Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey everybody, welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and today is another Saturday
Speaker 1: Morning rerun episode where we take a classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff that you might not have had a chance
Speaker 1: to hear and present it to you so you can
Speaker 1: enjoy it. Today, we're gonna talk about the Mars simulation
Speaker 1: that took place in Hawaii. This was a simulated Martian habitat,
Speaker 1: something that we would build on the surface of Mars
Speaker 1: if we were to go there. The whole purpose of
Speaker 1: this experiment was to see if the technology would work
Speaker 1: and if people could, you know, hold themselves together for
Speaker 1: the year of isolation that would take place if you
Speaker 1: were to actually travel to the Red planet. Now, this
Speaker 1: episode originally published on September two thousand sixteen, and The
Speaker 1: Anman had just ended at that point, So we're going
Speaker 1: to revisit this topic and talk all about what it
Speaker 1: takes to do a simulation like this, and I hope
Speaker 1: you guys enjoy today. We're doing an episode that is
Speaker 1: from a listener request. Listener Jeremiah Right sent me a
Speaker 1: message on Twitter and asked that I cover a recent
Speaker 1: experiment aimed at testing what it might be like to
Speaker 1: send human explorers to Mars as a project conducted by
Speaker 1: the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation and the acronym
Speaker 1: is High Seas HI DASH S E A S. So
Speaker 1: expect lots of pirate voices yar as we talk about
Speaker 1: going to the Martian landscape. I'll try and limit that
Speaker 1: as much as possible. I know a lot of you
Speaker 1: find that cringe worthy, rightly so, but hey, we should
Speaker 1: be in September now, and let's talk like a pirate
Speaker 1: days in September, so we have that to look forward to.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm gonna concentrate on that. Talk about the project,
Speaker 1: what went into it, some of the tech that was involved,
Speaker 1: why it was happening in the first place, what they
Speaker 1: were expecting to get out of it, and how it
Speaker 1: all turned out. So let's uh set the ground first
Speaker 1: by talking about what Mars is like and why it's
Speaker 1: important for us to simulate as many different scenarios as
Speaker 1: we possibly can before going to Mars. If you've seen
Speaker 1: or read The Martian, you probably have some ideas of
Speaker 1: what Mars must be like, and uh, for those who
Speaker 1: have not, seen the movie or read the book, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend it. It is not a scientifically accurate There
Speaker 1: are some major liberties taken in both the novel and
Speaker 1: the movie. I'd say more so in the movie than
Speaker 1: the novel, but both of them have major liberties. But
Speaker 1: it is very entertaining and the science in it in
Speaker 1: general is pretty good. So if you have not seen
Speaker 1: the movie or read the book, check it out. It's
Speaker 1: my recommendation. Anyway, you know that Mars does not have
Speaker 1: a breathable atmosphere, has very low air pressure, has very
Speaker 1: extreme temperatures. But here are some of the liberties that
Speaker 1: both the film and the novel took, and these are
Speaker 1: not spoilers really. One is that, uh, there are some
Speaker 1: major wind storms dust storms that play an important role
Speaker 1: in both versions of the story, and the density of
Speaker 1: the Martian atmosphere is way too low to have that
Speaker 1: devastating dust storm happen. The air is literally too thin
Speaker 1: to hold larger particulates, So you could have dust blowing around,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be blowing around in huge amounts and
Speaker 1: not at such enormous force because there's just not enough
Speaker 1: air there. That's it's not dense enough and uh, so
Speaker 1: that is problematic, but hey, there had to be an
Speaker 1: emergency in the story in order to get to the
Speaker 1: the the plot point of a stranded astronaut left behind
Speaker 1: on Mars. You had to have something happen so that
Speaker 1: you could have the central uh conflict set up. And
Speaker 1: so I give it a pass. It's not a huge
Speaker 1: deal breaker, but it wouldn't actually happen that way on Mars. Also,
Speaker 1: the gravity on Mars is just thirty eight percent that
Speaker 1: of Earth's gravity. Mars is less massive than Earth, and
Speaker 1: so it's gravitational pull is less than that of Earth.
Speaker 1: It's greater than the Moon's. The Moon is about one
Speaker 1: six and Mars is a little more than one third.
Speaker 1: But that means it would also be easier to pick
Speaker 1: up heavier stuff. So if you're an astronaut and you
Speaker 1: have to pick up something that weighs more than you
Speaker 1: typically could carry, you would probably be able to lift
Speaker 1: it without too much trouble. It might still be very
Speaker 1: bulky and cumbersome, but you could lift it, lift it.
Speaker 1: But it also means as you move around, you'd be
Speaker 1: a lot more bouncy. You wouldn't just walk across. UH.
Speaker 1: The other big big issue is that the service of
Speaker 1: Mars receives way more radiation than the surface of Earth. Now,
Speaker 1: this is due to a couple of things. One of
Speaker 1: those is that it has that thin atmosphere, which does
Speaker 1: not allow much protection. Earth's atmosphere is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we are so uh so able to survive. Is
Speaker 1: trying to find a better word for it, but really,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere provides a great deal of protection for us,
Speaker 1: not just the fact that we breathe the oxygen in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, but it slows down a lot of radiation
Speaker 1: or blocks radiation from getting to us. Another is that
Speaker 1: Mars does not have a strong magnetic field like Earth does.
Speaker 1: Our magnetic field also protects us from other types of radiation,
Speaker 1: and Mars lacks that. So if you were on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars, you would be subjected to way more
Speaker 1: radiation than you would encounter here on Earth. And uh
Speaker 1: we humans don't deal with that too well. All right,
Speaker 1: So a little bit more about Mars. Besides those issues
Speaker 1: I had with the Martian, uh, Mars's atmosphere being so
Speaker 1: thin means that liquid water doesn't tend to exist on
Speaker 1: its surface for very long. There may be liquid water
Speaker 1: underneath the surface of the soil, especially since it mixes
Speaker 1: with some other stuff that lowers the freezing point of water.
Speaker 1: But most water is going to end up freezing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's not going to stay in liquid form for very long.
Speaker 1: The atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide and bike primarily I'm
Speaker 1: talking of the atmosphere is c O two, which is
Speaker 1: not great for us. UH. Nitrogen makes up less than
Speaker 1: two percent of the atmosphere on Mars. Here. On Earth,
Speaker 1: nitrogen is the most plentiful element in our atmosphere accounts
Speaker 1: for seventy of our atmosphere, and oxygen, which on Earth
Speaker 1: is like of our atmosphere, is only found in trace
Speaker 1: amounts in the Martian atmosphere, So you would not be
Speaker 1: able to breathe. Even if the atmosphere were more thick
Speaker 1: than it is, you wouldn't be able to breathe there
Speaker 1: because there's not enough oxygen to support life UH from
Speaker 1: Earth on Mars, at least not life like us. There's
Speaker 1: some life forms that would do all right in that
Speaker 1: environment if you ignored other factors like the radiation. Now
Speaker 1: not not everyone says that carbon carbon dioxide rich atmosphere
Speaker 1: is necessarily a bad thing. Some scientists have actually suggested
Speaker 1: we might use the CEO two in the atmosphere to
Speaker 1: help generate rocket fuel for a return trip to Earth,
Speaker 1: which would be an enormous help because that means we
Speaker 1: would only have to carry half as much fuel as
Speaker 1: we would need for a round trip. Right, we would
Speaker 1: just take the fuel we need to get to Mars
Speaker 1: and then create the fuel we need to get back
Speaker 1: to Earth while we're on Mars. And weight in space
Speaker 1: launches is a deal breaker. If you get too much weight,
Speaker 1: it becomes too difficult and too expensive. So you want
Speaker 1: to limit the amount of weight as much as you
Speaker 1: can when you're sending stuff out into space so that
Speaker 1: you don't hit that critical point where it's just too
Speaker 1: difficult and too expensive to do so, if we were
Speaker 1: able to make our full on Mars for then turn
Speaker 1: trip home, that would be enormous. Of course, you could
Speaker 1: also plan a trip to Mars where there is no
Speaker 1: return trip home. It's a one way ticket, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there are some uh some projects that have been proposed
Speaker 1: that essentially would be that it would be a one
Speaker 1: way trip to Mars and that's where you would live
Speaker 1: out the rest of your life, which possibly would not
Speaker 1: be that much longer because Mars is a very hostile environment.
Speaker 1: But assuming you want to get back, being able to
Speaker 1: make rocket fuel on the surface of Mars is a
Speaker 1: pretty good deal. Now, I said that temperatures on Mars
Speaker 1: have a pretty wide range, and it is incredibly wide.
Speaker 1: It goes from about seventy degrees fahrenheit, which is twenty
Speaker 1: degrees celsius, down to negative two hundred twenty five degrees
Speaker 1: fahrenheit or negative one fifty three degrees celsius. So a
Speaker 1: Martian winter at night gets awfull chili. Obviously, we would
Speaker 1: want to locate any habitats that we would put on
Speaker 1: Mars in and a probably a belt closest to the
Speaker 1: most stable temperature on the planet um, and if we
Speaker 1: were to go there, we'd have to be there for
Speaker 1: a really long time. I didn't really put this in
Speaker 1: my notes, but I can talk about it. The orbits
Speaker 1: of Earth and Mars are such that at certain points
Speaker 1: they are fairly close together, or at least as close
Speaker 1: as they get, and then as they continue their orbits
Speaker 1: they start to spread apart. So if you think of
Speaker 1: Earth as a circle, you know that is the orbit
Speaker 1: of Earth that's one circle and then a slightly larger
Speaker 1: circle on the outside is Mars. And then you just
Speaker 1: imagine how they're both traveling at different speeds, so they
Speaker 1: start to spread apart. Eventually you get to a point
Speaker 1: where Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the
Speaker 1: Sun from each other, and then if you go long enough,
Speaker 1: they line up again. Well, when you are launching stuff
Speaker 1: to get from Earth to Mars, you want to travel
Speaker 1: the least amount of distance possible. It's just like I
Speaker 1: was talking about with the weight. The weight is going
Speaker 1: to be an issue and the distance is an issue.
Speaker 1: So you to fire your rockets so that the pathway
Speaker 1: that the rocket takes is the least amount of distance.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean waiting until Earth and Mars are closest,
Speaker 1: because it's an eight month journey to get from around
Speaker 1: eight months to get from Earth to two Mars, so
Speaker 1: you actually have to shoot ahead of time. It's it's
Speaker 1: that idea you're not shooting where Mars is, You're shooting
Speaker 1: where Mars is going to be. And this involves a
Speaker 1: lot of complicated math, knowing about the planetary orbits and
Speaker 1: just the geometry involved and making sure that you are
Speaker 1: conserving as much fuel as possible. Same thing on the
Speaker 1: return trip. So if you were to land on Mars,
Speaker 1: by the time you landed on Mars, Earth and Mars
Speaker 1: would no longer be ideally situated. You would have to
Speaker 1: wait for them to line up again, and that can
Speaker 1: take a long time, like about two years, essentially more
Speaker 1: than a year and um. And that means that if
Speaker 1: you're gonna land on Mars, you're gonna be there for
Speaker 1: a while, assuming that you are being very careful with
Speaker 1: your fuel. If somehow fuel is no longer an issue,
Speaker 1: like we've magically created cold fusion or something, uh, then
Speaker 1: that would not be You wouldn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: it as much. You would have more time in space itself,
Speaker 1: because you would still have to travel a long distance
Speaker 1: from Mars back to Earth, but you wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about waiting for the opportune time, that window when
Speaker 1: the distance is going to be at the smallest amount.
Speaker 1: All right, getting back to Mars. The regulus on Mars,
Speaker 1: which is the soil on Mars, could be very problematic
Speaker 1: to the Phoenix Lander discovered traces of perclorate in the
Speaker 1: regulars UH. This is a salt derived from perchloric acid.
Speaker 1: On the plus side, that stuff can be used as
Speaker 1: a propellant, like an oxidizing agent within rocket fuel, So again,
Speaker 1: you could use this stuff to help create rocket fuel
Speaker 1: on the surface of Mars along with the carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: that you're taking from the atmosphere. So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: But on the downside, Perkler, it can have a toxic
Speaker 1: effect on humans, particularly when it comes to the thyroid gland,
Speaker 1: so you'd have to be careful, Like if you if
Speaker 1: you've been keeping count, the radiation will kill you, the
Speaker 1: atmosphere will kill you, the uh temperatures could kill you,
Speaker 1: and the soil will kill you on Mars. Mars is
Speaker 1: trying to kill you really hard, so it's another thing
Speaker 1: you have to take into account if you're going to
Speaker 1: send human beings there. However, all that being said, the
Speaker 1: Martian soil also seems to contain nutrients that are necessary
Speaker 1: to grow plants, and in fact, NASA has conducted several
Speaker 1: experiments using simulated Martian soil because we've never we've never
Speaker 1: taken a sample from Mars and brought it back to Earth, right,
Speaker 1: so we've simulated Martian soil using soil primarily from places
Speaker 1: like Hawaii around volcanic planes, which is again that's gonna
Speaker 1: go back to the simulated habitat we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: in just a minute. So they've taken that soil and
Speaker 1: they tried to grow stuff in it, and they've been
Speaker 1: successful with those experiments. Both NASA and other facilities have
Speaker 1: grown crops, and so it looks like we would be
Speaker 1: able to do the same on Mars. Now, if we
Speaker 1: were to do that, we would have to have the
Speaker 1: plants inside a habitat because you would have to have
Speaker 1: the air pressure there to allow liquid water to exist,
Speaker 1: and we would need to leach the purcolorate out of
Speaker 1: the soil in order to make sure that it's not
Speaker 1: going to affect the plants. But that's something we could do.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not impossible. It's not even really that difficult.
Speaker 1: We could do it. It It would take some effort, but
Speaker 1: we could do it, and you would probably have to
Speaker 1: add some fertilizer to the soil to make sure it
Speaker 1: has plentiful nutrients for plant life. Because Mars has not
Speaker 1: had any life on it. If it ever has had
Speaker 1: life on it, it's been a really, really long time,
Speaker 1: So you would have to you know, you don't have
Speaker 1: that cycle, that nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle, all that
Speaker 1: stuff that allow for plant life to flourish here on Earth.
Speaker 1: That hasn't been going on on Mars in a very
Speaker 1: long time, if in fact, it ever has happened. So
Speaker 1: we would have to add fertilizer to the soil, but
Speaker 1: it would probably work. So that's super cool. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get into the experiment. Simulating life on Mars here
Speaker 1: on Earth is problematic, very tricky, right because for one thing,
Speaker 1: all of the elements I just mentioned we cannot really
Speaker 1: replicate here on Earth, nor would we want to. It
Speaker 1: would actually put people in serious danger. We would want
Speaker 1: to engineer as many solutions to problems as we possibly
Speaker 1: could here on Earth without actually subjecting people to really
Speaker 1: dangerous conditions until we got to a point where we
Speaker 1: were really confident that the solutions we had created would
Speaker 1: protect people from those conditions. You know, once you get
Speaker 1: to that that that level, you will find people willing
Speaker 1: to take on that risk. I mean, if we didn't
Speaker 1: have people like that, then test flight engineers would never happen, right,
Speaker 1: We would never to get test pilots who are some
Speaker 1: of the craziest people on the planet. And I say
Speaker 1: that with respect the you know, they take enormous risks
Speaker 1: in experimental aircraft and push it to the limit in
Speaker 1: order to advance our engineering and scientific knowledge, which is
Speaker 1: amazing to me. The same thing is true for astronauts,
Speaker 1: same thing is true for people who are testing the
Speaker 1: equipment that are ventrally. Astronauts will rely upon to keep
Speaker 1: them alive. But we don't have to worry about radiation
Speaker 1: the way we would on mars Um. The atmosphere is
Speaker 1: perfectly fine here on Earth. It's not like we've got
Speaker 1: a some place. There's not like a region on the
Speaker 1: planet where the atmosphere is really dangerous, or we don't
Speaker 1: have the potentially toxic soil. I mean, in some extreme environments,
Speaker 1: you could have toxic soil and dangerous atmospheric conditions, especially
Speaker 1: around really polluted areas. But typically on Earth we're we're
Speaker 1: pretty okay in those realms. Uh. And it would be
Speaker 1: pretty unethical to subject in you one to staying in
Speaker 1: a really dangerous zone just for the sake of experimentation.
Speaker 1: But the goal of high seas isn't to create a
Speaker 1: perfect representation of what it would be like to live
Speaker 1: on Mars. It's not meant to subject people to the
Speaker 1: extremes of the environment. It's really to discover the best
Speaker 1: ways to keep a crew healthy and happy as they
Speaker 1: live in isolation. So yeah, the crew had to behave
Speaker 1: as if they were on Mars, you know, they had
Speaker 1: to behave as if all of those conditions were in play.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, they had to figure out how to
Speaker 1: design a habitat and a series of missions to make
Speaker 1: sure the crew could coexist and cooperate throughout the duration
Speaker 1: of the mission, over months and months of time. So
Speaker 1: how do you keep people from succumbing to loneliness or irritability?
Speaker 1: How do you make sure they get the nutrition they
Speaker 1: need to stay healthy and active. That was the real experiment,
Speaker 1: not so much the technology side, but the PSYE collegey side,
Speaker 1: And it all began as a collaboration between a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different companies and research organizations and colleges. So
Speaker 1: here's the full list, and it's pretty long. You got
Speaker 1: the University of Hawaii, You've got Cornell, You've got Michigan
Speaker 1: State University, Arizona State University, University of South Florida, the
Speaker 1: University of Maryland, the Institutes for Behavior Resources, Smart Information
Speaker 1: Flow Technologies, Blue Planet Foundation, Pacific International Space Center for
Speaker 1: Exploration Systems, and NASA, and the result was that High
Speaker 1: Seas organization, and they had plotted out exactly where they
Speaker 1: wanted to put this experimental habitat in a place that
Speaker 1: would closely resemble the surface of Mars and essentially abandoned
Speaker 1: people for months at a time, not really abandoned people,
Speaker 1: I'll get more into that, but really limit the interaction
Speaker 1: people could have with anyone outside of the habitat itself.
Speaker 1: So the experiment site is on the volcano of mounta
Speaker 1: Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii. And I'm being
Speaker 1: obnoxious the way I pronounced these things, largely because the
Speaker 1: Big Island of Hawaii is my favorite place to visit.
Speaker 1: I have been there multiple occasions, and it is probably
Speaker 1: the slowest island in the chain as far as like
Speaker 1: all the ones that people go to for tourists purposes. Oah,
Speaker 1: who is where Honolulu is? That's where the major airport is,
Speaker 1: That's where the major city is. Uh. You've got Kawaii,
Speaker 1: which is gorgeous, uh and tiny and and they shot
Speaker 1: a lot of lost on Kawaii and Uh it's beautiful,
Speaker 1: but a little touristy. It's a little small touristy section.
Speaker 1: And then you've got Maui, which is like the resort island.
Speaker 1: I've been to Oaho, I've been to those islands, and
Speaker 1: Big Island. Big Island to me is my favorite. It
Speaker 1: is a little more laid back and it has a
Speaker 1: lot of different ecosystems, from rocky beaches to rainforest to grassland.
Speaker 1: Two snow on top of the volcanic peaks, including mounta Loa.
Speaker 1: Mounta Loa gets snow at the top of it at
Speaker 1: the higher elevations. It is not the tallest of the
Speaker 1: volcanoes on the Big Island. The tallest would be Mount
Speaker 1: a chia Um And also it can be confused with Kilauea.
Speaker 1: Kilauea is the the volcano you would really be looking
Speaker 1: at if you went to the Volcanic National Park and
Speaker 1: you were looking at the lava flows uh that are
Speaker 1: either coming from event or going out or rift into
Speaker 1: the ocean. That's Kilauea on on one side of the island.
Speaker 1: But the biggest of all the volcanoes, the largest in
Speaker 1: in just sheer size, is mounta Loa and it is
Speaker 1: an active volcano, so this experiment is located on an
Speaker 1: active volcano. Now that being said, eruption are rarely violent.
Speaker 1: They do happen, but the eruptions are more like lava
Speaker 1: flowing out of the volcano, or almost like it's leaking
Speaker 1: out of the volcano, not being propelled up in a
Speaker 1: big flume like you would think in a traditional volcanic eruption.
Speaker 1: It tends to flow from the summit down towards the
Speaker 1: edges of the island and what is often called the
Speaker 1: curtain of fire. There are these rifts in the earth
Speaker 1: and they act almost like channels where the lava will
Speaker 1: flow through. Uh. While the eruption itself can be relatively nonviolent,
Speaker 1: they're still pretty destructive, right, Like you can have a
Speaker 1: slow moving lava flow that will cause real damage to property.
Speaker 1: It's rare that anyone gets hurt in these things because
Speaker 1: the lava moves at a walking pace. It's not going
Speaker 1: super fast. I think it hasn't been since the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties since someone was injured by an eruption. Everyone tends
Speaker 1: to be able to get all the way in time
Speaker 1: and if avacuated, but it does cause damage because you know,
Speaker 1: homes don't move, and a lava flow encounters a house,
Speaker 1: then you know you've just got a fire on your hands.
Speaker 1: But it's generally a pretty safe place you get you
Speaker 1: aren't expected to have an a like sudden eruption that's
Speaker 1: going to put you into danger. The site of the
Speaker 1: simulated Martian habitat is located at about eight thousand feet
Speaker 1: elevation on Mauna Loa. The summit of the volcano, if
Speaker 1: you were to go at the very top, is thirteen thousand,
Speaker 1: six d seventy nine feet, so this is a little
Speaker 1: more than halfway up the full height of the volcano,
Speaker 1: and it's on a slope um that keeps it fairly level.
Speaker 1: For comparison sake, the primary observing side of the Mantala
Speaker 1: Observatory is at eleven thousand one hunt one feet of elevation,
Speaker 1: so the Manta Loa Observatory is higher up. But don't
Speaker 1: confuse that with the Mantichia observatories. Those are astronomical ref
Speaker 1: search facilities on the taller peak of Monachia to the
Speaker 1: north of mountal Iowa's summit. Mantaloa's observatory is an atmospheric Observatory,
Speaker 1: primarily keeping an eye on CEO two levels in our atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this classic episode of
Speaker 1: tech stuff. We're gonna take a quick break to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsor. The habitat itself is in an abandoned quarry
Speaker 1: on the northern slope of Mountaloa. The team picked that
Speaker 1: site because it has very little vegetation. It looks like
Speaker 1: the surface of Mars. It's this rocky, barren kind of
Speaker 1: of area. Uh, there are no rare or an endangered
Speaker 1: species that make it a home, so there was no
Speaker 1: chance of having a negative impact on an endangered species,
Speaker 1: and so you would also have a fairly accurate representation
Speaker 1: of Mars, and you would not be bringing harm to
Speaker 1: any threatened species. Also, there are no cultural or archaeological
Speaker 1: sites in that area, so the team wouldn't be causing
Speaker 1: any harm to something of cultural or historical value, which
Speaker 1: I think is incredibly intelligent. Um. The Hawaiian people have
Speaker 1: a very rich history. Their culture is phenomenal, and of course, uh,
Speaker 1: the the European explorers who came in had a huge
Speaker 1: impact on that culture. So trying to not make it
Speaker 1: trying not to endanger that rich history. More is really
Speaker 1: important from a sociological standpoint. If you ever get a
Speaker 1: chance to look into their culture, really you should do
Speaker 1: it because it is It is a beautiful and incredibly
Speaker 1: fascinating culture. So the habitat itself was designed by V.
Speaker 1: Paul Point of the Envisioned Design and it was built
Speaker 1: by the Blue Planet Foundation of Honolulu, and it's super
Speaker 1: duper cool, you guys. So it's a geodesic dome. That's
Speaker 1: the main habitat. Geodesic dome. That's thirty six ft in
Speaker 1: diameter and it has two stories. The volume inside the
Speaker 1: dome is thirteen thousand, five hundred seventy cubic feet. Now,
Speaker 1: not all of that is accessible. Uh, there's a very
Speaker 1: tall ceiling, like like the second floor is only half
Speaker 1: a half floor, so half of it looks out into
Speaker 1: the lower level. So you have this nice tall ceiling
Speaker 1: over half of the lower level. And since it's a dome,
Speaker 1: the walls curve inward. So because they curve in word,
Speaker 1: you don't have full use of the space that's right
Speaker 1: along the edge of the walls, right, You couldn't You
Speaker 1: couldn't stand up like a table or chair right up
Speaker 1: against the wall because the way the walls curve inside.
Speaker 1: On the ground floor, there are eight hundred seventy eight
Speaker 1: square feet that are that's considered to be usable space.
Speaker 1: The ground floor has a kitchen, dining room, bathroom with shower,
Speaker 1: a lab and exercise room, and some common working spaces.
Speaker 1: The upper floor is aloft, with about four square feet available. UH.
Speaker 1: It has six state rooms and one half bath. That
Speaker 1: ceiling is pretty high, and the reason why they have
Speaker 1: that high ceiling in the first places, studies have shown
Speaker 1: that the longer time, the amount of time you spend
Speaker 1: in a place, the more it seems to shrink to you.
Speaker 1: So you want the space to already be pretty lofty,
Speaker 1: pretty tall, and and open because you're gonna have that
Speaker 1: shrinking effect, and you don't want people to start feel
Speaker 1: like they're they're penned up or they're trapped. It's very
Speaker 1: important from a psychological point of view. UH. There are
Speaker 1: actually some pictures on the High Seas website where you
Speaker 1: can take a look at the rooms and the layout
Speaker 1: and some of the equipment inside this habitat, and I
Speaker 1: recommend you do it because they're pretty cool. They only
Speaker 1: have a few that are actually of the interior of
Speaker 1: the habitat. Most of their pictures are of the exterior
Speaker 1: or of UH. The various participants dressed up in simulated
Speaker 1: space suits as they go outside, because in order to
Speaker 1: simulate and an experience on Mars, you are not allowed
Speaker 1: to leave the habitat without first going through a simulated
Speaker 1: airlock experience, including getting all geared up inside a simulated
Speaker 1: space suit. AH, very important if you want to make
Speaker 1: as as accurate as possible as the experience on Mars
Speaker 1: would be. UH. Disregarding the other stuff we already talked about,
Speaker 1: like the fact that you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to simulate of Earth's gravity here on Earth. The picture
Speaker 1: of the kitchen makes it look really nifty and modern.
Speaker 1: It has a stove and oven, it's got a microwave,
Speaker 1: a breadmaker, and a crock pot. UM. They've thought that
Speaker 1: by giving the participants different abilities to prepare food, it
Speaker 1: would also help morale. Towards the end of the first mission,
Speaker 1: Commander Angelo Vermulin talked about the foods that were a
Speaker 1: big hit versus the ones that did not go over
Speaker 1: so well to kind of, you know, help with the
Speaker 1: future experiments. There have been four missions so far in
Speaker 1: the high seas habitat the first one lasted four months,
Speaker 1: and that's the one I'm talking about right here that
Speaker 1: Commander Vermullin was working on. He said that the foods
Speaker 1: available to the crew were limited to ones that could
Speaker 1: be easy to carry in a spacecraft, whether it would
Speaker 1: be carried in the spacecraft that the astronauts going to
Speaker 1: Mars would use, or a spacecraft sent ahead of time,
Speaker 1: or resupply mission sent later on to send more cargo
Speaker 1: and supplies to people already on Mars Um. In any case,
Speaker 1: you have to make sure that you you are packing
Speaker 1: stuff that is uh space efficient, right, meaning that you
Speaker 1: can pack a lot of it into a small area
Speaker 1: and that it's not too heavy so uh. He said
Speaker 1: that the favorites in the pre prepared category, so these
Speaker 1: are ones that were ready to go, you just had
Speaker 1: to heat them up in some way, included creamy wild rice, soup,
Speaker 1: mashed potatoes, raspberry crumble, and apple sauce, among others. The
Speaker 1: least favorite of the pre prepared foods was one called
Speaker 1: kung foo chicken, which the entire group described as being
Speaker 1: mostly tasteless and slimy in texture. The team also prepared
Speaker 1: meals for themselves and for each other using ingredients that
Speaker 1: were sent along, and those met with a lot of success.
Speaker 1: Those meals included everything from a seafood cholder to Russian
Speaker 1: borshed to Moroccan tangen uh and others. They also like
Speaker 1: to use tortillas a lot to make various raps. Apparently
Speaker 1: this is also a big hit aboard the International Space Station.
Speaker 1: Tortillas are easy to pack and you can put a
Speaker 1: lot of different stuff in them, So they talked about
Speaker 1: experimenting with all sorts of things from breakfast foods to
Speaker 1: fish and everything else, and apparently those were a huge hit.
Speaker 1: But in general, pre prepared meals were actually favored, not
Speaker 1: because they tasted better, but because they didn't require a
Speaker 1: lot of work and thought to prepare them. If you're
Speaker 1: working all day trying to complete mission objectives, and every
Speaker 1: single day they had mission objectives they were supposed to meet,
Speaker 1: then you are putting a lot of thought and energy
Speaker 1: into cooking, and uh, it's exhausting, it's overwhelming. So instead,
Speaker 1: if you were to go the pre prepared route, where
Speaker 1: you don't really have to think very much and cooking
Speaker 1: is easy and clean up as a breeze. That is
Speaker 1: an easy choice. You could see that also if you
Speaker 1: were to go with the preparation mode, like the full
Speaker 1: on cook a meal mode, it means using more water
Speaker 1: then you would with pre prepared stuff, and water conservation
Speaker 1: is incredibly important. Water would be a very precious resource
Speaker 1: for astronauts on Mars. You would need to have a
Speaker 1: very careful way of managing your water supply. Now, assuming
Speaker 1: we do send people to Mars, we will likely create
Speaker 1: means to get water from Mars itself. There is for
Speaker 1: us and water on Mars, and there are probably different
Speaker 1: ways that we could harvest water from Mars. But even so,
Speaker 1: you would want to be very judicious with your use
Speaker 1: of it, and you would want to conserve as much
Speaker 1: as you could and reuse as much as you could.
Speaker 1: And more on that in just a minute. The commander
Speaker 1: also said he figured future missions should have more comfort
Speaker 1: foods for particularly stressful days. Um He said that there
Speaker 1: should be a lot more spices, herbs, and hot sauces
Speaker 1: to add a kick to foods and give them more flavor,
Speaker 1: and there needed to be more foods with fiber in them. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the fiber content of a lot of the foods they
Speaker 1: had was fairly low, which you know, you don't want
Speaker 1: to have a regular problem with a lack of fiber.
Speaker 1: But so some of the ingredients included in that first mission,
Speaker 1: and this is just a small list of some of
Speaker 1: the ones that jumped out at me that I thought
Speaker 1: were kind of interesting. Anchovies, awesome pre cooked bacon, freeze
Speaker 1: dried meats, which the crew said, We're really only good
Speaker 1: if you use the as an ingredient within a bigger dish.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't want to eat one of the freeze dried
Speaker 1: meats on their own because they had very little aroma
Speaker 1: and less taste, so you essentially just got a meat
Speaker 1: consistency with no flavor to it. They had a lot
Speaker 1: of different freeze dried vegetables and fruits. They had nuts
Speaker 1: and seeds. They had pastas and other starches. They had
Speaker 1: baking ingredients like flour and yeast. Uh. They had powdered
Speaker 1: dairy products. They had tea, coffee, and other drinks, including tang.
Speaker 1: They had seasonings and condiments. Some of my favorite ingredients
Speaker 1: listed included canned eel popping corn masa, which I really
Speaker 1: do like to cook with, powdered eggs POI. That's very
Speaker 1: Hawaiian velveta cheese. And of course tang you gotta have
Speaker 1: tang on there on your space trip. And uh. The
Speaker 1: High Seas experiment assumed the residents on Mars would receive
Speaker 1: regular supplies from Earth, So that was they would actually
Speaker 1: hire a company to bring shipments of food and water
Speaker 1: at certain intervals during the experiments to represent a resupply
Speaker 1: mission sent from Earth to keep the astronauts supplied. UM,
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't want to pack a full year's worth
Speaker 1: of food and water onto the habitat all at once.
Speaker 1: It would be prohibitively large. You would have to have
Speaker 1: a much larger space and that would not be very efficient. Remember,
Speaker 1: the larger the habitat, the more you have to pack
Speaker 1: in in order to maintain the proper air pressure. Uh,
Speaker 1: you need more oxygen and it just it makes everything
Speaker 1: more complicated. So you want to find that perfect balance
Speaker 1: where it's efficient but not so small that it's going
Speaker 1: to make habitats the habitants go space crazy. You don't
Speaker 1: want space madness. That's bad. As for that exercise area,
Speaker 1: the astronauts used it a lot, in particular during the
Speaker 1: first mission. UH, there were some projects that NASA was
Speaker 1: conducting some some experiments they were using. They were studying
Speaker 1: how well different types of materials hold up to prolonged
Speaker 1: activity and where and they were looking at two things.
Speaker 1: We're looking at how much does the material stand up
Speaker 1: to wear and tear, like, does it does it maintain
Speaker 1: its integrity? And also how long can someone go wearing
Speaker 1: the same clothing before they stank up the joint? And
Speaker 1: that's serious. They really did do that because again, you
Speaker 1: want to conserve your water. You're not going to be
Speaker 1: taking a shower that frequently, and so they wanted to
Speaker 1: find micro bacterial type fibers that are anti microbial I
Speaker 1: should say, fibers that would limit the effect of bacteria
Speaker 1: on a person's skin from creating a stink and stinking
Speaker 1: up the joint. When you have six people working in
Speaker 1: close proximity, you don't want to have a lot of
Speaker 1: bo filling up that habitat. So that was one of
Speaker 1: the experiments on that first mission. Just imagine going out
Speaker 1: there and exercising your heart out and hoping that you're
Speaker 1: anti microbial under things can keep the job going. According
Speaker 1: to one former participant, most folks would exercise along with
Speaker 1: exercise videos like Insanity or P niney X that's pretty hardcore. Obviously,
Speaker 1: on the service of Mars, things would be different because
Speaker 1: again you would have that lower gravity, so you'd have
Speaker 1: to figure out a lot of different resistance training type
Speaker 1: experience type of approaches to allow for appropriate amounts of exercise. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're not just bouncing all over the habitat now. The
Speaker 1: staterooms were basically big enough for a bed, a stool
Speaker 1: and a small computer desk, and of course there's no
Speaker 1: view outside. The dome was made out of flexible material.
Speaker 1: The rooms have like a plywood kind of roof to them,
Speaker 1: so there's a fabric shell on the outside. On the
Speaker 1: inside you have this like plywood roof. It's solid. You
Speaker 1: don't have a view, um and I think the only
Speaker 1: porthole they have is near the entrance of the actual habitat,
Speaker 1: where you would go through the whole airlock system. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you don't Oh, you're just looking at the interior of
Speaker 1: the habitat. Now, the pictures of the rooms are kind
Speaker 1: of cool. I think Harry Potter would have felt right
Speaker 1: at home moving from his cupboard under the Dursley stairs
Speaker 1: to the high Seas facility, it would have seemed like
Speaker 1: pretty much a one to one comparison. Uh. You would
Speaker 1: store all of your belongings, like your clothing and stuff
Speaker 1: under the bed. There's no closet or anything. In fact,
Speaker 1: the bedroom looks like a closet. The beds themselves are
Speaker 1: positioned so that the one of the long edges is
Speaker 1: against the outer side of the wall, right, so that way,
Speaker 1: when you open the door, you're looking at the side
Speaker 1: of the bed essentially, and you could take maybe two
Speaker 1: steps and then sit down on your bed, and then
Speaker 1: you have your little bit desk and your stool there too.
Speaker 1: Uh so that that computer desk I mentioned the team
Speaker 1: did have access to computers and the Internet, but in
Speaker 1: order to simulate the isolation someone would feel on ours,
Speaker 1: all communications between the participants and the outside world were
Speaker 1: delayed by around twenty minutes. That simulates the amount of
Speaker 1: time it would take data to make its way from
Speaker 1: Mars to Earth at the speed of light. Now, like
Speaker 1: I said before, the distance between Mars and Earth varies
Speaker 1: throughout their respective orbits around the Sun, but a rough
Speaker 1: average is a twenty minute twenty light minute gap, meaning
Speaker 1: it takes light twenty minutes to pass between Mars and Earth,
Speaker 1: so that means there was no way to chat in
Speaker 1: real time. It was all asynchronous communication, and all the
Speaker 1: websites they could access were cashed images, so they couldn't
Speaker 1: have access to a dynamic website and they're not going
Speaker 1: to look at a website that is changing in real time.
Speaker 1: They would look at a cashed version of it. This
Speaker 1: was all to simulate the limitations they would face if
Speaker 1: they were actually on Mars. Power for the habitat came
Speaker 1: from solar panels and batteries solar power. Obviously, if you
Speaker 1: don't use the electricity generator from the solar panel right away,
Speaker 1: you waste it, so you have to either use it
Speaker 1: or store it. So you would use the solar power
Speaker 1: to power the stuff inside the habitat and store any
Speaker 1: excess electricity in batteries. They also had a hydrogen fuel
Speaker 1: cell to provide backup power if the batteries ever fell
Speaker 1: below five capacity, so that way you wouldn't have an
Speaker 1: interruption in power obviously that would be devastating on Mars itself.
Speaker 1: Inside the habitat, they also had a three D printer
Speaker 1: which allowed the crew to print out replacement parts. For equipment.
Speaker 1: If something had broken, let's say like a leg on
Speaker 1: a on a small table is wobbly, you could actually
Speaker 1: print out a little three D stop gap so that
Speaker 1: you stop it from wobbling. Or it might be something
Speaker 1: way more serious, or it could even be something simple
Speaker 1: like a comb, so you didn't have to pack a comb.
Speaker 1: You just print one when you get there. I thought
Speaker 1: that was kind of cool. The two bathrooms in the
Speaker 1: habitat had, or have, because the habitat still exists, have
Speaker 1: composting toilets. Poop is important, y'all. If you were on ours,
Speaker 1: you might want to use poop as fertilizer for the
Speaker 1: soil you are using to grow plants, and you would
Speaker 1: actually have to process the poop. You know, you'd have
Speaker 1: to process a little bit. It's not like you would
Speaker 1: just dump the poo into a a field of you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it was you're growing radishes or potatoes in the
Speaker 1: case of the Martian, but um, you would, you know,
Speaker 1: want to save that. So they were trying to keep
Speaker 1: that similar. Also, they had to learn how to repair
Speaker 1: composting toilets because sometimes stuff breaks. As for water, the
Speaker 1: habitat had a water tank or has a water tank.
Speaker 1: I keep using the past tense, but I should stress
Speaker 1: they still plan to do two more missions with the
Speaker 1: High Seas habitats, so it's not like it's gone away.
Speaker 1: Has a water tank that can store about one thousand gallons.
Speaker 1: The project hired people to bring water and refill the
Speaker 1: tank at regular intervals, but it was important that it
Speaker 1: wasn't so frequent. To make it easy. The team inside
Speaker 1: the habitat had to plan out their water usage so
Speaker 1: that they and not run out of water. It was
Speaker 1: a really tough challenge. Uh. Now on Earth we would
Speaker 1: be able to send water supplies up occasionally, but not
Speaker 1: that frequently because again, once the Mars and Earth orbits
Speaker 1: are out of alignment, it takes way more energy for
Speaker 1: us to get to Mars, and that means more fuel,
Speaker 1: and that means more expense and a bigger technological challenge.
Speaker 1: So you really don't want to have to send more
Speaker 1: water if you really can avoid it. Uh. They didn't
Speaker 1: go to the extremes of water conservation that you would
Speaker 1: find a board like the International Space Station, where scientists
Speaker 1: have attempted to recapture as much water as possible, including
Speaker 1: water people breathe out just the water you would lose
Speaker 1: the respiration UH that kind of water on the I
Speaker 1: s S. They tried to reclaim as much as that
Speaker 1: as possible, filter it, and then reuse it in various ways,
Speaker 1: but they did look at different ways to pay attention
Speaker 1: to conservation and recycling. During the year long mission that
Speaker 1: just concluded him, the team actually had to respond to
Speaker 1: a water emergency. They had planned out how much water
Speaker 1: consumption they would go through UH through the month of July,
Speaker 1: and they worked it out to like the millimeter of
Speaker 1: how far down the water tank they would go. But
Speaker 1: then the water supplier, the company that actually would come
Speaker 1: up and refill the water tank, suffered a mechanical failure
Speaker 1: and it had nothing to do with the habitat. It
Speaker 1: wasn't their fault at all, but it meant that the
Speaker 1: water that would come in and resupply them wasn't coming.
Speaker 1: And this is a simulation. They can't just get a
Speaker 1: different company to come out and deliver water. Something like
Speaker 1: this might happen on a real Martian mission. So the
Speaker 1: crew had to figure out what they wanted to do. Now.
Speaker 1: They had an emergency backup water tank, but it hadn't
Speaker 1: been touched in years. This emergency water tank had existed
Speaker 1: since the very first mission, but no one had had
Speaker 1: to use it, so they weren't sure about the quality
Speaker 1: of the water. They had no idea if it would
Speaker 1: be drinkable, if be safe to drink, and they lacked
Speaker 1: the equipment to test it because that would take up
Speaker 1: even more space, and if you don't absolutely need something,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna take it in a habitat that has
Speaker 1: very limited space to it. So they had to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to make the water usable and be
Speaker 1: and and be sure that it was safe without having
Speaker 1: the ability to test it. So what they did because
Speaker 1: then an old fashioned method of distilling the water. They
Speaker 1: put uh They put containers or pots of water inside
Speaker 1: a big plastic tote essentially, and they had an electric
Speaker 1: heater element. An electric heater element would heat up the
Speaker 1: pot of water so that the water would boil. On
Speaker 1: top of the tote. They put a plastic sheet and
Speaker 1: they clamped it down along the sides. They had just
Speaker 1: regular old clamps that they used. Boy Bush Joe McCormick
Speaker 1: were here because he loves clamps. But they put clamps
Speaker 1: all along the edges and kept it nice and tight.
Speaker 1: They put a spoon over the center of the plastic
Speaker 1: sheet to create an indentation, a dip in the sheet,
Speaker 1: kind of like if you were to imagine a bowling
Speaker 1: ball on a trampoline, it makes the material dip down.
Speaker 1: I honestly didn't remember talking about a bowling ball on
Speaker 1: a trampoline, but I'm so glad I did. We're gonna
Speaker 1: get back into this episode in just a minute, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So steam from the boiling water would rise up, it
Speaker 1: would condense against the plastic. The drops of water would
Speaker 1: slowly slide down to the lowest point where the spoon was,
Speaker 1: and eventually dripped down into the container itself. The water
Speaker 1: that would drip down was safe to drink. It had
Speaker 1: been distilled, and so they were able to make drinking
Speaker 1: water this way. They just had to constantly checking on
Speaker 1: the water make sure that there was at the right level, uh,
Speaker 1: and replace the water in the pots so that they
Speaker 1: added that to their daily activities. But otherwise it didn't
Speaker 1: impact the mission. So they were able to continue their
Speaker 1: mission and respond to this water emergency in a way
Speaker 1: that was realistic. You know, it didn't require them to
Speaker 1: step outside of the simulation in order to keep it going,
Speaker 1: so it was really cool. Now, next to the habitat
Speaker 1: itself is a steel shipping container that serves as a
Speaker 1: workshop for the habitat. It's actually attached to the habitat,
Speaker 1: so the participants can pass back and forth between the
Speaker 1: shipping container and the habitat itself in order to do
Speaker 1: more work. But they wouldn't necessarily have to down a
Speaker 1: full space suit in order to do that. And like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, they have completed four simulated mission so far.
Speaker 1: The first took place in two thousand thirteen it lasted
Speaker 1: four months long. The second mission took place in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen the early part of two thousand fourteen and
Speaker 1: lasted another four months. The third began in the fall
Speaker 1: of two thousand and fourteen and lasted six months, and
Speaker 1: the fourth mission began on August twenty nine, two thou fifteen,
Speaker 1: and ended a year later, So it was just a
Speaker 1: few days before I recorded this. Obviously, for the experiment
Speaker 1: to be meaningful, everyone has to behave as if they
Speaker 1: are in fact on Mars. Again, they don't have to
Speaker 1: pretend like they're in low gravity situations. That would be ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It would be it would require you to exert way
Speaker 1: too much energy, but going outside the habitat mint, putting
Speaker 1: on a space suit, going through that simulated airlock UH
Speaker 1: scenario before you could go out. And because the project
Speaker 1: was simulating an actual visit to Mars, they would receive
Speaker 1: mission objectives that would require the participants to do this
Speaker 1: on a fairly frequent basis. Every single mission they've done
Speaker 1: has had several Mars walks included where they were sent
Speaker 1: off to specific locations to take information down, make observations,
Speaker 1: explore things like lava tubes and vent um, which was
Speaker 1: really cool. I mean it allowed them to actually do
Speaker 1: real work. They were actually doing real research. It's just
Speaker 1: the research in this case was Earth research. They were
Speaker 1: just simulating the experience of it as if they were
Speaker 1: on Mars. So the information they gathered is useful to us.
Speaker 1: It's just useful to us as people on Earth, which
Speaker 1: is kind of cool. There was like a two for
Speaker 1: one in a way. Now, it also meant that the
Speaker 1: team had to show discipline when entering or leaving that
Speaker 1: that habitat um, and sometimes they would actually plan out
Speaker 1: a Mars walk when they didn't have one on the
Speaker 1: schedule simply to occupy their minds, because boredom is a
Speaker 1: real problem when you're in that that type of isolation,
Speaker 1: especially if you're in there for a whole year. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind that a habitat on Mars would have
Speaker 1: a much higher internal air pressure than the planet would,
Speaker 1: so the air pressure inside the habitat would be very
Speaker 1: very high compared to the Martian atmosphere. And that means
Speaker 1: if you opened up the habitat without using an airlock
Speaker 1: the air and said the habitat would rush out. It
Speaker 1: would blow out of the habitat and go out into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and dissipate, and that would be no bueno.
Speaker 1: That's end of end of habitat. You would you would
Speaker 1: lose air pressure and you would have a catastrophic emergency,
Speaker 1: which also happens in the Martian No spoiler there either.
Speaker 1: It's a big part of the story and you would
Speaker 1: imagine that would have to happen in order to up
Speaker 1: the stakes on the drama. The when the stakes start
Speaker 1: with being abandoned on Mars, there are only so many
Speaker 1: things you can do to increase the stakes at that point,
Speaker 1: and you have to do that in order to have
Speaker 1: a compelling story. All right, let's talk about the participants
Speaker 1: of this most recent experiment, the people who spent an
Speaker 1: entire year in isolation with one another, the six strangers.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned in the beginning of this podcast. First
Speaker 1: of all, the the High Seas Project always seeks out
Speaker 1: participants who are astronaut like, meaning they have the qualifications
Speaker 1: that NASA would look for when choosing astronauts for their
Speaker 1: various space faring missions. So you already have to be
Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable person to be considered to take part
Speaker 1: in this experiment. Uh. They have to be physically fit,
Speaker 1: they have to be mentally fit, and they have to
Speaker 1: have at least one degree in science or engineering, and
Speaker 1: most of them have multiple degrees. We're talking mega super
Speaker 1: smart people. As I was looking through the various accomplishments
Speaker 1: and degrees that a lot of these participants have, I
Speaker 1: started to feel very badly about myself. I consider myself
Speaker 1: to be a fairly smart person, but these folks leave
Speaker 1: me in the dust. So each team member has assigned
Speaker 1: duties that they must complete day to day. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: mundane stuff like cleaning up the habitat or cooking or
Speaker 1: something along those lines. Sometimes it's mission oriented stuff like
Speaker 1: going out on a Mars walk or conducting experiments within
Speaker 1: the habitat itself, but they can also pursue personal research
Speaker 1: projects during the course of the experiment. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who apply to be part of High
Speaker 1: Seas are also graduate students. Typically uh and a year
Speaker 1: long commitment's a big deal. I mean, you can do
Speaker 1: some really serious research within the course of a year,
Speaker 1: but that's a full year of your life. So here's
Speaker 1: the mission team from Mission for You had Commander Carmel Johnston.
Speaker 1: She's a soil scientist from Montana and her primary focus
Speaker 1: was to study how a Martian crew might grow food
Speaker 1: on a real mission. Um you had Christian Heinek, a
Speaker 1: physicist and engineer from Germany. She had worked on projects
Speaker 1: ranging from electro magnetic phenomena like the polar lights two
Speaker 1: simulations of the Earth's mantle before she joined High Seas.
Speaker 1: Super smart like her degrees are crazy because they focus
Speaker 1: on so many different different disciplines of science. She clearly
Speaker 1: is very intelligent and very curious, which is awesome. Then
Speaker 1: there was Shana Gifford. She also has a ton of
Speaker 1: academic credentials, including degrees and clinical laboratory science, biotechnology, journalism,
Speaker 1: and neuroscience. And she's also a science communicator, so as
Speaker 1: a fellow science communicator again, I am humbled by her accomplishments.
Speaker 1: I should get her on the show if I can,
Speaker 1: uh yet. Andre Stewart an aerospace engineer and flight engineer
Speaker 1: for NASA. He's also he was working for Lockheed Martin
Speaker 1: before this this project. And there's also a picture of
Speaker 1: him in the habitat wearing a Jane hat from Firefly,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of awesome. H Then you have Cyprien Versus,
Speaker 1: an astrobiologist expert. One of his goals is to pioneer
Speaker 1: are ways that future Martian colonists will produce various resources
Speaker 1: using biological processes, which would mean you'd use you know,
Speaker 1: like bacteria to produce stuff you would need. You would
Speaker 1: genetically modify the bacteria so that waste products that otherwise
Speaker 1: would just be thrown out could be converted into useful stuff.
Speaker 1: That could be everything from helping generate food or oxygen
Speaker 1: or rocket fuel even And the goal is to make
Speaker 1: Martian colonies, future Martian colonies more independent from Earth, not
Speaker 1: as like some sort of utopian society, but rather you
Speaker 1: don't have to rely on so many resupplies. You can
Speaker 1: support yourself independently, which would really increase the success probabilities
Speaker 1: of such a colony be really important. So that was
Speaker 1: really what he was focused on. And then you had
Speaker 1: Tristan basin th Weight, who's an architect, and he was
Speaker 1: studying human habitation extreme environments. So kind of a person
Speaker 1: who's living through this experience making note of it, making
Speaker 1: suggestions for what future habitats should incorporate. Maybe maybe elements
Speaker 1: they should get rid of, or elements they should add.
Speaker 1: Stuff that will again improve the success rate of any
Speaker 1: future Martian colony. So what was the outcome, Well, they
Speaker 1: spent a full year in that habitat, so that part
Speaker 1: was a success. They did not have to end the
Speaker 1: experiment early. No one got severely injured. One of the
Speaker 1: bright spots they said, is that when you are six
Speaker 1: people that are completely separated from everyone else, no one
Speaker 1: gets sick because viruses and can't just spontaneously pop up.
Speaker 1: You could get uh, some food poisoning or something. And
Speaker 1: in fact, one of the participants did get hit by
Speaker 1: like a stomach bug of some sort or just maybe
Speaker 1: something they just did not agree with them for one
Speaker 1: reason or another. But apart from that, they couldn't pass
Speaker 1: anything along to each other because they were all healthy
Speaker 1: when they went into the habitat, so I said that
Speaker 1: was kind of cool, But keeping people happy when isolated
Speaker 1: for a really long time is very difficult. According to
Speaker 1: members of the crew, one of the best ways to
Speaker 1: improve morale is through emergencies. Really, because an emergency requires
Speaker 1: the crew to work together and focus on a particular task.
Speaker 1: You cannot act as a lone wolf or else everybody
Speaker 1: dies the mission is in jeopardy. So when the emergency
Speaker 1: is over, everyone feels satisfied and they feel closer to
Speaker 1: each other. But being in those close quarters for that
Speaker 1: long doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be the best of
Speaker 1: buddies with everyone when it's over. The participants have been
Speaker 1: pretty diplomatic about this, but it's clear that some folks
Speaker 1: are gonna be in touch with each other for a
Speaker 1: very long time and other folks maybe not so much. Um,
Speaker 1: So it's not like everyone becomes in separable at the
Speaker 1: end of this, so that's kind of interesting. There's very
Speaker 1: little privacy in the habitat. I mean, everyone has their
Speaker 1: own private bedroom. But that bedroom, like I says, a
Speaker 1: closet um, and there's no real space to kind of
Speaker 1: get away unless you go to that bedroom, assuming that
Speaker 1: you have the time to do so, because you also
Speaker 1: have duties to perform, and most of the stuff the
Speaker 1: the actual possessions in the habitat were pretty much considered
Speaker 1: communal property. You could have private possessions, but you also
Speaker 1: understood that those private possessions might end up getting pulled
Speaker 1: into a solution to a problem. So it may mean
Speaker 1: the thing you were thinking of as yours becomes important
Speaker 1: to solve an engineering issue. It sounds very kind of
Speaker 1: mcgeiver ishu, but it's true. And it's also a challenge
Speaker 1: to learn how each person is going to respond to
Speaker 1: and manage the stress of being in this isolated environment.
Speaker 1: Some management strategies like being passive aggressive don't work in
Speaker 1: a small, enclosed environment where people can't get away from
Speaker 1: each other. And also you had the challenge of cultural
Speaker 1: differences being involved. This was an international series of missions,
Speaker 1: meaning that there were people from all different parts of
Speaker 1: the world who could potentially be part of this. Now
Speaker 1: that meant a couple of different things. That cultural differences
Speaker 1: could rear up and cause friction. But it also meant
Speaker 1: that people got to try different cuisines from other parts
Speaker 1: of the world, and apparently that was one of the
Speaker 1: big things. People really like the idea of trying stuff
Speaker 1: like home cooked meals from other cultures, and it was
Speaker 1: an interesting way to broaden your horizons. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: cultural difference could also pose an issue with communication. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, basic for Weight himself was saying, sometimes
Speaker 1: they would just plan an impromptu e V, a extra
Speaker 1: vehicular activity, essentially a Mars walk, just to alleviate boredom.
Speaker 1: That you would go through the whole process of suiting
Speaker 1: up and going through the airlock, which could take around
Speaker 1: an hour to do. Uh, that's a lot of work
Speaker 1: just to avoid tedium. Now, this particular mission, Mission four
Speaker 1: of High Seas is over. It's not the only time
Speaker 1: we've ever seen people try to simulate the isolation people
Speaker 1: would feel if they were to go to Mars. Actually,
Speaker 1: in Russia, there have been a series of three experiments
Speaker 1: where people were living in a simulated spacecraft. The three
Speaker 1: experiments collectively totaled sixty days, and the last of the
Speaker 1: three experiments was five hundred twenty days, so like a
Speaker 1: year and a half of isolation. The mission included a
Speaker 1: simulated landing on Mars that long one did, as well
Speaker 1: as three e v A s on the Martian surface.
Speaker 1: According to the Russians at the time, everything turned out swimmingly.
Speaker 1: There have been some other reports that said that there
Speaker 1: were you know, there were issues, not nothing that would
Speaker 1: stop the mission, but that not everything was absolutely perfect
Speaker 1: as you might have been led to believe. Um, so
Speaker 1: there could be some propaganda stuff going on in there.
Speaker 1: I would imagine any group, even if you have very
Speaker 1: disciplined people, would suffer setbacks now and again just because
Speaker 1: of the various different personalities and the stress involved. But
Speaker 1: what's next, Well, the next High Seas experiment is already
Speaker 1: in the planning stages. If you wanted to apply, oops,
Speaker 1: because this episode is going to come out too late
Speaker 1: for you to do that. I'm recording this on September two,
Speaker 1: two sixteen, but applications are due on September five, and
Speaker 1: this episode goes up after that, And as far as
Speaker 1: I know, the applications are for both of the last
Speaker 1: two missions that are scheduled. One schedule for two seventeen,
Speaker 1: one schedule for two thousand and eighteen. They're both going
Speaker 1: to last eight months long each, so I apologize if
Speaker 1: you wanted to apply, it's too late. Those are supposed
Speaker 1: to be the two final experiments for high seas, though
Speaker 1: you never know, there may be another high seas experiment,
Speaker 1: perhaps a redesigned habitat um. I don't know how that's
Speaker 1: going to turn out after these last two missions, or
Speaker 1: if the whole thing will just say all right, here's
Speaker 1: all the data we gathered and now this branch of
Speaker 1: experimentation is over. That's a possibility, And then of course
Speaker 1: we have the long term goal of actually going to Mars.
Speaker 1: A Martian habitat might be at least partially underground in
Speaker 1: a future Mars colony. The reason to put a Martian
Speaker 1: colony underground is to protect against that radiation I was
Speaker 1: talking about. You would want protection from cosmic radiation as
Speaker 1: well as X rays, ultraviolet rays, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and the Martian soil could do that for you. Since
Speaker 1: there's no magnetosphere or not a strong one anyway to
Speaker 1: protect you, you could protect yourself by burying your habitats
Speaker 1: under the ground, So you would probably have a few
Speaker 1: surface level buildings with tunnels that lead down into underground
Speaker 1: habitats where people were actually living, and you would do
Speaker 1: the same process of getting into a space suit if
Speaker 1: you want to emerge out on the Martian surface. One
Speaker 1: of the different proposals I have seen a lot of
Speaker 1: different UH proposed missions to Mars involved. This would include
Speaker 1: sending robots ahead of time to go and excavate an
Speaker 1: area where then they could assemble at least some of
Speaker 1: the habitats and then piled dirt regulus on top of
Speaker 1: them to bury them. And that way astronauts when they
Speaker 1: arrive at Mars would already have a place to go to.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't have to set it up themselves. That seems
Speaker 1: pretty intelligent to me. They would also involve sending cargo
Speaker 1: ahead of time so that when the mark the the
Speaker 1: the Martian UH colonists or the explorers more likely explorers
Speaker 1: than colonists. First off, when they land, they would already
Speaker 1: have some of their stuff there. They wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: take everything with them, and thus again you could spread
Speaker 1: out the weight of all of that stuff across multiple
Speaker 1: launches instead of trying to pack it all into a
Speaker 1: single one, and they could then take those that cargo
Speaker 1: storied in the proper space and start their mission uh,
Speaker 1: probably for a couple of years, and then try a
Speaker 1: return trip to Earth. We're talking about probably a full
Speaker 1: like three to three and a half years for a
Speaker 1: full Martian mission, when you include the trips out to
Speaker 1: Mars back from Mars, and the time spent on Mars. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it's really exciting, and I love that we
Speaker 1: have been working very seriously on designing a habitat that
Speaker 1: meets both the technical requirements we would have on Mars
Speaker 1: and the psychological requirements we would have. Because if you've
Speaker 1: ever really used any technology developed entirely just by engineers,
Speaker 1: you may notice will it works, but it doesn't work
Speaker 1: in a way that seems natural or intuitive. Sometimes that happens,
Speaker 1: and it may be that it makes perfect sense. It
Speaker 1: just requires you to think in a very specific way.
Speaker 1: You have to adjust your behavior and your thinking so
Speaker 1: that you get the most out of that piece of technology.
Speaker 1: But when you're talking about people living on another planet,
Speaker 1: you want that to be effortless. You don't want to
Speaker 1: have to adjust your thinking and your behavior to your destination,
Speaker 1: or at least not entirely. Some of that is absolutely necessary.
Speaker 1: Because of the differences between Mars and Earth. But you
Speaker 1: want the the habitat two be as much benefit to
Speaker 1: you as possible. So anyway, thank you so much Jeremiah
Speaker 1: for the suggestion. I really appreciate it. This was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun to look into. Um I'm sad that
Speaker 1: I was not able to see this habitat the last
Speaker 1: time I was in Hawaii, which was not that long ago.
Speaker 1: When I was less in Hawaii, this experiment was underway.
Speaker 1: They were inside the habitat, but it's not exactly on
Speaker 1: an easily accessible part of Manta Loah, which is part
Speaker 1: of the point, right. You wouldn't want it to be
Speaker 1: easily accessible. Then you could put the whole experiment at
Speaker 1: risk with tourists just walking up and standing on the
Speaker 1: surface of Mars in the background of the pictures as
Speaker 1: astronauts are trying to do missions. That would be a
Speaker 1: little silly. So I totally understand. But still it's kind
Speaker 1: of a bummer because I would love to see this place.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really really would love to see this place,
Speaker 1: and I got to Hawaii a lot. So if anyone
Speaker 1: at High Seas is like, hey, when we're not doing
Speaker 1: a mission, we're not doing an experiment. UH, and you
Speaker 1: want to see this space, come on over. Please let
Speaker 1: me know, because I will do it in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: I will book a trip to Hawaii so I can
Speaker 1: see it. First of all, I love Hawaii, UH and
Speaker 1: I would love to go back again. And second of all,
Speaker 1: I think it would be the experience of a lifetime
Speaker 1: even just to walk around this habitat and see the
Speaker 1: condition of the space and how what it must feel
Speaker 1: like to be in that space, even just for a
Speaker 1: few like a half hour, as opposed to a full year,
Speaker 1: It would be phenomenal. But I hold out very little
Speaker 1: hope that anyone that high sees is listening to this
Speaker 1: um if they are passed along, I'd love to check
Speaker 1: it out. Guys, this has been a fantastic time for me.
Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed it. I didn't go into too
Speaker 1: much pirate voice, so I hope that helps, and didn't
Speaker 1: make too many high seas funds. I really look forward
Speaker 1: to tackling a lot more UH topics that you guys choose.
Speaker 1: Just send me messages, send me an email the addresses
Speaker 1: tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or send
Speaker 1: it to me on Twitter or Facebook. At both of
Speaker 1: those the handles text stuff hs W. You can also
Speaker 1: fall allow my personal Twitter account that's John Strickland, j
Speaker 1: O N S t R I C K L A
Speaker 1: N D and UM. I post all the time from there,
Speaker 1: often about my dog, So if you don't want to
Speaker 1: see that, it's I don't blame you, but he is
Speaker 1: adorable and you should look at him because he's the cutest.
Speaker 1: You guys, have a great day. I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because it has staff works dot com