Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Heyl everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, in my arms,
Speaker 1: why don't you stay. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna talk about you know,
Speaker 1: we we talked about space travel quite a bit in
Speaker 1: this show. Obviously, We've got lots of different episodes. We've
Speaker 1: talked about things like colonization or you know, just even
Speaker 1: initial plans to send some intrepid adventurers off to Mars
Speaker 1: and what that would mean. One of the things that
Speaker 1: we haven't really talked about is this idea of if
Speaker 1: we are going to eventually grow beyond our planet and
Speaker 1: colonize other places. Presumably unless we find some magic way
Speaker 1: of traveling, getting from Earth to some other habitable place
Speaker 1: could take a very long time, like multiple generations of people, right,
Speaker 1: and unless we have some way of freezing everybody that's
Speaker 1: actually going to work and not kill them. That means
Speaker 1: people are going to be living out their lives on
Speaker 1: some form of spacecraft on their way to a destination.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to have a generational thing happen.
Speaker 1: That means eventually people are gonna be hooking up and
Speaker 1: having babies. We're talking about making new humans. That's right,
Speaker 1: Space Odyssey Space. I think it's exactly like the No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. I don't think you first get an obelisk
Speaker 1: um No. Well, we should clarify at the beginning. So
Speaker 1: are we aware that humans have ever been in space
Speaker 1: in a family way? The official statement is that NASA
Speaker 1: stresses that that astronauts maintain a certain level of professionalism. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the official comment is there's nothing to
Speaker 1: comment on. There's been a lot of um can jecture,
Speaker 1: but no direct evidence. There was a hoax document going
Speaker 1: around the internet a while back about NASA testing sex
Speaker 1: in space, and I think that was defunct. Was it
Speaker 1: was it? I am actually unaware of this. Was it
Speaker 1: done in a very straightforward way or was it actually
Speaker 1: done kind of like a spoof? Was there any kind
Speaker 1: of wink wink, nudge nudge kind of thing going I
Speaker 1: don't know. I haven't read the document myself. I just
Speaker 1: read about it. It was circulating on the internet a
Speaker 1: long time ago, and uh, but I think it was
Speaker 1: a little hoax, somebody was having a bit of fun. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, there's no real way to
Speaker 1: prove whether or not anybody's actually had sexual intercourse in space.
Speaker 1: We think probably not, um, But we definitely know that
Speaker 1: nobody has been pregnant in space or has had a
Speaker 1: baby in space. Yes. And so here's the thing is
Speaker 1: that this is such a complicated topic that we're going
Speaker 1: to be tackling that we're actually going to use uh,
Speaker 1: you know, two episodes to real cover it because there
Speaker 1: are there are lots of different factors you have to
Speaker 1: take into consideration when it comes to the idea of
Speaker 1: of of babies and space in multiple context right, So
Speaker 1: we want to kind of split this up so we
Speaker 1: can really handle both major categories thoroughly, right Sure. And
Speaker 1: I think a good indication of how complex and kind
Speaker 1: of weird and squidgy it gets, um is that I
Speaker 1: can't actually recall any kind of science fiction stories that
Speaker 1: deal with birth, with with reproduction in space in general.
Speaker 1: And and this this might be just due to the
Speaker 1: overall sexism of the industry that's more interested in dudes
Speaker 1: than it is in ladies, um, and having more dude
Speaker 1: characters than lady characters. Um, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: like I recall maybe in something like Highlands, the moon
Speaker 1: is a harsh mistress. They're being mentioned of women having
Speaker 1: some babies at some point, which is important because it's
Speaker 1: a moon colony. But but I mean, other than like Prometheus,
Speaker 1: I don't recall anyone ever being pregnant in a science
Speaker 1: fiction movie. Well, I think you count alien in general. Well,
Speaker 1: in in whatever science fiction does deal with it, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's often just taken for granted, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we figured this out, this is taken care of. Often
Speaker 1: in those same science fiction elements, they've solved a lot
Speaker 1: of the problems that we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: in these upcoming up They're all walking around on their
Speaker 1: spacecraft anyway, right, and there's never any indication that there's
Speaker 1: harmful radiation that they have to worry about. So those
Speaker 1: are those are actual, real problems that we have to consider.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing is that these are things we
Speaker 1: do have to consider, and being able to figure out
Speaker 1: these these problems before they manifest in real world tragedy
Speaker 1: is difficult because how do you create a scientific test
Speaker 1: for stuff that is ethical? I mean, these are this
Speaker 1: is tough, tough topic, you know. Yeah, of course it's
Speaker 1: not ethical to just like send some pregnant women up
Speaker 1: there and see what happens, right, or even to fertilize
Speaker 1: an egg. I mean, there's their ethical questions with that too.
Speaker 1: Of just the research hasn't really gotten far far long
Speaker 1: enough yet for for humans to even be a consideration.
Speaker 1: We've I mean because we've had some some pregnant mammals
Speaker 1: in space by mammals I mean like rats and mice, um.
Speaker 1: But but I don't think that according to what we read,
Speaker 1: we haven't seen any any evidence of their being conception
Speaker 1: by mammals in space or of Yeah, so so we've
Speaker 1: got you know, sending up an animal that is carrying
Speaker 1: a fetus into space is one thing, and I mean
Speaker 1: that obviously we would need to know about that as well.
Speaker 1: But if you're talking about colonization, I mean every single
Speaker 1: uh part of going from a planet with earthly gravity
Speaker 1: out into space and then traveling some distance for some
Speaker 1: time in space, and then perhaps even landing on another planet.
Speaker 1: All of these things would play factors into any kind
Speaker 1: of development. So there's lots of stuff we just don't know.
Speaker 1: Now what we do know is that we've got. We're
Speaker 1: we're looking mainly at two main categories of issues that
Speaker 1: we need to gather more information about in order to
Speaker 1: start coming up with solutions to head off any potential problems.
Speaker 1: And in this episode we're specifically gonna look at radiation.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I would seem that radiation and pregnancy don't
Speaker 1: mix well, not not in general. Now we should say
Speaker 1: that on Earth, all of us experience radiation. We are
Speaker 1: always a constant radiation and depending upon the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that is around you, you might get a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a dose than someone else. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you happen to work in the United States Capital Building,
Speaker 1: you're getting a little more radiation than someone who's living
Speaker 1: in a wooden house. And that's because the granite that
Speaker 1: actually makes up the Capital Building has trace amounts of
Speaker 1: uranium in it, not enough for it to actually be
Speaker 1: a danger, but enough of it to have a higher
Speaker 1: background radiation than other place that might not have as
Speaker 1: much uranium around it. Okay, so the average person, just
Speaker 1: from natural exposure to the world around him or her,
Speaker 1: gets about three and ten miller rim of radiation annually.
Speaker 1: So now we have to say what a miller rim
Speaker 1: is so RIM stands for orang gin equivalent in Man,
Speaker 1: And it's really a measure of how much radiation gets
Speaker 1: absorbed by a biological entity and how that affects that
Speaker 1: biological entity. So it's not just the raw energy, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of the effect. Yeah, right, And and this
Speaker 1: kind of thing gets gets mixed up in the media
Speaker 1: pretty often because there's actually three different measuring systems for radiation.
Speaker 1: You've got how much material emits that's measured in carries
Speaker 1: or beckerel, how much radiation energy will be absorbed by
Speaker 1: any given mass, which is measured in a raid or gray,
Speaker 1: and then this this ram that we're talking about, which
Speaker 1: can also be measured in um millis siverts. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be the sieverts. Siverts would be the main one.
Speaker 1: Rim is the main one. Millisieverts is usually what we
Speaker 1: talked about, because that's it's in the milli severt range
Speaker 1: usually for the actual amount of radiation that the average
Speaker 1: person encounters, uh, you know, and it's a little bit
Speaker 1: like it's a I think it's a hundred to one
Speaker 1: milli rim to millie siverts, so it's three miller RIM's
Speaker 1: being the average that a person would encounter in a
Speaker 1: on Earth ends up being three point one millisieverts. So
Speaker 1: that's how it It's nice that it is easy to
Speaker 1: figure that out because you don't have to divide by
Speaker 1: like one eighth or something, right, It's it's all basically
Speaker 1: metric based. Yeah yeah, so yeah, exactly. It makes it
Speaker 1: so much easier than having to convert inches to centimeters
Speaker 1: or fair Knight disintegrate or something along those lines. So essentially,
Speaker 1: what you're using this force to kind of determine how
Speaker 1: much are you, how much radiation are you encountering, and
Speaker 1: at what point should you start to really be worried. Now,
Speaker 1: the International Commission of Radiological Protection recommends that people limit
Speaker 1: exposure to artificial sources of radiation, meaning man made sources
Speaker 1: of radiation like additional above this exactly to one hundred
Speaker 1: miller rim per year. But according to the Nuclear Regulatory
Speaker 1: Commission of the United States, we tend to get about
Speaker 1: three hundred and ten miller rim per year, so we
Speaker 1: essentially we double the amount of miller rim radiation that
Speaker 1: we're receiving on a yearly basis. However, a lot of
Speaker 1: that comes from radioactive clown attacks. Just just so, Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of it comes from things like glowing watch faces.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not even joking with that. That really
Speaker 1: is a source of radiation, very minor source of radiation.
Speaker 1: We're not talking something that's gonna you know, you put
Speaker 1: the watch on and then all the fish in your
Speaker 1: nearby river have three eyes and I'll turn into blinking.
Speaker 1: But so the other thing to remember is that you know,
Speaker 1: harmful doses of this tend to be pretty high. We're
Speaker 1: talking higher than ten rim and Mellie rim is one
Speaker 1: one thousand of a rim, so you aren't even approaching
Speaker 1: one rim. Even with this background radiation and the typical
Speaker 1: radiation you would encounter from artificial sources, you're not getting
Speaker 1: close to that. And you know we're also talking about
Speaker 1: over the span of a year, not in one encounter, right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the amount of radiation we encounter here on
Speaker 1: Earth tends to be pretty manageable. Also, we've evolved to
Speaker 1: handle radiation. Our cells repair it themselves after being damaged
Speaker 1: by radiation. So as long as you're not exposing yourself
Speaker 1: to too much for your body to handle, you tend
Speaker 1: to be all right. This this is dangerous radiation in
Speaker 1: the sense that is ionizing, So too much exposure could
Speaker 1: and create some damage on a deeper level, like we're
Speaker 1: talking DNA level damage. But generally speaking, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be in too much trouble, uh, in your typical
Speaker 1: day to day experience. Some people, like medical professionals who
Speaker 1: might have to work with things like cat skin machines
Speaker 1: or X ray machines might have higher doses than others
Speaker 1: and therefore could run some risks. But you know, like
Speaker 1: I say, the typical experience is pretty it's pretty nominal. Okay,
Speaker 1: But let's talk about pregnancy specifically. Okay, what what's the
Speaker 1: relationship the known relationship between um radiation and health effects
Speaker 1: on a fetus or a pregnant mother. Well, in general,
Speaker 1: h embryos tend to be pretty resilient to radiations. So
Speaker 1: at least here, right, we're talking about the kind of
Speaker 1: radiation we normally encounter. Yes, here will make a distinction
Speaker 1: in a minute, sure, right, the precise numbers are in
Speaker 1: some amount of dispute. Yeah, I think I think you
Speaker 1: found ones that were a bit lower than than the
Speaker 1: overall range that I saw. Specifically, the Health Physics Society
Speaker 1: where the numbers they were citing were things like around
Speaker 1: uh twenty rem. You would have to be an excess
Speaker 1: of twenty rem to have danger to an embryo. UM.
Speaker 1: So if you're talking about that, that's twenty thousand millie
Speaker 1: ram or uh two hundred mills sivert if you prefer
Speaker 1: that that metric, and that's a lot. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's plenty um. I saw numbers from the CDC that
Speaker 1: they gave a range rather than that kind of solid
Speaker 1: number of more like five to fifty rem um. So
Speaker 1: that's five thousand to five. Sorry, I'm really bad at
Speaker 1: math uh mill ram. But and and with different ranges
Speaker 1: as the embryo progresses through different stages of development. Um.
Speaker 1: Of you know, the possibilities of of failure of the
Speaker 1: embryota implant during the first couple of weeks would be
Speaker 1: the main danger that you're looking at for for the
Speaker 1: next month and a half, there's you know, possibilities of
Speaker 1: malformations during organ development or something like that. And then
Speaker 1: uh moving on to the first trimester, like potential for
Speaker 1: for growth problems or brain or nerve damage. Um. However,
Speaker 1: once you get out of that first trimester development, the
Speaker 1: fetus and the mother are going to go through basically
Speaker 1: the same kind of danger processes from radiation. Right, So
Speaker 1: in other words, the baby, the fetus, and the mother
Speaker 1: are both equally resilient to radiation. So is it that
Speaker 1: the main danger sort of the pronounced risk of radiation
Speaker 1: is more weighted towards the beginning of the pregnancy. Okay,
Speaker 1: And again it's one of those where it has to
Speaker 1: be a significant amount of radiation for it to to
Speaker 1: hit what is considered to be a danger. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that these are all based probabilistically, right, These are
Speaker 1: all based upon uh, statistically being dangerous, So there are
Speaker 1: times when lower doses of radiation could result in problems
Speaker 1: down the line. But you know, you're looking across vast
Speaker 1: populations and big studies. These are these are the trends
Speaker 1: that you see. Okay, So what kind of radiation dangers
Speaker 1: are we actually looking at from being in space? Well,
Speaker 1: they are a little different, you know, the ones that
Speaker 1: we encounter here on Earth. Besides the background radiation might
Speaker 1: be things like X rays or maybe occasionally gamma raise.
Speaker 1: But if you're going out into space, you've got some
Speaker 1: some other types to worry about. There are charged particles
Speaker 1: that are trapped in the magnetic field around Earth, so
Speaker 1: around the ionosphere that can contain quite a bit of energy.
Speaker 1: Those those you would not normally encounter the ionosphere as
Speaker 1: it turns out, pretty far away from the surface of
Speaker 1: the Earth because you've got the stratosphere and the troposphere
Speaker 1: and the mesosphere in between the ionosphere and Earth. So
Speaker 1: we don't tend to encounter those charged particles very often
Speaker 1: unless we happen to be asked for not. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: also particles that come from solar eruptions, so occasionally, uh,
Speaker 1: there you might have a solar flare and a coronal
Speaker 1: mass ejection from the Sun that can end up shooting
Speaker 1: out these particles that are incredibly energetic. Those have the
Speaker 1: potential to do some damage. And then you have cosmic rays.
Speaker 1: I think this is the big one. Yeah, these could
Speaker 1: be heavy ions. I mean much heavier than what you
Speaker 1: would encounter on Earth as far as an ion's concern.
Speaker 1: And these can carry massive amounts of energy. They can
Speaker 1: travel near the speed of light, they can pass right
Speaker 1: through matters, so they're very difficult to shield against unless
Speaker 1: you have some sort of magnetic deflection shield because they
Speaker 1: are affected by magnetic forces. In fact, if you happen
Speaker 1: to have be in space during a time where the
Speaker 1: Sun is really active, you might have more particles to
Speaker 1: worry about from the Sun, but you're probably gonna have
Speaker 1: fewer cosmic rays interacting with you because the Sun will
Speaker 1: actually deflect those rays from its own magnetic forces. But
Speaker 1: you know, we know that once you go out into
Speaker 1: space far enough, you are no longer within that protective
Speaker 1: magnetic field that the Earth has. In fact, it's a
Speaker 1: field that is really important to life here on Earth
Speaker 1: and it's one that we've commented on that Mars does
Speaker 1: not have. So that's another issue is that you know,
Speaker 1: Mars would not have the protection that Earth has in
Speaker 1: this case, or even something in Earth's low orbit like
Speaker 1: the I S S is definitely within the magnetic sphere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you you know that definitely gets some protection there too.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about deep space travel, then you suddenly
Speaker 1: don't have that protection. Um. You know, these are these
Speaker 1: are the kinds of particles moving at incredible speeds incredible
Speaker 1: energy that could do huge amounts of damage on a
Speaker 1: tiny molecular level, uh in in biological creatures, including messing
Speaker 1: up the DNA of cells. And causing mutations that our
Speaker 1: cells might not be able to recover from. Right, And
Speaker 1: it's a really significant amount of radiation that you could
Speaker 1: receive on on one of these deep space sort of trips. Okay,
Speaker 1: not that Mars is really deep space, but that's the
Speaker 1: one that people have made out estimates for, especially when
Speaker 1: people started talking about doing that ridiculous Mars one thing
Speaker 1: or something, they were still very skeptical about. Sure, but
Speaker 1: you know, for for a hundred and eighty day ideally
Speaker 1: timed Earth to Mars trip, the estimate is that you
Speaker 1: would be exposed to some thirty three RAM. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's big, which is which is a bunch um. Several
Speaker 1: space agencies have actually set a limit of how much
Speaker 1: radiation from all this kind of stuff. It's it's recommended
Speaker 1: for an astronaut to receive over the course of their
Speaker 1: lifetime without unacceptable health risk. And that's about one DRAM.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, of course, we're talking about a
Speaker 1: hundred RAM over the lifetime of an astronaut. Now granted,
Speaker 1: hundred RAM over the probably the career lifetime of an astronaut. Uh,
Speaker 1: Still that's that's a lot of radiation. Um. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: here's here's some questions like what would this radiation have,
Speaker 1: what what effect would it have upon someone who is pregnant,
Speaker 1: And really the answer ultimately is we don't know for
Speaker 1: sure because we can't we haven't been ethical to test
Speaker 1: that it would be really bad. Uh So, one idea,
Speaker 1: of course, is that it would just result in say
Speaker 1: like embryo mortality or birth defects. The other idea is
Speaker 1: that it would result in uh, various kinds of sterilization.
Speaker 1: So if you have a male and a female, say traveling,
Speaker 1: and they decide, well, we're in the middle of a
Speaker 1: space journey, we want to get pregnant now, um, they
Speaker 1: might have trouble with that because the radiation might affect
Speaker 1: the male sperm to begin with. There's also been the
Speaker 1: suggestion that I read in several articles, um, that it
Speaker 1: would be likely to sterilize a female embryo, so that say,
Speaker 1: a female child conceived in space during the space journey
Speaker 1: would have her eggs sterilized so that she couldn't have
Speaker 1: children down to just the one generation. Okay, well, we
Speaker 1: could think about this question in sort of the really
Speaker 1: long term, the space colonization term, like we've been talking
Speaker 1: about but sooner in the future. I think this is
Speaker 1: going to come up in the context which we originally
Speaker 1: mentioned it in one of our videos, which is that
Speaker 1: are people going to be able to conceive children as
Speaker 1: space tourists say, within the next few decades. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to travel up to a you know,
Speaker 1: a private space station or an orbiting spacecraft or something
Speaker 1: like that, would it be safe to conceive a child
Speaker 1: there or for a pregnant woman to make that journey. Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the big questions there is how much
Speaker 1: exposure is too much? Like is it going to be
Speaker 1: where just a few days up there is enough to
Speaker 1: be a serious risk, or or would it need to
Speaker 1: be really prolonged exposure? And those are some of the
Speaker 1: most serious questions right now, and we certainly can are
Speaker 1: those either. And also those questions are highly dependent upon
Speaker 1: conditions in space at any given time. So for example, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we are not really good at predicting solar events,
Speaker 1: right We were just not good at predicting when a
Speaker 1: solar flare or coronal mass ejection will happen. We're better
Speaker 1: at being able to at least detect and then predict
Speaker 1: cosmic radiation, which is why it hasn't been as huge
Speaker 1: a problem right now because again we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are at least somewhat protected by a
Speaker 1: magnetic field, and also we get a little more advanced
Speaker 1: warning we can maneuver so that we decrease the chances
Speaker 1: of any kind of UH interaction with cosmic radiation. But
Speaker 1: we're not as good at the solar radiation. So it
Speaker 1: sort of depends upon what's going on out there already,
Speaker 1: because it's not like we can just point to a
Speaker 1: figure and say this is how much radiation is out
Speaker 1: there in space all the time always, because there is
Speaker 1: no such number. It all depends on lots of other variables.
Speaker 1: There is, however, an an experiment underway to examine one
Speaker 1: aspect of these effects. Some some researchers working with the
Speaker 1: Japan Areas Space Exploration Agency brought freeze dried mouse sperm
Speaker 1: to the I s S in August. These samples are
Speaker 1: going to hang out there for for three different periods
Speaker 1: of time and then be brought back to Earth for
Speaker 1: micro insemination, and that's when you UH inject a sperm
Speaker 1: directly into an egg um and and the goal here
Speaker 1: is to figure out the effect of that long term
Speaker 1: or relatively long term, several periods of months, radiation on
Speaker 1: fertility rates, on danny, damage on growth and birth rates
Speaker 1: of those pieces. So yeah, so this is going to
Speaker 1: be sort of that first step into learning what these
Speaker 1: these uh, what the consequences could be obviously, I mean,
Speaker 1: first step on a very long journey for us to
Speaker 1: figure this out. Uh So yeah, I mean it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's interesting that you bring that up
Speaker 1: about the idea that space tourism is something that could conceivably,
Speaker 1: for forgive the pun forgive the conceivably happen within a
Speaker 1: couple of years to maybe a decade, depending upon how
Speaker 1: long it takes to to build out the infrastructure, especially
Speaker 1: if talking about something like an extended stay aboard a
Speaker 1: private space station. That's going to take some time. But
Speaker 1: it's something that could happen within our lifetimes. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that the research that is necessary to make sure
Speaker 1: that everything is is safe and finding the best practices
Speaker 1: for things like conceiving a baby in space are going
Speaker 1: to be around at that same time. We're gonna see
Speaker 1: our ability to do something uh come across faster than
Speaker 1: our understanding of what all the consequences are, which is
Speaker 1: always kind of terrifying, right, I mean, in any respect,
Speaker 1: but when you're talking about human lives, obviously the scale
Speaker 1: is much larger than you know, other and other instances
Speaker 1: of not really being or what the stuff you made
Speaker 1: is going to do. Okay, Well, so we've established we
Speaker 1: don't really know what the effects are, but the risks
Speaker 1: are there and we should be we should be cautious
Speaker 1: basically about the crossing pregnancy or conception and space. Um, so,
Speaker 1: what can we do to offset these risks because I mean,
Speaker 1: in the long term we're probably going to be facing
Speaker 1: colonization efforts. In the short term, we know that somebody
Speaker 1: is probably going to want to try this, sure, so
Speaker 1: what can we do to make it safer? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean some some things you can do, like build better
Speaker 1: shielding for spacecraft for certain types of radiation. Other types
Speaker 1: of radiation tend to pass through matter like it's nothing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so there. So, like the I S S
Speaker 1: just has pretty plain like plate shielding, right, yeah, with better,
Speaker 1: better better shielding around um, sleep quarters and places where
Speaker 1: the crew spends more time than uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: In other words, there's certain areas of the of the
Speaker 1: I s s that have better shielding than others. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: but there's also this question about whether, say, metallic shielding
Speaker 1: like sheets of aluminum, actually also create a risk of
Speaker 1: their own from secondary radiation where you have an ionizing
Speaker 1: uh particle hitting the that then transferring the energy to
Speaker 1: the shielding, which could then become a source of danger.
Speaker 1: So how might we get around that. I've got one idea, Well,
Speaker 1: it's not really my idea. I read about one idea,
Speaker 1: which is using food and water and poop and p
Speaker 1: as a shield sounds Legit turns out substances like these
Speaker 1: actually provide better shielding than metal because something like water
Speaker 1: is very dense in terms of nuclei, so it's got
Speaker 1: more atomic nuclei in a smaller area, and apparently this
Speaker 1: is better at deflecting those cosmic rays were talking about,
Speaker 1: which just I get the impression they just go through
Speaker 1: metal like butter. Yeah. Yeah, but I've heard that. I've
Speaker 1: heard that bonded hydrogen is actually about the best that
Speaker 1: we figured out for that kind of Actually, it is
Speaker 1: much more effective than a lot of the other shieldings
Speaker 1: that we've come up with. Yeah, so, uh so this
Speaker 1: idea is just Basically, you surround your spacecraft capsule with
Speaker 1: organic matter, with with places where you can put water
Speaker 1: or p or human excrement. In general, all your storage
Speaker 1: capacity just in a skin around the ship. So if
Speaker 1: I said that your spacecraft shield was total crap, that
Speaker 1: would actually be a compliment. Yeah, it would be a
Speaker 1: better than made of some metals or I think that
Speaker 1: language is evolving right here. I'm so proud. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and this this game. It was suggested by so many
Speaker 1: named Tabor McCallum and an interview with New Scientists in
Speaker 1: twenty team talking about the Mars inspiration. Uh, I'll call
Speaker 1: that the Mars inspiration idea. I probably won't say mission Yeah,
Speaker 1: not quite yet now, but it seems to be a
Speaker 1: reasonable suggestion to make. Well, yeah, on the face of it,
Speaker 1: at least, it seems like, you know, obviously would need
Speaker 1: some testing to make sure that it was working. But
Speaker 1: we do know that hydrogen. You know that hydrogen serves
Speaker 1: as a really good shielding mechanism. So and yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be just water either. You could use
Speaker 1: a hydrogen based rocket fuel as a as a shield.
Speaker 1: The problem would be as you use it, you'd be
Speaker 1: depleting your shield. So another option in the future, it's
Speaker 1: one that is not really tested right now, is that
Speaker 1: you have an active shield like a force field. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is I think this idea. Basically The status right
Speaker 1: now is it would probably work better than any kind
Speaker 1: of physical shield, But it seems not feasible at the
Speaker 1: moment to make a system like this, or at least
Speaker 1: not safe and feasible, because you're talking about creating some
Speaker 1: sort of electromagnetic field or should be like an electrostatic
Speaker 1: field or a magnetic field. It would be you'd be
Speaker 1: using energy to create a force that would repel the
Speaker 1: cosmic rays coming in. Now, arguably you could do this
Speaker 1: in such a way where you only used it whenever
Speaker 1: you know any any oncoming threat was detected. So that way, well,
Speaker 1: we we can predict when cosmic radiation is coming towards
Speaker 1: the Earth. I mean, if you're using it, if you're
Speaker 1: using those abilities to detect anything that's coming towards you,
Speaker 1: and then you can activate the shield in time to
Speaker 1: deflect it, then you wouldn't have quite as much of
Speaker 1: a drain on your resources. But it's still an energy suck.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to find a way to replenish
Speaker 1: that energy. Um, you know, you have to be able
Speaker 1: to take in more energy than you need to use,
Speaker 1: knowing that you're gonna lose some in the form of
Speaker 1: heat no matter what you're doing. So yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a you know, it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: we see in science fiction all the time with force fields.
Speaker 1: This would be a type of force field. But you know,
Speaker 1: the question remains, where do you get the energy to
Speaker 1: create that force field? Yeah? I think I also read
Speaker 1: just a little bit about how this creating fields like
Speaker 1: this might create risks for the astronauts of boards. So
Speaker 1: you might be repelling cosmic rays, but like bombarding the
Speaker 1: interior with electrons from this field or something, or even
Speaker 1: if it was just just a simple electromagnetic field, that's
Speaker 1: still an electromagnetic field. You've got a lot of instrumentation
Speaker 1: on there that could easily be affected by electromagnetic field.
Speaker 1: And you know, they're they're just practical considerations that even
Speaker 1: if we were able to create this right now, we
Speaker 1: would say, oh, well, I didn't think about the hammer
Speaker 1: sticking to the wall like that, you know, or worse.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean so there, Well, there's the other option.
Speaker 1: Which is just avoid space. Which is not to say
Speaker 1: that you can never have children beyond Earth. It's just
Speaker 1: that you'd have to find a place to do it
Speaker 1: that was safe. The problem is, where's that going to be.
Speaker 1: The surface of Mars is not even as safe as
Speaker 1: the surface of Earth, right. It lacks It lacks the
Speaker 1: magnetosphere and atmosphere. Atmosphere is not Also, the soil is
Speaker 1: trying to kill you. Everything of Mars is trying to
Speaker 1: kill you, except possibly the rover. It might not try
Speaker 1: to kill It looks pretty friendly, but I think it
Speaker 1: wouldn't care if it did. No, It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: the sociopath of space exploration. True neutral. Um yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean the moon. The moon isn't that good for
Speaker 1: that kind of thing either. Basically, we haven't found another
Speaker 1: planet or moon or rocky body out in the big
Speaker 1: wide universe that is going to treat us as well
Speaker 1: as Earth does. Right. So, the bottom line I think
Speaker 1: right now is in terms of radiation, we don't have
Speaker 1: an option that's safe for for outside Earth, uh child bearing. Now.
Speaker 1: The hope is that by the time we reach a
Speaker 1: point where colonization is something we can legitimately consider as
Speaker 1: in we've we've advanced to the point where we are
Speaker 1: are reasonably confident that we can make a go of it,
Speaker 1: whether it's on another body within our solar system, or
Speaker 1: it's a long term plan that by then we will
Speaker 1: have solved some of these problems in ways that we
Speaker 1: possibly can't imagine right now. I mean, there's their developments
Speaker 1: that happen in science that are unexpected. They happen occasionally
Speaker 1: where you know, you don't you don't anticipate it, and
Speaker 1: it changes everything. So there's the possibility that that could happen.
Speaker 1: But as it stands right now, it's one of those
Speaker 1: difficult problems that scientists are looking to tackle, and they're
Speaker 1: looking to tackle it in ways that don't have these
Speaker 1: ethical considerations that we'd have to worry about. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we don't even understand what all the problems are yet,
Speaker 1: is what we're saying, let alone how to solve them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Compound that with the fact that there's one big other
Speaker 1: concern about child bearing in space. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that. We're going to talk about the effects of
Speaker 1: micro gravity in our next podcast to micro gravity and
Speaker 1: hyper gravity. Sometimes you give birth on Jupiter YEP. Yep,
Speaker 1: sometimes you do. Man, it's a tough day. What what
Speaker 1: what colloquial you are we talking about here, Jonathan? Sometimes
Speaker 1: I give birth. Look, we all have our hobbies, al right, guys.
Speaker 1: That wraps up this episode of forward thinking. In our
Speaker 1: next episode, we will continue this discussion by looking at
Speaker 1: the effects of gravity and what we've learned so far
Speaker 1: about how gravity may or may not influence things like well,
Speaker 1: the development of an embryo. How viable is our live
Speaker 1: offspring that have been conceived in micro gravity. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are are tricky questions again because we have so
Speaker 1: little information, but there have been some experiments in this field,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna talk about that in our next episode. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: guys should definitely go to f W thinking dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the website where we've got all the podcasts, blog
Speaker 1: post videos and other information about the future and all
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff we talk about and I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about. You should come and join that, be part
Speaker 1: of our family and join in on the conversation too.
Speaker 1: You can go over to Twitter, Facebook, or Google Plus
Speaker 1: and find us there. F W Thinking is our handle.
Speaker 1: Let us know what you think about the future, What
Speaker 1: has you excited, Come on and tell us guys. We're
Speaker 1: waiting to hear from you and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic and
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward Thinking dot Com, brought
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