For years, the possibility of a manned mission to Mars has filled our newsfeeds and imaginations, but what actually needs to be done to make that dream a reality? In this episode of The Curious Cosmos, Derrick Pitts is joined by science writer Mary Roach discuss her book, Packing for Mars, and all the important (and often off-kilter) work being done to prepare for that mission here on Earth!
- Check out Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and Mary’s other books
- Explore the Antarctic Search for Meteorites further
- Check out the Mars500 project from the European Space Agency, where participants simulated a tip to Mars in Moscow.
- Learn more about Peggy Whitson, the American record holder for most time in space!
- Learn more about the failed Mars One project, which promised to colonize Mars via a reality TV show
Transcript
I'm Derrick Pitts, and welcome to The Curious Cosmos.
Derrick Pitts:In the not so distant future, we'll be leaving Earth, heading off for
Derrick Pitts:the Moon, and eventually Mars.
Derrick Pitts:Sound great?
Derrick Pitts:Well, for some, maybe, but there's a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed
Derrick Pitts:up before any of that can happen.
Derrick Pitts:Thankfully, we're here.
Derrick Pitts:There's already people on that case, including my guest today,
Derrick Pitts:who's approaching this from a decidedly non NASA point of view.
Derrick Pitts:Mary Roach.
Derrick Pitts:Mary is the author of six New York Times bestsellers, including Stiff:
Derrick Pitts:The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary
Derrick Pitts:Canal, and Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void.
Derrick Pitts:Mary's books have been published in 21 languages.
Derrick Pitts:Mary has written for National Geographic, she's written for WIRED,
Derrick Pitts:the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, among lots of other publications.
Derrick Pitts:Mary and I met over a decade ago at the Franklin Institute to talk
Derrick Pitts:about her book, Packing for Mars.
Derrick Pitts:But now that space exploration is taking bigger steps towards human exploration
Derrick Pitts:of the solar system, I wanted to ask Mary about the adaptability of humans in space
Derrick Pitts:and the challenges we might be facing.
Derrick Pitts:Thanks for joining us, Mary.
Derrick Pitts:It's great to have you with us.
Mary Roach:Oh, thanks, Derrick.
Mary Roach:Great to be here.
Derrick Pitts:So, I guess my first question for you, Mary, refers to some
Derrick Pitts:of the other titles of, uh, what you've written as well, but in relation to
Derrick Pitts:this, you've written on a series of topics that really, I would say, have
Derrick Pitts:somewhat escaped lots of other authors, like Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human
Derrick Pitts:Cadavers, uh, Gulp, Spook, Grunt, Bonk.
Derrick Pitts:And this one.
Derrick Pitts:What encouraged you to explore what the challenges would be to human exploration?
Derrick Pitts:How did you get on to that topic?
Mary Roach:Okay, here's how I got on to that topic.
Mary Roach:Years ago, I was writing a piece for Vogue Magazine about bone loss,
Mary Roach:osteoporosis, and I was kind of bored with the topic, and I thought, how can
Mary Roach:I make this a little more interesting?
Mary Roach:I called an astronaut who's also an MD, and I, we got to talking about
Mary Roach:bone loss and how this is an issue when you don't, you know, use your
Mary Roach:bones, you start to lose them, but the conversation strayed because I
Mary Roach:have kind of a short attention span.
Mary Roach:And in the course of that conversation - we're going way back before I wrote
Mary Roach:books - he mentioned this toilet at Johnson Space Center that had a video
Mary Roach:camera that was pointing up, with a closed circuit screen right next to you.
Mary Roach:It was basically a training camera for astronauts to help them learn
Mary Roach:how to dock with a space toilet.
Mary Roach:And I was like, I can't work this into an osteoporosis story, but one
Mary Roach:day I will write about the Johnson Space Center potty cam, as it's known!
Mary Roach:And it stuck in the back of my head.
Mary Roach:And years later, I was in Antarctica for a series of stories.
Mary Roach:And I met somebody who later went on to run the bed rest facility
Mary Roach:near Johnson Space Center.
Mary Roach:It's in Galveston, Texas, where they have volunteers basically stay in
Mary Roach:bed for three months to mimic the kinds of changes that will happen to
Mary Roach:your body when you go up into space.
Mary Roach:When you don't have gravity, uh, you know, your body starts going, you know what?
Mary Roach:We don't need all these muscles.
Mary Roach:We don't need these bones.
Mary Roach:Let's just dismantle them!
Mary Roach:Anyway, those two things made me really start to think about number one, the
Mary Roach:challenges of trying to deal with life without gravity, like nothing works.
Mary Roach:And the other side to that was, I realized there are all these very interesting
Mary Roach:research facilities and things going on at NASA and places related to NASA.
Mary Roach:And that for me, as sort of a science geek, that would be a fun
Mary Roach:playground for a couple of years.
Mary Roach:So kind of those two events that made me very curious about it.
Mary Roach:And, um, It just seemed like there was a lot there.
Mary Roach:Yeah, most of the books about space exploration are very
Mary Roach:focused on actually being there!
Mary Roach:But a lot of stuff on the ground, to me, was as interesting
Mary Roach:as what goes on in orbit.
Derrick Pitts:Yeah, right.
Derrick Pitts:How are you going to sort of simulate an environment so you can figure out
Derrick Pitts:what the effects are going to be?
Derrick Pitts:You have to do it here on Earth.
Mary Roach:Exactly!
Derrick Pitts:So we have to try to mitigate all those things that
Derrick Pitts:are Earth related, so we can try to be space oriented somehow.
Mary Roach:Yeah, yeah.
Mary Roach:It's just amazing that everything that you as a human do or build or sit on or
Mary Roach:whatever is going to have to be rethought.
Derrick Pitts:So, I think you sort of pointed at it already, but in the work
Derrick Pitts:that you did with this, what did you identify as maybe the most difficult
Derrick Pitts:challenge that needs to be overcome or dealt with in exploring space for humans?
Mary Roach:Yeah, um, I'm going through them all in my head, you
Mary Roach:know, and I was tempted to say the psychology of isolation and confinement?
Mary Roach:Because you talk about going to Mars, you know, that's a -that's a long
Mary Roach:time in a small can with people that you maybe didn't choose to be around!
Mary Roach:Um, and strange things happen in that scenario.
Mary Roach:You know, there's wonderful examples from Antarctic or Arctic expeditions
Mary Roach:where you know, you read journals, and even though that's a vast expanse of
Mary Roach:the environment you are stuck in your tent in your camp with your people.
Mary Roach:You can't just, you know, go for a jog, or take a day trip, or go to the mall.
Mary Roach:You really are stuck with those people and you start to get irrational
Mary Roach:antagonism I think maybe it was called, where you're just like every
Mary Roach:single thing about that person just really bugs the crap out of you.
Mary Roach:You know, you're just like, uh, anybody who's, you know, been stuck on a,
Mary Roach:an RV trip with family for too long.
Mary Roach:It's that kind of thing.
Derrick Pitts:But this is hugely magnified in space
Derrick Pitts:travel because there really is
Derrick Pitts:- Mary Roach: Yes!
Derrick Pitts:No, just go outside, take a walk and blow it off.
Derrick Pitts:I mean, conceivably in Antarctica, you could bundle up enough and wait
Derrick Pitts:for the weather to subside to the point where you could actually go
Derrick Pitts:outside and get a breath of fresh air.
Derrick Pitts:But in space, there is no recourse.
Derrick Pitts:You have no opportunity for that at all.
Derrick Pitts:You know, you're in the spacecraft.
Derrick Pitts:You can't get outside.
Derrick Pitts:You can't open the window.
Derrick Pitts:None of that kind of stuff is going to happen.
Derrick Pitts:And so this...
Derrick Pitts:Uh, what was it you, you said again, antagonisms?
Mary Roach:Yeah, I think it's irrational antagonism.
Derrick Pitts:Irrational antagonism.
Mary Roach:Yeah, and you would see it in the documentation of every space
Mary Roach:mission - Mercury, Gemini, Apollo - the transcripts of the conversations between
Mary Roach:the astronauts and mission control.
Mary Roach:And you'd see that pop up.
Mary Roach:What happens is you don't want to take it out on your crewmates
Mary Roach:because you depend on them for your survival in a very serious way.
Mary Roach:So you don't want to alienate the people that you're up there with.
Mary Roach:This is something that was told to me by astronauts, and you tend
Mary Roach:to take it out on mission control.
Mary Roach:So the poor guy down there on the microphone in there.
Mary Roach:In the case of I think it was Gemini 7, Jim Lovell, you could see where
Mary Roach:at one point he goes, he gets the science guy the guy who's in charge
Mary Roach:of the food, his name was Dr.
Mary Roach:Chance, and he gets him on the microphone.
Mary Roach:He's like "Yeah, okay.
Mary Roach:Chicken a la king, serial number 2674, all over the window at this time.
Mary Roach:I think you could, you know, for 300 a meal, I think you could
Mary Roach:make this a little better."
Mary Roach:You know, it's just this, you could tell he's just having a really bad day.
Mary Roach:And poor, uh, Dr.
Mary Roach:Chance had to take the brunt of it.
Derrick Pitts:The reason why space meals are so expensive is because it takes a
Derrick Pitts:lot of effort to do the proper research to figure out how to package something
Derrick Pitts:to be completely germ free, be able to be shelf stable for months at a time, taste
Derrick Pitts:good, and be in a small, compact package.
Derrick Pitts:There's really a whole team of people whose job it is to figure out How to
Derrick Pitts:package food appropriately for space.
Derrick Pitts:You want to take what you might normally eat and get rid of all the extraneous
Derrick Pitts:calories and just go for the nutritional value in a package that looks as
Derrick Pitts:good as it can look for something that's packaged for a trip to space.
Derrick Pitts:So, it's not like we can take a item from Burger King, stick it in
Derrick Pitts:a plastic bag, and just suck all the air out to make it smaller.
Derrick Pitts:There's a lot more that has to go into materials that go into space, even food.
Mary Roach:Yeah, displacement where you displace your anger.
Derrick Pitts:Yes, right, right These were the gemini missions where
Derrick Pitts:the missions in which there were two astronauts in a space capsule
Derrick Pitts:They were uh, really doing the test flights for longer duration missions.
Derrick Pitts:And so often these missions were, you know, five days, seven days, eight
Derrick Pitts:days, ten days, you know, essentially in a sardine can with your co pilot,
Derrick Pitts:your partner there, and you had to do everything in that little space.
Mary Roach:Everything.
Mary Roach:Literally everything.
Mary Roach:There's no bathroom.
Mary Roach:You're using a little, very scientifically designed plastic bag.
Mary Roach:And it's the size of, you know, the front seat of a sports car.
Mary Roach:I mean, it really was a tiny space.
Mary Roach:You know, they're trying to keep it small and lightweight.
Mary Roach:You know, the astronauts were tiny.
Mary Roach:Everything was tiny!
Mary Roach:You are smooshed in there, right?
Mary Roach:And some of those early astronauts, they were, they were big ego guys.
Mary Roach:They were chosen for their bravery, their machismo, their, you know,
Mary Roach:they were test pilots and heroes.
Mary Roach:And so these aren't the kind of guys you want to cram in a
Mary Roach:small space together, you know.
Derrick Pitts:Right, right.
Mary Roach:And in later years, astronauts were chosen differently.
Mary Roach:Obviously you wanted technical expertise, there's a whole
Mary Roach:variety of things that you wanted.
Mary Roach:But in terms of personality, you wanted a team player, somebody who had a sense
Mary Roach:of humor, who was easygoing, forgiving.
Derrick Pitts:Well now, you know, this brings me to, uh, one of the
Derrick Pitts:directions I wanted to try to pursue.
Derrick Pitts:When we talk about the length of missions like this, it's easily years.
Derrick Pitts:You know, there's no question that a Mars expedition is gonna be two
Derrick Pitts:and a half to three years minimum to make the trip worthwhile and all
Derrick Pitts:that kind of stuff, especially with the technology we have right now.
Derrick Pitts:And so it made me think about the kind of psychological screening that probably has
Derrick Pitts:to happen to find the right mix of people.
Derrick Pitts:And I've always wondered what, what it might be like, and is there any
Derrick Pitts:possibility that one of the astronaut candidates has managed to sneak something
Derrick Pitts:under the psychological radar and you end up with an axe murderer on board as
Derrick Pitts:part of your crew, when you didn't really expect to have that kind of thing emerge
Derrick Pitts:as part of the personality of someone?
Derrick Pitts:And for me, it begs the question of, in long duration space flight, what
Derrick Pitts:do you do in a situation like that?
Mary Roach:NASA goes to great lengths to try to get around it.
Mary Roach:There's a guy in Antarctica who works with the Antarctic Search for Meteorites.
Derrick Pitts:Well, the reason why there's a hunt for meteorites in
Derrick Pitts:Antarctica is because Antarctica is essentially just a big snow field.
Derrick Pitts:And when meteorites fall on the surface, because they're so dark, they can easily
Derrick Pitts:stand out against the background of snow.
Derrick Pitts:But, they also get covered with snow because there's so much snowfall.
Derrick Pitts:Well, that means they get buried.
Derrick Pitts:Well, the compaction of the snow in the center of the continent actually pushes
Derrick Pitts:buried meteorites in a curved sort of path up to the surface of the snow, and
Derrick Pitts:scientists can literally go along and just pick up meteorites along this circle.
Mary Roach:He's involved with NASA and astronaut selection because
Mary Roach:they're out in tents in the middle of nowhere in Antarctica, so he sort
Mary Roach:of has first hand experience with the kind of cabin fever scenarios.
Mary Roach:Anyway, he knew one of the candidates, and at one point, he got a call, and
Mary Roach:NASA said, you know, well, one of the things that we have these astronauts
Mary Roach:do, they gotta learn how to fly an F 14, like a fighter plane, and we
Mary Roach:need to just check out his stuff.
Mary Roach:We're gonna take him up, and how comfortable would you feel going up
Mary Roach:with him and it was like - you know, there was something that you couldn't
Mary Roach:plan on, you know, he had to kind of really tell the truth about that person.
Mary Roach:I had an experience where I had applied for a simulated Mars mission
Mary Roach:called Mars 500, that's 500 days.
Mary Roach:And I made the first round of cuts, partly because not very many women
Mary Roach:had applied to be in a simulator outside Moscow for 500 days.
Mary Roach:And they said, "okay, well, we'll be back in touch with you" and fast forward a
Mary Roach:few weeks in the middle of the night 3 a.
Mary Roach:m.
Mary Roach:I get a phone call and I pick up the phone and they're like, "yes, hi, this is the
Mary Roach:European Space Agency, calling about the Mars 500 interview" and I said "It's 3 a.
Mary Roach:m.!
Mary Roach:I don't know if you know that I where I live..."
Mary Roach:and they're like "Okay.
Mary Roach:Thank you.
Mary Roach:That's the end of the interview.
Mary Roach:Okay.
Mary Roach:We know enough about you.
Mary Roach:Thank you very much for your time!"
Mary Roach:That was it.
Derrick Pitts:Right.
Derrick Pitts:Okay.
Derrick Pitts:So, sure.
Derrick Pitts:Testing just to see what your reaction is going to be in these situations.
Mary Roach:Yeah, just to see how do you behave when you're woken up from a
Mary Roach:deep sleep and asked to do something?
Mary Roach:You know, what kind of personality are we dealing with here?
Mary Roach:One thing about training for a longer mission.
Mary Roach:It's likely to be a long training period.
Mary Roach:So you're going to have these people working together for
Mary Roach:well over a year, I would say.
Mary Roach:So any personality clashes, I think, would surface before the mission.
Mary Roach:The other thing about, you know, a long mission, the communication
Mary Roach:time, the lag, from when you say, "Hello, Mission Control," you
Mary Roach:know, "Houston, we have a problem."
Mary Roach:That's going to take 20 minutes to get there!
Derrick Pitts:So the way a radio signal gets to Mars is the same way
Derrick Pitts:a radio signal gets from a radio station to the radio in your car.
Derrick Pitts:It's just a radio signal.
Derrick Pitts:Although, the farther away you are, the longer it takes to get there.
Mary Roach:So to deal with an emergency situation, you're on your own.
Mary Roach:You really are going to need a bunch of jack of all trades.
Mary Roach:You're going to need people with, you know, medical skills
Mary Roach:and also engineering skills.
Mary Roach:And as many as you can cram into those three or four people,
Mary Roach:however many are on your crew.
Derrick Pitts:So how do you think humans are adapting to space?
Derrick Pitts:I mean, we've seen the missions have been getting longer on board
Derrick Pitts:International Space Station.
Derrick Pitts:Peggy Whitson is an American.
Derrick Pitts:She's now a retired NASA astronaut who has joined another company after
Derrick Pitts:a number of years working for NASA.
Derrick Pitts:She actually spent 666 days in space, uh, cumulatively.
Derrick Pitts:And so she holds the record for an American astronaut for
Derrick Pitts:the amount of time in space.
Derrick Pitts:And she seems to have adapted very, very well to the space environment.
Soundbite Audio:Yeah, Peggy, Jeff here.
Soundbite Audio:I'm standing in line and I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you on,
Soundbite Audio:uh, on the new record among Americans.
Soundbite Audio:Thank you, Jeff.
Soundbite Audio:That's sweet of you to come in to say that.
Soundbite Audio:I appreciate it.
Soundbite Audio:You bet.
Soundbite Audio:Well, it couldn't be more deserved, uh, than it is for you.
Soundbite Audio:I remember 20 years ago you and I talking and all I wanted to do was
Soundbite Audio:do a little construction on station and all you wanted to do was get
Soundbite Audio:up there and stay and do science.
Soundbite Audio:Yep.
Soundbite Audio:It's been a great ride.
Soundbite Audio:Well, again, congratulations and enjoy the rest of your,
Soundbite Audio:uh, several months to go here.
Derrick Pitts:Are there particular things that we have to look at about
Derrick Pitts:that adaptation for a trip to Mars?
Derrick Pitts:Do all the basic functions of the human body still work?
Derrick Pitts:You know, as they are supposed to, you know, over these long trips in space?
Mary Roach:That was a question in the beginning.
Mary Roach:There really, it was a big question mark.
Mary Roach:Can you swallow without gravity?
Mary Roach:Can you initiate urination without gravity?
Mary Roach:There were little test flights in which, they would be like, given a pitcher full
Mary Roach:of water to drink, sent up on a, you know, zero gravity simulating, you know, with
Mary Roach:the parabolic arcs, the, where you have like 20 seconds of weightlessness at a
Mary Roach:time, they're like, "Okay, go, try to pee!
Mary Roach:Okay, drink some water!"
Mary Roach:They sent up eye charts on the Mercury flights, you
Mary Roach:know, like, can you still see?
Mary Roach:Is your eyeball changing shape or doing something strange?
Mary Roach:Astronauts on the ISS spend like an hour and a half a day exercising.
Mary Roach:I mean, you're really, and that, that in itself, how do you get weight-bearing
Mary Roach:exercise when you have no weight?
Mary Roach:You have to kind of bungee the person to the treadmill.
Mary Roach:I mean, that was another challenge to, to come up with weight-bearing
Mary Roach:exercise equipment for the International Space Station.
Mary Roach:Uh, you're gonna lose muscle and bone mass.
Mary Roach:Um, you come back down and you gain it, but there were studies showing
Mary Roach:that you don't gain it in the same.
Mary Roach:way and in the same bones.
Mary Roach:There's an adaptation period just getting used to so much more of the body's fluid
Mary Roach:being in the upper part of the body.
Mary Roach:It's not all falling down toward your legs.
Mary Roach:So your body has to figure that out.
Mary Roach:And for a while, your head, it feels like you have a cold all the time.
Mary Roach:Your sinuses are congested.
Mary Roach:Your face is kind of puffy.
Mary Roach:I mean, you feel kind of crappy the first few days /weeks is my understanding.
Mary Roach:Um, but the body is adaptable.
Mary Roach:It'll figure that out.
Mary Roach:But the atrophy is definitely a concern.
Mary Roach:Also, you get out into space without the Earth's atmosphere,
Mary Roach:you're, you're talking about solar flare radiation, cosmic radiation.
Derrick Pitts:So Mary talks about two types of radiation here.
Derrick Pitts:One is solar flare radiation and the other is cosmic radiation.
Derrick Pitts:Cosmic radiation is just the general space background radiation.
Derrick Pitts:Whereas solar flare radiation is really specific.
Derrick Pitts:Those are eruptions of electromagnetic particles that come off of our
Derrick Pitts:sun and blast out into space.
Derrick Pitts:Doesn't happen all the time.
Derrick Pitts:Happens kind of episodically.
Derrick Pitts:But it can cause a lot of problems for astronauts in space.
Mary Roach:That's a big question mark.
Mary Roach:At the time I was writing the book anyway, it was a lot of debate about, is
Mary Roach:this a big concern or is it no big deal?
Mary Roach:I know that NASA was talking about for a mission to Mars, you know,
Mary Roach:where you're exposed for that much time and that much more radiation.
Mary Roach:They're talking about sending older astronauts, you know, say you're exposed,
Mary Roach:you get a mutation somewhere in your genetic material, and that's going to show
Mary Roach:up in 15, 20 years while you're at the end of your lifespan anyway, so that was
Mary Roach:considered more of a trade off, you know.
Mary Roach:You're going to die anyway soon, so!
Mary Roach:Yeah, radiation.
Mary Roach:I don't think anyone at that time really knew exactly what
Mary Roach:that risk is for a Mars mission.
Mary Roach:How much are we increasing the likelihood of cancers?
Mary Roach:It's definitely a concern.
Derrick Pitts:I was going to posit that - so here you've got a multi month journey
Derrick Pitts:out to Mars, then you get there, you know, after having been trapped, quote unquote,
Derrick Pitts:"inside the RV" for lo these many months.
Derrick Pitts:You get there, you have to be in a spacesuit to be out on the
Derrick Pitts:surface, out of the spacecraft.
Derrick Pitts:So you finally get down on the surface, and then, now you go into
Derrick Pitts:your habitat, and you're gonna be here, inside this habitat now for...
Derrick Pitts:X number of months before the planets realign themselves to make the shorter
Derrick Pitts:trip back to Earth and things like that.
Derrick Pitts:What kind of people can possibly manage to survive that kind of existence
Derrick Pitts:for such a long mission like this?
Mary Roach:Well, you're going to have also those rovers that you can leave
Mary Roach:the suit, you know, you kind of like back up to it in your suit and then
Mary Roach:you connect to the rover and then you get out of your suit and you're
Mary Roach:in your shirt sleeves in the rover.
Mary Roach:So you're kind of, you have the - now you're back in the RV!
Mary Roach:So you've got the RV experience going on.
Mary Roach:But I compare it to, I like to go backpacking.
Mary Roach:My husband and I pack up whatever we need for three or four days
Mary Roach:and we go up into the Sierras.
Mary Roach:There's no one around and it's, for me it's, it's a beautiful place.
Mary Roach:People go, "well, uh, backpacking, you can't get any good coffee.
Mary Roach:The freeze dried food is terrible!
Mary Roach:You're sleeping on the ground.
Mary Roach:It's cold at night.
Mary Roach:Why would you do that?"
Mary Roach:And I say, "yeah, but look where you are.
Mary Roach:No one else is there.
Mary Roach:It's this unbelievable landscape and you're just removed from everything else."
Mary Roach:And it's just almost a spiritual experience.
Mary Roach:And I think for the kind of person who wants to explore
Mary Roach:space, it's that times a thousand.
Mary Roach:Yeah, the unknown.
Mary Roach:To go out into the unknown, I think, it's a strong pull and
Mary Roach:plenty of people will do it.
Derrick Pitts:One of the goals of SpaceX is to establish a colony
Derrick Pitts:on Mars within a hundred years.
Derrick Pitts:You know, when you look at the work that SpaceX is doing
Derrick Pitts:in developing their latest...
Derrick Pitts:launch capability of the Starship.
Derrick Pitts:The idea there is that they can send dozens of people at one time to visit
Derrick Pitts:space or to go to some place, and this may be one of the tools that
Derrick Pitts:allows them to actually colonize Mars.
Derrick Pitts:Do you think there are enough people on our planet that would be willing to make
Derrick Pitts:a journey like that, that we could start to shuttle a bunch of people up to Mars?
Mary Roach:Oh, absolutely.
Mary Roach:Absolutely.
Mary Roach:I remember when Mars One, what's that guy's name?
Derrick Pitts:Oh, yes.
Mary Roach:Lars...
Mary Roach:Boz?
Mary Roach:He wanted to start a Mars mission that would be funded by, essentially,
Mary Roach:entertainment rights globally.
Derrick Pitts:Well, his name was actually Bas Lansdorp.
Derrick Pitts:And he had this really interesting idea to start a permanent human colony on Mars,
Derrick Pitts:where funding would come from broadcast revenues from a reality show they
Derrick Pitts:would produce about the whole process.
Derrick Pitts:From astronaut selection to actually being on Mars.
Derrick Pitts:The project officially shut down in 2021, having been unsuccessful in
Derrick Pitts:their goal of establishing that colony by 2023, but you'd be amazed at how
Derrick Pitts:many people actually signed up to go!
Mary Roach:And he put out a call for people, like, who's interested,
Mary Roach:and hundreds, uh, he was overwhelmed with people who said they'd go.
Mary Roach:This is a one way trip.
Mary Roach:You'd think of it more as emigration, that you're moving to Mars permanently.
Mary Roach:Not It's a suicide mission, but no, I'm going to live on Mars the rest of my life.
Mary Roach:I think thousands of people would sign up possibly completely unaware of all the
Mary Roach:things you and I've been talking about!
Mary Roach:But I think easy to find well trained astronauts from various
Mary Roach:international Space Agencies who would absolutely sign on, yeah.
Derrick Pitts:And if we were going to do that sort of colonization kind of thing
Derrick Pitts:of, you know, dozens of people or hundreds of people or something like that, what
Derrick Pitts:do you think would need to be brought or set up for a settlement on Mars?
Mary Roach:Well, I think that things like iPads are tremendous
Mary Roach:technology for that, for bringing as many photographs and books and music.
Mary Roach:I mean, that's assuming that it'll work on Mars.
Mary Roach:I'm sure it will.
Mary Roach:It'll work.
Mary Roach:The cloud, can you hook up to the cloud when you're on Mars?
Derrick Pitts:Yeah, I think the wire is going to be really long for that!
Mary Roach:Where is that cloud located?
Mary Roach:How far is that cloud?
Mary Roach:Yeah.
Mary Roach:So when I wrote Packing for Mars, there was a very strict limit on personal
Mary Roach:belongings, weight wise, because the heavier the spacecraft, the more
Mary Roach:expensive it is to get it off the ground.
Derrick Pitts:Astronauts have carried all sorts of interesting
Derrick Pitts:and odd personal items to space.
Derrick Pitts:So there was the instance in which Gemini astronauts carried rolls of
Derrick Pitts:coins because they wanted to give them away as souvenirs of individual
Derrick Pitts:coins that had been to space.
Derrick Pitts:There's an instance where an astronaut actually smuggled a
Derrick Pitts:corned beef sandwich into space.
Derrick Pitts:Yeah, from their nearby corner delicatessen!
Derrick Pitts:And it's also fairly well known that Buzz Aldrin, when he landed on
Derrick Pitts:the moon, had with him a very small set of communion items so that he
Derrick Pitts:could take communion on the moon.
Derrick Pitts:In fact, the Franklin Institute has actually sent things into space.
Derrick Pitts:We have a really cool item on display, an artifact of a four inch wide
Derrick Pitts:steel star that was flown on the very last space shuttle mission, and then
Derrick Pitts:subsequently went to visit International Space Station on a different mission.
Derrick Pitts:If you want to know more about the steel star, check out our Curious
Derrick Pitts:Cosmos episode with Chris Ferguson.
Derrick Pitts:That's episode number one.
Mary Roach:People sometimes ask me, what would you bring?
Mary Roach:You know what I would miss?
Mary Roach:Color.
Mary Roach:Probably bring one of those, you know, those paint things with all
Mary Roach:the different colors, the paint chip.
Derrick Pitts:Oh, sure.
Derrick Pitts:Yeah, the paint chip book.
Derrick Pitts:Sure.
Mary Roach:The interiors of these spacecraft are busy and metal and drab.
Mary Roach:Very utilitarian.
Derrick Pitts:Well, I want to go back to something you said earlier, Mary, and
Derrick Pitts:I'll sort of put it together like this.
Derrick Pitts:We know going out to the moon is like a weekend trip, you know, two and a
Derrick Pitts:half days will get you to the moon without any problem, you can spend
Derrick Pitts:whatever time you want there and two and a half days back or a day and a
Derrick Pitts:half back or something, and that's kind of easy to do, uh, we know that.
Derrick Pitts:And going out to Mars is a bit more challenging because it's gonna take, you
Derrick Pitts:know, at least nine months to get there, you'll spend a year and a half or so on
Derrick Pitts:the surface of Mars because you're going to wait for the two planets to realign
Derrick Pitts:again so you have the shortest distance for a return trip, and that return trip
Derrick Pitts:might be six months So already we have nearly three years invested in a trip,
Derrick Pitts:but it's still kind of conceivable that that could work You know when we think
Derrick Pitts:about how long people have been living on board space station and things like
Derrick Pitts:that But for this truly romantic idea of really long trips, you mentioned that
Derrick Pitts:at one point it was considered to send senior citizens into space because of
Derrick Pitts:the possibility of radiation damage to the genetics wouldn't really matter so
Derrick Pitts:much because these people are aged out of birth and things like that anyway.
Derrick Pitts:So maybe that's a consideration.
Derrick Pitts:But if we think about that new dimension of space exploration, where we're
Derrick Pitts:considering these really long trips, like going out to Alpha Centauri, for example.
Derrick Pitts:Now we're talking about something that's hundreds of years, and this is now
Derrick Pitts:more like a generational space mission.
Derrick Pitts:That is a completely different animal altogether now, because this is
Derrick Pitts:a case where the original crew...
Derrick Pitts:is not coming back.
Mary Roach:Right, and one of the things that was surprising to me in researching
Mary Roach:Packing for Mars is that there had been very little work done looking at the
Mary Roach:physiology of conception, gestation.
Mary Roach:Can conception even happen?
Mary Roach:What happens to the fetus and what happens to the embryo?
Mary Roach:Do things attach properly?
Mary Roach:Do things mechanically even work?
Mary Roach:Well, what happens for birth?
Mary Roach:The changes in the bone mean that everybody has to
Mary Roach:give birth through cesarean?
Mary Roach:I mean, none of that's, none of that is known!
Mary Roach:Nobody has studied that.
Mary Roach:And I said, why?
Mary Roach:You know, I remember saying, "you know, if the goal here, the end
Mary Roach:point is to live off planet, to set up life on another planet in case I
Mary Roach:guess we completely trashed this one.
Mary Roach:If that is the goal, don't we need to know that we can reproduce?
Mary Roach:Isn't that a basic thing to know?"
Mary Roach:That was kind of, and they're like, "well, we're not there yet.
Mary Roach:It's still pretty low on the priority list.
Mary Roach:We need to understand things like the effects of radiation."
Mary Roach:And plus, you know, just the massive challenges of the technology.
Mary Roach:But that does seem to me something you want to, you want
Mary Roach:to figure out at some point.
Mary Roach:Can you actually populate a colony?
Mary Roach:Does everything work without gravity?
Derrick Pitts:Lots of experimentation still to do.
Mary Roach:Yeah.
Mary Roach:Let's finally have some astronauts having sex in space!
Mary Roach:All the journalists want to know!
Derrick Pitts:I was going to ask, have there been any studies
Derrick Pitts:yet that the government is willing to release about this?
Derrick Pitts:Are they also being stored down in Area 51 along with the alien corpses?
Mary Roach:A fake document online, you know, it's like "Space Shuttle, STS,"
Mary Roach:they had the mission number and they had the whole thing written up as though
Mary Roach:it was a document testing the best positions for zero gravity intercourse.
Mary Roach:Definitely a fake document.
Mary Roach:One of the conclusions was it's helpful to have a third party
Mary Roach:pushing at helping you stay together!
Derrick Pitts:That is something I want to see on the application
Derrick Pitts:form of "other duties as required if you accept this job."
Derrick Pitts:I don't think so.
Derrick Pitts:But in all seriousness, this is still part and parcel of what the human experience
Derrick Pitts:has to be for long distance space travel.
Derrick Pitts:And the difference between what the romanticized idea is and
Derrick Pitts:what the reality is, these things are still very, very far apart.
Mary Roach:Yeah, I mean, I, I would love to go to the moon in my lifetime.
Mary Roach:I'm in my 60s now, it's probably not gonna happen, but that's incredibly
Mary Roach:cool that at some point that sort of thing might be possible.
Mary Roach:Taking it out to the extreme of colonizing another planet,
Mary Roach:it to me is still very sci-fi.
Derrick Pitts:Well, it's interesting because that was going
Derrick Pitts:to be my last question to you.
Derrick Pitts:Would you go?
Derrick Pitts:It sounds like you'd go to the moon.
Derrick Pitts:Would you go to, uh, would you go to an orbiting space hotel?
Mary Roach:Um, no, because you know what, what really attracted me about
Mary Roach:it was to experience weightlessness.
Mary Roach:And you can do that right now.
Mary Roach:Zero Gravity Corporation has flights out of Las Vegas where you can
Mary Roach:go and you've got,what do we do, like 25 parabolas on my flight?
Mary Roach:So you probably have more chunks of time, you know, because you've got 20
Mary Roach:seconds at a time, then the plane pulls up and then you've got double gravity.
Mary Roach:And that was exhilarating.
Mary Roach:That was the most fun I've, I think I've ever had, to just be floating!
Mary Roach:But you could do that right now for, I don't know what they charge at
Mary Roach:zero gravity corp, I pestered NASA till I got onto one of their flights.
Mary Roach:But, um, so that was to me, that's what's appealing.
Derrick Pitts:Now, your experience on zero gravity, is that something
Derrick Pitts:you think most of us, all humans, ought to give that a shot, just to
Derrick Pitts:see what that experience is like?
Mary Roach:I mean, yes!
Mary Roach:Do it!
Derrick Pitts:Okay.
Mary Roach:Yes!
Mary Roach:Do it!
Derrick Pitts:Alright.
Mary Roach:Have you done it?
Derrick Pitts:I have not done it yet.
Mary Roach:It's so cool.
Mary Roach:I mean, you are a soap bubble.
Mary Roach:I mean, you have no weight!
Mary Roach:Which is a really strange, I mean, you're floating, but it's
Mary Roach:different than floating in water.
Mary Roach:It's even more pleasant.
Mary Roach:because...
Mary Roach:There's no resistance.
Mary Roach:In water you feel that resistance.
Mary Roach:Also, your organs now have no weight.
Mary Roach:So everything inside you, it's like this sort of subtle physical euphoria.
Mary Roach:You have no weight!
Mary Roach:It's the most awesome thing.
Mary Roach:Yeah!
Derrick Pitts:I think I'll try to do that.
Derrick Pitts:Well, Mary, this has been big fun, and I'm so glad you were willing to do this.
Derrick Pitts:Thank you very much for joining us to talk about what it's like to be out
Derrick Pitts:there in space and give us a little bit of a look at what might be coming in
Derrick Pitts:the future in terms of, uh, how we have to try to get the romantic part and the
Derrick Pitts:reality part a little bit closer together.
Derrick Pitts:And hopefully, in our lifetime, we'll see more of this, and maybe we
Derrick Pitts:will get a chance to go to the moon.
Derrick Pitts:Who knows?
Derrick Pitts:We'll keep our fingers crossed.
Mary Roach:See you on the moon, Derrick.
Derrick Pitts:That sounds great.
Derrick Pitts:That sounds great.
Derrick Pitts:Mary, thanks again.
Derrick Pitts:I really appreciate it.
Mary Roach:Oh, thank you so much.
Mary Roach:I really enjoyed it.
Derrick Pitts:Good luck with all your future writings.
Derrick Pitts:I look forward to them.
Derrick Pitts:They're all really exciting and interesting, and those topics
Derrick Pitts:you choose are just great.
Derrick Pitts:So, thanks for introducing us to all those things.
Mary Roach:You're so welcome.
Mary Roach:My pleasure.
Derrick Pitts:Thanks so much, Mary, for sitting down with me
Derrick Pitts:to chat about traveling to Mars.
Derrick Pitts:Now, I know this may sound like science fiction fantasy, but
Derrick Pitts:believe it or not, the first person to walk on Mars is already here,
Derrick Pitts:walking among us on Earth now.
Derrick Pitts:Let's just think back about what it was like when we
Derrick Pitts:thought about going to the Moon.
Derrick Pitts:That was fantasy for a long time, but that actually came to reality.
Derrick Pitts:And, we're going back to the Moon in the very near future.
Derrick Pitts:But let's think about Mars for a second.
Derrick Pitts:How many of you out there listening would go to Mars?
Derrick Pitts:Maybe?
Derrick Pitts:How about the moon?
Derrick Pitts:Does that sound more reasonable, like something you might do?
Derrick Pitts:Well, the next time you're outside looking up at the night sky, imagine what it
Derrick Pitts:would be like for you to be on the moon.
Derrick Pitts:Then imagine what it would be like to go all the way to
Derrick Pitts:Mars, and what you might pack.
Derrick Pitts:Thanks for listening.
Derrick Pitts:We'll see you next time on Curious Cosmos.
Derrick Pitts:This podcast is made in partnership with RADIOKISMET, Philadelphia's
Derrick Pitts:premier podcast production studio.
Derrick Pitts:This podcast is produced by Amy Carson.
Derrick Pitts:The Franklin Institute's Director of Digital Editorial is Joy Montefusco,
Derrick Pitts:and Erin Armstrong runs Marketing, Communications and Digital Media.
Derrick Pitts:Head of Operations is Christopher Platt, our Mix Engineer is Justin
Derrick Pitts:Berger, and I'm Derrick Pitts, Chief Astronomer and Director of the Fels
Derrick Pitts:Planetarium at the Franklin Institute, and your host for this podcast.
Derrick Pitts:Thanks so much for listening.