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How to keep Martians fed and happy · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:06
  Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one, eight people entered Biosphere two. You
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: may have heard of Biosphere two. There was a polychchore
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: movie sort of based on Biosphere in the nineties, and
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: as a child of the nineties, I of course watched
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: it and learned so much about the value of friendship.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: But Biosphere two was a three point one four acre
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: enclosure out in the Arizona Desert that was meant to
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: replicate Biosphere one, which is the Earth. So they had
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: a rainforest, a marsh, an ocean with the coral reef,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: a desert, a savannah, agricultural fields, and human habitats. And
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the people who started this giant experiment had future settlements
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: in space in mind. If you could figure out how
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: our Earth works and you can miniaturize that, maybe you
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: can take that out with you into space and create
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: sustainable habitats for humans in space. But during this first run,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: the men lost eight teen percent of their body weight
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and the women lost ten percent. They just were not
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: able to create enough food to keep themselves going. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: this was despite the fact that they were spending an
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: average of eight to ten hours a day five and
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a half hours a week doing this kind of stuff.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And that doesn't even include the other kinds of things
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: that you would have to do if you were, you know,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: trying to make a living on Mars, like running a
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: power plant. Biosphere too was running off of the grid,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: so on Mars there'd be all this extra stuff like
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: crewing the solar panels that you'd have to worry about.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: But we need more experiments like these. Probably it would
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: be better to start on a smaller scale and then
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: sort of scale up so we can understand the systems better.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: But we need these kinds of experiments where you're in
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: a closed environment. The amount of plants that you're growing
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: determine how much oxygen you get and how much carbon
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: dioxide is extracted from the atmosphere. We need to prove
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to ourselves that we can live in these systems while
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: growing sustainable amounts of food. These experiments take time because
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: they happen at the pace of ecology, which is slow.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So today we're going to talk about what we've learned
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: from these kind of closed loop systems so far and
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: what other kinds of challenges we might have as we
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: attempt to grow food to keep ourselves alive on Mars.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So welcome to episode two of our series on food
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: in space and Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Hi.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: UC Irvine, and I would never ever ever go into
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: biosphere too voluntarily.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I am Kelly Wienersmith. I study parasites. I have been
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: dying to visit biosphere too. Like I'm thinking of going
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: to a conference in Arizona so that I'll be close
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: enough to visit biosphere too. Why don't you want to
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: go in the same reason.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I get the chills when I visit Alcatraz and they
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: ask you to step into the cells, and I'm like, oo,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: feels like you will asking to get trapped.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Huh. So I am claustrophobic, and I went into a
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: cave on with family and was like, I have to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: get out of here. But I think three point one
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: four acres is big enough that I don't feel trapped.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: But anyway we can differ.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you another question about that kind
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: of scenario. Imagine you're living on the surface of Mars,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: struggling to survive. Is there some kind of food that's
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: so gross you'd rather starve than eat it and survive.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Oh man, Okay, Well, so first, I just finished re
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: listening to the story of Adolphus Greeley's trip to the Arctic,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and I think that what you learn from a book
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: like that is that when you're hungry enough, you will
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: eat anything.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Did he like boil his shoelaces and make tea or something?
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: He did? Yeah, they were eating their shoes at the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: end there.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Oh no, that was a joke.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it gets bleak. They were also accused of cannibalism,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: but there's no solid evidence, but a lot of them
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: didn't make it. So I'm sure that if I got
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to that point, I also be eating my shoes. But
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I can say that most of the food that I've
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: read about as it pertains to life in space are
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: not things that I think would be delicious. Like I
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: happen to come from a culture that doesn't eat a
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: lot of insects, and that seems to be a major
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: recommended protein source in space. And you can find recipes
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: for how to like hide insects by like grinding them
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: and like mixing it up with wheat, so you can
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: have like cricket bread that doesn't taste so crickety, but
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know what about you. Are you more adventurous.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty adventurous, and I think it's hard to predict
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: how you'd react in those situations. But I've thought about
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: the cannibalism question, like would I rather starve or eat people?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Oh boy, I'm very happy to not be in that
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: situation because I don't know how I would react. Probably
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: i'd be eating people.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think if I was gonna die before
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the rest of my crew, I would want them to
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: eat me because I wouldn't want them to die. If
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: they could like stretch it out and increase the probability
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: that they.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Live, wouldn't matter who though.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess if I had a death wish
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: for someone, I feel differently. But uh, and you probably
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: reading about how these like closed loop systems work. Often
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the crews end up hating each other, like in biospheric,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: you know, they were spitting on each other. So maybe
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, you know, Jane can eat me, but
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Brian cannot, and that is my dying wish.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or especially if you're on a colony you might
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: be related to some of these people. You're like, all right,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: my kids can eat me, but don't share me with
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: the Millers over there, because you know they've been jerks.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, let's get space gets weird fast.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I know exactly. And that's why space is so fascinating,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: because we know it's gonna be tough. We know it's
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: going to be difficult, we know we're gonna have to
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: push the limits of human ingenuity but also probably the
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: limits of human experience and culture and what we think
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: is appropriate.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that there's some things that you can
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: learn by looking at like Arctic expeditions, and I think
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: we should have an episode on that in the future.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: But you know, you see that people will do so
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: I think two lessons there. One, people will do extraordinary
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: things to survive, but two, they still treat each other
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: really well at the end in most situations like there,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: you know, as the Greeley expedition members were starving to death,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: they were like spoon feeding each other and holding each
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: other and like they were it was very well sweet,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know sweet sweets the right word, but their
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: humanity was maintained even in the case of this, this
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: horrible situation. It gives you a bit of hope for humanity.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe they were just exceptionally nice people, because I'm
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: not sure everybody would end up babing so well, yeah, fair.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And then the question is are humans nutritionally complete? I
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: don't know if they are, so you also, you know,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: there's a lot to think about when you're eating in Mars.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Do you need to add beans to your meal to
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: get all your proteins? Yes? Great question. Yes, And these
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: are just a sampling of the questions we're gonna be
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: talking about today as we explore how humans can feed
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: themselves in Space episode Part two.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So, Daniel, I'm wondering if any of the people that
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: you talked to on the street brought cannibalism up in
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: the conversation as quickly as we did when you ask
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: them about food on Mars.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Let's find out. I walked around the campus if you
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: see Irvine, and I asked people what they thought was
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: going to be the biggest challenge to feeding people in
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: a colony on Mars. If you would like to contribute
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: to these audience participation segments in the future, please don't
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: be shy. Write to us two questions at danieland Kelly
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: dot org. We'd love to have your voice on the podcast.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So think about it for a minute. What do you
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: think is the greatest challenge to feeding astronauts on Mars?
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: And is it finding the right marinade recipe for human thoughts?
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: No, too much, this whole episode I might dump.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: I'm just slowly trying to change your opinion about cannibalism,
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  Speaker 2: because really it's just a cultural thing.
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  Speaker 1: You know, there's a culture that was really into it,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and they got this protein disease called kubru, and so
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I think there's good disease related reasons to not eat
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: your family.
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  Speaker 2: All right, pull your biologists credentials there.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Fine, But I do have an expert on cannibalism that
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: we could talk to in a future episode because I
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: know all the best people.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: That sounds great as long as it's not over dinner.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Let's get back to our audience participation segment. Here to
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: folks around the uc Irvine had to say about challenges
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: of living on Mars. The astronauts could make sprouts and
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: stuff like that, so on Mars a few ways to
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: do that too.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, we all saw The Martian.
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  Speaker 2: The Martian was not a documentary, but the process felt feasible,
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  Speaker 2: Like they need water there first, to supply it, and
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  Speaker 2: the climate.
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  Speaker 4: I guess how cold it is. Nutrients in the soil,
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  Speaker 4: so you have to bring like nitrogen, and I think
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: we basically have to find ways to make local fertilizer possible.
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  Speaker 4: I mean also, I think at some point, like there's
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: this the bare minimum to keep people alive. It keeps
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: you alive, but it's horrific and nobody's gonna want to
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: come to Mars, so there's kind of a marketing inside
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  Speaker 4: of this.
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  Speaker 3: Well, so far we have not established an a sort
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: of colony on Mars there we could even grow any food.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a bit of a premature question, to be honest.
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  Speaker 3: I guess he did it in that movie The Martian
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  Speaker 3: and not supposed to be accurate.
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  Speaker 2: Not a documentary.
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  Speaker 3: Not a documentary. No, that's right, But I guess you'd
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: have to do it someday. And you've got some frozen
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: water in the ice caps, so people always talk about
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: terraforming it and getting that liquid water, so maybe it's possible.
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  Speaker 1: Well, no one brought up cannibalism, which is a little disappointing,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: but you know, I'm glad they focused on the more
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: immediate challenges. Yes, water came up a few times. One
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: of the great things about Mars actually is that there's
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: kind of a lot of water. So there's water at
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the poles and just about anywhere you go. If you
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: dig down far enough, you're gonna hit frozen water. We're
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: gonna talk a little later in the show about some
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: of the problems with that water, and it's going to
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: be hard to get, but there's water, whereas on the
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Moon there's a lot less than it's even harder to get.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: One thing I've found fascinating is how many people refer
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: to The Martian, and it's very entertaining, but it's also
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: amazing how much science people seem to have learned from
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: that movie.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, so I like The Martian because it got a
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: lot of things right. So, like, Mars has one percent
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of Earth's atmosphere, so you do get dust storms that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: kick up like or that can engulf the entire planet.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: But because you only have one percent of the atmosphere,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: those winds are not probably strong enough to like knock
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: over a rocket. And as you correctly noted in these interviews,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: it is not a documentary, and so it wasn't one
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: hundred percent correct, but it was very well researched, and
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: you know, I think it's fine for fiction to take
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: some scientific license.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Something I found fascinating is how many people saw the
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: movie and didn't understand that it was a made up story.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: A bunch of people came out of theater and thought, oh,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: this is a true story about something that really happened
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: to somebody on Mars.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: No.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Really, a lot of people googling like is The Martian
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: a true story after they saw the movie, which is
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: like maybe a testament to the apparent realism of it.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you're right, there's definitely some science issues with
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: that movie.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: And again, I don't think that's a problem in my mind.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: That's the only thing that matters is that you create
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: a world and then you stay consistent with the rules
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: you made for that world. And I think The Martian
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: was incredible, not complaining, but yeah, also not a documentary. Also,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: when I was researching a city on Mars, I was
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: surprised by how many people in the literature on settlements
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: would be like, well, could such and such happen well
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: in the expanse, And I'm like, dudes, that's fiction too,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And like, I know the author, he's a great guy,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: but He's like, he hasn't been there. None of us
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: have the author's quarrel, right, because there's two of them.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: The expanse not a textbook, you.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Say, yes, that's right, very well thought out, great character development.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Not a textbook.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I've written a lot of science papers and have
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: never cited science fiction in those papers. So maybe that's
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: something I should try. That sounds like a lot of fun.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: But today we're not talking about science fiction. We are
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: talking about science, and I'm very excited to hear about
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: the science. I'm growing food on Mars whether we do
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: need to be pooping in our own gardens. But first, Kelly,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: you were going to tell us about experiences here on
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Earth that are sort of simulations for what life might
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: be like on Mars. Where do we start with that.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Well, let's start back in the nineteen sixties in the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union, so while the space race was heating up
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the Soviets, we're interested in figuring out like, okay, not
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: just how do you grow food on Mars, but how
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: do you make that food work for you in a
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: lot of different ways. So if you are in a
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: sealed environment, every time you breathe out that carbon dioxide
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: it just builds up and it could suffocate you. And
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: you know, people complain about headaches way before the suffocation happens.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: So you could have chemicals and devices that remove the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, but you could also just let the plants
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: do that work for you. And so they try to
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: come up with systems where the plants pull out the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. The plants also produce the oxygen that you breathe,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and then you can like recycle the plant material, maybe
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: by feeding something else with it. And so just trying
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to be as efficient and good at recycling as possible.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: So making a system which is enclosed and self sufficient
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: and where things support each other so you don't need
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: to be injecting supplies from the outside. That makes sense.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so expensive to ship stuff from Earth to space,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: and the stuff that you have you want to get
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the most use out of. So you know, anything that
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: you can stretch the use of in space like you
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: want to do. And you know, every once in a
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: while it feels like this goes in cycles. But people
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: will get really excited about algae and so, you know,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: algae grows fast. It you know, takes up carbon dioxide,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: releases oxygen, it like you can grow it in a vat,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: so you can get a lot of it in a
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: small area. And so the first experiment was called bios
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: that we're focusing on growing algae, an attempt to like
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: do a bunch of this stuff. And it worked pretty
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: well actually, but a major complaint was that algae sucks
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: to eat, and like.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Does it taste as bad as it smells, because it
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: don't smell great.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: No, it smells awful. I hate that smell actually, And
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I actually lived with two roommates who studied algae, and
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: they smelled great, but like they did not enjoy talking
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to me about algae because I would always tell them
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: how bad it smells.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: But you know, also, like blue cheese doesn't smell great,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: and if you smell blue cheese for the first time,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: you're like gross. So I wonder if algae is just
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: like an acquired taste, maybe in a thousand years people
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: will be like, oh my gosh, have you had this
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: algae vintage? It's incredibly complex.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I can at least tell you that the Soviets
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: in this experiment did not come to that conclusion, and
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: so in the second iteration they added another wing where
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: they grew plants that were not algae, and then in
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: the third iteration, they were like, look, it's not worth
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: having any algae because none of us want to eat
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: this stuff. And so then they had two wings that
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: were just growing more traditional plants.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: So do you think if it came down to it,
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: they'd be like, I'd rather starve than eat more algae, Like, really,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: I'm just not going to do it.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I think the answer to this question is always going
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: to be when it comes between death and eating something else,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: we become way less picky. Do you disagree?
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel kind of picky, but also
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: I know the human drive to survive is very, very powerful,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: and people do basically anything in that situation. But based
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: on my knowledge of the documentary The Martian, it makes
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: me wonder in an enclosed environment like that, what happens
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: to the people's poop? Like are they pooping in their garden?
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Is that for real?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: That is for real in a lot of these systems.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: I don't think they were doing that in these bios systems,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: But when we move on to some of the other
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: systems we're going to talk about, yes they are, and
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: in space I think absolutely you're going to need those microbes,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: you're going to need those nutrients, and you're just going
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: to have to be really careful to make sure that
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: you're not transmitting any diseases, so you can like screen
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: for stuff ahead of time. I think using human waste
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: on fields that's called like night soil or something like that.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: That's a good name for it.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it sounds way less, way more appealing when
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: you call it that, but you do get diseases transmitted
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: that way, so you have to be really careful about
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: how you do that. And I think that's why we
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: don't tend to do that in a lot of areas
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: where we're able to avoid it.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: That reminds me of a dinner I had once in
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: France at some fancy restaurant where my wife ordered a
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: particular kind of dish she'd never seen before, and the
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: waiter warned her that the dish had quote a barnyard aroma.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: She ordered it anyway, and yes, when it came it
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: smell like poop. What was it? It was some kind
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: of horrible sausage. I tried it also, I was like,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: I just cannot eat that. Oh my gosh. You know,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: the French they're very creative with their meat dishes, and
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: they eat a lot of things that a lot of
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: other people would be like, yeah, that's not food.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: People will sometimes say that goat milk has a barnyard
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: after taste, and it does, but that's just the taste
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: of hay, which is way better than the taste of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: feces or the smell of feces. So I guess there's
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: a variety of barnyard tastes out there.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: So but back to BIOS three, they didn't have goats,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: they didn't have barnyards. When is this all happening? Is
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: this like in the middle of the space race?
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's before So sixty five was the first one,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: so before we landed on the Moon in sixty nine. Oh,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and then they kept it going so like they I
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: think BIOS three was in nineteen seventy two, and then
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union started running out of money and so
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: they kind of stopped. But like they so for a
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: while they were spending like twenty percent of their time
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: just like sort of tinkering with the system. So it
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: was very time intensive and they never achieved complete closure. Like,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: for example, they weren't growing meat, they didn't have cows
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: in there, but quote Siberians must have their meat was
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a quote I found in one of the papers. So
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: they were like doing meat deliveries regularly. And actually talked
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: to a guy who was born in Siberia and I
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: was like, Oh, it's so funny, and he's like, you
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: don't understand. In Siberia you need meat to stay alive.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, I'm not sure that scientifically sound, but
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to stop pushing you on the meat question.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Well, what's interesting If you're going for a closed loop
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: system and then you're like importing meat and you're exporting
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: human poop, it feels like you're not really close to
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: a closed loop system. Are you still learning something because
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: you're doing some closed loop stuff people haven't done before.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I think you're still learning something. So like you're getting
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: a handle on how long it takes to maintain these systems,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: and you know, maybe a little bit about the psychology
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: of living in these systems, a little bit of information
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: about food production, but you know, so biosphere too. One
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: of the exciting things about that was that their goal
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: was nothing, no food comes in, and there were some
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: rumors that maybe like liquor snuck in at some point,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: but like, I mean they lost the men lost eighteen
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: percent of their weight, the women lost ten, and so
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: like they were really they were sticking to it. But
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: they had the benefit of being on the grid, so
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: they didn't have to like worry about power or you know,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: like cleaning solar panels or anything like that. And they
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: had these giant lungs that equilibrated the pressure, so like
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: on warm days, you know, like the air would expand
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: and so and the lungs would sort of adjust to
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: make sure that, you know, like the panels didn't burst
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: and break and fall in on them. So like they
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: did a good job of closing things, but there were
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: still things that they were able to, you know, benefit
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: from because they were on the Earth.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: And so do we have like a linear progression from
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: the earliest efforts that are less closed loop to the
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: later efforts that are more closed loop or like making
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: progress or are we making progress? Or is it sort
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: of like a random assortment of Hey, let's try this,
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: let's try that.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the most frustrating things about space
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: settlement related research is that it does seem to be
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: a grab bag of someone who's like, oh, I have
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the right knowledge that to answer this question. And I've
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: got the right knowledge that to answer this question, and
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: there's no like funding for like. This is the like
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: step wise path we're going to take to get to
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the answer. It's a bit more of a hodgepodge. Lunar
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: palace is one of the more recent ones.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: So what is lunar palace?
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: So that is a facility in China. The palace part
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: is actually an acronym the permanent astro based life support
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: artificial closed ecosystem.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do they have an acronym generating facility within their
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: experiment in case they need new acronyms so they don't
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: have to import them from the outside.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I mean they should, they should. And you know, if
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: there's a space race heating up between China and the US,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: we should at least worry about China's acronym game because
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: they're rocking it.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Oh really, well, they're winning the acronym racey.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I mean it's close, it's neck and neck.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: All right, I want to hear about this amazing acronym facility,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: but first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: back and we are importing ideas into your mind and
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: exporting night soil. You know what that means. And we're
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: hearing about early efforts to try to learn how to
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: grow food on alien planets by practicing enclosed environments here
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: on Earth. And you were telling us about the Chinese
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Lunar Palace. So this is neither a palace, nor is
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: it on the Moon.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's right, but it is preparing for settlements
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: on the Moon eventually. And in my mind, this is
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the most impressive closed loop system that's been set up
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: so far. So Biosphere two was like huge, but it's
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: so complicated that if something goes wrong, it's kind of
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: hard to tinker with the system to figure out, like
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: what would you would do differently if you are on Mars.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: So Lunar Palace started a little smaller. They had two
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: wings where they were growing plants, and then they had
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: an area where like humans could live, and there was
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: a meeting space, and then they had a bathroom and
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: a waste treatment area. So they were trying to like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: reuse the water from the urine. I think they were
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: using the feces for fertilizer, but actually I'm forgetting if
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: they did that for sure, but they did a great
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: job at capturing the water that they breathed out, that
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: they used for showers, that they urinated, and I think
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: eventually they made it to one hundred percent like water recycling.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Kind of like they do in Dune, that other documentary.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, there's so many space documentaries. Yes, so impressive. I
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: watched the more recent version of that documentary just the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: other day.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: And for anybody out there who's not getting the joke,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: obviously Dune, he's not a documentary. Don't write us emails
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: about how Dune exact right fiction? But you're saying that
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: they did actually achieve some amount of recycling all of
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: their water like they do induce.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, and there is a worm connection. So Dune there
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: were those giant worms. There are not giant worms in
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the Lunar Palace. And I'm going to stretch this to
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: make the connection. But so they one of the things
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: that they did that was unique in this facility is
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: that they took meal worms.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Oh no, are we about to eat worms?
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: We're about to eat worms? Yeah, So meal worms they've
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: got like an exoskeleton, so they're not like the worms
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: in your garden. They like become beetles eventually, so they
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: were feeding the meal worms on the wasst the plant waste,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: and so any part of the plant that wasn't digestible
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: by the people was being turned into protein by the worms.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: And they created a meal plan, and the meal plan
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: they were able to grow seventy eight percent of the
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: food by weight for this meal plan, and they included
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the worms for like a protein source. They did bring
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: in things like different kinds of spices.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: So they're saying they're using the meal worm to turn
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: the plant waste in the proteins, and then they're just
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: directly eating the worms.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, they would season them to make them more palatable,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and they'd like fry them up and stuff, and so
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: they had a couple different like recipes for preparing them.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: But yes, they were being incredibly efficient. And so while
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: this makes a lot of Westerners like you and I
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: not hungry, you know that's not true. And other places
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in the world, other places in the world are way
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: more comfortable with eating insects than we are.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: So you're saying these Chinese lunar palasin knots or whoever
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: whatever you call these folks living there were totally cool
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: with this meal worm based diet. They were like yum
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: yum yum, put some soy sauce on it, and it's good.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: There was a survey and they raided the food favorably,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: And I mean it could be because, like if a
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: lot of the people who do analogs are people who
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: are hoping that eventually this their nation Space Agency will
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: send them to space. So maybe they were like, I
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: am just such a good sport about everything. These meal
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: worm tacos are just the best thing I've ever eaten.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: But they did report that they liked it.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Well, I have a science question for you, which is
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: I get how turning that plant matter into protein is useful,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: but can't we have another layer there, Like, can't you
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: have something that we'd like to eat, eat the meal worms,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: you know, feed the meal worms to talapia or something.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Have a fish farm, then yeah, you get to eat
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: fish and the fish get to eat mealworms and everybody's happy.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Do you lose a lot of efficiency there because you're
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: like one step up the pyramid? Or is that pretty efficient?
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: So this is a great question. Almost every plan that
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: I read for settlements on Mars stopped at insects. So
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: every time an animal eats another animal, you lose a
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: lot of energy as it like converts what it ate
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: into its own like muscle mass. A lot of that
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: gets like lost as heat. So every time you add
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: a step in the food chain, you're losing some of
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: the calories that you could have produced.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: So the way, like it takes a huge amount of
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: corn to support one cow, So you could replace a
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: burger with like a huge amount of corn, eat a
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: lot more food if you eat the corn directly exactly.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think there's zero chance of us bringing
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: cows to space and then your term, because they like
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: take up a lot of space and they fart a lot.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: You're gonna need to like clean the air a lot.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I wasn't even seeing chickens like listed as something that
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: we could handle bringing with us to space right now.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, they make a huge mess and they're just
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: not efficient. I feel like eventually we're going to have
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: to have that kind of stuff. So when I was
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: talking to people about like what we're going to do
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: so some you know, one person pointed out that a
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: lot of people who start as vegetarians are vegans, something
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: like eighty four percent of them can't stick with it,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: at least in Western diets, and I personally was a
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: vegetarian for two years and then I had a craving
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: for Arby's beef and cheddar sandwiches that I just could not.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: My husband is like that. So my husband's been a
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: vegetarian for twenty five years and he's like that is
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: just so depressing that that's what threw you off.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Is it a pregnancy related thing? Was it when you
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: were pregnant?
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, wasn't pregnant. I was an undergrad.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: You can't even blame it on the fetus.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: No, maybe it was a hangover related thing, which anyway, Arby's,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: if you want to advertise on our show, where we're
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: open for that. But so they were trying to figure out, like, well,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: what do you do if you know that the people
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: in your facility are going to be sad on Mars
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: if they're not eating meat, And so their proposals were
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: it's called so based meats. But the ideas you like,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: take cells from cows, for example, and you feed them
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: all the nutrients that those cells need to divide, and
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you grow them and essentially like a nutrient filled vat
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: and then all you need is the cells and so
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: you don't need the whole animal. There's a lot of
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: waste that way, and you don't have to worry about
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: like humane treatment of those animals, and so you can
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: still get the cells. That science is like it's coming
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: along pretty well. But like you know, when you bite
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: into a steak or something, there's actually a lot of
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: different cell types that are in that steak that contribute
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: to the taste. And so I think trying to create
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: a taste that is similar to actually eating cow if
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: you're someone who eats cow, is difficult. But maybe bringing
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: these cell based solutions with us will be a way
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: to make it happen.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: So you're saying, we can't bring cows, but we could
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: grow real meat sort of in the lab without having
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: the whole animal, just by growing the cells. I think
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: I've seen people do that here, Like they even just
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: ban that in Florida because people were worried about the
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: effect on the industry or something.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Oh that's a bummer. So, like, I'm excited about this
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: idea because it seems less environmentally damaging and far more humane.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: So I'm excited about this technology personally, but I can
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: see how, yes, lobbyists would not be happy to have
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: cattle farms replaced by vats, and it does feel kind
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of dystopiing it's.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Sort of weird indeed, bad grown meat. But is it
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: a lot more efficient or does it require as much
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: or just different resources like energy, etc.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: I am not an expert. My sense is that it
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: is more efficient, but I don't know that for sure.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: It's possible that those factories have some complicated extra stuff
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: that makes it less efficient.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Well. Also, just in terms of satisfying the Siberians, plant
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: based products that taste like meat have come a long way, right,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: A lot of people happily eat impossible burgers or beyond
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: burgers or whatever.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So my husband has tried a bunch of
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: those kinds of like fake meat. I call them feet
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and he doesn't appreciate that. But every once in a while,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Who'll be like, oh, man, try this hot dog. It
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: tastes just like a hot dog. And I was like,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: you haven't had I eat in twenty five years. It
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: does not taste like a hot dog. Actually, I like
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: eating a lot of those foods, but in my head,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: I never think, oh, I'm eating a hot dog. I
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: think like, oh, I'm eating something different. This is like
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: protein something different. I don't classify it as meat in
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: my head.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I was a vegetarian for a long time, and when
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: I was I wasn't into the whole like meat replacement things.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm a vegetarian. I'm into vegetables. I
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: like vegetables. Let's make an eggplant, let's roasta cauliflower, Like,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: let's eat the vegetables as vegetables and not force them
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: to pretend to be meat. But it brings up an
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: interesting question about these colonies, Like you have to think
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: not just about the initial colonists who just want to
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: survive and will be able to choke down meal worms,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: but you want to build a self sustaining population that
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: lives and has quality of life and joy and can
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: have barbecues and whatever. And so you're right, you need
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: to build up this technology to have like different kinds
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: of foods and actually tasty foods, not just Shackleton styles
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: scraping by.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but like even I Shackleton Expedition, they got to
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: like kill penguins and have fresh meat.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: All right, So we'll talk more about growing food on
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Mars and the science of that, But you're telling us
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: about the lunar Palace is that's sort of the epitome
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: of examples of growing things in a self sustained colony
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: on Earth.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some companies who are trying to do stuff
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: like this on the small scale, but in my mind,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Lunar Palace is the facility that has managed to close
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the most things while doing the best recycling. But there's
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: still a lot to learn. So like, they had a
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: run where it was three guys in there, and the
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide levels were like fluctuating up and down. They
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: were getting too high and then dropping down again, and
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: so they took two of the bigger men out and
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: replace them with two smaller women, and then then the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide levels were okay. And so like if that
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: happened on Mars, like that's like that could have just
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: been death for everybody. And so like right now we're
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: at the stage where like we're swapping out sizes of
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: humans to try to make things work, and so like
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the papers from the Lunar Palace group have like many
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: pages of storychometric equations where they're trying to like figure
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: out where all of the different like atoms and molecules went.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: There's still a lot we have to figure out it's complicated.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: So are we sending short people to Mars? Is that
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: what we learned from this experiment?
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: So women are slightly more metabolically efficient, and on average
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: we're smaller. I've heard people argue that we should be
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: sending just women to space, or and then my exac
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: likes to joke that we should send just jockeys to space.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: But it's worth considering. But at least initially, you know
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: your cargo will stretch for longer if the people are smaller.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: What about amputees. We could have amputees in space, right,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, do you really need your legs anyway? Right?
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Why support all that leg tissue?
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I mean Mars has partial gravity, and so
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: there's still some benefit to having having to But maybe
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: it would be way more comfortable to have a prosthetic
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: on Mars if there was less gravity pulling you down
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: and creating like friction and pain at the interface between
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the prosthetic and the human body. So I don't really
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: know the answer to your question.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Somebody's going to type amputees in space into Google and
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: see some really really weird stuff.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: There's lots of weird space stuff. Yeah, yeah, So Lunar
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Palace did well. There's a ESA, the European Space Agency
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: is working on this system. Their acronym is Melissa, and
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what it stands for. But they
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: are doing some experiments with algae. Again, algae's back, and
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: they don't have humans in this system, but they're they're
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out these equations for like, you know,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: how many for if you have like one hundred cells
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: of algae, how much carbon dioxide can that extract from
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the air, and how much oxygen does it give you back?
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: And it does it depend on like what you're feeding them.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: And I'm just sort of making things up here, but
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: like the point is they're trying to like start at
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the bottom and work out all of these little equations
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: that you're gonna want to have sort of figured it
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: out before you go to Mars. And so there's there's
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: groups sort of tackling this from different angles. But we're
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: I would say, we're definitely not there yet. All right, Well,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: we have been having too much fun. I've lost of time,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and it is time for us to take a little
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: break and we'll be back to talk more about food
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: and space in just a second.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: So this is great practice and we're learning a lot,
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: and we're tweaking our systems, and we're learning to love
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: algae and meal worms because apparently it's the future of
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Michelin starred restaurants on Mars. But what do we know about,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: like the long term plan for growing food on Mars,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: because as you said, we can't like shift food from
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Earth for a long time. And you know, the whole
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: plan I think is let's make humans multiplanetary. That's only
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: useful if we're actually independent. Right, if we have colony
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: on Mars and it's totally dependent on Earth and then
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Earth gets hit by an asteroid and it goes capute,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: then the colony, if it's dependent on Earth, it's going
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: to die out anyway. So what do we know about
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: like making a actually independent so you can survive on
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: its own.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Well, we know it's going to be even more complicated
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: than doing it on Earth. So one of the reasons
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: it's going to be complicated. So in our prior episode
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: on why it's going to be so hard to work
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: on the Moon, we talked about how regolith is a
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: huge pain in the rear end. So like the dust
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: on the Moon and Mars. It's jagged. You don't want
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: to breathe it in That jaggedness we think also makes
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: it hard to grow plants in it. So there were
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: these samples from the Apollo mission that folks tried to
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: grow a Rabbitopsis thaliana in and the plants grew, and
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just lunar regolith. It was like lunar regolith
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: plus fertilizer and nutrients and water, like there was a
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff done to like put lipstick on the pig,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: that is lunar regolith.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: So, but for people who haven't heard that episode or
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: don't remember, you're saying, basically, there's no soil on the
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Moon and no soil on Mars, and that the dirt
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: we grow our plants in has a lot of useful
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: stuff and that stuff is just missing from Mars and
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: from the Moon. Yeah, And what is a Rabbitopsis thaliana
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: For the of us who are not biologists.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: A rabbit ops Ofstheliana is a plant. It's also known
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: as sale criss and it's a workhorse for biologists. So
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: tons of experiments have been done on this kind of stuff.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: We know, like if you grow it under soil with
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: toxins in it. We know what genes turned on to
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: tell us that the plant is stressed out, for example.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: So it's like a well understood plant here on Earth.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Is it something that you could eat or is it
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: just like, hey, let's start with something we know how
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: to grow.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: I think it's can you just start with something that
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: we know how to grow. It's edible, edible, by.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: The way, I like to describe my food source. What
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: are we having for dinner tonight? It's edible. Don't worry,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: right right, Yeah, I feel now I'm worried.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: I feel like foragers like to tell you that food
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: is edible a lot like I feel like what you're
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: telling me is that artificial selection has made food good,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: but nature provides edible anyway. Okay, it is edible.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: So you're saying, they tried growing this thing in lunar regolis, right.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: And they added all of this stuff to make it
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: more like Earth's soil, and the plants that grew showed
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: signs of stress based on their coloration and what their
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: genes were doing. And one of the hypotheses was that
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: all of those jagged lunar bits were like making it
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: hard for the plant to put out roots, and maybe
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: nutrients and water were leaking out because it kept getting poked.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: We don't really know. But the point is, even if
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: you like supplement a lot, it's hard to grow in
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: this stuff.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: So you're saying they basically grew it in earth soil,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: but with lunar regolith mixed in, and that was bad
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: enough to make the plants stressed out.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, and Mars is going to be worse.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Now they're really testing the Mark Watney experiments, right. Basically,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: human poop plus regolith is not a great place for
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: plants to grow.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they didn't actually use human poop. They used
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: other fertilizers, but if they had wanted to be more
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: realistic for Martian settlements, they could have used human poop.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: So what do we need to add to regolith on
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Mars to actually make it soily enough that we could
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: grow plants on it?
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: So you might need to supplement with nitrogen and potassium.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: So I think those things are both available on Mars,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: but maybe not in the form that plants use, So
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: we might need to bring some of that with us.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: We almost certainly need to bring boron and we understand
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Martian soil in some areas where it's been studied well,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: but I don't think we have a good handle on
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: variability and what Martian soil is like. But some of
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: the areas we've sampled have perchlorates, which are endocrine disrupting hormones.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: That sounds bad.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's bad right, so for developing fetuses. So like
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: if a pregnant woman was consuming food that had been
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: grown in regulus with these perchlorates, the perchlorates get taken
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: up in the food. We know that plants take it
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: up and it messes with nervous system development, so bad
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: for the baby, and it also messes with maternal metabolism,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: so bad for the mom.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: So edible but poisonous.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: So when I talk to folks who are pro space settlement,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: they always say, ugh, pah, it's water soluble. You just
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: gotta like rinse it and it's gonna go away. But
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: then I talked to a friend of mine who's a
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: geologist and his lab works with perchlorates, and I was like,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: is it that easy? Do you just like rinse it
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: and it goes away? And he's like, we work with
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: that in fume hoods, only, Like, it's not that easy,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: and he's and it's a big deal if you miss it.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: And also like if you imagine, you know, so Zach
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: and I bought some farmland and we wanted we have
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: like a garden. If someone was to say like, hey,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: it's cheap, it's got like these endocrine disrupting hormones in
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the soil, but like, just rinse it first before you
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: grow your plants. It's cool. Like I wouldn't be like,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: oh great, I'm fine with that.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And you have to rinse the plant, so you have
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: to rinse the soil. Rise every rinse.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: The soil to get the perchlorates out. But then now
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: you've got the perchlorates in the water. So basically, like
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: the more you talk about the regolith, like it's jagged,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: it's filled with chemicals. I think it also has toxic
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: amounts of aluminum. Maybe that's on the moon, but like
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: it's gonna need to get cleaned up so it's not
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: toxic first. So a lot of folks say like, look,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: this is all too much work. Let's just do hydroponics.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: And so the idea with hydroponics is you plant the
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: plants directly into water, like you give them something to
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: hold on to, but they're just in water, and into
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: that water you add nutrients and everything else that they need,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: and then that way you don't need the soil at all.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Everybody who like carved an apple before listening to this
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: episode knows what you're talking about when it comes to hydro.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Don't understand I have a I have apple trees growing
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: in my head.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: Was a bong reference.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Oh I thought this was a family friendly show.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: That's why I was making a subtle reference.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Oh well, it goes right over my right over my head.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Can't be too subtle with Killy on the show.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Well, that tells me something about your college experience. First,
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I want to go back to something you said about
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: importing this stuff, Like you said bringing nitrogen and boron.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: I've heard of nitrogen as something we need for plants
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: to grow, but what is boron and why do we
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: need it for plants?
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm not a botanist, so I'm not one hundred
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: percent sure, but so like just you know, our bodies,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: we were mostly made out of what knops I think carbon, hydrogen, oxygen,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: phosphor a sulfur. Those the main things that are in
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: our body, but we also need other things and like
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: trace amounts, and so something that plants need some of
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: but not loads of, includes boron, and I think that's
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: something that we just haven't found a lot of on Mars,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: so it's something we'd need to bring with us. The
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: list of things that you need to bring for the
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Moon is much longer, and you know, Mars has things
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: like there's carbon in the atmosphere in the form of
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide, and so you can get that carbon, whereas
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: the Moon has very little carbon and it's hard to acquire. So,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: like Mars has a lot of good stuff, but you're
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: still going to need to bring some and recycle others.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: So we're going to need to pull some of the
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: things we want out of the Martian environment and bring
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff in order to create an environment
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: where plants can be healthy and grow in a way
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: that they produce food we want to like feed our children.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And the stuff that you pull out of
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: the Martian environment, it's probably going to be a pain
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: in the rear end to pull it out. So, like previously,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: we're talking about how regolith is super jagged and how
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: that makes it hard to run equipment because it's abrasive
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: and it gets it clogs up the equipment and wears
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: it down pretty quickly. And so anytime you're like extracting
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: something from the regolith, for example, you're going to want
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: to recycle. It is probably easier to recycle it than
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: it is to extract it additionally, and so so these
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: recycled systems are going to be super important.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: And all of these things sound like they're going to
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: be very energy intensive, Like you're extracting things from Mars
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: and you're separating them and doing all these complicated processes
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: on them. I guess this is going to all run
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: on solar power.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so solar panels on Mars. We use them for
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: our rovers for example, and so it's like a proven technology.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: But that one percent atmosphere that Mars has, as we mentioned,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: is enough to support dust storms that can encircle the
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: whole planet for like weeks at a time sometimes, so
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: they can last for a long time. They're not super predictable,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and you can have battery packs to help you get
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: through those periods. But most of the folks that I
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: talked to say, we're going to need to bring portable
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: nuclear reactors with us as well and plant them sort
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: of far away from our habitats, so they're not, you know,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: irradiating the crew members. So we're probably going to be
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: relying on both of those. You might be able to
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: get a little geo thermal energy from Mars, but that's
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: like a comple caid engineering project that I don't think
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: we'll be ready to tackle for a while. And there's
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: no flowing water, so hydropowers out and unless there's big
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: surprises on Mars, there's not going to be any fossil fuels,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: so probably it's going to be solar and nuclear.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: We've talked before about nuclear power in terms of spaceflight,
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: and one of the big questions is like, how do
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: you safely get the nuclear materials up there, because we
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: mind them here on Earth and then we're going to
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: send them to Mars or send them to the Moon.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Something we haven't talked about it, and I'm wondering if
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: you know anything about it, is extracting nuclear materials on Mars.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Like Mars has uranium, right, why not send the technology
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: to Mars to extract uranium from Marsian soil itself, because
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: then we don't have to launch uranium in the Earth's atmosphere.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: So I believe that those materials are available on Mars,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: but just like on Earth, it's not just a matter
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: of acquiring those materials. So, for example, if you're using
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: plutonium to power your power plant, you need to like
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: centrifuge it to get certain kinds of plutonium and it
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: requires like massive facilities to do that. And so I think,
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: you know, eventually, if Mars is going to be self sustaining,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: they will need to collect and process their own nuclear
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: fuel for their power plants. But I think we're not
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: going to start that way.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Probably all these conversations have like two modes, like how
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: do you get there and get started? And then how
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: do you become self sufficient? And it's incredible, like the
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: list of things you're going to need to run a society,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: you know, to grow all this food and to supply
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: the power, and then all the people to run these facilities,
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: and then the schools to teach those people's children, and
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: then the factory to make the pencils for those children
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: to do their homework. And it's just like the tensils
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: of the complexity of the society are incredible.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Our global supply chains are so incredible, Like there's so
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: much that we benefit from. We tried to find numbers
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: on how many people you would need to create a
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: self sustaining society, so like how many people would need
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: to be there before the Earth could explode and Mars
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: could survive without us? And I think we don't really
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: know the answer to that, But like I think Cuba
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: and North Korea, which are countries that maybe get the
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: closest to running without interacting with other countries, they've got like,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: what is it thirty million, like probably tens of millions,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: but neither one of those countries are places where most
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: of us would be like totally, I want to live there, right,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: So they're like and I think a lot of them
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: would rather not be so closed or you know, maybe
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: not the leaders in those countries, but the average citizen.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: So it's going to take a lot. I've seen a
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: lot of estimates, but I think if you're going to live, well,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: like there's something like one hundred thousand different kinds of
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: medical specialists, you don't necessarily need all of them, but
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I'm glad they all exist and that they're available to
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: me on this planet. So it's going to take I
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: think generations before Mars is completely self sustaining.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: And do you think that answer changes if we only
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: send jockeys to Mars, Like can we get there faster
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: with just jockeys? Is it like a volume of humanity
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: question or like a number of heads?
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: I think it's numbers of heads and hands. But uh ok,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: I haven't done all the equations.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: So you didn't say feet. So then like my amputee
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: only colony on Mars, you know, maybe that could succeed. Yeah,
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: but speaking of bringing life to Mars, you were talking
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: about importing all these materials to grow food on Mars.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: I was wondering about the little critters, like our life
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: here on Earth also relies on micro organisms in the soil.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Are we bringing sterile stuff to Mars to grow or
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: are we bringing like Earth based microorganisms for our farms
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: on Mars.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is tough. So for space stuff, you
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: try to bring as few microbes as possible typically, but
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: we're going to need to bring those microbes with us
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: because bacteria and fungi are like very important collaborators with
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: the plants that we like to eat, so they need
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: to come. And you probably can speak to this better
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: because your wife works on questions like this, But yeah,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: those are going to have to come. But so then
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the hard thing is just bringing the organisms that you
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: want and keeping out the organisms you don't want. So
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: at the introduction we talked about how Biosphere two had
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: problems with plant pests and pathogens that they clearly had
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: not plans to bring with them, but they got in.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: And Biosphere two also had scorpions that got in that
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: they didn't mean to have in there, and they're the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: only lethal scorpions in the United States and they managed
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: to get in.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Wow. Do they make good tacos? I bet there's a
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: pretty spicy.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They did not try eating them in Biosphere too.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: They were not hungry enough. Eighteen percent body mass loss
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: was not enough to get them to eat the scorpions.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: At some point, you're eating scorpion tacos. But I guess
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: they weren't there yet.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: No, maybe they'll get there all right.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating though, how we have these competing interests, Like
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: on one hand, as you said, you don't want to
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: bring microbes to Mars because you still want to know the
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: answer to the question like are there already microbes on
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Mars that either grew independently or through some sort of
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: like pan spermian thing got to Mars from Earth or
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: maybe originally evolved on Mars and then got knocked off
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: the planet and landed here on Earth and seated life
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: on Earth? Like are we space cousins with the Martians?
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: So you're right, we want to answer those questions, which
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: means we shouldn't be bringing those microbes. On the other hand,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: we can't really go to Mars long term without bringing microbes.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: And so do we try to like set up some
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: sterile barrier, I mean, the whole thing seems totally impractical.
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: Or do we just have to wait until we've answered
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: the science question before we can begin colonizing.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I think have to wait is a tough way
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: to put it, Like you don't have to wait for anything,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: should you wait? I would like to see us have
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: the answer to that question before humans go there, because
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: even if you're not like you know, so, the first
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: mission of Mars is probably not going to be trying
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: to like grow their own food. They're probably going to
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: pack stuff that's shelf stable. But they're humans, so they're
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: gonna come with their microbiome and like we're lousy with microbes,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: and so I think we'll contaminate the surface, you know,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: just by like touching our space suits before we put
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: them on for EVAs, So I think before humans go
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: at all, if that's a question that we think is
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: important to answer, we should probably try to answer it
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: with the machines we send out there, which probably also
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: brings some microbes, but hopefully fewer.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: Well. People are planning to visit Mars, you know, in
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: the next decade or so, I can't imagine we're gonna
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: have an answer, definitive answer to the question about life
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: on Mars in that deck. So we're most likely we're
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: going to spoil Mars for this question scientifically.
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Musk has just announced that in twenty twenty eight he's
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: going to send people to Mars. I wouldn't hold my breath.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's going to happen that fast unless
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: some so the United States government, I guess, would probably
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: have to say no, you can't do that until we
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: have the answer to this question, because I don't know
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: who else would have the power to stop him.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Does the US government have the power to stop him?
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: So, according to the Outer Space Treaty of nineteen sixty seven,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: some country is responsible for what Musk does out there.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: So Musk could decide, well, I'm not going to launch
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: from the US, I'm going to launch from some other country,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: and then that country becomes responsible. But given his current infrastructure,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: in his current nationality, he would probably be the United
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: States's responsibility. So they're the ones who would be issuing
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the launch license, so they're the ones who would have
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: to put their stamp on the mission plan. So I mean,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: the international community could like make a fuss and the
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: US could feel pressured, but I'm not seeing that happening.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Another possibility I suppose is that we try to build
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: colonies on Mars that are more separate from like what's
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: going on on the surface. And I talked about living
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: underground on the Moon. What about living underground on Mars
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: also as a way to protect yourself from all the
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: cosmic radiation the death from the Martian skies.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we will probably live underground on Mars as well.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: So Mars, like the one percent atmosphere that Mars has
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: isn't really sufficient to save you from all of this
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: space radiation. And unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have a planet
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: wide strong magnetic field, so you're going to get exposed
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: to space radiation. So most of the proposals I've seen
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: do involve habitats either in like lava tubes or just
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: buried underneath regolith. So first I'll say that burying yourself
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: underground doesn't necessarily mean you're not going to contaminate the
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Martian surface, I think, because you're probably still going to
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: be going on some EVAs.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: And also it could be that there are microbes under
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: the ground, right.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, and that might be the place we're most
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: likely to find them because they're not exposed to you know,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: the radiation from space. Like maybe the most likely place
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: we are to find these microbes could be in you know,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: lava tubes or caves underground. But this also this opposes
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: problems related to growing plants because you're not going to
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: get any sunlight. And already you were getting less sunlight
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: than you would on Earth because Mars is farther from
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the sun, which is also going to be a problem
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: for your solar panels. But now you're also underground, so
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: you're going to need to be using a lot of
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: energy to create artificial lights, or you're gonna have to
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: pipe the sunlight in somehow. So it's it's going to
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: be complicated. But yeah, I don't think being underground necessarily
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: protects the microbes, but it adds some complications when it
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: comes to growing plants.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Well, what about future technology. All this stuff assumes we're
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: going to be growing earth like plants and bringing earth
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: like chickens. What if we genetically engineered, you know, chickens
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: that were good at growing on Mars, or plants that
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: were good in nine environment, or like loved Martian regularithic
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: could like filter out these toxins. Is that just a
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: pipe dream? Should I expect Andy Weird to write a
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: novel about that next?
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll read anything Andy wear rights. But so, I
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: hear a lot of folks pushing genetic engineering, and often
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: they're talking about genetic engineer in humans, which I think
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: has its whole a whole other range of ethical questions
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: that maybe we don't want to dive into today. But
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: you know, genetic engineering can improve crops in some ways,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: but I think there are a lot of problems that
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: are really complicated, and we don't understand which genes you
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: would need to tinker with in which way to solve
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: those problems. Yet, So I think that eventually it could
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: help us with a variety of problems, maybe like genes
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: for radiation resistance or something like that. I don't know,
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: although if you're underground that'll be less of a problem.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: But I would be surprised if right now we knew
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: what kind of genes we needed to tinker with in
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: a way that would actually be effective. And I know
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: there's people who disagree with me, so I guess we'll
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: have to see.
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess we'll just have to see which plants
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: and which people survive in that Martian colony. And that's
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: just sort of like a form of genetic engineering, right,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: that is.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: A form of natural selection, you know, So everyone should
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: purchase a city on Mars and hear all about my
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: opinions on this, But my opinion is that we need
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: a lot more research ahead of time so that we're
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: not said people out there and saying, like, all right,
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: we're going to see what happens. Natural selection is going
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: to select the best of you, and we'll see what
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: happens there, like I would rather. I think there's a
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: lot of engineering solutions to this stuff, you know, like
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: burying your habitat under regoliths probably helps. There might be
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: certain like material science problems that could be solved for
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: like types of habitats that do better at absorbing radiation.
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of work that can get done ahead
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: of time to figure out the equations for you know,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: how much human poop do you need to fertilize your
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: plants take up this much carbon dioxide to make this
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: muss oxygen. Like, there's a lot of work that can
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: be done ahead of time so that you can reduce
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: the number of people who need to die. And I
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: think we need to do that stuff first, so that
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: we're not relying on natural selection to hone the people
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: for space.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: So you're saying we shouldn't just send a bunch of
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: people up there and see who lives and see who dies.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: We should prepare for that and try to minimize the
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: number of deaths, right.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Or we should send delicious people so that everybody can
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: at least have some good meals while the end closes in.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Well, I want all of those jobs to have nice
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: tasty meals from all their dead co colonists.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, we have come full circle to the
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: forbidden meal. So I think that's probably good for this week.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to probably not eat for a few
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: hours because I think you've put me off of food.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: But I will enjoy the wonderful variety of foods that
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: are available on Earth when I'm prepared to eat again.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Well, I hope at least that this episode was food
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: for thought, even if it didn't inspire an appetite in anybody.
• 53:36
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