Speaker 1: Not a good day. So don't go to the poles.
Speaker 1: Don't go to the poles. Yeah. So anyway, you've got
Speaker 1: these extreme temperatures that you'd have to deal with, uh
Speaker 1: in some way. You'd have to figure out how do
Speaker 1: we make sure that the people who are going to
Speaker 1: Mars are going to be able to endure this. Another
Speaker 1: thing is Mars doesn't protect you from space the way
Speaker 1: Earth does. Mars wants you to die. Things like cosmic
Speaker 1: radiation and solar radiation both can be more severe on
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars. You don't have the atmosphere really
Speaker 1: to protect you, not not a strong one, and you
Speaker 1: don't have a strong magnetic field protect you, so you
Speaker 1: need to provide additional layers of protection. You'd either need
Speaker 1: to dig down under the ground and build underground habitats
Speaker 1: to shield yourself or have some kind of In any case,
Speaker 1: this is going to be greatly adding to the mission
Speaker 1: costs and the different kind of things you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to do. It's going to make it a lot harder.
Speaker 1: You're either you're either doing some very primitive terraforming in
Speaker 1: the sense of digging a hole, or you have to
Speaker 1: factor that into your habitats, you know, features like the
Speaker 1: actual material has to be good at shielding against cosmic
Speaker 1: radiation and solar radiation. Um. Yeah, we already talked about
Speaker 1: the gravity, so that could also potentially be an issue,
Speaker 1: and we talked about the soil. So yeah, as it
Speaker 1: as it turns out, getting to Mars and staying on
Speaker 1: Mars really some big challenges. They're not necessarily, you know, insurmountable,
Speaker 1: but certainly things that you have to keep in mind. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the other things I want to say is, Okay,
Speaker 1: so why do we want to go to Mars. I
Speaker 1: would say that the main reasons are, well, I guess
Speaker 1: maybe two main reasons. One is just purely emotional. It's
Speaker 1: just the emotional experience of exploration. It's exciting, it's inspiring
Speaker 1: to humans. But it's really something that's fundamental to humans.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've you see it in the history of Earth, right,
Speaker 1: just just exploring the different places on Earth, and then
Speaker 1: of course you just extend that outward. Human curiosity is
Speaker 1: not bound just to our planet. Yeah. The other ing
Speaker 1: is of course science, to do scientific research, planetary science
Speaker 1: research on Mars, which could potentially tell us a whole
Speaker 1: lot about all kinds of things about you know, could
Speaker 1: give us insights into, uh, into how planets are formed,
Speaker 1: how Mars is different from Earth, what happened to the
Speaker 1: Martian atmosphere, could give us ideas about astrobiology, you know,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different things that we could learn from Mars.
Speaker 1: But unmanned rovers are doing a pretty good job so
Speaker 1: far doing planetary science on Mars. So I wonder what
Speaker 1: are the added benefits that having humans on site will provide. Yeah, um, well,
Speaker 1: I want to add a third thing to your list,
Speaker 1: on top of science and on top of inspiration, which
Speaker 1: is technology, which is that you know, sometimes these these
Speaker 1: challenges to meet these challenges means that we develop new technology,
Speaker 1: new approaches to various problems. I guess I would have
Speaker 1: lumped that in with inspiration in a weird and that
Speaker 1: just that it gives us an impetus to to go
Speaker 1: further right, and it does mean that we can stand
Speaker 1: to benefit in in indirect ways to the efforts to
Speaker 1: get to Mars. I mean the if you look at
Speaker 1: a list of inventions that were either created during or
Speaker 1: or popularized by the Space Race, there's a lot that
Speaker 1: end up being really fundamental to the way we rely
Speaker 1: on technology today. In fact, the development of the transistor
Speaker 1: in large part has UH the Space Race to thank
Speaker 1: for it, because there was a there was a strong
Speaker 1: incentive to continue to develop to miniaturize electronics that you
Speaker 1: could create these space capsules that could keep people alive.
Speaker 1: So so another thing that you know, another potential benefit
Speaker 1: down the road to getting to Mars is uh technology.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about the various benefits at the end too,
Speaker 1: But anyway, so why would you want to go human
Speaker 1: versus rover? One thing is that humans can a vice.
Speaker 1: That's totally true, and I remember I wrote about that
Speaker 1: in a video episode. We did a while back about
Speaker 1: the future of space exploration should it be entirely unmanned,
Speaker 1: And I think there is a big role for unmanned
Speaker 1: exploration because there are a lot of places humans just
Speaker 1: can't shouldn't go, it's just too dangerous. Where you can
Speaker 1: pair robot and humans together so that the humans can
Speaker 1: do things that humans are really well suited for, and
Speaker 1: the robots can do the stuff that humans are not
Speaker 1: really well suited exactly. But the one I'd say, the
Speaker 1: main thing that I I think humans can do that
Speaker 1: robots can't do is figure out what to do in
Speaker 1: a situation where you've been presented with unforeseen circumstances. I mean,
Speaker 1: a robot can very easily get stuck. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: know how, it doesn't know how to get out of
Speaker 1: the problem that faces it, and and it may be
Speaker 1: a long time before someone back on Earth is able
Speaker 1: to one ascertain what the problem actually is and to
Speaker 1: come up with a potential solution, and then three enact
Speaker 1: that solution, and then four evaluate said solution to see
Speaker 1: if it actually solved the problem. So you're talking about
Speaker 1: potentially something that could take days depending upon what the
Speaker 1: nature of the problem is, or sometimes it could just completely, um,
Speaker 1: you know, close the door on an entire project if
Speaker 1: the problem is is severe enough for the robot. But
Speaker 1: humans are really good at recognizing situations and either overcoming
Speaker 1: them or working their way around them so that it's
Speaker 1: not a problem in the first place. Right. So one
Speaker 1: big example in this would go back to something we
Speaker 1: talked about a minute ago, like, so, what if you're
Speaker 1: on Mars and a very crucial piece of equipment breaks,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Robots so far are just not
Speaker 1: very good at fixing things. Fixing what what is it
Speaker 1: about the concept of xing that it's just an inherently
Speaker 1: human task to mend or repair, to you know, see
Speaker 1: how a thing should be and put it back in
Speaker 1: that state, right, or even just jerry rigging something to
Speaker 1: do the same function or building a replacement that's also
Speaker 1: very human. Hard for robot to do something like that
Speaker 1: maybe impossible. And when you're on Mars, like we were
Speaker 1: talking about, you may not even have the option of
Speaker 1: getting sent a new one. It might be that it
Speaker 1: would be a year before it gets there, and if
Speaker 1: you don't have one by next week, you're going to
Speaker 1: be dead. Right now. There are times when when robots
Speaker 1: have been able to quote unquote improvise, but that's all
Speaker 1: due to the direction of the people back on Earth
Speaker 1: right where something did not work the way it was anticipated,
Speaker 1: and so uh we had to you know, essentially switched
Speaker 1: to Plan B. But that kind of improvisation takes lots
Speaker 1: of time and in the meantimes, you know, the situation
Speaker 1: can change, whereas humans can do that on the fly.
Speaker 1: So that's a big one. Mobility obviously a big difference.
Speaker 1: You know, depending upon how you've designed the robot, it
Speaker 1: may be very good at going across certain terrain and
Speaker 1: terrible ago at encountering anything else. So humans are really versatile.
Speaker 1: We can we can deal with all types of terrain. Uh,
Speaker 1: the regions that we would probably visit on Mars are
Speaker 1: somewhat limited in the types of terrain that we would encounter.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't necessarily be going to the polls um. So
Speaker 1: we're pretty good at again, adapting to that situation and
Speaker 1: and conquering it. So that's another reason why humans would
Speaker 1: be a good choice because they could. That means that
Speaker 1: we could do a lot more science in the same
Speaker 1: amount of time as a robot could. You know, we're
Speaker 1: able to adapt if we see something interesting on our
Speaker 1: way from point A to point B, we can go
Speaker 1: out of our way really quickly and check it out
Speaker 1: or even collect samples that kind of thing, and then
Speaker 1: continue on our way. That's a lot easier for us
Speaker 1: than it is for a robot um. Also, any human
Speaker 1: human visit to Mars would likely take some time, and
Speaker 1: this is largely in part because of that that situation
Speaker 1: we're talking about with the various orbital paths of Earth
Speaker 1: and Mars. When they are approaching one another, that's when
Speaker 1: you ideally want to launch from one to get to
Speaker 1: thegether because it will take the least amount of time
Speaker 1: um if there. If they are moving away from each other,
Speaker 1: then as you know as you're traveling that your destination
Speaker 1: is actually moving away from you, so you have to
Speaker 1: counteract that, which means you have to spend more energy
Speaker 1: to get there and it's going to take you more time.
Speaker 1: So any visit to Mars is likely going to take
Speaker 1: a long time, just because in the in the duration
Speaker 1: of going from Earth to Mars, the position of the
Speaker 1: planet's change, and by the time you land on Mars
Speaker 1: is no longer ideal for you to turn around and
Speaker 1: go back to Earth, you have to wait, So any
Speaker 1: visit to Mars is going to take a long time.
Speaker 1: If you're trying to be really conservative with fuel and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, that means that you're gonna
Speaker 1: be spending more time on the service of Mars than
Speaker 1: your average rover project is to outlast. They often exceed projections,
Speaker 1: and I think part of that is just being conservative
Speaker 1: with projections so that way, should the worst happen, it's
Speaker 1: not as it's not as a big a blow. Like
Speaker 1: if you have very specific parameters and you get that
Speaker 1: approved for your project and then you go beyond it,
Speaker 1: everyone's happy. If you set very specific parameters and you
Speaker 1: don't make those, everyone gets upset. So you want to
Speaker 1: be conservative with what you can achieve and hope that
Speaker 1: the situation is such that you can continue to operate
Speaker 1: long after the planned into the project has coming on um.
Speaker 1: But with humans, you know, we would be stuck there essentially,
Speaker 1: is what what it really boils down to, and it
Speaker 1: would mean that we'll be able to do a lot
Speaker 1: more science in that time. Yeah, okay, so let's say
Speaker 1: that there is a good benefit to taking humans to Mars.
Speaker 1: As we've just established that there may very well be
Speaker 1: who's talking about going these days. We've mentioned Mars one,
Speaker 1: maybe we should focus on them for a bit. Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: so Mars one this is like a you know, I
Speaker 1: don't I want to be fair, I want to be objective,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be snarky. That being said, Mars
Speaker 1: one thing makes me think of a circus act. It's
Speaker 1: like if P. T. Barnum were we're arranging a trip
Speaker 1: to Mars. That's that's the implication I get. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just too cynical, It's it's quite possible. But the premise
Speaker 1: behind Mars one is is got some showmanship behind it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will say that they're having read a lot of
Speaker 1: their materials, they sound extremely optimistic in a way that
Speaker 1: slightly confuses me. So so then again, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: always trying to encourage scientific ventures and optimism on this show.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't want to throw a wet blanket
Speaker 1: on anybody and say don't try. But the best thing,
Speaker 1: the best thing we can say here is that even
Speaker 1: if Mars one does not ultimately succeed in their endeavor,
Speaker 1: they will at least in some way a contribute to
Speaker 1: our understanding of the difficulty of getting the Mars right.
Speaker 1: So no matter what, we're gonna learn something. Now, what
Speaker 1: we learned might not be, you know, how to get
Speaker 1: to Mars. It might be hell not to get to Mars.
Speaker 1: But let's hope that maybe they've got this planned out
Speaker 1: way better than we can anticipate. Here's the pitch, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's bracket all the wet blankets stuff right now. Try
Speaker 1: not to be a bummer. Just what are they talking about.
Speaker 1: The pitch is they want to create a permanent colony
Speaker 1: on the service of Mars, meaning that there's no necessary
Speaker 1: plan to get people back, So anyone who wants to
Speaker 1: be part of this has to be prepared that this is,
Speaker 1: you know, potentially a one way ticket. Uh. They have
Speaker 1: crowd funded and crowd sourced a lot, so they they're
Speaker 1: essentially kind of holding auditions to be astronauts that would
Speaker 1: participate in this, narrowing it down to a certain pool.
Speaker 1: And then here's where the showman thing comes in. They
Speaker 1: want to have essentially a reality television show that has
Speaker 1: them settle on the final list of astronauts who will
Speaker 1: be attempting this um, including alternates in case one of
Speaker 1: the top picks is not able to make it this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they also want to have essentially like a reality television
Speaker 1: experience while the astronauts are in training and preparing for
Speaker 1: what they would eventually be doing UM, and that they
Speaker 1: would raise money through various means like trying to get
Speaker 1: people to invest, crowdfunding, selling merchandise, and this television series
Speaker 1: would also be part of the way that they would
Speaker 1: plan to finance the trip. Keeping in mind, like I
Speaker 1: said at the top of the show there, their estimation
Speaker 1: of the cost is six billion dollars for those first four.
Speaker 1: They do plan on doing this in stages, so it's
Speaker 1: not like they would immediately launch four people into space
Speaker 1: and say good luck. UM. The first stage would involve
Speaker 1: actually doing some demonstration missions to make sure that they
Speaker 1: could get to Mars safely, that they would be able
Speaker 1: to set up a communication satellite to help facilitate communication
Speaker 1: between the colony and back here on Earth. But in general,
Speaker 1: the plan is to send human beings to Mars by
Speaker 1: they would actually land in so the year would change
Speaker 1: over here on Earth between when they launched him when
Speaker 1: they landed on Mars, and then the six you would
Speaker 1: have a second group before joining the first before that
Speaker 1: you would actually send up several missions where rovers would
Speaker 1: land on the surface of Mars. You would also send
Speaker 1: up cargo, including the habitats that people would be living
Speaker 1: in the rovers. Their responsibility would be to prepare the
Speaker 1: landing site, really preparing the habitat site, so that astronauts
Speaker 1: would have a place to kind of check in, you know,
Speaker 1: after their long road trip. They have their own little
Speaker 1: Mars motel, the check in UH. Like Joe was saying,
Speaker 1: this is the approach where you would the rovers would
Speaker 1: theoretically dig UH and bury these habitats so that the
Speaker 1: soil would provide the protection against solar radiation and cosmic radiation,
Speaker 1: so that the UH, the astronauts would have a safe
Speaker 1: place to stay in between doing science out on the
Speaker 1: surface or working within the context of the habitats. They
Speaker 1: would have to grow their own food UM, so there
Speaker 1: would be they would be bringing plants along with them
Speaker 1: to UH to grow in one of those habitats. The
Speaker 1: food the plants they grow would also help provide some
Speaker 1: of the oxygen they would need, although they would have
Speaker 1: to generate more oxygen by extracting UH possibly water from
Speaker 1: the soil of Mars and then using electrolysis to separate
Speaker 1: that out into hydrogen and oxygen. Ah. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things you have to take into consideration.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are a lot of of steps to this.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of things that have to happen
Speaker 1: for this to work. Um. So they also have to
Speaker 1: produce you know, not just the water, but the oxygen,
Speaker 1: the food. Uh, they would end up being there forever probably,
Speaker 1: I mean, unless Mars one came up with a plan
Speaker 1: for creating a return ticket. See that's super tricky because
Speaker 1: not only do you have to have something that can
Speaker 1: get all the way to Mars Land safely, it then
Speaker 1: has to be able to launch back off of Mars
Speaker 1: and come back to Earth. Um. Now, some of the
Speaker 1: other plans involve ways of generating fuel while on Mars,
Speaker 1: which helped get around that because otherwise you just have
Speaker 1: to carry twice as much fuel. Well not twice as much,
Speaker 1: but you get what I mean. You have to carry
Speaker 1: enough fuel to get two Mars and then you have
Speaker 1: to have enough left over to get back. So it's really,
Speaker 1: like you said, really ambitious, really aggressive, really optimistic, and
Speaker 1: uh uh, you know, I don't know what what people want.
Speaker 1: NASA have to say about this. I don't know what
Speaker 1: their opinions are of this particular initiative, but based upon
Speaker 1: the plans I've seen, which are much more kind of
Speaker 1: methodical and um, you know, they're they're looking further ahead
Speaker 1: than as the first date to send people to Mars.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to put words in their mouths,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine that most of them feel like
Speaker 1: it is a very aggressive and very optimistic approach. Some
Speaker 1: might say, uh, some might go so far as to
Speaker 1: say unrealistic. That's that's the way I feel about it.
Speaker 1: It just seems like, based upon what we know of
Speaker 1: the challenges of getting there and landing and making sure
Speaker 1: people are safe. I mean, we're assuming here that the
Speaker 1: approach will actually work and that everyone would be alive
Speaker 1: and and maintain living conditions on Mars. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a that's an enormous endeavor. So, but they're They're
Speaker 1: not the only ones, right. There have been other private proposals.
Speaker 1: There's actually one from Dennis Tito, right, yeah, Inspiration Mars Foundation,
Speaker 1: which Dennis Tito has been to space. Right he was
Speaker 1: was he the first space tourist. I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was the first one. But he was a key
Speaker 1: was let me look it up right here, right Well,
Speaker 1: I'll talk about what he was doing while you look
Speaker 1: that up. So yeah, he talked about According to glance
Speaker 1: at Google results, he was the first space tourist. There
Speaker 1: we go. He has proposed a manned fly by of Mars,
Speaker 1: originally set for two thousand eighteen because as again you're
Speaker 1: talking about when Earth and Mars are are aligned well
Speaker 1: enough to to do this with the least amount of fuel. UM.
Speaker 1: Now it's been adjusted to one, which would be the
Speaker 1: next time that this would work. It would be a
Speaker 1: five and one day mission for two crew members, a
Speaker 1: man and a woman aboard a modified Ryan spacecraft. Uh.
Speaker 1: It would just orbit Mars and then come back. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't land on the surface of Mars, so fighting here
Speaker 1: in one days to go all the way out and
Speaker 1: all the way back. UM. And originally he had hoped
Speaker 1: to raise this money through philanthropic efforts to have people
Speaker 1: donate money to it. UM I think I think one
Speaker 1: of the costs they estimated was around two billion. But
Speaker 1: again they're not talking about landing on the planet. They're
Speaker 1: just talking about flying by and coming back. So those
Speaker 1: costs are largely in the stuff you have to have
Speaker 1: in the capsule keep everybody alive, and the fuel costs obviously. Um.
Speaker 1: But he went to look to Congress to get additional funding.
Speaker 1: But that's when the government said, UM, yeah, no, we
Speaker 1: will let you have access to all the experts that
Speaker 1: we know endlessly. You can talk your head off to him,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to sign a check. We're not
Speaker 1: gonna give you any money. And he said that he
Speaker 1: was not willing to um to go ahead with this,
Speaker 1: to ask for money from more investors until there was
Speaker 1: an official mission on the books, like there was like
Speaker 1: this is going to happen, this is the date of
Speaker 1: the launch, etcetera. But on the flip side, no one
Speaker 1: wants to put a mission on the books if it
Speaker 1: hasn't been funded already. So you're in a catch twenty two, right,
Speaker 1: you can't he's not gonna ask for He says, I
Speaker 1: don't want to ask people for money for something that
Speaker 1: may not ever happen, because no one ever gives me
Speaker 1: to go ahead. Meanwhile, they're saying, well, we can't give
Speaker 1: you the go ahead until you can prove you can
Speaker 1: pay for it. So it's it's kind of this, this
Speaker 1: sort of stalemate that we're in right now. Then there's
Speaker 1: the boldly Go Institute. Obviously, so they put the split
Speaker 1: infinitive right in the name, paying tribute to Star Wars.
Speaker 1: I guess, except no, it wouldn't be split. It's like
Speaker 1: a severed infinitive with no too, and it obviously wouldn't
Speaker 1: be Star Wars at a Star Trek. That was a test.
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't even pick up. No, that's fine, I'm
Speaker 1: sure I did that specifically just to tweak listeners. I
Speaker 1: do know the difference. My parents wrote books for Star Trek,
Speaker 1: so um. Anyway, this nonprofit has a plan to send
Speaker 1: a spacecraft in an orbit around Mars, and this case
Speaker 1: it would do be another kind of fly by mission,
Speaker 1: but it would also scoop up some of the dust
Speaker 1: from Mars atmosphere and return to Earth. Because so far,
Speaker 1: the stuff we have studied from Mars, it's all been
Speaker 1: rovers that have analyze the stuff on the surface and
Speaker 1: then send the data back to us. Right, it's not
Speaker 1: like we've got Martian rocks that have been collected and
Speaker 1: brought back. We haven't brought anything back. This would be
Speaker 1: a change to that. So that's kind of cool. Uh.
Speaker 1: The type of mission would be a sample collection for
Speaker 1: investigation of Mars, also known as skim because they're skimming
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. That's cute, But it's skim with the CEA.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like scum or or sim Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: private ventures. We've talked about them. What's the deal with NASA?
Speaker 1: What are they saying these days? Everybody wants to know. Well, first,
Speaker 1: let's let's look back at the plan, the one that
Speaker 1: supposedly would have cost four hundred fifty billion dollars, not
Speaker 1: according to NASA itself. Right, Well, NASA didn't put a
Speaker 1: budget to it. They were saying this is what they
Speaker 1: this is what the proposed plan is. They didn't go
Speaker 1: so far as to say here's how much it would
Speaker 1: cost the Space Exploration initiative. It laid out an incredible plan,
Speaker 1: like it kind of makes Mars one seem quaint in comparison. Um. So,
Speaker 1: their plan was to build a thousand ton Mega ship
Speaker 1: in orbit at the International Space Station. Thousand tons and
Speaker 1: it is capable of carrying a thousand tons of cargo,
Speaker 1: so enormous, right, talking like like we've talked about per
Speaker 1: pound launch costs before which in the past, Well, in
Speaker 1: this case they're talking about building it, still have to
Speaker 1: launch it. Yeah, you'd have to. You'd have to launch
Speaker 1: all the materials. But it has to be it has
Speaker 1: to be capable of carrying a thousand tons. It doesn't
Speaker 1: itself have to weigh a thousand tons. You have to
Speaker 1: be misunderstood, you, Yeah, it's the the old way of
Speaker 1: describing ships, like it's a sixty ton frigate. Well, that
Speaker 1: would mean it could carry cargo up to sixty tons,
Speaker 1: not that itself weighed sixty tons. Anyway, it would um
Speaker 1: it would be this enormous vessel that would take astronauts
Speaker 1: to Mars. It would land on the surface. Part of
Speaker 1: that vessel would be able to take off back from
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars to head back towards Earth. The
Speaker 1: final part of the plan was using Venus to slingshot
Speaker 1: around Venus, because it would actually be closer to get
Speaker 1: to Venus at that point than back to Mars. Slingshot
Speaker 1: around Venus to get to that final leg back to
Speaker 1: Earth and this land. Yeah, that's total Star trek right
Speaker 1: uh at Star Trek four voyage home. Anyway, that was
Speaker 1: kind of once once you've got people estimating, like, well,
Speaker 1: based upon the the enormity of this plan, it would
Speaker 1: cost you four billion dollars whatever, even if that were
Speaker 1: just a number pulled out of the air. Yeah, well Congress.
Speaker 1: Congress's reaction was essentially saying that's way too expensive and
Speaker 1: we're not gonna fund any of it. So there's some
Speaker 1: people who have said that this initiative actually caused more
Speaker 1: harm than good, because what essentially did was tell politicians, hey,
Speaker 1: this is going to be so expensive that you're never
Speaker 1: going to get the approval for it, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: we just won't support it at all of them. So
Speaker 1: it makes it harder to sell it in the future
Speaker 1: because you've already presented like this enormous, this enormous package,
Speaker 1: and they've said, no, we can't. You know, we've already
Speaker 1: established we're not gonna pay for that. Couldn't they just
Speaker 1: sell this under the guys of starting a war on Mars?
Speaker 1: Well again, you know, it's hard to it's hard to
Speaker 1: to mention it, it's hard to promise things that haven't
Speaker 1: been developed yet. But it is true that any time
Speaker 1: we were to if we were to take that plan,
Speaker 1: there's so much that we would have had to advance
Speaker 1: in order to make it possible that there would have
Speaker 1: been enormous benefits in multiple industries. But it's hard to
Speaker 1: to say these things that don't yet exist and we
Speaker 1: cannot anticipate are totally going to be due to this project,
Speaker 1: and therefore it's going to pay for itself. That's that's
Speaker 1: like it's too nebulous, right, you can't really sell that. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So what's the new plan? Much more methodical? Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you were to read the release that's on NASA's
Speaker 1: website that's all about traveling to Mars, it really focuses
Speaker 1: most on asteroids. Going to asteroids. First step, it is
Speaker 1: the first step part of this would be capturing and
Speaker 1: moving an asteroids. So actually relocating an asteroid and uh,
Speaker 1: either an asteroid or part of an asteroid. Some asteroid
Speaker 1: mining companies have already talked about this. Actually, instead of
Speaker 1: just going to an asteroid where we find it orbit
Speaker 1: and then coming back with the materials, they've talked about
Speaker 1: finding a real small one just bringing it straight to
Speaker 1: Earth to maybe orbit the Moon or orbit the Earth.
Speaker 1: And in fact, this is what NASA proposes, is to
Speaker 1: bring the asteroid into a lunar orbit so it orbits
Speaker 1: the Moon. And this would provide a testing ground for
Speaker 1: a lot of approaches and technologies that would be necessary
Speaker 1: for us to send people to Mars and have them
Speaker 1: be safe so they in order for us to be
Speaker 1: able to one capture the asteroid to move it, we
Speaker 1: would need to help develop more approaches for things like propulsion.
Speaker 1: A big development would be in solar electron propulsion. That's
Speaker 1: essentially an ion drive. It uses solar energy to convert
Speaker 1: into electricity to generate ions. It emits these ions and
Speaker 1: that's what creates the thrust. So it's a low power thrust.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it's not like it gives you the sudden zoom.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be thrust back into your seat,
Speaker 1: you know, light speed style or or ludicrous speed style,
Speaker 1: depending upon your sci Fi of choice. But it's the
Speaker 1: kind that can continuously allow you to accelerate in the
Speaker 1: the wonderful uh medium of space. And it also is
Speaker 1: a low energy propulsion system. It means you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to carry as much fuel. Um, you know, you'd have
Speaker 1: to have enough to do certain maneuvers, and you'd have
Speaker 1: to have enough to you know, launch a vehicle into space,
Speaker 1: but then once you're in space, you wouldn't need tons
Speaker 1: of fuel to get around. You can use this too
Speaker 1: in theory any way to get around. So it would
Speaker 1: require developments in that. It would require developments improvements in
Speaker 1: space suit technology um as well as the capsule technology,
Speaker 1: because the environment of lunar orbit is different than just
Speaker 1: if you're in low Earth orbit. You're getting to the
Speaker 1: extremes of the magnetosphere. You are more susceptible to things
Speaker 1: like solar radiation and cosmic radiation, so you have to
Speaker 1: build that stuff into making this project work. So essentially
Speaker 1: what they're saying is we want to go to Mars.
Speaker 1: The first step to going to Mars is manipulating these asteroids,
Speaker 1: which could be a huge benefit to us for multiple reasons,
Speaker 1: and what we learn as we do that will help
Speaker 1: us get on get the next step, which is to
Speaker 1: go to Mars. So if we sell this idea of
Speaker 1: the asteroid first, that step one, yeah, because it is
Speaker 1: very methodical, right, It's instead of just saying we want
Speaker 1: to go to Mars and here's what's going to take
Speaker 1: to get there, it's saying we want to be able
Speaker 1: to manipulate asteroids. This has enormous potential benefits for us
Speaker 1: in the future, including being able to get a resources
Speaker 1: that we just can't get here on Earth easily, So
Speaker 1: that's an easier sell. And then once you have established
Speaker 1: all that and say, hey, look at all the stuff
Speaker 1: we learned, look at all the technology we developed as
Speaker 1: a as a result of having this goal. This is
Speaker 1: stuff we can apply to going to Mars, then you
Speaker 1: can sell that idea. So it is interesting that you know,
Speaker 1: there's this whole thing about let's go to Mars, and
Speaker 1: then as you read it, it's all about asteroids. A
Speaker 1: little on there about Mars itself, because I think NASA
Speaker 1: has has I think they're a little wary of trying
Speaker 1: to make too big a goal too quickly and and
Speaker 1: make it seem like it's it's unreachable, where they say, no,
Speaker 1: it's totally reachable, but we have to concentrate on the
Speaker 1: specific steps so that way we can get to our destination. Well,
Speaker 1: I think space exploration is kind of like what the
Speaker 1: mayor of Amity says in the movie Jaws. He says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he says, you know, you say Barracuda. Everybody says what
Speaker 1: you say, shark, then you've got a panic on your hands.
Speaker 1: And it's right. I think the same thing is sort
Speaker 1: of true in space. This asteroid plan to me sounds
Speaker 1: very smart, very useful. But if you say asteroid, everybody
Speaker 1: says huh what, But you say Mars, then they know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. The public becomes much more susceptible
Speaker 1: to your pitch. It's interesting. So in one sense, you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: if we say this, if we frame this as this
Speaker 1: is our our roadmap to Mars, you get and it
Speaker 1: actually is part of the I'm not saying it's like
Speaker 1: a diversion. Well, I just mean it's interesting because if
Speaker 1: you present it to the public as this is our
Speaker 1: roadmap to Mars, the public is, oh, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: If you present it to the to the government saying,
Speaker 1: look at this practical use of technology that could benefit
Speaker 1: us in the future, Oh and we could also get
Speaker 1: to Mars, and it's like it's it's like you're using
Speaker 1: the same strategy, but you're framing it in two different
Speaker 1: ways depending upon your audience, right, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: It's it's very savvy actually, um, anyway, it's gonna mean
Speaker 1: that we're going to see lots of different improvements, not
Speaker 1: just in technology, but in approaches, things like how do
Speaker 1: we develop stuff that is uh, maintainable and reparable out
Speaker 1: in space by astronauts because a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that exists right now, you know, International Space Station. Obviously
Speaker 1: you have to stuff that's reparable by astronauts because you
Speaker 1: can't bring that back to Earth to fix it. But
Speaker 1: things like space suits haven't really changed that much over
Speaker 1: the decades. So in order to repair a space suit,
Speaker 1: you generally have to bring it back. Then you have
Speaker 1: experts who maintain it or do repairs or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then it can be sent back up into space. Obviously,
Speaker 1: for something that's a long term mission, you know we're
Speaker 1: talking about maybe uh, if you're talking about landing and
Speaker 1: spending time there and coming back, it might be nine days.
Speaker 1: That's you know, that's a long time to spend out there.
Speaker 1: You obviously need to have equipment that can be maintained
Speaker 1: and repaired by people when it needs to be. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't just say, well, I guess I'll just live
Speaker 1: with that for two and a half years. Who needs oxygen?
Speaker 1: You know, obviously you need to have ways of addressing that.
Speaker 1: And it's also true that whatever tech they develop for
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff will ultimately need to be useful
Speaker 1: on Mars, because the stuff that's useful in space is
Speaker 1: not necessarily ideally suited for what's gonna what they're gonna
Speaker 1: encounter on Mars. Right, So what your encounter in micro
Speaker 1: gravity is different than what you encounter in a thirty
Speaker 1: eight percent Earth's gravity environment. So these are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that they have to address and challenges they
Speaker 1: have to meet in order for a NASA trip to
Speaker 1: Mars to be feasible. So to me, it's really interesting,
Speaker 1: like they may even incorporate some elements of plans like
Speaker 1: Mars Direct. It's not like a a project to send
Speaker 1: people to Mars independent of NASA. It's more of a
Speaker 1: proposal saying, here is a way that we could do
Speaker 1: this that would be UH, that would not be economically unfeasible,
Speaker 1: and would address a lot of the issues that UH
Speaker 1: that are that come up as concerns in a trip
Speaker 1: to Mars. So it may be that the future real
Speaker 1: plan to go to Mars from NASA incorporates a lot
Speaker 1: of those elements. Totally, We'll have to see, so The
Speaker 1: cool thing is there are tons of resources online if
Speaker 1: you want to read all about NASA's plans about Mars,
Speaker 1: the incredibly thorough research that's been done to the feasibility
Speaker 1: of a MANDA Mars mission. There there are huge documents online.
Speaker 1: We looked at several of them. There are more than
Speaker 1: a hundred pages long for several of these that are
Speaker 1: very interesting, uh, extremely thorough. There also, the Mars Direct
Speaker 1: Initiative has a great website where you can learn all
Speaker 1: about the proposed plan. Mars One has a website that
Speaker 1: uh will either fill you with optimism or leave you
Speaker 1: scratching your head, like like it does with with us. Uh.
Speaker 1: So uh, There's there's lots of stuff online where you
Speaker 1: can read more about this. But ultimately, I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think when it comes down to it is the
Speaker 1: question of is it is it in fact a good
Speaker 1: idea to pursue the goal of sending people to Mars. Joe,
Speaker 1: what is your take? I wouldn't want to rush to it,
Speaker 1: especially not if you can't find a good way to
Speaker 1: make it safe for multiple reason. I mean, number one, obviously,
Speaker 1: you just don't want people dying on Mars or on
Speaker 1: the way to Mars. I mean, that's horrible, But even
Speaker 1: apart from that tragedy in itself, I can see that
Speaker 1: being a blow to exploration in the future. Um, if
Speaker 1: you have a tragedy on the first major mission to Mars,
Speaker 1: I can see public support for continued exploration being much lower. Sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we saw that with previous tragedies in
Speaker 1: the space industry, where things projects get get shelved indefinitely,
Speaker 1: sometimes to the point where they're never brought back because
Speaker 1: in the duration between the tragedy and when everything was
Speaker 1: given the all clear, it lost the support it needed
Speaker 1: to continue. Yeah. So I am very in favor of
Speaker 1: sending people to Mars, but I think it's something that
Speaker 1: we need to be very sure we can do before
Speaker 1: we try to do it. Um, I'm not as I guess,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not as bullish on this as I am
Speaker 1: about a lot of things on space exploration, just because
Speaker 1: of that problem, like the fact that we need to
Speaker 1: be very careful and and the asteroid thing could actually
Speaker 1: teach us a lot there. Yes, I see, I think, Um,
Speaker 1: I feel that it would be great to really pursue
Speaker 1: the goal of landing humans on Mars. Uh because the
Speaker 1: the benefits we stand to gain in advances in science
Speaker 1: and technology, as well as inspiring future generations to go
Speaker 1: into those fields, you know, various fields like engineering, science, whatever.
Speaker 1: I think that would be incredibly beneficial to us as
Speaker 1: a whole, even if we ultimately came to the decision
Speaker 1: that we're putting off an actual man mission to Mars
Speaker 1: because we just don't we don't have the infrastructure in
Speaker 1: place to make it a safe uh project, or at
Speaker 1: least within the excel upable levels of risk. I think
Speaker 1: that just having it as a goal for something to
Speaker 1: strive for will provide a lot of incentive to people
Speaker 1: to innovate in various ways. And so for me, I
Speaker 1: think it's incredibly important that we at least attempt to
Speaker 1: send people to Mars. Maybe you know, maybe that actual
Speaker 1: the actual pressing the button and launching the rocket into space,
Speaker 1: that to me is actually less important than than having
Speaker 1: that goal there, so that people have something that is
Speaker 1: all right, I know what I want to achieve, How
Speaker 1: is the best way to achieve it? Because that's what's
Speaker 1: going to specifically focus a lot of innovation, And like
Speaker 1: I said, we all stand to benefit from that in
Speaker 1: ways that we cannot anticipate, and maybe the next commonplace
Speaker 1: technology that revolutionizes some aspect of consumer life comes from
Speaker 1: discoveries made in this project. That to me is that
Speaker 1: means that there's a real value to this that goes
Speaker 1: beyond Even if you don't care about science. If you
Speaker 1: have you just want a better Panini press, it might
Speaker 1: come from Mars. It could. I will say that anyone
Speaker 1: listening to this, if they don't care about science, I
Speaker 1: don't know how they found the show because uh boring, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were like, you know, I like to have a
Speaker 1: way of punishing my kids when they act up in
Speaker 1: the back of the car. So I'll turn you guys on.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think most of you guys are
Speaker 1: probably really in twenty minutes of photonics, I think most
Speaker 1: of you are really into into science, and therefore you
Speaker 1: are you probably have a similar mind. You might you
Speaker 1: might have even stronger opinions. You may be thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to have the money on the table to
Speaker 1: send people up asap because X, Y and Z. If
Speaker 1: you have those kind of opinions, if you have strong
Speaker 1: thoughts one way or the other, maybe you think manned
Speaker 1: space missions are ultimately not the way to go, and
Speaker 1: you disagree with what Joe and I said, I really
Speaker 1: want to hear what your thoughts are, so you can
Speaker 1: share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, or on Google Plus.
Speaker 1: Our handle at all three of those locations is f
Speaker 1: W Thinking and We'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this topic in the future of technology,
Speaker 1: I visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by
Speaker 1: Toyota Let's Go Places