Speaker 1: Audi adults. If you're listening to this show with kids,
Speaker 1: we just wanted to give you a heads up that
Speaker 1: we're talking about the birds and the bees today, So
Speaker 1: decide for yourself if it's time to switch to a
Speaker 1: different episode of Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Giving birth
Speaker 1: is a truly profound and beautiful experience, but also it
Speaker 1: really sucks and it's super dangerous. According to UNIEF, there
Speaker 1: were two hundred and eighty seven thousand maternal deaths in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. That's down from four hundred and forty seven
Speaker 1: thousand deaths in two thousand, so that's great news, But
Speaker 1: labor and delivery remain super dangerous. Not all places are
Speaker 1: equally dangerous, though, A lot of danger is removed when
Speaker 1: you have access to nearby healthcare, which is why I
Speaker 1: find myself a little concerned when Elon Musk proposes we
Speaker 1: send one million people to Mars in the next thirty years.
Speaker 1: No humans will have ever been quite so far away
Speaker 1: from a hospital. And on top of that, Mars is
Speaker 1: a much harsher environment than Earth, for reasons we'll discuss today.
Speaker 1: The Martian environment could pose a lot of additional challenges
Speaker 1: for pregnant moms and their babies. Can moms survived this
Speaker 1: process and what about their babies? So today we're talking
Speaker 1: about conception, pregnancy, labor, and subsequent child development in space.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I've continued in
Speaker 3: my family's tradition of being born in one continent, raised
Speaker 3: in a second, and having a child on a third.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, go through the Where did you come from?
Speaker 3: I was born in Israel, which technically part of a
Speaker 3: raised in America, and one of my children was born
Speaker 3: in Switzerland near the particle collider.
Speaker 1: That is very cool. I have no crazy travel stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I was born in New Jersey, raised in Ohio.
Speaker 1: Then I went kind of all over the US for
Speaker 1: a while, but I've pretty much lived on this continent.
Speaker 1: It's exciting. Oh yeah, and I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study
Speaker 1: parasites and mostly stay here.
Speaker 3: All right. Well, then my question for you today, Kelly
Speaker 3: is where is the strangest place you've ever heard of
Speaker 3: a baby being born?
Speaker 1: So in Antarctica. There's this slice of Antarctica that has
Speaker 1: three overlapping land claims. So the UK, Chile, and Argentina
Speaker 1: all claim this chunk of Antarctica, and for geopolitical reasons,
Speaker 1: there's it seems this desire to have babies on this
Speaker 1: land chunk, so that if we do ever go back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great story. So if we do ever
Speaker 1: go back to an era where sort of history matters,
Speaker 1: and you could say, well, like, yes, there's overlap claims,
Speaker 1: but we were here doing science and having babies and
Speaker 1: and so I don't remember which it was, either Argentina
Speaker 1: or Chile. They flew a pregnant woman out to the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere so that she could have a baby.
Speaker 3: Who agrees to that? Who agrees to have your birth
Speaker 3: be part of like geopolitical discussions.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an interesting birth story, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: And then the other nation to one up them, had
Speaker 1: a baby conceived and born on their research base, and
Speaker 1: so there's this like wit zach and I call it
Speaker 1: counter stork technology or something like instead of yeah and
Speaker 1: so so, yeah, I think that is the weirdest birth
Speaker 1: baby birth story I have heard, what about you?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that totally tops it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I mean I've heard of babies born like in transit
Speaker 3: in the ocean, like you know, between continents. But I
Speaker 3: was wondering if babies had ever been born under really
Speaker 3: difficult circumstances like that. But I have to question, like
Speaker 3: the moms, like are they really nationalistic? They really want
Speaker 3: to play a role in these arguments between countries, like
Speaker 3: literally being upon in global diplomacy. That's crazy to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I feel like the dad's decisions could
Speaker 1: have been you know, part of it too. But but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think parents, you know, having kids as part of
Speaker 1: geopolitical one upmanship is not amazing, is it, TMI. We
Speaker 1: can delete this if it is to mention that my
Speaker 1: son was born on Halloween and they were little cat
Speaker 1: ears over the like blanket on my knees when I
Speaker 1: was giving birth to my baby because the doctor had
Speaker 1: dressed up as a cat, and it was a weird experience.
Speaker 3: That's not to you, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, you know, I think pregnancy is always a
Speaker 1: little bit weird, but sometimes it's just weirder than other times.
Speaker 3: Well, here's hoping that all of your pregnancies are smooth
Speaker 3: sailing and do not involve diplomats arguing outside.
Speaker 1: So geopolitics, complic and other things that can complicate life
Speaker 1: are being a difficult environments when you need to give birth,
Speaker 1: and there's maybe no environment more difficult than space. And
Speaker 1: today we are tackling a question from a listener we
Speaker 1: got that was inspired by the episode where we interviewed
Speaker 1: Erica Nezvold, and here is the question.
Speaker 2: Now, Hi, Daniel, ye Kelly. My name is Glenn Rosas.
Speaker 2: During your recent interview with Eric and Neswold, a question
Speaker 2: occurred to me. Now, we cannot be an air planetary species,
Speaker 2: and let's we're able to have babies up there, and
Speaker 2: we know from our experience on the ISS that micro
Speaker 2: gravity is not good for human physiology in the long term.
Speaker 2: So where can babies safely just date and womb away
Speaker 2: from Earth? Thank you so very much for everything you do.
Speaker 3: Well, Kelly. This seems like a pretty basic question about
Speaker 3: space exploration because I imagine we're not just going to
Speaker 3: send like one generation of astronauts to colonize the Solio system.
Speaker 3: Those folks are going to want to have kids, and
Speaker 3: we're going to want to perpetuate the species. You know,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk is always talking about making us multiplanetary, that
Speaker 3: involves having kids off Earth, right, So I hope that
Speaker 3: we have like a really solid, well researched answer to
Speaker 3: this because everybody's rushing into space, right.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you can explore space without us having
Speaker 1: the answer to this question, no problem. And Elon Musk
Speaker 1: would argue that you could just send something like a
Speaker 1: million people to space. You don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: reproduction initially, you can get the whole thing up and going.
Speaker 1: And he's doing his best to create a million babies
Speaker 1: to send to Mars. He's still got a little bit
Speaker 1: of a way to go, but he's getting there. But
Speaker 1: you know, I do think that before we send people
Speaker 1: to settle Space, even if you send a million people there,
Speaker 1: I've met humans, there's going to be babies, whether you
Speaker 1: plan on them or not.
Speaker 3: A million people are going to want to entertain themselves
Speaker 3: and making babies. This part of that.
Speaker 1: Yes, you told me that, Katrina. Let you know once
Speaker 1: that in Antarctica there is a lot of these sorts
Speaker 1: of activities as a way to pass time. Imagine that
Speaker 1: human behavior will follow us to these other isolated and
Speaker 1: confined environments.
Speaker 3: Yes, because they actually mandate your schedule in that Antarctic
Speaker 3: Research Station. It's eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work,
Speaker 3: and then you have eight hours like you gotta do something.
Speaker 3: And there's only so many times you can watch the
Speaker 3: same set of DVDs that are down there. You know,
Speaker 3: they don't have internet streaming, and so, yeah, people entertain
Speaker 3: each other. That's right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: That's right. Card games get boring, you gotta do something else.
Speaker 3: So we should know the answer to this question. We
Speaker 3: should understand whether this is something humans can safely do
Speaker 3: off Earth, and then we should figure out like how
Speaker 3: we can figure it out. If we don't have the answer.
Speaker 1: I would absolutely agree with you, and I think that
Speaker 1: for a lot of folks, and for me in particular,
Speaker 1: when we started researching a city on Mars, we didn't
Speaker 1: know actually where we stand in terms of our understanding
Speaker 1: of how reproduction works in space. So let's back up
Speaker 1: a bit here and ask our audience what do they know?
Speaker 1: What do they think? Is it safe for humans to
Speaker 1: have babies on Mars?
Speaker 5: I would say main obstacles are psychological, medical, gravitational and
Speaker 5: radiation exposure is also a problem.
Speaker 6: If it's barely safe to have humans on Mars right now,
Speaker 6: grown adults who are trained to do it. Having babies
Speaker 6: on Mars doesn't seem super safe or ethical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that should be perfectly safe.
Speaker 4: My bed is yes, but you may have higher rates
Speaker 4: of cancers and other bone density issues.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna say that you'd be lucky if your children
Speaker 7: survive the harsh climates and thin atmosphepere that doesn't have
Speaker 7: breathable air and that has low gravity.
Speaker 3: On the surface.
Speaker 4: It's not safe for humans to have babies on Mars
Speaker 4: because it's not safe for all humans to have babies
Speaker 4: on Earth.
Speaker 8: I don't see any reason why not. Yes, it would
Speaker 8: be dangerous. However, we should have developed a safe as
Speaker 8: it can be environment for humans to live anyway. So
Speaker 8: what difference does it make if that human is a
Speaker 8: little one.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Maybe, I think given that Mars is full of kind
Speaker 9: of toxic things like heavy metals and other contaminants in
Speaker 9: the soil, it might be really difficult to bring a
Speaker 9: child into the world that was healthy.
Speaker 4: The more different the Mars environment is from the Earth environment,
Speaker 4: more likely it is that our offspring will be different.
Speaker 4: I think we will have to use the precautionary principle
Speaker 4: and play it safe.
Speaker 8: No, it is not safe for humans to have Martian babies.
Speaker 6: We are very much custom built for this planet and
Speaker 6: likely with pore adaptability for another planet.
Speaker 5: Of course, it's dangerous for a woman to give birth
Speaker 5: on Mars.
Speaker 2: Mars wants to kill you.
Speaker 4: I'm not really sure that it's safe to have babies
Speaker 4: on Earth. Seem to need an entire hospital at your
Speaker 4: disposal to be able to do it here. The lower
Speaker 4: gravity environment may have fit the bones. Other than that,
Speaker 4: I'm in a.
Speaker 10: Lost Ultimately, it probably will prove to be safe. Radiation
Speaker 10: damage to the parents would be important, and maybe at
Speaker 10: some point we can re engineer our genes to withstand
Speaker 10: more radiation. After all, cockroaches do that quite well. Maybe
Speaker 10: we can borrow their genes.
Speaker 3: So a lot of skepticism here. Yeah, folks have been
Speaker 3: reading your book and listening to us talk about the
Speaker 3: crazy dangers and the environment of space and realizing how
Speaker 3: culshy we have it actually here on Earth. Giving birth
Speaker 3: in Antarctica is probably really safe and comfortable compared to
Speaker 3: anywhere else in this Solar system.
Speaker 1: That's true. But you know, there were also some folks
Speaker 1: who who felt pretty confident that we would be able
Speaker 1: to have babies on Mars, no problem. And I should say,
Speaker 1: right at the beginning, it's totally possible. They're right, We
Speaker 1: really just don't know. And at the beginning of the
Speaker 1: space Age, there were a bunch of medical doctors who
Speaker 1: were concerned that just sending humans up into space we
Speaker 1: would die. Like if you were essentially in free fall
Speaker 1: experience and no gravity, you wouldn't be able to swallow,
Speaker 1: you'd never be able to eat. It would just be
Speaker 1: a total non starter. So there is a long history
Speaker 1: of worrying about things that don't end up being a problem.
Speaker 1: But I think we have pretty good reason to suspect
Speaker 1: that some of these things will be problems.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes these problems go away only because you
Speaker 3: do worry about them. I mean, my Jewish heritage tells
Speaker 3: me that worrying solves problems, and so, you know, don't
Speaker 3: be down on people worrying, but less joky. I think
Speaker 3: it's important to remember that our perspective is constantly shifting,
Speaker 3: and that it's really hard to put yourself in the
Speaker 3: minds of people who knew less about the universe. You know,
Speaker 3: folks who thought maybe there was life on Mars and
Speaker 3: who didn't know what space was like because it was
Speaker 3: before the era of space exploration, and so it's easy
Speaker 3: to look back on those folks and be like, ha ha,
Speaker 3: what a bunch of goofs. But remember they really didn't know,
Speaker 3: And people are going to look back on us in
Speaker 3: one hundred years and be like, ha ha, what a
Speaker 3: bunch of goofs. They didn't know xyz. But you know,
Speaker 3: everybody's just doing their best.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of your current
Speaker 1: experiences do color the way you look either forward or back.
Speaker 1: You know, like if we were a couple hundred years
Speaker 1: in the past, anywhere on Earth where someone got pregnant,
Speaker 1: there'd be a pretty good chance that mom or the
Speaker 1: baby would die, Like you would be more concerned about it.
Speaker 1: But now, at least if you live in the United States,
Speaker 1: for most people in good areas where there's affordable well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a lot of affordable healthcare
Speaker 1: in the US, but where you can access healthcare, you know,
Speaker 1: you expect that you're going to survive through labor. But
Speaker 1: that's not even true in a lot of different places
Speaker 1: in the world. And so, you know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of us don't hear about mothers and children dying often,
Speaker 1: though of course it still happens, but maybe that makes
Speaker 1: us think it'll be easier just about anywhere we go.
Speaker 3: All right, So we do have some experience in space, right,
Speaker 3: We've been sending people to space for fifty years or
Speaker 3: so and even living in space on space stations. What
Speaker 3: do we know from our experience in space stations about
Speaker 3: women's bodies and conception and reproduction in.
Speaker 1: Space, Well, not a ton. So only fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: the people who have ever been to space have been women, which,
Speaker 1: like that percentage surprises me. So we've sent something like
Speaker 1: seven hundred people to space, so that's still like a
Speaker 1: fairly large number of individuals and a decent number of women.
Speaker 1: But they've all been, you know, up there for different
Speaker 1: amounts of time, doing different kinds of missions, so the
Speaker 1: data from all of them isn't necessarily super comparable. And
Speaker 1: the longest consecutive stay by a woman is three hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty eight days by Christina Koch. No other woman
Speaker 1: has stayed up for even a year up until this point,
Speaker 1: and so we don't have a lot of data on
Speaker 1: adult women bodies. We do know that bodies in general
Speaker 1: tend to start falling apart when you're in free fall,
Speaker 1: so you're experiencing something like no gravity. And as we've
Speaker 1: talked about on other episodes, muscles and bones degrade, visions,
Speaker 1: vision degrades, and we think all these problems are associated
Speaker 1: with low gravity.
Speaker 3: And do we know, even from our limited data, if
Speaker 3: it affects women differently, Like obviously women's and men's bodies
Speaker 3: on average are different. Does freefall affect them differently?
Speaker 1: That is a great question. It is possible that someone
Speaker 1: has done that study, and I haven't seen it. I
Speaker 1: didn't when I was reading like various reviews, I didn't
Speaker 1: see a lot of you know, people saying things like
Speaker 1: and bone atrophy is way worse for women or way
Speaker 1: worse for men. So it's possible we know that, but
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: And the effects that we do know about which ones
Speaker 3: are maybe most relevant for pregnancy and conception and birth
Speaker 3: and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I think the data related to muscles and bones are
Speaker 1: particularly concerning so astronauts in general, not necessarily just women,
Speaker 1: but the entire pool of astronauts that have been studied
Speaker 1: on this question lose one percent of the bone density
Speaker 1: in their hip per month. You know, when labor kicks
Speaker 1: in and you're hoping that your hips are not going
Speaker 1: to break like that sounds pretty scary. There's also been
Speaker 1: a study where they sent rodents to space when they
Speaker 1: were pregnant, and then they brought them back down to Earth,
Speaker 1: and those rodents had to do a certain type of
Speaker 1: contraction twice as much, And the thought was that their
Speaker 1: muscles degraded in space, so the kind of muscles that
Speaker 1: they needed for contractions just weren't as strong as they
Speaker 1: should be. So they were in labor for a lot longer.
Speaker 1: And any of the women out there who have been
Speaker 1: in labor, they can all agree with me. You don't
Speaker 1: want that to last any longer than it has to,
Speaker 1: especially if you didn't request the epidural soon enough and
Speaker 1: you do it naturally.
Speaker 3: So the effects in the human body are primarily muscle loss,
Speaker 3: which is going to impact going into labor. Bone loss,
Speaker 3: and you need your bones also, don't You need to
Speaker 3: provide basic building blocks to build your baby. All those
Speaker 3: ingredients are taken from the woman's body, right, So if
Speaker 3: you're losing them because of the environment of space, and
Speaker 3: you're losing them because you're pregnant, that seems kind of
Speaker 3: dangerous for the mom's health.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely, that seems dangerous for the mom's health.
Speaker 1: I mean, so you could send her up there with
Speaker 1: the right kinds of foods, the right kinds of nutrients.
Speaker 1: We do know that when you're in freefall, you lose
Speaker 1: a lot of fluids, So your body is kind of
Speaker 1: thrown by the fact that a bunch of fluids are
Speaker 1: so high up in your body, so you end up
Speaker 1: peeing out a lot of it. We're not really sure
Speaker 1: what kind of problems that's going to cause. Additionally, you know,
Speaker 1: muscles are important for how our cardiovascular system works. They
Speaker 1: like push back against our blood vessels, and so women
Speaker 1: who have had cardiovascular problems related to pregnancy might be
Speaker 1: particularly at risk when they're in an environment where their
Speaker 1: muscles are even more degraded than usual. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of problems that are sort of hinted at by
Speaker 1: what we know about what happens on space stations. But
Speaker 1: no woman who's been to space, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: has been pregnant or gotten pregnant, and as far as
Speaker 1: we can find solid evidence for, and Zach and I
Speaker 1: disagree about, you know, whether or not this has happened.
Speaker 1: We don't even know if sex has happened in space.
Speaker 3: Yet another thing I wonder is, you know, when a
Speaker 3: woman is pregnant, she's told to have exercise certain ways
Speaker 3: and eat certain ways in order to you know, counteract
Speaker 3: some of these effects and support the growth of the baby.
Speaker 3: And then also when you go to space, you're told
Speaker 3: do certain exercises, drink more fluids. Whatever. Do you think
Speaker 3: any of those instructions disagree, are they in conflict or
Speaker 3: you know what a pregnant woman in space basically just
Speaker 3: like do both of those things, like eat lots of
Speaker 3: protein and make sure you get extra exercise to avoid
Speaker 3: boring loss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a great question. So I remember when
Speaker 1: I was pregnant, I was told, you know, like you
Speaker 1: should exercise a lot, but don't overdo it because if
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: you don't want to overdo it. But women or people
Speaker 1: in space are supposed to exercise something like two to
Speaker 1: three hours a day every day, and so it might
Speaker 1: be difficult to balance not overdoing it with making sure
Speaker 1: that you're keeping your bones and muscles strong enough. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, we change our diet in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways when we get pregnant. So for example, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't eat any processed meats because there was some
Speaker 1: concern of listeria and what that could do. So there
Speaker 1: were like no turkey sandwiches for me during my pregnancy.
Speaker 1: It was a massive hardship. But the environment, like you know,
Speaker 1: the space station is notorious for having like all kinds
Speaker 1: of weird stuff like growing on the other sides of
Speaker 1: the panels. People are more likely to get sort of
Speaker 1: like weird infections on their skin. Their immune system is
Speaker 1: already a little bit immunocompromise, so people who have for example,
Speaker 1: herpes latent herpes virus in their body, like the herpes
Speaker 1: virus wakes up because the immune system seems to be
Speaker 1: suppressed in some way. And so you know, these are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that you could imagine possibly being
Speaker 1: a problem for the mom or the baby, but we
Speaker 1: just don't have a lot of a lot of data
Speaker 1: on any of it.
Speaker 3: Well, here's another potential problem. Since we've had children and
Speaker 3: two continents, we've discovered that the cultural norms for what
Speaker 3: pregnant women should do are very different. So, for example,
Speaker 3: here in the US, if you're pregnant and you're having
Speaker 3: caffeinated coffee, everybody's like, how dare you? That's so bad
Speaker 3: for you. But if you're in France, everybody's like, one
Speaker 3: cup of coffee a day, no big deal, It's not
Speaker 3: that big a deal. But if you have salad, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, they give you the look of death. Right.
Speaker 3: Salad is because of the risk some lettuce has things
Speaker 3: growing on it. Like basically, you just don't eat salad,
Speaker 3: and all kinds of soft cheeses you just don't eat
Speaker 3: in France when you're pregnant. So the kinds of things
Speaker 3: that people judge you for are very different different continents. Now,
Speaker 3: imagine you're in the International Space Station. Do you follow
Speaker 3: the French rules the American rules? Doesn't matter where you
Speaker 3: launch from your citizenship? Like, who gets to judge you
Speaker 3: about your pregnancy decisions?
Speaker 1: I mean maybe everybody gets to judge you, because space
Speaker 1: is a global humankind activity, you know, And so says
Speaker 1: if moms aren't getting enough judgment, we can even more
Speaker 1: in space.
Speaker 3: Awesome. Well, let's talk about how you get pregnant. You
Speaker 3: referenced this. We don't know that anybody's actually ever done
Speaker 3: that in space, But what do we know about the
Speaker 3: science of reproduction? Is it possible? Is there anything we
Speaker 3: know about reproduction that would suggest that it's more difficult
Speaker 3: or easier or just weirder in space.
Speaker 1: So there have been some studies looking at sperm, for example,
Speaker 1: that have found that, like it was bull sperm move
Speaker 1: a little bit faster. But there was recently a study
Speaker 1: that found that sperm sent to space we're sort of
Speaker 1: behaving weirdly. So, like the data that we have on
Speaker 1: just about everything related to reproduction in space is really
Speaker 1: haphazard and often gives conflicting results. And partly this is
Speaker 1: because NASA is really queasy about sex and reproduction, and
Speaker 1: partly that's because they don't want to be spending money
Speaker 1: and then needing to go in front of Congress to
Speaker 1: justify why like geckos were having sex in space, like
Speaker 1: why is that important? And I've asked a bunch of
Speaker 1: NASA people. I was like, is this is it fair
Speaker 1: to say that NASA doesn't really want to fun stuff
Speaker 1: like this? And they're like, no, absolutely they don't. And
Speaker 1: so so you'll get studies that manage to get up
Speaker 1: there because they're sort of studying something else. Related to
Speaker 1: reproduction in space, and then the reproduction stuff will kind
Speaker 1: of be a sideshow. But there have been some studies,
Speaker 1: including one on Earth, looking at cells associated with decidualization.
Speaker 1: So this is how the uterus prepares for implantation, and
Speaker 1: it looks like something about gravity is required for this
Speaker 1: process to go.
Speaker 3: Well, so what is the process I'm imagining deciduous trees?
Speaker 3: Is there some analogy here to what's happening in the
Speaker 3: lining of the uterus, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: So there could be so deciduous trees shed their leaves
Speaker 1: and the uterus is sort of ripening and thickening and
Speaker 1: providing more of like you know, sort of blood and
Speaker 1: food for possible implanted embryo, and then you know, once
Speaker 1: a month that sheds, And so I hadn't put that together,
Speaker 1: but way to go, Daniel, That's almost certainly what it means.
Speaker 1: And maybe gravity is to some extent required for that.
Speaker 1: Oh and so we could have trouble getting pregnant for starters.
Speaker 1: Don't necessarily know that we will, but it's possible. And
Speaker 1: there's already a bunch of people on Earth who have
Speaker 1: fertility issues and find it difficult to get pregnant in
Speaker 1: the first place, and some of those issues I guess
Speaker 1: could be exacerbated when we get to space.
Speaker 3: All right, So say I give you a large budget
Speaker 3: to answer this question. What experiments would you do and
Speaker 3: how do you do it in a way that's ethical.
Speaker 1: That is a great question, and I'm going to answer
Speaker 1: it after the break when I take you to the moon.
Speaker 1: All right. So we talked about some of the problems
Speaker 1: that have been sort of hinted at by having humans
Speaker 1: on the International Space Station on how these problems might
Speaker 1: indicate how reproduction could go in space. And Daniel asked
Speaker 1: me what experiments I would do to try to figure
Speaker 1: out if it's safe to have babies in space.
Speaker 3: Without worrying about what you're gonna have to say in
Speaker 3: front of Congress.
Speaker 1: That's right. Oh, I don't know that there's any solution
Speaker 1: for that. Maybe you get a private company to fund
Speaker 1: these research experiments. That's that's above my pay grade. But
Speaker 1: if somebody gave me a billion dollars or more, probably more,
Speaker 1: what I would do is I would either send satellites
Speaker 1: out past our magnetosphere and start spinning them to create
Speaker 1: something like Martian gravity. Mars is where most of the
Speaker 1: space settlement advocates are pushing for us to end up
Speaker 1: and so Mars has forty percent of Earth's gravity. We
Speaker 1: already know that being in free fall and experiencing something
Speaker 1: like zero gravity is a problem. So if you're in
Speaker 1: a satellite that's rotating, you could make Martian gravity and
Speaker 1: you could try to get a handle on you know,
Speaker 1: does forty percent gravity, for example, remove all of the
Speaker 1: problems with bone density. Is forty percent gravity enough to
Speaker 1: keep bones and muscles strong? We don't really know the
Speaker 1: answer there.
Speaker 3: We don't even know the answer to what happens to
Speaker 3: your bones if you live on Mars for quite a while.
Speaker 1: No, nope, nope, no, no, boy. I mean there's Jacks,
Speaker 1: the Japanese Aerospace Agency. They have a module up on
Speaker 1: the International Space Station that now has oh the acronym
Speaker 1: is Mars, but I forget what it stands for. It's
Speaker 1: got these little wheels where one size has rodents that
Speaker 1: spin to simulate different gravity regimes, and another side the
Speaker 1: wheel doesn't spin, so you can see what happens in freefall.
Speaker 1: And so we now have some systems to start to
Speaker 1: get a handle on that, but we don't have loads
Speaker 1: of data coming from that system. Yet.
Speaker 3: All right, so you create the Martian environment in near
Speaker 3: Earth orbit by using centrivical force. But I want to
Speaker 3: know what you're going to do in that environment. What
Speaker 3: experiment is Kelly setting up to answer these sixy questions?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, for starters, I would just put like
Speaker 1: a rodent colony in one, a mouse colony in another,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know, a vole colony in the third,
Speaker 1: and just kind of see like can they survive through
Speaker 1: multiple generations? And then you know, every once in a while,
Speaker 1: harvest some of them and look to see if you know,
Speaker 1: there's anything weird happening with any part of their physiology.
Speaker 1: And another reason why you'd want to put them out
Speaker 1: in orbit, but you know, out past our magnetosphere, is
Speaker 1: that you could also start to get a handle on
Speaker 1: how space radiation is impacting their bodies. You know, is
Speaker 1: that causing mutations that are resulting in problems down the line.
Speaker 3: And you're doing this in rodents because you don't care
Speaker 3: about rodents feelings and whether their babies are mutated, or
Speaker 3: because rodents are very similar to people in terms of
Speaker 3: their reproductive systems, or why rodents.
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I'll say that I adopted a
Speaker 1: rodent as a pet when it was done with some
Speaker 1: cancer research because I like rodents very much. I think
Speaker 1: they're very cute.
Speaker 3: I had rats as pets. I love them. They're absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: Are absolutely wonderful. I had one sitting on my shoulder
Speaker 1: while I was working for a while while I had it.
Speaker 1: But it's very cute. So rodents are like humans in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but they're also not like humans
Speaker 1: in a lot of other ways. And so if it
Speaker 1: worked with rodents, I would feel like, Okay, we've to
Speaker 1: some extent convinced ourselves that we've gotten over the first hurdle.
Speaker 1: And then after that I would say, you know what,
Speaker 1: probably these satellites are just they're not going to be
Speaker 1: big enough to do what we need to do next.
Speaker 1: So maybe the next step is to head to the
Speaker 1: moon and set up a research station.
Speaker 3: The real barrier is ethical, right, Like you wanted the
Speaker 3: answering humans, but you can't just start with humans. You
Speaker 3: can't just like put humans there and have them reproduced
Speaker 3: and see whether the babies come out weird, right, because
Speaker 3: you can't just make weird babies in your science experiment.
Speaker 3: But it's okay to do with rats. So how do
Speaker 3: we get from we can't do this experiment of humans too?
Speaker 3: We can do this experiment of humans. Do we need
Speaker 3: to convince ourselves it works on rats and then on dogs,
Speaker 3: and then on pigs and then on monkeys. Is there's
Speaker 3: like a stair step ladder where at some point we
Speaker 3: feel like this is a reasonable chance to take with people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a great question. And there's not like
Speaker 1: a global pre existing, you know, step ladder that's been established, Like,
Speaker 1: first you do this and then you can test it
Speaker 1: on humans. What I'm proposing is what I would feel
Speaker 1: comfortable with, and so you know, I'd feel comfortable trying
Speaker 1: it out on rodents first and then maybe scaling up,
Speaker 1: like you know, have some dogs at the research station
Speaker 1: and see how they do. People like having dogs around anyway,
Speaker 1: and then send up chippanzees. But of course that is
Speaker 1: ethically difficult, and so it's not clear how easy it
Speaker 1: would be for you to get permission to do something
Speaker 1: like that. But then maybe you could say, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a woman conceive on the moon, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna check her out every single day, and if anything
Speaker 1: looks like it's going wrong with mom or the baby,
Speaker 1: we immediately bring her back to Earth. So one of
Speaker 1: the great things about the Moon is it's about three
Speaker 1: days away, whereas Mars is six months away at best,
Speaker 1: if you're at the right window where you can leave
Speaker 1: for it, which only opens every two years. So testing
Speaker 1: stuff out on the Moon, if something goes wrong, you
Speaker 1: can send them back really quick. Also, the Moon has
Speaker 1: one sixth the gravity of Earth, and so if things
Speaker 1: go well at one sixth Earth gravity, they're probably going
Speaker 1: to go great at Martian gravity, which is even higher.
Speaker 1: That's kind of how I would do it. I'd test
Speaker 1: things out in satellites and then move to the Moon
Speaker 1: and sort of slowly scale up until I convinced myself
Speaker 1: this is safe to do on the Moon. Now we're
Speaker 1: ready to start trying it farther out. But what do
Speaker 1: you think if you were in charge, what would you do?
Speaker 3: Oh? Man, This is why I do particle physics, because
Speaker 3: you don't need IRBs or ethical questions when you're smashing
Speaker 3: particles together. This is even why I avoided any part
Speaker 3: of physics that has like immediate applications. You know, my
Speaker 3: parents worked in weapons programs, and I was like, yikes,
Speaker 3: that's too complicated morally for me. I really like to
Speaker 3: separate my research from these moral quests. And even though
Speaker 3: the more questions are really fascinating, I don't want to
Speaker 3: be in charge of making those decisions. And I can't
Speaker 3: imagine experimenting on my baby like the women you talked
Speaker 3: about who are willing to give birth in Antarctica. That
Speaker 3: definitely comes with additional risks, right. I remember when we
Speaker 3: were having kids, I wanted to absolutely minimize the risk
Speaker 3: in every direction, because this is your kid's life you're
Speaker 3: talking about. So I can't imagine saying like, yeah, let's
Speaker 3: go get pregnant in a place nobody's ever gotten pregnant before.
Speaker 3: I just can't imagine being in that place. But hey,
Speaker 3: everybody's different, you know. Some people want to break barriers,
Speaker 3: But tell us what is unusual about the Moon's environment,
Speaker 3: Like you told us about the effects on the human
Speaker 3: body a free fall, But on the Moon there must
Speaker 3: be other things that we have to worry about specifically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let me back up real quick for the
Speaker 1: ethics issue. And so I agree, this is like a
Speaker 1: difficult ethical thing to build up to. And you know,
Speaker 1: the first woman who gets pregnant on the moon, Like,
Speaker 1: I would not want that to be me, but what
Speaker 1: I would not let it be me? But uh, But
Speaker 1: one of the things that I worry about is that
Speaker 1: space tourism increases, and you know, people get more alone
Speaker 1: time when they're up there. I'm worried we're going to
Speaker 1: get these data accidentally and in a like non consistent way,
Speaker 1: and so I would love to see us investing in
Speaker 1: getting some more of these answers in a more consistent
Speaker 1: way so we can let people know what the risks
Speaker 1: really are. And I'll note that I also did everything
Speaker 1: I could to reduce risk during pregnancy. But I met
Speaker 1: plenty of people who I would say, like, here's what
Speaker 1: I think the risks are about giving birth on Mars,
Speaker 1: and they either thought that I was like over selling
Speaker 1: the risks. Like one of them said, you know, wombs
Speaker 1: are a neutral buoyancy tank. Gravity's not going to matter.
Speaker 1: It'll be fine. I would have babies on Mars. And
Speaker 1: so there are people who are not wospbags like you
Speaker 1: and me, and would be willing to do it. But
Speaker 1: that's not me yet.
Speaker 3: No, as long as people know what the risks are
Speaker 3: and are well informed can make their decisions. But I
Speaker 3: guess they're ethical issues. They're like, we don't let people
Speaker 3: make some decisions about their babies, Like we don't let
Speaker 3: people engineer their babies DNA, Right, just because your parent
Speaker 3: doesn't mean and you have complete control over the pregnancy
Speaker 3: and this kind of stuff. So there's some really tricky
Speaker 3: issues there, even if we have some initial data.
Speaker 1: And you know, parents can sign consent forms but their
Speaker 1: children can't. And we don't actually know that babies who
Speaker 1: are born on Mars could ever return home. So maybe
Speaker 1: developing in a lower gravity environment means your body would
Speaker 1: never be strong enough to survive Earth gravity. But you
Speaker 1: asked me about the Moon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I was listening to you say that we
Speaker 3: could always bring the mom home, she's only three days away.
Speaker 3: But I was wondering, aren't there some situations where a
Speaker 3: problem has cropped up which is not reversible just by
Speaker 3: going back to Earth. What are the particular dangers of
Speaker 3: getting pregnant on the moon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a tough question. Okay, So say
Speaker 1: we do get our research station on the moon, and
Speaker 1: the rodents are doing great on the Moon, so then
Speaker 1: we know that reproduction at low gravity one sixth of
Speaker 1: Earth's gravity doesn't cause any problems. We maybe at this
Speaker 1: point have hopefully already figured out what happens when you're
Speaker 1: exposed to space radiation and how to shield against that.
Speaker 1: Because the Moon has no atmosphere and no planet wide magnetosphere,
Speaker 1: so all the space radiation hits the surface of the
Speaker 1: Moon straight on. So hopefully we've figured out radiation shielding,
Speaker 1: so that's not a problem.
Speaker 3: What about the regolith on the Moon. Is there anything
Speaker 3: weird about that that we have to worry about?
Speaker 1: I mean, that is some nasty stuff. So like you
Speaker 1: probably want mom to stay inside the entire time, you
Speaker 1: probably want almost everyone to stay inside most of the time.
Speaker 1: So the problem with the regolith is, and we talked
Speaker 1: about this in our episode about challenges of working on
Speaker 1: the Moon, it is electrostatic, so it clings. It's also
Speaker 1: really fine pieces that are also super jagged, and so
Speaker 1: there's concern that if you breathe it in it's going
Speaker 1: to cause what's called stone grinder's disease here on Earth,
Speaker 1: where essentially these tiny sharp particles scar your lung over
Speaker 1: and over again, making it really hard to breathe. So
Speaker 1: we're going to have to be super careful to make
Speaker 1: sure that we don't bring any of this into the
Speaker 1: habitat with us. And between not going outside often and
Speaker 1: radiation shielding, which is often in the four of or
Speaker 1: often proposed to take the form of burying your habitat
Speaker 1: in this regolith, you're not gonna be going outside much,
Speaker 1: and we don't really understand the implications of that. So like, yes,
Speaker 1: there could be some mental health implications of never going outside.
Speaker 1: But part of how we extract calcium from food and
Speaker 1: then incorporated into our bodies is by using sunlight to
Speaker 1: produce vitamin D. So if you are underground all the
Speaker 1: time and not getting any sunlight, is that going to
Speaker 1: mess with your ability to produce your own bones and
Speaker 1: then to produce the bones in the fetus, We don't know.
Speaker 1: So maybe you'll have to sit in front of those
Speaker 1: like full spectrum lights all day long to try to
Speaker 1: get yourself enough vitamin D so you can make this stuff.
Speaker 3: So you'll be nicely tanned.
Speaker 1: So you'll be nice. Yeah, I guess that's good. So
Speaker 1: the moon is sort of like Mars light, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess it's more extreme in terms of gravity. If things
Speaker 1: work on the Moon you can have pretty good confidence
Speaker 1: that a lot of things will be okay on Mars,
Speaker 1: and if things don't go well, you can get home quickly.
Speaker 1: But so let's go ahead and head out to So
Speaker 1: Mars is on average one hundred and forty million miles away,
Speaker 1: really far. With current propulsion techniques, it takes six months
Speaker 1: to get there, and you can only leave every two
Speaker 1: years when like an orbital when a window opens up
Speaker 1: in Mars and Earth are and sort of like the
Speaker 1: right locations as they're traveling around the Sun, so that
Speaker 1: you could get to Mars as fast as possible. And
Speaker 1: that means that if you're out there, you are like
Speaker 1: on your own. If you need medical equipment, you are
Speaker 1: not going to be getting a resupply ship, and so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of planning that you need to do.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask during Katrina's pregnancy, were there
Speaker 1: any medication she needs, but maybe you don't want to
Speaker 1: share that on air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Katrina is type one diabetes, so her pregnancy was
Speaker 3: considered high risk. And actually when she was pregnant with Hazel,
Speaker 3: near the end of it, she stayed in lab very
Speaker 3: late one night and missed the last bus home and
Speaker 3: she ran to catch it and sprinted at like thirty
Speaker 3: eight weeks pregnant, and then started feeling out very good,
Speaker 3: but came home and went to bed. At two o'clock
Speaker 3: in the morning, she woke up and she was like,
Speaker 3: something is wrong. So we rushed to the hospital and
Speaker 3: something was indeed wrong. She had help syndrome, which can
Speaker 3: be very dangerous, and the doctor was like, this will
Speaker 3: kill your wife very soon. But the cure is we
Speaker 3: just take the baby out. So she had an emergency
Speaker 3: sea section, and so we were very glad to have
Speaker 3: excellent medical facilities nearby. And I imagine if you're going
Speaker 3: to build a colony on Mars and consider having pregnant
Speaker 3: women there, that you're going to want excellent medical facilities there, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, And I don't think we've gotten far enough
Speaker 1: in any of our planning to say, like, Okay, the
Speaker 1: third rocket is going to be filled with just equipment
Speaker 1: for sea sections and stuff. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: equipment that we need to keep women and babies alive.
Speaker 1: And that equipment is why we do so well. So
Speaker 1: you know, I ended up having hypertension for both of
Speaker 1: my pregnancies. I had to be induced, which meant I
Speaker 1: needed oxytocin, which needs to be refrigerated at stable temperatures.
Speaker 1: There was a study in Sub Saharan Africa that found
Speaker 1: that a bunch of women were hemorrhaging. So oxytocin is
Speaker 1: also used not just to induce the contractions that you
Speaker 1: need to start labor, but all so to cause additional
Speaker 1: contractions to pinch off blood vessels and stop hemorrhaging if
Speaker 1: a woman is hemorrhaging at the end of labor, which
Speaker 1: is the way most women die if they're going to
Speaker 1: die in pregnancy. And this oxytocin wasn't working as well
Speaker 1: in some regions of Sub Saharan Africa, and the hypothesis
Speaker 1: was that somewhere along the trip that it made to
Speaker 1: Sub Saharan Africa, the refrigeration broke down and this, like
Speaker 1: unsteady temperature, caused it to not be as effective.
Speaker 3: So it only needs to be cold when you delivered.
Speaker 3: It needs to never have been warmed up.
Speaker 1: Ever, Yes, so you need backup refrigerators. You need to
Speaker 1: figure out how much oxytocin you need. You need a
Speaker 1: sea section equipment. You need blood pressure medication and that
Speaker 1: needs to be shelf stable for as long as it's
Speaker 1: going to take for resupply to get out there. There's
Speaker 1: just a lot of stuff that keeps humans alive in
Speaker 1: western countries that you know. Some people tell me, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we don't have to bring that stuff with us. There
Speaker 1: are women who give birth all over the world without
Speaker 1: that stuff, And well that's true. I think I think
Speaker 1: that our lack of ability to provide adequate medical care
Speaker 1: to women in like remote region isn't good. It's not
Speaker 1: something we should be bringing with us out into space.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be like, oh, we do it there, we'll
Speaker 1: do it in space too. But I've gotten off track.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of planting that you need to do.
Speaker 1: Mars offers a couple unique additional challenges. That regolith on
Speaker 1: Mars is worse in some ways than that reguleth on
Speaker 1: the Moon. And one of the ways that it's worse
Speaker 1: is that it's laced with perchlorates. These are endocrine disrupting chemicals.
Speaker 1: They mess with the stuff that your thyroid does, and
Speaker 1: the Food and Drug Administration warns that for fetuses, being
Speaker 1: exposed to perchlorates can mess with nervous system developments.
Speaker 3: But what are perchlorates? Are they an organic molecule. How
Speaker 3: they made? Like, why do they exist on Mars not
Speaker 3: the moon?
Speaker 1: The Moon has a lot less of a bunch of
Speaker 1: things like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus. The Moon just sort of
Speaker 1: generally seems to be poor and a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: Mars has more stuff available to be reacted with and
Speaker 1: somehow that results in perchlorates would be my best answer,
Speaker 1: But do you think you can sort of summarize it.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm definitely not a chemist, but perchlorates our combination
Speaker 3: and oxygen, and I think there is more chlorine in
Speaker 3: the Martian soil and then the UV hits that and
Speaker 3: forms these perchlorates. But basically, these things are a simple
Speaker 3: chemical compound, but they're bad for us. Can you tell
Speaker 3: us why they're bad? Firms? From like the biological point
Speaker 3: of view? Why is this thing so dangerous for fetuses?
Speaker 1: Sure? So, I believe the answer is that our thyroid
Speaker 1: there's a iodine that our thyroid collects and uses to
Speaker 1: make hormones, and perchlorate sort of interrupt the ability of
Speaker 1: the thyroid to use the iodine to make the hormones
Speaker 1: that it usually makes, and when that gets disrupted, you
Speaker 1: get problems with metabolism and nervous system development.
Speaker 3: So that sounds especially bad for fetuses.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah. And a reason that this becomes particularly relevant
Speaker 1: is not just because if you go outside you might
Speaker 1: accidentally bring it back in if you get regolith on
Speaker 1: your suit, but also when you grow plants in dirt
Speaker 1: or soil that has perchlorates, the perchlorates get pulled out
Speaker 1: of the soil and go into the plant tissues. So
Speaker 1: if you're growing your plants in either water that has
Speaker 1: happened to take up some perchlorates because perchlorates are water soluble,
Speaker 1: or you haven't gotten all the perchlorates out of the dirt.
Speaker 1: If you decide that you're going to like be old
Speaker 1: fashioned and grow your food in the dirt, then you
Speaker 1: have to be concerned that mom's taking in these perchlorates.
Speaker 3: Wow, so mom can't eat any food grown on native
Speaker 3: Martian soil basically.
Speaker 1: Well, so this is where I can hear the space
Speaker 1: settlement advocates yelling while you're over selling the difficulty. It's
Speaker 1: water soluble, so you could just bring regulyth in and
Speaker 1: then rinse RNs, rins insurances, rens, rents, rent rents until
Speaker 1: it's gone, and then you could grow in it, but
Speaker 1: now you also have to make sure that you don't
Speaker 1: have chlorates in your water. And I talked to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who's a geologist who works with perchlorates,
Speaker 1: and I was like, does that sound like just print
Speaker 1: RNs rents are insurants? Problem solved? And he goes, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man. All I can tell you is that
Speaker 1: I only work with this stuff in fume hoods. That's
Speaker 1: how nasty it is. I will only work with this
Speaker 1: if there's a fume hood on. So I would be concerned.
Speaker 1: Like when we bought our farm, if they had said, well,
Speaker 1: if you rinse the soil the endercrendisrupt chemicals that are
Speaker 1: in there, yeah, it'll be fine. You can still grow
Speaker 1: food for your family, I'd be like, I'm living somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you're just gonna have to be really careful
Speaker 1: to make sure that this like pretty nasty toxin doesn't
Speaker 1: get into your food or water in any way. But
Speaker 1: let's take a break and then we will talk about
Speaker 1: what will happen if it turns out that Martian gravity
Speaker 1: is just not going to work for human reproduction. All right,
Speaker 1: So what if you get to the moon and you
Speaker 1: find out that reproduction is just not working at one
Speaker 1: sixth of Earth's gravity. You know, like moms bones are breaking,
Speaker 1: she doesn't have the right muscles for contractions. The baby
Speaker 1: is just not developing at all, and it's just you know,
Speaker 1: development for the baby is just not going according to plan.
Speaker 3: And this is not outrageous. Right, Basically every human ever
Speaker 3: conceived and carried and born has been within one G
Speaker 3: and using the benefit of the Earth's atmosphere, and so
Speaker 3: there's reasons why evolution may be dependent on it. Right,
Speaker 3: It wouldn't be ridiculous to discover that these are necessary
Speaker 3: for humans to conceive in birth successfully, right, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is the environment we're adapted to. It wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprising to me if we needed And so you know,
Speaker 1: maybe some people would say, Okay, it didn't work on
Speaker 1: the Moon, but the Moon has one sixth of Earth's gravity.
Speaker 1: Maybe Mars's forty percent will be enounced. So maybe we
Speaker 1: go out there and we discover actually, the rodents can't
Speaker 1: make it work at forty percent either. We talked to
Speaker 1: some space settlement advocates who are like, well, there's another solution,
Speaker 1: maybe you just need Earth gravity. Well, you're pregnant, in
Speaker 1: which case we can put you on like a banked
Speaker 1: racetrack and create one g And I puked a lot
Speaker 1: during my pregnancy. I think I would be puking a
Speaker 1: lot more under that scenario.
Speaker 3: I'm imagining those devices they use to test astronauts for
Speaker 3: high GI where they like put them in those chairs
Speaker 3: and then spin them around. And you're saying, no bed rest,
Speaker 3: You got to sit in one of those things the
Speaker 3: whole pregnancy, Oh my god, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, Or maybe you only need to sit in it
Speaker 1: at night, like eight you just sleep in it eight
Speaker 1: hours a day. Maybe that's enough to make you strong enough.
Speaker 1: Like we just we really don't know. But say, say
Speaker 1: women decide they don't want to do that, they don't
Speaker 1: want to spend their pregnancies on a banked racetrack. The
Speaker 1: rotating space settlement people argue that now they are the
Speaker 1: only game in town. So these rotating space settlements, they
Speaker 1: are these giant structures. They can take a variety of
Speaker 1: different shapes, but the one that I immediately imagine looks
Speaker 1: sort of like a bike wheel and it kind of
Speaker 1: spins and you live around the rim and you can
Speaker 1: simulate gravity by spinning fast enough.
Speaker 3: So you're saying, if it's not possible to have babies
Speaker 3: in Martian gravity and nobody wants to sit in one
Speaker 3: of those spinning racetracks, then you basically can't be on
Speaker 3: the surface of Mars. You have to go up into
Speaker 3: space and simulate Earth grapt in a space station.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe you could just put on like an
Speaker 1: incredibly weighted suit on Mars so that you maybe that
Speaker 1: would keep your muscles and bones strong enough. We just
Speaker 1: we don't know. I'm saying that it's possible that we
Speaker 1: will discover there's no easy solution to forty percent Martian gravity,
Speaker 1: and then the rotating space station people can stand up
Speaker 1: at the conferences and say we won, we won.
Speaker 3: But also you're just talking about the pregnancy itself. What
Speaker 3: about the development of the kid, right, Like, what if
Speaker 3: you need gravity to grow up into a normal human being,
Speaker 3: then this kid's going to be on a racetrack until
Speaker 3: they're eighteen or up into space.
Speaker 1: You can't go back down to Mars, right And so
Speaker 1: I feel like this is where questions about social issues
Speaker 1: start to come into play, Like what if some people
Speaker 1: want to live on the surface of Mars, but moms
Speaker 1: and children need to live in these rotating space stations.
Speaker 1: You know what kind of social dynamics does that create?
Speaker 1: And you know, maybe you only need to live in
Speaker 1: a rotating space station if the child ever wants the
Speaker 1: option of returning to Earth. Maybe you can develop on
Speaker 1: Mars if you never plan on leaving. Like we just
Speaker 1: we don't know how this kind of stuff will play out,
Speaker 1: Like this is the current state of our knowledge.
Speaker 3: What a crazy decision you'd have to make for your kids,
Speaker 3: Like you get to grow up on Mars, but you
Speaker 3: can never go to Earth. That would be insane.
Speaker 1: I mean, Earth is so awesome, Like I mean, I
Speaker 1: can imagine my family moved from Ireland to New York City,
Speaker 1: and I can imagine someone being like, well, what if
Speaker 1: if you're born in New York City but then you
Speaker 1: never get to go back to Ireland, Like what are
Speaker 1: you doing to your child?
Speaker 3: Well, you should feel responsible for raising your kids in Virginia.
Speaker 3: I mean, they didn't have a choice in that, right,
Speaker 3: they have to always tell people they come from Virginia.
Speaker 3: You settle them with that their whole lives.
Speaker 1: They seem very happy, They seem very happy, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you know when we lived in California, we experienced an earthquake,
Speaker 1: and I think that would scare Ada quite a bit
Speaker 1: if she had been a bit older.
Speaker 3: She just they just have to learn to ride it out.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: It's fun. It's like a theme park ride.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: She also is I hope she doesn't listen to this episode.
Speaker 1: She's a little scared of some theme park ride. Me too, Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: some of them are intense. When I went to Cedar
Speaker 1: Point last time, I like the rides that I used
Speaker 1: to love. Now when I go around the corner, I like,
Speaker 1: you know, my arms are in the air, I'm screaming,
Speaker 1: and then I pass out around the corner, which makes
Speaker 1: me think I'm probably not a good candidate for those
Speaker 1: banked race tracks either, spend the whole time passed out.
Speaker 3: One more reason why you shouldn't go to space.
Speaker 1: As if we needed another one.
Speaker 3: All right, So we were talking about having moms and
Speaker 3: maybe even their kids in high G environments near Mars.
Speaker 3: If we think that it's probably not possible to carry
Speaker 3: the pregnancy and give birth and maybe raise your kids
Speaker 3: in Martian gravity.
Speaker 1: You could abandon the Mars plan altogether. With and these
Speaker 1: rotating space stations could go anywhere. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the places that they're proposed are at like Lagrange points,
Speaker 1: where the gravitational pull of various objects more or less
Speaker 1: cancels out, so you don't have to use a lot
Speaker 1: of fuel to stay in one place. But you know,
Speaker 1: you could put them near the asteroid belts for resources,
Speaker 1: or near the moon or whatever. They could go anywhere.
Speaker 3: I like your zz top pronunciation of Lagrange points. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Oh now, how am I supposed to say it?
Speaker 3: Well? I think it's not named after the town in
Speaker 3: Texas Lagrange, but probably the French mathematician Lagrange. But you know,
Speaker 3: maybe I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm thinking about all the conferences I've been
Speaker 1: to now where I've said they're wrong. That was good.
Speaker 1: I also apparently have been saying magnetosphere. It's magnetosphere or
Speaker 1: something I've been Anyway, I'm an embarrassment to my children
Speaker 1: and always will be.
Speaker 3: No, I'm going to talk about Lagrange gians from now
Speaker 3: on in particle physics.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, Well, your class will be more interesting because
Speaker 1: of it, I'm sure exactly. But you know, these rotating
Speaker 1: space stations, it's worth noting they're going to be difficult
Speaker 1: engineering challenges, and we haven't built them yet. So, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you think about how big the International
Speaker 1: Space Station is, to make a station that could hold
Speaker 1: a lot of people and not have to spin so
Speaker 1: many times that you'd feel sick due to the spinning,
Speaker 1: you would probably want it so that the wheel of
Speaker 1: the rotating space station could fit around the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: So you know, I guess the diameter of the wheel
Speaker 1: would be the same as the length of the International
Speaker 1: Space Station at its widest point. And already the International
Speaker 1: Space Station is one of the most expensive things that
Speaker 1: has ever been made, and it's not rotating, and so
Speaker 1: when you start, you know, thinking about how you're going
Speaker 1: to make these, it's going to be tough. Not possible,
Speaker 1: but it's going to be tough, and it's not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that, like, you know, if Musk sends
Speaker 1: people to Mars and they start reproducing in the next
Speaker 1: few decades, these sort of rotating space stations might not
Speaker 1: be available yet so that you could like shuttle them
Speaker 1: up there to try to save their lives.
Speaker 3: But Kelly, I've heard entrepreneurs say with confidence, will have
Speaker 3: our first rotating space hotel in twenty twenty seven. Are
Speaker 3: you saying that's over sold?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably over sold. I mean
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. Rotating space hotel by twenty twenty
Speaker 1: seven really.
Speaker 3: Huh m hmmm, okay with great confidence?
Speaker 1: Wow, And is it going to be rotating at one
Speaker 1: g or just providing enough gravity that you're not going
Speaker 1: to be incomplete free fall?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like you want at least enough gravity to
Speaker 1: make sure that, like when you're in the bathroom, everything
Speaker 1: moves in the direction you want it to. That makes
Speaker 1: everything cleaner.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe they can have a swimming pool at the
Speaker 3: center of it, like a zero G bubble of water
Speaker 3: really can float in. That would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Did you watch there was a movie with Chris Pratt
Speaker 1: and Jennifer lawrenceingers, Yeah, where the gravity gave out and
Speaker 1: the fiction and the water in the pool was anyway,
Speaker 1: that was a scary scene. But yeah, okay, So maybe
Speaker 1: we will have tourist hotels by twenty twenty seven. I'm
Speaker 1: a little skeptical. I don't think they're going to be
Speaker 1: out at Mars at that point, and I don't think
Speaker 1: they're going to be big enough to be a permanent
Speaker 1: housing structure for thousands of people. I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: So there's one other place that folks propose if it
Speaker 1: turns out gravity is a problem. And you are probably well,
Speaker 1: you know me, so you're probably not going to be
Speaker 1: surprised what the answer is because I've probably oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because you were on the call where we interviewed Guermo
Speaker 1: Sunline for Daniel and Jorge explain the universe. But yes,
Speaker 1: Venus is the other place where people are proposing.
Speaker 3: Venus is the goddess of fertility, right, so oh.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, appropriate, And no one's proposing the surface of Venus.
Speaker 3: And why is that, Daniel, Because the surface of Venus
Speaker 3: is totally inhospitable. It's very high temperature, it's very high pressure.
Speaker 3: It's crazy like the things we've landed on the surface
Speaker 3: of Venus have lasted for like minutes or hours before
Speaker 3: being melted and crushed. It's also like sulfuric acid rain.
Speaker 3: It's basically not the kind of place you'd want to go,
Speaker 3: even if you were like the rock. Not to mention
Speaker 3: a baby.
Speaker 1: Anytime I read about Venus, it's always compared unfavorably to Hell,
Speaker 1: and as being like worse than Hell. But some folks
Speaker 1: note that if you are up in the atmosphere, there's
Speaker 1: a part of the atmosphere where you are like above
Speaker 1: the sulfuric acid clouds and you're experiencing one G and
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is thick enough to protect you from space radiation.
Speaker 1: So if you can make a floating environment, then you
Speaker 1: could have the one G that maybe we're going to
Speaker 1: need to have babies. And so you know, I think
Speaker 1: the humans to Venus people would say, if we think
Speaker 1: this gravity thing is a serious problem, we should be
Speaker 1: serious about floating habitats in Venus.
Speaker 3: That only makes sense to me if you want to
Speaker 3: live on Venus anyway, Why otherwise would you go to
Speaker 3: Venus to have babies, Right, Like, if you're going to
Speaker 3: colonize Venus. Sure it's nice if you're going to have
Speaker 3: babies on Venus, but if your goal is to colonize
Speaker 3: Mars and explore the outer Solar system, doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: me to me much in advantage to have like a
Speaker 3: terrible floating place just above Hell that you could also
Speaker 3: go to to have babies.
Speaker 1: Well, so I think they're saying that we just need
Speaker 1: to find the places in our solar system where we
Speaker 1: can create self sustaining settlements, and that we haven't been
Speaker 1: serious enough about considering Venus as one of those places.
Speaker 1: So this isn't just like a nice place you go
Speaker 1: during your pregnancy vacation. This is like where humans are
Speaker 1: going to live out their lives and have families.
Speaker 3: Oh, I seem forever, let's move closer to the Sun
Speaker 3: instead of going out to explore the universe. I don't know,
Speaker 3: it feels like going backwards to me. Not a big
Speaker 3: fan of move in Venus.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not signing up for any of these plans,
Speaker 1: to be honest. So so I thought maybe we could
Speaker 1: wrap up by talking about how optimistic I am that
Speaker 1: we're going to be able to get this research done
Speaker 1: before the tourists start giving us the answers. And to
Speaker 1: be honest, I'm not super optimistic right now. So, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, NASA's super squeamish about funding stuff like this,
Speaker 1: So we're not getting government funding, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine companies being able to find profitable routes to finding
Speaker 1: the answers to these reproduction questions.
Speaker 3: Well, I know you don't like Elon Musk questions. But
Speaker 3: do you think Elon's new influence on the government might
Speaker 3: change that because he's a big proponent of making the
Speaker 3: species interplanetary, and I know he likes to rush to
Speaker 3: the sexy bits without necessarily doing all the homework. But
Speaker 3: do you think like doing studies about pregnancy and childbirth
Speaker 3: and space could maybe tickle those guys fancy?
Speaker 1: I mean, that could be a silver lining. Musk does
Speaker 1: not seem concerned about these questions. It doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: me like he would want to be pushing the government
Speaker 1: to spend a bunch of money to get the answers
Speaker 1: to these questions. I think he feels like we will
Speaker 1: go out there and find the answers to these questions
Speaker 1: when we.
Speaker 3: Get there, maybe with tragic consequences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that they that Musk and
Speaker 1: others think that, you know, people like me are way
Speaker 1: too risk averse. It'll probably be fine, and if not,
Speaker 1: we'll just let natural selection take care of things, which
Speaker 1: is of course, like that means a lot of death.
Speaker 1: It's like a way that hides the fact that lots
Speaker 1: of death could happen. It would be great if there
Speaker 1: were funding. I think there are a couple companies that
Speaker 1: are trying to study reproduction in space with the hopes
Speaker 1: that the research will produce patentable technologies that can then
Speaker 1: be used to pay for like the next step in
Speaker 1: the process. I hope that works out. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me to imagine, Like, I don't know. Maybe maybe you
Speaker 1: do learn something about reproduction of microgravity that produces some technology.
Speaker 1: That would be great.
Speaker 3: But people having babies on Earth in risky environments, you know,
Speaker 3: people living in the Ukraine near Chernobyl exposed to higher
Speaker 3: radiation or whatever. Can we do something learning from those
Speaker 3: experiences those risks people are already deciding to take and
Speaker 3: extrapolating from there.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a great question. So the radiation and
Speaker 1: Chernobyl that we would maybe be learned something from is
Speaker 1: different than the kind of radiation we expect we're going
Speaker 1: to experience in space, So I don't think you're going
Speaker 1: to get a lot of great data from that.
Speaker 3: What about pregnant stewardesses, because they spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time at high altitude and they're exposed to more space radiation.
Speaker 1: If it turned out that they had more radiation associated
Speaker 1: issues with their pregnancies, that would be good reason for
Speaker 1: us to worry. But if they were fine, that wouldn't mean,
Speaker 1: for example, that things like partial gravity is not going
Speaker 1: to be a problem anymore. So there are some environments
Speaker 1: that give us some insights, but the data are going
Speaker 1: to be hard to collect in a systematic way, mostly
Speaker 1: because of ethics associated with, you know, doing experiments with
Speaker 1: humans like you wouldn't want to send the pregnant stewardess
Speaker 1: up like more often to see if the extra radiation
Speaker 1: causes problems.
Speaker 3: You and your friend Cap o'hennon have a show on
Speaker 3: exactly this question, don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So she wrote this book called Eve about the
Speaker 1: evolution of the female reproductive system, and she contacted me
Speaker 1: and she was like, you know how much reproduction sucks
Speaker 1: on Earth. I'm like an expert in that, and you're
Speaker 1: an expert in how awful space is. We should do
Speaker 1: a show together where we sort of jokingly inform people
Speaker 1: about that. We could hire some artists to create outfits
Speaker 1: that sort of imagine ways we might be able to
Speaker 1: help women have safe pregnancies and labors in this environment.
Speaker 1: And we did the show at the MIT Museum, and
Speaker 1: we're going to do it at the Royal Institute of
Speaker 1: London on April seventeenth, and we might have a couple
Speaker 1: other shows in the UK. We were there, so you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we can all laugh about this problem together.
Speaker 3: If you don't have answers, at least we have jokes.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: The motto of this podcast is well, that's right.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the best way I know to live
Speaker 1: a life.
Speaker 3: All right. So let me end by asking you when
Speaker 3: do you think the first baby's going to be born
Speaker 3: on Mars? If you had to put a year on it.
Speaker 1: So I think the answer is going to depend on
Speaker 1: geopolitics and stuff like that. I would like the answer
Speaker 1: to be thirty years from now or something, because I
Speaker 1: think thirty years would be the right amount of time
Speaker 1: to sort of biology research can't be rushed in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, Like you just you have to live
Speaker 1: through the generations that it takes. And you know, if
Speaker 1: you can successfully have a baby on the moon, you
Speaker 1: probably want to stay there for a couple of years
Speaker 1: to make sure they develop, okay, and maybe that they
Speaker 1: go through puberty. Okay. So I just I feel like
Speaker 1: we want to do this slowly, but I can also
Speaker 1: imagine that you know, with Musk's newfound geopolitical clout. If
Speaker 1: he is able to stay on his timeline, he could
Speaker 1: have people finding the answer in what I think are
Speaker 1: unethical ways much sooner. So I guess I hope the
Speaker 1: answer is decades.
Speaker 3: But do you fear it might just be a few years?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 3: I think it'd be foolish to predict the future, That's
Speaker 3: what I think. So I'm curious to see what happens.
Speaker 1: I'm curious and scared. So anyway, write your senators and
Speaker 1: tell them that they should be funding sex and space.
Speaker 3: That's right, and let's hope that the first baby's born
Speaker 3: in space and on Mars are happy and healthy.
Speaker 1: See you next week. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is
Speaker 1: produced by iHeart. We would love to hear from you,
Speaker 1: We really would.
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