Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, Peter, and Welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the future and says, don't want to argue.
Speaker 1: I don't want a debate. I don't want to hear
Speaker 1: about what kind of food you hate. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and our other host, Lauren Big Obama
Speaker 1: is not with us today. She's having a horrible dystopian
Speaker 1: allergy experience. Yeah, we should do one about the future
Speaker 1: of allergies. Actually, that's not a bad idea. I was
Speaker 1: just going to kid about that, but that's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting topic. We'll put it on the list. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll make sure that she's, you know, got plenty
Speaker 1: of any histamines in her system before we record that one,
Speaker 1: but not so many that she's asleep, because there's no
Speaker 1: point really. But today we wanted to talk about something
Speaker 1: that is a pretty cool topic, the idea of one
Speaker 1: of the big challenges in space travel. You knew it
Speaker 1: was going to come to space travel because here and
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, space travel is one of those things we're
Speaker 1: absolutely obsessed with, you know, so, But Joe, why don't
Speaker 1: you pay me a picture with your words and tell
Speaker 1: me what you think of as some of the biggest
Speaker 1: challenges in space travel. Well, let's see. First of all,
Speaker 1: i'd have to say space pirates. That's a big one, geck.
Speaker 1: And I'd have to say the fact that space smells
Speaker 1: really bad. In space, no one can smell you. Third, though,
Speaker 1: I'd say there are tremendous costs to getting the stuff
Speaker 1: we need in space up there. Yeah, you might be wondering, like, um,
Speaker 1: why don't we have all of those Star Trek space
Speaker 1: stations going all around the Earth and colonies on the
Speaker 1: Moon and Mars. And there are several explanations, but one
Speaker 1: of the most basic is just it's really expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it costs huge amounts of money to have a space launch.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know we've talked about in the past before.
Speaker 1: We've given kind of the round number, the one that
Speaker 1: everybody quotes, which is ten dollars per pound. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's more expensive than that really good cut of meat
Speaker 1: that you can find at your grosser's. Um. Yeah, ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a pound is a huge amount of money.
Speaker 1: But the unicorn meat, I don't know, say, think geeks
Speaker 1: sells unicorn meat for much less than that, but uh,
Speaker 1: it comes in a can like spam, but ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per pound. So we we thought for a moment,
Speaker 1: we thought, well, why we should look into this, because
Speaker 1: we have quoted this figure many many times ourselves. Right, well,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily wrong, but it's not a specific number either.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a rough historical estimate, right, and and
Speaker 1: beyond that, it's it's very vague because this is ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to get stuff into space. But we're into space, right,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. So basically, if you look back
Speaker 1: in the history of us taking stuff from the surface
Speaker 1: of the Earth up to orbit or beyond it, it's
Speaker 1: been about ten tho dollars per pound on average, if
Speaker 1: you if you average together the stuff that costs more
Speaker 1: and the stuff that costs less. Well, what influences those.
Speaker 1: One of those is the kind of rocket we use,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about that in a second. But
Speaker 1: of course another one is simply where you're taking this stuff.
Speaker 1: So going to a low Earth orbit destination like the
Speaker 1: International Space Station is going to be cheaper than say,
Speaker 1: taking a satellite way out to geo stationary orbit where
Speaker 1: it stays at the same line of longitude and revolves
Speaker 1: around the Earth in synchronization. Right. And also it would
Speaker 1: matter about whether or not the spacecraft you're sending up
Speaker 1: is expected to come back, because then you know you
Speaker 1: need to believe it has crew that's gonna be yeah,
Speaker 1: because yeah, you want them eventually to come back, and
Speaker 1: so you need to factor in the amount of field
Speaker 1: that's going to be necessary to make the return trip.
Speaker 1: And that's just talking about orbit. Of course. Now once
Speaker 1: you're talking about going to another planet or to a moon,
Speaker 1: then you add in a whole other lay of complexity
Speaker 1: because then you're talking about landing vehicles and hopefully if
Speaker 1: it's a crude mission you're talking about relaunching off of this,
Speaker 1: I mean adding more and more layers of complexity and
Speaker 1: more and more support requirements. Right. We can talk about
Speaker 1: the support mass that's required on these missions in a bit,
Speaker 1: But the other thing is what rocket you're using. So
Speaker 1: on on the low end, so far, we have something
Speaker 1: like SpaceX's Falcon nine, right, And I should add that
Speaker 1: the figures I've seen, we're actually priced per kilogram, so
Speaker 1: per unit of mass as opposed to per unit of weight,
Speaker 1: and then I did the conversion to UH cost per
Speaker 1: pound that way, Well, what is it, Jonathan, give us
Speaker 1: the numbers. So for the Falcon nine the cost per
Speaker 1: pound and and it was about a thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 1: sixty seven dollars and seventy three cents, so significantly less
Speaker 1: than ten thousand dollars per pound, but still well above uh,
Speaker 1: you know what most of us be able to pay
Speaker 1: to send a pound of stuff up into space. And
Speaker 1: there's also the Atlas five, which would be closer to
Speaker 1: the higher end. That's closer to about six thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per pound. But all of this is rough estimation, and
Speaker 1: it's mostly estimated based on the cost of a launch
Speaker 1: compared to the cargo capacity of you know whatever device,
Speaker 1: like how much mask can a rocket propel up into orbit?
Speaker 1: So it's it's taking all that into consideration. It's almost
Speaker 1: like looking at the pound for pound best fighter. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to take all this stuff, and there are
Speaker 1: a lot of factors that may not be entering into
Speaker 1: this really rough estimation that could wildly change that amount, right. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things that could wildly change it, of course,
Speaker 1: is creating much cheaper, newer versions in the future, which
Speaker 1: people like Elon Musk have been predicting is going to
Speaker 1: happen for a while now. The he said, you know,
Speaker 1: Musk says, the private spaceflight industry is going to be
Speaker 1: able to get prices much cheaper. The first major milestone
Speaker 1: is going to be a launch cost of a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per pound. And Musk predicted in an interview with
Speaker 1: NPR in two thousand eleven that the Falcon Heavy, which
Speaker 1: is the booster rocket that's the successor to the Falcon nine.
Speaker 1: They're working on it now. The Falcon Heavy is like
Speaker 1: the Falcon nine, Like I think it's something like three
Speaker 1: Falcon nine's grouped together. It's it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's it's enormous.
Speaker 1: I know, it's big. I mean, we'll see if that
Speaker 1: achieves a thousand dollars per pound. He predicted that a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, but we don't know yet. It's
Speaker 1: scheduled for launch in so I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 1: And of course, in the same NPR interview, must acknowledge
Speaker 1: that even a thousand dollars per pound is still too expensive.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's so expensive. What we really need to
Speaker 1: do is get things under a hundred dollars per pound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even then we still have some limitations to take
Speaker 1: into right, because no matter how cheap you get it
Speaker 1: in terms of the dollar or as you spend right,
Speaker 1: you still have physical limitations. Exactly, you have a physical
Speaker 1: limitation of how much cargo of particular rocket can boost
Speaker 1: into orbit. And depending upon what your mission is, you
Speaker 1: may not be able to physically take with you using
Speaker 1: a single rocket at any rate the materials you need
Speaker 1: to carry out your mission. Let's say that your mission
Speaker 1: is to go to Mars and spend some time there
Speaker 1: and come back now, because the way the Martian orbit
Speaker 1: and the Earth orbit are, there's really a very limited
Speaker 1: window of when you want to launch to Mars in
Speaker 1: order to spend the least amount of fuel to get there.
Speaker 1: And then once you're at Mars, you have to wait
Speaker 1: for a long time for that situation to come back
Speaker 1: round for you to be able to get back to
Speaker 1: Earth under the same conditions. Otherwise you have to have
Speaker 1: even more fuel because the distance between Earth and Mars
Speaker 1: will be greater, right, because they don't orbit the son
Speaker 1: at the same rate. Yeah, I mean, there's no point
Speaker 1: at in launching at a time when you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to make the shortest route to Earth, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to launch off of ours and say, well,
Speaker 1: here's the problem. By the time we get to Earth,
Speaker 1: we it will effectively be on the other side of
Speaker 1: the Sun from where we are now, So we're going
Speaker 1: to need five times the amount of fuel we would
Speaker 1: need or more. Really, I was just throwing five times
Speaker 1: in there out of random, right. So they are basically
Speaker 1: mass constraints on top of the dollar constraints. And one
Speaker 1: of those is that in the paper we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about in this episode points this out, so you'll
Speaker 1: hear about that in a second. But they say for
Speaker 1: every unit mass of payload launched into space, the mission
Speaker 1: as a whole requires nine nine units of support. So
Speaker 1: for every pound of payload the stuff you're taking, we
Speaker 1: require nine pounds of food, water, oxygen, fuel. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it gets even more complicated, right because when you're talking
Speaker 1: about fuel, like, you can't just add fuel into the
Speaker 1: mixture and say, oh, now, adding fuel increases your weight,
Speaker 1: so you need to add more fuel. You have to
Speaker 1: find the right balance point where the fuel you have
Speaker 1: is going to be sufficient to get that weight out
Speaker 1: into space. It's kind of like, why doesn't my car
Speaker 1: have a gallon gas tank? Yeah? Yeah, because by that
Speaker 1: time that your car would be so heavy as to
Speaker 1: not be able to move. Um, I mean yeah, you
Speaker 1: never need to refill it because it would never consume
Speaker 1: enough fuel. You never get anywhere your battery would diverse.
Speaker 1: But then we look at things like permanent colonies, which
Speaker 1: have their own issues. Right, even if you if you
Speaker 1: figured out the amounts you need to get people to
Speaker 1: where they're going. Let's say you know you're going to
Speaker 1: establish a Martian colony. Obviously you can't expect to have
Speaker 1: everything you ever will ever need on board that same rocket.
Speaker 1: It's just not you know that spacecraft is not going
Speaker 1: to have the cargo capacity necessary to carry a lifetime
Speaker 1: supply of everything. Unless you're big cargo requirements are effectively infinity.
Speaker 1: Then you can't do that, right if you if you're
Speaker 1: going to be a cynical, cold hearted person and say, well,
Speaker 1: technically there is lifetime supply on there, because after the
Speaker 1: supply runs out, so well, the lifetime that's not what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. We're talking about being able to
Speaker 1: perpetuate a colony. Be able to keep it going. So
Speaker 1: clearly you can't just expect to be able to carry
Speaker 1: everything with you, nor in the case of something like Mars,
Speaker 1: can you expect to get regular resupplies from Earth. Because
Speaker 1: it takes months for a ship to get from Earth
Speaker 1: to Mars, and that's under ideal conditions. That's when we're
Speaker 1: talking about Earth and Mars being lined up so that
Speaker 1: you are spending the least amount of effort to get
Speaker 1: out there. Then even then you're you're talking about uh,
Speaker 1: like an eight month trip and then more than a
Speaker 1: year before it comes round again. So that's not really
Speaker 1: a viable option either to say like, oh, we'll just
Speaker 1: send uh supplies from Earth to Mars indefinitely in order
Speaker 1: to keep them going. So that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why we talked about the big challenges that the Mars
Speaker 1: one Colony faces if they want to really be successful.
Speaker 1: So here's where we get to the point of the episode.
Speaker 1: What if we could create a way where a low
Speaker 1: mass initial investment in a space mission's cargo could create
Speaker 1: a self replenishing system for the things we need in
Speaker 1: order to colonize other planets or survive in a long
Speaker 1: space journey, right, So, in other words, what if we
Speaker 1: could bring something with us that could continue to manufacture
Speaker 1: the basic things we're going to need, either on the
Speaker 1: journey there or if it's a uh, if it's a
Speaker 1: mission like the one we mentioned about Mars, where you
Speaker 1: land on the planet, you are actually able to make
Speaker 1: the stuff that you need in order for that mission
Speaker 1: to be a success and for everyone to survive and
Speaker 1: to get back to Earth safely. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: where synthetic biology comes in. Yeah, this is really an
Speaker 1: interesting idea. Synthetic biology is defined as the design and
Speaker 1: construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems, and the
Speaker 1: redesign of existing natural biological systems for useful purposes. So
Speaker 1: it's sort of like engineering with life. Yeah, it's saying,
Speaker 1: look at these various organisms, usually micro organisms in the
Speaker 1: case of synthetic biology. Look at these micro organisms that
Speaker 1: have remarkable capabilities and qualities and can survive in various
Speaker 1: environments and produce things that, with a little tinkering can
Speaker 1: come become useful stuff for us. What if part of
Speaker 1: our payload in that initial launch happens to be some
Speaker 1: of these micro organisms that we put to use, especially
Speaker 1: once we get to a place like Mars and can
Speaker 1: we realistically create you know, the basic things we're gonna
Speaker 1: need using those microorganisms converting the stuff that's already there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea here is going to space and taking along
Speaker 1: a factory that fits in a Petrie dish. Yeah. But space,
Speaker 1: of course, we should say at the outset is not
Speaker 1: the only place that synthetic biology is going to be
Speaker 1: a No, there's actually an m i T Synthetic Biology
Speaker 1: working group. Have you actually looked at this website the websites,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of cute. It's a website that includes
Speaker 1: areas of interest for the field. So the at m
Speaker 1: I T. You have a working group that meets in
Speaker 1: brainstorms about potential uses for synthetic biology and they dream
Speaker 1: big and my favorite like they have areas like yeah
Speaker 1: we expect well yeah, I mean you know why dreams small,
Speaker 1: aim for the stars. If you don't make it, you're
Speaker 1: still going to come up with something amazing with your bacteria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that they're applications include things like fabrication, computation and
Speaker 1: signal processing, materials processing, energy management, mechanics, and replication. But
Speaker 1: it also creates creates some interesting more science fiction e
Speaker 1: like applications that would have fit in with our our
Speaker 1: x men uh episodes in a way, like the idea
Speaker 1: of creating humans that can photos synthesize, so that humans
Speaker 1: would be able to get some energy through a photosynthetic
Speaker 1: chemical process similar to what you find in plants. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was not It wasn't gone into detail. It was
Speaker 1: like literally it was listed on the website, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I want to read that paper to see if you're
Speaker 1: actually paying attention. Maybe that could very well be the
Speaker 1: point of it. But the idea is that this biology
Speaker 1: would allow us to harness these processes that organisms carry out,
Speaker 1: or we could change the organisms to do something that
Speaker 1: we specifically need them to do, either genetically or through
Speaker 1: selective breeding or whatever, um, and then use those to
Speaker 1: our advantage. So really simple example that I was thinking
Speaker 1: of is a genetic alteration to a silkworm so that
Speaker 1: the silk produced is stronger and more resilient, so that
Speaker 1: you could use that silk to then make other stuff
Speaker 1: that would be useful for you. That's just a like
Speaker 1: an example polled elephant air. Yeah, I feel like you've
Speaker 1: talked about some other examples of this kind of thing
Speaker 1: on the show before, like when we talked about microbial
Speaker 1: computing and about creating microbial machines that would move tiny
Speaker 1: components in machines that like you can get microbes to
Speaker 1: spin a tiny gear. Uh. And if you would be
Speaker 1: changing the nature of these microbial life forms in order
Speaker 1: to do useful work for you, that seems like that
Speaker 1: would fit under synthetic biology, right. Yeah, in this case,
Speaker 1: the work we're mostly talking about tends to be chemical
Speaker 1: in nature as opposed to mechanical. Well, obviously that that's
Speaker 1: probably easier to do, I guess, I imagine. So I
Speaker 1: mean just getting those microorganisms to be consistent with hitting
Speaker 1: those punch cards in and out whenever they're checking in
Speaker 1: for the beginning of the day and they're checking out
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, that alone is a nightmare.
Speaker 1: They're also always just walking in front of the robot.
Speaker 1: They get beaten down every time. Yeah. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about this paper you found that really became the the
Speaker 1: lynch pen for all of the research that we've done
Speaker 1: for this topic. It's actually an incredible paper and it's
Speaker 1: and it's completely available to read. You can read the
Speaker 1: full text for free. So so it was just last week,
Speaker 1: I think it was in It was a group of
Speaker 1: authors associated with UC Berkeley and with NASA two and
Speaker 1: to each and they published a paper called Towards Synthetic
Speaker 1: Biological Approaches to Resource Utilization on Space Missions, and this
Speaker 1: was in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, and
Speaker 1: of course interface here sort of refers to the interface
Speaker 1: between different natural and applied sciences. And so the authors,
Speaker 1: which were Menezi's cumbers, Hogan and Arkin, claimed that if
Speaker 1: you're going to explore or colonize the Moon or Mars,
Speaker 1: it makes good sense to develop systems of biological production
Speaker 1: to use live organisms to transform things like available volatiles
Speaker 1: and waste products into usable resources to keep the crew
Speaker 1: members alive and able to do their work on the
Speaker 1: mission right. And ideally you would want to have organisms
Speaker 1: that could harness whatever resources are going to be available
Speaker 1: on the site you're going to Mars, for example, which
Speaker 1: would include things like carbon dioxide and nitrogen which are
Speaker 1: found on Mars. Also, ideally the outputs of those organisms
Speaker 1: will fall into a useful category of material or as
Speaker 1: an intermediate feedstock that some other microorganism will consume to
Speaker 1: produce the useful material. In other words, they actually talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, you could create a system where you have
Speaker 1: these microorganisms that take some sort of raw material that
Speaker 1: are that that you find on Mars, they convert it
Speaker 1: into a different type of material. You have a second
Speaker 1: group of microorganisms that consume that new material, they produce
Speaker 1: a third type of material, and so on and so
Speaker 1: forth until you finally get to where you want to be.
Speaker 1: Now they stress that, of course, you want to have
Speaker 1: as few intermediates in that relationship as possible because you
Speaker 1: want it to be more simple. The added complexity just
Speaker 1: means you have added payload because you have to bring
Speaker 1: more stuff with you in order to process the different materials.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it makes sense. You want to streamline your
Speaker 1: chemical assembly line, right, and you want to try and
Speaker 1: make it effective across multiple outputs. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the outputs in a little bit, because there are they
Speaker 1: identified four big ones and and you want those processes
Speaker 1: to apply to as many of those as possible. So
Speaker 1: that way, again, you are simplifying your your efforts as
Speaker 1: much as you can. Yeah. So, in the simplest possible terms,
Speaker 1: you're looking for a way to create a collection of
Speaker 1: organisms that sort of eat Martian soil and poop things
Speaker 1: that are really useful. That's pretty much it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the most useful poop in the universe. Well, at least
Speaker 1: for as far as we're concerned, And we haven't run
Speaker 1: into like, what's the what's the little nibbler on Futurama
Speaker 1: that that poops dark matter that US spaceships. We haven't
Speaker 1: run into that yet. So barring running into Nibbler, then yes,
Speaker 1: so far this is the most useful stuff. Okay, And
Speaker 1: so probably we should be fair and say, maybe not
Speaker 1: pooping in the way you and I imagine, but at
Speaker 1: least creating a byproduct. Please don't imagine the pooping now,
Speaker 1: you can't help. But what are what are the pooping,
Speaker 1: non pooping byproducts that these powerful little machines could create. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the first ones we should mention are drugs
Speaker 1: in medicine. Yeah, yeah, there are. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of drugs that we synthesize through uh, using
Speaker 1: different types of micro organisms, bacteria, fungi, all sorts of
Speaker 1: stuff that we depend upon from the natural world in
Speaker 1: order to produce drugs. Uh. You know, even if we're
Speaker 1: talking about starting off with something and then creating a
Speaker 1: purely synthetic version. We often look at nature as the
Speaker 1: first source. So you know, you hear about like um,
Speaker 1: natural cures and folk wisdom. A lot of the drugs
Speaker 1: we use really are the refined, scientifically arrived at versions
Speaker 1: of stuff that has been used in folk cures for
Speaker 1: quite sometimes. Oh sure, like we have, you know, chemically
Speaker 1: isolated the active ingredient in some piece of tree bark
Speaker 1: that acted as a pain reliever. And now you've got
Speaker 1: just just that main chemical that was actually doing the
Speaker 1: work concentrated in pill form, right in a very predictable
Speaker 1: and measurable way. Right. But now that I bring up
Speaker 1: the pill form, I do kind of wonder. We'll wait
Speaker 1: a second, why would you need to synthesize medicine in space?
Speaker 1: Because medicine doesn't really take up that much room or mass.
Speaker 1: It's not a significant amount of your payload. And it
Speaker 1: turns out there is a good reason you need to
Speaker 1: synthesize medicine and space. Yeah, and this was interesting. I
Speaker 1: did not know this until we looked at this paper
Speaker 1: that medications. You know, there are expiration dates for medications
Speaker 1: that tell you when the active ingredient is no longer
Speaker 1: going to be as efficacious as it should be. I
Speaker 1: always just assume that's a lie, But maybe that's not
Speaker 1: at all. Apparently it is not a lie. And apparently
Speaker 1: not only is it not a lie, it happens faster
Speaker 1: in space, So drugs go go bad. They they lose
Speaker 1: their efficacy, they become less effective over time and space
Speaker 1: it happens faster. It's the old radiation, isn't it. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's really the microgravity. They just start partying
Speaker 1: and then they're tired. Oh no, I'm thinking of the astronauts. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's interesting. I think it's it's a cool
Speaker 1: idea to bring along micro organism so that you can
Speaker 1: continue to create drugs instead of having to rely upon
Speaker 1: whatever stores you brought with you. Right, So, once you
Speaker 1: get to Mars, apparently it is not all that difficult
Speaker 1: to create a system where you could have microbes manufacturing,
Speaker 1: for example, a seat amnifin, which is the you know,
Speaker 1: a pain killer, right. And there are other drugs that
Speaker 1: they might be able to make too, like antibiotics, which
Speaker 1: obviously that'd be really useful in small amounts. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to if you don't run into the
Speaker 1: Mars flu every five seconds would be good too. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we would hope that whatever cold
Speaker 1: you catch on Mars is something we brought with us.
Speaker 1: And the Martian supervirus, I'd be pretty pretty sure that
Speaker 1: it would be something we brought with us. We haven't
Speaker 1: detected anything on Mars that would lead us to believe
Speaker 1: there are pathogens already there. But yes, you know you
Speaker 1: would want to be able to make this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: especially if you know again the the useful uh lifespan
Speaker 1: of it would be effective or really drastically shortened by
Speaker 1: space travel. Okay, well, let's go from a tiny part
Speaker 1: of the payload to the big cahuna. Fuel. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the big one, right. So, according to that Royal
Speaker 1: Society paper, about two thirds the entire mass of a
Speaker 1: rocket bound for Mars and destined to return to Earth
Speaker 1: would be fuel. So the more stuff you want to
Speaker 1: bring with you, the more fuel you need. And again,
Speaker 1: like we said, it's not that simple ratio. The more
Speaker 1: fuel you need, the more fuel you're gonna need to
Speaker 1: move that fuel, and you have to find just the
Speaker 1: right balance there. Uh. Now, the paper says that if
Speaker 1: we could make fuel on Mars. We could cut that down,
Speaker 1: cut down on the amount we need by a factor
Speaker 1: of two to three, which is significant. And Uh. Further,
Speaker 1: the paper goes on to say, Okay, look, there are
Speaker 1: lots of different types of rocket fuel out there, and
Speaker 1: a lot of them are really chemically quite complex, and
Speaker 1: to make them requires a long production uh process that
Speaker 1: you cannot realistically find a way of of matching using
Speaker 1: the synthetic biology. It's just not in the cards. However,
Speaker 1: there is one type of fuel that you could create
Speaker 1: that we could do it right now with synthetic biology,
Speaker 1: which would be a methane oxygen fuel. So liquid methane
Speaker 1: is something that we could produce um using micro organisms
Speaker 1: and the base I stuff that you would find on Mars,
Speaker 1: maybe bringing some stuff along with us in order to
Speaker 1: do it, because yeah, you can use hydrogen and carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide to make methane oxygen fuel. Uh. And it relies
Speaker 1: on stuff like acetogens, which are microorganisms that create acetate
Speaker 1: as a product of respiration and other microorganisms can convert
Speaker 1: the acetate into nitrogen compounds. Oh. By the way, Uh,
Speaker 1: we have acetogen's really close by us. Did you see that?
Speaker 1: They They include some of the microflora found in human feces.
Speaker 1: That's pleasant. Uh. Then you also have methanogens which can
Speaker 1: convert hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane boom. So that yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: You're gonna be careful with that stuff, right. Um, So
Speaker 1: there's also you. It was interesting you had this note
Speaker 1: here about nitrous oxide and hydrocarbons, which is currently preferred
Speaker 1: for safety and efficacy, but we're not sure how to
Speaker 1: produce it biologically. That that's a problem. So it may
Speaker 1: be stuck with the liquid methane thane fuel. But here's
Speaker 1: the really really oh right, this is you, isn't it. No,
Speaker 1: it is me. Here's the really super cool part. So
Speaker 1: the Royal Society team Ransom numbers to see how much
Speaker 1: mass we'd have to bring to Mars if we want
Speaker 1: to create a methane oxygen propellant while we're at Mars.
Speaker 1: So you'd have to take some fuel with you to
Speaker 1: launch from Earth. Yeah, we couldn't just automatically get there
Speaker 1: with you know, fuel free, right. But the the idea
Speaker 1: is either in transit or once you land on Mars,
Speaker 1: you set up a fuel production factory that consists of
Speaker 1: these microorganisms. Right. The idea being what's the bare minimum
Speaker 1: amount of fuel that we could put on a launch vehicle, um,
Speaker 1: you know, just just as a way of getting two Mars.
Speaker 1: And so they came up with a couple of different methods.
Speaker 1: One was, if we just produce oxygen on Mars, so
Speaker 1: we bring everything else we need to create methane oxygen
Speaker 1: fuel with us, but we leave the oxygen production for
Speaker 1: the when we're actually on the planet. We would need
Speaker 1: to ship seven thousand, five D twelve kilograms and methane
Speaker 1: to Mars in order to have enough to lift off again. Now,
Speaker 1: if we produce both oxygen and methane our Mars, we
Speaker 1: would need to ship just three thousand, two hundred fifty
Speaker 1: one ms of hydrogen there to fuel the production of
Speaker 1: the methane oxygen fuel while we're on the planet, which
Speaker 1: is less than half the mass of what we would
Speaker 1: need if we were only concentrate on oxygen. Now, if
Speaker 1: we want to step further and said, how about we
Speaker 1: tried to produce the hydrogen on Mars as well. And
Speaker 1: the way we would do that is we would collect
Speaker 1: water from the soil of Mars. We would evaporate the
Speaker 1: water out of the soil we would then use electrolysis
Speaker 1: to break the molecular bonds so that you get hydrogen
Speaker 1: gas and oxygen gas um. And if if we use
Speaker 1: that methodology, then we could cut it down to between
Speaker 1: two thousand, twenty one and two thousand, six hundred fifty
Speaker 1: eight kilograms. Now, remember we started with seven thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve and that was already assuming we were
Speaker 1: going to produce socks gen on Mars. That's not even
Speaker 1: like if we were talking about just pure fuel to
Speaker 1: get there and get back without ever making fuel on Mars,
Speaker 1: you start getting into huge, huge numbers, and it it
Speaker 1: quickly becomes problematic. Yeah, so this is a really interesting idea. Uh,
Speaker 1: the you know, I don't fully understand the processes, the
Speaker 1: actual like lab process. That means you're not a rocket scientists,
Speaker 1: nor am I some sort of micro organisms fuel scientists.
Speaker 1: It's not a microbiologist either. So so both of those
Speaker 1: are true, and so I think we can take them
Speaker 1: at their word for now, and so we hear response
Speaker 1: by other people in the community. So let's go to
Speaker 1: another big thing that's part of our trip and making
Speaker 1: sure that we survive, not just to get there and
Speaker 1: get back but to survive the entire way, and that's
Speaker 1: a that's some tasty yum yums, well maybe somewhat tasty.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they qualify as yum yums. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe almost numb numbs. You know. We need some sort
Speaker 1: of sustenance, however, some some barely edible, somewhat nutritious food
Speaker 1: that people can keep down while they're up there. So
Speaker 1: one of the paper talks about a resupply mission to
Speaker 1: the International Space Station. Yeah, they So they say that
Speaker 1: typically more than half of a resupply mission the cargo
Speaker 1: is food, and they specified there was one recent mission
Speaker 1: they looked at which was fifty nine percent food by weight.
Speaker 1: And that space food we're talking about, that's presumably mostly
Speaker 1: or totally dehydrated food. Yeah, you would add water once
Speaker 1: there and prepared to to eat your shrump cocktail. Mush.
Speaker 1: We had a nice long discussion about shump cocktail. But
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about space food in a minute, Okay, fair,
Speaker 1: I won't, I won't. I won't spoil it then, uh,
Speaker 1: And this is not really practical for people who are
Speaker 1: headed to Mars, where you can't get that resupply mission regularly.
Speaker 1: Like I was saying before you need to have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some way of producing food, because you're probably
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to carry all the food you're
Speaker 1: gonna need for that incredibly long mission, you know, the
Speaker 1: eight month or so flight out to Mars, the year
Speaker 1: or more that you're going to be spending on Mars
Speaker 1: before you can take another eight month flight back. That's
Speaker 1: a long time, you know. I have a question actually,
Speaker 1: which is how much food does an astronaut need? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: and I wonder how that compares to what you need
Speaker 1: on Earth because an astronaut, you know, they have to
Speaker 1: exercise constantly in order to prevent too much decay of
Speaker 1: the bones and muscles. Uh And and how does that
Speaker 1: factor into how many calories they need? Well, I can
Speaker 1: tell you that they eat about one point eight three
Speaker 1: kilograms of food per day each person. Does I don't
Speaker 1: know the caloric value of that one point eight three
Speaker 1: ms um, I don't know. Like it's just straight up
Speaker 1: pork dripping, ye, it's yeah, it's it's just pork rinds,
Speaker 1: Just bags and bags of wark grinds up on the
Speaker 1: is s s. No, like we were saying, I think
Speaker 1: most of that is going to be dehydrated packaged food
Speaker 1: that's shipped up it. You know, it's been designed by
Speaker 1: the chefs at NASA. Now I didn't. I don't know
Speaker 1: for a fact if the one point eight three kilograms
Speaker 1: of food per person per day is based on the
Speaker 1: dehydrated amount or the quote unquote wet food, because they
Speaker 1: do talk about there's a difference between dehydrated and wet
Speaker 1: in the paper, because you know, you can ship stuff
Speaker 1: up dry, add water to it to make the wet food,
Speaker 1: or you could have it all be wet food to
Speaker 1: begin with, which adds mass obviously because you've got water there.
Speaker 1: You know, the term wet food makes me think of
Speaker 1: the canned dog dog cat. So if we wanted to
Speaker 1: go to Mars, so this, this is how much we
Speaker 1: would need to take with us for an entire trip,
Speaker 1: which includes flying out there, staying on the plant, and
Speaker 1: then coming back, we need to ship ten thousand, five
Speaker 1: the eight kilograms of food to last the whole trip.
Speaker 1: That's based on six astronauts um. And that's the conservative estimate.
Speaker 1: So according to the paper Snacks No no midnight snacking.
Speaker 1: Going to the paper, about five thousands of quote vegetarian
Speaker 1: wet food end quote could come from local crops. So
Speaker 1: I imagined this would be similar to the approach that
Speaker 1: the Mars One Colony proposes, which is they want to
Speaker 1: use hydroponic farming techniques to grow food crops on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars. Really, it's probably under the surface of
Speaker 1: Mars because it's probably an underground greenhouses because there are
Speaker 1: radiation issues if you are on the surface. UM. So,
Speaker 1: according to the paper, yeah, we would still have to
Speaker 1: bring more than four thousand kilograms with us in order
Speaker 1: to UH to have the entire trip accounted for, because
Speaker 1: you know, you need to have enough food to get there.
Speaker 1: Once you're there, you can start growing food and use
Speaker 1: that to supplement it. So they said that this could
Speaker 1: also come from a different source, not just local crops.
Speaker 1: If you didn't want to go the hydro product crop route,
Speaker 1: you could grow arthur Spira plat tensis and arthur Spira maxima,
Speaker 1: which together formed voltron No, actually they become spiro Leina.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of spirolina? And not before today?
Speaker 1: So spiro Lena. Actually had had heard of this, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know much about it. Um. It's often sold
Speaker 1: as a food supplement. It's specifically sold to vegetarians as
Speaker 1: a food supplement because it is it's got a lot
Speaker 1: of proteins in it. In fact, it has like all
Speaker 1: the major amino acids are involved in a uh in
Speaker 1: in this so you you wouldn't miss out on any
Speaker 1: So vegetarians often take this as a supplement so in
Speaker 1: case they're not getting enough protein through their other parts
Speaker 1: of their diet. Um. And it's stuff that the Aztecs
Speaker 1: used to eat. It's technically a cyanobacteria that lives in
Speaker 1: tropical lakes that have happened to have a high pH level,
Speaker 1: so they need that environment really to survive. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it's sold as a food supplement everywhere also as a
Speaker 1: whole food. I mean, there are people who make cakes
Speaker 1: out of this stuff. That's what the Aztecs used to do.
Speaker 1: And uh. The only thing that really I know about
Speaker 1: that is something to take as a precautionary warning, is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't necessarily serve as a good source for
Speaker 1: vitamin B twelve, So you could suffer a vitamin B
Speaker 1: twelve shortage if you didn't have some other means of
Speaker 1: supplementing this food. Presumably they would plan ahead and either
Speaker 1: have that in other food stores or have a supplement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the supplement that's often packaged with this stuff in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, often it will say it's it's fortified with
Speaker 1: it or whatever. A lot of that doesn't end up
Speaker 1: being biologically active when you take these things. So it's
Speaker 1: actually a real problem. You need to have a good
Speaker 1: source of B twelve. But using this approach, the spirolina approach,
Speaker 1: the shipping mass for food would be cut down to
Speaker 1: two thousand three two ms uh and the mission would
Speaker 1: include bioreactors in which space travelers could cultivate the spiralina.
Speaker 1: So you'd be cultivating the scum you need for dinner. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking about cyano bacteria right here. So
Speaker 1: this is a k A blue green algae scum in
Speaker 1: the ocean that is responsible for all the lakes. But yes,
Speaker 1: well sure, yeah, there's cyanobacteria specific stuff is from lakes freshwater. Correct,
Speaker 1: you are so it would it would not be salty
Speaker 1: cyano bacteria scum. Yeah. There's no discussion about how they
Speaker 1: would augment the texture or taste of this stuff. This
Speaker 1: is purely a could we do could we achieve the
Speaker 1: goal of producing food using a synthetic biology. It's not
Speaker 1: so much a do we want to do this because
Speaker 1: you right, well, now I can see that the main
Speaker 1: advantage of this would be on a very extended journey, right,
Speaker 1: a long trip to Mars or to an asteroid or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, not so much
Speaker 1: for the Moon or something close, because those bioreactors have masks,
Speaker 1: they take up space on your ship, they have mass.
Speaker 1: You have to spend fuel to launch them out there.
Speaker 1: And if your trip is going to be a relatively
Speaker 1: short one, as it would be for a lunar mission,
Speaker 1: then uh, you know you you're not going to be
Speaker 1: producing enough food to justify it would actually be cheaper
Speaker 1: to put all the food you're going to need on
Speaker 1: that launch vehicle rather than to bring the bioreactors along
Speaker 1: if it's going to be a short trip. It's only
Speaker 1: when it's a long trip that starts to pay off.
Speaker 1: And uh, but I've had in the paper they mentioned
Speaker 1: that you could still use this on a lunar mission,
Speaker 1: specifically to test it as a proof of concept. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think it would be very important to test something
Speaker 1: like this ahead of time because, as we know from
Speaker 1: reading about the experiences of people on the I S. S.
Speaker 1: Food tastes different in space. Yeah, I mean the astronauts
Speaker 1: report this that you might you might taste a meal
Speaker 1: on Earth to try to figure out, Okay, what do
Speaker 1: what menu items do I want to have available to
Speaker 1: me when I go up on the I S. S.
Speaker 1: And you decide you like this, that and the other.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very steak, is amazing, exactly, I want
Speaker 1: I want fifty cartons very steak uboard the I S. S.
Speaker 1: And then it turns out you get up there and
Speaker 1: something's happen to your body when you're in a microgravity environment.
Speaker 1: Suddenly all these fluids that were originally in your legs
Speaker 1: and your feet and stuff flow up into your head.
Speaker 1: You get sinus congestion. It's like having a really bad
Speaker 1: cold for a while, and and even after that, supposedly
Speaker 1: that subsides somewhat after a number of weeks, but even then,
Speaker 1: they're just problems with tasting in space. It's different than
Speaker 1: it is on Earth. It's the different experience. You're in
Speaker 1: an environment that's saturated with recirculating strange smells and can't
Speaker 1: necessarily smell the food that you're trying to eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just all out of whack, basically, And and so
Speaker 1: it's strange that if you've never heard this before, be
Speaker 1: prepared for a surprise. What do you think the most
Speaker 1: popular rehydrated meal on the I S S Is? We
Speaker 1: already mentioned it earlier in the episode. It is, in
Speaker 1: fact shrimp cocktail that is so disgusting. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're talking. I don't know what you're gay. Where
Speaker 1: your problem is with this idea of it being disgusting?
Speaker 1: How is this more disgusting than any other kind of
Speaker 1: dehydrated food because it's shrimp. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: get it, though, dude, I mean, like, like like sea
Speaker 1: monkeys are dehydrated shrimp. Well, I think I think people
Speaker 1: generally acknowledge, like you know, shrimp cocktail just doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like the best thing to dehydrate and rehydrate in space.
Speaker 1: But they love it. Astronauts can't get enough of it.
Speaker 1: And I've heard I've heard it speculated that the reason
Speaker 1: they love it so much is that the cocktail sauce
Speaker 1: has a horseradish kick in it, and the spiciness of
Speaker 1: it sort of brings back the magic to your mouth.
Speaker 1: And know didn't you say there was an astronaut who
Speaker 1: asked that all of his meals be that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Now I can't remember what the person's name was, but
Speaker 1: there was somebody who ate shrimp cocktail. Just continuous morning, noon,
Speaker 1: and night. It's shrimp cocktail all the time. Um. But now,
Speaker 1: I I had said, and this was before we went
Speaker 1: into the studio, I had said that I have imagined
Speaker 1: that he landed and never wanted shrimp cocktail ever again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we'll see. But anyway, all of this is in
Speaker 1: service of the point that you definitely need to plan
Speaker 1: ahead for what things are going to taste like in space.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, this isn't trivial. Taste matters
Speaker 1: in space because morale matters in space, and if your
Speaker 1: astronauts are not getting nutritious food that's at least somewhat palatable,
Speaker 1: it can be a big problem for the mission. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when that's going to take more than a year
Speaker 1: to complete. I mean, you know, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: three months in and you're already feeling really depressed because
Speaker 1: you know the food is unpalatable to you, then you know,
Speaker 1: and you know that you've got more than a year
Speaker 1: of that food to look forward to. That's an issue,
Speaker 1: but no one thing we should point out though, is
Speaker 1: that the issues that people run into in space may
Speaker 1: not in fact be the same as those that they
Speaker 1: encounter once they're on the surface of the planet. That
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I was actually wondering about exactly
Speaker 1: that fact. So obviously, if you're traveling to Mars, a
Speaker 1: lot of this is going to be like being on
Speaker 1: the I. S. S. You know, you'll have this fluid redistribution,
Speaker 1: and so probably it will affect the way things taste.
Speaker 1: I wonder if things, if you're on the surface of
Speaker 1: Mars in a sort of buried habitat there, does your
Speaker 1: sense of taste and smell return to more like what
Speaker 1: it would have been on Earth? Or is it more
Speaker 1: like what it is in space? Well, I mean you
Speaker 1: still have is it something completely different? Would probably be different.
Speaker 1: I mean I would imagine to be kind of similar
Speaker 1: to what you encounter. And like any place where you
Speaker 1: get a lot of recirculated air, so imagine an airplane
Speaker 1: where you get a lot of recirculated air. It's the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing, because you know you're not getting
Speaker 1: any fresh air because you can't know on Mars. However,
Speaker 1: Mars does have gravity. It's it's much greater than micro gravity.
Speaker 1: You have maybe what about third the the strength of
Speaker 1: Earth's gravity. Uh, So you know, your fluid distribution would
Speaker 1: be more akin to what it is on Earth. So
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have necessarily the same sort of scinus issues
Speaker 1: that you would have in in microgravity. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: would not have to worry as much about opening up
Speaker 1: a food item and not being able to, you know,
Speaker 1: really smell it, because you know on a space in
Speaker 1: a space environment, you have to make sure you're not
Speaker 1: emitting anything that's gonna get into important equipment. Right. You can't.
Speaker 1: You can't just squirt the shrimp cocktail all over the place.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're just rough housing over aboard the
Speaker 1: I S S. You can't do that. But on Mars
Speaker 1: it sounds big of an issue, So things like the
Speaker 1: smell of food could become more of an important factor.
Speaker 1: Of course, if you're thinking, do I want to smell
Speaker 1: cyano bacteria grouped into cakes, that's a different question. I
Speaker 1: would smell like I don't know either, I've never had it.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, the whole point is, yes, you need to
Speaker 1: test this in space first and and tested on the Moon.
Speaker 1: I think that's crucial because you can't settle these people
Speaker 1: with disgusting grubbins for three years or what two and
Speaker 1: a half two and a half, so yeah, something I think.
Speaker 1: I think it's not quite two and a half. Like
Speaker 1: I remember the paper talked about being nine something days,
Speaker 1: so a two and a half to three years somewhere
Speaker 1: in between there. Yeah. So we've talked about medicine, we've
Speaker 1: talked about fuel, we've talked about food. There's one more
Speaker 1: big one that I think is very important. Now here's
Speaker 1: a good question. Let's say you're going to space, and
Speaker 1: you know there's this whole range of tools and building
Speaker 1: materials you might need, but you don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: many of them you're going to need for sure, or
Speaker 1: or maybe you just notice that some of these tools,
Speaker 1: while they would be very useful when once we get
Speaker 1: to Mars, are kind of unwieldy in shape and would
Speaker 1: be difficult to store on the way they're there, you know,
Speaker 1: volumetrically inconvenient. Why don't you just print them in space?
Speaker 1: This is an idea that's been explored and we've talked
Speaker 1: about it. On the show before three D printing for
Speaker 1: space exploration. So instead of taking up all these tools
Speaker 1: and building materials, you instead take a lump sum of
Speaker 1: printing material and then you can print the items you
Speaker 1: need once you're there. I think that makes good sense,
Speaker 1: But you can do one step even better. Don't even
Speaker 1: take the bulk materials to begin with. Take some microorganisms
Speaker 1: that can convert whatever stuff happens to be on the
Speaker 1: planet you're visiting. That will then convert that into the
Speaker 1: bio polymers that you need to print stuff. Brilliant. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: now this again could really cut down on the amount
Speaker 1: of launch mass you need for your mission. That would
Speaker 1: require the team to print out stuff that they need,
Speaker 1: and that could include things like habitats, It could include
Speaker 1: like it, it could include big stuff. And really, again,
Speaker 1: the team that was writing this paper was just looking
Speaker 1: into the feasibility, like is it possible to have a
Speaker 1: microorganism create the stuff that could potentially go into a
Speaker 1: device like a three D printer, And they found that yes,
Speaker 1: that is feasible. It doesn't mean that we can do
Speaker 1: it right now, It just means that there's no reason
Speaker 1: we couldn't pursue that as an option. Oh, bioplastics are
Speaker 1: a huge thing. Yeah. Sure, it seems totally feasible to
Speaker 1: me that you can have a microbial factory for producing
Speaker 1: the plastics you need to make a you know, slat
Speaker 1: that goes on the side of a habitat. Yeah. So again,
Speaker 1: this could really cut down not just on the bulk material.
Speaker 1: I mean again, it just it creates more room for
Speaker 1: other stuff. It means that you also have a more
Speaker 1: self sustaining mission that is capable of handling things when
Speaker 1: the unexpected occurs, like when something you had not accounted for,
Speaker 1: like a tool breaks. Then with this system you would
Speaker 1: get more of whatever raw material with the microorganisms needed
Speaker 1: to convert into biopolymer, then put that into the three
Speaker 1: D printer and print yourself a new tool whenever the
Speaker 1: old one has worn out or broken, and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about that kind of situation completely throwing
Speaker 1: the mission into jeopardy. I think that's an excellent idea.
Speaker 1: And I also want to do a little aside that
Speaker 1: you might find amusing. Okay, it's a note about academic
Speaker 1: language usage in the way people write papers, right, I
Speaker 1: don't want to denigrate their research. These guys are brilliant.
Speaker 1: But I kept seeing a certain phrase in this paper
Speaker 1: and I was like, what the heck is three dimensional printing?
Speaker 1: So so we have completely gone beyond using the actual
Speaker 1: words three dimensional to the point where I didn't recognize
Speaker 1: what that was. It didn't register as three D printing team, Right,
Speaker 1: that's pretty funny. Yeah, we're we've gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where three D itself means something and three dimensional doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily evoke that. That is amusing. We also wanted to
Speaker 1: briefly talk about another thing that we would obviously need
Speaker 1: on any space exploration mission, which is oxygen. Now, the
Speaker 1: the various the paper doesn't address oxygen, right, and I
Speaker 1: think that makes sense because it's less of a synthetic
Speaker 1: biology concern and just the fact that you might have
Speaker 1: plants or algae or you know, things that exist already
Speaker 1: to produce breathable oxygen and habitat Mars one specifically was
Speaker 1: looking into creating oxygen through electrolysis, again, taking the water
Speaker 1: from the Martian soil and using electrical current to separate
Speaker 1: out the hydrogen and oxygen, and then to mix in
Speaker 1: some nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere. Because you don't want
Speaker 1: to breathe pure oxygen. No, so yeah, exactly, you want
Speaker 1: to be able to to supply your mission with oxygen.
Speaker 1: You know, we need it to breathe. But we can't
Speaker 1: carry all that with us either. But usually these systems
Speaker 1: involved things like electrolysis or like you said, photosynthesis, some
Speaker 1: sort of um other method to generate the oxygen we need,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just uh, you know, create a microorganism
Speaker 1: that poops air. That one's not listed in the paper,
Speaker 1: So if you want to be more elegant, you could
Speaker 1: say it exhales air. Yeah, I could say that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something that that respirates and it breathes out oxygen
Speaker 1: and maybe breathes in carbon dioxy. I guess the term
Speaker 1: is excretes it. It puts it out there. So we
Speaker 1: have a lot of different challenges here. One of those
Speaker 1: is just being able to make use of whatever the
Speaker 1: resources are at the destinations we're going to. And because
Speaker 1: I mean this comes up in the paper, going to
Speaker 1: the Moon and going to Mars are different in terms
Speaker 1: of the chemical elements available in say the soil exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: Martian soil and lunar regules, which is what we call
Speaker 1: the the soil on the Moon have very very us
Speaker 1: some oxides and other elements in them that you can
Speaker 1: find in one but not the other. So you may
Speaker 1: be able to come up with a micro organism that
Speaker 1: could work really well in one environment but not so
Speaker 1: well on the other. Which is that's problematic because normally
Speaker 1: we would say, how about we use the Moon as
Speaker 1: kind of a testing grounds for a lot of this
Speaker 1: technology to make sure it works before we commit to
Speaker 1: a Martian expedition where people are going to be much
Speaker 1: further away for much longer, and uh thus their lives
Speaker 1: will literally depend upon this technology working. But if we
Speaker 1: can't really test it effectively on the Moon, at least
Speaker 1: not without you know, some caveats, then that's a little
Speaker 1: that's challenging. Right The Moon is at least where we
Speaker 1: should test the algae cakes. Yes, yeah, which again they
Speaker 1: point out that in the case of going to the
Speaker 1: Moon would actually be less efficient than just packing all
Speaker 1: the fooji exactly. But this is not a matter of efficiency,
Speaker 1: it's a matter of testing the technology. Uh So it
Speaker 1: is really interesting. And again, the the paper itself looks
Speaker 1: at four main components as the inputs. You know, we
Speaker 1: talked about the four outputs, which are four main chemicals
Speaker 1: that you would feed these microbes right right, Because the
Speaker 1: four outputs we've already talked about drugs, biopolymers, food, and fuel. Well,
Speaker 1: the inputs would be carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen.
Speaker 1: So it is really interesting that they're looking at these
Speaker 1: four basics and they said, all right, well, how can
Speaker 1: we take these four basic things that we can get
Speaker 1: either we can ship to the place we're going to,
Speaker 1: or we can harvest it from that environment, and how
Speaker 1: can we get these four outputs we want? And in
Speaker 1: some cases, like I said, it's going to require intermediaries,
Speaker 1: some some intermediate steps between the beginning and the end.
Speaker 1: But how can they cut that down to the bare
Speaker 1: minimum to be as quote quote greedy end quote as possible?
Speaker 1: That's the that's the phrase they used to say, like,
Speaker 1: how can we maximize these inputs to try and get
Speaker 1: as much of these outputs as we possibly can. It's
Speaker 1: fascinating to me to think that the the they're they're
Speaker 1: treating these microbes like common office workers. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say that to me, it's remarkable that the success of
Speaker 1: our long term space exploration initiatives could come down to
Speaker 1: dependence on these micro organisms like that. Really, the the
Speaker 1: future of long term space missions could be in these
Speaker 1: little you know, the different types of bacteria and algae
Speaker 1: and things like that. UM really interesting. It makes me
Speaker 1: less likely to sign up for a trip over to
Speaker 1: Mars because I don't know that I want to eat
Speaker 1: algae cakes for two three years. Somehow I feel like
Speaker 1: I'd rather have algae cakes than than shrimp cocktail in space.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'd changed my tune once I got my
Speaker 1: fluids redistributed. Bonkers, man, I don't know what it is
Speaker 1: about the dehydrated trimp cocktail that gy. What need to
Speaker 1: do is we need to get some. We need to
Speaker 1: get a pack of dehydrated shrimp cocktail as used in
Speaker 1: space missions and do a taste test. NASA kitchen, if
Speaker 1: you're listening here, we are. I send the house stuff works. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's me. I'm the bald guy. Yeah, absolutely, I would.
Speaker 1: I would try it in a heartbeat. I would. I'll
Speaker 1: try it with you, Okay, alright, So that you got
Speaker 1: at least two of the three hosts, we might be
Speaker 1: able to get Lauren in on this. I don't know, Lauren,
Speaker 1: Lauren uh there's certain foods that don't agree with Lauren,
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't want to speak for her,
Speaker 1: but we will at least offer her a spoonful of dehydrated,
Speaker 1: reconstituted shrimp cocktail that we have probably rehydrated in some way.
Speaker 1: I'll try it. I've I've eaten worse stuff. I believe
Speaker 1: you can it with the bravado. I'll take you at
Speaker 1: your words, all right, Well, at any rate, I think
Speaker 1: this wraps up our discussion about synthetic biology and ace
Speaker 1: travel and how it could be a really integral part
Speaker 1: of how we get around and how we survive on
Speaker 1: these missions. Yeah. I thought this paper was fascinating, And
Speaker 1: if you're interested in reading all of the technical details
Speaker 1: and in full, the text is available online just to
Speaker 1: look it up. Yeah it uh. It took me three
Speaker 1: or four reading sessions to get all the way through it,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot that synthesize, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of information and a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of of chemistry that um, you know, I frankly had
Speaker 1: to take time to really understand because it was well
Speaker 1: beyond my my poor recollection of chemistry from my school days,
Speaker 1: but very fascinating stuff and guys, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of Forward Thinking. Maybe you've got
Speaker 1: a topic that's been um, you know, just eating at
Speaker 1: you and you want us to cover it. Let us know.
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