Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from how stuff
Speaker 1: weren't dot com? Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: I wanna put you in a strange scenario. I want
Speaker 1: you to imagine yourself an astronaut in a near future dystopia,
Speaker 1: in fact, a truly dystopian scenario. From my perspective, to
Speaker 1: do this is an exer side I try to employ
Speaker 1: you know every day. Okay, Now, you might be going
Speaker 1: to a kind of Orwellian place, like the totalitarian Hell
Speaker 1: don't go there. Or you might be going to like
Speaker 1: the oldest Huxley place where we're all just medicated and
Speaker 1: placated and have an empty, soulless bliss. Not there. I
Speaker 1: want you to put yourself in the actuarial capitalist bureaucracy
Speaker 1: of the private insurance market. Okay, okay, so we land
Speaker 1: in a place that's maybe a little more comfortable, but
Speaker 1: a little more mundane. So specifically, what you're trying to
Speaker 1: do is purchase a suite of insurance policies that will
Speaker 1: protect you and your family if you suffer death, disability,
Speaker 1: or a serious medical condition in your line of work.
Speaker 1: So during a brief interview, there's a policy agent who
Speaker 1: has to ask you if you questions to determine whether
Speaker 1: they can sell you a policy and what your rate
Speaker 1: is going to be, so you get the standard ones.
Speaker 1: Are you a smoker, heavy drinker, ivy drug user? Wait?
Speaker 1: What this is the future? Right? Yes? Okay? Uh duelist
Speaker 1: and or gun slinger? Um, this is the future? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I'll say sometimes how about drag race junkie night of
Speaker 1: the Sacred art of the motor joust? Um? Do you
Speaker 1: work with high voltage nitroglycerin or flying guillotines? Not currently?
Speaker 1: And does your church congregation practice snake handling? Not bio snakes?
Speaker 1: So we're good, right, you only get those uh those
Speaker 1: safe synthetic snakes. Yeah, yeah, I mean so we get
Speaker 1: you know, the spirit of the practice is still true.
Speaker 1: It's not the Middle Ages. Come on the future. Okay.
Speaker 1: So we're all the way through the interview except for
Speaker 1: one final question. Are you now or have you ever
Speaker 1: been on the waiting list for a space colonization project?
Speaker 1: And there you got me? Yeah, I got you. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that's the kicker, because Robert, I know that you are
Speaker 1: in fact, currently an in astronaut training to become one
Speaker 1: of the members of the first wave of semi permanent
Speaker 1: Mars colonists. Uh. And depending on circumstances, you might be
Speaker 1: spending the next six to twelve years and maybe the
Speaker 1: rest of your natural life in a habitat on the
Speaker 1: surface of a red, red waste land. And unfortunately you're
Speaker 1: well aware of this, and well aware of the fact
Speaker 1: that if you answer yes to this question, your monthly
Speaker 1: payments are going to be so high as to defeat
Speaker 1: the entire purpose of the insurance policy, right, because this
Speaker 1: is a risky venture. This is this is even beyond
Speaker 1: drag racing and motor jousting and what have you. This
Speaker 1: is uh, this is this is a risky lifestyle to
Speaker 1: take on. How true that is? Now, you could do
Speaker 1: what Neil Armstrong and the rest of the crew of
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven did. Did Did you ever hear about this story? Now?
Speaker 1: The whole insurance policies for astronaut is is an area
Speaker 1: I've I've not explored well. When the crew of the
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven mission, who were going to be the first
Speaker 1: people to land on the Moon, realized that life insurance
Speaker 1: policies would be prohibitively expensive for them. They came up
Speaker 1: with an interesting idea to to make a policy of
Speaker 1: their own. So, during the month when they were in
Speaker 1: quarantine before launch, and this is true, they signed hundreds
Speaker 1: of autographed covers they were called which were these envelopes
Speaker 1: postmarked with historically significant dates on them? Uh, And they were.
Speaker 1: They were autographing these covers, and then they would deliver
Speaker 1: them all to their families. This way, they knew that
Speaker 1: if they didn't survive of the mission, the sale of
Speaker 1: autographed memorabilia would at least be enough to keep their
Speaker 1: families afloat. So since I'm probably not going to get
Speaker 1: this insurance policy because of my my my aspirations to
Speaker 1: to become a Mars colonist, I can at least set
Speaker 1: up the possibility that my family can make money off
Speaker 1: the fact that I am Slash was the first man
Speaker 1: to die on Mars. Yeah, okay, I could see that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that the motion pictures that would be made
Speaker 1: about me, the rights to your life. Who's gonna play
Speaker 1: you dying on Mars? I I hope everybody. They would
Speaker 1: be like a Bob Dylan kind of thing, where different
Speaker 1: actors and actress would would play me at different stages
Speaker 1: of my demise. Kate Blanchets you gasping on the red Rock.
Speaker 1: I think that's perfect. That would be pretty cool. But anyway,
Speaker 1: put yourself back in the scenario. So the insurance agent
Speaker 1: that that question might actually cause you to have some
Speaker 1: second thoughts about your plans to go to Mars because
Speaker 1: of what your body is going to be up against.
Speaker 1: Now you know a few things, but you might not
Speaker 1: realize the entire spate of potential challenges to your health
Speaker 1: and well being while living on Mars, well while bound
Speaker 1: for Mars, and once you get there, especially since you
Speaker 1: couldn't wait out the years of preparation it was going
Speaker 1: to take to be part of the joint NASA Jackson Yes,
Speaker 1: a mission, and instead you have signed up with a
Speaker 1: kind of sketchy sounding nonprofit based Mars colonization outfit because
Speaker 1: they promised lift off within eighteen months and you're in
Speaker 1: a hurry. Though from what you've seen so far, they
Speaker 1: might be cutting some corners. Uh. Yeah, I was very
Speaker 1: skeptical of the the wooden spaceship approach that they were
Speaker 1: they were looking to employ. Did you ever read that?
Speaker 1: What was that there? Was a proposition that that the
Speaker 1: movie Alien three was originally going to be about a
Speaker 1: wooden planet. Oh yeah, I go, yeah, wooden space station
Speaker 1: man by monks. That idea. Pretty wish they'd made that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the story, So this is a good jumping
Speaker 1: off point to talk about the real thrust of today's episode,
Speaker 1: which is the question, what are all of the health
Speaker 1: challenges that our bodies might face over the course of
Speaker 1: a long term Mars colonization effort, both traveling to Mars
Speaker 1: and living there for years at a time or maybe
Speaker 1: for a whole lifetime, And are there anyways we know
Speaker 1: of to overcome these challenges? Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: big question one that uh that NASA and other space
Speaker 1: exploration authorities continue to look into, because that's kind of
Speaker 1: the next big phase, right, that's the dream that's our
Speaker 1: generation's moon, the idea of actually making it to the
Speaker 1: red planet, of leaving this world that we've evolved to
Speaker 1: thrive on and to thrive within a very slim portion
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere and also only in certain regions of
Speaker 1: the planet, to leave this world, travel through the unforgiving
Speaker 1: void of space to a rather lifeless world and somehow
Speaker 1: make a go of it. Yeah, well, we certainly don't
Speaker 1: want to discourage Mars exploration with this podcast, but I
Speaker 1: think it's just helpful while encouraging the exploratory and scientific
Speaker 1: spirit to also realize what a truly horrible place Mars is.
Speaker 1: So I think we should start with some of the
Speaker 1: more obvious and more often talked about issues such as
Speaker 1: radiation and reduced gravity micro gravity or zero gravity as
Speaker 1: the case may be, and and then move on to
Speaker 1: some of the more obscure concerns. So, the biggest health concern,
Speaker 1: quite obviously for Mars travelers is going to be radiation exposure. Indeed,
Speaker 1: we live in a kind of privileged a situation here
Speaker 1: on Earth because we're we're largely shielded from some of
Speaker 1: the the harsher radiation that can reach us in the
Speaker 1: form of cosmic radiation and in a lot of the
Speaker 1: solar radiation. Yeah, that's certainly true, And we actually would
Speaker 1: have to deal with radiation in two different scenarios that
Speaker 1: both apply to the Mars colonists. So there's gonna be
Speaker 1: the radiation on the way to Mars and the radiation
Speaker 1: once you get there. Because it's a sad fact that
Speaker 1: Mars is not shielded the way Earth is, so both
Speaker 1: cosmic and solar radiation immediately become a problem once you
Speaker 1: leave the neighborhood of Earth. Even on Earth's surface, we're
Speaker 1: actually exposed to a steady ambient level of radiation from
Speaker 1: the Sun and from the larger universe. That would be
Speaker 1: solar radiation and cosmic radiation, respectively. But Earth's atmosphere and
Speaker 1: magneto sphere, so that's the magnetic field generated by the
Speaker 1: dynamo effect when the Earth's liquid metal outer core rotates
Speaker 1: around the intercore, an effect that most planets, uh that
Speaker 1: we know do not feature. Yeah. Uh, that protects us
Speaker 1: from the danger. So most of the incoming radiation gets
Speaker 1: deflected or absorbed and we don't really have to worry
Speaker 1: about it. Even astronauts on the International Space Station, which
Speaker 1: is on average two nine miles above the surface of Earth,
Speaker 1: even though they're exposed to more radiation than we get
Speaker 1: on the surface, there's still shielded by Earth's magnetosphere, which
Speaker 1: extends thousands of miles out into space. Yeah. When you
Speaker 1: take that into account, I mean it's it's hostile and unforgiving.
Speaker 1: As as the orbital environment is, it makes it seem like,
Speaker 1: you know, like a five year old camping in his
Speaker 1: parents backyard compared to actually venturing beyond the magnetosphere into
Speaker 1: this unprotected regional space. Well, it's the equivalent of like
Speaker 1: wading into three feet of water as opposed to swimming
Speaker 1: across the ocean. But yeah, so once you're traveling in
Speaker 1: outer space on the way to Mars, you no longer
Speaker 1: have these protective barriers. And even once you get to Mars,
Speaker 1: as we said, things aren't gonna be much better because
Speaker 1: Mars does not have a strong magnetosphere like Earth, and
Speaker 1: its atmosphere is absolutely puny. It's puny and thin. It's
Speaker 1: about one percent the thickness of Earth's atmosphere. So you're
Speaker 1: just not going to get much protection from radiation on Mars.
Speaker 1: And there are ways to get around this. So people
Speaker 1: have been coming up with all kinds of habitat and
Speaker 1: space ship designs that would try to shield astronauts from
Speaker 1: the various types of radiation they would encounter. So some
Speaker 1: ideas are how to how to make shielding around a
Speaker 1: spaceship that would absorb cosmic rays and try to prevent
Speaker 1: secondary radiation from shooting off and irradiating you. One interesting
Speaker 1: idea of read about is surrounding the crew capsule with
Speaker 1: organic materials and water, so all of the food and
Speaker 1: human waste and water and things like that would go,
Speaker 1: would sort of form a weird moist BioShield around you.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so in in a sense, you would be
Speaker 1: sailing to Mars in a protective bubble of your own sewage. Yes, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sewage to the future. It will save your life, hopefully,
Speaker 1: But we need to do more research to determine exactly
Speaker 1: what the risks are and if we can create a
Speaker 1: system like this that's economically feasible and we'll keep astronauts safe.
Speaker 1: Because another problem is, sure, you can build a radiation shield.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've build stuff like that all the time.
Speaker 1: We have nuclear power plants, people who work with radiation,
Speaker 1: and they can do that with relative protection. But it's
Speaker 1: expensive to ship stuff into space, and the more bulk
Speaker 1: you're adding to your ship to shield yourself, the more
Speaker 1: trouble you're making this mission. Yeah, and it's in a
Speaker 1: continuing theme that we'll we'll keep coming back to here
Speaker 1: is is so much of this work is still ongoing.
Speaker 1: We're still trying to find the answers, still trying to
Speaker 1: figure out the best methods and dealing with a limited
Speaker 1: ability to experiment on them. UH in real life. Totally true,
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, it's not even just the standard radiation risks
Speaker 1: that we're going to be dealing with during the trip
Speaker 1: to Mars. So a standard trip to Mars might take
Speaker 1: somewhere around six months. This is an estimate you see
Speaker 1: thrown out a lot, and during those six months, and
Speaker 1: once you get get to Mars, it's not just the
Speaker 1: increased risk of cancer and other standard dangers associated with radiation.
Speaker 1: Astronauts bound for Mars might face even weird or and
Speaker 1: more disturbing dangers, for example, brain damage. So there is
Speaker 1: some evidence that the kinds of cosmic rays that will
Speaker 1: be cutting through your body on a regular basis while
Speaker 1: you're on the way to Mars can produce brain damage,
Speaker 1: leading to symptoms somewhat analogous to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's UH,
Speaker 1: and I've read a few articles about this. So medical
Speaker 1: doctors have noted that some patients who receive radiation to
Speaker 1: the head in the course of treating brain cancer display
Speaker 1: side effects like increased confusion and other cognitive impairments, and
Speaker 1: cosmic rays might do pretty much the same thing to us.
Speaker 1: So in recent experiments, researchers have subjected mice to simulated
Speaker 1: cosmic rays, and six weeks after acute exposure to this radiation,
Speaker 1: the mice exhibited decreased cognitive performance as well as physiological
Speaker 1: changes to brain tissue. And I just want to read this,
Speaker 1: uh quote from the abstract of the study. It was
Speaker 1: reductions in dendritic complexity and spine density along the medial
Speaker 1: prefrontal cortical neurons known to mediate neurotransmissions specifically interrogated by
Speaker 1: our behavioral tasks. So so your ability to behave with
Speaker 1: intelligence could be impaired by the time you arrive at Mars.
Speaker 1: Showing up at Mars brain damage is not a good idea. Yeah, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: when a lot of the really heavy work is about
Speaker 1: to begin. Yeah. And so a couple of notes, these
Speaker 1: are mice brains, not human brains, and we know there's
Speaker 1: some difference there. Also, we we should be able to
Speaker 1: protect against this, like I was saying earlier, if we
Speaker 1: prepare and invest enough, if we do the research, figure
Speaker 1: out what the vulnerabilities are, and build the right kind
Speaker 1: of shielding. But again it's an economics problem. Can we
Speaker 1: invest enough resources to make sure people are safe from
Speaker 1: these effects? If you're going on the nonprofit cutting corners
Speaker 1: get you there fast missions, that might not be the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if the balsa wood shielding is going
Speaker 1: to work and the outfit that I've been I've been
Speaker 1: reading the brochure about. But of course it's not just
Speaker 1: the radiation that will threaten our bodies on the trip
Speaker 1: to Mars. What about the effects of micro gravity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a big one. And again I'm sure this
Speaker 1: is one that that everyone is familiar with on some level. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it often shows well, I was about to
Speaker 1: say it often shows up in science fiction, but more
Speaker 1: more often it's ignored in science fiction than the whole
Speaker 1: issue of of of gravity and the lack of gravity
Speaker 1: and space flight. Generally, you just throtle in some sort
Speaker 1: of magical artificial gravity scenario and you don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I always respect the science fiction universes that have some
Speaker 1: kind of rotating device on the ship to generate the
Speaker 1: force of gravity. Yeah, where it's not just the millennium
Speaker 1: falcon and you can walk around wherever. Yeah, because the
Speaker 1: bottom line, of course, is that we evolved on a
Speaker 1: world with a certain amount of gravitational pull and we're
Speaker 1: completely adapted to it. Yeah, everything about our form and
Speaker 1: gravity dictates the form of our muscle groups. Uh. And
Speaker 1: gravity alone forces a certain level of exercise on you
Speaker 1: at all times. So even if you're just you know,
Speaker 1: standing in your apartment otherwise doing nothing, your body is
Speaker 1: still working with gravity. And on a microscopic level, our
Speaker 1: skeleton constantly alters its structure to bear the gravitational forces
Speaker 1: of our planet. Even our organs work with it. With
Speaker 1: with Earth gravity, I mean our heart beats against gravity
Speaker 1: when it pushes blood um up to our brains. So
Speaker 1: I mean we are we are just steeped in it.
Speaker 1: We often take it for granted. I mean we we
Speaker 1: almost always take it for granted. But we are creatures
Speaker 1: that have evolved to live with our gravity, with Earth gravity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't think about it, but your body is constantly
Speaker 1: having to compensate for gravity. I mean, the gravity wants
Speaker 1: to pull you towards the floor. The gravity wants to
Speaker 1: pull all your blood into your feet. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: your circulatory says them, Like you mentioned has to pump
Speaker 1: more blood pressure into the top of your body just
Speaker 1: to make sure you get an even circulation, all because
Speaker 1: of gravity. Indeed, so when we when we send astronauts
Speaker 1: into space, when they go into orbit, um, they experience
Speaker 1: a certain amount of muscle and skeleptle system deterioration. It's
Speaker 1: called getting soft. Yeah, and literally that's that's what happens.
Speaker 1: The muscles, especially the underutilized leg muscles, become flabby, lose
Speaker 1: tone and mass, Muscular atrophy occurs. Bone becomes weaker because
Speaker 1: of the loss of the minerals calcium, potassium, and sodium
Speaker 1: um and the bone degeneration can reduce bone in the
Speaker 1: lower limbs by so it's essentially a form of osteoporosis
Speaker 1: known as space flight osteopenia. Yeah, and astronauts have to
Speaker 1: do tons of exercise just to prevent this from being
Speaker 1: worse than it is. Yeah, they're a number that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of exercise. Um. Also, astronauts will generally take
Speaker 1: various vitamins and even some pharmaceuticals. Particularly will take calcium
Speaker 1: and vitamin d H. NASA often you know, tends to
Speaker 1: have their their astronauts take clay to help to supposedly
Speaker 1: help with calcium retention and then also uh, and it's
Speaker 1: thought that osteoporosis drugs can be helpful in mitigating this
Speaker 1: as well. Um, it's interesting the calcium is especially a problem.
Speaker 1: The calcium loss in the bones of our body is
Speaker 1: calcium is stored in the skeleton, and when we lose
Speaker 1: it in low gravity, it enters the bloodstream, where an
Speaker 1: excess of calcium can cause a host of unpleasantries. You know,
Speaker 1: that could be as mild as just you know, diarrhea.
Speaker 1: But you don't need another reason to have diarrhea in space. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you don't need you don't need a reason
Speaker 1: to have any condition in space. That plays on another
Speaker 1: problem that's not a medical condition in itself, but just
Speaker 1: the fact that if you're headed towards Mars, or on Mars,
Speaker 1: you are so far away from the nearest medical facility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got to have it all in the back, right,
Speaker 1: you're ready to go. Yeah, what if you get a
Speaker 1: kidney stone on Mars? You know? And the other thing
Speaker 1: about the the exercise, because it easy to imagine, all right,
Speaker 1: we'd have our our our drug hampers is completely filled
Speaker 1: up and our our vitamins and our um and our
Speaker 1: osto process medications. But then and we'll just be hitting
Speaker 1: the treadmill the whole time. But you know, we've been
Speaker 1: working with this problem for decades and and uh and
Speaker 1: and experts still aren't really convinced, you know, what the
Speaker 1: best method of exercises and if exercise really helps to
Speaker 1: mitigate this, because you're again you're talking about constant ambient
Speaker 1: gravitational pressure on the body and that's not something you
Speaker 1: can you can really replicate with our current systems of
Speaker 1: you know, treadmills or even some of these, uh, like
Speaker 1: these force suits that the the Russians experimented within the past,
Speaker 1: where they would be like this, we're just the act
Speaker 1: of moving your arm would have a certain amount of
Speaker 1: of of exercises. Yeah, the resistance suits, those are interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're Um is a space musical by the name of
Speaker 1: the American Astronaut, and there's a character that shows up
Speaker 1: named body Suit, and he's this, uh, he's been living
Speaker 1: in deep space for a long time and has has
Speaker 1: one of these resistant suits on to keep his body strong. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: his father is just this stringy creature that's completely lost
Speaker 1: all of his bone mass and as this enormous swollen head.
Speaker 1: It's a yeah, um, it's it's a common exploration in
Speaker 1: sci fi. I guess some of the heavier sci fi,
Speaker 1: like Dan Simon's Hyperion books, there's a there's like a
Speaker 1: race of humans that live in wayless environments and very
Speaker 1: very tall and elongated, creepy. Well. I mean, actually, if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen live footage of astronauts on the International
Speaker 1: Space Station, you might have noticed that they look a
Speaker 1: little weird, like, yeah, what, what exactly is wrong with
Speaker 1: their bodies? That's an effect of weightlessness, where where body
Speaker 1: fluids are read distributed up from the legs and into
Speaker 1: the chest, shoulders, and heads. So if their face looks
Speaker 1: puffy and they look they've got the kind of bodybuilder shoulders,
Speaker 1: that's because of the microgravity environment. Yeah, there's so many
Speaker 1: things we don't even necessarily think about. One that always
Speaker 1: amazes me is how your bladder fills up in a
Speaker 1: weightless environment. Yeah, because we've evolved to live in gravity.
Speaker 1: So as our bladder fills up, that water is subject
Speaker 1: to gravity, and as it starts getting a little bit,
Speaker 1: a little bit towards the tipping point, we realize Hey,
Speaker 1: I need to go to the bathroom. I should go
Speaker 1: and relieve this. But if you're in a weightless environment,
Speaker 1: it's not filling from the bottom up, it's just kind
Speaker 1: of filling all around. So afternots don't often really realize
Speaker 1: they have to go urinate until they've reached like maximum capacity,
Speaker 1: like like almost you know, dangerous levels of full bladder.
Speaker 1: Oh man, Yeah, so it's kind of so it kind
Speaker 1: of transforms, you know, an ad adventurous adult in to
Speaker 1: a toddler who suddenly realizes I've got to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
Speaker 1: All right, But that's all just in space flight, when
Speaker 1: you're in this effectively zero G environment, the micro gravity
Speaker 1: environment floating around, when you're on the International Space Station
Speaker 1: for a number of months, you can eventually come back
Speaker 1: to Earth and retrain. Your body might never be exactly
Speaker 1: the same as it was before you went up to
Speaker 1: the I S S, but you can you can regain
Speaker 1: a lot of lost capacity. One question I have is
Speaker 1: to what extent is that going to be true once
Speaker 1: astronauts get out of the ship after six months in
Speaker 1: weightlessness and then walk around on Mars, Because Mars is
Speaker 1: not Earth right less gravity there, So you be you're,
Speaker 1: you're you would certainly leave behind this, uh, this weightless
Speaker 1: environment of space travel, but you're not. You're certainly not
Speaker 1: going back to Earth levels of gravity. You're going back
Speaker 1: to something far lighter. Yeah, and so what is the
Speaker 1: effect of living in sixty less gravity for years at
Speaker 1: a time or the rest of your life. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody knows the answer to that question yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just not something we've we've dealt with thus far.
Speaker 1: And and and this is again an area where are
Speaker 1: our research into ways to mitigate uh space flight osteopenia
Speaker 1: has to improve. Is we have to figure out better
Speaker 1: ways to tackle it with improved exercise system improve pharmaceuticals
Speaker 1: and vitamin regiments. So it's it's hard to say. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there are a whole host of other effects
Speaker 1: we observe in astronauts and witless environments that are not
Speaker 1: even related to the decay of muscle and bone density.
Speaker 1: One example would be vision. We ever read about astronaut
Speaker 1: vision impairment? Yeah, this is the thing. So on Earth,
Speaker 1: like we were saying, our circulatory system has adapted to
Speaker 1: give us even blood circulation despite the effects of gravity
Speaker 1: yanking our blood towards the ground. So without the gravity,
Speaker 1: your body overcompensates for gravity that isn't there and puts
Speaker 1: way too much blood into your head, so you can
Speaker 1: essentially read out without without the aid of the jet fighter. Well,
Speaker 1: the it's actually the continuous effects of this increased blood
Speaker 1: pressure in the head that caused the biggest problem. One
Speaker 1: common symptom is far sightedness. Another thing is this thing
Speaker 1: called cotton wool spots in your field of vision, and
Speaker 1: that's caused by damage to the nerve fibers in the
Speaker 1: back of the eye. So now we've got a few things.
Speaker 1: When you get out of the ship, so you've just
Speaker 1: arrived at Mars, you might have decreased bone and muscle density,
Speaker 1: possibly brain damage if you didn't take you know, your
Speaker 1: proper radiation shielding, and impaired vision. That's not a way
Speaker 1: to build a colony. So I I don't know if
Speaker 1: the impaired vision effects would carry over onto Mars either
Speaker 1: or to what extent the Mars gravity would help solve
Speaker 1: the problem. Again, we don't know about the long term
Speaker 1: effects of living on reduced gravity. All Right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will consider the Martian dusty. Alright, we're back, as we've
Speaker 1: been discussing. Yeah, we've arrived at Mars and we've we've
Speaker 1: just been ravaged by a micro gravity radiation and now
Speaker 1: we're actually on the surface and here comes the Martian dust. Right,
Speaker 1: So we've dealt with the main threats to health and
Speaker 1: well being that people bring up, the micro gravity and
Speaker 1: the radiation. But it turns out there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of other ones, and and the Martian dust is a
Speaker 1: particularly interesting one to me. In December of nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: the astronauts Harrison Schmidt and Eugene turn On of Apollo
Speaker 1: seventeen landed on the Moon and they were carrying out
Speaker 1: some surface missions and once upon returning from the Taurus
Speaker 1: Littro Valley, which is close to the Sea of Serenity
Speaker 1: on the Moon, the two astronauts re entered the lunar
Speaker 1: module and Harrison Schmidt reported respiratory distress from inhaling particles
Speaker 1: of moon dust that they had tracked into the capsule
Speaker 1: with them. Uh and to make it sound cute, he
Speaker 1: called it lunar dust hay fever. That does sound cute,
Speaker 1: but the actual situation isn't so cute. And while working
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Moon, the Apollo astronauts have
Speaker 1: have noticed a consistently annoying and troubling thing about the Moon.
Speaker 1: It's covered in this sticky, abrasive dust that true fact,
Speaker 1: smells like gunpowder, they all report, and it gets all
Speaker 1: over everything. Astronauts found that it's these sharp edged, abrasive
Speaker 1: dust grains, almost almost like a tiny shards of glass,
Speaker 1: and they would embed themselves and surfaces, and it was
Speaker 1: just impossible to prevent astronauts from bringing it with them
Speaker 1: when they returned from outside. And this is proven a
Speaker 1: tough problem for anybody imagining a return trip to the
Speaker 1: Moon or a Moon colony, because if the trip involves
Speaker 1: any extra vehicular activity, moon colonists are going to have
Speaker 1: this dust problem. Yeah, I've read about some of this,
Speaker 1: but before it's it's it's interesting. You just see those
Speaker 1: images of the Moon and you you kind of default
Speaker 1: to imagining it is being covered with you know, just
Speaker 1: sand or maybe maybe like a fine flower, uh consistency,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's rough stuff and it gets over everything.
Speaker 1: Another aspect is that again it's dark. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: and it's it's dark gray kind of material, and you're
Speaker 1: on the Moon and it's say, it coats your instruments,
Speaker 1: it coats your equipment, maybe it coats your space suit,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna cause whatever it's coding to start heat up,
Speaker 1: to heat up in the sun because this is the
Speaker 1: dust itself will absorbed the solar radiation. So suddenly it's
Speaker 1: like you're wearing a black coat on a sunny day
Speaker 1: and you're just getting hotter and hotter because of the
Speaker 1: dust on Yeah, and you don't want to sweat like
Speaker 1: a pig on the moon, So you could essentially wind
Speaker 1: up cooked via lunar dust. Scary thought, but that's the Moon.
Speaker 1: Mars might have a similar problem, but basically even more horrible.
Speaker 1: So one problem is fine grains of silicate materials. So
Speaker 1: here on Earth, human miners often suffer from a disease
Speaker 1: called silicosis. If you're working in like a mine or
Speaker 1: a quarry, or if you work in tunneling, drilling, sand blasting,
Speaker 1: glass works, any of these things, your work environment can
Speaker 1: produce extremely fine grain particles of silicon dioxide or silica
Speaker 1: dust in the air and silica is a totally common mineral.
Speaker 1: It's not one of those things to get upset about.
Speaker 1: As a material itself, sand is mostly sica. If ingested
Speaker 1: in reasonable quantities orally, it's non toxic. But if you
Speaker 1: breathe in extremely fine particles silica dust, they can become
Speaker 1: embedded in your lungs and your body can't remove them,
Speaker 1: so depending on the level and length of exposure, this
Speaker 1: can lead to irritation, swelling, and difficulty breathing, and eventually
Speaker 1: to progressive massive fibrosis, which means your lungs are pretty
Speaker 1: much destroyed, and long term exposure to crystalline silica is
Speaker 1: also considered a cancer risk. This is this is a
Speaker 1: bad recipe for long health. Martian soil contains fine grained
Speaker 1: silicate particles that are largely different from the particles of
Speaker 1: quartz silica that we'd risk breathing on Earth, though they
Speaker 1: might produce similar or even worse effects. So years ago,
Speaker 1: researchers at Stony Brook University in New York pulverized samples
Speaker 1: of the most common basaltic minerals you'd find in the
Speaker 1: Martian soil feldspar, pyroxene, and olivine to see what would
Speaker 1: happen when this faux Martian dust reacted with moisture the
Speaker 1: way it would with the moisture in your lungs if
Speaker 1: you breathe in And the results were kind of gross.
Speaker 1: A mixture of five million liters of water with a
Speaker 1: couple hundred milligrams of the synthetic Mars dust reacted to
Speaker 1: create hydrogen peroxide, So fizzy fizzy party times hydroxyl and
Speaker 1: a negatively charged oxygen ion called superoxide. Not not really
Speaker 1: things you want in your lungs. In addition to this,
Speaker 1: scientists believe Martian soil contains perchlorates, which have detrimental effects
Speaker 1: on the thyroid and hormone production in the human body.
Speaker 1: So not only is it likely to cause irritation and
Speaker 1: lung diseases if inhaled chronically over time, it can also
Speaker 1: poison you and he gets worse. On Mars, there are
Speaker 1: dust storms of titanic proportions. You don't really have to
Speaker 1: worry about dust storms on the moon. On Mars, you do.
Speaker 1: The dust storms there can become so bad they can
Speaker 1: become planet wide dust storms engulfing the entire surface. So
Speaker 1: welcome to planet poison storm. Don't breathe in. As far
Speaker 1: as I'm aware, there is no known solution to this
Speaker 1: problem yet except maybe just never going outside. I guess
Speaker 1: if you seal yourself off in an airtight container and
Speaker 1: you know you're never going in or out, then you
Speaker 1: could probably be okay. But then what are you doing right?
Speaker 1: As right? So I read in the past, I think,
Speaker 1: in the context of Moon exploration, about NASA researchers looking
Speaker 1: into designs for things like handheld vacuums and airlocks. And
Speaker 1: I don't know where that research is today, but it
Speaker 1: seems like even that would have trouble completely solving the
Speaker 1: dust problem, because you only, what, are you just going
Speaker 1: to bring an entire ship of vacuums that steadily break
Speaker 1: down from all the particles that are surging through the system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's the question of how the dust would
Speaker 1: actually affect the equipment in your habitat. So is the
Speaker 1: dust going to be clogging air filters, is it going
Speaker 1: to be getting into instruments that you need to perform
Speaker 1: your scientific work? And so, by and large, the dust
Speaker 1: is going to be a huge problem, and it's something
Speaker 1: we really need to think about if we're actually going
Speaker 1: to be sending people to Mars. And that's assuming that
Speaker 1: the dust doesn't suddenly turn into a giant hand like
Speaker 1: the Stephen King short story Beach World. Right, yeah, because
Speaker 1: then it's a whole set of set of problems in
Speaker 1: addition to just breathing it in or or wait a minute,
Speaker 1: what does the dust do in mission to Mars? Oh?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think I ever saw mission to Mars. Well,
Speaker 1: you're one of the lucky ones, all right, Well, the
Speaker 1: next thing to think about, you know, on the surface
Speaker 1: seems a little less intensive. Uh, you know, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not as as crazy as dust that's gradually killing you,
Speaker 1: or or the loss of phone mass, or even the
Speaker 1: harmful effects of radiation. But it is very real, and
Speaker 1: you can think of it as just an additional thing
Speaker 1: you would have to deal with on Mars. And that
Speaker 1: is how life on Mars would affect your circadian rhythm. Um.
Speaker 1: And I have to admit I never really thought about
Speaker 1: this myself, But a Mars day called a soul is
Speaker 1: thirty nine minutes and thirty five seconds longer than an
Speaker 1: Earth day. Oh that that's just close enough that it
Speaker 1: seems maybe even worse than if it were way different. Well,
Speaker 1: you know it, Yeah, and on the surface, it doesn't
Speaker 1: maybe it maybe it doesn't sound like much. You might
Speaker 1: even think, oh, it's a good thing. I can watch
Speaker 1: one extra episode of of my favorite hour long show
Speaker 1: Fans Commercials. Right, it's forty minutes. I can get it in, right,
Speaker 1: maybe forty minutes of extra sleep. But we actually have
Speaker 1: some experience dealing with the problems of an extra forty
Speaker 1: odd minutes in the day. Uh As, every time NASA
Speaker 1: lands are over on Mars operations teams have to adapt
Speaker 1: to the Martians schedule. There's a there's a great article
Speaker 1: that deals with this that appeared in Scientific American by
Speaker 1: Katie It's an article by Katie Worth titled step into
Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone? Can Earthlings adjust to a longer day
Speaker 1: on Mars? And she describes how those extra forty minutes,
Speaker 1: you know, they weren't bad at first, but you have
Speaker 1: the you have this crew and they're dealing with with
Speaker 1: with the Martian day, they're dealing with the Earth day,
Speaker 1: and they're dealing with both across multiple time zones. So
Speaker 1: the forty minutes just begins to add up over time.
Speaker 1: It just ends up causing high levels of exhaustion, so
Speaker 1: they end up trying limiting shifts to four days in
Speaker 1: a row no more. But even this uh causes the
Speaker 1: martian minutes to catch up with you after time. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you have to imagine it. It's not just that
Speaker 1: you would get an extra long day one day and
Speaker 1: then you get to sleep and reset every day. This
Speaker 1: accumulation of the extra forty minutes is adding on to
Speaker 1: the accumulation of the day before. Now it's like continuous
Speaker 1: jet lag. Now we're in for some good news because
Speaker 1: one of the things is once you actually get to Mars,
Speaker 1: you're at least going to have, you know, cycles of
Speaker 1: day and night to tie in with your circadian rhythm.
Speaker 1: So it's thought that you would probably adjust pretty well
Speaker 1: to this extra forty minutes once you're on the planet. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, one of the problems is that you've, of
Speaker 1: course you've been traveling through space completely cut off from
Speaker 1: cycles of night and day unless there's some sort of
Speaker 1: artificial stimulation of your circadian rhythm and uh, and you're
Speaker 1: still going to have to on some level deal with
Speaker 1: time back come um. And this is where you get
Speaker 1: into questions about, all right, what what's going to be
Speaker 1: the degree of communication with the home world. Uh. I'm guessing,
Speaker 1: especially in an early low budget visit to Mars, is
Speaker 1: gonna be pretty minimal. You're not gonna have any direct
Speaker 1: skype conversations with your family back home. Now, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna be broadcasting your reality television show. Yeah, and with
Speaker 1: with some tape delay, right. But um, but the people
Speaker 1: back home, the people looking after you and uh and
Speaker 1: and seeing how operations are going, they're going to be
Speaker 1: the one suffering from that extra forty minutes is they
Speaker 1: have to simultaneously live into different time zones at once. Um.
Speaker 1: And this this plays into another area that I've thought
Speaker 1: about before too, like how do we end up keeping
Speaker 1: track of time in general when we start looking towards
Speaker 1: an an interplanetary future where you have different lengths of
Speaker 1: days on different worlds, um, And then you have to
Speaker 1: deal with the distance between those worlds, the time delay
Speaker 1: and communication. In some cases, you might even have to
Speaker 1: deal with noticeable time dilation exactly. Yeah, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about like near light speed travel between different I mean,
Speaker 1: the idea of time starts to lose its sense of
Speaker 1: universality when you're talking about an interplanetary species. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a great example of taking a very terrestrial concept and
Speaker 1: then trying to make sense of it when we leave
Speaker 1: the planet and I and you know, there we've we've
Speaker 1: touched on religion in that sense, and you know, now
Speaker 1: we're talking about time and the human body there. And
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine how many different additions to that
Speaker 1: there are that we're not even thinking about, all the
Speaker 1: little things that add up to make interplanetary life all
Speaker 1: the stranger totally. I I was trying to think about
Speaker 1: it in the car on the way to work this morning, like,
Speaker 1: how do you synchronize Mars time with Earth time? This
Speaker 1: is only forty minutes difference each day, but what do
Speaker 1: you do? Does does Mars just have thirty nine points
Speaker 1: something extra minutes that go up on the clock and
Speaker 1: then it resets to zero or I'm sure nobody would
Speaker 1: actually try to do this, But for a minute, my
Speaker 1: brain went to the place of would you just make
Speaker 1: your minutes a little bit longer and have twenty four
Speaker 1: hour days? Or yeah, it's very complicated and uh, and
Speaker 1: again we have some experience with this in the way
Speaker 1: that that NASA workers looking after any kind of operations
Speaker 1: on Mars have to add that forty extra minutes into
Speaker 1: their day. Well, I've got another way that we are
Speaker 1: completely and totally adapted to Earth, and I think we
Speaker 1: haven't fully considered the rampant cations of removing our culture
Speaker 1: to a non Earth location, and that is microbiota. Ah,
Speaker 1: and this this is uh, this is what I had
Speaker 1: never thought of either. But even though on the past,
Speaker 1: on the show, we've done a number of episodes dealing
Speaker 1: with microbota and and how essentially we're just this population
Speaker 1: of different bacteria, uh, in different microbiotic organisms that all
Speaker 1: kind of work together as one spaceship. Oh totally. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine you're a colonist on Mars. Where are you going
Speaker 1: to get your food? I imagine you're gonna be growing it, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: or or you know, getting it from the cube distancer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, if you're an astronaut in the I
Speaker 1: S S. You can live on vacuum packed shrimp cocktail
Speaker 1: for a couple of months and that's not gonna kill you.
Speaker 1: On Mars, you can't take all your food with you
Speaker 1: and you go. You're gonna have to somehow grow crops
Speaker 1: for yourself. Once you're at your semi permanent colony on Mars.
Speaker 1: So maybe you could survive on hydroponics like rooting plants
Speaker 1: in nutrient field water, or maybe even aeroponics like free
Speaker 1: growing roots in the air fed by a nutrient rich
Speaker 1: mist or spray. Makes sense, but there's a crucial question there.
Speaker 1: We might not be taking into consideration what happens when
Speaker 1: you drive a hundred and forty million mile wedge between
Speaker 1: earthlings and earth soil, because Mars is a microbiotic desert.
Speaker 1: And this is a digression, but I had to report
Speaker 1: that Microsoft word wanted to change microbiotic desert to macrobiotic dessert.
Speaker 1: That's how that's how appalled Microsoft is that the idea
Speaker 1: of life on Lars right. So I read a really
Speaker 1: interesting article about this in Slate from called our Guts
Speaker 1: May Hate Mars, and the author, Michael Chorrost, makes the
Speaker 1: interesting point that the soil we live on isn't just
Speaker 1: an inert mass of stuff for plants to sit in.
Speaker 1: It's an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem of its own, like
Speaker 1: a rainforest or a coral reef, and it is teeming
Speaker 1: with life, including bacteria, insects, worms, protozoa, and this ecosystem
Speaker 1: is something that humans have never really tried to live
Speaker 1: without for years at a time. So a few considerations.
Speaker 1: One of them is the bacteria found in earth soil
Speaker 1: is probably important for maintaining your microbiotic profile, because, as
Speaker 1: we were alluding to a minute ago, your body isn't
Speaker 1: just your body. You are a symbiant. You have legions
Speaker 1: of benign microorganisms that live inside you, for example, in
Speaker 1: your digestive system. And without healthy gut flora, humans can
Speaker 1: suffer serious consequences Like what happens to you if you
Speaker 1: don't have healthy gut flora. A lot of bad things
Speaker 1: gonna happen. I mean, at the very least diarrhea in space, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a bad thing to happen in space. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, this reminds me too of some past
Speaker 1: episodes we've done on the show dealing with the problems
Speaker 1: of creating all these artificial environments that we live in now,
Speaker 1: just talking about our our office spaces, where you have
Speaker 1: an entirely different microbiotic profile that emerges because it is
Speaker 1: separated from the soil, separated from the natural microbiotic environment
Speaker 1: in which we live. And that's just here on Earth.
Speaker 1: That's your workplace. Yeah, and so in this article, Chorist
Speaker 1: points out that scientists say organisms that live in the
Speaker 1: earth soil also provide countless quote ecosystem services that go
Speaker 1: unnoticed but which are really important for keeping the rest
Speaker 1: of life on Earth running smoothly. And these services include
Speaker 1: things like the breakdown of dead organic matter, water filtration,
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide cycling, and he cites Justin L. Sonnenberg, a
Speaker 1: microbiologist and immunologists from the Stanford School of Medicine, who
Speaker 1: also says a couple of really interesting things. One of
Speaker 1: them is that the soil bacteria on Earth might make
Speaker 1: your food better. So when you grow crops in the
Speaker 1: t eaming micro jungle of Earth's soil, the plants have
Speaker 1: to face off against enemies. They have to face off
Speaker 1: against predators parasites of the ecosystem, and this causes the
Speaker 1: plants to you know, be like Rocky when in the
Speaker 1: training montage. It makes the plant strong, and in getting strong,
Speaker 1: they have to synthesize compounds like antioxidants that make the
Speaker 1: plants more nutritious for us when we eat them. So
Speaker 1: without having to fight off the microbiotic onslaught the plants,
Speaker 1: we eat wouldn't do all the same beneficial things for
Speaker 1: our bodies that they do here on Earth. And this
Speaker 1: is just one example of the many ways the complexities
Speaker 1: of earth soil contribute to our well being. The point
Speaker 1: is we don't know all of the ways that earth
Speaker 1: soil contributes to our well being and to what extent
Speaker 1: we might be able to survive without it, and we
Speaker 1: might face health and well being problems that are much
Speaker 1: bigger than we could have expected. So we get to
Speaker 1: Mars and we're flabby and fightless due to our our
Speaker 1: bone and muscle loss, and then we're growing some sort
Speaker 1: of hydropod pumpkin to eat that's equally flapping and fightless
Speaker 1: because it doesn't have to deal with the with the
Speaker 1: with the natural uh predators and microbiota that it has
Speaker 1: to that it has evolved to combat. Yeah, how many
Speaker 1: ways Mars would make us soft? Well. So there's one
Speaker 1: potential solution, right, What if we just shipped a bunch
Speaker 1: of soil with us two Mars. So you just pack
Speaker 1: up dirt from Earth and you take it and you
Speaker 1: protected along the way because you don't want irradiated soil either,
Speaker 1: and then you grow your crops in that would would
Speaker 1: that work. Probably not, and there are a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One of the things is that we've alluded to already
Speaker 1: is cost. It's unbelievably expensive to put mass into orbit,
Speaker 1: even more expensive to send it all the way out
Speaker 1: of Earth's gravity well as we would need to do
Speaker 1: to get it to Mars. The old figure that was
Speaker 1: commonly cited was that it cost ten tho dollars per
Speaker 1: pound to put stuff into low Earth orbit. With all
Speaker 1: the private space launch technology that's currently emerging or will
Speaker 1: emerge soon, that number is going to change. Who knows
Speaker 1: what it is today or what it will be, but
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say it's still going to
Speaker 1: be very, very expensive. And if you're on this corner
Speaker 1: cutting Mars mission, they're not going to pony up for
Speaker 1: the Earth soil. But there's a second point that's made
Speaker 1: by Dr Sonnenberg in this article, and that point is
Speaker 1: that it might not matter because in a closed environment
Speaker 1: separated from the rest of Earth. Sonnenberg says that the
Speaker 1: biodiversity of a soil sample will tend to decrease over
Speaker 1: time until you no longer have the balanced microbiotic jungle
Speaker 1: that you're looking for in this soil, so you end
Speaker 1: up with just this dead soil. Essentially, the soil dies
Speaker 1: like you you will. Yeah, this is interesting. It brings
Speaker 1: mind to two things. First of all, even though it
Speaker 1: would ultimately die, if we just needed to get soil
Speaker 1: into orbit, we could take the Great Escape route, right
Speaker 1: or the no I guess it was. I guess it
Speaker 1: was the Great Escape And maybe it was Shoshank Redemption
Speaker 1: as well, where they you have the problem of right,
Speaker 1: if you're digging a hole to escape from a prison,
Speaker 1: you have to do something with the dirt, so you
Speaker 1: just you you you sneak it out a little bit
Speaker 1: at a time, right, So maybe we just start putting
Speaker 1: like a pocket full of dirt into on on board
Speaker 1: each astronaut as they go up every space launch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's a great idea. Every time an astronaut goes
Speaker 1: to the I S S, they just take some fistfuls
Speaker 1: of soil. Yeah. Of course, again, it doesn't really do
Speaker 1: much good if it's dead. But the other thing that
Speaker 1: kept entering my mind is we consider the possibility of
Speaker 1: organisms bringing their soil with them when they travel to
Speaker 1: a new land in order to to thrive and to live. Is,
Speaker 1: of course Dracula, because when Dracula left his home in
Speaker 1: Transylvania to begin life in uh in London, he brought
Speaker 1: with him a bunch of that that soil from his
Speaker 1: native land, right. Yeah, And you actually see this in
Speaker 1: ancient religious concepts, to like the idea that the God
Speaker 1: I worship is the god of my lands, and if
Speaker 1: I want to work ship my God in a foreign land,
Speaker 1: I might want to take some soil from where I
Speaker 1: came from with me, so I'm still technically on the
Speaker 1: lands of my god when I worship him. Well, there
Speaker 1: you go. There's some Internet that's probably some great food
Speaker 1: for thought when it comes to any asked ancient astronauts scenarios, right,
Speaker 1: because clearly this idea was handed down to us by
Speaker 1: quote unquote gods who from another planet and had to
Speaker 1: bring their own soil because they were aware of the
Speaker 1: problems here of venturing to a new world caught off
Speaker 1: from your your Earth. They were the reason the Colossus
Speaker 1: of Rhodes was anatomically correct. Uh So, So ultimately, what
Speaker 1: will life be like separate from from Earth dirt? We
Speaker 1: just don't know, And the prospects are intriguingly scary. And
Speaker 1: I think this is something that needs to be researched
Speaker 1: very well before somebody makes that leap and says, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a Martian now. But there's another risk that you
Speaker 1: might run when you take the leap to say I'm
Speaker 1: a Martian now, which is that you're not going to
Speaker 1: have a lot of room on Mars, and you might
Speaker 1: not necessarily have a lot to do on Mars, and
Speaker 1: you're not going to be able to leave if you
Speaker 1: want to write, and you might be confined in this
Speaker 1: small space with several other people who you don't get
Speaker 1: to get away from if you don't like them. And
Speaker 1: and that's where space madness centers EQUI right, what we
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we did not talk about
Speaker 1: space madness. So what is the deal with psychological health
Speaker 1: on Mars. Well, you know, we've already touched a little
Speaker 1: bit on how radiation could play into it. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: just when we're dealing with the possibilities of dealing with
Speaker 1: a confined space, not much variety in your environment. Um,
Speaker 1: certainly on the trip there, but even once you get there,
Speaker 1: you know you're you're you're stuck in this little shell.
Speaker 1: Perhaps and then occasionally you get to engage in this
Speaker 1: very stressful john out into the dust ravage landscape. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, you're opening yourself up to the psychological effects
Speaker 1: of of of isolation and seclusion. Uh, social isolation as
Speaker 1: well as just you know, a lack of variety in
Speaker 1: your environment. They've been you know, countless studies that have
Speaker 1: looked at at how um isolation affects the human mind.
Speaker 1: Now when we don't, you know, it comes back to
Speaker 1: what we've evolved to live. And we've evolved to live
Speaker 1: in this rather vibrant world of fixed and movable objects,
Speaker 1: of interacting people and things. And when you leave that,
Speaker 1: your brain kind of starts gnawing on it, creating the
Speaker 1: the varied stimuli that you have come to it, your
Speaker 1: brain has come to expect. Yeah, so we're here on Earth,
Speaker 1: we're the mice on the mouse playground. On Mars, you
Speaker 1: might be the mouse in the tiny cage with nothing
Speaker 1: but a heroine button to push right and uh, and
Speaker 1: you better hope that the heroine button works. And of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole time you're dealing with people, which, of course,
Speaker 1: just in any given environment, can be stressful. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, you were traveling through space. You're
Speaker 1: going to a disco. You're dealing with all the stress
Speaker 1: of that, which is only going to exasperate into these
Speaker 1: other conditions. Yeah, you're possibly having a lung conditions, serious
Speaker 1: lung conditions. You might be suffering from cancer, you might
Speaker 1: be suffering brain damage, you might be suffering weakness and
Speaker 1: bone density loss, you might be suffering from digestive distress
Speaker 1: from lack of proper microbiome. And then you've got to
Speaker 1: deal with all these jerks and a tin ft by
Speaker 1: tin foot space. Yeah, it's not surely not tin foot
Speaker 1: by tin foot. I just threw that out there. However
Speaker 1: big the space would be. Let's hope it's bigger than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. You know, it's an area that that NASA
Speaker 1: has been looking into for a while, but it's also
Speaker 1: an area that we haven't had an extensive amount of
Speaker 1: research on because for the most part, space flights are
Speaker 1: pretty busy, even when you're dealing with these longer johns
Speaker 1: up to the I s s, because you have a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of that time is taken up by
Speaker 1: you know, just getting acclimatized to the orbital environment, forcing
Speaker 1: down your food making yourself sleep, braving the indignities of
Speaker 1: orbital toilet use, and then of course conducting lots of experiments,
Speaker 1: repairs and all the exercise you have to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hitting that that coldbart treadmill up there. Um, there's plenty
Speaker 1: to do. So we're not we're not as yet dealing
Speaker 1: with the long term, uh, solitude issues, of the very
Speaker 1: long term isolation issues, and people don't spend you know,
Speaker 1: six to twelve years of Yeah, but of course NASA
Speaker 1: has been looking into it, and they've studied how work, entertainment,
Speaker 1: and food can conquer the effects of solitude. The agency
Speaker 1: even invested one point seventy four million in a virtual
Speaker 1: space station, a computer program designed to council astronauts about
Speaker 1: the emotional problems, about their emotional problems and insecurities. So
Speaker 1: we're essentially talking about the birth of robots psychologists here, um,
Speaker 1: which which I I believe the movie Moon explored. We
Speaker 1: had to Kevin Spacey voiced psychologist robot the regularly checks
Speaker 1: in with our main character to uh, to see how
Speaker 1: he's coping with this isolation. Yeah, it was fun. It
Speaker 1: had a number of cool science topics, the Helium three
Speaker 1: isolation and a few others. I don't want to spoil,
Speaker 1: but uh, there's also a two thousand eight study that
Speaker 1: was conducted at the NHC Healthcare in Maryland Heights of Missouri,
Speaker 1: and they found that the robotic dog Abbo or abbo
Speaker 1: ibo ibo a I b o that's the one. Yeah
Speaker 1: he uh he that that particular robot he she whatever
Speaker 1: was just as effective at decreasing human loneliness as a living,
Speaker 1: breathing dog. That's kind of weirdly depressing but comforting because
Speaker 1: we probably don't want to send a dog on one
Speaker 1: of these journeys. God knows it's it's gonna be difficult
Speaker 1: enough to send a human. But if you have a
Speaker 1: robot psychologist, a robot friend all wrapped up into one,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a robot dogs I cologist that can help
Speaker 1: mitigate the problems. Um. Yeah, I guess if he took
Speaker 1: a real dog to Mars, you'd have a big problem
Speaker 1: with like taking it out to do its business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean in the dust. I've been watching a lot
Speaker 1: of shows recently that have a robotic humanoids in it. Um,
Speaker 1: the excellent Humans show that's been airing on and you
Speaker 1: can tell me about that. I've got to check it out.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good. Um. It makes me think, like what
Speaker 1: you need to do is you need a robot family
Speaker 1: to send this uh the space uh explorer with right.
Speaker 1: You can't send him with his actual hit him or
Speaker 1: her with her actual family. You know. Another way you
Speaker 1: could go is if you want to go down the
Speaker 1: total recall route, the Quato route, and then you could
Speaker 1: have a friendly companion in your body with you, like
Speaker 1: Quato's Uh, well you have Big Marshall Bell and then
Speaker 1: he has Quato in his stomach. Yeah, okay, well well
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe the the the form that could
Speaker 1: take is that essentially the I on your ship or
Speaker 1: in your suit, like that is your buddy. Like your
Speaker 1: suit is your buddy. You talk to your suit, and
Speaker 1: your suit is analyzing your your your your your levels
Speaker 1: and your your your current state of physical fitness, and
Speaker 1: then also quizzing you about your mental health. So it's
Speaker 1: like David Hasselhoff in his car. What's the car called, um,
Speaker 1: smart car? Smart cars? No, I don't think it's not
Speaker 1: how kit kits the tea, Yeah, because you need somebody
Speaker 1: to talk to, so talk to the computer anyway. It's
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a perfect, perfect answer. Well, but
Speaker 1: but it's the one we've been looking at. Tying back
Speaker 1: into our echo Boorgs podcast. I think we would need
Speaker 1: better chat pots before this would make any sense. Otherwise
Speaker 1: you're just gonna be up there and infuriated that it
Speaker 1: won't stop bringing up fruit trees. Yeah. I mean it
Speaker 1: comes back to the reminding you of the fruits you
Speaker 1: can't get. Yeah. I mean it comes back to the
Speaker 1: idea that there there's certain things that we've evolved as
Speaker 1: part of our lot to deal with as part of
Speaker 1: our lives, and would be dealing with long term um
Speaker 1: extraction from that environment, and so what can we do
Speaker 1: to mitigate the effects of removal from that environment? Uh,
Speaker 1: and or the recreation of that environment on another planet
Speaker 1: and during the voyage to that planet. Yeah, So is
Speaker 1: your solution to try to simulate Earth on Mars or
Speaker 1: to try to recognize that your Mars habitat isn't Earth
Speaker 1: and deal with the problems as they arise. I know
Speaker 1: that's a tough one. I mean, maybe you try and
Speaker 1: find some sort of space between I'm reminded of one
Speaker 1: of the elements from Philip K. Dicks The Streets the
Speaker 1: Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrick. Um, they're they're they want
Speaker 1: to read it just based on that title. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a wonderful book. It's one of his
Speaker 1: trippier books and and really one of his best in
Speaker 1: my opinion. But you have these individuals in space and
Speaker 1: they take this drug called can D which allows them
Speaker 1: to share the experiences of these perky pat layouts that
Speaker 1: they play around, which is essentially kind of like Barbie
Speaker 1: play uh houses with little dolls. Um. But it also
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of the computer game The Sims.
Speaker 1: You know, You're really end up. I haven't played it
Speaker 1: in you know, over a decade, but I remember when
Speaker 1: it came out and I'm playing it, remember how invested
Speaker 1: I felt in these uh these little you know, non
Speaker 1: existing characters and they're little, very you know, one dimensional lives.
Speaker 1: But but it reminded me even then a lot of
Speaker 1: of perky pat and and of course the in this scenario,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a pharmaceutical, uh means of of increasing
Speaker 1: your involvement with perkey Pats. So I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a situation of giving the the astronaut or robotic
Speaker 1: family that looks after him and analyzes his, uh his
Speaker 1: mental state and then also secretly, you know, pumping ecstasy
Speaker 1: and in the whole trip. Maybe that's the the answer.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm suggesting. We're gonna have to be way
Speaker 1: less prude issue about our methods to keep the astronauts
Speaker 1: truly happy. Yeah, you kind of end up having to
Speaker 1: perhaps take that that lab rat mentality. Right, This is
Speaker 1: maybe less a person in more an experiment. This is
Speaker 1: more about the living cargo, and how do we keep
Speaker 1: the cargo uh in in shape for the duration? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is an interesting question. How how mercenary do you
Speaker 1: want to be about keeping the astronauts on your Mars
Speaker 1: colony happy? Like if you found that you could just
Speaker 1: give them a drug that would make them, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of placated, and then the oldest Huxley sense to
Speaker 1: go back to that, you know, if you could, if
Speaker 1: you could make a brave new world on Mars, and
Speaker 1: and that was a pretty reliable way to keep the
Speaker 1: astronauts from going crazy, would you do it? Yeah? I mean,
Speaker 1: and it also just drives home that we don't belong there,
Speaker 1: right in a very very basic sense, like this is
Speaker 1: not our world. And it's it's not how it's completely
Speaker 1: inhospitable to the human form. We want to go there.
Speaker 1: We want to go there to two so we can say, hey,
Speaker 1: we have been to Mars, and then in our grander
Speaker 1: visions of the thing, we want to recreate Earth life there.
Speaker 1: But is that is that just kind of a ridiculous
Speaker 1: notion that we eventually have to get past. Yeah? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Is it wishful thinking? I don't want to
Speaker 1: take away from this episode to be let's not go
Speaker 1: to Mars, right, I mean, because I don't feel that way.
Speaker 1: I'm in a lot of ways I support a very
Speaker 1: aggressive program of space exploration and colonization. But I think
Speaker 1: we're just highlighting how difficult this project is if we
Speaker 1: want to do it right, all of the things we
Speaker 1: have to learn and all the things we don't we're
Speaker 1: not even aware that we don't know about the dangers
Speaker 1: of space and Mars and and and colonization of other
Speaker 1: bodies in the Solar System. Indeed, the destination is hostile,
Speaker 1: the trip is dangerous and lonely, and those are realities
Speaker 1: we have to face if we are actually going to
Speaker 1: send humans to Mars. Yeah, but if you're one of
Speaker 1: those people out there who's working on these problems. Right now,
Speaker 1: I salute you and I and I say more people
Speaker 1: should support your efforts. Indeed, yeah, I'm still one behind
Speaker 1: putting up you know, human on Mars. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: just one though, just just one. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: we should go crazy, just just one. Really, it should
Speaker 1: just be Val Kilmer, just Valkolmer. Or who's going to
Speaker 1: be in the upcoming film about the I think it's
Speaker 1: Matt Damon. There's a film. Yeah, I heard about that.
Speaker 1: I haven't read that book, but I hear good things interesting.
Speaker 1: So we'll have to we'll have to revisit this topic
Speaker 1: when that film comes out. I guess okay, So that
Speaker 1: you have it, your life as a Mars colonists, all
Speaker 1: important stuff to think about before you sign on the
Speaker 1: dotted line. Right. Hey, if you want to check more
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Speaker 1: check out our vast archive of videos. We want to
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Speaker 1: know about an interesting solution you've read about or thought
Speaker 1: of to any of these concerns we brought up today,
Speaker 1: or a threat that your health might encounter on Mars
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