Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there'll be one, And Welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says ground
Speaker 1: control to Major Tom or she packed my bags last
Speaker 1: night pre flight zero hour nine am or Earth below us, drifting, balling, floating, witless,
Speaker 1: calling calling home. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren bock Obama,
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. I think we've already had the third one,
Speaker 1: haven't we? We probably have, but it's still very fitting
Speaker 1: for this particular episode. So that's why I had to
Speaker 1: have extras to fill in for the fact that I
Speaker 1: was already quoting myself again next myself. But anyway, it
Speaker 1: sounds like we're talking about space. We aren't talking about space.
Speaker 1: It's very cold in space. But yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about space and space exploration. And really, this whole
Speaker 1: idea of exploring space using manned missions versus unmanned mission
Speaker 1: is like, why do should we concentrate on one more
Speaker 1: than the other? Is one intrinsically better than the other? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is the era of manned space exploration, at least for
Speaker 1: the time being over is a just beginning and and
Speaker 1: kind of have a just a full discussion about the
Speaker 1: whole idea. So, uh, I mean, what do you I
Speaker 1: guess we should probably start with kind of a historical
Speaker 1: look at at manned and unmanned missions. Right. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so y'all know when we first landed on the Moon, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wasn't born yet, but yes, it was ninety nine yeah,
Speaker 1: the Apollo missions, unless you watch Arrested Development, in which
Speaker 1: case the first real moon landing was nine one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or if you're yeah, if you're one of those conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists generally right, right, if you're if you if you
Speaker 1: somehow believe that that that the most amazing human achievement
Speaker 1: arguably was actually faked. It's a product of Stanley Kuberick
Speaker 1: and a set in the desert somewhere right right, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, we do not subscribe to that. Yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: it turns out that's still wrong either way, depending on
Speaker 1: how you define the question. We actually put tons of
Speaker 1: stuff on the Moon before any humans got there. That's
Speaker 1: where my remote control is. Actually, I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 1: don't have any direct proof, but I can't find it
Speaker 1: anywhere here on Earth, and most of my left socks.
Speaker 1: Yeah wait, you know, wow, your socks are actually left
Speaker 1: and right now. No, seriously, we so we actually had
Speaker 1: something on the Moon in the fifties. Fifties. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, the Soviet probe Luna two smashed into the Moon.
Speaker 1: It's not quite what you'd call a landing, but it
Speaker 1: it took some molecules from Earth and it put them
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Moon, and so, and they're
Speaker 1: still there in one way or another. Now, that's honestly
Speaker 1: I did not I had known of the Soviet space
Speaker 1: program and the fact that they had fired stuff to
Speaker 1: the Moon and actually landed things on the Moon, but
Speaker 1: unto we did the research for this, I honestly could
Speaker 1: not remember the act, the name of the program at all.
Speaker 1: And uh. And the reason why I bring that up
Speaker 1: is because that plays into what part of our conversation
Speaker 1: later on. I just think it's an interesting thing, is
Speaker 1: that I'm aware of it, but I wasn't really knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about it. Sure, And I think the part of that
Speaker 1: is that none of us were alive. Then you know,
Speaker 1: it's um and so you know, perhaps if we had
Speaker 1: been the geeks that we are in that particular time
Speaker 1: period we would remember these things, but maybe, but there
Speaker 1: are so many of those, and I was just astonished
Speaker 1: how many things we put on the Moon that I
Speaker 1: didn't even know about. And so you had this, you
Speaker 1: had this impact in theft and the hard landing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first soft landing was another Soviet spacecraft. It was
Speaker 1: the same It was from Luna nine, so the same series,
Speaker 1: and that was in nineteen sixty six, so still years
Speaker 1: before we managed to land any people. But only a
Speaker 1: couple of years. I mean, that's that's an impressive It's
Speaker 1: sorry the loose definition of a but no, that's that's
Speaker 1: a very short period of time between manned and unmanned. Well,
Speaker 1: it's amazing what we didn't know about the Moon back then.
Speaker 1: So when they put down the Luna nine on the Moon,
Speaker 1: one of the important things they found out is oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so you can put stuff on the Moon and it
Speaker 1: won't sink. Right. Can you imagine to think about this,
Speaker 1: You're you're a NASA scientist planning a manned mission to
Speaker 1: the Moon. We're gonna put some astronauts on there. But
Speaker 1: one option in your mind is that the Moon is
Speaker 1: completely covered in dry quicksand, and that when you set
Speaker 1: foot on it, you would sink into the moon right
Speaker 1: then sink into the moon. Perhaps it was just so
Speaker 1: powdery that you would end up so deeply entrenched in
Speaker 1: it that there would be no way to get back
Speaker 1: out again. Yeah, but so the Luna nine they learned that, Okay, no,
Speaker 1: you won't sink. Uh, you know, it's it's safe for
Speaker 1: human landing. The Surveyor one was the first US spacecraft
Speaker 1: land on the Moon. That was a few months after
Speaker 1: the Lunar nine. And then we had a bunch of
Speaker 1: other in packs and landers before we ever got to uh,
Speaker 1: the Apollo eight, which orbited the Moon, and then eleven,
Speaker 1: which finally set down, And so it took us this
Speaker 1: long to get to the human landing. But the human
Speaker 1: landing is what everybody remembers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you
Speaker 1: if you talk to people about moon landings and there,
Speaker 1: naturally tend to think of the Apollo missions, specifically Apollo eleven,
Speaker 1: although six missions did ultimately land on the Moon. I
Speaker 1: think twelve astronauts were able to walk on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Moon and uh, and so you know, that's
Speaker 1: one of those missions was supposed to go there but
Speaker 1: didn't quite manage. We'll talk about that later, but so
Speaker 1: this kind of puts something in perspective. We haven't been
Speaker 1: back to the Moon with human beings since the seventies, right,
Speaker 1: and we've we've seriously cut back on just manned missions
Speaker 1: into space in general. With what we haven't been anywhere
Speaker 1: else either. Well, well, I'm talking about being like just
Speaker 1: even going into ornaments. I mean, you know, the Space
Speaker 1: Shuttle program has been shelved. It's actually well been scrapped
Speaker 1: at this point. It's it's retired, it's done. So we
Speaker 1: don't have a Space Shuttle mission anymore speaking anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have privately we well even then it's not Space Shuttle,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's the like the Dragon space program, things
Speaker 1: like that over at SpaceX and then a few other
Speaker 1: countries of course still have space programs that are sending
Speaker 1: people to and from the International Space Station. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think when we had the first Moon landing and
Speaker 1: we had the first experience of seeing people walking on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon, the natural progression there was
Speaker 1: to think, wow, this is this is the beginning. Here
Speaker 1: we go, Yeah, we're gonna go out there and we
Speaker 1: are going to explore the solar system and beyond and
Speaker 1: and people are going to play a big part of that.
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, a lot of that hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we have explored the Solar System quite
Speaker 1: a bit, but we've done so with these un manned missions,
Speaker 1: and we kind of wanted to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about why that is, Why have we gone down this
Speaker 1: route of unmanned versus manned? So I think first we
Speaker 1: should just give a real brief overview of of what
Speaker 1: these unmanned missions look like, and then um, what kind
Speaker 1: of advantages they provide overmanned missions or what are the
Speaker 1: disadvantages of manned missions. So a lot of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about is space probes or planetary orbiter probes and
Speaker 1: occasional rovers and rovers and so the most common is
Speaker 1: will send out a probe that's like it orbits other
Speaker 1: planetary bodies and it takes data readings of all different kinds,
Speaker 1: sometimes photographs. Right, You've got the deep space probes like Voyager,
Speaker 1: and they're just going you know, yeah, these are ones.
Speaker 1: The Voyager probes in particular, we're designed to do surveys
Speaker 1: of the outer planets in our Solar System. And then
Speaker 1: once they were done with that, they were to continue
Speaker 1: on into uh, the furthest reaches of our Solar system
Speaker 1: grab tationally ricocheted off of Jupiter. Yeah, it all depends
Speaker 1: on which voyager you're talking about, because one of them,
Speaker 1: one of them just visited essentially, uh, you know, like
Speaker 1: like Saturn and Jupiter, and the other one went further
Speaker 1: out all the way to Neptune and then hit it
Speaker 1: off into interstellar space or toward interstellar space. We should
Speaker 1: say that it's one of those milestones that has constantly
Speaker 1: shifted the idea of leaving the Solar system. Right, it
Speaker 1: seems about every three months now, so it goes like
Speaker 1: it's leaving the kind of thing that we thought was
Speaker 1: the edge of the Solar System, but we're finding out
Speaker 1: that it's bigger than we thought. I kind of think
Speaker 1: of that as like trying to leave Atlanta. The further
Speaker 1: out you go, the bigger Atlanta becomes. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you if you live within Atlanta, you tend to
Speaker 1: think Atlanta is the city like the city of Atlanta.
Speaker 1: The city has an extremely high escape velocity. Right you
Speaker 1: get to the perimeter and then you're thinking, all right,
Speaker 1: well that now now because the perimeter is actually bigger
Speaker 1: than the city, right, So you know, you get to
Speaker 1: the perimeter and then other people who are outside the
Speaker 1: are saying, no, you're still in Atlanta. You get a
Speaker 1: little further out of there and people who are like
Speaker 1: an Athens are saying, no, you're still in Atlanta. Even
Speaker 1: if you say you're in Stone Mountain, you're still in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I know that this has lost everybody else who doesn't
Speaker 1: live in the Metro Atlanta neighborhood. But hey, it's true.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where the soldar system gets
Speaker 1: bigger the further out we go, and nope, you're not
Speaker 1: done yet. So you've got the space probes, you've got
Speaker 1: you've got a few landers, like the Venera Landers that
Speaker 1: landed on Venus. Those were Soviet craft that if you
Speaker 1: ever see the pictures these things take if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen a google the photographs taken by the Venera Lander,
Speaker 1: they're they're just kind of some rocks. But it's still haunting.
Speaker 1: This this eerie yellow mist over, this scary looking gravel.
Speaker 1: I don't know something about it haunts one young girl
Speaker 1: wearing a night shift in her hair down over her face.
Speaker 1: She basically I might be looking at the wrong pictures. Um.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these landers don't make it back.
Speaker 1: We've we've had Japanese Space Agency had to put a
Speaker 1: lander on an asteroid and then got that to return
Speaker 1: to Earth, but not a whole lot of landers. We've
Speaker 1: had some rovers like rovers on the Moon and on Mars.
Speaker 1: Um the Mars rovers. We've had a bunch of those, right,
Speaker 1: and the most recently the Opportunity, the Curiosity. Yeah, Viking
Speaker 1: was Viking one. Viking was I thought that was a probe.
Speaker 1: Might have been Viking landed, but it wasn't a rover.
Speaker 1: It landed on Mars and it gave us our first
Speaker 1: color images of Mars one, but it I don't remember
Speaker 1: it being mobile. Okay, that might I think that's right. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the most recent, obviously is Curiosity one. Thing. Um,
Speaker 1: a lot of these and of course we we mentioned orbiters,
Speaker 1: but there have been more recent orbiters of different planets.
Speaker 1: We we've seen like Cassini doing its schoolwork and Saturn
Speaker 1: and um the Grail probes doing gravity research on the Moon. Right.
Speaker 1: One thing all of these unmanned missions seem to have
Speaker 1: in common is that their suicide missions. You know, like
Speaker 1: the Yeah, there's sort of a planned end. It's just like, well,
Speaker 1: because we've got all these dead rovers on Mars, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: some are still going, some are, some are some are
Speaker 1: destined to die on Mars, while they're all destined to
Speaker 1: die pretty much unless unless we get our bets over
Speaker 1: there real quick and and find a way of picking
Speaker 1: them up and bring them back. Yeah. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, we've learned a lot of cool stuff from
Speaker 1: these these unmanned probes, right sure. Yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: we learn lots of basic information about the the environments
Speaker 1: that we send them to. For instance, we can learn
Speaker 1: things like the chemical composition, composition of the soil or
Speaker 1: the regular on these these surfaces. Well, whether it's the
Speaker 1: Moon or Mars or whatever. We can get images back.
Speaker 1: We can take samples of atmosphere if there is one,
Speaker 1: and learn what is what makes up the atmosphere of
Speaker 1: that planet or moon or whatever. We can get a
Speaker 1: lot of information things like whether or not the you know,
Speaker 1: the plant has a magnetosphere, all this other kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that that is important for us to know, particularly
Speaker 1: if we want to do further uh, scientific endeavors that
Speaker 1: involve this planetary body and I would imagine for all
Speaker 1: of these we want to do that, um, and even
Speaker 1: just figuring out how how our universe works, right Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the history of our solar system, in the history
Speaker 1: of our planet, in our place in the universe. I mean,
Speaker 1: all of these things play a role in in why
Speaker 1: we would do this. And Uh, to your point about
Speaker 1: these suicide missions, I think that's one of the big
Speaker 1: reasons why we why unmanned missions have taken such precedents,
Speaker 1: because it means that we can send stuff that we
Speaker 1: don't have to get back. We don't have to get
Speaker 1: it back, so so that takes care of a huge
Speaker 1: engineering problem, right, I mean, creek coming up with an
Speaker 1: engineering solution to not only get a spacecraft out to
Speaker 1: another body in space, but then back again is an
Speaker 1: enormous challenge, and it is amazing to me that we
Speaker 1: have managed to do that so many times. But it
Speaker 1: definitely makes missions I hesitate to use the word easier,
Speaker 1: but less complex too. If you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about getting them back home again, then we can go
Speaker 1: ahead and say easier. I think that I usually want
Speaker 1: to come home well, and also that they want to
Speaker 1: breathe air and eat food. Yeah, so well, that takes
Speaker 1: us to where we're going next, the whole the whole
Speaker 1: idea about the the benefits versus the costs and risks
Speaker 1: of of of manned and unmanned flights. So okay, so
Speaker 1: what's wrong with manned missions? Well, let's talk about let's
Speaker 1: talk about cost a bit. Okay, alright, So about twenty
Speaker 1: five billion dollars was spent on the Apollo program in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and today's money, that's about a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty five billion, which is a few dollars. That's
Speaker 1: a lot, and it's more than two it's more than
Speaker 1: what I'm making an average year. Uh and and a
Speaker 1: lot of that went to the human spaceflight element of
Speaker 1: of the mission. Um I I think about um out
Speaker 1: of wow. So essentially that money, yeah, so that that's
Speaker 1: covering everything from the systems on board the spacecraft to
Speaker 1: the personnel both in the spacecraft and on the ground
Speaker 1: that are in charge of all the things that are
Speaker 1: keeping the astronauts alive. And you know, you think about
Speaker 1: there there, it's not a surprise that so much money
Speaker 1: would need to go in to the safety and health
Speaker 1: of astronauts. As it turns out, space is not a
Speaker 1: very forgiving environment. Space want to kill you. Yeah, so alright,
Speaker 1: so twenty five billion dollars or like you said, about
Speaker 1: eighty five billion in today's money. So how does that
Speaker 1: compare against an unmanned mission. Well, the Mars Curiosity Space
Speaker 1: Lab project as of right now sits it about two
Speaker 1: point five billion, significantly less. We should also point out that, uh,
Speaker 1: other things to take into consideration involve the proximity of
Speaker 1: the Moon as compared to the proximity of Mars. Turns
Speaker 1: out Moon is a bit closer by it like millions
Speaker 1: and millions of miles, but a bunch of the cost Yah,
Speaker 1: it's going to be in fuel, um and and just yeah,
Speaker 1: getting it, getting it all the way out there, and
Speaker 1: making sure that your instrumentation is um uh powerful enough
Speaker 1: to transmit It's It's interesting though, because you sit there
Speaker 1: and you think about it, and you think, well, if
Speaker 1: it costs a hundred essentially a hundred and eighty five
Speaker 1: billion dollars to run the Apollo program, which granted is
Speaker 1: greater than just the Moon landing, sure, sure, and it's
Speaker 1: it's also it's a bunch of missions. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the Curiosity rover is is one mission on Mission Apollo
Speaker 1: was seventeen missions and only six of those landed on
Speaker 1: the Moon and came back. Um, whereas the Curiosity Rover
Speaker 1: one mission out to Mars. But if you if you
Speaker 1: just extrapolate, if you sit there and think, well, if
Speaker 1: it cost us two point five billion dollars to send
Speaker 1: essentially a remote controlled car onto the surface of Mars
Speaker 1: move it around something, uh, then how expensive would it
Speaker 1: have been to have had a Mars landing program where
Speaker 1: we're putting in the same care and and development in
Speaker 1: life support systems as well as everything else just to
Speaker 1: get people there and back. And you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a huge expense. And while we don't want to suggest
Speaker 1: that scientific discovery should all boil down to how much
Speaker 1: money does it cost, that is a factor you have
Speaker 1: to take any consideration. YEA, whether I would love it
Speaker 1: if we didn't have to worry about money when it
Speaker 1: comes to science, I would love it if that were
Speaker 1: just not something we had to think about at all.
Speaker 1: But the reality is you do uh yeah, Well, whatever
Speaker 1: your feelings about allotting money to science, you have to
Speaker 1: accept that these projects have a budget, and whatever that
Speaker 1: budget is, you need to deal with it, and uh
Speaker 1: so we've got to do the best we can with
Speaker 1: the money that we can get in. Uh. In In
Speaker 1: further contrast, the Voyager program and the numbers here get
Speaker 1: a little bit squiggly because because you know, Voyager was
Speaker 1: launched a little while ago, and and and an inflation
Speaker 1: rates and and you know differences. I mean, and we're
Speaker 1: still putting money into that project, into building satellite rays
Speaker 1: to to better detect the signals from these guys. This
Speaker 1: is this is the project where we have these probes.
Speaker 1: They're going further and further away. So it means that
Speaker 1: we have to keep building more sensitive radar technology or
Speaker 1: radio technology I should say, like radio antennas, uh to
Speaker 1: pick up the signals that these things are sending back
Speaker 1: because they're getting weaker and weaker over time because we
Speaker 1: can further and further away from us. Right right. But
Speaker 1: but overall that's cost about a billion dollars. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: again the cost of unmanned missions that I think that
Speaker 1: plays a big part in why there's been such a
Speaker 1: concentration in them. It's it's the idea that we can
Speaker 1: do a lot more research for less money. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then they're the other factors. Well, yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: that cost comes from so a lot of the cost
Speaker 1: of the manned mission. The reason that costs more is
Speaker 1: because you're having to spend huge amounts of money on
Speaker 1: training and safety to keep the astronauts alive. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we said, space is not a very forgiving environment
Speaker 1: at all. It's very dangerous. Let's just talk about all
Speaker 1: the ways space wants to kill you. Lack of air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a lack of air. The most common ones
Speaker 1: you'd think about our lack of air, maybe lack of gravity, uh, coldness,
Speaker 1: So we can talk about those. Lack of air, that's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious. You have to take oxygen tanks, but that's
Speaker 1: not always so easy because of course, like oxygen is explosive,
Speaker 1: and as we saw in the Apollo thirteen, wasn't one
Speaker 1: of their oxygen tanks that had the major malfunction. And
Speaker 1: then there was the build up of carbon dioxide within
Speaker 1: the capsule itself, and we'll talk about that more later.
Speaker 1: But so you've got that problem you've got of course,
Speaker 1: it's freezing in space. Yeah, you've got the vacuum of space,
Speaker 1: which that will kill you. I mean, even if we
Speaker 1: talk about the lack of air, but explosive decompression, right,
Speaker 1: lack of air goes beyond lack of oxygen. Obviously we're
Speaker 1: talking about like they're not really that many molecules out
Speaker 1: there in the first place. Um, yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: having a pressurized spacecraft in a near vacuum out in space.
Speaker 1: Is it's like having a balloon, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: it's waiting to pop. Yeah, it's yeah. And so if
Speaker 1: you were to have a whole breach, you know, people
Speaker 1: talk about uh, stuff getting sucked out of the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: That's not really what's happening. It's getting blown out, as
Speaker 1: data on Star Trek next Generation would one day correct
Speaker 1: Captain card Um, Yeah, I saw that episode not that
Speaker 1: long ago, but anyway, uh that Yeah, So there's the
Speaker 1: vacuum space, there's the lack of oxygen. Like you said, microgravity,
Speaker 1: or as I like to call it, zero G because
Speaker 1: I like to see Joe go crazy. Hey, so this
Speaker 1: is a little nerd happiness moment we're going to share
Speaker 1: with you. So if you're talking with your friend who
Speaker 1: works for for NASA and you're talking about being in space,
Speaker 1: you don't want to say zero gravity because you're not
Speaker 1: really at zero gravity in space, you're what you're at
Speaker 1: what we would call micro gravity. It's gravity so small
Speaker 1: that it might be almost noticeable or even totally negligible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why it's not totally zero. So if you're in
Speaker 1: zero G one of the problems. Even your own hand
Speaker 1: has gravity, so you're never okay, so you're in zero
Speaker 1: graph zero, you would be you'd be floating. In any case,
Speaker 1: you you are effectively witless, if not completely witless, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: What does that do to your body? Does a lot
Speaker 1: of things. First of all, it can are they nice things?
Speaker 1: They are not? Well, I mean you can do flippy flips,
Speaker 1: that's nice, and rules and those are nice. That's fun.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a strong stomach, you might also
Speaker 1: do some barfie barfs. Um, don't they report? Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so people who are new to micro gravity environments experienced
Speaker 1: space sickness. Well, yeah, I mean it's you've got your
Speaker 1: you've got you've got some organs in your ear, these
Speaker 1: little micro organs that are essentially like a three axis
Speaker 1: uh accelerometers. It's essentially the same sort of thing as
Speaker 1: you would find in a three excess accelerometer device. It's
Speaker 1: what tells your body how it's oriented in comparison to
Speaker 1: the ground. And then you have your your visual input
Speaker 1: that you come in to play. And if the visual
Speaker 1: input and the input you're getting from those little micro
Speaker 1: organs are at odds, you start to feel a bit dizzy, disoriented,
Speaker 1: sometimes nauseated. Furthermore, if if I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: those those microorgans involved fluid, and if the fluid is floating,
Speaker 1: then your ear just does not know how to read
Speaker 1: that data. It's like, well screw it, like something is happening,
Speaker 1: what ought not to happen? Uh? And so yeah, you
Speaker 1: can definitely feel disoriented, auseated, But that's that's small potatoes comparatively. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about prolonged exposure to micro gravity alright.
Speaker 1: So if prolonged exposure, it can mean everything from muscle
Speaker 1: loss just because your your muscles aren't having to work
Speaker 1: against gravity, so you are starting to lose muscle mass
Speaker 1: that way. Also, on the I S S they spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time exercising just to try to make muscle.
Speaker 1: But even then, I think despite you know, they however
Speaker 1: long they spend on the treadmill every day, they still
Speaker 1: have muscle density, they have to go through a lot
Speaker 1: of physical therapy when they get back to Earth. And
Speaker 1: then there's bone density loss, and that's mainly serious. Muscle
Speaker 1: you can rebuild bone, you cannot, so you start to
Speaker 1: lose bone. That's a serious problem. And and uh, prolonged
Speaker 1: exposure to microgravity environments does result in bone loss. So
Speaker 1: that means that you could suffer some pretty serious problems
Speaker 1: when you get back to Earth. Things like, you know,
Speaker 1: your bones may not be as as sturdy as they
Speaker 1: used to be, and you may experience joint issues as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: exposure to micro gravity I think can affect your digestive
Speaker 1: tract too, can it can anything that's not just making
Speaker 1: you sick, but affect your gut flora, the bacteria that
Speaker 1: and not only that, but anything that involves fluid and
Speaker 1: bodies are nothing if sacks of fluid can really get
Speaker 1: affected to Yeah, that's what I meant. They are sacks
Speaker 1: and fluid. In other words, Um, ignore my my circuitous
Speaker 1: uh speaking, which confuses even myself. Uh. At any rate,
Speaker 1: you the fluids get redistributed away from the extremities, which
Speaker 1: is not the way they normally are. So um, this
Speaker 1: causes some problems. Now, initially, the problems involved for those
Speaker 1: of us who are vain, a bit of puffiness around
Speaker 1: the face, for example, and so people might look a
Speaker 1: little more flushed and a bit you know, a little
Speaker 1: swollen around the face. Uh, and you know I think, oh,
Speaker 1: that's kind of that's not attractive. Well, it's worse than that,
Speaker 1: because you can actually develop prol issues like cardiovascular issues
Speaker 1: due to these redistributed fluids um and blood pressure problems.
Speaker 1: When you come back down to Earth, you can have
Speaker 1: issues with your blood pressure and that can cause more
Speaker 1: issues down the line. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: problems just by being in an environment that's got microgravity
Speaker 1: for a long time. Speaking of body fluid ix, it
Speaker 1: affects the shape of the eye, doesn't it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then you can see things that are invisible to the
Speaker 1: naked eye. At least that's the that's that's the reported reaction.
Speaker 1: So it's like an event horizon because that turned out poorly. No. No,
Speaker 1: it's like it's like like like things that are outside
Speaker 1: the visible spectrum for most of us. But apparently because
Speaker 1: of the way the eye can be reshaped in microgravity,
Speaker 1: you can start to see things that normally you would
Speaker 1: not be able to notice that though all seems most
Speaker 1: of the reports seem anecdotal in nature. It's kind of hard.
Speaker 1: I haven't read too many, like serious scientific papers on it,
Speaker 1: so I hesitate to go into it here. Like I
Speaker 1: like the idea that astronauts are just punking us on
Speaker 1: some of this. It could be it could be like
Speaker 1: let's tell them, let's tell them you can see the China,
Speaker 1: let's tell them that. Okay, so it gets listed on
Speaker 1: trivial pursuit, which is wrong. I think we need to
Speaker 1: get to the big one. I think the biggest, the
Speaker 1: most dangerous effect of prolonged space travel radiation. Types of radiation.
Speaker 1: A lot of lay people might not think about this
Speaker 1: as much as the lack of oxygen and stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're being in space. You're exposed to radiation from two sources, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's the Sun and then there's everything. Yeah, there's the
Speaker 1: entire converse. Yeah, cosmic radiation, which really that tends to
Speaker 1: be high speed, low mass particles, yea, cosmic rays. And
Speaker 1: then you have solar radiation, which can involve everything from
Speaker 1: what we're familiar with, like ultra violet radiation, things of
Speaker 1: that like that stuff that is also harmful to us
Speaker 1: if we absorb too much of it over over any
Speaker 1: length of time. Where we're protected on Earth by two things,
Speaker 1: by the atmosphere and by the magnetospheres of the Earth
Speaker 1: is surrounded by gases that absorb some of this radiation
Speaker 1: and it also puts out a magnetic field that repels it. Yes,
Speaker 1: some stuff like some stuff like anything that's a charged
Speaker 1: ion can get repelled by our magnetosphere. Anything that is
Speaker 1: not a charge to ion but is a particle that's
Speaker 1: traveling very quickly, once it hits our atmosphere, it slows down,
Speaker 1: and that both of these things protect us. Now if
Speaker 1: you are in orbit, so for example, if you're on
Speaker 1: the International Space Station, you still have the benefit of
Speaker 1: the magnetosphere because that extends out pretty far from the Earth.
Speaker 1: It's not like, you know, as soon as you get
Speaker 1: up above you know fort you suddenly don't have it.
Speaker 1: But the fact that the atmosphere isn't there to protect
Speaker 1: you is a concern, which is why they have to
Speaker 1: build in certain types of shielding, particularly if there is
Speaker 1: something that they know, like an event has happened and
Speaker 1: they have to essentially move away from areas that are
Speaker 1: more vulnerable to such a thing. So, for example, a
Speaker 1: coronal mass ejection a CME from the Sun might mean
Speaker 1: that they need to relocate for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: so that they can ride it out while these particles
Speaker 1: that are traveling at incredible speeds move through the area
Speaker 1: so that they don't get affected by it. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the things that can happen if you do encounter
Speaker 1: a lot of this radiation, assuming that the radiation levels
Speaker 1: aren't super high. If they are super high, you could
Speaker 1: suffer radiation sickness and radiation poisoning immediately and start seeing
Speaker 1: some really serious symptoms develop upon contact. But if they
Speaker 1: are lower levels than that's still a problem because it
Speaker 1: could mean an increase in your chance of developing diseases
Speaker 1: like cancer. So this is not a trivial problem. This
Speaker 1: is something that has had to have been in consideration
Speaker 1: for every manned space flight. The idea that even even
Speaker 1: if it's a short, relatively short jaunt out and back,
Speaker 1: you have to uh think about this stuff and think, well,
Speaker 1: how how do we minimize this effect on the astronauts
Speaker 1: so that they don't end up coming back sick. So
Speaker 1: it gets even worse if you leave the I S. S.
Speaker 1: I've got some facts here. This from a National Geographic
Speaker 1: article where they they interviewed a scientist named carry Zeitland,
Speaker 1: and he said that basically, an astronaut, say flying to
Speaker 1: Mars going interplanetary space, would get three times the amount
Speaker 1: of radiation somebody gets on the I S. S UM
Speaker 1: and during the trip that would amount to u the
Speaker 1: what he used was it would be like getting a
Speaker 1: whole body CT scan every five or six days the
Speaker 1: entire trip. Right. And we'll go into more detail about
Speaker 1: the problems of getting to Mars in a future episode
Speaker 1: because we've got some more information about that that gets
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's sobering stuff. Now, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that we should shy away from it necessarily, but these
Speaker 1: are some of the and there are other ones too.
Speaker 1: Beyond just these space risks, there's also always the risk
Speaker 1: of something going wrong, either doing launch or landing or
Speaker 1: re entry to Earth. There are a lot of these
Speaker 1: risks as well that you know, we do our best
Speaker 1: to minimize by doing all our safety checks. But I mean,
Speaker 1: even though Apollo program had some pretty famous failures that
Speaker 1: that resulted in the loss of human life and then
Speaker 1: of course there was a polic their team where we were,
Speaker 1: against all odds able to rescue or the actually the
Speaker 1: astronauts themselves were able to address the situation so that
Speaker 1: no one died, right right, And you know it's you
Speaker 1: could argue that the capacity of human people to fix
Speaker 1: what problems go wrong, um is one of the benefits
Speaker 1: of manned missions, because you know, robots don't have the
Speaker 1: thing that they can. I mean, you know people are
Speaker 1: a little bit quicker on their feet. Yeah, that's their brains.
Speaker 1: That's one of those things that we can definitely, uh
Speaker 1: look at as how how a man mission can be
Speaker 1: superior to an unmanned mission and the of being able
Speaker 1: to respond to changing situations and adapt to them or
Speaker 1: or address them in some other way. Also, um, diapers
Speaker 1: have never been the same since we sent manned missions
Speaker 1: out into space. Oh, you're talking about sort of the
Speaker 1: earth based practical benefits like inventions we get. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: there are a crazy number of inventions that might say
Speaker 1: a crep ton oh dear um that that we've gotten
Speaker 1: out of the NASA program. I need to recover from
Speaker 1: that entire phrase for a second. No one of them
Speaker 1: is in fact diapers. NASA developed the maximum absorbancy garment
Speaker 1: UH during the space program, which space space diapers just
Speaker 1: makes the whole thing that much more glamorous, doesn't it. No,
Speaker 1: I mean you know that these have These have terrific
Speaker 1: healthcare industry uses and are are also used by by
Speaker 1: race car drivers and skiers other professional athletes during uh huh,
Speaker 1: Suddenly being a podcaster seems way more glamorous than I
Speaker 1: did before. Also, I kind of wants some of them
Speaker 1: those now important reflective coatings, UM when I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: move on. That's probably best for everybody. When when when
Speaker 1: sky Lab was set in position back in ninety three, UM,
Speaker 1: one of the solar panels famously fell off during launch
Speaker 1: and a company called National Metalizing helped NASA put together
Speaker 1: this this thin plastic material coated in vaporized aluminum UM
Speaker 1: to send up to replace it. And it can deflect
Speaker 1: or conserve radiant energy depending on what's needed at the time. UM.
Speaker 1: And and this is used to uh to to protect
Speaker 1: people and also manatees from hypothermia. People and manatees, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's Manatees can suffer from hypothermia at like sixty
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. It's it's important um bulletproof materials. During the
Speaker 1: Mars Pathfinder and Rover landings, Warwick Mills developed a layered
Speaker 1: coated liquid crystal polyester fiber that can withstand punctures from needles, knives,
Speaker 1: and bullets. It's currently used for military and least protective gear.
Speaker 1: So the way that was developed through which program Mars Pathfinding? Wow?
Speaker 1: So it was it was for the for kushioning the landing.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I was thinking there were muggers in space
Speaker 1: the other ways, other ways that space is trying to
Speaker 1: kill you. Dustbusters. Engineers at Black and Decker developed a cordless,
Speaker 1: self contained power drill during the Apollo Moon landings that
Speaker 1: ended up leading to the Dustbuster. Yeah, before the Yeah,
Speaker 1: the power tools in general basically, right, A lot of
Speaker 1: these benefits, you know, whether it's a manned or unmanned mission,
Speaker 1: are are due to you know, space exploration. Things that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily associate with space, you know have directly
Speaker 1: benefited us in many ways that you might be unaware of.
Speaker 1: And uh, and the neat thing to me is that
Speaker 1: we get these whether it's unmanned or manned missions, But
Speaker 1: when it's a man mission. Because of the just the
Speaker 1: nature of having to take even more things into consideration,
Speaker 1: it is pushed entire industries forward. I mean, for instance, transistors,
Speaker 1: those were pretty young when the Apollo program started. I mean,
Speaker 1: transistors had not been around for very long. But the
Speaker 1: Apollo program was the number one destination for transistors that
Speaker 1: were being produced at that time, like they were. NASA
Speaker 1: was the number one customer for transistors that for for
Speaker 1: years because the Apollo program. But that meant that it
Speaker 1: gave other companies this incentive to continue to improve their
Speaker 1: manufacturing processes and development processes, so that that entire industry,
Speaker 1: uh grew quite a bit in those years, which benefited everybody.
Speaker 1: Further down the line, you go another decade, and then
Speaker 1: that's when the rise of the personal computer happened. That
Speaker 1: would not have been possible, or at least it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have happened at that time without the space industry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to pick up another benefit you mentioned a
Speaker 1: minute ago, actually, Lauren, which was the sort of human
Speaker 1: adaptability factor. I think this is kind of crucial to
Speaker 1: the long term future of space exploration. And this also
Speaker 1: connects to something we said earlier that most of these
Speaker 1: probes or suicide missions. You know, we we put a
Speaker 1: rover on Mars and it goes until it can't go anymore,
Speaker 1: and then that's just a planned obsolescence. It's you know,
Speaker 1: at some point we know it's just not going to
Speaker 1: work right, and and if we're lucky, it will work
Speaker 1: beyond what the parameters were for the mission, but eventually
Speaker 1: it will stop working. Yeah. Um, but one thing that
Speaker 1: occurred to me is that wouldn't necessarily have to be
Speaker 1: the case if we get to a point where, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we're better at protecting humans at space, we're smarter, we
Speaker 1: know how to do it, and it's cheaper. Um, if
Speaker 1: we could have humans to provide for contingencies. Basically that
Speaker 1: that's where the real human strength lies, is that a
Speaker 1: human can deal with a problem that was not foreseen
Speaker 1: in a way that machines can't really. So imagine if
Speaker 1: you're we're exploring Mars and you have a bunch of
Speaker 1: rovers going around on the surface, but you also have
Speaker 1: a human technician. Well, if a rover breaks, if there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with its drive train, uh, the human can
Speaker 1: go and fix that. Or if the rover gets stuck,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's a dust storm and the rover
Speaker 1: is all right, Like the rover manages the despite the
Speaker 1: dust storm, the instrumentation is fine, the rovers fine, but
Speaker 1: as a result it is now lodged because of you know,
Speaker 1: a drift of sand has stuck it where it was.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't plan for that, because there was
Speaker 1: no sand there when the rover started moving there. Things
Speaker 1: like that, Or just imagine even outside of maintenance, simple piloting,
Speaker 1: I mean, there might be a lot of situations where
Speaker 1: it would be much more beneficial to have somebody near
Speaker 1: by controlling or rover as opposed to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: several million miles away. Because because as we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: that you know pesky uh you know light speed limit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the transmission time might actually mean the death of a mission.
Speaker 1: If you if you've got say a probe exploring Europa
Speaker 1: and it encounters some kind of atmospheric variable, something that
Speaker 1: threatens it or something that needs to be responded to
Speaker 1: in real time. If it takes an hour for the
Speaker 1: signal to get to mission control and then it's operators
Speaker 1: on Earth to send some direction back to it, that
Speaker 1: might be too late. Like think about all these these
Speaker 1: sort of time bound contingencies that have popped up in
Speaker 1: previous missions and took humans to deal with. You could
Speaker 1: think about Apollo thirteen, so they had they had. One
Speaker 1: of their many problems was, um, oh, man, we've got
Speaker 1: a CEO to build up in the capsule and the
Speaker 1: only CEO two scrubbers we have don't fit the little
Speaker 1: slot they need to go in. Um. So what they
Speaker 1: had to do was have engineers on the ground instruct
Speaker 1: the astronauts on how to basically invent a portal to
Speaker 1: fit the fitting scrubber. They had a jerry rig, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a new type of connection there, and so that was nearby.
Speaker 1: But you can't imagine a machine being able to invent
Speaker 1: like that, right, and so if that had been say
Speaker 1: something other than now it's worth observing that was life support,
Speaker 1: which wouldn't have been necessary without the human, but it
Speaker 1: could have affected any number of necessary It could have
Speaker 1: affected like a navigation system or some sensor that would uh,
Speaker 1: you know, indicate that thrusters were supposed to fire at
Speaker 1: a very specific moment and they didn't. That kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Another one was jim and I eight, so Jimminy Jiminy.
Speaker 1: According to pilot Neil Armstrong, who by all accounts sort
Speaker 1: of saved the mission by some quick thinking. Um. So
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be a sort of experimental mission
Speaker 1: where they were going to practice docking procedures in orbit. Uh.
Speaker 1: But they get up there and they had a malfunction
Speaker 1: where one of their thrusters started firing and wouldn't stop firing,
Speaker 1: and it's sent the ship they were in into an
Speaker 1: uncontrolled role, so it was rolling in three directions. Um.
Speaker 1: And basically the human crew had to make really fast
Speaker 1: decisions and and use smart piloting to get out of
Speaker 1: that situation and to land back safely on Earth and
Speaker 1: they survived. Um. But it was a lot of people
Speaker 1: would say it was basically because they had a human
Speaker 1: crew there that was smart, that that knew what they
Speaker 1: were doing and was able to respond in real time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so it's just hard to imagine that a machine
Speaker 1: would be able to have a planned, programmed response to
Speaker 1: a contingency that's unpredictable, right until we get to a
Speaker 1: point where we have artificial intelligence that can not only uh,
Speaker 1: detect detect stimuli or detect specific scenarios and then respond
Speaker 1: to them, but also anticipate and even improvise at that time.
Speaker 1: Until we get to that point, then it's pretty clear
Speaker 1: that humans are going to be better at those kind
Speaker 1: of situations the machines are. Yeah. Another thing that I
Speaker 1: think human adapt ability really helps is uh is changing
Speaker 1: research goals. Think about this, I mean Curiosity Rover. The
Speaker 1: Curiosity Rover is amazing for science. It's taught us a
Speaker 1: lot of really cool stuff. But it has set mission
Speaker 1: parameters and stuff it can do. And if you suddenly
Speaker 1: discovered something, if you wanted to change the mission, that
Speaker 1: would be hard to do because if you discovered that
Speaker 1: when you landed on Mars that you just sank right
Speaker 1: into it, then for example, then you know, yeah that
Speaker 1: that the rover couldn't have done anything about that. Of course,
Speaker 1: we we knew when we launched it that it wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But say it just wanted to do some kind of
Speaker 1: sampling or any any kind of experiment that was the
Speaker 1: original mission. It just it wouldn't be able to do
Speaker 1: that because it wouldn't have the right hardware, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have the you know, it just wasn't programmed. Um, but
Speaker 1: a human astronaut, I mean essentially they could be able
Speaker 1: to do anything. Yeah, anything, as long as they had
Speaker 1: as long as they got the materials. Yeah. Well then
Speaker 1: that kind of leads us on to another big benefit
Speaker 1: of manned missions, which is that you know, you can't
Speaker 1: really discount the fact that it's an inspiring thing to have,
Speaker 1: like to have someone who goes out into space and
Speaker 1: explores truly what we call the final frontier. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: that's a big thing. And you know, it really is
Speaker 1: an inspiring thing they have. The world changed when people
Speaker 1: walked on the moon. The world changed the first time
Speaker 1: that a Soviet astronaut orbited the Earth. I mean it's
Speaker 1: we consider these people heroes, right, Well, things you can
Speaker 1: say orbited the Earth but went into Earth orbit. But yes,
Speaker 1: think back to what I said at the beginning. Remember
Speaker 1: all those landers that we put on the Moon that
Speaker 1: we couldn't remember the names of. I mean, that was
Speaker 1: all before Apollo Eleve. That's the one. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: you know it's I you could you could argue that
Speaker 1: that it's all it's all marketing or something like that,
Speaker 1: because you know, of of course a human face and
Speaker 1: that hero element is is something inspiring that these programs
Speaker 1: that are looking for funding kind of want to latch
Speaker 1: onto um. But but at the same time, they they
Speaker 1: are I mean, they these are these are stories. I
Speaker 1: mean if you look at something like like you know,
Speaker 1: any of the space exploration stories that we have from
Speaker 1: the past hundred years, and even the even some of
Speaker 1: the more famous rovers, like you know, we we saw
Speaker 1: it with the rise of social media giving rovers a
Speaker 1: voice of having the Curiosity rover giving them a Twitter account,
Speaker 1: right and even before Curiosity, we had rovers that had
Speaker 1: their own Twitter accounts, and and we kind of anthropomorphized
Speaker 1: these these Wiley came out and yeah, and that helped too.
Speaker 1: But I mean I remember getting a little weepy when
Speaker 1: getting messages about how rovers Battery was dying and essentially
Speaker 1: its job was done, and people were all like, hey,
Speaker 1: good job, And I mean, like, why am I feeling
Speaker 1: emotional about robot something that cannot feel It actually isn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's essentially as if I had really did
Speaker 1: chuck my remote and roll onto the moon. There's I
Speaker 1: might be frustrated that I can't change my channel, but
Speaker 1: I'm not really sad about the remote control. But it
Speaker 1: is this thing where we have identified with with something
Speaker 1: that's doing a mission for science, for the good of mankind,
Speaker 1: for us to learn more about how our universe works,
Speaker 1: and when it's a person doing that. I mean the
Speaker 1: reason why we felt that way about the robot is
Speaker 1: because they gave the robot of a human voice, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, otherwise we just would have been like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that was a really cool device and I'm glad we
Speaker 1: did it, but you wouldn't have an emotional connection. Then
Speaker 1: you put you put this whole like number five is
Speaker 1: alive kind of concept to it, and and that's that's
Speaker 1: a powerful story. Yeah, I think in at the bottom line,
Speaker 1: a rover can do amazing research, but a human being
Speaker 1: is an adventure yes, And and there's something about adventure
Speaker 1: that runs deep within the human psyche. There's this desire
Speaker 1: for adventure and need for adventure for a lot of us.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, you know, I wonder. Yeah, this the
Speaker 1: the itchy feat syndrome, the idea that you know you
Speaker 1: are exploring and learning, and it's it's something that goes
Speaker 1: really really to the core of being human. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of you know know, it's hard to put it into
Speaker 1: words because it's just one of those experiences that we
Speaker 1: kind of all feel. But you know, it's it's just
Speaker 1: part of who we are. So how do we reconcile this?
Speaker 1: We know that for now, unmanned missions seem like the
Speaker 1: much better deal, Like we can learn so much from them,
Speaker 1: they're really useful, uh, and they cost so much less
Speaker 1: and there's less risk to human life. But the manned
Speaker 1: missions we've talked about have all these great advantages. What's
Speaker 1: the how does this balance out? Well? I think you
Speaker 1: have to have a you have to have both. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think unmanned missions being are important so that we
Speaker 1: can gain as much information about our potential destinations as
Speaker 1: possible so that we can prepare for when we actually
Speaker 1: do go there. But I think that, uh, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that that you can only do
Speaker 1: if humans are directly involved. In fact, one of the
Speaker 1: things NASA has said about the Mars missions is that
Speaker 1: we've pretty much done everything we can do on Mars
Speaker 1: with without getting our hands on Martian stuff. So right now,
Speaker 1: the proposed mission next mission to Mars is not a
Speaker 1: manned mission from NASA. This is specifically NASA's approach um,
Speaker 1: but rather to send a series of robots that will
Speaker 1: gather material from Mars and then bring it back to Earth,
Speaker 1: and actually one robot gathers at another robot retrieves the
Speaker 1: the canister and goes into Martian orbit, and a third
Speaker 1: one goes into Martian orbit and retrieves the canister from
Speaker 1: the second robot and then brings it back here. It's
Speaker 1: a three robot mission. It's actually the guy from NASA
Speaker 1: who was explaining it to me was he could he
Speaker 1: was thrilled at how My jaw just kept hitting the
Speaker 1: floor over and over it because I was thinking, how
Speaker 1: what an amazing achievement it was to land the Curiosity
Speaker 1: rover onto the surface of Mars. The way that it happened,
Speaker 1: it was just so a phenomenal feat of engineering and
Speaker 1: science that I was speechless when it worked. I could
Speaker 1: not believe it. I had been hoping and hoping, but
Speaker 1: when it happened, I was just I I cannot believe
Speaker 1: we humans have come up with a way of doing this,
Speaker 1: And now we're talking about taking the complexity of that
Speaker 1: mission and essentially, I mean, I could say tripling it,
Speaker 1: but that really doesn't even bring it into It's just
Speaker 1: crazy that what what would be uh necessary for this
Speaker 1: to work? But we've already done the crazy, So why
Speaker 1: stop there now that even then we're talking about bringing
Speaker 1: stuff back, not going there yet. But I think that
Speaker 1: it is really important that we continue to uh have
Speaker 1: the human element and exploration. And not only is it important,
Speaker 1: it's kind of unavoidable because it is who we are,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean to think about the explorers back
Speaker 1: in the early early early days, hundreds and thousands of
Speaker 1: years ago, people who risk their lives to find out
Speaker 1: what is on the other side of these mountains. You know,
Speaker 1: that's something that is kind of just intrinsic in us.
Speaker 1: So while it might be really difficult, I think it's
Speaker 1: impossible for us not to go out there. Sure, and
Speaker 1: I think that that that dream is going to drive
Speaker 1: a lot of dum. That's a that's a really interesting
Speaker 1: way of putting it. It's not can we do it?
Speaker 1: It's can we not do it? How? How can we
Speaker 1: not do it? I mean, how could we deny that
Speaker 1: part of ourselves? Um? And I have I grabbed a
Speaker 1: collection of sort of interesting quotes about space and astronomy
Speaker 1: and and space exploration, and I just thought i'd share
Speaker 1: a few of these with you. Some of them are
Speaker 1: are pretty amusing, uh, and some of the one of
Speaker 1: them at least could be apocryphal, but I will I
Speaker 1: will let you know which one that is. Um So
Speaker 1: the first one I have really just kind of to
Speaker 1: set the scene. This one comes to us all the
Speaker 1: way from three hundred forty two BC. This is Plato
Speaker 1: who said astronomy compels the soul to look upward and
Speaker 1: lead us from this world to another, which, really that
Speaker 1: goes right to the heart of what I was saying.
Speaker 1: This idea of exploration, Now that was just intellectual exploration
Speaker 1: at that point. Of course, there was no way that
Speaker 1: Plato was ever going to get off the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth. But I think it really does speak to
Speaker 1: that desire. Then there's um Ray Bradbury who said in
Speaker 1: July nine, this is the result of six billion years
Speaker 1: of evolution. Tonight we have given the lie to gravity.
Speaker 1: We have reached for the stars. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: this sense of wonder at the achievement of landing people
Speaker 1: on the Moon. And then uh uh. I love this
Speaker 1: quote because I mean I love watching the footage of
Speaker 1: the moon landing and the news, the news reporting that
Speaker 1: was going around with it, because it just shows how
Speaker 1: phenomenal that moment was. So when the eagle landed on
Speaker 1: the Moon. I was speechless and overwhelmed, like most of
Speaker 1: the world, couldn't say a word. I think all I
Speaker 1: said was wow, geez, not exactly immortal, Well, it was
Speaker 1: nothing if not human. That was Walter Cronkite, who you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was like the voice of a generation.
Speaker 1: He was. He was the voice of the news. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he really was. And then like if you watch the
Speaker 1: moon landing, you see him break down and like, just
Speaker 1: he's so overwhelmed. I mean, that's a phenomenal thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And then Arthur C. Clark, famous science fiction author, said
Speaker 1: the moon is the first milestone on the road to
Speaker 1: the stars. Which I think we'll have more to say
Speaker 1: about that in our next episode because we were thinking
Speaker 1: about a particular exploration type episode for for Friday's show.
Speaker 1: And then a man This is the apocryphal quote, possibly
Speaker 1: apocryphal quote, A man is the best computer available to
Speaker 1: place in a spacecraft. It is also the only one
Speaker 1: that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. That that
Speaker 1: quote is attributed and again could be apocryphal, to Werner
Speaker 1: von Brown, faded rocket scientist UM David R. Scott, who
Speaker 1: was the commander of the Apollo fifteen mission, had a
Speaker 1: couple of really good ones. One of them is for
Speaker 1: when I look at the Moon, I do not see
Speaker 1: a hostile, empty world. I see the radiant body where
Speaker 1: man has taken his first steps into a frontier that
Speaker 1: will never end. And then his other one is as
Speaker 1: I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown
Speaker 1: at Hadley, I sort of realized there's a fundamental truth
Speaker 1: to our nature. Man must explore, and this is exploration
Speaker 1: at its greatest. Uh. Then this one might be my
Speaker 1: favorite one. It's the penultimate quote in my list. So
Speaker 1: I do have one more, but it's will be Man.
Speaker 1: That may have been a small one for Neil, but
Speaker 1: it's a long one for me. It was Charles Conrad Jr.
Speaker 1: Who was commander of the Apollo twelve and the shortest
Speaker 1: astronaut in the Apollo program. Uh. Reportedly he made that
Speaker 1: quote because he had gotten into a discussion with a
Speaker 1: friend of his who had said that the words of
Speaker 1: astronauts when they sat down the moon must have been
Speaker 1: dictated by the United States government, and that, in fact,
Speaker 1: Big Brother was making sure where that they said exactly
Speaker 1: what was on script. And he said I'll say something
Speaker 1: that will prove you wrong. And that's what he came
Speaker 1: up with. And he said, the only thing I regret
Speaker 1: is he never made good on the bet um. And
Speaker 1: then here's my final quote, Bob. This is Gane and
Speaker 1: I'm on the surface. And as I take man's last
Speaker 1: step from the surface back home for some time to come,
Speaker 1: but we believe not too long into the future, I'd
Speaker 1: like to just say what I believe history will record
Speaker 1: that America's challenge of today has forged Man's destiny of tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And as we leave the Moon at taras Littrow, we
Speaker 1: leave as we came, and God willing as we shall
Speaker 1: return with peace and hope for all mankind. God speed
Speaker 1: the crew of Apollo seventeen, says Jene Sermon, who was
Speaker 1: the final person to walk on the surface of the
Speaker 1: Moon December fourteenth nine. So far, yeah, we hope that
Speaker 1: that will not be too far into the future when
Speaker 1: someone else can make history yet again and say the
Speaker 1: next first words on the moon. So uh, I uh,
Speaker 1: you know, this is this is something that I really
Speaker 1: find very inspirational myself. Um, you know, I I definitely
Speaker 1: love the whole space exploration theme. We have covered that
Speaker 1: so many times and forward Thinking I think it's pretty obvious,
Speaker 1: but this kind of gets to the heart of why
Speaker 1: I think it's really incredible stuff. So, guys, if you
Speaker 1: have any comments about space exploration, or any thoughts of
Speaker 1: your own about manned versus unmanned space, or even just
Speaker 1: just a suggestion for a topic that we should cover
Speaker 1: in the future, get in touch with us. Let's know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking. You can email us our addresses f
Speaker 1: W Thinking at discovery dot com, or just go to
Speaker 1: FW thinking dot com. Check out the videos there, the
Speaker 1: blog posts, the podcasts. We have links to some pretty
Speaker 1: incredible articles that can go into even further detail about
Speaker 1: things like space exploration and other topics as well. We
Speaker 1: want you to be part of the conversation. We look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing from you, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic and
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com. Brought
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