Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Exploration from the poles to the heavens

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Exploration from the poles to the heavens · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Before the first crew leaves from Mars, it would be
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: good to know what to expect. Yes, you want to
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: know things like what kind of trajectory your spacecraft is
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: going to take, But you also want to know some
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of the squishier stuff too, like what kind of social
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: problems might come up along the way.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: To help think through the problems you might encounter.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It might be helpful to know what's happened in similar situations,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: But what would a similar situation look like? Well, okay,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: a trip to Mars will include separating crew members from
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: their family and friends for more than two years, living
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: in a cramped space with a small number of people
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: who you may or may not like, days filled with
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: tedious and boring tasks like fixing the toilet, and a
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: diet of shelf stable and maybe less than delicious foods,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: in an environment where some small mistake could spell death
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: for the whole crew. Turns out, all of those criteria
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: are met by research expeditions launched to Earth's poles around
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the year nineteen hundred.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Space will have fewer walruses.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And hopefully less cannibalism, but at least initially, we'll probably
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: have similar levels of misery tediousness, stinkiness, and danger. So
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about two different polar research
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: expeditions and discuss how the problems experienced during these expeditions
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: can give us some insights into how we should prepare
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: for the first trip to Mars.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Hi, Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. I'm Daniel.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: I'm a particle physicist and I don't like being uncomfortable,
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: but I do like camping.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I'm a parasitologist and I like gross stuff.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And there's just not enough gross stuff at the polls
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: for me to want to go.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Well, are you a camping kind of person? Do you
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: like to be out there in nature, on the edge
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: of survival, making coffee over an open flame?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I do, but I don't get to do it a
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: lot because I married an indoor husband.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Sounds like you need a second outdoor husband.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Is that an option? I don't know. I think Zach
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: would say.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: No, you have my permission, but I do know what
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: that counts for.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, fantastic, or I'll let zech know.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: We went to a cabin once and he called that
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: camping and then he was like, I've had enough and
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: so that's it.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: So what about you?
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: I don't have an outdoor husband. No, but thank you
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: for asking, but no. My question for you today is
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: what is the scariest or most dangerous outdoor camping expedition
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: experience you've had? Have you ever thought hmm, I'm not
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: sure I'm going to make it back from this one.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: No, I don't think I've ever done anything that dangerous.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And anytime that I have been scared, it's because I
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: was camping and they were like loud people nearby who
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: sounded like maybe they were getting violent, and so it
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: was scary because of the other humans, not because of
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: like wild animals or difficult temperature conditions.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Or something like that. I don't know that I've really
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: gone out on a limb while camping. What about you?
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: I almost froze to death once in the Ozarks in
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: a freak snowstorm.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: WHOA.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: I was going to go on like a week long
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: backpacking trip with my wife Katrina, and we had this
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: wonderful guidebook to take us through the Ozarks, and it said,
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: you know, if people tell you it's going to snow
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: don't worry. It never snows in the Ozarks. And the
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: morning we started walking out, it started to snow and
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: we were like, hm, this is weird, but we just
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: kept going because we had never bailed on a backpacking
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: trip ever, right, And we were crossing streams which were frozen,
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: and the temperatures just kept dropping and dropping, and we
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: had to stop at like three in the afternoon and
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: try to set up camp and it was like ten
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: degrees and our fingers were freezing, and we made the
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: like terrible decision to cook dinner inside the tent because
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: it was so cold, and we didn't burn the tent down,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: but we did like go to bed in the sleeping
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: bags at like five pm because the temperature was so low.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: And we woke up at like three in the morning
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: having slept the full night, and it was still like
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: five degrees. Oh no, So we woke up in the
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: morning and hiked right back out of there, and we
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: were like, yeah, we're not doing this again, and we
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: spent the rest of that trip in a cabin. So
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Zach would call it camping.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Have you done any backpacking away from civilization since?
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: Oh?
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, we've since taken our kids backpacking and made
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: similar mistakes, this time being underprepared for mountains in the
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: summer in California. Turns out when you go really high up,
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: it can get pretty cold.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I always get dizzy when I go really
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: high up.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: I think everybody's maybe picking up on me being a
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: giant wimp and having married a giant whimp. And you're
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: totally correct with that assessment. Yeah, whenever I go mountain
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: climbing with friends or something, we get a little high
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: up and I'm like, sorry, guys, I'm dizzy. You keep
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: going hung and eat my snack, got my protein bar, and.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: I hang out.
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: Well.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: Fortunately, humanity has learned a lot about the Earth because
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: there are people who are not like me and not
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: thank you, and can survive crazy conditions to explore all
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: the amazing and beautiful corners of this earth.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: So the people who explore the poles are really amazing
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: to me, in part because it's like such a juxtaposition
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: with my wimpiness, you know. So when I read about
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: the expeditions to the Poles, like, I don't really like
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: being cold. Virginia has a little bit of cold in
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the winter that seems really nice. I have friends who
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: go to Antarctica to like study sealed diving behavior, and
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be that cold, but they're incredible.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: There are people who love this stuff and thrive on
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: it and don't die.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: And so is it hard for you to even like
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: read about this, like while you're wrapped up in a
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: blanket and sipping your warm tea, You're like, ooh, this
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: is too unpleasant? Or does it give you a thrill
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: to hear about other people suffering?
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I don't revel in their suffering.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: It makes me feel justified in my decision to stay
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: home with my warm blankets. You know, it's good that
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: some people go out and explore the world. And there'll
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: be some stories today about an expedition that collected some
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: data from the Arctic that's used now as like a
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: baseline for understanding climate change. I'm glad there are people
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: out there doing it. It just doesn't have to be me.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I'm good, what about you.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: I'm in awe of these folks, you know, the way
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: they risk their lives, the way they suffer, the way
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: they persevere. It's incredible. I don't think that I could
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: do it, but of course I'm not in that situation.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: I don't really know, and lots of times when normal
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: people have had to do extraordinary things in order to survive.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: But this feels different because it feels like they've chosen it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 7: You know.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: They could have stayed home with their blanket and their
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: tea and had a more boring job. But I guess
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: there was something in them that made them feel like,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: I want to do something nobody else has done, even
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: if I'm risking my fingers and my toes and my nose.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Why do you think they do it? What do you
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: think their motivation is.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: I think they're outdoor husbands, you know, and that's just
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: some of us are outdoor husbands and some of us
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: are indoor husbands. I think it's just really who we are.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Everybody's different. And I want to explore the universe. I
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: had this deep drive to understand the way the universe works,
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: but I don't have a drive to physically explore the universe.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: I want to explore the universe mentally while staying home
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: with my tea. And I think other people have that
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: deep desire to see new things physically themselves, to be
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: the first person to put their flag somewhere who were
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: excited about the idea of like living in Elon Musk's
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: colony on Mars. I think we're all just built a
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: little different.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I totally agree. I think we are all
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: just built a little different. I think these expeditions are
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a combination of like looking for adventure, wanting to answer
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: scientific questions, and then also a little bit in some
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: cases of a drive for fame. So like famously, roll
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Aminson was heading to try to get to the North
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Pole first, and he had like the whole ship like
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: packed up, and they were on the way, and he
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: found out that actually someone had made it to the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: North Pole first, and he wasn't going to get the
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: first claim. So he turned that ship around, lied to
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: his funders, and headed to the South Pole, which he
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: did get to first. And so I think in some
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: cases it's not like a desire to get a certain
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: amount of information or to see a certain place. It's
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: like a desire to like be number one. But I
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: don't think that's the motivation for everyone. That's maybe just
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the motivation for some captains who have gone out there.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Well, lying to your funders. Nate's with me. There's definitely
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: been times when I've gotten a grant to do X,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: and then I'm like, that's not gonna work out. I
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: think want to do why instead? And I don't know
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: if that counts as lying to your funders, but you know,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: sometimes science takes a swerve.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I don't think you're alone there.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of people say that they pitch
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: grants for projects they've already done, yeah, so that they
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: know they'll have it done on time and then they
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: can use the money for the next thing.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Anyway, maybe Elon Musk has already been to Mars and
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: he's pitching it, but he secretly already has the base there.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: What do you think?
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: No, I hope not.
• 8:31
  Speaker 7: No.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: I don't think quick aside that I thought was super fun.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: So I was reading Freak Joff Nansen, sorry about the pronunciation.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Part of his mission Aboard the fram was funded by
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Ring This Beer, and in his diary, which he knew
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: was going to get turned into a book, he very
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: regularly talks about how delicious Ring This Beer is and
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: the day they ran out, he says, it's a day
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of mourning when we ran out of Ring this Beer.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, to what extent is this advertising versus
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: like actually being said about running out of ring this beer.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: So anyway, some things haven't.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: Shaped all right, But let's get back on topic. Yeah,
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: tell us why we're talking about polar expeditions today. If
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: our real goal is to understand what life would be
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: like on.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Mars, well, before you go to Mars, you'd like to
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: know what kind of problems you should prepare for, what
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: kind of things you're likely to experience. And there's just
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: not a lot of exploration missions that are as intense
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: as what amission to Mars will be like. But the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Polar expeditions come close, and they had a lot of
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: problems that I think NASA folks are now anticipating and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: have like incorporated into their mission plans. But there's just
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of problems that get encountered that you're gonna
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: want to avoid. And there's a lot of common themes
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: when you're reading this stuff that make you think, like, oh,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: all right, there's definitely some stuff beyond figuring out the
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: trajectory and like designing the rocket or the ship that
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: you need to be thinking about.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: So going to Mars is going to be uncomfortable. So
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: let's think about the most uncomfortable anybody's ever been. That's
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: basically the.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Thought, you know, As I said, I hate being cold,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: so yes, hungry and cold. I don't like either of
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: those things. That a lot of people died hungry and
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: cold at the polls.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: So let's hear all about it. But before we do,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: I went out there and I asked folks if they
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: thought that we could learn something about what life would
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: be like on Mars without actually going there. So before
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: you hear these answers, think for yourself. What do you
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: think we can learn about life on Mars from uncomfortable
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: experiences on Earth. Here's what folks around U see Irvine
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: had to say.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: We'd probably learned some helpful tips and tricks.
• 10:32
  Speaker 7: But I think just the scale of how much more
• 10:35
  Speaker 7: difficult it would be to get to Mars makes things
• 10:37
  Speaker 7: a lot harder.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: Even if it might be useful, it is only useful.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: The first team of evolutions.
• 10:44
  Speaker 6: I think that's the best chance we have to prepare
• 10:47
  Speaker 6: for something is extreme as Mars.
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: They're isolated for six months without any real way to resupply,
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: you know, or get them out. So I remember there
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: was like several instances where they got ill and then
• 11:03
  Speaker 5: they had to learn how to from training and from
• 11:06
  Speaker 5: remote how to take care of the illness.
• 11:09
  Speaker 6: For example, the difficulty to getting into the South Pole
• 11:12
  Speaker 6: is similar to the difficulty of getting to Mars, at
• 11:14
  Speaker 6: least on a local level, right like gif to go
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: to Argentina first, then the weather has to be completely
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: perfect to get to the South Pole. Sometimes that takes
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: several months for to be good. And so I think
• 11:24
  Speaker 6: that would prepare the travelers going to Mars mentally, like
• 11:28
  Speaker 6: that uncertainty of all right, we have this time window.
• 11:31
  Speaker 6: If we miss it, we're going to have to wait
• 11:32
  Speaker 6: another amount of time, but you're still going to be
• 11:34
  Speaker 6: You're going to still have to be just as prepared
• 11:37
  Speaker 6: as you would have then before.
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: It's probably a good way to train, right just like
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: send people some cold, remote place and say, okay, live
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: by yourself for a year and see how that goes.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: See if you like the misery?
• 11:49
  Speaker 6: Yeah no, no, Once traveling to Mars is its own thing,
• 11:55
  Speaker 6: it's a lot easier to travel to the pole.
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: For me, I don't have a very gietic I.
• 12:00
  Speaker 7: Feel like it would be totally diffferent.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: I think it does because there's hospitable environments.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: You learn how to manage those, so it's a stepping stone.
• 12:09
  Speaker 7: Oh, there's huge parallels. That's why Antarctic stations are treated
• 12:14
  Speaker 7: as a space analog, especially the one that the Australians run,
• 12:18
  Speaker 7: where they have ten people overwintering with no contact from
• 12:22
  Speaker 7: the outside world for eight months in the year, and
• 12:25
  Speaker 7: we see really interesting changes in immune system because you're
• 12:28
  Speaker 7: not exposed to new introductions of microbes through that time.
• 12:33
  Speaker 7: And there's social aspects as well, how you get people
• 12:36
  Speaker 7: to keep their dynamic moving in a good way when
• 12:39
  Speaker 7: they're so isolated.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: It was interesting to me the variability and answers where
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: some folks were like, yes, absolutely, there's stuff to learn,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: and others were like, no, it's two different I could
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: see both sides, and I do think that there's like
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: a narrow window of Martian exploration where we can learn
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: something from polar expeditions, and we're going to try to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: folks on that narrow window today.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: But what did you think of the responses?
• 13:03
  Speaker 6: Oh?
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I thought they were great. That last one is from
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: my wife Katrina, and she touched on the social aspect,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: which was really fascinating because I know that she studies
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: how folks microbes are similar when they lived together in
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: the Australian Antarctic Station, and in order to study that,
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: she had to have access to like how many times
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: the Australians, how do you say, transmit fluids among each other?
• 13:27
  Speaker 7: Uh huh?
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: And it turns out ten people overwintering and the Australian station,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of fluid transmission.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: We read a lot of stories about what happens at
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: those stations, and that comports with what we had read.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's a very exciting place down there.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Lots of different potential matchups and basically all of them happened.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Not much else to do when you're down there, so
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, exactly, So wait to pass the time.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's a preview for what life will be like
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: on Mars.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, could be. It is a universal way to spend time.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: So maybe outdoor husbands occasionally are indoor husbands in a
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: different way.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And then they get bored and they need to do
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: indoor things, yes, exact with other indoor people. If you'd
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: like to weigh in for our next episode, feel free
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: to send us an email at questions at Danielankelly dot org.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: We'll send you the question and you can send us
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: an audio file with your answer, and then you can
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: hear your voice on our podcast.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: And everybody can hear your thoughts on the question of
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: the day.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: M all right, so let's get started. So I picked
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: two expeditions for us to talk about today that I
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: felt like illuminated some pretty important social things.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: That you'd want to think about.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: I also specifically picked missions that most people hadn't heard
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: about already. So these aren't like the first person to
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: make it to the North Pole the first person to
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: make it to the South Pole, because if you know
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: about polar expeditions, those are the things you're most likely
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: to know about that are shackleton and so these are
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: research expeditions.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Which you know.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I'd like to think that people care more about research,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: but they sometimes don't. So our first expedition is led
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: by Adolphus Greeley. Interestingly, he was in the Civil War
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: and he got shot in the jaw. Maybe interesting was
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the wrong word for that, but he got knocked out,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: he fell over, and then he got shot again, but
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: he survived, and he wore a beard for the rest
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: of his life. And he was on the correct side
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: of the Civil War. I'll say, but he went through
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: some intense stuff and then he got put in charge
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: of this expedition that left in eighteen eighty one.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: So already this guy's a survivor. He experiences terrible pain
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: and tragedy and just moves on.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, yep, he's intense. He's a survivor.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: And I'll note that the story today is from a
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: book called Labyrinth of Ice by Buddy Levy, and it's
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: a great book.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: I recommend it.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Well, if I'm choosing somebody to head up my expedition
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: to the polls that I'm funding, I definitely want somebody
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: who's been through some suffering. So I want to see
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: that on the CV Experience Suffering.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: I want to see that too.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: But I think by the end of this story, maybe
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: we'll both agree that Greeley isn't your guy in particular.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: He lives and that's great, But the rest of his crew.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: So what was the goal of this mission? You said,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: as a research mission? What were they trying to learn?
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: So one, they were setting up a research station, and
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the goal was just to collect a bunch of environmental
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: data like temperature, barometric pressure or stuff like that. They
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: also were supposed to go look for the DeLong Expedition,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: which was another expedition sent to the Arctic, but they
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: were DeLong gone, and oh, I'm so sorry. Maybe they
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: actually weren't all dead yet at that point, but really
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: didn't look too hard for them to be honest.
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: Mmm.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: I feel like that's the set of for so many tragedies, like, hey,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: we sent these people to this dangerous place, they didn't
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: come back, so now we're sending you to go figure
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: out what happened. Like I'm pretty sure I know what happened.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: The ideas don't send more people there, but anyway, you know,
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: mission too get sent.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: The survivors of the Greeley Expedition did get saved by
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: a crew that went in to save them, so sometimes
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it works. But yes, I think a lot of the
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: time you're just like throwing more dead bodies on the pile.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's a little cold, but it's cold out there,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: cold out there, So any puns I'm going to have
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: for today, it's going to be great.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: But you were saying also that the point of this
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: mission was just to get like barometric and environmental data,
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: like we didn't know yet how cold it was at
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: the polls and what the pressure was and what the
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: weather was like there. That was still new to us.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: It wasn't totally new. So most of the folks who
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: had gone to the polls were trying to reach farthest
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: north and so it was like a race to get
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: there and then to come back. And it wasn't like
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: systematic data collection. So his goal was to set up
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: a research station and collect data in the same place
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: over a long period of time, to get like some
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: really nice solid baseline, not just like collecting random data
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: points wherever you happen to be on a trip to
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: try to make it to a place quickly.
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: All right, So how did this mission go? Was it
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: fun from the beginning or did tragedy strike on day one?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: It was pretty good initially.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: So, like they got there and they set up the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: research station, they were collecting data pretty well. One of
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: the secret goals really had that he wasn't really supposed
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: to be going for was to try to get as
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: far north as anyone had ever gotten before, or just
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to kind of like tie up that record. And they
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: did that, all right, I mean the record was eventually beat,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: but like he was feeling pretty good about that. They
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: were getting their data. Things were going okay. But at
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the end of year one they hit their first major snag.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: There were a couple like social problems before then, but
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: at year one, the first resupply ship that was supposed
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: to bring them supplies to like get them through to
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the next couple of years left too late in the season.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: What how does that happen? They just like woke up
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: late and didn't make.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: It or I mean, this was a government expedition, and
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: so I think they were like government hold ups and
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know one thing or another. And then temperature
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: is different between years, and they just thought they'd be okay,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: but they weren't, and so by the time they got there,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: they hit a wall of ice and they were like, oh, well,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: we can't get there.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: I mean, if I send people to a very unpleasant
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: place and they're relying on my resupply, then I'm sending
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: that resupply like a little early, yeah, just to make sure.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: So like this is kind of shocking.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it is shocking.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: And really's wife was mortified and very angry. So there
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: was a like letter writing campaign and the people in
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: charge were like, Okay, next year, we promise we'll send
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it sooner.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Next year, Like can they make it without this resupply ship?
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Is this just like extra biscuits and coffee or is
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: it like essential supplies?
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: So they did plan ahead knowing that it's possible that
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the mission wasn't going to get through, and so they
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: had enough food to get them through a year if
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the resupply mission didn't make it through. But they knew
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: that by year two, if they didn't get a resupply mission,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: they were going to need to abandon the station and
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: like high tail it out for an area where they
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: were more likely to get rescued and maybe there'd be
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: some resupplies along the way where boats would have left. Like,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: this is as close as we could get, So we
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: dumped the food here with like a flag. The plan
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: was like, if you don't get resplies for two years,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: then you need to go out and try to get help.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: And were there any resources there? I mean, is it
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: just completely barren where they were or could they like
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: hunt polar bears?
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were hunting.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: They were hunting wolves and foxes, and on this mission
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: they didn't to eat their dogs, which is nice because
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I don't think they wanted to do that, so they
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: were able to do some hunting, which was also nice
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: for like getting out and mental health and stuff like that.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: So they were able to resupply themselves a little bit.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: But the big problem came in year two where they
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: sent out two boats and for a variety of reasons,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: like one hadn't been retrofitted soon enough, because you need
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: really strong boats because you're gonna have to sometimes like
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: crush through the ice to try to get forward if
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: you think the ice is thin enough, and so for
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: like a variety of fumbles, they kind of left laid again,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: oh man, and one boat was like I'm going forward anyway,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: and then that one got stuck in the ice and
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: sank to the bottom of the sea with a lot
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: of the food.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: Oh.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Grieley's wife must appended a really grumpy letter after that. Huh.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: She was not so happy about the way this was
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: all working out. It's so sad reading about it, you know,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Like they were standing on a hill looking hoping to
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: see the ship, because there was a period where it
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: looked like things were opening up and the ship could
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: have gotten through, but like the food never came.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Why don't they resupply in the summer. This is crazy.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: Why wait for the ice to be forming so you
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: have to race against the ice.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: They were trying to like leave in the summer, but
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: it's a long journey at a time where a boat
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: rides are slow, and they got out later than they
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: had planned on in both instances, and so even though
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: they should have left earlier, by the time they left,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: it was too late and it just didn't work out.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: So is this resupply boat still like on the bottom
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: of the ocean or did somebody eventually find it and
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: pull it up.
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So it was the Polaris, and it's not one of
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the more famous ships to have gone to the Arctic,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and so I don't know if anyone's bothered to pull
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: it up, so it might still be there, I'm not sure.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: It's amazing to me how hard it is to bring
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: up a shipwreck, which means that like the Earth is
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: covered in shipwrecks, many of which maybe nobody can get
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: to or nobody ever will, which contained like vast riches
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: and archaeological and sociological stuff that would be super revealing
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: about the time. It's fascinating how close it is and
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: yet how inaccessible some of this stuff is yeah, but.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Like it totally makes sense to me.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Like when I wear a wet suit and I'm like
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: in the water and I go to stand up, if
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the wetsuit is open a little bit and some water
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: gets in there, like it's much harder.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Like water is really heavy when it gets inside stuff.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It makes sense to me that it would be hard
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to lift a boat out if it's stuck, and then
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: it's got all that water and the boat is heavy
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: on its own, And so I think you'd rather just
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: get the gold and leave the boat if.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: You can, or the coffee or whatever's down there.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, definitely, you don't want to lose the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: coffeeld though now it's maybe a little salty, little less good,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: all right.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: So Greeley goes out there. They try to resupply him twice,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: fail twice. What does he do. Does he decide he's
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: going to live off polar bears forever or does he
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: head home?
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: So there's a disagreement in the crew. Some of the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: crew think, like, look, we can make this polar bear
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: thing work. Let's just stay here for another year. But
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Greeley is a rule follower in the army, and so
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: he's like, no, we said that if the resupply didn't
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: come in two years, we were gonna leave and like
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: meet everybody at this spot. And so he followed the rules,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and there were twenty five men that set out, and
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: they were able to get like a I think it's
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: called a cash where like some food got left for
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: them and they found some of it. But in the end,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: out of the twenty five that set out, only seven
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: of them survived and the rest of them died from
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: starvation and exposure.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: So it was bad.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I've messed up research projects before, but nobody
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: ever died because I was too late to file a
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: report or run some calculation or something.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: This is why I decided to not be an er surgeon,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: because I thought, you know, like there's gonna be a
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: day where something goes wrong and someone dies and maybe
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: you could have done something about it. And I don't
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: know that I can handle that. Like major props to
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the people who do. We obviously need those jobs, but
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: I was like, I don't think I want that on
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: my shoulders, and really had a lot of deaths on
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: his shoulders.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: I feel the same way you do. I couldn't handle
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: this sort of mental load of knowing that my decisions
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: caused somebody to die, even if there are also days
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: where like, I've saved somebody's life. That's one reason why
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: I ended up in particle physics, because I felt like
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: there's no chance anything I do is ever going to
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: impact humanity really in any way, not even like being
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: able to develop new weapons, you know, like my parents
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: were in the weapons program, and obviously there are big
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: moral consequences there because they're developing literal weapons of mass
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: destruction pointed at civilian populations. And so I decided to
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: be totally irrelevant. But then later when I grew up,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: I thought, hm, it's kind of weird. Other friends I
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: have have actually useful skills that can help people and
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: save lives and whatever. I thought that might be nice,
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: but it does protect you against the days where oops,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: I didn't get enough coffee and I actually cut off
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: the wrong thing.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I made a lot of the same calculations, and
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I'm totally happy where I am. I'm totally happy being
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: mostly irrelevant but sometimes amusing.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: That's fine with me. I hope I make some people
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: chuckle sometimes and nobody.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: Die, that's right. Anyway, these aren't the lessons of Daniel
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: and Kelly's career choices. We're trying to learn from Greeley's expeditions.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: So a lot of people died, very few made it back,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: and largely because they weren't resupplied.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Is that right, Yeah, So there's two lessons to get
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: from this, and the first lesson is all about resupply.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: So just like a to Mars, there's like windows of
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: time where resupply ships can leave and things go wrong,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: so you need to be self sufficient. So you know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: you could imagine with SpaceX if that window that opens
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: up once every two years to send a resupply mission,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: you can imagine things going wrong and making it so
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that resupply doesn't show up. For example, maybe China attacks
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Taiwan and the special computer chips that are made in
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Taiwan can no longer be purchased, and maybe that's a
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: problem for SpaceX. Or maybe SpaceX goes bankrupt and they're
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the only ones with the technology to get a resupply
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: ship to Mars right now, or a musk decides to
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: invest all of his money in X and you're just
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: left there.
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: But let's back up a second and think about why
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: you need a resupply. I mean, the polar analog is
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: interesting because those guys needed a resupply even though they
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: could hunt locally. Right now, clearly on Mars there are
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: not polar bears. We're not aware of any large mammals
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: you can eat. But technology is also improved. Is it
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: absolutely clear that a Martian mission will need to be resupplied?
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Is it possible to just send a bunch of people
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: there and have them be self sufficient from the get go.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that is a great question and maybe something
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: you should try to plan for, especially if your goal
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: is to have like a settlement, or you could just
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: pack two extra years worth of freeze dried foods and
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: plan ahead of time for them and not expire.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Polar bear jerky. I bet that's pretty good.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, delicious. I mean, I think you'd need a
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: lot of space to do essentially subsistence farming for four
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: people and survive just on that. So that would be
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: a pretty massive undertaking. But you know, maybe you want
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: to try to pack enough to buy yourself time for
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: that next open window, or pack cyanide pills.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Got dark?
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: I thought first you were going to go into the
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: like maybe you should bring spices that would help you
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: when you need to, you know, draw straws and decide
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: who's going to be dinner and who's going to be
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: at dinner.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: I was reading this book by Eric Seahouse that was
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: all about like lessons you can learn from polar expeditions,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: and I was really surprised at how little he talked
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: about behavioral things that you could learn. But he brought
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: up cannibalism like a bunch of times. And in this
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: book he kept being like, in this generation, they're all
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: a bunch of whims. And he had a whole section
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: where he talks about how like, okay, say you do
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: run out of food and you look across the table
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: and you're like, there's food.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who goes first?
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And he was like, well, the biggest one should go
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: first because they require the most calories and can provide
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the most calories, which made me wonder if he's kind
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of like a short guy, and he's like and there's
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: a bit of a bias there, but you know, the
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: math checks out. But then he went and he talked
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: about how you could like three D print the stuff
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: that you'd need to like.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Butcher a body, and I was.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Like, I would not invite Eric's seathouse on my knision,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: like he is not coming with me.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: Well, it seems like there are nuances there also, like
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: do you need to eat a whole person? Can't you
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: just be like, hey man, you don't need both of
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: those legs, or you know, let's cut a hunk out
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: of that buttock or something. Right, there are ways somebody
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: could survive and still provide you food.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Sure, those would be some very difficult conversations.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: So did Greeley do any of that? Do you think
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: there's any cannibalism? I mean people died, right, and other
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: people were starving where they tempted to, like, you know,
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: cook up their mates and have them for a snack.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: So this is a pretty big controversy actually, and we're
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: going to return to it after.
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: The break, all right.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I know everybody's dying to know about cannibalism on the
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: Greeley expedition. So the answer is, we really don't know.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: It sounds like really genuinely was not aware of it happening.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: But all of the bodies of his crew were brought
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: back to the US and some doctors thought that there
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: were signs on some of the bones that could have
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: been indicative of flesh being cut away to be eaten,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and so there were some grumblings about possible cannibalism. But
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: it's thought that even if the evidence was pretty good,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: the government tried to cover it up because they wanted
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: this to be an uplifting story about how it seven
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: people got saved, not a story about cannibalism in an
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: army expedition.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: So it's unclear an uplifting story about how we failed
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: to resupply twenty five people and most of them died.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: What's been that just slighting scale. I guess some of
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: them made it back. I think they were really clinging
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: to the silver lining, all.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: Right, So then, what wo do you say is the
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: lesson we learn from the polar chips about how to
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: resupply stuff on Mars, make it self sufficient, building lots
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: of buffer. What can we do other than thinking, wow,
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: you got to be brave to go on one of
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: these missions.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: You know it's going to be really hard to pack
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: enough resupply to get a crew through an extra two years,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and that would be extremely expensive to do. But I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: think you really need to think through how do we
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: make sure the resupply gets there. Can we give them
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: enough extra supplies where it would be okay if we
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: missed one launch window? What would that look like? Could
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: we have like a backup plan where maybe the next
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: mission won't be crude, but we have like duplicate rock
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: gets that just send food that we can dump somewhere
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: on the Martian surface. You got a plan for things
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: going wrong, and it's going to be even more complicated
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: for a mission to Mars.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like we should pack some cyanide pills.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: You know, it might not be a bad idea.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: Put that on the indoor husband's to do list, all right?
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: So what other kinds of lessons can we learn from
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: polar expeditions other than just like, resupply is crucial and
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: it's really hard.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: So Greeley had a big problem on his expedition, which
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: is that he had at least three crew members who
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: were just not listening, not behaving, and he had no
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: ability to punish them.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: So his engineer, of which he.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Brought one was an alcoholic, and when it was time
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: for them to leave the research station to try to
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: like go get help, he kept drinking the fuel alcohol
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: would and they needed that for their ships and to
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: cook their food, and at one point he's drunk it
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: he grounds the boat and Greeley is like, I'm gonna
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: shoot you, but then he realizes, like I can't because
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I have one engineer and I need this guy, and
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: he didn't have a backup plan, so he like made
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: a note in a notebook like we're gonna talk about
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: this with the government when we get home, and like
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the guy just kept doing it, he kept stealing the
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: fuel alcohol. He ended up being one of the first
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to die, which kind of solved that problem sort of
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: in the harsh you know, math of the Arctic, but.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: It doesn't solve the we still need an engineer problem, right.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: No, that's true, but at that point a couple other
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: people had learned those skills, which is something they should
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: have done before they left. So like less than one
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: duplicate skills, you need to have like multiple people who
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: know how to do the same job because you never
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: know what's gonna happen. And so he had a similar
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: skill problem with the doctor, who around year two was like,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: you know what, I don't want to do this anymore
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: and really was like, dude, we wouldn't have hired you
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: if you were going to quit halfway through, you have
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: to keep going. And he's like, I'm gonna arrest you
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: if you don't. And the guy's like, how can you
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: arrest me? We're in the middle of nowhere, and really
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: was like, no, I can't, and he like he didn't
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: provide any details.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: What was this guy's plan. He's like, I'm with you
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: on this mission, but I'm gonna stop being a doctor,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: or I'm just like gonna walk home myself. Like the
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: guy's kind of stuck, isn't he.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: That is what I would have thought if I was
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: in that position. But I think he was just like
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: I just want to chill, I want less work. You
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: still have to take care of me. But also he
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: was involved in like some mutinous conversations. There was like
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: somebody else he wanted to take control because they thought
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: really wasn't doing a great job, and so the doctor
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: was offering to diagnose Greeley as being like mentally unstable
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: so that somebody else could take over. And really got
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: word that this sort of mutinous talk was happening, but
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: he didn't do anything because he didn't have a lot
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: of options. Oh man, And then the worst thing the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: doctor did. In my mind, there was one guy who
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: was like really sick, he had gotten frostbite, and the
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: doctor was like, look, I know we're all on rations,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: we're all starving to death, but this guy, if he's
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: gonna make it, he needs extra food. So can we
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: please give this guy extra food? And everybody's like, yes,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: we want to save this guy, Let's give him some
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: extra food. And then Greeley saw the doctor eating the
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: extra food that was meant to be for.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: The other pagion. I know he's such a jerk.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: He doesn't make it either, but there's nothing that he
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: could do.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And then the last guy, and this is why cru
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: selection is important, turned out that this guy had been
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: in jail for forging a check and then when he
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: got out in jail, he killed a man and then
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: he changed his name.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: And he made it on the Greeley expedition. So not
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: a great guy.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: And as they're all starting, I think needs a better
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: vetting system, like, you know, weed these people out before
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: you take them on the mission, right, well.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: And so NASA has like a very stringent system for
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: how they pick people who get to go to space,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: and so what makes me nervous is that when we
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: start to open it up to like muscle, say, well,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: anyone who can afford to go? Who are the people
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: who are trying to escape earth? Like, no doubt there's
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of like dreamers and researchers and big thinkers,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: but maybe there's also people who are just like trying
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: to escape the law. So you're gonna have to be
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: careful with who goes. But this guy's stealing their food
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: while everyone's starving to death, and he at one point
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: gets caught because he snuck in ate some raw bacon,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: and then everybody was like, where'd.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: The bacon go?
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: And eating raw bacon had upset this guy's stomach, so
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: he threw it up and they were like, oh, there's
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the bacon, and so then he couldn't like pretend he
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: hadn't stolen it.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I wait, I have a gross question. Are they so
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: hungry that like vomited up raw bacon is still something
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: you might consider like cooking up.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: They had eaten fungus cover dog treats. At one point,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: when they'd shoot an animal, they would start like licking
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the blood, like and they were eating moss.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: They'd like boiling their shoes to make tea and stuff. Right,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: these folks are desperate, so at some point even vomited
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: up bacon might be quite a delicacy.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: They are eating the leather in their clothes by the end. Yeah,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: So the book did not specifically talk about the fate
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: of the regurgitated bacon. It wouldn't surprise me if it
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: had been distanmed, because when you're dying elite like anything,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: which I think is something we've talked about before, we
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: have themes.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Imagine going to a restaurants seeing this stuff the menu,
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: like shoe tea or fungus covered dog treats or once
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: vomited bacon. It's amazing what people will eat though, when
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: they got.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: To survive, right, Yeah, yeah, the drive to live is
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: pretty incredible.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: But this is mostly a lesson about picking your crew
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: and what you can do when you're out there. I mean,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: this guy's the captain of the ship. Doesn't he basically
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: have complete authority that can't he excute people if he
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: has to in order for the mission to succeed.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: So, yes, he has that power, but he was a
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: little concerned that if he exercised that power would reflect
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: poorly on the mission. So he held back for a
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: long time, but this guy who was stealing the food,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: he was getting stronger while everybody was getting weaker because
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: they weren't eating, but this guy was eating more. So
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: eventually g really was like, all right, we're gonna have
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: to shoot this guy. And he couldn't do it because
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: he was too weak to get up. So he told
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: two other guys like, you've got to go shoot I
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: think the guy who's the last name was Henry, and
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: they did, and so eventually justice in a way was served.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: What are the lessons here? So one, you need job redundancy,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: because this got really in a hole a bunch of times.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: There were a lot of times where he clearly should
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: have punished someone or locked them up, but he's like
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: he needed their skills.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: So you're saying we need like two engineers and two
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: doctors and two cooks or whatever.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Or you at least need skill redundancy, where like maybe
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: your doctor also knows the main tasks of the engineer,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: and the engineer knows a lot of what the navigator
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: needs to do, and so you know, I mean, I
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: feel like in an ideal world, you'd be able to
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: bring like a couple of all of these people, but
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: probably are just going to need to have redundancy and
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: skills within the crew.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: So everybody's got to be a doctor slash cook slash engineer.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Which requires a lot of prior planning, and I think
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: NASA does do that kind of like cross training ahead
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: of time. But you know, it would be good if
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Musk also had that kind of stuff on his mind. Also,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: there was no jail cell, which kind of limited his
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: options for what he could do. But he also couldn't
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: afford to lock up members of the crew all out
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: of the time, Like if he locked up the engineer,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: then he still can't use the engineer's skills.
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: Wait, but help me imagine where they are. I mean,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: they're on a polar expedition. Are they sleeping in tents?
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: And they built some sort of temporary structure. I realized
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: now I don't have like a mental image of where
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: these folks are living.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: So initially they were living in a research station where
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: they probably could have like walled off part of it
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: to make a jail cell.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: To research station is like a building. Somebody built a
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: building out there.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Yep, yep.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: They brought building supplies and they put it together. And
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: it was a nice station. Actually, in a future expedition,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: I think it was Perry who stopped by and credited
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: his survival with being able to like hang out in
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: this station that had been so well built that like
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: years later he could still go there to warm up.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Indoors aren't nice places, yes, yeah, pro indoors, all right,
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: So they had indoors on this research station. That's great.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my indoor husband would love that.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: So if you could get him out there, that's right.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: But you know, then at some point they are living
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: in a tent and so a jail cell would have
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: been difficult, but a plan would have been helpful. He
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: should have been able to see that this was a
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: possibility that would come up that they wouldn't be able
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: to like put someone in a jail cell and have
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: a way to deal with it instead of making a
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: note that like, oh, I'm gonna tell the government that
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: you engage in mutiny when we get home.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: But for right now, we've got nothing.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: And so you know, on early naval expeditions, flogging is
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: something that they would do. It was like a quick
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: thing where you like really hurt someone enough that they
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: don't want to do the thing again. But then they
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: can go right back to work and you don't need
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: to like confine them in a certain area. And I'm
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: not saying that I am pro corporal punishment. I'm giving
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: the history of punishment options, but like, whatever they decide
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: to do, they needed to have a clearer plan and
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: really needed to feel like he was empowered to carry
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: through on those plans, and it just seemed like that
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: did not happen for this mission.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting that people would act this way on
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: this mission because it feels like sort of counter to
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: their own interests. I mean, everybody's got to pull their
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: weight for this whole mission to succeed, and this mission
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: has to succeed for be able to survive, So it
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: feels like that would provide a lot of pressure for
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: people to toe the line and be part of the
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: team and stuff. That's amazing to me that even under
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: those conditions, some folks are like stealing the bacon and
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: deciding to not do their job anymore.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: There was a ton of variability actually, so you know,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: there's the guy who's stealing the bacon, but there were
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: also members of the crew where like somebody was dying
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: because they were starving, and they'd take some of their
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: food and they would feed the other person, try to
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: like help them, and like there were literally stories about
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: them like cradling each other's heads and trying to like
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: spoon feed them because they were too weak to eat.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: So, like there was.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: A lot of compassion and a lot of examples of
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: people being willing to like risk their lives to help
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: other crew members. But then there's the guy who's stealing
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: the bacon. And so I think you've got to be
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: careful about who you send up there, and then you
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: need to have a system for making sure that the
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: people who don't behave the way you want them to,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: there's some way to keep them from doing that again.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: So Greeley is one example, and he seems like a
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: little bit of a week leader, Like he had some
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: of these tools and he didn't use them, and maybe
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: that would have helped him keep his crew in line.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: Is that a general thing in these polar trips and
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: in these crazy expeditions and on you know, long voyages,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: that the CA is not really feeling like they have
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: these tools of their disposal because it'll ruin morale or whatever.
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: It's really unusual or this is a common theme.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: The next story we're going to talk about is another
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: case where a leader had a little bit of trouble
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: maintaining order for a different reason. So it's not like
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: this is the only story of a leader who has
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: sort of trouble with maintaining order, But there were some
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: who were definitely more successful. So earned Shackleton, for example,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: when his boat, the Endurance, sunk first, he did a
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: really great job of managing the personalities. So there were
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: like three or so guys who are just like super
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: annoying and super negative, and Shackleton was like, you guys
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: are sleeping in my tent. And he just made sure
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: that like their negative attitude didn't like seep over into
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: the other crew members.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: And he was more willing to threaten people.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: So, for example, there's this story where there was a
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: stowaway on the Endurance and they discovered it after they
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: had left. It was too late to return the guy
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: who had stowed away, and so Shackleton said to him, Okay,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: but if anything goes wrong, you're the first one we're
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: gonna eat. And I think threatening ca anibalism is probably
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: a pretty good way to keep people in line. And
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: he also was better about reminding people about the documents
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: they had signed ahead of time where they promised to
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: follow the rules, and he was just a bit more assertive.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: All right, So then what's the takeaway. You're planning a
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: mission to Mars. You're keeping Greeley's experience in mind. You
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: have your own experience as a parent flogging your children
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: when they get out of line, you know, or at
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: least holding that possibility over there.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: I've never hit my kids, but I think the point
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: is you need to have a plan that you are
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: willing to execute and that everybody knows could have been
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: ahead of time. And that might not solve all of
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the problems, but at least then you've got some path
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: forward and some legitimacy.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: And you have some credibility that the negative outcomes are
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: going to keep people in love. Ye yeah, you hope,
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: you hope. So, yeah, that's a real challenge, you know,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: being a leader of a mission like that, you know,
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: really being willing to follow through on those threats because
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: otherwise they're empty and then you have no power.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so you need to be careful about picking the crew,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: but you also need to be careful about picking the
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: leader because you could argue that if Greely had been
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit more assertive and had a little clearer plan,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: maybe some people could have lived longer, and maybe they
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: would have made it to the resupply ship. If Henry
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: hadn't been stealing food for so long, if the cook
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: hadn't been drinking the fuel alcohol that they needed, you know,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: to keep warm and stuff like that.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: You need a leader who's willing to follow through on
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: this stuff.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, I know, as apparent, you don't make threats
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: you're not willing to follow through on because sometimes you
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: have to. And if you're like, finish your dinner and
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: nobody's going to go into that movie and you're like,
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: oh man, I kind of wanted to go to that movie.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: You got to be willing to do it.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: You know, those moments suck.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I hate those moments where I'm like, oh no, I
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: don't get to do what I want to do because
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: I'm punishing you. Or the moments where you know your
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: kid really wants to do something and you want to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: let them do it, but you're like, yeah, you kept pushing.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: I remember once my daughter like I told her, you
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: do that again. Blah blah Blah's gonna happen. And she
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: looked me in the eye and she said the thing again,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and I was like, I have conflicted feelings. On the
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: one hand, Wow, that took some hutzba. I'm proud of
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: you for like being tough. But on the other hand,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: go to your room. You're not going to the campout
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, interesting watching them grow, right, stuff out.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: It's a wonderful challenge everyone. Yes, all right, So what
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: else do we learn from the polar expeditions. We talked
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: about resupply, we talked about punishment and management. What else
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: do we need to worry about on our Martian mission
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: that we can learn about from our polar experiences.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Well, we're going to take a break and then we're
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: going to talk about how psychology can be a problem
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: on polar missions.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: All right, we're back.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: So the last example for today is the Moss and Expedition.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: And this is a guy from Australia who went down
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: to Antarctica around nineteen eleven to collect a bunch of
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: scientific information about Antarctica. So this is another like, it's
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: not a race to the pole, it's just going out
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: there to try to collect data about this difficult environment
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: and he had a really hard time. Like he went
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: out with these other two guys. One of the guys
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: fell through a crack in the ice and they just
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: never saw him again because he fell down through the
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: ice so far with like a bunch of their resupply stuff,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: and so now they like didn't have a lot of food,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and they were racing back as fast as they could,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: and one of the guys just kind of died from
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: hunger and exposure. Mawson, who's, you know, the leader of
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: this expedition, He's trying to race back in time, but
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: he like falls down another one of those like cracks
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: in the ice, but he manages to pull himself up,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: and when he gets back, he looks out and there's
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: the boat sailing away for the season.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: He had just missed it.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: Oh no, I know.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Like so you'd think that he'd be the one who
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: would have a mental break, But it turns out they
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the crew hadn't given up on him. So they left
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: some men behind to watch out to see if Mawson
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and the rest of the guys on his expedition got
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: back there. And they had resupplied enough to get them
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: over the winter. And so they've got this chance right,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: and the boat's gonna come back. And so Mawson's there
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: with some other guys, and one of the guys there
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: was a twenty nine year old names need Jeffries, and
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: he was the only guy there who knew how to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: use the wireless telegraphy system, so he was the only
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: one who could communicate with the outside world. And Jeffries
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: started to have a mental break. He starts trying to
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: start fights with people. He's like, I could tell you're
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: trying to be a jerk. Let's go to the other
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: room and fight. And the other guy's like, I don't
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: know what you're talking about. Man, I'm reading a book
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: and he's just like trying to chill. And then at
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: one point Jeffries is challenging other people to duels and
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: so they have to lock up all of the weapons.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: At one point, he's telling Mawson about a disease he
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: had of the type that we usually don't talk about
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: in polite conversation.
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: Does it come from fluid transmission?
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: It does come from fluid transmission. Yes, that's right to theme.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Yes, be careful of those indoor husbands, some of them
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: are diseased.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, probably some of the indoor wives too.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: You just you know, you gotta watch out. So Mawson
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: goes to talk to the doctor and is like, okay,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: so you know, Jeffries has that disease, and the doctor's like, no,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: that's a hallucination. Nothing is wrong with him in that regard.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: There was no dirty indoor wives causing any problems. And
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: then Jeffries also starts storing his urine because he thinks
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: there's some like medical reason he should be doing that.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: He also stops bathing. He's letting his hygiene go, so
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: he smells bad. But perhaps most importantly, he's in control
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: of the communication system, and he starts telling the outside
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: world that actually everybody but him has lost their mind
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: and everybody's trying to kill him, and he won't let
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: anybody else communicate with the outside world. And so what
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: is the lesson here? So this guy, you know, when
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: he gets back to Australia, it turns out he needs
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: to end up an asylum. He spends the rest of
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: his life there. He probably had the onset of something
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: like schizophrenia, which happens often in your early thirties. This
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: guy was twenty nine years old, and so I think
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the lesson here is one, if you take young people
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: with you, there are a fair number of diseases that
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: don't become apparent until you're like in your thirties, and
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: so there's some ants that you're going to be dealing
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: with these problems when you're in this harsh environment. But
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: more importantly, people break sometimes, Like even people who don't
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: have like underlying mental health issues will break under difficult conditions.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: And so you need to have a system, which means
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: you need to, you know, maybe have some therapists with
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: you on the trip, or you need to try to
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: see if you can get some shelf stable medication that
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: you can send with you, Like, you need to have
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: a plan for what happens when things go wrong, because
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: even the humans that seem the most stable when you
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: hire them onto the crew, they're not necessarily going to
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: stay stable the whole time.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: But some people survive this experience without their minds cracking.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: Is it thought that this guy was more susceptible to
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: it he already had these mental issues and this tough
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: experience brought it out, or was he like totally saying
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: and the experience itself just broke him.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I don't think we have great information about what this
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: guy was like before the trip. It could be that
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: this experience broke him. Although he did volunteer to be
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: one of the people who stayed, he must have kind
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: of felt like he had a handle on the situation. So,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: first of all, we read a bunch of astronaut memoirs,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of astronauts lie about their mental health.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: It totally makes sense because if they say I'm feeling anxious,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: maybe they don't get to go on another trip to space, right,
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: so they have every incentive to say that they're fine.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: And so there's plenty of stories. A lot of the
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: stories are medical, like there was a guy who thought
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: he was going to have a heart attack a couple
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: days before he was supposed to go up to space,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: but he lied and went to a doctor covertly and
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: didn't tell anyone else about it because he didn't want
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: anyone to know. And then there's also people who passed
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the tests maybe really were fine, and then break later.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: So for example, Lisa Noak was a NASA astronaut. She
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: went up on the Shuttle, she started dating one of
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: the Shuttle astronauts. He left her for another woman and
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: she tried to kidnap the other woman, and it's not
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: clear what she planned on doing with her after that,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: And so is this the one.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: Who drove cross country wearing astronaut underwear?
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: So she would say that actually she hadn't worn it,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: and that she had twins, and that those diapers were
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: from a prior trip she went on. Then she just
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: forgot to throw them out. But yes, I think that's
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: exactly what happens. She had rubber tubing, and she was
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: arguing like I was using the rubber tubing for exercise,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: like it was a tension thing. And it seems pretty
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: clear that she was planning on trying to kidnap this woman,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: and it's not clear what she was going to do
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: with her after that.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: I think the lesson is, don't date astronauts, or don't
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: date people who have the mental fortitude to go in
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: these missions, because there's clearly something weird about those folks,
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: you know. More power to them, and I'm glad that
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: we have them, and we've learned so much about the
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: polls and we potentially will learn a lot about Mars.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: But I'm not sure those folks need to be in
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: the reproductive pool.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't know.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of people who would say
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: that astronauts are like the best of us. I don't
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of people advocating for pulling them
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: out of the gene pool.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: You might be on your own there.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: It's interesting because if we build a colony, it's going
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: to be populated by those folks, and they're going to
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: be reproducing. And so if it takes a certain kind
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: of person to be willing to go on that mission,
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: then your colony is going to be filled with those
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: folks the same way that like colonies a few hundred
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: years ago required some fortitude and some risk taking. And
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: they're definitely not representative samples of other countries, right sure.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: But then also they'll have kids, and maybe their kids
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: will be more like a representative sample from the country
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: that they came from. And I think, no matter who
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: you send, you need to have a system in place
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: for what happens when someone has a mental health crisis,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: because I just think that it's unavoidable no matter who
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: you pick, that at some point there's going to be
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: a problem with someone, and on the iss they have
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: a system, you're supposed to tie somebody up, put a
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: towel underneath their chin and duct tape their head to
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: something so that they can't move, and then I think
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to offer them like an oral something like
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: a tranquilizer to calm them down, and if they refuse,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: you can also like inject it. And so essentially the
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: plan for the International Space Station is to just immobilize
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: someone until you can get them home, which will only
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: take a couple days. But it gets much more complicated
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: if you're stuck on Mars for two years and you're
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: worried that they're going to try to hurt themselves or
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: hurt somebody else. Usually it's hurt themselves, not hurt somebody else.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: But like having a system in place, like are you
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: just going to trank someone for a year and a half.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: That doesn't seem feasible or good for the person being
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: knocked out for that long.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: No, but it might solve some of your other problems,
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: like hey, this person turns out to be dinner right,
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: they go crazy, or they break the rules like oh,
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: maybe we don't need a resupply.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: You should be going to space. You are apparently comfortable
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: with any of the difficult decisions that need to be made.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure i'd want to be on your crew,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: but I think maybe.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: You should go.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: No, I'm comfortable having a podcast conversation about these difficult decisions,
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: but when rubber hits the road, or you know, ice
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: hits the tent, I think it'd be a lot harder
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: to do than it is to talk about.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: So those are the lessons for today. You know, when
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: you read about these stories, there is a lot of
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: really exciting, inspirational stuff that's going on, people really pushing
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: the limits and people who are just really excited about
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: getting answers, doing like whatever it takes to get those answers.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: But there's also a lot of difficult.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Stuff along the way that if you plan for, hopefully
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: you can avoid or at least minimize the negative impacts of.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: So let's hope that Elon Musk is doing sufficient planning
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: for his first trip to Mars, which is hoping will
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: happen in the next you know, decade or so.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: I think the takeaway from me is that we imagine
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: these expeditions to be voyages or scientific journeys, but these
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: are people, and these expeditions have people on them. And
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: so they have people problems, and people problems come with
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: people and you can't escape them, and so you've got
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: to be prepared for them. You know, people got to
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: go to the bathroom, and people are going to be
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: jealous and mad and go crazy. And you can't pretend
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: that just because you have noble goals that are universal
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: or deep unfundamental, that you're somehow just going to magically
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: avoid those issues. So yeah, you got to be prepared.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Bring your astronaut underwear and bring your astronaut tranquilizer amen.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I think, especially with space, people tend to project utopias
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: and think that everything's going to be great up there.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: But I think humans are going to bring all their
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: problems with us into the heavens and we need to plan,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: all right.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Thanks everyone for taking this voyage into our historical expeditions
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: and what we can learn from history about the problems
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: we'll face in the future when humans we hope one
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: day to start to colonize the Solar System.
• 53:11
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• 53:20
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