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Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.

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Speaker 1: The vault lies open, and inside the vault this time

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Speaker 1: I see not just avoid but a planet on the darkness,

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Speaker 1: the planet Iracus, Dune itself. We're going back to our

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Speaker 1: classic Dune episodes. These were some fan favorites back in

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Speaker 1: the day. So there were two episodes on Dune we did.

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Speaker 1: We did uh episode about the technology of Dune in

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Speaker 1: an episode about the biology of Dune back in September

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Speaker 1: and October. So this is going to be the first

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Speaker 1: episode of our Dune revival. This this one originally aired

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Speaker 1: on September and it was called the Science of Dune Technology. Right,

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Speaker 1: one of the main focuses in this episode is going

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Speaker 1: to be the still suit. These are, of course the

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Speaker 1: water reclamation suits that you see in the movie adaptations

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Speaker 1: and of course appears in the original nine book by

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Speaker 1: Frank Herbert as well. Right, Robert, are you ready for

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Speaker 1: another Dune movie or you just pretty satisfied with our

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Speaker 1: with what exists now? I am satisfied with what we

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Speaker 1: have now, but I am all in on a new

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Speaker 1: vision a new cinematic vision of of the Dune universe.

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Speaker 1: Listeners out there, I've got homework for you. If you

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Speaker 1: have never seen David Lynch's Dune, or if you have

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Speaker 1: seen it, either way, you should go watch David Lynch's

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Speaker 1: Dune and just take notes on all the scenes that

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Speaker 1: have a pug in them. There's a pug, a royal pug.

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Speaker 1: I don't think the pug was in the book. I

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Speaker 1: don't remember anything about a pug. Maybe in the sequels.

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Speaker 1: Are there are there pug sequels? They should do one.

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Speaker 1: They should have like the pugs of House of Tradees.

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Speaker 1: That would be a wonderful focus for for one of

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Speaker 1: the prequel novels. But in David Lynch's movie, there is

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Speaker 1: totally a pug in several scenes, like sometimes he's sitting

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Speaker 1: in Karl McLaughlin's lap. Sometimes Captain Picard is about to

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Speaker 1: run into battle on the planet Iracus and he's just

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Speaker 1: gotta do He's got a pug in his arms. Dune pug. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's just one of the mini wonderful visual features of

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Speaker 1: that film. An imperfect adaptation. But I am I am

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Speaker 1: not the sort of Dune fan that can completely hate

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Speaker 1: upon film adaptation I will kill him. Yes, all right,

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Speaker 1: Well it's a long episode, so without further ado, let

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Speaker 1: us enter the vault. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your

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Speaker 1: Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, this is Edric,

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Speaker 1: your gul navigator speaking, just letting you know that we've

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Speaker 1: begun our approach to a minimal safe departure for our

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Speaker 1: one way John to the planet Oracus. This is, of

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Speaker 1: course just a precaution, as the Spacing Guild currently holds

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Speaker 1: an impeccable record of Holtzmann enabled space fabric distortion travel.

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Speaker 1: And as always you can rest assured that no thinking

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Speaker 1: machine has taken your lives. It's care, but rather the

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Speaker 1: President Lunge augmented powers of the human mind. So set back,

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Speaker 1: enjoy our in flight presentation of maud By conversations, and

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Speaker 1: our flight attendants will check in with him shortly. Hey you,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and uh, I want

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Speaker 1: to thank a musician or Raleigh porter for that bit

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Speaker 1: of music there. That's the laxo off his two thousand

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Speaker 1: eleven album Aftertime, released by Subtext Recording, and you'll find

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Speaker 1: a link on the landing page for this episode to

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Speaker 1: learn more about that work. But it's the title of

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Speaker 1: this episode and our our intro narration. Um UH Presents

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Speaker 1: were of course talking about the Done universe in this

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Speaker 1: week's episodes, so we've probably heard us talking about Dune

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Speaker 1: on recent episodes of the show. I've mentioned several times

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Speaker 1: that I've been reading it. I finally finished reading it.

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Speaker 1: I loved this book. Yeah, I'm about halfway through my

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Speaker 1: my reread of it, and this I think this will

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Speaker 1: be the third time I've read it, and it's it's

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Speaker 1: a book that has a special place in my heart

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Speaker 1: as well. It's very strange to me that a book

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Speaker 1: written fifty years ago. That's one of the reasons we're

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Speaker 1: doing this is that this year in it's the fiftieth

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Speaker 1: anniversary of the publication of Dune, that a book this

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Speaker 1: old can feel so fresh and imaginative. So much science

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Speaker 1: fiction is disturbingly familiar when you when you go to it.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. When I went into the world of Done,

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Speaker 1: I was constantly surprised by what I encountered. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: so unlike, you know, anything that had come before it,

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Speaker 1: and and and unlike even though it's it's had a

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Speaker 1: huge impact on the genre. Um, there's nothing quite like

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Speaker 1: it to this day. I mean it's, uh, you have

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Speaker 1: this space age feudalistic society and it's full of you know,

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Speaker 1: you have profits, you have fabulous creatures, you have strange science,

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Speaker 1: strange technology that's changing the shape of life. Yeah. So

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Speaker 1: to describe the influencer in terms of the influenced, a

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Speaker 1: young person approaching done today might want to think of

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Speaker 1: it as sort of like Game of Thrones in space

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Speaker 1: because a lot of political intrigues, Yeah, but also with

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Speaker 1: with a lot of philosophical commentary. And I have to say,

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Speaker 1: this is the most ecological novel I've ever read. I've

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Speaker 1: never read anything as concerned with ecology and the conservation

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Speaker 1: of resources. Yeah, A tremendous amount of thought went into

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Speaker 1: the creation of this, this alien ecosystem, an alien ecosystem

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Speaker 1: that is not only intrinsically interesting, but but plays an

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Speaker 1: enormously important role in the plot. Right, So we're gonna

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Speaker 1: do two episodes about the science of Dune, talking about

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Speaker 1: the world of imagined by Frank Herbert In in his

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Speaker 1: novel Dune and in the larger Doune universe, but then

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Speaker 1: also real world parallels to this science and how Doone

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Speaker 1: has influenced science fiction. Yeah, so we're gonna be discussing

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Speaker 1: some of the science fiction, some of the actual science.

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Speaker 1: But one of the reasons that they the sci fi

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Speaker 1: aspects of Frank Herbert's done, you know, continues to resonate

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Speaker 1: so well is, first of all, it's set tremendously long

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Speaker 1: period of time in the future, and he does a

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Speaker 1: great job about giving me some details but leaving a

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Speaker 1: lot of the details a bit ambiguous and unexplained, and

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Speaker 1: you're just sort of left to fill in fill in

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Speaker 1: the blanks in your own mind, right, and if you

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Speaker 1: know how sci fi fans work, they will fill in

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Speaker 1: those blanks. Yes. So two of our primary resources here

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Speaker 1: um are, first of all, a fabulous new publication titled

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Speaker 1: The Science of Doone, edited by Kevin R. Grazier, ps PhD.

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Speaker 1: It's an unauthorized exploration into the real science behind Frank

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Speaker 1: Herbert's fictional universe. And it's a series of essays all

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Speaker 1: all you know by experts in their in their field, planetologist, cosmologists,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. It's a fabulous book. We'll have a link

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Speaker 1: to where you can pick up a copy on the

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Speaker 1: landing page. For this episode, we also doug in a

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Speaker 1: little bit into the Dune Encyclopedia, which came out in

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Speaker 1: It's long out of print, but there are used copies

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Speaker 1: out there available for purchase. And this was compiled by

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Speaker 1: Dr Willis E. Nick and Nelly and uh. This also

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Speaker 1: involved a number of different freelance writers and U and

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Speaker 1: some scientists weighing in on not only the science potential

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Speaker 1: science underlying the details of Herbert so a Universe, but

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Speaker 1: also some of just the cultural aspects as well. Right,

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Speaker 1: it's got recipes for frem and flatbread. Yes, I was

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Speaker 1: you pointed that out yesterday, and I was very fascinated

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Speaker 1: by the top of They're also lyrics to songs. There's

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Speaker 1: as well as some uh, some some science into how say,

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Speaker 1: you know, sandworms or face stand answers may have worked.

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Speaker 1: You know, thinking about the recipe for frem and flatbread,

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Speaker 1: I wonder why the fremen would cook anything, because cooking

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Speaker 1: is almost always the cause of much evaporation and loss

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Speaker 1: of moisture. Well, perhaps they have a special oven like

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Speaker 1: a still of and that captures all that moisture. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so they seal off the kitchen and no moisture can escape,

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Speaker 1: and then you can cook. Yeah, indeed, that makes sense. Now.

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Speaker 1: I also just wanna don't want to preface here too

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Speaker 1: that they were dealing primarily with the nineteen novel Dune,

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Speaker 1: with some discussion of details that may pop up in

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Speaker 1: Frank Herbert's later novels. We don't really get into any

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Speaker 1: of the more recent works by by Brian Herbert. Brian

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Speaker 1: Herbert is, of course the son of Frank Herbert, and

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Speaker 1: he continued the saga, did some prequels in a number

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Speaker 1: of Legends of Dune books with with his collaborator, But

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Speaker 1: I have personally not read them. I know a lot

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Speaker 1: of people enjoy them, so um, Yeah, we would love

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Speaker 1: to hear from anyone who who has read those books,

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Speaker 1: who has additional information they want to share based on

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Speaker 1: their enjoyment of that sort of continued universe. Right, But

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Speaker 1: these two episodes we're doing are going to be primarily

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Speaker 1: the first novel, Dune, and then our wonderful supplementary materials. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that I think for the most part,

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Speaker 1: people even who haven't read the book, might be familiar

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Speaker 1: with from either the Of course, the David Lynch film adaptation.

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Speaker 1: Oh and we got to talk about that. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Sci Fi Channel mini series from several years back,

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Speaker 1: or just sort of the general cultural residents of the series. Um,

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Speaker 1: and we're gonna try and make sure it's not too deep,

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Speaker 1: so if you have little or no understanding of the

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Speaker 1: Done Universe, will hold your hand through the stands. So

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Speaker 1: we mentioned it's going to be a two part episode.

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Speaker 1: This first episode today is going to be about primarily

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Speaker 1: the technology of the Done Universe, and then the next

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Speaker 1: episode we do or we're going to try to focus

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Speaker 1: on the organic components, the biology and the ecology of

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Speaker 1: the Done Universe. But before we get into the meat

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Speaker 1: of today's episode, I think we should just give a

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Speaker 1: very very brief cursory plot synopsis to people who haven't

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Speaker 1: read the book but want to be able to have

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Speaker 1: a basic idea of what's going on. So what happens

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Speaker 1: in the novel Dune, Well, essentially you have a space

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Speaker 1: opera in which you have a galactic civilization spread across

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Speaker 1: various planets right right, and there is one precious key

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Speaker 1: resource in the universe that everybody wants and sort of

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Speaker 1: controls all trade, and that resources, the spice milange. It

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Speaker 1: comes from one planet in the entire universe, and that

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Speaker 1: planet is a raucous also known as Dune. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: the stuff that really makes uh, ultimately travel between planets possible.

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Speaker 1: It makes the interplanetary economy possible. So everything is hinging

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Speaker 1: on this one precious commodity. It's kind of the It's

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Speaker 1: essentially the oil of the done universe, right, and you

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Speaker 1: can't get it anywhere else. So the characters that come

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Speaker 1: in on the story that there are two main houses

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Speaker 1: in the story. There's House of trade Ees and his

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Speaker 1: House Harconan. The Tradees are it's it's kind of manniche

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Speaker 1: and I guess the Tradees are the good guys and

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Speaker 1: the Harconan's are very very bad guys. Yeah, but I

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Speaker 1: mean the Hardconans are they're they're they're a product of

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Speaker 1: the environment to to a certain extent, but yeah, they're

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Speaker 1: they're pretty villainous. Yeah, And they are essentially competing for

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Speaker 1: control of the planet that produces spice. And there's a

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Speaker 1: lot of warfare and backstabbing and treachery and double crossing

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Speaker 1: and and tests of loyalty, but ultimately the main thrust

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Speaker 1: of the story is the adventure of Paula Tradees, the

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Speaker 1: young son of House of Tradees, and his mother Jessica,

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Speaker 1: while they're learning how to live on the planet Dune

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Speaker 1: and eventually participating in a journey of cosmic discovery and

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Speaker 1: revenge and drugs. Like at the heart, it's such a quintessential,

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Speaker 1: like nineties sixties product, right, because it's about a young

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Speaker 1: man who takes an allucinage and and h then saves

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Speaker 1: the calaxy. You know, I never thought of it that way,

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Speaker 1: but that's that's pretty much right. We'll get way more

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Speaker 1: into the drugs in the second episode. But today we

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Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the technological theater of the Dune universe.

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Speaker 1: And I think one of the coolest concepts that's created

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Speaker 1: in the book that that Frank Herbert comes up with

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Speaker 1: is the idea that this is a future scenario without

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Speaker 1: computers or robots. Right, yeah, it is a post Buttlerian

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Speaker 1: jihad world. Uh So, basically, imagine that the singularity has occurred.

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Speaker 1: We have thinking machines everywhere that are caring for is

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Speaker 1: looking after us more of I tend to interpret more.

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Speaker 1: It's like the beneficial aspects of of a post singularity

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Speaker 1: world in which your computers are not like you know,

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Speaker 1: enslaving you and making you were working their salt minds,

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Speaker 1: but they've just become such a ubiquitous aspect of our lives,

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Speaker 1: and eventually humans rebel against that. Yeah. So there is

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Speaker 1: in the past of this universe a great war against

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Speaker 1: the machines, and it's it's referred to, as you said,

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Speaker 1: by the name the but Larry and Jihad from the

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Speaker 1: name Butler, but Larry and Jihad. And I like the

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Speaker 1: idea that it invokes the concept of jihad. So it's

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Speaker 1: not just like in the Terminator movies where there is

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Speaker 1: a war for survival against the machines, or maybe like

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Speaker 1: you might find in the Matrix or something like that,

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Speaker 1: the machines take over, they decide they want to kill

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Speaker 1: us or enslave us, and we fight back. There is

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Speaker 1: there is that element, I think, but there is also

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Speaker 1: a deeper, more spiritual element, which is where the concept

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Speaker 1: of the jihad comes in. It's a physical struggle, but

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Speaker 1: it's also a spiritual struggle for the soul of humankind. Yeah. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: like some of the Herbert Frank, Herbert himself didn't really

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Speaker 1: give you a lot of details on you left it.

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Speaker 1: You know, like a lot of the details in the

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Speaker 1: universe a little ambiguous, and you're helping. You left to

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Speaker 1: sort of um, you know, dwell on the philosophical implications,

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Speaker 1: but just a few quotes from the fictional tombs such

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Speaker 1: as the Orange Catholic Bible that play a prominent role

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Speaker 1: in the universe. Thou shalt not create a machine in

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Speaker 1: the likeness of a human mind. Thou shalt not disfigure

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Speaker 1: the soul. And then this is a great line from

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Speaker 1: some of the appendix material uh in novel. Then came

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Speaker 1: the but Lerrian Jihad, two generations of chaos, the god

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Speaker 1: of machine logic was overthrown among the masses, and a

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Speaker 1: new concept scept raised man may not be replaced. I've

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Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about this, um just in my

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Speaker 1: daily life, you know, about not even with like thinking machines,

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Speaker 1: but just the use of Facebook in your daily life,

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Speaker 1: you know, the the use of social media, the use

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Speaker 1: of all these gadgets. And so for me, when I

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Speaker 1: think of this spot Lerrian jihad, it's it seems as

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Speaker 1: much rebellion against that as it is against you know,

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Speaker 1: some robot with a with a laser gun. Sure, and

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Speaker 1: it's not unusual for our technology change us, right, I mean,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't just make our lives easier, it changes the

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Speaker 1: way we we prioritize things and the way we we

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Speaker 1: go about our lives. One way of looking at this

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Speaker 1: might be something like agriculture. I mean, that's a technology

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Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people would argue fundamentally

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Speaker 1: change the human animal Homo sapiens is not the same

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Speaker 1: anymore after we invented agriculture. And you could probably look

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Speaker 1: at the rise of thinking machines, of computers and perhaps

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Speaker 1: the same way it is changing us in a very

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Speaker 1: fundamental way. I mean, who knows what that look like

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Speaker 1: ten thousand years in the future, as as the done

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Speaker 1: universe imagines, But it's doing something to our brains. When

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Speaker 1: we can have vast computational power, vast power of storage

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Speaker 1: of information, and as imagined by this sort of singularity,

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Speaker 1: future decision making power that we can outsource two machines. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just think of all the things we outsourced already,

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Speaker 1: all the things we no longer bother to remember because

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Speaker 1: the machine remembers it for us. So yeah, like you said,

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Speaker 1: your your interpretation of this coming in I agree with

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Speaker 1: this about the butlerry and jihad having something to do

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Speaker 1: with the way humans are changed by our dependence on machines.

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Speaker 1: So either way, we end up with a situation in

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Speaker 1: these these books, in this world where we've kicked out

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Speaker 1: the computers. We kicked out humans one, the humans one.

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Speaker 1: But now all the humans have to do all the

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Speaker 1: things of the machines were doing beforehand. So what do

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Speaker 1: you do when suddenly, uh, you know, just think about

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Speaker 1: a business, so you can't depend on accounting software anymore,

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Speaker 1: you need what do you do? You have to turn

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Speaker 1: to the human mind to deal with all that accounting.

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Speaker 1: What do you do when it comes to navigational concerns?

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Speaker 1: I mean, even in our own lives will become dependent

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Speaker 1: on these uh like things like Google maps and ways

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Speaker 1: right to tell us how to get from point A

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Speaker 1: to point B. If we throw that out the window,

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Speaker 1: suddenly we have to look at maps. Suddenly we have

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Speaker 1: to know which way is north and south. It falls

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Speaker 1: to the human to know how to navigate. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: it gets even tougher of course when you're in space.

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Speaker 1: So without the aid of advanced computer computation, um, they

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Speaker 1: have to turn to human capabilities uh and they have

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Speaker 1: to essentially breed and train uh special classes of humans

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Speaker 1: to to to take on these varying taxing tasks. Right,

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Speaker 1: and so some of these classes that you encounter in

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Speaker 1: the Doune universe, well, one of them, the most straightforward

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Speaker 1: upgrading of the human mind to replace computers would be

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Speaker 1: the mentats. There are several characters in the book who

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Speaker 1: are explained to be men tats. And this is pretty

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Speaker 1: straightforwardly a human computer. It's a person whose mind has

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Speaker 1: been trained and I think in some ways stimulated by drugs. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're constantly consuming some variation with some wine type eli

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Speaker 1: SATs sort of supercharge them. It's kind of like a

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Speaker 1: red buy. Yeah. It talks about their purple stained lips.

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Speaker 1: And these mentats really do in some ways fulfill the

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Speaker 1: function of computers. And otherwise they're sort of like advisors.

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Speaker 1: They're they're sort of the perfect computer human hybrid. They

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Speaker 1: can do computation, they can store vast amounts of information.

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Speaker 1: They seem to pretty much remember everything like that. They

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Speaker 1: do not ever forget any details, or at least as

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Speaker 1: far as I can tell from the first novel um.

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Speaker 1: But then also they they are attuned to human nuance.

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Speaker 1: It's something that's not true the computers today. They might

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Speaker 1: be more replacement for the kind of you know, superhuman

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Speaker 1: artificial intelligence that we imagine in the post singularity world. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's interesting too that they have kind of an

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Speaker 1: ethical guideline to them. And if you want one that's twisted,

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Speaker 1: you have to Essentially, it's like a jail broken iPhone.

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Speaker 1: I want to order a sociopathic mentap Yeah, in that case,

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Speaker 1: you have to go to the Relaxa and they will

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Speaker 1: provide you with one. And of course one of them

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Speaker 1: is a is a major character in the early goings

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Speaker 1: of the novel. Yeah, that's true. And then of course

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Speaker 1: there's the spacing guilt. These are individuals who handle in

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Speaker 1: your planetary travel and this is a very complex, dangerous arrangement.

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Speaker 1: So you have Guild navigators, individuals who have been specially

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Speaker 1: bread trained and to varying degrees engineered to make the

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Speaker 1: kind of advanced navigational computations necessary to get from planet

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Speaker 1: day to planet B without just popping out of existence. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: we mentioned that the mentats rely on some kind of

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Speaker 1: drug that stains their lips purple. The Guild navigators definitely

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Speaker 1: rely on a drug, and that drug is the drug

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Speaker 1: we talked about of the opening, Spice. That will will

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Speaker 1: go more into the spice and the effects of Spice

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Speaker 1: in the second episode, but it's a key part of

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Speaker 1: their outlook of their abilities is not just this computational power,

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Speaker 1: but also sort of the ability to see the future,

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Speaker 1: which Spice gives them. Yeah, at least a very limited amount,

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Speaker 1: just so you can see what where your various choices

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Speaker 1: will take you, and you can, at least in the

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Speaker 1: next few seconds a avoid the ones that will destroy you. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and therefore sort of feel your way through the dark,

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Speaker 1: uh safely from point A to point B. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: then there's a third group of these sort of advanced

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Speaker 1: humans that I think is is maybe the most interesting

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Speaker 1: of the three and also the hardest to pin down

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Speaker 1: and define. But they're the Binny Jesseret. So the main

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Speaker 1: character of the novel Poul Trades, his mother is Jessica,

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Speaker 1: and she's a Binny Jesseret trained woman. The Binni jesssere

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Speaker 1: At are a a female order of super smart, very perceptive,

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Speaker 1: highly trained priestesses of some kind who haven't they haven't

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Speaker 1: They have an aptitude for politics, for one thing like

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Speaker 1: that they are tuned into all the finer points of

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Speaker 1: human expression that we miss every day. There's sort of

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Speaker 1: human lie detectors. They can tell what people are thinking

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Speaker 1: and what they're gonna do by micro expressions on their faces,

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Speaker 1: tonal shifts in their voices. And they command a sort

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Speaker 1: of supreme knowledge of the human animal and how it works.

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Speaker 1: And they play a fascinating long game too, of manipulating mythology,

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Speaker 1: um mamonics and UH and culture to their benefit. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: One of the most interesting examples of this that comes

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Speaker 1: up in the novel is the idea of them. Is

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Speaker 1: it the called the Missionary of Protectiva? Yes, which is

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Speaker 1: this fascinating idea that the this order goes throughout the galaxy,

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Speaker 1: seeding planets with mythology that later members of the order

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Speaker 1: can rely upon if they're in a pinch. So it says,

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Speaker 1: if you went to every city in the country you

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Speaker 1: live in, spreading rumors about I don't know, prophecies about

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Speaker 1: someone who would come to your community and save it

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Speaker 1: from poverty and and and everything, and then you tell

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Speaker 1: all your friends exactly what to do to fulfill those prophecies. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So it's a factless failsafe. Also, they're gonna laying the

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Speaker 1: grounds for future manipulation. Uh. And of course at their

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Speaker 1: heart they also have a breeding program, yeah, which has

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Speaker 1: some I think some creepy similarities to eugenics programs. Yeah, Andy,

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Speaker 1: there's definitely a eugenic vibe to it. They're trying to

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Speaker 1: breed a specific person a what they call the quistat's

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Speaker 1: hat iraq um, a term signifying one who can be

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Speaker 1: many places at once. I thought the translation of that

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Speaker 1: term was the shortening of the way. Yes, that right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I believe, Yeah, that is also invoked as well. But

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Speaker 1: according to the Don Appendix, in simpler terms, what they

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Speaker 1: saw it is quote a human with mental powers permitting

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Speaker 1: him to understand and use higher order dimensions. So they're

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Speaker 1: trying they're essentially trying to breed a superman tat, a

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Speaker 1: human supercomputer with from some preceientabilities found in the Guild Navigators,

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Speaker 1: but without necessarily without the without necessarily having to imbue

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Speaker 1: the spice. Yeah. Yeah, So in a sense, they're trying

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Speaker 1: to to get to that next phase of evolution in

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Speaker 1: terms of human thinking, the human thinking apparatus. I don't

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Speaker 1: think you can make evolution happen. You just gotta wait

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Speaker 1: on it. They're they're determined them. And then on top

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Speaker 1: of that, you have the beneath a laxu who have

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Speaker 1: continued to refine human form and function, often in ways

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Speaker 1: that push the envelope of acceptabilities. Though, and this you

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Speaker 1: see that, you know that post human conundrum, like how

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Speaker 1: much can you change a human and it still be

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Speaker 1: a human? Yeah? I love this aspect of the universe,

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Speaker 1: that it's so fresh and interesting that they imagine a

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Speaker 1: future without robots and computers, because robots and computers, of

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Speaker 1: course are ubiquitous and uh in science fiction, and I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of times with good reason, because that

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Speaker 1: it certainly does seem to be the trend in human

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Speaker 1: history is outsourcing all of our capabilities to machines that

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Speaker 1: can do them better, or at least do them cheaper,

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Speaker 1: or I don't know, a greater scale. But here we

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Speaker 1: have human technology. It is really the wet war future

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Speaker 1: universe where all of the things that computers used to do,

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Speaker 1: or even that you know they can't do for us

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Speaker 1: today but we only imagine they could do, are all

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Speaker 1: replaced by human perfection. Yeah, you know, and it all

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Speaker 1: makes me think two of our episodes and techno religion. Right, so,

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Speaker 1: particularly some of the conundrums of how do I create

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Speaker 1: a refrigerator that will operate in keeping with the laws

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Speaker 1: of the Stabbas? Right, You're you're having to advance your technology,

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Speaker 1: but do so within search certain religious frameworks and religious guidelines. Right. Oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: because we don't want to lose sight of that. It

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Speaker 1: is dictated in the Orange Catholic Bible. And it's not

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Speaker 1: just that people sort of frown on computers. The Bible

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Speaker 1: says you shall not do it, right, It's it's blasphemy

426
00:24:47,720 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 1: to do this sort of thing, so you have to

427
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:52,720
Speaker 1: you have to work around it. Yeah. So the sort

428
00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:57,240
Speaker 1: of upgraded advanced human brain technology is a larger feature

429
00:24:57,240 --> 00:25:00,440
Speaker 1: of the Doune universe, and if we want to try

430
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:04,199
Speaker 1: to relate that to real technology, I can't see that

431
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,159
Speaker 1: there's all that much we could say about it, except that,

432
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 1: of course people can there are some people with exceptional

433
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:14,880
Speaker 1: mental abilities. People can hone their their skills in certain areas.

434
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:18,080
Speaker 1: But I don't know if there's a wine you can

435
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:20,160
Speaker 1: drink that will make you a ment at And I'm

436
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: doubtful we will ever discover such a thing because I

437
00:25:23,400 --> 00:25:26,160
Speaker 1: tend to assume that the human mind is already operating

438
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 1: probably a pretty close to its capacity. I don't buy

439
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:32,320
Speaker 1: into this whole like, you know, we only use ten

440
00:25:32,359 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: percent of our brains. No, yeah, yeah, that that they

441
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:36,520
Speaker 1: tend to throw that out the window when you start

442
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:38,200
Speaker 1: and also when you start looking at like what makes

443
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 1: an individual genius? You know, it's not just in nature,

444
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:45,399
Speaker 1: but it's also nurture. There are several different factors. And granted,

445
00:25:45,440 --> 00:25:49,359
Speaker 1: I'm sure the manipulations of the Beni gesture it would

446
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: involve both nature and nurture, but but still yeah. But

447
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: on the other hand, if we do want to isolate

448
00:25:55,280 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 1: specific capabilities of these people, say the capability of the

449
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:03,880
Speaker 1: Beni Jesstera to read micro expressions, I think that very

450
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: well could be trained in a person. Uh. And then

451
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:09,159
Speaker 1: other things like the ability of a ment at to

452
00:26:09,400 --> 00:26:13,199
Speaker 1: recall vast amounts of information beyond what would normally be

453
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:17,880
Speaker 1: accessible to the average humans memory. I think you could

454
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:21,679
Speaker 1: compare that to what the really good people, the memory

455
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: athletes do, you know, like we talked about in the

456
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: Memory Palace episode of people make these memory palaces that like,

457
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:29,639
Speaker 1: how exactly does that work? Oh? That's of course, just

458
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 1: using a different type of memory and invoking spatial memory

459
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: to to memorize say a list of terms or a

460
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:39,200
Speaker 1: you know, or a table of information. Yeah, so if

461
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 1: you have a list of five hundred numbers that you

462
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 1: could never remember, well, what if you imagine those numbers

463
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 1: as objects that are kind of strange oriented in a

464
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: room that you're familiar with. Some people can use methods

465
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 1: like this to recall things that we would never normally recall.

466
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's sort of the the human technology and

467
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 1: the broader universe of doone. I think we should now

468
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 1: zero in on the planet Dune itself, the planet Iracous,

469
00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: because the physical conditions on the surface of this planet

470
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:20,679
Speaker 1: constitute a huge part of the struggle of this book.

471
00:27:20,880 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 1: A lot of the plot is just based around the

472
00:27:23,280 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: fact that this is a desert planet. Water is extremely scarce.

473
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: People are constantly fighting to stay alive and preserve moisture

474
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:34,640
Speaker 1: in a place where every single drop of water wants

475
00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:38,159
Speaker 1: to evaporate and disappear. Yeah, it's like an extremely harsh

476
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 1: life and it requires some some rather ingenious cultural innovations,

477
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:45,320
Speaker 1: but also technological innovations. Yeah, and I think one of

478
00:27:45,359 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: the most interesting pieces of technology we encounter in the

479
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 1: book Dune is the still suits. So what are the

480
00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: still suits? All? Right? So still suit and this is

481
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,520
Speaker 1: something I imagine people are definitely familiar with from the

482
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: movies and and and again may just be from leader

483
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 1: with outside of having ever seen or read anything doing related.

484
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:07,840
Speaker 1: But it's a second skin worn by the deserted inhabiting

485
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:12,040
Speaker 1: fremen of Iracus, and it traps body moisture and recycles

486
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: it through tubes, cooling the wear and also preventing water loss.

487
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,240
Speaker 1: So they collect your sweat, your urine moisture from your

488
00:28:19,240 --> 00:28:22,399
Speaker 1: fecal matter, and then coils it around you, cools you

489
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 1: down a bit, and then you drink it out of

490
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,159
Speaker 1: a little a little straw in your mouthpiece. Yeah. So,

491
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 1: if you've seen pictures of kar McLaughlin with little things

492
00:28:30,240 --> 00:28:33,200
Speaker 1: dangling out of his nose in the desert, that's probably

493
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,399
Speaker 1: from the movie Dune, unless he did in another movie

494
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: with stuff hanging out of his name in the desert.

495
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 1: That's from the movie Dune. And he's wearing the at

496
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: least the David Lynch version of what the still suit

497
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,160
Speaker 1: looks like. The fremen you mentioned or these are sort

498
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:49,479
Speaker 1: of the native inhabitants of the planet Iracus. These are

499
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:54,040
Speaker 1: the people who are perfectly adapted over many generations to

500
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:58,120
Speaker 1: life in this extremely harsh desert condition. Yeah, and the Fremen,

501
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: they take their still sue disciplined very seriously. They don't

502
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:06,080
Speaker 1: waste any water. They keep their still suits on unless

503
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 1: they're in a sealed off place that can retain moisture.

504
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:12,000
Speaker 1: And it sounds like a rough life, but it's also

505
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:15,640
Speaker 1: very interesting is described in the novel because of course,

506
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 1: what happens to you in the desert without a still suit, Well,

507
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:21,520
Speaker 1: you die. And uh, it's we're told that if you're

508
00:29:21,560 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: out there unprotected in the desert, you can't last a

509
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:27,200
Speaker 1: full day unless you have just a massive amount of

510
00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:29,600
Speaker 1: water on hand. It just burns you right out right.

511
00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 1: But if you have the Fremen still suit, proper frem

512
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:35,000
Speaker 1: and still suit, not one of those city models, you

513
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 1: can you can actually limit your water loss to fifteen

514
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: mil liters a day and so so yeah, it's an

515
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:44,600
Speaker 1: invention of of necessity by these uh, these Fremen who

516
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:48,760
Speaker 1: were former nomads that you know says they were zen

517
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: sunny no ensunning nomads who popped around from planet to planet,

518
00:29:52,920 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: evidently picking up different technologies and uh and you know

519
00:29:56,560 --> 00:29:59,920
Speaker 1: material technology along the way, which they then implement into

520
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: signing the suit. Yeah. And so there's a scientist character

521
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: in the novel Dune named Kinds lee at Kinds who

522
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:09,680
Speaker 1: explains how the still suits work. Yeah and most and

523
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 1: again this is another example of Herbert giving us some details,

524
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 1: perhaps in this case a few too many details. This

525
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: we'll get into, but leaving a lot of the the

526
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty stuff to the reader to to figure out.

527
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: So Kins tells us that is still suit as a

528
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:31,719
Speaker 1: micro sandwich quote, a high efficiency filter and heat exchange system.

529
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 1: So you have a layer that touches the skin that's

530
00:30:34,520 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: porous and perspiration passes through it, and it cools the

531
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,400
Speaker 1: body in a manner that maintains the existing cooling process

532
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:44,840
Speaker 1: of the bodies, which we'll get into that's key and problematic.

533
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 1: And then you have two additional layers on the suit

534
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:52,960
Speaker 1: that include heat exchange filaments and a salt of precipitators. Uh,

535
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:55,680
Speaker 1: the ladder of which is used to reclaim salt. Now,

536
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: why do we call it a still suit? H? What

537
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: does that mean? It's just like a unshine still distillery. Yeah,

538
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 1: you're separating which is you know, all about separating different liquids.

539
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 1: The still up in the Appealachian Mountains, Uh, that's all

540
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: about separating alcohol. But with the still suits about separating

541
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:18,400
Speaker 1: potable water from salt, h and other waste materials in

542
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:23,000
Speaker 1: a wares excretions. Now, what I immediately wonder when I

543
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: encountered this concept is Okay, that sounds very interesting. I

544
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:29,440
Speaker 1: wonder if something like that could be done in real life.

545
00:31:29,480 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: But one of the main questions is where does it

546
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: get its energy from? Like how how is this distillation

547
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: process powered? Because if you think of a still, you've

548
00:31:37,640 --> 00:31:40,560
Speaker 1: got to boil things. You've got to be feeding energy

549
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:43,920
Speaker 1: into the system to power the distillation process. What's going

550
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:46,720
Speaker 1: on in the still suit, Well, according to two kinds

551
00:31:46,760 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: and ultimately according to Frank Carpet here, Uh, it's all

552
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:53,360
Speaker 1: due to body movement, especially breathing, and then this and

553
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: some ausomatic action. It's providing the pumping force for all

554
00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:00,040
Speaker 1: of this water. Uh. And again, as we'll get into that,

555
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: there are a lot of questions surrounding how that would

556
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: actually work. But then, of course, once the water gets distilled,

557
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:09,720
Speaker 1: it gets filtered into these things that they talked about

558
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: in the novel called catch pockets, which is great because

559
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: then you just got a little straw and you can

560
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:16,880
Speaker 1: just suck the water straight out of your suit when

561
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:20,160
Speaker 1: you're thirsty. Yeah. Yeah, and um used to be your pa.

562
00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:23,240
Speaker 1: Now it's tasty desert water. Yeah, and it and yet

563
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 1: you'urin in. Feces are processed in your thigh pads, which

564
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: is a detail I remember kind of sticking on when

565
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 1: I read this for the first time, like back in

566
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 1: junior high or high school. They just mentioned that so briefly. Yeah,

567
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 1: because it also it makes it makes you feel like

568
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: you're you're probably constantly aware of the like the poop

569
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: cakes that are stored in your in the thighs of

570
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:44,720
Speaker 1: your your pants. I'm like, Frank, tell me more about

571
00:32:44,720 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 1: the feces. I've gotta know, Like does it We were

572
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 1: talking about this the other day, like does it? Like

573
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: I was kind of imagining it's it's kind of cleaning

574
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 1: out of the filter on your dryer, except every so

575
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: often a fremen has to stop and remove this this

576
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: flat cake of like super dry poop. Yeah. I imagine

577
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 1: it for some reason as a powder. Okay, I think

578
00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:06,400
Speaker 1: that would make sense to Yeah, if you if you've

579
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 1: removed all of the liquid from it, I guess it

580
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:11,719
Speaker 1: could pretty easily be disintegrated into a powder. You can

581
00:33:11,760 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 1: just sort of dust out the back of your suit. Yeah,

582
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: I can see that working. You just drop your poop powder.

583
00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:19,040
Speaker 1: And then again, if it's a powder, you might be

584
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 1: that you might easily inhale it. I don't know. Speaking

585
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: of breathing, that's another way your body loses moisture, right,

586
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: every time you exhale, you're you're wasting some precious water

587
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:31,920
Speaker 1: vapors going straight out your nose, that's right. And that's

588
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:35,040
Speaker 1: why on the still suit you breathe in through a

589
00:33:35,040 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 1: mouth filter and you breathe out through the nose, and

590
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:39,880
Speaker 1: then you have that little nostril toe that's really supposedly

591
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:43,479
Speaker 1: reclaiming moisture from your exhalation. And that's pretty much it, right,

592
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:46,040
Speaker 1: I mean, Herbert doesn't give us all that much detail

593
00:33:46,080 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 1: and exactly how the steel suit works, despite how important

594
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 1: it is in the novel, that's right. So it we

595
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:54,560
Speaker 1: have to turn to uh two expert commentators to figure

596
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 1: out exactly how it might work and how it maybe

597
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: doesn't work based on our current technological understanding, Okay, is there? Uh?

598
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: Should we should we go first to the Dune Encyclopedia

599
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 1: or the Science of Dune? Um. I think we're gonna

600
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 1: go to the Science of Dune first because I think

601
00:34:08,239 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 1: this has the most robust explanation. Uh. And then the

602
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:15,160
Speaker 1: and then the Doing Encyclopedia potentially fills in some some gaps.

603
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 1: So the still suit article wasn't by the editor Grazier,

604
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: but was by a different guy. Yes, NASA engineer John C.

605
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:25,400
Speaker 1: Smith wrote this one. Uh. The top tackles the topic

606
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:28,719
Speaker 1: at some length in the piece still Suit. Uh. He

607
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: points out that we've seen a lot of still suit

608
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:34,239
Speaker 1: patents over the decades since the release of Dune, but

609
00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 1: they all kind of muck up the thermodynamics, and the

610
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 1: thermodynamics are really one of the sticking points here, um

611
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 1: he made. Ultimately, he maintains that if you take a

612
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:47,720
Speaker 1: strict literal interpretation of Herbert's writing, the still suit quote

613
00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: probably would not work and most likely would cook the

614
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 1: wear like a crop pile. Yeah that's awesome, you know.

615
00:34:56,600 --> 00:34:59,960
Speaker 1: And yet we can we can certainly envision technological advancements

616
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,240
Speaker 1: that would make a still suit possible in the future,

617
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 1: and and since we're talking about a sci fi realm

618
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand years in the future, that's certainly time enough

619
00:35:09,080 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 1: for various UH technologies and especially meta materials to come

620
00:35:13,520 --> 00:35:16,920
Speaker 1: online to enable it. Right. Well, okay, well maybe we

621
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:19,800
Speaker 1: should look at this one energy loss source at a time.

622
00:35:20,600 --> 00:35:25,280
Speaker 1: So let's think about sweat first. Sweat does something really important.

623
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:27,920
Speaker 1: It cools you. This might not always be the case

624
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: if you live in a very moist environment where it's

625
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 1: hard for the sweat to evaporate. But if you're in

626
00:35:32,160 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: a place like Aracus, if you're in a desert environment,

627
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:39,840
Speaker 1: a dry environment, and you're sweating, that evaporation is bringing

628
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 1: your temperature down, right, I mean it's even taking place

629
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: in just a a very ambient level. Um Failure to

630
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 1: sweat leads to heat stroke and death. And uh. As

631
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:51,759
Speaker 1: Smith points out in his in his piece here the

632
00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:54,960
Speaker 1: Golden Gal and gold Finger, you might remember she's painted

633
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 1: gold and then she dies. Uh. It's often uh, you know,

634
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:00,480
Speaker 1: they're saying, oh, she's suffocated, But in real holidy shoe,

635
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:02,320
Speaker 1: he says, she would probably die from heat stroke. I

636
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:04,720
Speaker 1: feel like I've heard a lot of disputes about whether

637
00:36:04,760 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 1: that person who's got the full body paint job would

638
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 1: survive or not. I think I've read people saying that

639
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: that wouldn't actually kill you. Yeah, I think I've seen

640
00:36:14,120 --> 00:36:16,080
Speaker 1: people go back and forth on that as well. Um,

641
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:18,480
Speaker 1: all of us missing probably the point that they just

642
00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: wanted to put up dead naked golden lady on the

643
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:25,200
Speaker 1: screen there. But but either way, if you enclose the

644
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:28,680
Speaker 1: entire body in a sealed suit like this, you're courting

645
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:30,640
Speaker 1: death in the form of heat stroke. And that's one

646
00:36:30,640 --> 00:36:33,840
Speaker 1: of the primary design flaws with a still suit. Even

647
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 1: when inactive, the body has to dissipate about ninety watts

648
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 1: of heat just to balance out the heat of your metabolism.

649
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: So even if you're not who have sweaty sweat is

650
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:45,799
Speaker 1: still an important process. Most of the most of the

651
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:49,080
Speaker 1: body heat arises from the liver, the brain, heart, and muscles,

652
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:53,279
Speaker 1: and uh it's dissipated through blood circulation at the skin

653
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: level along with the primary method of sweating. So even

654
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:01,920
Speaker 1: when passive sweat glands extreet excrete point six ms of

655
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:05,879
Speaker 1: perspiration per day, maximum rate one point five liters per hour.

656
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:07,919
Speaker 1: And it's also worth noting you see images of people

657
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:10,919
Speaker 1: throwing the hood back on that that's still super right. Yeah.

658
00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: In the movie, the hood is essential because your Ekron

659
00:37:15,120 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 1: sweat glands are all over the body, but they have

660
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:20,399
Speaker 1: the highest concentration in the forehead and the Akron sweat

661
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 1: glands those are the ones that are tied, uh, you know,

662
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 1: exclusively to cooling. Not to be confused with any of that,

663
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 1: have you know, hormonal issues. Yeah, so you said that.

664
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:31,759
Speaker 1: John C. Smith mentions that there are patents out for

665
00:37:31,840 --> 00:37:35,280
Speaker 1: still suits. I tried to find an example of a

666
00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 1: still suit in the wild. I was looking around on

667
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:39,759
Speaker 1: the internet to see if anybody had made one. I

668
00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:43,359
Speaker 1: didn't find one. I did find a Gizmodo article from

669
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:47,520
Speaker 1: July proclaiming in the headline quote the sweat to water

670
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: purifier real life dunes still suit will save lives. Unfortunately,

671
00:37:52,760 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: this was interesting but turned out to be kind of

672
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: an exaggeration, so it referred back to a BBC article

673
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: about this inventor named Andreas Hammer who he invented a

674
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:06,360
Speaker 1: device called the sweat machine, which was designed to reclaim

675
00:38:06,400 --> 00:38:10,160
Speaker 1: and distill water from sweaty clothing through a process known

676
00:38:10,160 --> 00:38:14,560
Speaker 1: as membrane distillation, and essentially the machine spins clothing in

677
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 1: a centrifuge to pull all the liquids out. So if

678
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:21,440
Speaker 1: you have a high efficiency washing machine, uh that it

679
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:23,319
Speaker 1: does the same thing, though maybe not to the same

680
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: level of extraction as the centerfuge. But the idea is

681
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:29,760
Speaker 1: that high efficiency washing machine spins the wet clothes really

682
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:32,520
Speaker 1: fast to drain out all of the moisture, and then

683
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:35,760
Speaker 1: the clothes spend less time in the energy gobbling dryer.

684
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:39,160
Speaker 1: But in the sweat machine instead of the washer water,

685
00:38:39,239 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: it's pulling out some salty, nasty sweat and then it

686
00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:48,880
Speaker 1: distills that liquid by heating it and then circulating it

687
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 1: between two membranes. And basically the way the membranes work

688
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 1: is that the membranes are hot on the sweaty side

689
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: and cool on the other side, and this creates a

690
00:38:57,840 --> 00:39:02,560
Speaker 1: vapor pressure differential that pulls water and only water, so

691
00:39:02,719 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: not all of the other molecules, just the H two

692
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: O molecules through the membrane and leaves all the other

693
00:39:08,160 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: stuff on the other side. So they say that one

694
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:15,319
Speaker 1: sweaty T shirt typically contains roughly ten milli leaders are

695
00:39:15,320 --> 00:39:19,280
Speaker 1: about point three ounces, which is about a mouthful of water. Okay,

696
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,160
Speaker 1: so this is your sweaty t shirt is a sip okay,

697
00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 1: so it's a it's a body water reclamation technology, but

698
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 1: not something that you could actually use in a suit. No, unfortunately,

699
00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:31,799
Speaker 1: so you can drink it. They say it's cleaner than

700
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 1: tap water, and they even they cited one example of

701
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 1: when they served the product of this machine to a

702
00:39:37,560 --> 00:39:40,839
Speaker 1: bunch of people in the public at this event called

703
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: the Gothia Cup in Gothenburg, Sweden. I looked it up.

704
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:48,600
Speaker 1: That's like a football slash soccer tournament. Uh, And it's interesting,

705
00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: But looking at the setup of the machine, I can't

706
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 1: really see how this could be incorporated into a feasible

707
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,960
Speaker 1: body suit. It's pretty big, especially given the necessity of

708
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: the center fugere process to extract the liquid in the beginning. Like,

709
00:40:00,719 --> 00:40:04,799
Speaker 1: you couldn't have the machine be part of a suit

710
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:07,840
Speaker 1: if it needs to extract the liquid from the suit.

711
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 1: So I don't really begrudge them a cool headline referring

712
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: to a still suit, but the comparison doesn't really seem

713
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:19,000
Speaker 1: app to me. But it is an interesting invention nonetheless,

714
00:40:19,040 --> 00:40:21,759
Speaker 1: and of course sweat is not the only way the

715
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:25,759
Speaker 1: body wastes precious moisture. As if H two O, we're

716
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:28,319
Speaker 1: just cheap and abundance. Yeah, as we mentioned already, you

717
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:32,200
Speaker 1: gotta take into account urine. It's water. The rest is

718
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:36,560
Speaker 1: metabolic waste, salts, organic materials. You can drink a little

719
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: lot bit and feel okay, and some people even claim

720
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: therapeutic benefits, but it's ultimately like cutting your kidneys out

721
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 1: of the waste removal process if you just keep guzzling urine. Uh.

722
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: So you have to take the waste out. And of

723
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:50,719
Speaker 1: course this is also a very real area of of

724
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 1: waste processing technology. Sure. Yeah, reclaiming water from urine is

725
00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:58,080
Speaker 1: something that happens in space all the time, for example,

726
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:01,719
Speaker 1: So shipping water or to space is really expensive. We

727
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 1: talked about the costs of of getting cargo into orbit before.

728
00:41:06,280 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: Uh it's hard to put an exact figure on the

729
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:11,359
Speaker 1: cost per pound to lower th orbit today, but traditionally

730
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: around estimate they used to give was ten dollars per pound.

731
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: We don't know how much it costs today, but it's expensive. Um.

732
00:41:18,960 --> 00:41:20,919
Speaker 1: And you know that great feeling you get when you've

733
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,839
Speaker 1: just been doing strenuous exercise and then you sit down

734
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:27,120
Speaker 1: and drink a whole glass of water at once. Astronauts

735
00:41:27,120 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: on the I S s have to exercise all the

736
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:32,960
Speaker 1: time to mitigate the effects of bone and muscle density

737
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:38,120
Speaker 1: loss that you experience in microgravity. Um So, without reclamation efforts,

738
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 1: that refreshing glass of water you get right after an

739
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:43,680
Speaker 1: hour on the treadmill is gonna do you know? That

740
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 1: might be a ten tho dollar glass of water? Who knows? Uh. So,

741
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: instead of constantly shipping up new water, the crew members

742
00:41:51,200 --> 00:41:53,960
Speaker 1: on the I S S rely on in uh it's

743
00:41:53,960 --> 00:41:56,960
Speaker 1: called the Environmental Control and Life Support System or the

744
00:41:57,000 --> 00:41:59,799
Speaker 1: e c l s S, and that has within it

745
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,800
Speaker 1: water reclamation system. So when the astronauts exhale some hot

746
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:07,880
Speaker 1: moist breath on each other, the habitat can recycle and

747
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:11,040
Speaker 1: reclaim it. When the astronauts p or spit in the

748
00:42:11,080 --> 00:42:14,840
Speaker 1: sink during oral hygiene routines, the station can capture that water.

749
00:42:15,360 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 1: In a space dot Com article I read about this,

750
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 1: the author Denise Chow said that without the recycling system,

751
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 1: an average of roughly ten thousand pounds of water per

752
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:29,239
Speaker 1: crew member would be required from Earth each year to

753
00:42:29,360 --> 00:42:33,600
Speaker 1: keep the station properly functioning. So it's it's kind of

754
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:35,919
Speaker 1: being in space is kind of like being on Iracus,

755
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: Like you know, it's it's very it's mighty precious. You've

756
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 1: got to hang onto it. And so there have been

757
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:44,279
Speaker 1: a lot of efforts at research for reclaiming water for

758
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: space missions. Early space missions, like the Apollo missions came

759
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:52,600
Speaker 1: up with solutions like electrolytics, silver ion generators, and apparently

760
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:56,200
Speaker 1: these could disinfect drinking water. They would like remove bacteria

761
00:42:56,280 --> 00:42:58,520
Speaker 1: from the water without having to dump a bunch of

762
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 1: bleach or other chemicals in there. Uh. And then today

763
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: the I S S uses a more complex filtration system

764
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:08,000
Speaker 1: that's got three steps. It's basically got a a filter

765
00:43:08,160 --> 00:43:11,240
Speaker 1: step that gets out particles and junk from the liquid,

766
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:14,880
Speaker 1: and then they push it through a semi permeable membrane

767
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:18,759
Speaker 1: that has these substances and in it that that pull

768
00:43:18,800 --> 00:43:23,520
Speaker 1: out organic materials. And then finally they have a catalytic

769
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:28,359
Speaker 1: oxidation reactor and that kills bacteria and it takes all

770
00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:31,240
Speaker 1: the other organic compounds out of it. But of course

771
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:33,640
Speaker 1: that's at the space station level. It's still not a suit.

772
00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:38,600
Speaker 1: Could you shrink it down to the individual level sort of,

773
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: but not exactly so. Uh. NASA scientists have equipped at

774
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: least some astronauts headed for the I S S with

775
00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:50,800
Speaker 1: test demonstrations of personal sized water purification bags that don't

776
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 1: drain energy like the large scale recycling systems, but instead

777
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:57,840
Speaker 1: depend on this process known as forward osmosis. Generally this

778
00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:03,680
Speaker 1: concept is called the forward osmosis bag or FOB fob yeah,

779
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:06,560
Speaker 1: and so. Forward osmosis takes place when you've got two

780
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: liquid solutions separated by another one of these semi permeable membranes.

781
00:44:11,680 --> 00:44:14,520
Speaker 1: One of the liquid solutions is a lower concentration that

782
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:17,239
Speaker 1: this is probably gonna be your dirty water, and then

783
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:21,160
Speaker 1: one has a higher concentration, and that's this electrolyte filled solution,

784
00:44:21,239 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 1: which I think is like gatorade or or something pretty

785
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:27,480
Speaker 1: much along those lines. And then the water flows naturally

786
00:44:27,560 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: from the lower concentration solution to the higher and the

787
00:44:30,680 --> 00:44:33,959
Speaker 1: semi permeability of the membrane means that it allows water

788
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 1: molecules to pass through, but not larger molecules or objects

789
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,560
Speaker 1: like bacteria and proteins. From what I can tell, NASA

790
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 1: is still investigating how well and under what conditions these

791
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: devices work. I read a Wired report in that said

792
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:50,960
Speaker 1: that they hadn't been able at that time to prevent

793
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:53,480
Speaker 1: urea which is a waste product that you find in

794
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:57,799
Speaker 1: urine from getting through in the osmosis bag. But apparently

795
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:01,279
Speaker 1: a Japanese TV crew member a decided to try some

796
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: of the product of the Forward osmosis bag despite the

797
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 1: despite that warning, and he said it tasted like Caprice Son.

798
00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:12,320
Speaker 1: So there's your your free ad for Caprice Son. A

799
00:45:12,360 --> 00:45:14,800
Speaker 1: more recent work I found on the it's a NASA

800
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:18,359
Speaker 1: research report from that mentioned the fact that these osmosis

801
00:45:18,360 --> 00:45:22,720
Speaker 1: powered devices work slower in microgravity, and they're testing ways

802
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 1: of solving that problem. But okay, so sweat you're in

803
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:30,480
Speaker 1: kind of gross but at least basically liquid. Are we

804
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,560
Speaker 1: ready to talk about feces? Uh? Well, we are in

805
00:45:33,600 --> 00:45:36,640
Speaker 1: the podcast, But the larger concern is that we're really

806
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:41,759
Speaker 1: not as a civilization. UM feces is of course sev water.

807
00:45:42,320 --> 00:45:46,359
Speaker 1: The rest is undigested food bacteria. But but there's water

808
00:45:46,400 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: in there, water that is ideally worth reclaiming. But we've

809
00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: actually seen far fewer studies regarding fecal water reclamation. Though.

810
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 1: The thing is, of course this takes place, as does

811
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:02,240
Speaker 1: urine water reclamation, sweat red recommation, whatever, via the natural

812
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:06,200
Speaker 1: water cycle on our on the planet itself. Now, um

813
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: In in his UM s. A. Smith points to a

814
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:12,240
Speaker 1: University of Colorado study on water recycling for a Mars

815
00:46:12,280 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: mission that found that reclaim water would be minimal from

816
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:19,440
Speaker 1: from the species. Uh, and that they'd also have to

817
00:46:19,520 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 1: factory in quote psychological concerns unquote for the crew and

818
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:26,439
Speaker 1: so in in this yeah, and this we get back

819
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: to the psychological contagion inherent in any water reclamation effort.

820
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean, I've I've blogged about this in

821
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 1: the past. You have to be able to wrap your

822
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 1: mind around the fact that the water you're drinking used

823
00:46:41,640 --> 00:46:43,760
Speaker 1: to be urine or used to be part of poop

824
00:46:43,920 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 1: when really, I mean you can essentially say any water

825
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:49,040
Speaker 1: you drink was you may have been poop at some

826
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:53,640
Speaker 1: point in the past, may have been dinosaurs. Right. But

827
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: but yeah, you have to deal with you know, how

828
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:59,759
Speaker 1: is the how is the user in that experience working out?

829
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:05,759
Speaker 1: And it's uh, it's it's interesting because it could be done. Uh,

830
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 1: and we we just haven't faced a dire enough circumstance

831
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:10,759
Speaker 1: despite the fact that we're talking about a trip to

832
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:14,160
Speaker 1: Mars here um. Interestingly enough, in the book Packing for

833
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:18,000
Speaker 1: Mars by Mary Roach, she mentions that NASA scientists at

834
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: one point, we are actually pondered recycling fecal matter into food,

835
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 1: but they never pursued it at all, just because of

836
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:27,719
Speaker 1: that ig factor. And part of this is she lays

837
00:47:27,719 --> 00:47:30,400
Speaker 1: out of you have at the time, you know, or

838
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 1: especially early on in the in the space program, you

839
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:36,160
Speaker 1: have the very sort of cowboy mentality of the you know,

840
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:40,759
Speaker 1: the x U test pilots who are becoming astronauts, the explorers,

841
00:47:40,760 --> 00:47:43,200
Speaker 1: and then you have the scientists, and the scientists are

842
00:47:43,239 --> 00:47:47,160
Speaker 1: are are more inclined to to present some out there

843
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: notions such as what if you could eat portions of

844
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:52,400
Speaker 1: the spaceship. That was another idea that came up eating

845
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:56,920
Speaker 1: what if the like the insulation itself was food, or

846
00:47:56,920 --> 00:47:59,720
Speaker 1: you know, making small cakes out of out of poop,

847
00:48:00,080 --> 00:48:01,719
Speaker 1: and of course the astronauts themselves, we're not going to

848
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 1: go for that idea on any level again, due to

849
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:10,080
Speaker 1: the psychological contagion inherent in fecal water reclamation. That's so gross,

850
00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:12,439
Speaker 1: I gotta admit. I mean, it's one of those things

851
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 1: where I wonder if there's an equivalent to the mentor

852
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:18,680
Speaker 1: the Benny jesserat the Guild Navigator, the person who has

853
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:23,359
Speaker 1: upgraded their mental faculties to escape the factor. It's an

854
00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:27,680
Speaker 1: icles human the person who eats poop with no qualms. Yeah,

855
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I guess again. It just comes

856
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:32,480
Speaker 1: down to are you in a dire enough condition and iracous?

857
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:43,680
Speaker 1: Is that is that environment? Now? Smith coming back to

858
00:48:44,520 --> 00:48:48,160
Speaker 1: sweating itself though, uh Smith has a real problem with

859
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:52,640
Speaker 1: the idea that the suit would allow your normal sweat

860
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:57,760
Speaker 1: process to to carry on because because as well discuss,

861
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:00,239
Speaker 1: it's not just a matter of water leaving your audi

862
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:04,879
Speaker 1: and and now you're cool, um, you need an evaporation

863
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:07,440
Speaker 1: to take place, and he doubts that quote near normal

864
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: evaporation process would even be possible in a still suit

865
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 1: for UH. For organic cooling to take place, sweat must

866
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: go through a phase change from a liquid to vapor

867
00:49:17,080 --> 00:49:19,600
Speaker 1: in order to remove heat and cool the skin. So

868
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:23,920
Speaker 1: it's an endothermic process. And moving sweat away just whisk

869
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:28,440
Speaker 1: wicking it away, as with specially designed workout garments, that

870
00:49:28,520 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 1: just merely makes your skin drier, not cooler. That's why

871
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:36,120
Speaker 1: so called wicking fabrics UM, which use a passive capillary

872
00:49:36,120 --> 00:49:38,800
Speaker 1: action to move sweat from your skin to the outer

873
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:42,360
Speaker 1: surface of your workout garment. They help you stay warm

874
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:47,160
Speaker 1: during cold weather workouts. You're interfering in the natural cooling process,

875
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:52,120
Speaker 1: not not level because it's not skin tight, not completely,

876
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: but it's still preventing sweat from doing what it does.

877
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:59,239
Speaker 1: And I think anybody who's ever worn a scuba suit

878
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,040
Speaker 1: i'll side of the water in the sun for any

879
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:03,920
Speaker 1: amount of time can probably attest to that. You can

880
00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:06,879
Speaker 1: you can overheat really quickly in that environment because it's

881
00:50:06,880 --> 00:50:09,160
Speaker 1: making such close contact with the skin. When I was

882
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 1: watching the David Lynch Dune movie, I was looking at

883
00:50:12,520 --> 00:50:16,719
Speaker 1: those actors and thinking like, wow, that looks really hot. Yeah.

884
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 1: I mean apparently these were these were thin latex bodysuits,

885
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:22,600
Speaker 1: and of course they were not functional still suits, so

886
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: they were having to deal with without with overheating, you know,

887
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:30,720
Speaker 1: falling out from the heat. Uh. And interestingly enough, Patrick

888
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:33,720
Speaker 1: Stewart has apparently gone on record saying it's the least

889
00:50:33,719 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: comfortable thing he ever wore for for any kind of

890
00:50:37,160 --> 00:50:39,400
Speaker 1: a film or TV project. And this is from the

891
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:42,800
Speaker 1: guy who you know who had to wear that awful

892
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:45,719
Speaker 1: Starfleet uniform. Um. I was not aware of this, but

893
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 1: apparently they call it the the Picard maneuver. If you

894
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:51,799
Speaker 1: watch it enough, you'll see that he's always tugging down

895
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:56,880
Speaker 1: on the garment to keep it from riding up. So anyway,

896
00:50:56,880 --> 00:51:00,200
Speaker 1: the bottom line here um is that the skin level

897
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:01,880
Speaker 1: layer of the steel suit would need to be a

898
00:51:01,960 --> 00:51:07,120
Speaker 1: highly thermally conductive layer that allowed evaporated cooling to take

899
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 1: place um again perhaps via some as yet uninvented meta material.

900
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:14,799
Speaker 1: And yet even then, the humidity in the skin level

901
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: porous layer would need to be high humidity, which could

902
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:22,799
Speaker 1: in theory, merely just escalate the whole situation more perspiration,

903
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 1: more heat, and according to John C. Smith, the suit

904
00:51:25,719 --> 00:51:28,520
Speaker 1: would have to self dehumidify as well. So and in

905
00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:30,840
Speaker 1: order for that all that water vapor to become liquid

906
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:32,880
Speaker 1: again so that you could drink it, you'd have to

907
00:51:32,960 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 1: have condensation occur. And for this phase change to happen,

908
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 1: which is an exothermic process, you need to have a

909
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:42,040
Speaker 1: cool layer, such as you know, a cold glass on

910
00:51:42,080 --> 00:51:43,400
Speaker 1: a hot day, and you see that, you know, the

911
00:51:43,440 --> 00:51:46,279
Speaker 1: moisture form on it, and there's no mention of refrigeration

912
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:48,480
Speaker 1: in the suit, but it would be necessary as far

913
00:51:48,480 --> 00:51:51,879
Speaker 1: as we understand the process, for that phase shift to happen. Man,

914
00:51:51,960 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: that just sounds like a mess. Yeah, that's the thing.

915
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:57,640
Speaker 1: It seems like it would be if you don't have

916
00:51:57,719 --> 00:52:00,879
Speaker 1: a clear understanding of how sweat works and how how

917
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 1: how cooling works, and indeed how cooling systems work. It

918
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:07,399
Speaker 1: seems like it would be a simpler mechanism, but it's not. Yeah. Now,

919
00:52:07,440 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: of course refrigeration does exist. So perhaps it's just a

920
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:13,640
Speaker 1: question of how much bulk do you want to incorporate

921
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:16,319
Speaker 1: into your suit? Yeah, I mean, can you fit some

922
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:20,160
Speaker 1: manner of heat pump in there? A free incompressor? Um?

923
00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: You know we have we have firefighters that use like

924
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:25,560
Speaker 1: blue ice packs near the skin to keep their body

925
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:27,920
Speaker 1: from overheating. But would that make sense at all in

926
00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:31,960
Speaker 1: a water scarce environment? And then uh, and then you

927
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: also have to any of these systems would also involve

928
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:37,239
Speaker 1: more power. Uh. And all we have to go on

929
00:52:37,360 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 1: is that it's powered by motions of the body, especially breathing,

930
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:43,560
Speaker 1: and according to Smith here, that would not be sufficient

931
00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:46,760
Speaker 1: to power the suit given our current progress on motion

932
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:49,720
Speaker 1: generated power, even if we augmented it with solar power,

933
00:52:50,040 --> 00:52:51,880
Speaker 1: which again is if he because you want to travel

934
00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:56,759
Speaker 1: by night on a racus um, we you just end

935
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:59,040
Speaker 1: up again not being able to keep up with with

936
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:02,480
Speaker 1: the energy requirements for the suit. So that's what Smith

937
00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: has to say more recent commentary, But if we look

938
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:09,120
Speaker 1: to the Dune Encyclopedia and the entry written by Christine Watson,

939
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:12,960
Speaker 1: she stresses the use of still cloth based on the

940
00:53:12,960 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: principles of cryogenics of a cryogenics separator, that's she says,

941
00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:19,839
Speaker 1: used on a number of worlds to draw oxygen and

942
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 1: other gases from the planet's happens here. So here we

943
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:27,080
Speaker 1: see a you know, a futuristic meta material explanation. And

944
00:53:27,120 --> 00:53:30,600
Speaker 1: as for cooling, she says that the the tubes contained air.

945
00:53:30,640 --> 00:53:32,720
Speaker 1: At the beginning of the suit cycle, the air pressure

946
00:53:32,719 --> 00:53:35,520
Speaker 1: built up by the pumping action of the wearer's breathing

947
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:38,960
Speaker 1: and by heel pumps. At a preset pressure, the air

948
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:41,600
Speaker 1: was released into a holding chamber in the suit's hood.

949
00:53:41,600 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: This sudden release cool the air by the jewel Thompson effect,

950
00:53:45,400 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 1: and the cooled air was drawn back into the system

951
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:49,800
Speaker 1: and again through the suit, dropping the temperature of the

952
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:52,879
Speaker 1: separating layers. And that jewel Thompson effect, by the way,

953
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: that's the temperature exchange of a gas or liquid when

954
00:53:55,960 --> 00:53:59,120
Speaker 1: it is forth through a valve or porous plug while

955
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:02,000
Speaker 1: kept insulat it did so that no heat is exchanged

956
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 1: with the environment. I gotta be honest, I didn't follow that.

957
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:07,719
Speaker 1: I mean I had I had to go at it

958
00:54:07,719 --> 00:54:09,320
Speaker 1: a couple of times. But basically it comes down to

959
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: the fact that the hood would be kind of an

960
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:16,000
Speaker 1: essential air bladder for the suits cooling systems. So imagine

961
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:18,760
Speaker 1: the steel suit. Imagine com McLaughlin in the steel suit,

962
00:54:19,080 --> 00:54:23,080
Speaker 1: but with kind of a balloon hood portion. Man that

963
00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:26,920
Speaker 1: makes mud deep a little less a little less cool

964
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 1: looking if he's got a balloon head. Yeah, I would

965
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:32,919
Speaker 1: think so. So again, you have to kind of talk

966
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:35,600
Speaker 1: it up to say, however, the steel suit works. It

967
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: evidently involves some materials and technologies that we haven't quite

968
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: have figured out in this ancient day and age. Now,

969
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:46,920
Speaker 1: another interesting technology that you see on a rackets and

970
00:54:46,960 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: also elsewhere in the worlds of done the use of

971
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:56,239
Speaker 1: ornithopters of aircraft that fly via flapping wings. Yeah. So

972
00:54:56,640 --> 00:54:59,760
Speaker 1: we are told that the power of House of tradees

973
00:55:00,080 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 1: their home planet of Caladan before they move to the

974
00:55:03,960 --> 00:55:07,120
Speaker 1: desert planet of Irakus. Is air power there? An air

975
00:55:07,160 --> 00:55:09,360
Speaker 1: force power kind of like you might think of the

976
00:55:09,440 --> 00:55:14,360
Speaker 1: United States on the sort of military geopolitical world stage

977
00:55:14,680 --> 00:55:17,200
Speaker 1: that the power is concentrated in the ability to strike

978
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:21,920
Speaker 1: from above. But their way of striking from above is

979
00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:25,920
Speaker 1: not much like anything we would commonly use on on

980
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:29,200
Speaker 1: Earth technology today. It is like something we would commonly

981
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:32,759
Speaker 1: see in the biological world. So of course birds fly

982
00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: by flapping their wings, insects fly by flapping their wings.

983
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:39,200
Speaker 1: It seems like a perfectly normal way to get around.

984
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 1: But there's a reason our airplanes don't do this. Ornithopters

985
00:55:44,320 --> 00:55:47,040
Speaker 1: can be built. You can make a machine that stays

986
00:55:47,040 --> 00:55:49,440
Speaker 1: in the air by flapping wings, but it is not

987
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:52,560
Speaker 1: a very practical way to move heavy cargo or passengers.

988
00:55:52,880 --> 00:55:55,440
Speaker 1: That's right, and and certainly that's what you see utilized

989
00:55:55,480 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 1: in the dune universe, like sweeping down, swooping down to

990
00:55:58,480 --> 00:56:02,120
Speaker 1: pick up you know, mobile spice factory off of the

991
00:56:02,160 --> 00:56:04,440
Speaker 1: sands before a worm can get to it. Yeah, according

992
00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 1: to Dr James Usherwood of the University of London's RBC

993
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 1: Structure and Motion Laboratory, uh, this is one area of design,

994
00:56:11,600 --> 00:56:14,279
Speaker 1: you know, where nature doesn't quite nail it. And this

995
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 1: is a kind of ironic because in the field of

996
00:56:16,280 --> 00:56:19,239
Speaker 1: biomimicry we see In a lot of cases, we can

997
00:56:19,239 --> 00:56:21,600
Speaker 1: turn to nature and say, well, how did nature evolve

998
00:56:21,680 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: to solve this design problem? And oftentimes they're they have

999
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:27,560
Speaker 1: a really elegant Nature has a really elegant solution. I'd

1000
00:56:27,560 --> 00:56:31,399
Speaker 1: say that's especially true on the very small scale. Biomimicry

1001
00:56:31,560 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 1: becomes more and more powerful the smaller you go in

1002
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 1: uh In an essay titled a Flying and Walking Learning

1003
00:56:39,200 --> 00:56:41,520
Speaker 1: from Nature, and this was published in the book seventy

1004
00:56:41,520 --> 00:56:43,800
Speaker 1: Great Mysteries of the Natural World, which I highly recommend.

1005
00:56:44,160 --> 00:56:47,280
Speaker 1: Um Usherwood points out that a slow flying pigeon requires

1006
00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:50,839
Speaker 1: up to four times the power an equivalent helicopter would need,

1007
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:54,480
Speaker 1: and hovering is even worse, resulting in pitiful amounts of

1008
00:56:54,560 --> 00:56:58,239
Speaker 1: lift for the amount of energy exerted. Each pump of

1009
00:56:58,280 --> 00:57:00,680
Speaker 1: the wings requires yet another burst of energy, and it

1010
00:57:00,680 --> 00:57:03,799
Speaker 1: all adds up pretty quickly. That's why hummingbirds have the

1011
00:57:03,960 --> 00:57:07,720
Speaker 1: highest energy expenditure of any warm blooded animal, ten times

1012
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: that of a human. They're perpetually on the verge of starvation.

1013
00:57:11,480 --> 00:57:13,360
Speaker 1: Uh and and and sometimes I have to actually go

1014
00:57:13,440 --> 00:57:16,200
Speaker 1: into kind of suspended animation to deal with these these

1015
00:57:16,280 --> 00:57:19,200
Speaker 1: energy costs. Uh and all the time, you know, consuming

1016
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:22,000
Speaker 1: colossal amounts of nectar to keep up their little sugar

1017
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:26,200
Speaker 1: water vampires that cannot be sated. Yeah, so you know,

1018
00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: we you know, looking back, you see early aviation pioneers

1019
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: who toyed around with flapping wings, generally with the disastrous results.

1020
00:57:35,800 --> 00:57:38,760
Speaker 1: But you do see scientists that have been looking into

1021
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:41,600
Speaker 1: it's used for micro air vehicles or m a v s.

1022
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 1: And these are tiny robotic aircraft that depend on bio

1023
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:49,480
Speaker 1: mechanical flight designs. Uh. And the funding typically comes into play, um,

1024
00:57:49,680 --> 00:57:52,560
Speaker 1: you know, for obvious surveillance purposes. Right, some sort of

1025
00:57:52,600 --> 00:57:56,080
Speaker 1: tiny robot with buzzing, flapping wings that you can use

1026
00:57:56,120 --> 00:57:59,000
Speaker 1: to spy on somebody. Now, what is the appeal of

1027
00:57:59,040 --> 00:58:02,120
Speaker 1: that over just like a tiny quad rotor drone or

1028
00:58:02,160 --> 00:58:04,400
Speaker 1: something like that. Is it just that it would look

1029
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:06,880
Speaker 1: like an insect? I think so. And I think also

1030
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:10,920
Speaker 1: there is that that bio mimicry attraction saying if it's

1031
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 1: if it's flight at a small scale, then perhaps, uh,

1032
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:18,840
Speaker 1: perhaps there is an advantage in drawing on real world comparisons,

1033
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:21,600
Speaker 1: but overall, we are not going to see passenger planes

1034
00:58:21,640 --> 00:58:24,680
Speaker 1: with flapping wings. And uh. I was looking at a

1035
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 1: US Army Research Office report from two thousand five. Uh

1036
00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:31,840
Speaker 1: that alt was weighing in and saying that when it

1037
00:58:31,840 --> 00:58:34,320
Speaker 1: comes to M A v S, you're looking at enormous

1038
00:58:34,320 --> 00:58:38,280
Speaker 1: manufacturing challenges, inefficient energy usage, and dependence on less under

1039
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:41,760
Speaker 1: good understood small scale physics. So at this point in time,

1040
00:58:42,600 --> 00:58:47,400
Speaker 1: even small ornithopters the amount of reach. Yeah. Now, if

1041
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:50,920
Speaker 1: you want to just cheat and invoke some science fiction magic,

1042
00:58:51,320 --> 00:58:54,000
Speaker 1: you might say that the ornithopters have something to do

1043
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:58,200
Speaker 1: with other technology present in the Dune universe, like like suspensers.

1044
00:58:58,240 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: I noticed you putt in a note here, right, yeah, yeah,

1045
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 1: and this draws us right into another important technology they

1046
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:06,320
Speaker 1: we're going to spend less time on because there's there

1047
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:08,960
Speaker 1: are a fewer answers, and that is the Haltzman effect

1048
00:59:09,360 --> 00:59:13,680
Speaker 1: that enables faster than light travel, It enables personal shields,

1049
00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:18,840
Speaker 1: and enables just ubiquitous use of anti gravity suspensers. That

1050
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:21,680
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the main character of one of

1051
00:59:21,680 --> 00:59:24,160
Speaker 1: the main characters, Vladimir Harcon and uses it to float

1052
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:27,000
Speaker 1: around and suspend his bulk. But you also see mentions

1053
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:29,680
Speaker 1: of just you know, here's a suspenser enabled chair in

1054
00:59:29,680 --> 00:59:32,640
Speaker 1: a room. If you watch any scene from the movie

1055
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:35,160
Speaker 1: and not the whole movie, not the whole David Lynch movie.

1056
00:59:35,320 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: Go watch the scene where where Vladimir harcon and floats

1057
00:59:38,960 --> 00:59:41,680
Speaker 1: up in the screams I will have the spice. That's

1058
00:59:41,720 --> 00:59:44,280
Speaker 1: pretty good. But anyway, I thought this is also a

1059
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:48,240
Speaker 1: really cool technology as imagined in the books, specifically with

1060
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: application to the shields. Now, there are personal energy shields imagined,

1061
00:59:54,240 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 1: uh in the Dune universe, and you've probably seen all

1062
00:59:57,080 --> 01:00:00,680
Speaker 1: kinds of science fiction that has shields, you know, like

1063
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: a shields up, you know, you put them up around

1064
01:00:02,720 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: the spaceship and they deflect incoming weaponry, projectiles, energy beams.

1065
01:00:08,040 --> 01:00:11,000
Speaker 1: But these are personal shields that are often imagined. Well,

1066
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 1: actually they're There are large scale shields, and there are

1067
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 1: personal shields, but you might like click a button on

1068
01:00:15,920 --> 01:00:18,760
Speaker 1: your belt and suddenly a shield comes up around your body.

1069
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:21,680
Speaker 1: Somebody tries to run and stab you with a knife,

1070
01:00:21,720 --> 01:00:24,920
Speaker 1: they will be deflected by the shield. And so the

1071
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:29,160
Speaker 1: solution to this creates a very interesting combat dynamic that

1072
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:32,760
Speaker 1: people talk about in the book, where people engaging in

1073
01:00:32,880 --> 01:00:36,560
Speaker 1: knife fights with shields activated have to come up with

1074
01:00:36,640 --> 01:00:41,000
Speaker 1: ways of trying to move their knife very slowly toward

1075
01:00:41,080 --> 01:00:44,680
Speaker 1: the enemy because a quickly incoming knife will be deflected

1076
01:00:44,680 --> 01:00:48,160
Speaker 1: by the shield. But if you can stab ever so slowly,

1077
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 1: you can go through the shield gently, and then you

1078
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:54,520
Speaker 1: can you can penetrate the person's skin and make them bleed. Yeah.

1079
01:00:54,520 --> 01:00:58,920
Speaker 1: So the defensive technology requires an entirely well not entirely,

1080
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:02,040
Speaker 1: but at different isle of martial arts. So we we

1081
01:01:02,080 --> 01:01:04,080
Speaker 1: don't know a lot about the Holtzman effect. In the

1082
01:01:04,120 --> 01:01:07,160
Speaker 1: books UH, it's described as the negative repelling effect of

1083
01:01:07,200 --> 01:01:10,560
Speaker 1: a shield generator. UH. And a suspenser is the secondary

1084
01:01:10,640 --> 01:01:13,880
Speaker 1: low drain phase of the Haltzman field generator, and it

1085
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:19,880
Speaker 1: nullifies gravity. It nullifies gravity within certain limits prescribed by

1086
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:24,560
Speaker 1: relative mass and energy consumption. So in this we we

1087
01:01:24,720 --> 01:01:26,720
Speaker 1: have no choice but to turn to the science of

1088
01:01:26,760 --> 01:01:32,560
Speaker 1: doone and UH the writings there of planetary scientist Kevin R. Grazier,

1089
01:01:32,600 --> 01:01:36,760
Speaker 1: who also edited and along he also worked with physicist

1090
01:01:37,080 --> 01:01:40,880
Speaker 1: Jess Seeger on some of this and UH. As they

1091
01:01:40,920 --> 01:01:44,800
Speaker 1: point out, much of the whole Haltzman situation is unexplained.

1092
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 1: In the later books, we do learn that that guild

1093
01:01:47,480 --> 01:01:51,960
Speaker 1: highliners the big spaceships travel the stars by the quote

1094
01:01:52,000 --> 01:01:57,440
Speaker 1: compression or warping of space time in conjunction with mass neutralization,

1095
01:01:58,040 --> 01:02:01,200
Speaker 1: and as a planetary scientist. Again, Kevin R. A. Grazier

1096
01:02:01,280 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 1: points out UH in cosmic oregonomy, that's the piece in

1097
01:02:04,400 --> 01:02:06,600
Speaker 1: the science of doone. UH. If the mass of a

1098
01:02:06,640 --> 01:02:10,680
Speaker 1: spaceship could be nullified, then the relativistic effects of high

1099
01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:14,720
Speaker 1: speed space travel could be reduced. So essentially it's talking

1100
01:02:14,760 --> 01:02:16,959
Speaker 1: about all right, if you could turn, if you could

1101
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:21,920
Speaker 1: simply dampen or nullify the mass of an object, then

1102
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:25,520
Speaker 1: that would enable you to to cheat in various respects

1103
01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:29,640
Speaker 1: in terms of acceleration in spacetime. UH. Also Grazier and

1104
01:02:29,760 --> 01:02:32,920
Speaker 1: Uh and Seeger opposit that the Holsman field is an

1105
01:02:33,040 --> 01:02:36,600
Speaker 1: energy screening shield. Perhaps it screens the mass of an

1106
01:02:36,640 --> 01:02:39,320
Speaker 1: object from the rest of the universe. Lowering the mass

1107
01:02:39,320 --> 01:02:41,840
Speaker 1: of an object would also lower the force of gravity

1108
01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:44,800
Speaker 1: on it. Lowered enough and you just float around up

1109
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:47,960
Speaker 1: in the air. And as for space travel, theory and

1110
01:02:48,000 --> 01:02:51,840
Speaker 1: observations of general relativity indicate that spacetime can be curved

1111
01:02:52,040 --> 01:02:55,160
Speaker 1: and warped, and perhaps it can even be folded and compressed.

1112
01:02:55,720 --> 01:02:57,840
Speaker 1: So again the classic examples, you have a map, right,

1113
01:02:57,880 --> 01:02:59,520
Speaker 1: and you fold the map, and then you just poke

1114
01:02:59,560 --> 01:03:01,800
Speaker 1: a hole through point A and point B, and now

1115
01:03:01,800 --> 01:03:05,760
Speaker 1: you have the whole right right, the Tessaract Tessaract example,

1116
01:03:05,840 --> 01:03:09,760
Speaker 1: the even arise an example. Um, do you thus shorten

1117
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:12,760
Speaker 1: the distance between two points, meaning that faster than light

1118
01:03:12,880 --> 01:03:17,200
Speaker 1: acceleration and all the problems they're in might not even

1119
01:03:17,200 --> 01:03:19,840
Speaker 1: be necessary? In the Dune books, we don't know much

1120
01:03:19,840 --> 01:03:23,320
Speaker 1: more beyond that, other than the process is dangerous and costly.

1121
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:26,400
Speaker 1: You really need a number crunching power of an advanced

1122
01:03:26,400 --> 01:03:28,800
Speaker 1: computer to handle it all. But in the Dune universe

1123
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:32,640
Speaker 1: it all falls to human minds enhanced by spice. Alright,

1124
01:03:32,640 --> 01:03:34,919
Speaker 1: So that's pretty out there science fiction. I think I'd

1125
01:03:34,920 --> 01:03:37,480
Speaker 1: have to say the same thing about the energy shields

1126
01:03:37,680 --> 01:03:41,000
Speaker 1: as that relates to the whole Simon effect. I I

1127
01:03:41,040 --> 01:03:43,800
Speaker 1: can't think of any example, uh, And I wasn't able

1128
01:03:43,800 --> 01:03:47,440
Speaker 1: to find any example of a real energy shield in

1129
01:03:47,480 --> 01:03:50,880
Speaker 1: the world that would successfully deflect incoming matter like that,

1130
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:54,280
Speaker 1: especially not without harming the person who was wearing it.

1131
01:03:54,320 --> 01:03:56,920
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine wearing a huge magnet of

1132
01:03:56,960 --> 01:03:59,760
Speaker 1: some kind that, you know, if somebody tries to shoot

1133
01:03:59,760 --> 01:04:01,840
Speaker 1: a bull it at you or something like that, might

1134
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:05,000
Speaker 1: be able to deflect it if it's powerful enough. But

1135
01:04:05,600 --> 01:04:08,440
Speaker 1: I mean, at certain points you're getting into levels of

1136
01:04:08,640 --> 01:04:12,680
Speaker 1: energy that makes the proposition ridiculous. And so if you're

1137
01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:16,160
Speaker 1: imagining an energy shield like they have, maybe the closest

1138
01:04:16,200 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 1: thing I've seen would be propositions of energy shields like

1139
01:04:19,640 --> 01:04:24,360
Speaker 1: ion shields around spaceships to prevent incoming radiation. But I

1140
01:04:24,400 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 1: don't even know if that's really viable. Yeah, it's definitely

1141
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:32,000
Speaker 1: less down to Earth compared to the still sit So

1142
01:04:32,040 --> 01:04:34,040
Speaker 1: there you have it, some of the technology to do,

1143
01:04:34,120 --> 01:04:36,400
Speaker 1: not all of it by any means. We just decided

1144
01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 1: to draw in a few examples that we could discuss

1145
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:41,040
Speaker 1: here in the podcast. Uh. And again, we're gonna do

1146
01:04:41,040 --> 01:04:43,520
Speaker 1: a second episode and we'll get into the biology of

1147
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:46,320
Speaker 1: doing a bit where we're definitely going to discuss sandworms

1148
01:04:46,920 --> 01:04:50,440
Speaker 1: in detail. So UH, as we lead out here, we're

1149
01:04:50,440 --> 01:04:54,240
Speaker 1: gonna enjoy another track from Raleigh Porter. This is X

1150
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:57,160
Speaker 1: again off the two thousand eleven album Aftertime, released by

1151
01:04:57,200 --> 01:05:00,160
Speaker 1: Subtext Recordings. There's a link on the landing p age,

1152
01:05:00,200 --> 01:05:02,600
Speaker 1: but you can learn more about his work at Raleigh

1153
01:05:02,600 --> 01:05:05,880
Speaker 1: Porter dot com. Uh. In the meantime, checkout stuff to

1154
01:05:05,880 --> 01:05:07,920
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. That is the mothership. That's

1155
01:05:07,920 --> 01:05:10,840
Speaker 1: where you will find all of our podcast videos. And

1156
01:05:11,000 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: blog post, as well as the links out to our

1157
01:05:12,640 --> 01:05:14,520
Speaker 1: social media accounts. And if you want to get in

1158
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:17,560
Speaker 1: touch with us about your favorite fact about the June

1159
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:20,760
Speaker 1: Universe or any feedback about these episodes, you can email

1160
01:05:20,840 --> 01:05:26,240
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.

1161
01:05:26,280 --> 01:05:28,680
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is

1162
01:05:28,720 --> 01:05:53,960
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com