Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome tough Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, my evil
Speaker 1: twin bad weather friend. He always wants to start when
Speaker 1: I want to begin. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Jie McCormick.
Speaker 1: I don't usually ask, but I want to ask this time.
Speaker 1: What was that? That's that's the song by Evil Twin By.
Speaker 1: They might be giants. You go to them a lot,
Speaker 1: don't I do? They? Admittedly I am an enormous thing
Speaker 1: might be giants fan. Now we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: some twins today, but I am under the distinct impression
Speaker 1: that not a one of these two guys is evil. No, no,
Speaker 1: that neither of them appeared to be evil as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell. The one has a mustad not
Speaker 1: well there at times he has a mustach, and we've
Speaker 1: got a story about that later. So we're talking specifically
Speaker 1: about NASA's twin study. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: we were going to set the ground here a little bit.
Speaker 1: We've talked in previous episodes that space. You know that
Speaker 1: that big black thing up in the sky is trying
Speaker 1: to kill you where most of the everything is most
Speaker 1: of everything that's not us, that's out there it's trying
Speaker 1: to kill us. It's yeah, yeah, our earth does a
Speaker 1: really good job of protecting us from deadly, deadly space. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's it's about as harsh an environment as you
Speaker 1: can get to. Uh uh, and and it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of effort to get there actually, But at any rate,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that can kill you
Speaker 1: in space, some of which are pretty immediate, like the
Speaker 1: lack of oxygen. That'd be a big one. We need
Speaker 1: that also pretty regularly. Yeah. I was actually talking earlier
Speaker 1: today about someone who was asking me, Hey, does tonightus
Speaker 1: in your ear bother you all the time? I said,
Speaker 1: only when I think about it, and you're making me
Speaker 1: think about it. It's kind of like when you think
Speaker 1: about breathing, and then you get to a point when
Speaker 1: you think about breathing that you worry you will never
Speaker 1: stop thinking about breathing. Oh no, Jonathan, Can I be
Speaker 1: pedantic and say we recently had a listener right in
Speaker 1: and tell us to stop pronouncing tenitas tenitas and pronounce
Speaker 1: it tend us because the listener said that is how
Speaker 1: it is pronounced. Well, that's funny because it's not the
Speaker 1: way that the guy who was telling me about my
Speaker 1: tenitas was pronouncing it, and he was a doctor. But
Speaker 1: it could totally be wrong at any rate. So there
Speaker 1: are some other concerns besides the immediate ones that will
Speaker 1: kill you right away. Uh, there's radiation. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of radiation out in space, different types of radiation, and
Speaker 1: some of which is potentially extremely harmful to humans. You're
Speaker 1: in a low gravity environment, which is precisely the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that human beings did not evolve in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: low low gravity environment means that you can lose muscle
Speaker 1: mass as well as bone density. I mean, there's some
Speaker 1: some long term effects that can easily be very detrimental
Speaker 1: if you are out there for any good length of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Astronauts spend a lot of time on the exercise machines
Speaker 1: just trying to stave off this physical de kay, And
Speaker 1: it doesn't work entirely, No, it's it's at best it
Speaker 1: slows it. Yeah. It also does fun things like reshape
Speaker 1: your eyeballs. Yeah, that's a good one. Makes you taller.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that a little bit too. I've got
Speaker 1: a fun fact about that. Interesting. So NASA has been
Speaker 1: studying the effects of space on living, breathing human beings
Speaker 1: for decades, right, so that's not anything new. But but
Speaker 1: you know, there's a problem with it, which is that
Speaker 1: you can never know exactly how somebody's health would have
Speaker 1: looked had they not gone into space. Yes, this is
Speaker 1: the problem we talk about with like weather control, because
Speaker 1: you can never tell if it would have rained without
Speaker 1: the weather control either. Right, so what do you do?
Speaker 1: I mean, you send someone up in space, maybe they
Speaker 1: catch a really bad cold, and you aren't really sure
Speaker 1: if that was you know, if being in space made
Speaker 1: that easier for that to happen. How can you tell sure?
Speaker 1: Because a lot of what we're learning about about genetics,
Speaker 1: like the more we dig into the human genome, the
Speaker 1: more we realize that a person's very specific makeup and
Speaker 1: body chemistry has so much to do with how they
Speaker 1: with how they deal with environments. Yeah, so, if you
Speaker 1: want to follow the scientific method, the ideal thing to do,
Speaker 1: if you could, would be to take two exactly identical
Speaker 1: humans and send one into space and keep the other
Speaker 1: one on Earth. But those never exist, Joe, where would
Speaker 1: we find such people? Oh, identical twins. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: exactly what has happened. We have just recently seen one
Speaker 1: identical twin, Scott Kelly, come back to Earth and rejoin
Speaker 1: his his fellow identical twin, Mark Kelly here on the surface.
Speaker 1: I think only one of the twins is identical. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but one identical twin and the unidentical twin
Speaker 1: met up with each other, of course I'm kidding. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh so they and NASA this was a great opportunity
Speaker 1: for NASA to say, let's take a look at how
Speaker 1: the two compare and contrast after a prolonged exposure to
Speaker 1: Oulter Space for one of them, while the other ones
Speaker 1: remains here on Earth. So, then, being twins, I assume
Speaker 1: they were born on the same day. Yes, I mean technically,
Speaker 1: if it were really close to midnight, they could be
Speaker 1: on two different days, or if it was a really
Speaker 1: long delivery. Yeah, yeah, that possibility. But they were both
Speaker 1: born in February twenty first, nineteen sixty four, Mark and
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly. So here's some little little bit of background
Speaker 1: information on the two. Mark Kelly attended the United States
Speaker 1: Merchant Marine Academy and received a bachelor's degree in Marine
Speaker 1: Engineering and Transportation UH. Much later, he earned a master's
Speaker 1: degree in aeronautical engineering at the US Naval Postgraduate School. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly attended the State University of New York and
Speaker 1: received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He also pursued
Speaker 1: post graduate degrees. He got a master's degree in aviation
Speaker 1: systems from the University of Tennessee. And they would both
Speaker 1: wind up being pilots in the Navy YEP. So between
Speaker 1: their initial college and their postgraduate work, they both joined
Speaker 1: the Navy, and they both became pilots. Scott became a
Speaker 1: pilot in nineteen eighty seven and Mark came a pilot
Speaker 1: in ninety nine, and in they both graduated the U.
Speaker 1: S Navy Test Pilot School. And if you know anything
Speaker 1: about test pilots, and you take a look at where
Speaker 1: a lot of the pilots from the astronaut UH class
Speaker 1: come from, Yeah, the the US Navy Test Pilot School.
Speaker 1: That's a large representation. They tend to have the right stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're not a if you're not trying
Speaker 1: to become a top gun, you're trying to become an astronaut.
Speaker 1: So at any rate. In nineteen they also both began
Speaker 1: training to become astronauts, So Scott Kelly was the first
Speaker 1: one to go into space, becoming the pilot for the
Speaker 1: Space Shuttle mission STS one oh three. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: It was the Discovery. It was a good one. This
Speaker 1: was the mission sent up to make repairs to a
Speaker 1: very important piece of equipment in orbit, the Hubble space telescope. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you recall, the Hubble had a couple of problems
Speaker 1: that needed to be adjusted after Yes, now I could
Speaker 1: be wrong about this, but I believe that that is
Speaker 1: the farthest anybody has gone from Earth since the Moon,
Speaker 1: since the last Moon mission would have been this would
Speaker 1: have been the mission to repair the Hubble. That sounds
Speaker 1: correct to me. I don't happen to know that because
Speaker 1: the hubbles in a higher orbit space then yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: the International Space stations at a lower orbit. I think
Speaker 1: you're correct. So here's hoping if we're wrong, people will
Speaker 1: let us know. At any rate. Mark would then get
Speaker 1: his first chance to go into space in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: so a few years after Scott had gone up and
Speaker 1: Mark piloted the Endeavor for mission STS one oh eight,
Speaker 1: which brought astronauts up to the International Space Station, and
Speaker 1: both brothers flew on and commanded several other missions to space.
Speaker 1: They both were involved in them, never together, but they
Speaker 1: both were working in on various missions throughout the years.
Speaker 1: At one point they were actually going to be the
Speaker 1: first siblings to be in space at the same time.
Speaker 1: They were going to both be Scott I think, was
Speaker 1: going to be up on the International Space Station. Mark
Speaker 1: was going to command a launch, a launch and launch
Speaker 1: into space, so they would both be in space at
Speaker 1: the same time. But uh, various delays pushed back the
Speaker 1: launch for um for Mark's mission to further back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, and it pushed it beyond the
Speaker 1: time when Scott was returning from the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: Uh and and Mark wound up retiring out of the
Speaker 1: astronaut business. Yeah, he did so because of a truly
Speaker 1: terrible moment in US history, one that I'm sure a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners will remember. So he almost didn't
Speaker 1: go on this, this two thousand eleven mission at all
Speaker 1: after the delay because his wife, Gabrielle Gifford's, who was
Speaker 1: a representative for the state of Arizona in the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives here in the United States. Was one of
Speaker 1: the victims of mass shooting. She was having a meeting
Speaker 1: with constituents and a parking lot at a supermarket and
Speaker 1: uh a man open fired into the crowd, killing a
Speaker 1: few people and hitting Gifford's in the head. She survived
Speaker 1: and made a remarkable recovery. Everyone talked about how amazing
Speaker 1: it was that she was able to recover so quickly. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Although after after he did return from that mission, he
Speaker 1: he wound up retiring in order to help her with
Speaker 1: her continued recovery. Yes, she actually was able to attend
Speaker 1: the launch of his mission. She was able to recover
Speaker 1: enough to be there for that. And then a few
Speaker 1: months after he returned from his mission, he said, I'm
Speaker 1: leaving the Navy, I'm leaving the the Space program, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be with my wife. So that was
Speaker 1: at that point. Mark ends up retiring from the space program.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean he has to be done helping
Speaker 1: with space research. That is correct, he can do. He
Speaker 1: actually is helping with space research by not going into space.
Speaker 1: He's the control twin. So how does the twin study work?
Speaker 1: It was part of another project, the one year mission,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit of a misnomer. Uh. There
Speaker 1: were two people who were part of this. One was
Speaker 1: Scott Kelly and the other was a Russian cosmonaut, and
Speaker 1: the idea was to send these two people up into
Speaker 1: space for three forty days. That's not exactly a year,
Speaker 1: which is that's why it's a misnomer. Yeah, three days
Speaker 1: and not a full year. But the purpose was to
Speaker 1: study the long term effects of space on the human body,
Speaker 1: as well as a ton of other research projects which
Speaker 1: I'll talk about in a second. So part of this
Speaker 1: is NASA's plan to try and build, uh build a
Speaker 1: path for us to get to Mars, to have human
Speaker 1: explorers go to Mars. Not an easy path, not an
Speaker 1: easy path at all, because, as we've said said in
Speaker 1: previous episodes, NASA's approach to a Martian mission would be
Speaker 1: about thirty months long. And that's partially because getting from
Speaker 1: Earth to Mars takes several months, and getting from Mars
Speaker 1: to Earth back to Earth takes several months. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: in order for you to conserve fuel so that you
Speaker 1: don't have to have as heavy as spacecraft, you have
Speaker 1: a better chance of success. Your mission is slightly less
Speaker 1: horrifyingly expensive. Yeah, and you are also spending the least
Speaker 1: amount of time in the most dangerous of the environments.
Speaker 1: Not that we remember, Mars is trying to kill you too,
Speaker 1: it's just not trying to kill you as hard as
Speaker 1: space is. You can dig a hole on Mars and
Speaker 1: that's that's a little bit better than being in space.
Speaker 1: So also Mars has a little bit of gravity. Yes,
Speaker 1: At any rate, the the trip you would want to
Speaker 1: launch your your spacecraft when the orbits of Earth and
Speaker 1: Mars are at their most advantageous, where it's going to
Speaker 1: require the least amount of distance to travel from one
Speaker 1: to the other. And by the time you make that
Speaker 1: trip once the two planets are no longer in that configuration,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna have to wait a significant amount of
Speaker 1: time for them to come back round to that so
Speaker 1: you can make the return trip with that same smaller distance,
Speaker 1: which is why the overall mission would last thirty months.
Speaker 1: In order for us to get there, we have to
Speaker 1: know what are the long term effects of space on
Speaker 1: the human body, so that we can make sure that
Speaker 1: the people we send there have the best chance for success.
Speaker 1: And and we're not going to put people's lives in danger. Uh,
Speaker 1: because or not at least not more danger than the
Speaker 1: otherwise would be just going into space in the first place.
Speaker 1: So very important type of mission. So at any rate,
Speaker 1: the two went up, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was they were representing a joint operation between the
Speaker 1: Russian Space Program and NASA, and the idea is that
Speaker 1: they're going to share all information and results with one
Speaker 1: another to benefit mankind. Uh, in an effort to get
Speaker 1: to Mars and beyond in the future. Yeah. And this
Speaker 1: is the longest that anyone has been up for a
Speaker 1: NASA mission, but not for a Russian mission. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: there's a cosmonaut named Valerie Polyakov who spent nearly four
Speaker 1: D thirty eight days. I think technically it's four D
Speaker 1: thirty seven points seven days space aboard the Mere Space
Speaker 1: Station in my r space station, but that obviously was
Speaker 1: not a NASA mission, So that was the longest anyone
Speaker 1: has spent in space. In fact, Uh, Polyakov said upon
Speaker 1: returning that, in his opinion, we could totally go to
Speaker 1: Mars um. Also, there's some great, possibly apocryphal stories about
Speaker 1: some of the things he did. As soon as he
Speaker 1: got out of his space capsule. But that's for another time.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, it was was that statement part of
Speaker 1: the space badness? Or well he he seemed to be
Speaker 1: like about as stereotypical a likely think of your stereotypical
Speaker 1: big bear of a Russian. Those are the kind of
Speaker 1: stories attributed to this guy. Like at any rate? Okay, um,
Speaker 1: so so what so what specifically? Uh? Was a study
Speaker 1: trying to look for Well, it's part of NASA's Human
Speaker 1: Research Program or HRP, and some of it was just
Speaker 1: really basic stuff like how do you provide for the
Speaker 1: long term nutrition of astronauts going out into deep space?
Speaker 1: Because for shorter missions it's not I mean, obviously you
Speaker 1: want them to have enough calories and the right nutrients
Speaker 1: to be able to do their job, but you're not
Speaker 1: thinking necessarily for long term people. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of like the spatial missions lasted about a week to
Speaker 1: ten days, so you didn't have to worry about that much.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about long term, you guys start thinking
Speaker 1: about other stuff that can set in, like scurvy, So
Speaker 1: you actually have to sit there and think, all right, well,
Speaker 1: how do we make sure that they get enough vitamin
Speaker 1: C so that they are not going to be prone discurvy,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff. They also wanted to study things
Speaker 1: like fluid redistribution in space, I mean fluid within the
Speaker 1: human body. We've talked about that, Joe. I remember when
Speaker 1: we talked about space foods. You talked about how a
Speaker 1: lot of people like the spicy shrimp cocktail partially because
Speaker 1: the fluid redistribution makes you feel kind of like you're
Speaker 1: congested and have a cold, and so it's hard to
Speaker 1: smell and taste things. So they wanted to study that
Speaker 1: into in greater detail and see if there were ways
Speaker 1: of of of working with that. How how dangerous could
Speaker 1: it be? Could it actually impact things like your vision
Speaker 1: over time? That's really important stuff to know. Everything does
Speaker 1: impact your vision right now, Yeah, because of the aforementioned
Speaker 1: eyeball reshaping. Right. So they also wanted to find out
Speaker 1: ways to ward off stress and fatigue. Obviously, morale is
Speaker 1: going to be a very important thing for long distance missions,
Speaker 1: where you're going to be feeling increased sense of isolation
Speaker 1: from everybody who isn't on your crew. Uh, you're gonna
Speaker 1: feel the opposite of that for everyone who is on
Speaker 1: your crew. Because, as Scott Kelly has said, it's it's
Speaker 1: tricky to find a way to fall asleep on these
Speaker 1: missions because you're so close to everyone else if they
Speaker 1: have to be, if they're on a task and you
Speaker 1: have a sleep shift, being able to sleep next to
Speaker 1: someone who's working is challenging. So you have to design
Speaker 1: your spacecraft in such a way to try and limit
Speaker 1: the kind of noise and other interference you might encounter
Speaker 1: while someone else is trying to do his or her job.
Speaker 1: So the things that I wouldn't have even really thought about,
Speaker 1: like oh, yeah, I guess you know, that could be
Speaker 1: a huge impact on your mental and physical health over
Speaker 1: the long term. So they wanted to look into that
Speaker 1: as well, and uh, they did tons of other science
Speaker 1: besides the various impact on the bodies. They actually did
Speaker 1: four d fifty different investigations aboard the International Space Station
Speaker 1: over that three days stay, and only eighteen of those
Speaker 1: four fifty were actually about human reactions and functions. Everything
Speaker 1: else was various exploratory science, like what happens when you
Speaker 1: put worms in space? You get what does happen? Dune happened.
Speaker 1: It didn't really get a lot of coverage, but I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure the thing I made up happened. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you made up dune. You're Frank Herbert. Look, I don't
Speaker 1: like to toot my own horn, especially when I'm lying
Speaker 1: like crazy. So let's just move on with the twin study. Okay, excellent.
Speaker 1: What about that twin study? So this was the more
Speaker 1: specific study that was encapsulated in that one year mission, right,
Speaker 1: the idea being that, hey, we've got an identical twin
Speaker 1: here on Earth who must face unrelated to anything else
Speaker 1: that I've lied about so far. Now we have this
Speaker 1: one uh one guy on Earth and his identical twins
Speaker 1: in space. So we and compare the two. We can
Speaker 1: do a whole bunch of different measurements before the mission,
Speaker 1: We can monitor people throughout the mission, we can do
Speaker 1: a bunch of studies after the mission is over. Compare
Speaker 1: and contrast the two and figure out what if any
Speaker 1: variables we can eliminate from certain outcomes. Are there certain
Speaker 1: things that we can be fairly certain are due to
Speaker 1: the exposure to the microgravity environment being on the International
Speaker 1: Space Station for three forty days. Are there somewhere we
Speaker 1: can't be absolutely certain, or you know, in science, nothing
Speaker 1: is ever an absolute certainty, but which ones do we
Speaker 1: feel very strongly about versus which ones our possibility, but
Speaker 1: we don't have enough information to really make a determination
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. So it involves ten investigation teams
Speaker 1: who are all working together to look at the differences
Speaker 1: between the two twins, And these ten teams are sharing
Speaker 1: all their work with one another, and their findings create
Speaker 1: integrated studies. So it's kind of like an integrated study
Speaker 1: with ten many studies inside it, many being M I
Speaker 1: N I, although each one is actually pretty impressive and exhaustive.
Speaker 1: Um so, because the twins share the same genes, the
Speaker 1: hope is that the investigations will give us those insights
Speaker 1: as to the real effects of space. So those ten
Speaker 1: investigations fall into four broad categories. Uh. The first is
Speaker 1: human physiology, So how does space affect the various tissues
Speaker 1: and organs of the human body, including the heart, the brain,
Speaker 1: and your muscles. Then you have behavioral health. How does
Speaker 1: being in space for a year affect a person's ability
Speaker 1: to reason and to make decisions? How does it affect
Speaker 1: that person's perception and alertness? Does this include testing the
Speaker 1: ingestion of spice? I never should have brought up to
Speaker 1: the third one, especially with me in the room, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: come on, you know me. The third category is microbiology.
Speaker 1: So how did the two different diets that the very
Speaker 1: you know, the guy on Earth and the guy in space,
Speaker 1: how did their diets and the various stressors that they
Speaker 1: experienced throughout that year affect the organisms in their respective guts. This,
Speaker 1: this one is really interesting to me. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: especially important because we we keep learning that that your
Speaker 1: microbiome has a lot to do with other bodily processes,
Speaker 1: like like your immune system function and your mental health. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that the stuff in your guts can affect whether
Speaker 1: or not, you know, how you're feeling, like not just
Speaker 1: how you're feeling in your stomach, but how you're feeling
Speaker 1: upstairs up in the brain. It's it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of crazy how much we see, you know, how
Speaker 1: big an influence we see down there is. Suddenly going
Speaker 1: with your gut has a much stronger implication than did before.
Speaker 1: And then the fourth category is molecular and oh mix
Speaker 1: on a genetic level, what effect does space have on
Speaker 1: a person? Which genes switch on or off in space
Speaker 1: due to various stressors? Everything from microgravity to radiation exposure
Speaker 1: to just the sense of isolated shouldn't and how much
Speaker 1: of that does that change in other ways, like what
Speaker 1: sort of proteins and metabolites are in the body. UM.
Speaker 1: Usually you would find that out through collecting various samples
Speaker 1: like urine and sweat and blood, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: There's also a related question here about whether time and
Speaker 1: space ages you faster. Uh and and this is due
Speaker 1: to recent research that's pointed out the length of your
Speaker 1: telomeres as an indicator of your health and your youth.
Speaker 1: Telomeres being sort of like like caps on the end
Speaker 1: of our chromosomes. I think we've talked about them on
Speaker 1: the show before. They sort of protect our DNA from
Speaker 1: deterioration and other wiggy stuff disease issues, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: UM and space radiation could potentially affect your telomeres, So
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that they're going to be
Speaker 1: looking at UM. But they're they're also going to do
Speaker 1: like a like a whole genome analysis, which is just
Speaker 1: so nerdy and terrific. I'm really excited about pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I I will be very curious to hear about the
Speaker 1: differences between the two genomes once this is all done. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: So each individual investigation under those four categories, all of
Speaker 1: them have really long technical names, so I thought going
Speaker 1: through all of them would at some point you just
Speaker 1: started to tune out because you're hit hearing a lot
Speaker 1: of technical words. But here's an example. Uh, Proteomic assessment
Speaker 1: of fluid shifts and association with visual impairment and intracranial
Speaker 1: pressure and twin astronauts. That's rolls off the tongue. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are very important studies, but like I said, if
Speaker 1: I were to list all of them by name, I'd
Speaker 1: have to take a break. One of the investigations ties
Speaker 1: into another topic we covered not that long ago, and
Speaker 1: that would be vaccines. So that particular investigation is called
Speaker 1: characterizing Personalized changes in baseline immune abnormalities and Stimulated Immune
Speaker 1: response in the presence of a benign trivalent and activated
Speaker 1: flu vaccination. Yeah. I told you they were long titles.
Speaker 1: So the purpose of that one, obviously is to study
Speaker 1: the long term effects of spaceflight on the immune system,
Speaker 1: very important for us to know if we're ever going
Speaker 1: to and people to explore or colonize Mars for example. Now,
Speaker 1: the really neat thing about this to me, beyond just
Speaker 1: the idea that this gets us a little closer to
Speaker 1: our ability to go to Mars, is that we could
Speaker 1: stand to see incredible benefits from this research well outside
Speaker 1: of the space industry. Uh. And that's something that we
Speaker 1: talked about on this show all the time, the idea
Speaker 1: that research and science stands to give us incredible benefits
Speaker 1: that we cannot necessarily anticipate when we first start engaging
Speaker 1: in that investigation. Although this is one that NASA was
Speaker 1: specifically looking towards, they were thinking that this approach would
Speaker 1: allow them to help advance the study of personalized medicine,
Speaker 1: and that's one of those things that is a great
Speaker 1: promise of the future. We have a certain amount of
Speaker 1: personalized medicine today, but the idea of being able to
Speaker 1: essentially cater medical care to an individual well based upon
Speaker 1: their genetics and their body chemistry is incredibly powerful as
Speaker 1: opposed to the one size fits some approach that medicine
Speaker 1: often follows, at least traditional medicine. Of course. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: also just just on another like like warm fuzzy kind
Speaker 1: of level, uh, that this research is bringing together dozens
Speaker 1: of universities and facilities around the US and the world
Speaker 1: in order to look into this kind of stuff, which
Speaker 1: is which is just all scientist buddies. Yeah, it's neat,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider how the initial space race was
Speaker 1: fueled by the opposite, right, So it's nice to see
Speaker 1: it's nice to see collaboration as opposed to competition. Uh.
Speaker 1: So what have we actually learned so far? Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: we have learned from Scott Kelly that a trip to
Speaker 1: Mars is doable in his opinion. That's that's him stating that,
Speaker 1: based upon his experiences, he thinks that we have the
Speaker 1: capability of sending people to Mars right now. It just
Speaker 1: as a question of making that choice. So that's very um,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's really ambitious. Obviously, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people at NASA would argue that there needs to
Speaker 1: be some more intermediary steps before we take that particular jump.
Speaker 1: But it is very encouraging to see that from a
Speaker 1: person who actually went through and experience this three and
Speaker 1: forty day immersion in space. Uh. He also said that
Speaker 1: in order to keep himself motivated, he would focus on
Speaker 1: tasks and in his downtime he read a lot of email,
Speaker 1: He watched TV and movies. Uh, he would read just
Speaker 1: in general. He would also take lots of photos of Earth,
Speaker 1: and he said that normal activities helped keep him from
Speaker 1: feeling too isolated. It was really important, like the having
Speaker 1: scheduled tasks helped, but also just keeping himself occupied when
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing a specific investigation was really important. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it just starts to get to you about how isolated
Speaker 1: you are from almost all of the rest of humanity.
Speaker 1: So um, also with something else we we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: he ended up growing, or at least ended up being stretching,
Speaker 1: stretching by about depending upon the source you read, I've
Speaker 1: seen up from one and a half to two inches,
Speaker 1: but one half inches is the source that NASA itself said,
Speaker 1: which is about four centimeters while he was up in space.
Speaker 1: But since that time hasn't been very long since he
Speaker 1: got back. It's been like eight or nine days as
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast, right since that time,
Speaker 1: he's already returned to his normal height. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: related to a fact one of these factoids that that
Speaker 1: I bet you've heard before, the one about how when
Speaker 1: you wake up in the morning you are taller than
Speaker 1: you were when you went to bed at night, and
Speaker 1: I wondered if that was true. But I actually looked
Speaker 1: it up, and it is true that this is a fact. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I read um a. There was a two thousand six
Speaker 1: article in the medical journal Journal Scoliosis that said, the
Speaker 1: effects of gravity on the upright human posture are powerful.
Speaker 1: Individuals are as much as twenty five millimeters taller five
Speaker 1: millimeters something. Come on, that's not that much. It says
Speaker 1: millimeters taller in the morning than in the evening as
Speaker 1: a result of compressive forces bearing down all day, and
Speaker 1: astronauts grow growing quotation marks by nearly seventy five millimeters
Speaker 1: when released from the force of Earth's gravity. So uh so,
Speaker 1: I thought that was really interesting. Not only is that
Speaker 1: fact true, but it's the same reason that you're taller
Speaker 1: when you get out of bed in the morning. Is
Speaker 1: why Scott Kelly was taller when he got back from space.
Speaker 1: He didn't have gravity compressing him vertically all day. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not like they put in space lifts. Well, he
Speaker 1: was well, he was aboard the I s s uh So.
Speaker 1: Most of what there is to be learned through this
Speaker 1: study has not yet happened, as the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: the research is ongoing, so we don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of results that we can give right now. Maybe perhaps
Speaker 1: in a future episode we can revisit this topic and
Speaker 1: talk about some of the specific was results that have
Speaker 1: been publicly revealed by NASA, But right now that's still
Speaker 1: ongoing research. Uh. And of course we also always have
Speaker 1: to remember that even once we get that research, there
Speaker 1: are variables that might be in play that have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with one person being on Earth and one
Speaker 1: person being in space. Uh. You can't, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't always be certain that, uh it's one particular thing
Speaker 1: that lead to a result unless you've got an extremely
Speaker 1: carefully controlled experiment. And this experiment is awesome and it
Speaker 1: stands to give us a lot of really useful information.
Speaker 1: But it's not the most carefully controlled experiment I've ever
Speaker 1: read about. But it's really exciting stuff. Um, and I
Speaker 1: promised a kind of a fun story about mustaches at
Speaker 1: the beginning, and here he goes about they can be Yes,
Speaker 1: I have my own mustache that will be twirling, Sue.
Speaker 1: And so I've got mustache wax at home to actually
Speaker 1: apply to it. I might do that, Souf byself West
Speaker 1: let's find out. I find out on Saturday. So anyway,
Speaker 1: this specific mustache story relates to the fact that when
Speaker 1: it came time for Scott to launch into space back
Speaker 1: in March two thousand fifteen, his twin brother Mark showed
Speaker 1: up at the launch facility, but he was clean shaven,
Speaker 1: and Mark usually wears a mustache, so that threw everybody off.
Speaker 1: Because Scott is typically clean shaven, Mark typically wears a mustache.
Speaker 1: Mark comes in with no mustache. People look at Mark
Speaker 1: and they suddenly think, oh, my gosh, Scott isn't in
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and we're right now, why Scott not? Oh
Speaker 1: it's Mark. Yeah. According to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Mark
Speaker 1: fooled everyone because the mustache was how they just told
Speaker 1: the two apart. Now, if you look at pictures of
Speaker 1: the two back when Mark was where sporting his mustache. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are other notable differences, but isolated, you're only seeing
Speaker 1: one of the two twins. I could easily see how
Speaker 1: you would make that mistake and have a moment of
Speaker 1: pure panic. So I thought that was really cool. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I love the At least the article I read
Speaker 1: made it sound as if this was entirely planned by Marcus.
Speaker 1: To prank, you have to pull a prank on NASA,
Speaker 1: and I love that kind of sense of humor. It's
Speaker 1: also something you typically find with test pilots. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that also like any time that you can
Speaker 1: prank NASA, you're having a pretty good day. So this
Speaker 1: research is really cool. But I've got a proposal for
Speaker 1: the next thing they should do. Okay, what's that. The
Speaker 1: next stage after the twins study for a year in
Speaker 1: space should be the twin paradox study for a year
Speaker 1: at light speed. Yeah, I guess not at light speed.
Speaker 1: Light speed. You get to work on the near light
Speaker 1: speed engine. I foresee one minor stumbling block before we
Speaker 1: are able to carry out that investigation, and I'll start
Speaker 1: working on recruiting some twins. Yeah. Now, if you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: the twin paradox would be an interesting thing to study
Speaker 1: in reality. It's it's sort of been a an experiment
Speaker 1: conducted in thought. In the math of it seems to
Speaker 1: work out, but it would be interesting to see if
Speaker 1: it happens in reality. Of course. The idea is that
Speaker 1: if you due to the effects of relativity, the time
Speaker 1: dilation effects of relativity. If you took two twins, put
Speaker 1: one of them in the spaceship and had to go
Speaker 1: near the speed of light for a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time and then come back to Earth, theoretically the one
Speaker 1: living on Earth should have aged more than the one
Speaker 1: on the space ship. Right time for each twin would
Speaker 1: have seemed to have passed at the same rate, but
Speaker 1: in reference to one another it would be at different rates. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the the twin on Earth would think
Speaker 1: that the twin aboard the spacecraft was living in slow motion,
Speaker 1: and the twin aboard the spacecraft would think the twin
Speaker 1: on Earth was living fast forward, but individually they would
Speaker 1: each experience time as we normally do. That's one of
Speaker 1: those crazy things about relativity. Well, if you have crazy
Speaker 1: things to tell us, don't just tell us the really
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