Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Could humans live in the clouds of Venus?

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Could humans live in the clouds of Venus? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, am I remembering correctly that your kids are
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: almost in college?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: That's right, they're in high school, so college is just
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: around the corner.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it goes so fast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Do they want to stay close to home or are
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: they needing a little distance from their parents?
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Well, the oldest wants to be far enough away that
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: we can't pop into surprising.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: So how far is that?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Are we talking like a long car drive one stayed
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: over a whole country.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: This is the loophole my wife is relying on because
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: she's willing to travel a long way to just pop
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: in on somebody.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Ah right, So maybe they need to consider like universities
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: in Australia.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering if Elon Musk is going to build a
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: university on Mars, they might be able to attend.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: You know, he's got enough kids to fill the first
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: class of students by himself.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: And if your dad, nowhere in the Solar system, is
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: far enough away.
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: Hi, I'm Daniel.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: and I was definitely ready to leave home when it
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: was time to go to college.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: I'm Kelly Wiener Smith.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I'm adjunct at Rice University, and I also was ready
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: to go when I started college. California was not far
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: enough from Ohio, but I stuck with that.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: And Welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: in which we take your mind to new locations to
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: explore new ideas and think about living in other places,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: where we download the entire workings of the universe into
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: your little brain. My friend and co host Jorge isn't
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: here today, but I'm very glad to be joined by Kelly. Hi, Kelly,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: thanks again for joining us.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, I think that maybe we should change
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the introduction to my friend and co host Toorge isn't
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: available today, but my friend and co host Kelly is.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I want to be upgraded to friend and co host status.
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: You're definitely a friend and a co host, an a
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: fellow scientist, and a colleague, absolutely all those things.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Oh what a great day for me.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: You were in all the prizes.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: And you're also a great person to be talking to
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: about today's topic about casting not just our minds, but
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: maybe our bodies and our lives and our families out
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: of the little envelope of the Earth and into the
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Solar System and maybe even the rest of the universe, and.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Not just the places that you usually think of.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: We're talking about settling places that I think of as
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: maybe some of the worst places in space. But there
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: are people who disagree with me. So the question today
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: is could humans live on Venus?
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: You might be wondering why anybody ever lives anywhere other
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: than the best place on Earth, otherwise known as southern California.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: But for some reason, humans do live in the northern
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: reaches of Norway and the hottest deserts on Earth, and
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: so humans do seem to have this appetite for living
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: in crazy places, maybe even on Venus. So we went
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: out there to ask our audience if they thought it
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: was possible for humans to live on Venus. If you
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: would like to participate in this audience answer segment for
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: future episodes, please don't be shy. Write to me two
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: questions at Danielandthorge dot com and I'll put you on
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: the list. So think about it for a minute before
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: you hear these answers. Do you think humans could live
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: on Venus? Here's what people had to say. It might
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: be possible for us to live on Venus. But obviously
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: we've made protection from the extreme pressure, temperature, radiation, and
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: poisonous gases.
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: I guess in the ice caps in the northern region,
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: but we'd be vaporized before we got there, correct, So
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: yes and no.
• 4:06
  Speaker 6: Well, just today I heard that Venus is a sister
• 4:09
  Speaker 6: planet to planet Earth. So for that reason, I'd say, PEPs.
• 4:14
  Speaker 7: Humans could live on Venus if we could construct a
• 4:23
  Speaker 7: strong enough structure. Oh look, never say never, that's my motto.
• 4:28
  Speaker 8: Okay, So obviously humans could not live on the surface
• 4:32
  Speaker 8: of Venus. We don't know any life that could manage
• 4:34
  Speaker 8: that pressure and temperature. But there's definitely a habitable zone
• 4:38
  Speaker 8: up in the atmosphere kind of best bin like a
• 4:40
  Speaker 8: cloud city style where we kind of have like balloon
• 4:43
  Speaker 8: or other floating habitats, and there's possibility there. Is it
• 4:47
  Speaker 8: worth pursuing. I think everything's worth pursuing. Spend more money
• 4:50
  Speaker 8: on science.
• 4:51
  Speaker 6: There's no way you can live on Venus and be
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: a human unless you have some insanely good air conditioning
• 4:58
  Speaker 6: system because it's hundred degrees there absolutely not for three
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: reasons crushing air pressure, extreme air toxicity, and extreme heat.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Humans could live pretty high up in Venus kind of
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: like the Jetsons, maybe a balloon city or something like
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: that on surface, no, further out, no, but somewhere in
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: the middle of the clouds.
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: So what do you think of these answers, Kelly?
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I think that the listeners who said never say never,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: which was an interesting, you know, repetition in the answers,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: are really going to like the guests that we have
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: on the show today.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: I think there's a wonderful optimism there, you know, the
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: sense that problems that seemed impossible ten years ago or
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: fifty years ago might be solvable now. And the humans
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: are just so ingenious and always coming up with new solutions,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: which means that places that used to be impossible to
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: imagine living might eventually one day be like cozy and comfortable.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Maybe. Who knows.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Humans like to dream big, and on today's show, we've
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: got a pretty big dreamer.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, why do you think humans like to dream big?
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: Kelly?
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: You wrote a whole book on this where you were
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: not exactly you know, in favor of space colonization in
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: the near term. Why do you think it captures the imagination?
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: What are the motivations for everybody casting their ideas and
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: maybe even their families and their descendants out past the
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: comforts of Earth.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: To be honest, I've been asked this question a lot,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and I don't think I will ever have a perfect answer.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: But I think it's because we all think different things
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: are awesome, you know, Like like I have a vodka
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: bottle filled with tapeworms from a road killed porcupine on
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: my desk and I think that's awesome and I like
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: looking at it sometimes. And there are some people who
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: think it would be awesome to move to space, and like,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I can totally get both of those things.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I think humans we find our little niches that we
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: think are awesome and we want to go, and space
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: is particularly inspirational, you know. I think most of us,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: you and I talk on the show all the time
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: about looking up at the stars and all the big
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: thoughts that makes us have and how small it makes
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: us feel. And yeah, I don't think I have a
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: really good answer, but I think just you know, it's
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: kind of awesome, and that's a good enough. He's going
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to do a lot of things as long as it
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't hurt anyone else.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: Well, I think it would be awesome.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: If all the tapeworms on Earth were evicted and sent
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: to space, Daniel, bands are too awesome.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: No, No, I am so glad you don't have any
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: power over these things, Daniel.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: They have to say here where people like me can
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: study them.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: All Right, Well, we have a fun expert to talk
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: to today who knows a lot about what it might
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: be like to live outside of the Earth's comfort zone,
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: out in space and maybe even in the atmosphere of Venus.
• 7:29
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: So, our guest today is Guiermo Sunline. I've had the
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: pleasure of meeting Guermo in person. We've chatted virtually a
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: couple times. He's a really fun guy to talk to.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: He's got big ideas. He was an officer in the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: US Marine Corps. He got an AB in economics from
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: UC Berkeley and a jd from the UC College of
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Law in San Francisco. He's an explorer, an entrepreneur, and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: a philanthropist. And today we're going to talk to him
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: about a space venture studio he's working on called Humans
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: to Venus, where their goal is to get a thousand
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: people living in the Venusian atmosphere by twenty fifty and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of challenges with that goal, but Ghermo's
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: the right person to be working on it, so let's
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: talk to him about why he thinks this is a
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: good plan for humanity.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I'm skeptical, but fascinated. Let's do it same.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: Welcome to the show, Girmo. We're excited to have you here.
• 8:21
  Speaker 6: Hey, thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, me too.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: So you and I have met Irl once and it
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: was a lot of fun, So I'm excited to be
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: chatting with you again about all of your awesome Venus stuff.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: You are the only person I've ever talked to who
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: made me think that maybe Venus isn't quite best bad.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: But we'll get there. Okay.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: So we're talking about settling space, and so first let's
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: talk about why space is so hard to settle. So
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: humans are like super well adapted to life on Earth.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: What are some challenges that space poses to the human body?
• 8:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, geez, where to start with that? I mean you
• 8:57
  Speaker 6: know this from writing your book, right, I mean, first
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: of all, we're adapted to our gravity here on Earth,
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: which I'm sure we'll come back to in a minute
• 9:05
  Speaker 6: here talking about Venus. Then we've got the protection of
• 9:09
  Speaker 6: our atmosphere. So we've got both the breathable air that
• 9:13
  Speaker 6: we take for granted as we take our breaths every day,
• 9:17
  Speaker 6: plus keeping us nice and cozy and warm from the
• 9:20
  Speaker 6: cold of space and at the same time keeping us
• 9:23
  Speaker 6: from getting fried by the sun, which is basically this
• 9:27
  Speaker 6: big star that we're just living very close to. So yeah, geez,
• 9:33
  Speaker 6: where to start. I mean, on top of all that,
• 9:36
  Speaker 6: obviously we have to eat and drink water, which is
• 9:40
  Speaker 6: easy to get relatively speaking, here on Earth, and it
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: gets harder as you leave Earth. So one of the
• 9:47
  Speaker 6: things that I always say is I think people that
• 9:51
  Speaker 6: work in space or work at trying to get humans
• 9:54
  Speaker 6: into space are probably some of the biggest environmentalists and
• 9:59
  Speaker 6: conservation because they have a true appreciation for how important
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: Earth is for the human body and how well, as
• 10:09
  Speaker 6: you said, how well adapted we are to Earth, and
• 10:11
  Speaker 6: how ill adapted we are to basically living anywhere else.
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: So it is our precious, our precious homeworld. We got
• 10:19
  Speaker 6: to take care of it.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: I was surprised at how many people in the space
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: community are environmentalists who are really interested in sustainability, because
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I think that when I, as.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: An ecologist, talk to my friends.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: A lot of them would be like, oh, but the
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: space people, they don't care about Earth. They just want
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: to dump it and leave it behind and go leave
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: somewhere else. But that has not at all been my
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: experience with the community since interacting with you all.
• 10:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think I think that's one of the frustrating things,
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: you know, as you're dealing with the media or the
• 10:47
  Speaker 6: general public, or even friends and family, right they're like,
• 10:50
  Speaker 6: you know, why are you trying to leave Earth? We
• 10:51
  Speaker 6: have so many problems here on Earth. It's like, yeah,
• 10:54
  Speaker 6: I know, but you know, it's also the best way
• 10:57
  Speaker 6: to draw attention to those problems on Earth and help
• 11:00
  Speaker 6: find solutions for them. So at least for some people,
• 11:03
  Speaker 6: it's the best way for you know, for people like
• 11:05
  Speaker 6: me and maybe you, I don't know.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting that you comment that humans
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: are well adapted to Earth but ill adapted anywhere else,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: because one of the things I think about for human
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: adaptation is how amazing it is that we've been able
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: to live in so many different environments, Like what else
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: other than you know, bacteria can adapt to like really
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: cold and really warm and really wet and really dry,
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: and we've built cities basically everywhere on the Earth except
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: maybe Antarctica. Is that just because we're considering a pretty
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: narrow range of habitats compared to like the extraordinary radiation
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: and dryness and wetness and insanity of space.
• 11:40
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's exactly as you were saying that, That's exactly
• 11:43
  Speaker 6: what I was going to say. You know, it is
• 11:44
  Speaker 6: such a narrow band relatively speaking. You know, the temperatures
• 11:50
  Speaker 6: is a big one, right, you mentioned you know, the
• 11:54
  Speaker 6: hottest place on Earth and the coldest place on Earth
• 11:56
  Speaker 6: range wise is nothing compared let's say to the excid
• 12:00
  Speaker 6: or light side of the Moon, or you know, day
• 12:03
  Speaker 6: or night on Mars. And so it is a very
• 12:07
  Speaker 6: narrow range. And again kind of focusing on the core
• 12:12
  Speaker 6: advantage of Venus, all of that is still within one
• 12:15
  Speaker 6: G of gravity. So even if you think about even
• 12:18
  Speaker 6: astronauts in low Earth orbit, they're still experiencing one g
• 12:21
  Speaker 6: of gravity. The reason they float is because they're constantly
• 12:25
  Speaker 6: falling off Earth in response to the one G of gravity.
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: But even that, we're still within one G of gravity.
• 12:30
  Speaker 6: Or even if you think about pressure, atmospheric pressure. As
• 12:35
  Speaker 6: you know, I've done work underwater taking humans underwater in
• 12:38
  Speaker 6: subs and going from the surface of the Earth, let's
• 12:42
  Speaker 6: say at sea level, where you have one atmosphere of
• 12:44
  Speaker 6: atmospheric pressure, and go into space to the vacuum of space,
• 12:48
  Speaker 6: it's a change of only one atmosphere. Going underwater, it's
• 12:52
  Speaker 6: a change of one atmosphere every thirty three feet roughly
• 12:56
  Speaker 6: ten meters going down, because you've got the way to
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: the atmosphere on top of you, plus you have the
• 13:00
  Speaker 6: weight of the water on top of you. But we
• 13:03
  Speaker 6: don't live underwater, and right now, we don't live in
• 13:07
  Speaker 6: the vacuum of space, and so even atmospheric pressure wise,
• 13:11
  Speaker 6: we're really only in a very narrow range from sea
• 13:14
  Speaker 6: level to maybe you know, some high altitude and that's
• 13:16
  Speaker 6: about it.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: So basically Earth is like the southern California of the
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Solar system. You know, we say we have seasiness, but
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: really it's not winter.
• 13:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's always sixty eight in sunny.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: You know, So then why should we ever leave It
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: seems great here?
• 13:33
  Speaker 6: Well, you know, it's funny. I just had that. I've
• 13:36
  Speaker 6: had that discussion several times, and I just had it
• 13:38
  Speaker 6: last week with a couple of students that I'm mentoring.
• 13:42
  Speaker 6: You know about why should we leave? And the short
• 13:44
  Speaker 6: answer I think is we should never leave, right. I mean,
• 13:47
  Speaker 6: if you think about it from a survival standpoint, survival
• 13:50
  Speaker 6: instinct standpoint, if you're somewhere comfortable and it's not dangerous
• 13:54
  Speaker 6: to you, and it's got water and air and food,
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: and you know, why would you ever leave? And the
• 14:00
  Speaker 6: thing is, I kind of look at this like in
• 14:03
  Speaker 6: nature when you look at an ant colony or a
• 14:06
  Speaker 6: bee hive. Right, once the queens have a good location
• 14:10
  Speaker 6: for their hive or their colony, they don't move the colony,
• 14:13
  Speaker 6: they don't move the hive, but they know that at
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: some point those circumstances may change and they may need
• 14:19
  Speaker 6: to move the colony and the hive. And so in
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: both cases they always have a small subset of the
• 14:26
  Speaker 6: colony or hive that is always going out and looking
• 14:29
  Speaker 6: at other places. You know, they're kind of, you know,
• 14:31
  Speaker 6: to use human terms, they're out exploring, you know, they
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: send scouts out in different places and they end up
• 14:37
  Speaker 6: losing a lot of ants and a lot of bees
• 14:39
  Speaker 6: in the process, but some of them make it back
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: and they convey information to the queens, and at some
• 14:45
  Speaker 6: point the queens make a decision that it's time to
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: move the colony or move the hive, and now they've
• 14:50
  Speaker 6: got some information, they and they actually do move them
• 14:53
  Speaker 6: for the survival of the colony or hive. I think,
• 14:57
  Speaker 6: to a certain extent, I think that's kind of what
• 15:00
  Speaker 6: driving a little bit of let's say Elon Musk looking
• 15:02
  Speaker 6: at Mars as a potential second home for humanity, is
• 15:07
  Speaker 6: that at some point we may decide we need to
• 15:10
  Speaker 6: move humanity somewhere, or at least a portion of humanity,
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: and by the time that day comes, it's going to
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: be too late to think about it, like we have
• 15:19
  Speaker 6: to have already, you know, taken some steps in that direction.
• 15:23
  Speaker 6: I think that's I think that's at the core of
• 15:26
  Speaker 6: what's driving someone like Elon to look at taking humanity
• 15:30
  Speaker 6: off planet. But I agree with you. I mean, until
• 15:33
  Speaker 6: something like that happens, like rationally, why would you ever
• 15:35
  Speaker 6: leave Earth?
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Well, so that's why Elon wants to settle space. Why
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: do you want to settle space?
• 15:41
  Speaker 6: This is where it gets a little bit philosophical. But
• 15:44
  Speaker 6: going back to the ant and be analogy, I think genetically, psychologically,
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: I don't know, there's a small subset of Homo sapiens
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: that are wired the same way those scouts are in
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: the in the beehive or in the colony, and I
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: think I'm just wired that way. It's I think that's
• 16:03
  Speaker 6: also why within the explorer community, forget space for a second, right,
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: just the general explorer community. Like if you go to
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: the Explorers Club and talk to anybody there, any of
• 16:13
  Speaker 6: the members there, about the stuff that they're working on,
• 16:15
  Speaker 6: and they go some of the places Daniel was just
• 16:17
  Speaker 6: talking about, you know, the deserts, the polls, you know,
• 16:20
  Speaker 6: high altitudes. Probably the most common question that an explorer
• 16:24
  Speaker 6: gets asked is why, right, why are you doing this?
• 16:27
  Speaker 6: It just doesn't make sense. It seems it's counterintuitive, It
• 16:29
  Speaker 6: goes against your survival instinct to take a risk climbing
• 16:33
  Speaker 6: that mountain or doing whatever. And every explorer since you
• 16:36
  Speaker 6: get asked that question so often you come up with
• 16:39
  Speaker 6: an answer that you give, but it never feels like
• 16:42
  Speaker 6: a complete answer, It never feels like a fulfilling answer.
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: And I think if you talk to explorers, I think
• 16:50
  Speaker 6: at the core it's because they don't know really why
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: they're doing it. And I think the reason they don't
• 16:56
  Speaker 6: know why they're doing it is because they're just wired
• 16:58
  Speaker 6: that way. You know, they're just being themselves. That's one
• 17:01
  Speaker 6: question that explorers never ask each other. You never hear
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: an explorer. I remember at the Explorers Club ask another member, Hey,
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: why are you doing that? Like they already know that
• 17:09
  Speaker 6: the answer is, I don't know. It's because I'm being myself,
• 17:13
  Speaker 6: you know, and that's what I do.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: It's like asking those ants what you're doing, and they're
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: just like, we're just anting.
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, or at least the scouts, Yeah, they're just
• 17:21
  Speaker 6: doing what they think is right.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I like it, and I feel like, you know, the
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: parasitologists that I work with, no one is like, why
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: are you elbowed deep in.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Fish cuts for a worm? Just because we love the worms.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: It's very different.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: But anyway, okay, so where are we going to settle?
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: So that in my book, the two most commonplaces I
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: hear about people wanting to settle are rotating space stations,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: where they argue that you can control so many different
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: aspects of your environment it's really great, and mores. So
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your takes on the pros and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: cons of those two locations so that we can then
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: set up the even better option of Venus.
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: I'd love to see some sort of free floating, rotating
• 18:04
  Speaker 6: structure somewhere, kind of Oelian kind of future. I think
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: the big advantage to that one, obviously that everyone pushes
• 18:12
  Speaker 6: for it is you've got the artificial gravity, right. The
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: whole reason it's rotating is so that we we have
• 18:18
  Speaker 6: this artificial unji of gravity, which I think is a
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: big advantage obviously because I'm looking at Venus. But for
• 18:26
  Speaker 6: me as an explorer, what I like about that option
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: is that you can take that rotating ship and just
• 18:31
  Speaker 6: point it out on the exit on the off ramp
• 18:34
  Speaker 6: off the Solar System and just go. You know, it's
• 18:36
  Speaker 6: a one way trip, just go kind of like you know,
• 18:39
  Speaker 6: Star Trek, to boldly go where no one's gone before.
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: And I would love that if we have that built,
• 18:44
  Speaker 6: I'd sign up for that right now. But obviously the
• 18:48
  Speaker 6: con to that is just the cost is just enormous, right.
• 18:52
  Speaker 6: I Mean, the biggest engineering structure we've built as humanity
• 18:56
  Speaker 6: is the International Space Station, and that costs a huge
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: amount of money, took a lot of time, and it's
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: not nearly you know, the size that a big rotating,
• 19:07
  Speaker 6: kind of free floating station would have to be, or
• 19:09
  Speaker 6: for free floating community would have to be. So that's
• 19:12
  Speaker 6: the obvious con on that one.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Are you imagining something that's self sustaining? I mean, if
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: you're going to point this thing out of the Solar
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: System and needs to not rely on Earth's infrastructure, right,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: are you talking about something at that scale where it's
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: like making its own food, et cetera.
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, So that's a great point, you know,
• 19:29
  Speaker 6: because then you've got the structure that's kind of a
• 19:32
  Speaker 6: free floating, rotating, rotating structure. But then you've got the
• 19:37
  Speaker 6: question of geography, like where are you going to put it?
• 19:40
  Speaker 6: And if you put that in orbit around Earth, that's fine.
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: If you've got it still within the Solar system, you know,
• 19:47
  Speaker 6: you can kind of still be dependent on Earth for
• 19:49
  Speaker 6: imports and potentially exports. But if you do what I
• 19:54
  Speaker 6: just suggested, which is just pointed out and just go yeah,
• 19:58
  Speaker 6: then you've got to make sure that thing's fully self sustaining.
• 20:00
  Speaker 6: And if you think about it, you know that's going
• 20:03
  Speaker 6: to require a lot of infrastructure and a lot of people,
• 20:07
  Speaker 6: you know, to really get to the point where that
• 20:09
  Speaker 6: society is as specialized as it needs to be to
• 20:12
  Speaker 6: put everything together.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And the letter recycling and redundancies. Yeah, it would be tough,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: but awesome.
• 20:19
  Speaker 6: Yeah, my favorite. I'll tell you my mind got blown
• 20:21
  Speaker 6: of about a year ago. I'd heard this before, but
• 20:24
  Speaker 6: there's a YouTube video out that I watched over and
• 20:26
  Speaker 6: over again. Now I can never remember which economist it
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: was that that did this. Maybe as I tell you this,
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: you'll know which one it is. It's from like the
• 20:35
  Speaker 6: seventies where he holds up a pencil and he talks
• 20:37
  Speaker 6: about thinking about what it would take to build a
• 20:40
  Speaker 6: pencil from scratch, And if you think about it, it
• 20:43
  Speaker 6: takes like millions of people to build that number two pencil. Right,
• 20:47
  Speaker 6: If you just think about just the wood for the pencil, right,
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: requires a whole timber company, and you got to go
• 20:54
  Speaker 6: cut down the tree. Okay, but to do that you
• 20:57
  Speaker 6: need saws, So somebody's got to make the saws. And
• 21:01
  Speaker 6: for the saws, you're going to need metal. So someone's
• 21:03
  Speaker 6: going to need the metal for the blades for the saws,
• 21:05
  Speaker 6: and someone's going to have to build all that. And
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: if you think about that, the saws get made at
• 21:10
  Speaker 6: a factory, Well, someone's got to build the factory and
• 21:12
  Speaker 6: you got to power the factory. And now all of
• 21:15
  Speaker 6: a sudden you realize if you go through every single
• 21:18
  Speaker 6: nuance of that supply chain for that number two pencil,
• 21:21
  Speaker 6: it's millions of people that you need to get even
• 21:24
  Speaker 6: just to that number two pencil. You know, sometimes I'll
• 21:27
  Speaker 6: hold up I think, actually, Kelly, I may have even
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: done this when we last saw each other in Slovakia,
• 21:34
  Speaker 6: I held up a beer bottle and with someone I
• 21:36
  Speaker 6: was talking with, and I just pointed to the label.
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: Forget the bottle, forget the beer, just the label, the
• 21:41
  Speaker 6: printed label that goes on the beer bottle. You know,
• 21:44
  Speaker 6: if you think you know the paper that goes in that,
• 21:46
  Speaker 6: the adhesive that goes in that, the paint that goes
• 21:48
  Speaker 6: on that, the design, putting the label, and just getting
• 21:51
  Speaker 6: that label ready, and then you think it takes millions
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: of people just to even make that label. And in
• 21:59
  Speaker 6: the world on Earth, I guess we just take a
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: lot for granted because we've got eight billion people, right
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: and they're spread out everywhere, and we have so many
• 22:07
  Speaker 6: people that we can specialize in these various areas. But
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: when you think about trying to replicate that beer bottle
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: label in space or as Daniel was saying, you know,
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: in a free floating station that's going out toward outside
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: the Solar System, you're not going to have millions of
• 22:22
  Speaker 6: people to create all that. So that's that's where things
• 22:27
  Speaker 6: get interesting, is when you know, we start going off planet,
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: but we try making that community as self sustaining as possible.
• 22:34
  Speaker 6: And I think that's also a big premise of Kelly
• 22:36
  Speaker 6: of your book, right, that we haven't thought through a
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: lot of those things yet. We're so focused on, you know,
• 22:41
  Speaker 6: the technology and the science of getting humans off this planet,
• 22:44
  Speaker 6: but there's a lot of other stuff that we need
• 22:47
  Speaker 6: to consider when we talk about doing that at scale.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and those millions of people on Earth can just
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: go outside and take a big breath of fresh air,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and so you you know, those million people in space,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: you also need to provide them the air they breathe.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Everything down to that, it gets complicated.
• 23:02
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it gets complicated in a hurry. So, Daniel, to
• 23:06
  Speaker 6: one thing you were saying before, you know, a couple
• 23:08
  Speaker 6: of years ago, I was talking with some friends. We
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: were talking about just kind of even trying to replicate
• 23:14
  Speaker 6: a community like that, like an off world community like that,
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: just trying to replicate that here on earth. Right, if
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: you just started, let's say you wanted to set up
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: a thousand people here on Earth to live somewhere remote
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: and be as self sufficient as possible. We realized, at
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: least through the thought exercise, that the first people you
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: had to start with was the medical community, right, because
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: you've got to make sure that these people don't die, right,
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: and that can stay healthy and then can reproduce and
• 23:42
  Speaker 6: have kids and grow them into adulthood and all that.
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: So you have to start with a medical community. And
• 23:48
  Speaker 6: all of a sudden, we realized, man, this gets complicated
• 23:50
  Speaker 6: in a hurry, because let's say you start with a hospital, right,
• 23:55
  Speaker 6: But that hospital's got to be unlike any hospital you've
• 23:57
  Speaker 6: ever seen on Earth, because first of all, it has
• 24:00
  Speaker 6: to have every specialty, right. You got to have dentists,
• 24:03
  Speaker 6: you got to have oncologists, you got to have obstetricians
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: like cardio. You got to have everybody all in one hospital.
• 24:10
  Speaker 6: Number one. Number two, it's got to be a teaching
• 24:12
  Speaker 6: hospital because you don't have medical schools that you can
• 24:15
  Speaker 6: rely on, so you're going to have to teach the
• 24:17
  Speaker 6: next generation of medical professionals that come up. Then it's
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: also going to have to be its own pharmaceutical company,
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: because you're not going to be able to just order
• 24:27
  Speaker 6: drugs from a drug company to have them delivered there
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: if you really want to be truly self sustaining, right,
• 24:32
  Speaker 6: So you're going to have to develop your own drugs there.
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: And you got to be a medical devices company because
• 24:38
  Speaker 6: if you're a dentist or an orthodonist in your drill breaks,
• 24:42
  Speaker 6: you can't just order another drill. You got to make one. Now,
• 24:46
  Speaker 6: all of that can be helped with modern robotics and
• 24:49
  Speaker 6: AI and all sorts of stuff, but it still means
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: that you need all that functionality all in that one hospital.
• 24:56
  Speaker 6: And if you think about that, that all of a sudden,
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: you're getting i don't know, like three hundred people, four
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: hundred people, five hundred people at a minimum. And now
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: all those people have families, right, and all those families
• 25:08
  Speaker 6: have to live somewhere. Everyone's got to live somewhere, so
• 25:10
  Speaker 6: you need you know, houses and food and sewage and
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: water and security and all that stuff. It's hard to
• 25:18
  Speaker 6: make a fully self sustaining society with only a thousand people.
• 25:22
  Speaker 6: So it's just crazy. Even just doing the thought exercise,
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: Even if the numbers are all off, you know, and
• 25:27
  Speaker 6: everything I just said, the premise still stands that it
• 25:31
  Speaker 6: gets complicated very quickly.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: All Right, you convinced me I'm never leaving Southern California.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: I'm here to stay.
• 25:38
  Speaker 6: Let me share an anecdote, and I don't think he'll
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: mind my my sharing this. So a few years ago,
• 25:45
  Speaker 6: there's a group that was contemplating what it would take
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: to set up a permanent presence on the Moon. So
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: this was like eight years ago, nine years ago, and
• 25:56
  Speaker 6: at the time, this was the I think the third
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: organization in about a year that did these like workshops
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: where they would bring people together and just have them
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: talk about, you know, what would it take to set
• 26:07
  Speaker 6: up a you know, a permanent presence on the moon.
• 26:12
  Speaker 6: And so this organization got twelve of us together in Chanuga,
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: Tennessee for a weekend and it was pretty good. They
• 26:19
  Speaker 6: brought people together that kind of understood space but came
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: from different backgrounds. So you had, you know, a scientist,
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: an engineer, an entrepreneur, a marketer, a lawyer, like you
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: had different people. And the facilitators. The first thing they
• 26:34
  Speaker 6: did on the morning of the first day of this
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: weekend workshop is They went around and they how did
• 26:39
  Speaker 6: everyone answer the same question, which is what would have
• 26:42
  Speaker 6: to be set up on the moon for you to
• 26:46
  Speaker 6: go visit there? Right, not even to go live there,
• 26:49
  Speaker 6: just to go visit there. And there were different answers
• 26:53
  Speaker 6: depending on you know, someone said, you know, I'm willing
• 26:56
  Speaker 6: to go when they have the first music festival there,
• 26:59
  Speaker 6: because then that means that they've got enough infrastructure that
• 27:01
  Speaker 6: people could go and it's safe enough and all that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: One person said, you know, I'll go when they have
• 27:06
  Speaker 6: the first hotel there. You know, there were twelve people
• 27:09
  Speaker 6: in the room, the two ends of the spectrum. On
• 27:11
  Speaker 6: one end was me, I said, I'll be the first
• 27:14
  Speaker 6: one there, like you send me. I don't care, there's
• 27:16
  Speaker 6: got to be nothing. That's fine. I'll go and I'll
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: help set everything up for you guys, you know, to follow.
• 27:21
  Speaker 6: The other end of the spectrum, interestingly enough, was Andy Aldrin, right,
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: so his dad was Buzz Aldrin, the second man to
• 27:31
  Speaker 6: walk on the Moon. And Andy surprised all of us
• 27:34
  Speaker 6: because he said exactly what Daniel just said. He says,
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: I'm never going. It doesn't matter what you've got set
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: up there, I'm never going. And he said, I like
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: my air, I like my food, I like my water,
• 27:47
  Speaker 6: I like my gravity, I like my radiation protection. I'm
• 27:50
  Speaker 6: staying right here. And first of all, it took us
• 27:53
  Speaker 6: all by surprise that some I don't know why. In
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: our minds, we just figured, well, the son of the
• 27:57
  Speaker 6: second Man walk on the Moon. Of course he's going
• 27:59
  Speaker 6: to want to go. And it surprised us that he
• 28:02
  Speaker 6: said no. And so we asked him, like, why do
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: you have that, you know, this feeling, this opinion, And
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: he said, precisely, because I grew up around astronauts. I
• 28:12
  Speaker 6: grew up with people who risk their lives leaving this planet.
• 28:16
  Speaker 6: I know how dangerous it is up there. I know
• 28:19
  Speaker 6: how rough it is. I know how you know, as
• 28:22
  Speaker 6: we were talking earlier, how well suited we are for Earth,
• 28:25
  Speaker 6: and like, why would I want to take that risk?
• 28:27
  Speaker 6: I'm perfectly happy being here. Now that was a few
• 28:30
  Speaker 6: years ago. I don't know if his mind's changed, but
• 28:33
  Speaker 6: the fact remained that, you know, the people that I
• 28:37
  Speaker 6: think are most aware of the risks of leaving this
• 28:40
  Speaker 6: planet sometimes they are the ones that, like, you know what,
• 28:43
  Speaker 6: I'm perfectly happy staying right here.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: On that note, let's all take a break to think
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: about what it would take to convince us to go
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to the Moon, and we'll be right back. So we're back,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: and we are talking about settling space. So girmo, let's
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: quickly talk about Mars and why Mars is less good
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: in your mind than Venus, and then we're let's move
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: on to talking about Venus.
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: First of all, I'm not entirely convinced that Mars is
• 29:18
  Speaker 6: less good, because it depends on different parameters and why
• 29:23
  Speaker 6: you're going to where you're going. But each possible destination
• 29:27
  Speaker 6: in space has its drawbacks, right, It's got its pros
• 29:30
  Speaker 6: and cons, just like just like being here on Earth, right,
• 29:33
  Speaker 6: which is on the side, I was trying to figure
• 29:35
  Speaker 6: out where to live next, and every city on Earth
• 29:38
  Speaker 6: that I thought about living had its pros and cons,
• 29:40
  Speaker 6: and I couldn't make up my mind. So it's a
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: similar thing, I think. You know, the biggest advantage to Mars, obviously,
• 29:47
  Speaker 6: is just humans are used to walking on hard surfaces,
• 29:51
  Speaker 6: and you know, so landing on the Moon and landing
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: on Mars makes sense, which is the drawback, by the way,
• 29:59
  Speaker 6: to the free floating stations we were talking about earlier.
• 30:02
  Speaker 6: That's almost like being on a cruise ship stuck out
• 30:05
  Speaker 6: in the middle of the ocean, as opposed to actually
• 30:08
  Speaker 6: be ending up somewhere where you can, you know, walk
• 30:11
  Speaker 6: on ground. The biggest disadvantage I see to Mars is
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: the lack of gravity. It's the same as the Moon.
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: The difference is that the Moon is so close to Earth.
• 30:22
  Speaker 6: It's only three days away. You can go there and
• 30:25
  Speaker 6: come back. It's kind of a weekend trip almost going
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: back and forth. I don't want to minimize the risk
• 30:31
  Speaker 6: of going to the Moon and back, but you know, geographically,
• 30:35
  Speaker 6: on a Solar System level, it's basically our backyard, whereas
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: Mars is a lot further away, and if you've got
• 30:43
  Speaker 6: problems out there and with the lack of gravity or
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: anything else, it's tough to get any help. And we
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: already know from our own history of human spaceflight, even
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: with limited short duration hops to the Moon and lower
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: th orbit, that we don't react that well to lack
• 31:04
  Speaker 6: of gravity. Our bodies are as we keep talking about,
• 31:07
  Speaker 6: our bodies are well suited for one g of gravity
• 31:10
  Speaker 6: here on Earth. And so to go to Mars, where
• 31:13
  Speaker 6: it's so far away, it takes so long to get there,
• 31:15
  Speaker 6: you're kind of committed to being in zero gravity the
• 31:19
  Speaker 6: whole way there and the whole way back, and then
• 31:21
  Speaker 6: when you get there, it's only thirty eight percent diverts gravity.
• 31:25
  Speaker 6: You know, we're just not sure how the human body
• 31:26
  Speaker 6: is going to react to that. It could be that
• 31:29
  Speaker 6: it's fine, but it could be that it's not. And
• 31:33
  Speaker 6: if you're looking at being there from a Homo sapien
• 31:38
  Speaker 6: expansion into the cosmos perspective, being there multiple generations and
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: that's where the problems come up, where we're not sure
• 31:47
  Speaker 6: if humans can reproduce in less than one g of gravity.
• 31:50
  Speaker 6: And I know Kelly's heard me say this before, right,
• 31:53
  Speaker 6: you know, we're not sure if we can conceive, we're
• 31:54
  Speaker 6: not sure if we can carry a fetus to term,
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: We're not sure if we can deliver a baby without defect,
• 32:00
  Speaker 6: and most importantly, we're not sure if that Martian born
• 32:04
  Speaker 6: Homo sapien baby can grow into adulthood and reproduce themselves.
• 32:09
  Speaker 6: So it's entirely possible that we could be going to
• 32:12
  Speaker 6: Mars and then kind of die out within one generation
• 32:15
  Speaker 6: because we can't reproduce. I think that's the biggest challenge.
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: I'm hoping that I'm wrong. You know, I'm hoping that
• 32:22
  Speaker 6: we get there and everything works out or we can
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: figure out ways around it. But as of right now,
• 32:27
  Speaker 6: given what we know, that is probably the biggest risk
• 32:30
  Speaker 6: of going to Mars from a species standpoint, at least
• 32:33
  Speaker 6: from a long term, permanent, multi generational standpoint. Now, the
• 32:38
  Speaker 6: pro of Mars, I think is from my standpoint because
• 32:41
  Speaker 6: I'm one of these explorer as explorer bees is you know,
• 32:46
  Speaker 6: we're on the third rock from the Sun here and
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: Mars is the fourth rock from the Sun, So it
• 32:50
  Speaker 6: feels like we're on our way out of the Solar System.
• 32:53
  Speaker 6: You know, it's closer to the asteroid belt. We can
• 32:55
  Speaker 6: get to some of the asteroids, and the asteroid belt,
• 32:58
  Speaker 6: we can get through that and get to the moon
• 33:00
  Speaker 6: of Jupiter and move on beyond. It seems like we're
• 33:03
  Speaker 6: heading in the right direction, either in actuality or psychologically.
• 33:07
  Speaker 6: It feels like we're going out in that direction. I
• 33:10
  Speaker 6: think that's the biggest advantage that Mars has.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: So I think most people wouldn't listen to the list
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: of cons that you said and then think, well, we
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: should go to Venus instead.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: Like so, when we were doing.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: The research for our book, Venus was always compared unfavorably
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: to Hell. And I remember reading about the you know,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Russian venera probes they like landed and.
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Immediately was squished and then melted.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: So we listed in our book we put Venus is
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: one of the less good options.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, why were we wrong?
• 33:45
  Speaker 6: Well, so I've told you this before. I think even
• 33:48
  Speaker 6: the first time we met is until four years ago,
• 33:50
  Speaker 6: I agreed with you, and I think every time we
• 33:56
  Speaker 6: have to when we talk about Venus, we've got to
• 33:58
  Speaker 6: get past the everything you just said. If we land
• 34:01
  Speaker 6: on the surface of Venus, we're going to get crushed
• 34:03
  Speaker 6: or we're going to get fried, or both, because the
• 34:05
  Speaker 6: pressure and the temperature at the surface is just horrendous
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: for Homo sapiens. Or we have to combat the other
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: end of the sci fi spectrum, which is terraforming Venus. Right,
• 34:16
  Speaker 6: can we change it so that we take their big
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: atmosphere and make it more amenable to us, which, of
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: course we don't even know if it's possible, and even
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: if it's possible, it would take centuries, so like it's
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: total sci fi. So I think what changed for me
• 34:33
  Speaker 6: four years ago is I was reading a white paper
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: about those Soviet era ven aera emissions that you were
• 34:38
  Speaker 6: talking about. And for people who are listening who don't know,
• 34:41
  Speaker 6: and I didn't know this until four years ago, the
• 34:43
  Speaker 6: former Soviet Union has more experience learning more about Venus
• 34:47
  Speaker 6: than anybody else because they've sent I don't know, a
• 34:49
  Speaker 6: dozen or so probes in orbit and through the atmosphere
• 34:53
  Speaker 6: and to the surface of Venus. So four years ago
• 34:57
  Speaker 6: I was reading this white paper about some of the
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: data collected from these these missions, and there's a chart
• 35:03
  Speaker 6: in particular that stood out which showed that, yeah, on
• 35:09
  Speaker 6: the surface of Venus, the pressure is horrendous and the
• 35:12
  Speaker 6: temperature is horrendous, but about fifty kilometers off the surface,
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: in the Venusian atmosphere, there's like a ten kilometer wide
• 35:21
  Speaker 6: swath of the atmosphere where it's basically one atmosphere of pressure,
• 35:26
  Speaker 6: which is about what is sea level here on Earth,
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: and where temperatures range from twenty five to fifty degrees centigrade,
• 35:34
  Speaker 6: which is definitely hot, but it's not fatal. It's gonna
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: it's not going to burn, you know, melt your suit
• 35:41
  Speaker 6: or anything.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: I want to see that on the advertising for Venetian homes.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: Not fatal.
• 35:46
  Speaker 6: That's really yeah, hey, yeah, but you know what, as
• 35:51
  Speaker 6: we were talking about earlier, that's a claim that you
• 35:54
  Speaker 6: can't make on Mars or the Moon, right, you know,
• 35:57
  Speaker 6: you can't make them not fatal on on pressure, on
• 36:01
  Speaker 6: gravity or on are on temperature. So so that's one
• 36:06
  Speaker 6: reason where all of a sudden I looked at it
• 36:07
  Speaker 6: and go, wait a second. And by the way, let's
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: back up. The whole reason I was looking at that
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: white paper to begin with was because of the gravity
• 36:14
  Speaker 6: that we were talking about earlier, right, the problems with
• 36:18
  Speaker 6: making a Martian community multi generational and not knowing if
• 36:22
  Speaker 6: we can reproduce. I started thinking, well, it'd be nice
• 36:24
  Speaker 6: if we found somewhere in their solar system then had
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: one g of gravity that was not one of these,
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: you know, human constructed spinning, rotating structures. And since gravity
• 36:37
  Speaker 6: is related to size and mass of the object, obviously
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: Venus would be the best choice because it's ninety eight
• 36:42
  Speaker 6: percent the size of Earth and it has ninety eight
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: percent of our gravity.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: But we are talking about a human constructed something, right,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: because as you say, the surface is way too deep.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: The nice region is not on the surface. There's no
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: surface to walk around fifty kilometers fifty eight kilometers. Also,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: that is very, very high. I'm terrified of heights. You
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: talking about living fifty kilometers above the surface on some
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: human constructed platform. I'm really going to be having to
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: trust those engineers.
• 37:11
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, Well so you're right now. Backtracking one step though,
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: I'm talking about human constructed and rotating just so we
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: can get artificial gravity. I see, right, You know, at
• 37:24
  Speaker 6: least on Venus, whatever the human constructed structure is, you
• 37:29
  Speaker 6: don't have to spin it around and rotate it and
• 37:32
  Speaker 6: hope that it doesn't break apart, because you've got one
• 37:35
  Speaker 6: g of gravity. Right, And I want to come back
• 37:39
  Speaker 6: to the rest of what you just said, because I
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: think that that's very important. But let me just keep
• 37:46
  Speaker 6: kind of going through the thought process originally from four
• 37:49
  Speaker 6: years ago, because when I looked at it, I thought, well,
• 37:51
  Speaker 6: this is perfect. Then we've got one g of gravity
• 37:53
  Speaker 6: and fifty kilometers off the surface, we're going to have
• 37:56
  Speaker 6: decent temperature, decent pressure. I dug further. They're into the
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: white paper, and the data that they collected seem to
• 38:02
  Speaker 6: suggest that the Venusian atmosphere is still so thick that
• 38:07
  Speaker 6: even at fifty kilometers, as you said, that's very high up,
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: but their atmosphere is so thick there, like there's people
• 38:13
  Speaker 6: living there. I don't know why I just said that,
• 38:15
  Speaker 6: but you know, Venus' atmosphere is still so thick that
• 38:19
  Speaker 6: what's left above you at fifty kilometers is still thick
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: enough to provide adequate protection from the Sun's radiation, even
• 38:26
  Speaker 6: though Venus is closer to the Sun and it does
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: not have a magnetic field the way we do. So
• 38:33
  Speaker 6: I thought, wow, this would be like a perfect place,
• 38:37
  Speaker 6: you know, as close as it gets off Earth. Digging
• 38:40
  Speaker 6: a little further, it turns out Venus is also closer
• 38:42
  Speaker 6: to Earth than Mars is and has a more similar
• 38:46
  Speaker 6: orbit than Mars. If you've looked at Mars or thought
• 38:51
  Speaker 6: about Mars, you've seen or even talk listening to elon Talk,
• 38:54
  Speaker 6: you know that there's a launch window every twenty six
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: months where we can launch anything toward Mars. And that's
• 39:00
  Speaker 6: in large part because we have a fairly circular orbit
• 39:03
  Speaker 6: around the Sun, and Mars has a fairly more elliptical
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: orbit around the Sun, whereas Venus is a lot more circular,
• 39:09
  Speaker 6: kind of like ours. So it kind of makes it
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: easier to get to and from Venus.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Is there a regular launch window though, that's an and
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: if so, what is the timeframe there?
• 39:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah? So I think the transit time is a lot shorter,
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: but it's also more regular, like it's always three to
• 39:23
  Speaker 6: four months, whereas Venus can be anywhere from six to
• 39:26
  Speaker 6: nine months. And in some cases, if you hit it
• 39:30
  Speaker 6: on the wrong time, you may as well not even
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: try because you know you're never going to catch it
• 39:33
  Speaker 6: coming around. But also importantly, you're using less fuel to
• 39:40
  Speaker 6: catch it, you need less delta V We promise not
• 39:43
  Speaker 6: to get too technical, but so anyway, I started looking
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: at all that. But the problem is, as I've said before,
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: you know, I'm not technical, I'm not an engineer, I'm
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: not a scientist. So I was looking at this, going okay, this,
• 39:53
  Speaker 6: I can't be the first person to have seen this, right,
• 39:55
  Speaker 6: So of course the first thing I did is a
• 39:56
  Speaker 6: Google search, And it turns out NASA had actually looked
• 40:00
  Speaker 6: at this already a few years ago. They created a
• 40:03
  Speaker 6: thing called HAVOC. NASA loves their acronyms, right, so HAVOC
• 40:08
  Speaker 6: High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, and they had come up
• 40:13
  Speaker 6: with this concept of having basically floating research stations in
• 40:17
  Speaker 6: the Venusian atmosphere, and I thought, okay, well, if NASA's
• 40:21
  Speaker 6: looked at it, then I'm not completely nuts. There's got
• 40:23
  Speaker 6: to be other people that have looked at it and
• 40:25
  Speaker 6: kept doing more Google search and poking around, and it
• 40:27
  Speaker 6: turns out a lot of people around the world have
• 40:30
  Speaker 6: looked at this, including the Russians, and so it just
• 40:33
  Speaker 6: kind of became interesting seeing, Okay, there's all these experts
• 40:36
  Speaker 6: everywhere that have actually looked at this. And I thought
• 40:39
  Speaker 6: the same thing, Kelly. Did you know when you and
• 40:41
  Speaker 6: Zach were researching your book, It's like, well, then, how
• 40:43
  Speaker 6: come we don't know about this?
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 40:44
  Speaker 6: Why is it such a hidden gem kind of thing?
• 40:48
  Speaker 6: And I think it's because all these people are kind
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: of working in isolation around the world, and because the
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: world is so focused on Moon, Mars and beyond, and because,
• 40:58
  Speaker 6: as you were saying, you know, the conventional wisdom on
• 41:01
  Speaker 6: Venus is that it's hell. Everyone's afraid of poking their
• 41:04
  Speaker 6: head up and being labeled some sort of lunatic on it.
• 41:11
  Speaker 6: And so I started, before I poked my head up
• 41:14
  Speaker 6: and started being labeled at lunatic, I started trying to
• 41:17
  Speaker 6: have private conversations with people that had talked about this
• 41:22
  Speaker 6: or discussed this or put out videos or blogs or whatever.
• 41:25
  Speaker 6: And the more I talk to people, the more it
• 41:28
  Speaker 6: seemed to make sense.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: So you said floating in the Venusian atmosphere.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: So floating to me implies like no work needs to
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: be done, but like propellant will constantly need to be
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: used to keep this thing up, so it doesn't, you know,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: fall down, so everyone dies.
• 41:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, no, So that's great. So actually that's a
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: good segue to come back to what Daniel said earlier
• 41:47
  Speaker 6: about living on this man made structure, you know, floating
• 41:51
  Speaker 6: somewhere and trusting it and being afraid of heights and
• 41:53
  Speaker 6: all that. So the interesting thing in Venus's atmosphere, which
• 41:58
  Speaker 6: is primarily carbon dioxide, and it's very very dense. It
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: is so dense that if you take our normal breathable
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: air and put that in a balloon, it will actually
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: float in Venus' atmosphere, which means that if you're looking
• 42:14
  Speaker 6: to build something that's livable, you could essentially take something.
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: And this is an engineer did this. I didn't do
• 42:22
  Speaker 6: the calculation. So if it's wrong, someone else can work
• 42:25
  Speaker 6: around it. If you take let's say a football stadium
• 42:28
  Speaker 6: that's domed, and you fill it with normal breathable air,
• 42:34
  Speaker 6: it will create enough lifting force in venus' atmosphere to
• 42:38
  Speaker 6: keep the whole football stadium afloat?
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: Does that check out?
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: Particle physicists, Daniel, that's a whole lot of particles to
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: calculate it all at once. But doesn't that depend a
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: little bit on the extra mass, Like you know, how
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: heavy is the football stadium, et cetera.
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: But you know it might.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can float like huge battleships that are
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: basically bubbled of air in the water. That's effectively we're
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: talking about, right.
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, something like that. So cool. Again, not being
• 43:05
  Speaker 6: an engineer and not being a scientist, I tend to
• 43:08
  Speaker 6: live my life trusting engineers and scientists and instead of
• 43:13
  Speaker 6: questioning them, maybe I should question them more. But for
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: something like that, it seems to me like that's an
• 43:18
  Speaker 6: engineering problem. Like you put enough engineers on that they'll
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: figure out how to how to make this thing float.
• 43:24
  Speaker 6: So two things, Kelly to your point.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: And after the first few disasters crashes, they'll really figure
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: it out. Yeah, so you don't want to be in
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: the first wave. But eventually.
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: Well, and hopefully, you know, the first few waves are
• 43:36
  Speaker 6: going to be autonomous and there won't be anyone on
• 43:38
  Speaker 6: them until they figure it out, right. But you know, Kelly,
• 43:43
  Speaker 6: to your point, despite the fact that this thing may
• 43:46
  Speaker 6: kind of float, like you said, with like little or
• 43:48
  Speaker 6: no effort, there is going to still have to be
• 43:51
  Speaker 6: you know, maintaining that that equilibrium and keep it floating.
• 43:55
  Speaker 6: And then there's probably going to need to be some
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: sort of system to keep it kind of station keeping,
• 44:01
  Speaker 6: you know, make sure it doesn't dip too far down
• 44:03
  Speaker 6: or too far up, because if it goes down, it's
• 44:05
  Speaker 6: going to be subject to the additional pressure and temperature.
• 44:08
  Speaker 6: Too far up, it's it's going to be cold and
• 44:11
  Speaker 6: all that stuff. So there's going to have to be
• 44:12
  Speaker 6: some adjustment there. But Daniel, going back to your earlier
• 44:15
  Speaker 6: point about having the sphere of heights and all that stuff,
• 44:18
  Speaker 6: I think it's because when you think about it, you're
• 44:21
  Speaker 6: kind of thinking of like a small like research station
• 44:23
  Speaker 6: kind of thing. But imagine an entire building or a
• 44:26
  Speaker 6: football stadium, right, or a mall right, you could kind of,
• 44:31
  Speaker 6: or or a cruise ship right where you're you're always
• 44:34
  Speaker 6: on this big structure and and it's floating, and I
• 44:41
  Speaker 6: think it's also I guess related to that is one
• 44:45
  Speaker 6: thing that we don't have a lot of from a
• 44:47
  Speaker 6: science standpoint. We don't have a lot of photographs or
• 44:50
  Speaker 6: video of the Venusian atmosphere, so we're not even sure
• 44:54
  Speaker 6: what the view will look like from up there. It's
• 44:57
  Speaker 6: very dense atmosphere. There are a lot of clouds there,
• 44:59
  Speaker 6: and so so it may just be kind of like
• 45:01
  Speaker 6: when you're in an airplane and you're flying through clouds,
• 45:04
  Speaker 6: or you're flying right above clouds, you may not even
• 45:08
  Speaker 6: get a sense for how high up you are.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: Anyway, And if I fall off this platform, right, I'm
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: not just going to be on my own. I'm going
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: to be in some sort of breathable suit anyway. Say
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: I'm like working on the outside of it, I fall off,
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering because the pressure, will I actually fall off
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: or will I just float next to it? Is it
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: more like being underwater where if you like lose your grip,
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: you're floating next to it, as opposed to like actually
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: plummeting towards the surface.
• 45:33
  Speaker 6: You know, that's a great question. I don't think I've
• 45:35
  Speaker 6: ever been asked that question in the last four years.
• 45:37
  Speaker 6: You know, I have no idea. So since I'm not
• 45:39
  Speaker 6: an engineer scientist, I'm going to have to ask somebody
• 45:41
  Speaker 6: you know, to help out with that, because a part
• 45:43
  Speaker 6: of me says, well, you've got gravity pulling you down, right,
• 45:46
  Speaker 6: So it is like being one gee of gravity. It
• 45:48
  Speaker 6: is going to pull you down. But I guess to
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: your point, is the atmosphere so dense that it wouldn't
• 45:54
  Speaker 6: be able to pull you down? Would you float? Like?
• 45:56
  Speaker 6: You know, that's a great question.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: I don't know the same physics should apply to a
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: in an air bubble as they do to a football
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: stadium in an air bubble.
• 46:03
  Speaker 6: Right, so ooh, that's a great question.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Oh let's all take a break and see if we
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: could figure out the answer, and we'll come back in
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: a second to chat more about Venus. So, I think
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: that living in Venus would also have some really interesting
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: material science.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: Problems that would need to get solved.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: In particular, I'm thinking about the fact that there are
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: lots of clouds made of sulphuric acid that you'd be
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: floating on top.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Of in the Venutian atmosphere.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: What do we know about how well habitats can survive
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: stuff like that.
• 46:46
  Speaker 6: Yeah, So that's great because there are two things that
• 46:48
  Speaker 6: I was kind of excited about, because there are two
• 46:53
  Speaker 6: huge cons to venus, right you asked me earlier, the
• 46:57
  Speaker 6: cons to Mars. They're two huge cons to venus. One
• 47:01
  Speaker 6: is that the atmosphere is primarily CO two, so we
• 47:04
  Speaker 6: can't breathe it. And the other one is what you
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: just mentioned is the clouds are made of sulphuric acid.
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: So when I read that, I'm like, oh, well, now
• 47:14
  Speaker 6: what do we do? But I kind of researched a
• 47:16
  Speaker 6: little bit more, and so the first thing we'd have
• 47:19
  Speaker 6: to do on the first one is we'd have to
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: be able to convert the CO two into breathable air.
• 47:24
  Speaker 6: And the thing with that is if you're a scuba diver,
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: you know that scuba divers have been using rebreathers for
• 47:31
  Speaker 6: a long time now, and so there is a method
• 47:35
  Speaker 6: of converting CO two into breathable air. And by the way,
• 47:39
  Speaker 6: a few weeks ago, I was in Boston at a
• 47:41
  Speaker 6: conference and after one of the sessions, we were at
• 47:44
  Speaker 6: one of the receptions and I happened to be talking
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: with a guy and before he even knew what I
• 47:49
  Speaker 6: was working on with the whole Venus thing. I asked
• 47:51
  Speaker 6: him what he was working on. It turns out he
• 47:53
  Speaker 6: was an atmospheric scientist, and I'm like, oh wait, I've
• 47:57
  Speaker 6: got three questions for you. So question number one, is
• 48:02
  Speaker 6: it possible to turn CO two into breathable air just
• 48:05
  Speaker 6: from a atmosphere chemistry standpoint? And he said, yes, it
• 48:09
  Speaker 6: depends on what scale, but yeah, it can be done.
• 48:12
  Speaker 6: And it depends on how much money it's going to
• 48:16
  Speaker 6: take to do it or resources it's going to take
• 48:18
  Speaker 6: to do it, but yes, from a chemical standpoint, it
• 48:20
  Speaker 6: can be done.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I think that's the subodia reaction. Didn't Moxie just do
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: that on Mars? I think they had a box on
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Mars that was converting the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere anyway,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: So sorry, yeah, that's a problem we've made some progress on.
• 48:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, that's my point with this is
• 48:36
  Speaker 6: that you know, these are not like we don't need
• 48:38
  Speaker 6: to like invent the warp drive or something, you know
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: to make this happen. You know, because number two is
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: can we extract water from sulphuric acid clouds and CO
• 48:51
  Speaker 6: to atmosphere and he said, yeah, absolutely, that's a no brainer.
• 48:54
  Speaker 6: I said, okay. And then the third one is what
• 48:58
  Speaker 6: your question was, right, do we have materials that can
• 49:00
  Speaker 6: withstand sulfuric acid? And he said yes, and the two
• 49:05
  Speaker 6: most common ones are glass and the big long scientific
• 49:12
  Speaker 6: name that I don't know, but the common name is teflon. Right,
• 49:17
  Speaker 6: so we've got teflon that's resistant to sulphuric acid and glass.
• 49:23
  Speaker 6: So I asked him, well, given you know CO two
• 49:25
  Speaker 6: and sulfuric acid, can you make teflon out of it?
• 49:28
  Speaker 6: It's like, well, you'd need fluorine or something like that,
• 49:31
  Speaker 6: you'd add it in, but you could, you could create it.
• 49:35
  Speaker 6: So so the bottom line is it sounds like even
• 49:39
  Speaker 6: the biggest obstacles to setting up shop in the Venusian
• 49:42
  Speaker 6: atmosphere are from an engineering perspective and from a scientific perspective,
• 49:48
  Speaker 6: we can probably overcome even today if we really wanted
• 49:51
  Speaker 6: wanted to do it. It's not like, like I said,
• 49:53
  Speaker 6: it's not like we've got to invent warp drive or
• 49:56
  Speaker 6: artificial gravity or anything else like that.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: So to try to bottom line, so, I think what
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: you're arguing is that so rotating space stations awesome but
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: super complicated, and Venus is less complicated because you don't
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: have to spin, and Mars has a lot of benefits.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: But if not living in one G is a game stopper,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: then Venus is a better option.
• 50:18
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, in some ways you could think about it.
• 50:20
  Speaker 6: You know, in the US, NASA has been following this Moon,
• 50:24
  Speaker 6: Mars and Beyond strategy for a couple of decades, and
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: the rationale behind that is, you know, kind of like
• 50:30
  Speaker 6: the crawl walk run approach. Right, we start in Leo,
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: that's crawling, we're getting used to kind of operating in space.
• 50:37
  Speaker 6: Then we go to the Moon, which is our planetary backyard,
• 50:41
  Speaker 6: to build up some of the competencies and that develop
• 50:43
  Speaker 6: some of the technologies, and then we're going to actually
• 50:46
  Speaker 6: go out to Mars. So it's kind of like this
• 50:48
  Speaker 6: crawl walk run kind of thing. But if you think
• 50:51
  Speaker 6: about it, in many ways, Venus may actually be a
• 50:54
  Speaker 6: better next stepping stone because at least we don't have
• 50:57
  Speaker 6: to worry about all these weird orbital mechanics, we don't
• 51:00
  Speaker 6: have to worry about gravity, we don't have to worry
• 51:03
  Speaker 6: about you know, what's the hardest part you ask anybody
• 51:05
  Speaker 6: on Mars missions. What's the hardest part about a Mars mission,
• 51:08
  Speaker 6: and it's the hard landing on the surface, you know,
• 51:11
  Speaker 6: surviving that hard landing. I don't know what the success
• 51:15
  Speaker 6: rate is on on the Mars missions, but you know,
• 51:19
  Speaker 6: most of them failed just during the landing, and you know,
• 51:23
  Speaker 6: we don't have to worry about that on Venus. We
• 51:25
  Speaker 6: got to make sure that, you know, we don't fall
• 51:27
  Speaker 6: through the fifty kilometer mark and implode on the way
• 51:31
  Speaker 6: down to the surface. But it's a lot of challenges
• 51:34
  Speaker 6: that we're going to have going to Mars that we're
• 51:36
  Speaker 6: not going to have going to Venus. And so there's
• 51:40
  Speaker 6: there's an argument to be made that maybe Venus is
• 51:42
  Speaker 6: even a good training ground for going to Mars or beyond.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: Would it be fair to say that that it's not
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: necessarily that we don't have the same problems, but they're
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: just a little easier because, like Venus will still have
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: some orbital mechanics to worry about, and getting just the
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: right spot in the Venusian atmosphere is tough, but maybe
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: not as tough as landing on Mors.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: But space is never easy. Problems never go away.
• 52:04
  Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, that's why I never say that it's easy,
• 52:07
  Speaker 6: or even that it's better because it's just different, right,
• 52:12
  Speaker 6: Because you're right, we've got similar problems, but they may
• 52:15
  Speaker 6: be easier to solve. But we also have some problems
• 52:18
  Speaker 6: on Venus that you don't have on Mars, like dealing
• 52:20
  Speaker 6: with the CO two atmosphere and dealing with the sulphuric
• 52:22
  Speaker 6: acid clouds and dealing with you know, we haven't even
• 52:26
  Speaker 6: talked about the mechanics of this, but you know, in
• 52:28
  Speaker 6: both cases, you're probably orbiting the planet and then you're
• 52:31
  Speaker 6: going down to where the human community is. On Mars
• 52:34
  Speaker 6: you're going from orbit down and landing on the surface,
• 52:37
  Speaker 6: and then in Venus you're going down to the atmosphere.
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: In both cases you also have to be able to
• 52:40
  Speaker 6: come back. So from Mars you're launching from the surface
• 52:44
  Speaker 6: back to the orbit before coming back to Earth or whatever.
• 52:47
  Speaker 6: And that's something we know how to do, because that's
• 52:49
  Speaker 6: how we've got there to begin with. Right, We launched
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: off the surface of Earth into orbit and then beyond,
• 52:55
  Speaker 6: but launching from an atmospheric platform back to orbit is
• 52:58
  Speaker 6: something we really haven't done. We've tested, but we don't
• 53:03
  Speaker 6: have a lot of experience doing that, and certainly not humans. Right,
• 53:06
  Speaker 6: we haven't launched humans from a hot air balloon or
• 53:08
  Speaker 6: from a stratospheric balloon into orbit. So those are challenges
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: that we haven't faced yet and that we won't face
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: on Mars or the Moon. But on the flip side,
• 53:23
  Speaker 6: a lot of those things are, like I said, are
• 53:25
  Speaker 6: challenges that, like I said, I keep kind of tritely saying,
• 53:29
  Speaker 6: we don't have to invent warp drive or something like
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: that to do that. It's something that we could even
• 53:33
  Speaker 6: start testing. That's the other nice thing, by the way,
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: with Venus is so much of the technologies and the
• 53:40
  Speaker 6: operational capabilities we're going to need to develop or about
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: operating in an atmosphere, and so we can actually test
• 53:45
  Speaker 6: some of those here on Earth. Right. We could test
• 53:48
  Speaker 6: high altitude balloons and trying to launch rockets into orbit
• 53:51
  Speaker 6: from there, and people have tried that and have tested it.
• 53:54
  Speaker 6: But we could develop those capabilities. We could develop some
• 53:56
  Speaker 6: of these larger floating structures and try The other thing
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: we haven't tried is point to point transportation within the atmosphere. Right,
• 54:05
  Speaker 6: if we had two balloons with stations, can we get
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: from one to the other, you know, floating over there
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: in some sort of transportation system. So it's things that
• 54:16
  Speaker 6: we could test here on Earth before we actually go
• 54:18
  Speaker 6: to Venus. It's tougher to test stuff from Mars because
• 54:21
  Speaker 6: we can't simulate the gravity and everything else.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: We're coming up on the end of our hour, and
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: my plan for wrapping things up was to ask if
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: you would personally go to Venus given the chance.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: But I feel like.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: We've had enough comparisons to the scout Bees that the
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: answer must be yes.
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: So what is the answer?
• 54:40
  Speaker 6: I think the advantage to living in Venus because of
• 54:42
  Speaker 6: the one G of gravity is it'll be relatively straightforward
• 54:46
  Speaker 6: to go back and forth between Venus and Earth, especially
• 54:49
  Speaker 6: for anyone born on Venus. Right, any homo sapien born
• 54:54
  Speaker 6: on Venus is going to be used to one G
• 54:55
  Speaker 6: of gravity there, and so they can easily come back
• 54:57
  Speaker 6: and visit here on Earth and go back. Any homo
• 55:00
  Speaker 6: sapien born on Mars is going to be used to
• 55:03
  Speaker 6: thirty eight percent of Earth gravity, So coming to visit
• 55:06
  Speaker 6: here on Earth to them, it will feel like they're
• 55:10
  Speaker 6: constantly pulling a two and a half g turn in
• 55:13
  Speaker 6: an airplane, and that's going to be uncomfortable. At a minimum,
• 55:18
  Speaker 6: it's going to be uncomfortable, you know. At worst, it's
• 55:21
  Speaker 6: just going to cause all sorts of health problems. So
• 55:24
  Speaker 6: I don't think very many Martian Homo sapiens, assuming we
• 55:28
  Speaker 6: can you conceive and be born there and all that,
• 55:31
  Speaker 6: I don't think very many of them are ever going
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: to be able to come back to Earth, whereas Venusians
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: will kind of be more of a society that will
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: have closer ties with Earth and go back and forth.
• 55:42
  Speaker 6: Now I'm kind of talking more sci fi futuristic, you know,
• 55:45
  Speaker 6: one hundred years from now, but I think that's for
• 55:49
  Speaker 6: that reason. I think I'd rather live on a floating
• 55:53
  Speaker 6: platform in Venus than on some surface of Mars Station, which,
• 55:59
  Speaker 6: by the way, probably going to be underground anyway. So
• 56:02
  Speaker 6: it's going to be just as claustrophobic as staying stranded
• 56:06
  Speaker 6: on a little floating station in the middle of the
• 56:08
  Speaker 6: Venusian atmosphere.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Daniel's afraid of heights and I'm claustrophobic. So I
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: suspect that Daniel and I are going to be staying
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: on Earth and Germo.
• 56:16
  Speaker 3: You can visit Us from Venus because it'll.
• 56:18
  Speaker 6: Be conunious, So I'll send you pictures.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, was there any more questions you wanted to ask? Daniel?
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: You know, I think a lot about where I moved
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: because it influences not just where my kids live, but
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: where they're from. You know, I moved to southern California,
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: and now I have to hear my kids say, like,
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I'm from Orange County, which is a bit of a
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: shock to the system. So how do you feel about
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: moving to Venus and then having your kids be like,
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: I'm Venusian.
• 56:43
  Speaker 6: I think it would be cool. You know. I was
• 56:44
  Speaker 6: just thinking about this because I was watching For All
• 56:47
  Speaker 6: Mankind Love it and you know, not to spoil it
• 56:51
  Speaker 6: for people who haven't watched it yet, but it's just
• 56:54
  Speaker 6: interesting the evolution of off world communities when they're on
• 57:00
  Speaker 6: the Moon or on Mars and versus Venus, which by
• 57:05
  Speaker 6: the way, is not part of the For All Mankind.
• 57:08
  Speaker 6: And I think that kind of will evolve over time.
• 57:12
  Speaker 6: And I think to a certain extent, Kelly and Zach
• 57:14
  Speaker 6: kind of talked about this, and they're both too. But
• 57:17
  Speaker 6: if you just kind of look at the history of
• 57:19
  Speaker 6: human expansion from one piece of land mass on Earth
• 57:22
  Speaker 6: to another piece of land mass owner you know, initially
• 57:25
  Speaker 6: First of all, the demographics of whoever's in this new
• 57:28
  Speaker 6: community change over time. You know, the first ones are
• 57:31
  Speaker 6: the explorers, and then you've got settlers, and then you've
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: got natives who were born there, and a lot of
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: them will always come back because they're originally from wherever
• 57:41
  Speaker 6: they were from. And eventually you get to a point
• 57:44
  Speaker 6: where you've got people that were born and raised in
• 57:46
  Speaker 6: this new community that have never been back to their ancestors,
• 57:49
  Speaker 6: you know, their parents' homeland or their grandparents' homeland, and
• 57:52
  Speaker 6: so they start developing their own identity, and eventually they'll
• 57:55
  Speaker 6: kind of become more independent because they'll have their own lane,
• 58:00
  Speaker 6: which their own culture, their own belief system and all that.
• 58:04
  Speaker 6: I think that's going to be more true on Mars
• 58:06
  Speaker 6: than on Venus. I think over time, I think the
• 58:13
  Speaker 6: Moon will never have that identity because it's just so
• 58:15
  Speaker 6: easy to go back and forth. I think it's always
• 58:18
  Speaker 6: going to be tied to Earth's identity. I think Venus
• 58:23
  Speaker 6: will have its own identity and people will say, hey,
• 58:27
  Speaker 6: I'm Venusian, I'm from Venus, but it'll still be fairly
• 58:30
  Speaker 6: closely tied to Earth because it's relatively easy to go
• 58:32
  Speaker 6: back and forth, although over time a lot of Venusians
• 58:35
  Speaker 6: will never come to Earth, just like a lot of
• 58:37
  Speaker 6: Earthlings will never go to Venus. But Mars is really
• 58:40
  Speaker 6: going to be where there's going to be I think
• 58:43
  Speaker 6: an independence movement because of just the physical problems of
• 58:49
  Speaker 6: Martian Homo sapiens coming back to Earth and vice versa.
• 58:53
  Speaker 6: So I think, yeah, I'd be perfectly okay with descendants
• 58:58
  Speaker 6: saying that they're from Venus. In fact, I think it'd
• 59:01
  Speaker 6: be pretty cool.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: It does sound pretty cool. Well, thanks very much for
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: answering all of our questions. Really appreciate your time.
• 59:07
  Speaker 6: Yeah, sure, it's great. It's always great talking with Kelly
• 59:10
  Speaker 6: and Daniel. It's great meeting you all.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Ride super fun to talk to Giermo. So what do
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: you think in the end, Kelly, what are the chances
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: that they're going to get a thousand people to live
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: if floating in the atmosphere or Venus by twenty to fifty.
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: I think that conversations like this make me realize just
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: how harsh space is. You know that Venus, that by
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: listening to someone like Germo at the end, you could
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: be like, well, maybe Venus isn't quite as inhospitable, as
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I thought to me, that just says that everything out
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: there is just absolute rubbish.
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: It's just really bad living out in space. But you
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: know it does. I don't know.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to be living having space
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: settlements anywhere.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: In space by twenty fifty. And I think if you ask.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Ghermo, he'd say that they're shooting for twenty fifty.
• 59:55
  Speaker 3: But you know, he wouldn't hang his hat on that date.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: It's my not answer answer to your question is what
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: do you think?
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: My answer to my question is that the question is
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: totally bogus because it's impossible to predict this kind of stuff.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: Humanity and human civilization and technology changes so quickly, and
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: the changes happen faster every year that you know, the
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: technology required could be invented that what is impossible today
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: could be totally possible in five years. Somebody could invent
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: some new kind of material which makes these things really
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: easy or simple. And so it's impossible to predict. And
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: I like their strategy of like, let's aim for it,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: let's push for it, because that's exactly the kind of work.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 4: You have to do to make it possible.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: You have to push forward on all these boundaries and
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: do basic research and trying to crack problems. And you know,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: even if they don't figure this out, this kind of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: work could lead to new ideas that.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: Helps solve other problems.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: And so I'm in favor of, like, let's do all
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: of it, you know, all the science and all the engineering.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Sure, I'm with you, and I can tell you that
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of fun drinking with Garamo.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: Well, thanks very much for bringing him on the show.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: And thanks again to Germo for answering all of our questions,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: well meaning.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: And naive as they were.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: Thanks very much Kelly for joining us today, and thanks
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: everybody for taking this mental trip to Venus with us.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: Thanks friend and co host Daniel.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: Thanks brand and co host Kelly, and thanks to all
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: the listeners. All right, tune in next time for more
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: science and curiosity. Come find us on social media where
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg, Instant,
• 1:01:33
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• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:01:40
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