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Challenges of Working on the Moon · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty nine, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted
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  Speaker 1: the American flag on the Moon while an estimated six
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty million people tuned in. It was an
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  Speaker 1: incredible moment, and frankly, when I watch videos on YouTube,
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  Speaker 1: I still get a little choked up watching it. That said,
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  Speaker 1: it turned out that getting the flag there and raising
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  Speaker 1: it on the Moon was a real hassle, and it's
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  Speaker 1: a pretty good illustration of the kinds of hassles that
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  Speaker 1: we experience when we send humans to space. For starters,
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  Speaker 1: there was this big political brew haha, which is a
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  Speaker 1: great word really that hopefully I pronounced correctly over what
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  Speaker 1: kind of flag or flags to put up there. So
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  Speaker 1: some folks wanted to bring loads of tiny flags, one
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  Speaker 1: for every nation currently recognized on Earth. But the US
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  Speaker 1: Congress felt like if the US was footing the bill,
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  Speaker 1: then it was an American flag that needed to go up,
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  Speaker 1: and funding for the Apollo program appeared to be contingent
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  Speaker 1: on this. Oh, it's a US flag that was planted
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  Speaker 1: on each of the Apollo missions that made it to
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  Speaker 1: the Moon. But the US had to be careful to
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  Speaker 1: let everyone know that planting the flag was just a
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  Speaker 1: symbolic gesture and was not their way of showing the
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  Speaker 1: world that the Moon now belonged to the United States
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  Speaker 1: because that would have broken recently established international law. All right,
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  Speaker 1: so the politics was complicated. The next problem was how
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  Speaker 1: to get the flag up there and how to make
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  Speaker 1: it look good in space. The first problem for making
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  Speaker 1: it look good was that there is no atmosphere on
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  Speaker 1: the Moon, so if you hang the flag, it's just
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  Speaker 1: gonna like sadly droop down and look super not majestic.
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  Speaker 1: So they had to adjust a flag pole that one
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  Speaker 1: telescope so that it wouldn't take up a lot of
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  Speaker 1: space and they could just expand it out. And then
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  Speaker 1: it also had to have a bar along the top
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  Speaker 1: that would hold the flag up so that you could
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  Speaker 1: see the stars and stripes better. It's really expensive to
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  Speaker 1: send stuff to space, and it's really cramped inside of
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  Speaker 1: the spacecraft, so they had to make it as light
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  Speaker 1: as possible, and because space was limited inside the lunar lander,
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  Speaker 1: they had to attach it to the outside of the
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  Speaker 1: lunar lander. That meant that it was going to be
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  Speaker 1: exposed to space when the lunar lander was coming down
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  Speaker 1: to the Moon. And it was going to get super hot,
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  Speaker 1: so they had to create this insulated container to make
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  Speaker 1: sure that the flag wouldn't get sort of burned up
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  Speaker 1: as it was entering the Moon. All right, So now
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  Speaker 1: they've got it to the Moon, and even then there
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  Speaker 1: were problems. So spacesuits are pressurized, and so it's not
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  Speaker 1: like wearing a normal pair of gloves. It's like a
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  Speaker 1: pair of gloves that sort of pushes against every movement
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  Speaker 1: that you tried to make. So they had to make
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  Speaker 1: the flag easy to get out and put up. But
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  Speaker 1: once they got up there, the ground was more compact
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  Speaker 1: than they thought it was going to be, so the
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  Speaker 1: astronauts couldn't get the flag down as far as they wanted.
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  Speaker 1: And because of that, and because they ended up putting
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  Speaker 1: the flagpole maybe a little bit too close to the
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  Speaker 1: lunar lander, when they took off to return, you know,
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  Speaker 1: for their trip back to Earth, buzz Aldrin looked out
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  Speaker 1: the window and saw that they had knocked over the
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  Speaker 1: American flag. That appeared to have happened about half of
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  Speaker 1: the time, because if you look at pictures now of
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  Speaker 1: the Moon where those flagpoles should be, we see shadows
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  Speaker 1: cast by flagpoles in areas where Apollo twelve, sixteen, and
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  Speaker 1: seventeen put flags, So those three are probably still standing,
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  Speaker 1: but the rest of the flagpoles probably have fallen over,
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  Speaker 1: and the flag itself is probably a mess. The flags
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  Speaker 1: were just run of the mill flags, which cost only
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  Speaker 1: five dollars and fifty cents. And if you've seen a
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  Speaker 1: flag that's been left out on a flagpole for years,
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  Speaker 1: you've probably noticed that the sun's radiation has started to
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  Speaker 1: make the colors fade. The flags on the Moon have
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  Speaker 1: had about fifty years of exposure to solar radiation in
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  Speaker 1: the vacuum of space, so there's probably not much red
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  Speaker 1: or blue anymore. It's probably white. But also maybe the
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  Speaker 1: flags have disintegrated by this point. Because the Moon has
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  Speaker 1: temperature swings that go from over one hundred degrees celsius
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  Speaker 1: to less than one hundred and fifty degrees celsius near
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  Speaker 1: the equator as you go from day to night. That
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  Speaker 1: stuff's really hard on equipment, so the flags are likely
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  Speaker 1: disintegrated by now. Dennis Lakaruba, whose company sold the flag
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  Speaker 1: to NASA, said I can't believe there would be anything left.
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  Speaker 1: I gotta be honest with you. It's gonna be ashes cause, look,
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  Speaker 1: the space environment is tough and we're planning on returning
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  Speaker 1: to the Moon. The Artemis one mission orbited the Moon
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  Speaker 1: without a crew in twenty twenty two. Artemis two is
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  Speaker 1: expected to leave no sooner than September twenty twenty five,
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  Speaker 1: and it will take a crew around the Moon without landing,
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  Speaker 1: sort of like what we did with Apollo eight. Artemis
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  Speaker 1: three is expected to happen no earlier than September twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty six, but this one's going to actually land humans,
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  Speaker 1: including the first woman on the Moon, and they're heading
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  Speaker 1: to the lunar South Pole. So on today's episode, we're
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  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the kinds of challenges we're
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  Speaker 1: going to experience on the Moon as we move towards
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  Speaker 1: setting up things like research stations, mining operations, and maybe
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  Speaker 1: eventually permanent human habitats. Welcome to today's show. It's going
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  Speaker 1: to be hard to work and live on the Moon.
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  Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist.
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  Speaker 1: I'm Kelly Wiersmith. I'm a parasitologist. Daniel. What have you
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  Speaker 1: been up to this week?
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  Speaker 2: Well, in addition to doing my research at serin I'm
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  Speaker 2: also a professor, which means I teach, and this week
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  Speaker 2: I've been preparing my new class for this fall, where
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  Speaker 2: I'm talking about life in the universe, Does it exist?
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  Speaker 2: Where is it? How can we find it? Basically, I'm
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  Speaker 2: talking about aliens.
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  Speaker 1: Nice. That sounds awesome. So is it a lecture class
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  Speaker 1: or a conversation? I bet that would be some really
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  Speaker 1: awesome conversations.
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  Speaker 2: It's supposed to be a lecture, but I'm going to
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  Speaker 2: make a kind of conversational and it's for non majors,
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  Speaker 2: so we're talking like dance majors and artists and all
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  Speaker 2: sorts of fun folks.
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  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that sounds like so much fun. Can
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  Speaker 1: I take your class? Never mind, I don't want to
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  Speaker 1: go back to school.
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  Speaker 2: I'll give you an A and I'll have about you. Kelly.
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  Speaker 2: What's your week been like?
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  Speaker 1: So? I recently took over as vice president for the
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  Speaker 1: American Society of Parasitologists. So I've been doing some like
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  Speaker 1: organizational stuff that's not super exciting. But I also have
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  Speaker 1: been studying the reproductive behaviors of male small mouth bass.
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  Speaker 1: So one of my things that I do as an
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  Speaker 1: ecologist is I work on questions related to managing fish populations.
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  Speaker 1: And so we're working on some papers about bass reproduction.
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  Speaker 1: So I've had my head underwater all week.
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  Speaker 2: So why small mouth and not large mouth bass or
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  Speaker 2: medium mouth bass.
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  Speaker 1: There are no medium mouth bass, which is best friend
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  Speaker 1: of mine. But I have done work on large mouth
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  Speaker 1: bass too. That work involved making the fish vomits that
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  Speaker 1: I could see what they were eating. That was a
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  Speaker 1: way smelier job than this one, although this one involved wetsuits.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm going to tell you there's two kinds of
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  Speaker 1: people in the world, those who pee in their wetsuits
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  Speaker 1: and those who lie about it. And riding in the
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  Speaker 1: van with the crew every day was not always a
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  Speaker 1: lovely experience. And the van was like twenty years old
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  Speaker 1: because ecologists can't afford anything nice.
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  Speaker 2: Five minutes in and we're already talking about ar En.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast with a Biologist.
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  Speaker 1: My husband has a timer actually when Biologist started together,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: and he keeps track of how long it takes for
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: us to start talking about poop, which we're gonna do
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  Speaker 1: on today's episode at some point.
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  Speaker 2: I bet, which we're gonna do absolutely except it's going
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  Speaker 2: to be poop in space and anyway, Welcome to the
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: podcast Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, in which we talk
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  Speaker 2: about poop in space and poop on Earth and everything
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  Speaker 2: out there in the universe. We like to explore the deepest,
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  Speaker 2: darkest questions about how everything works, including tiny little particles
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  Speaker 2: and fruit bats and everything in between.
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  Speaker 1: Fruit bats are awesome.
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  Speaker 2: So in the intro, Kelly, you told us about how
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  Speaker 2: terrible it's going to be to live on the Moon,
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  Speaker 2: all the challenges, how hard even was to get an
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  Speaker 2: American flag to fly on the Moon. And my first
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  Speaker 2: question is like, well, why are we even thinking about it?
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  Speaker 2: Why is NASA planning to go back to the moon.
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  Speaker 2: Why are people talking about building a particle collider on
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  Speaker 2: the moon. Why does Jeff Bezos want to go to
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  Speaker 2: the moon. Why don't we just stay home?
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  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, there's so many different answers to that question.
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  Speaker 1: One of the big answers, like, the reason we went
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  Speaker 1: to the Moon in the first place is probably prestige. So,
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  Speaker 1: you know, humanity seems to have decided that being able
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  Speaker 1: to get to a place like the Moon and keep
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  Speaker 1: people alive is a great way to show how amazing
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  Speaker 1: your economy is, how amazing your scientists are and to
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  Speaker 1: just get the whole world sort of impressed with you,
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  Speaker 1: and so that's probably part of why we're going back.
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  Speaker 1: But there's also a bunch of small companies who are
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  Speaker 1: hoping to make some profits off of the Moon. So
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  Speaker 1: there's already people who are sending as of loved ones
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  Speaker 1: to the Moon, which is a bit of a controversial thing.
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  Speaker 1: There are people who don't feel like we should be
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  Speaker 1: littering the moon with the ashes of humans, but there's
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  Speaker 1: a company that's working on doing that already.
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  Speaker 2: And is that a nice thing to do for somebody?
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  Speaker 2: Or you like, I'm ejecting you from the planet because
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  Speaker 2: I didn't like you in life, So.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to be a nice thing. I
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  Speaker 1: think Jean Roddenberry, the guy who did Star Trek, was
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  Speaker 1: the first person, or was one of the first people
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  Speaker 1: to have his ashes sent to space. They haven't made
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  Speaker 1: it to the moon, but you know, I think it
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  Speaker 1: would be great if you could go to the Moon
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  Speaker 1: in life, But it's much cheaper and easier to send
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  Speaker 1: a small quantity of your ashes to space.
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  Speaker 2: Are you thinking, Gene Roddenberry literally went where no man
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  Speaker 2: had gone before.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I mean he was with a shuttle crew surrounded
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  Speaker 1: by men and maybe some women at that point in
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  Speaker 1: the shuttle program, and then I think he came back.
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  Speaker 2: To you know, speaking of Urine. That's how I always
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  Speaker 2: interpreted the Star Trek thing. To go where no man
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  Speaker 2: has gone before always made me think of like I'm
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  Speaker 2: peeing where nobody has ever peed before.
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  Speaker 1: You know, as a biologist, my brain actually never went
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  Speaker 1: with Aeron. I'm surprised.
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  Speaker 2: Oh well, I'll just ruined Star Trek for you.
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  Speaker 1: No, that's okay, I'm still good with Star Trek. It'll
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: be fine.
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  Speaker 2: So tell me, is this desire to go to the
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  Speaker 2: moon do you see it as like a natural extension
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  Speaker 2: of you know, colonialism and exploration five hundred years ago
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  Speaker 2: when the Spanish were sending out their ships, they also
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  Speaker 2: wanted to like claim New Spain for the king and
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  Speaker 2: you know, find resources and gold and exploit people. Is
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  Speaker 2: this like a natural extension of it or is it
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  Speaker 2: like a difference in kind?
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  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so that could be a whole episode
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  Speaker 1: on its own. There's a book that just came out
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: called Ground Control by Savannah I forget her last name,
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  Speaker 1: But that's enough information for you to find that book,
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  Speaker 1: and she tackles that question head on. I think it's complicated.
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  Speaker 1: So one thing that's nice is that when you go
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  Speaker 1: to the Moon, for example, there's already international law saying
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  Speaker 1: you can't you know, America can't land plant a flag
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  Speaker 1: and say the Moon belongs to us. But there is
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  Speaker 1: a lot of ambiguity and international law about what you
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  Speaker 1: can do with the resources once you're there. So could
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  Speaker 1: Blue Origin, for example, extract water from the Moon and
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  Speaker 1: create a gas station on the Moon by splitting it
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  Speaker 1: into hydrogen oxygen, which is propellant for rockets, and then
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  Speaker 1: sell that back to people. The US interpretation of international
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  Speaker 1: law is that the answer is yes. But I think
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  Speaker 1: there's a lot of other countries who would disagree. Or
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  Speaker 1: I think China and Russia would disagree until they were
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  Speaker 1: able to do the same thing, and then they would agree,
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  Speaker 1: but they don't want to be the second country to
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  Speaker 1: be able to do that. So it's complex. So there's
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  Speaker 1: no people, so at least you don't have the problems
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  Speaker 1: with dispossession in GENOCIDEA.
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  Speaker 2: It could be aliens. There could be aliens.
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  Speaker 1: On the moon.
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  Speaker 2: We didn't know until we went, you know, and the
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  Speaker 2: same is true with Mars. Right, Lanning people on Mars
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  Speaker 2: is complicated for that reason.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think microbes on Mars are way more
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  Speaker 1: likely than microbes on the Moon, and that I think
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  Speaker 1: does make it complicx. But there are folks who argue
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  Speaker 1: that the US, for example, being able to get to
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  Speaker 1: the Moon before everyone else is sort of like we
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  Speaker 1: benefited from colonization and from you know, exploiting various peoples
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  Speaker 1: and that's how we got this far ahead. And now
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  Speaker 1: we're going to be the first ones to get the
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  Speaker 1: resources and we're not going to share it with people,
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  Speaker 1: and that's like colonization sort of continuing to benefit the colonizers.
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  Speaker 1: It's complicated. I think international law fixes some of these problems,
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  Speaker 1: but I'd like to see more clarity to make sure
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  Speaker 1: that everybody benefits from space a little bit more clearly.
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  Speaker 1: But let's get back to the science.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I have a very like twelve year old opinion
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  Speaker 2: on this, which is it excites me to hear about
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  Speaker 2: people going to the Moon in Mars and beyond because
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  Speaker 2: I want to know what's out there, right, and I
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  Speaker 2: feel like eventually we have to explore the universe, and
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  Speaker 2: eventually has to start somewhere, and they should probably start
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  Speaker 2: with the moon because it's the closest thing and that's
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  Speaker 2: a baby step. And so I like hearing about like
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  Speaker 2: concrete progress towards our eventual future as a galactic species.
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  Speaker 2: You know, a big reader of science fiction, and so
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  Speaker 2: it feels like if you can't even get to the moon,
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  Speaker 2: you're not going to get anywhere. So that's my like,
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  Speaker 2: you know, as a twelve year old view of going
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  Speaker 2: to the moon.
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  Speaker 3: Amen.
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  Speaker 1: No, I totally agree with you. So my husband and
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  Speaker 1: I wrote a book called The City on Mars, and
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: it's all about space settlements. And the reason we took
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: this project on initially was because we're both sci fhi
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: nerds who love the idea of humans living in space.
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  Speaker 1: We just want to see it done right. And it's
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  Speaker 1: kind of complicated and those complications. We're not going to
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  Speaker 1: talk too much about the legal complications or the ethical
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  Speaker 1: complications today, more of the like challenges that the lunar
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  Speaker 1: environment poses when you're trying to work just do something
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  Speaker 1: like plant a flag on the moon. Even something that
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  Speaker 1: simple is complicated.
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  Speaker 2: Even peeing on the moon is going to be hard.
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  Speaker 2: So we were curious what folks out there thought about
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  Speaker 2: life on the moon. Is it going to be a rosy,
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  Speaker 2: relaxed retirement home where people can live out their cushy
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  Speaker 2: lives or is it going to be brutish and short
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  Speaker 2: and difficult. So I asked our listeners to comment on
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the question what is the biggest challenge for living on
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  Speaker 2: the Moon. If you'd like to participate for future episodes,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: please write to us to questions at Danielankelly dot org
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: and will happily add your voice to the choir. So
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  Speaker 2: think about it for a minute. What do you think
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: is the biggest challenge for living on the Moon. Here's
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: what a bunch of our listeners thought. I'd say it's
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: some combination of food and water having to be replenished,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: most likely from Earth. Also bone loss due to low gravity.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: I think radiation is going to be the main one
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  Speaker 2: that we'd have to pay attention to, and living deep
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: underground doesn't seem like the most glamorous way to be
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: exploring a new body.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: I would say probably the cost of keeping supplies.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I would say cost.
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  Speaker 4: There are so many ridiculous challenges facing humans on the Moon,
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  Speaker 4: and almost every one of them is a single point
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  Speaker 4: failure like radiation, exposure, or access to food and water.
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  Speaker 4: So it's tough to choose, but I'm going with supplying oxygen.
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  Speaker 5: I guess that would be the lack of any life
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  Speaker 5: supporting ecosystem. Radiation is going to be a big problem.
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  Speaker 6: But also I hear there's really difficult dust, which is
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  Speaker 6: kind of like asbestos, I think, very dangerous to inhale
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  Speaker 6: and also just damages everything. I can't see it being
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  Speaker 6: a huge problem humans living on the Moon. We've already
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  Speaker 6: got the International Space Station a few hundred years, few
• 15:26
  Speaker 6: trillion dollars, and some clever engineers.
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  Speaker 5: I guess they would have to find a source of
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: water on the Moon because bringing it from Earth would
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: be incredibly heavy, and trying to recycle it from PSDD
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: on the space station just doesn't seem as if it
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: would be enough.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Well, top of mind is what to do with all
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: the cheese realistically? Actually how to deal with all of dust,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: since I'm not aware of any room bus that can
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: handle it really well.
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  Speaker 2: I think the.
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  Speaker 7: Biggest challenge our humans living on the Moon will be
• 16:01
  Speaker 7: I think.
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  Speaker 2: The dust over there, because it's charged, it gets everywhere.
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  Speaker 6: Mental health and growing food is the biggest obstacles to
• 16:10
  Speaker 6: long term survivability on the Moon.
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  Speaker 2: Well, there's temperature variations because there's no atmosphere. That sun
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: is going to heat up the surface really quickly and
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: make it really warm, and then it's going to cool
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  Speaker 2: off doing night breathing, not floating away, lack of resources
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: to farm water, all that stuff. I think without the atmosphere,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: meteors are going to come in and just ping the
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: surface of the Moon there, which is why it is
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: already so pock marked.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I probably guess the fact that you don't have all
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: the things you have on Earth would be the biggest
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: problem living on the Moon, like oxygen, water, radiation shielding,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: that's my guest.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: I think the hardest thing would be defined the nearest box.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: It's a level way away.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Surviving the radiation environment. So it's going to force them underground.
• 16:54
  Speaker 7: The right the aditional water, it's probably going to be
• 16:57
  Speaker 7: the regulars. The moon soil, it is just corrosive sticks
• 17:02
  Speaker 7: to everything. It's probably going to cripple every mission that
• 17:05
  Speaker 7: goes up there for an extended period of time.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: So nobody mentioned the thing I expected, which is, you
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: know the issue of being lactose intolerant and living on
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: a ball of cheese.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: If the moon were made of cheese, that would solve
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of our food problems that we're going to
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: have on the moon. Although how old is the moon, Daniel.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, the moon is billions of years old, so it's
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: going to be very Gorgonzola.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: All right, that would really narrow the pool of folks
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: who would want to go to the Moon. I'm guessing
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: that would be a whole different set of problems.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: It's going to be a sharp cheese for sure. So
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: tell me what you thought about these answers. Really, it
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: seems like our listeners are kind of aware of a
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: lot of difficulties for living on the moon.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was impressed. Actually, it seems like they've got
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of facts about the moon. Honestly, they had
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: a lot more knowledge about the Moon that I had
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: before I started this book about the settling Space. So
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: I was impressed a lot of the problems that they mentioned.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: We're going to be going over today and we could
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: have a whole show called the Moon kind of Sucks
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: that could have like five or six different seasons. But
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: we're going to just pick a couple of Kelly's favorite
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: moon problems. But before we get into my first problem,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: what did you think about the listener answers?
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought they were great. I love that people
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: really think about the problems of living on the Moon,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: and I hope it means that they really appreciate how
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: cushy and wonderful life is here on Earth. No radiation issues,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: we got nice weather, food is easy to grow. Man,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: life here is great. So you may be anti Moon,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: I hope that means you're also pro Earth.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Earth is where you find all the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: interesting parasites and wasps like that might not work for
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: most people, but man, the idea of moving to a
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: place where there's zero chance that I could, like find
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: a wasp species that hasn't been identified by science yet,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I'd be pretty bummed out about that.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure most people include wasps on the pro
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: list for Earth, but you know, everybody's got their own thing.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I study the ones that are like too small to sting,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: but I've helped describe two new was species, you know,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: new to science. But but anyway, I hate yellow jackets.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: All right, So tell us what is the number one
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: big pain in the butt for living on the Moon.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that you can necessarily pick the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: biggest problem. But the problem that was complained about a
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: lot by the astronauts and that seems particularly like a
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: pain in the rear and to me is regolith. So
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: regolith is the name for like the dirt that covers
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the surface of the Moon. So on Earth, when you've
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: got dirt, we have wind and rain and these things
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: sort of roll our pebbles and they become nice and
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: smooth because of that. On the Moon, not only do
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: you have no wind and no water because it's in
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the vacuum of space, but it just keeps getting hammered
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: by stuff from space, which kind of keeps shattering, and
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: then the heat like fuses things together again, and then
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the temperature swings come and they shatter things into pieces,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: and so it becomes super tiny and super sharp. So
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: it's like having all of these little like glass knives
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: on the surface. Astronaut John Jung referred to them as
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: tiny razor blades and was really worried about breathing them in,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: which is a totally legit concern because on Earth we
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: have a disease called stone grinder's disease, where people were
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: like grinding stone and breathing in the tiny little sharp pieces,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: it gets stuck in their lungs and causes scars and
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: it's hard to breathe. And so we're going to really
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: have to worry about like where this regolith goes and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: make sure it's not in our habitats.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: So you're saying this kind of weird word regolyth, Right,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: this is a funny thing, And I guess it just
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: means like the dusty little bits on the outside of
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: a planet, right, because Earth also has regolith, right, This
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: what we call soil here on Earth, I think geologists
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: technically call regolith. It's like any sort of like dusty
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: little bits on the outside of a planet. And I
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: think that's kind of interesting that like planets have like
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: rock and then on their edges they're kind of like
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: covered in fine detail. I think that's sort of fascinating,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: and it was interesting to learn more about like where
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: that comes from, Like why do we have regolith anyway?
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: You know, why isn't the Moon just like a big rock?
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: And why isn't the Earth just like a big rock?
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: You said, like Earth has water and wind, And I
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: think you're right, that's like a real source of the regolith.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Like on Earth, why do we have soil, right, because
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: we have weathering processes, But on the Moon we don't,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: right as you said, And the regolith actually comes from
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: like those asteroid impacts. It's it's really fascinating that this
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: is like shards of collisions, you know, Yeah, real tactile
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: physical debris from a collision, and that's all there is.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: The Only way to make regolith on the Moon is
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: to have this like destructive process that creates shrapnel basically, right,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: it's all shrapnel, super tiny shrapnel.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean the destructive process I think also includes
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: the like changing of temperatures and the expanding and the shrinking.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: But so I think regolith means something like blanket of
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: dirt or something like that. I was talking about geologists
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the other day and I was like, what's the difference
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: between regolith and soil and dirt? And he just went
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: ugh and change the subject.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: That's one of those like meteor, meteorite, asteroid. Like the
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: words are always a mess, right because everything is historical,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, we used to call it this
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: and then we discovered that doesn't make any sense. But
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: we try to shoehorn this thing back in the names
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: always nonsense.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, nature doesn't care that humans would really like
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to categorize things exactly. But I think that a lot
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: of geologists would say that on Earth we have dirt
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and soil, and that like that definition wraps up the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: fact that there's microbes in there and so it's like
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: a living thing. And regolith I've only ever heard it
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: referred to as like places where we think it's just
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: dead dirt that's jagged and awful.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: So you would say Earth doesn't have regolith.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I this is the first time I've heard the word
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: regolith applied to the Earth. Okay, but I'm not a geologist,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: so I'm not gonna like bet any money on. But
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: that's my understanding.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: Geologists write in and tell us how wrong we are. Yes,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: but the important point is that the surface of the
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Moon is very different from the surface of the Earth.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Right Earth, we have this nice cushy soil because of
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: microbes and water and wind and the moon whatever, those
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: little bits are are very very different and very very painful.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they mess up equipment. Like astronauts would complain that,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: you know, they'd have these things on their wrists that
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: would tell them like what they were supposed to be
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: working on when and if they got dirt on it
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and they rubbed it off, it would scratch the surface
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: and then they couldn't read it anymore. And so if
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: you can imagine, like you know, people talk about wanting
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: to process tons and tons of this regolith so that
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: they can extract for example, there's a little bit of
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: water in there, maybe you'd want to extract. That would
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: be a real pain. There's helium three that people talk
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: about extracting. That's a whole different show on why I
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: think that's a bad idea. But the idea is, if
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you're processing all of this stuff, your equipment is going
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: to be constantly like rubbing against this sharp, abrasive stuff,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and it's going to wear down. So that's going to
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: make it tough, and stuff clings so it's electrically charged,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and it would cling to space suits. So space suits
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: are supposed to be white so that you don't overheat. Daniel,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: maybe you can explain the physics of why that works.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: But they would like a lot of them fell over
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: because it's like low gravity is fun but still hard
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: to move in, and so they'd fall over and they'd
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: like sort of turtle around for a while trying to
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: get back up. They'd stand up just coated in regulith.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: And so now they're gray and they're like absorbing more
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: heat and it's electrically charged. Why is it electrically charged,
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: physicist friend.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fascinating that it's electrically charged. And one
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: reason basically is that the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: So the environment just above the surface is very, very
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: different on the Moon than it is on Earth. You know. So,
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: like we talked about the Moon being impacted by asteroids
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: and creating this regolith, the Earth is also impacted by asteroids,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: but you know, we have an atmosphere which is like
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: a big cushy blanket that absorbs all of those and
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: turns them into nice streaks in the sky. And so
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: that's why we don't have the same kind of debris,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: and the same thing affects the charge of the surface.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: So the Moon is actually electrically charged, but one side
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: is positive and the other side is negative. It's really weird.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: So one side, the side that's facing the Sun, those
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: photons make it all the way down to the surface
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: and they kick electrons off the surface. This is just
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: called like the photoelectric effect. Electrons and material will absorb
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: photons and get kicked out, so photons make the sun
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: side of the Moon be positively charged because they're kicking
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: off the electrons. But there's also this plasma sheath that
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: surrounds the Moon, and the interaction of that sheath with
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: like the solar wind, all the particles coming off the
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Moon push electrons to the back side of the Moon
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: where they stick. So the backside of the Moon is
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: covered in extra electrons and the front side, the solar side,
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't have enough electrons. So the whole Moon is electrically charged,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: including this recolith. But it's different on either side. It's
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: really weird.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Is it going to be harder to operate equipment on
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: one of those sides? Would it be like more likely
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to short because of this electrical charge? Or is electrical
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: charge in either direction equally bad.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: Electrical charge is equally bad in other direction for static electricity,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: like the stuff will cling to you, but it does
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: change how you might take advantage of this charge. There
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: are folks who are trying to make levitating gliders like
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: drones that can fly in the moon using electrostatic repulsion
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: because you can't have like a helicopter on the Moon
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: there's no atmosphere. But if the surface is like negatively charged,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: you could make a negatively charged glider that floats above
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: the surface, and that'd be a lot nicer than like
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: rolling across all this regolith. There's actually folks who are
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: building this technology.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, all right, two questions. I've never heard of this,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: all right, So first is there really enough charge to
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: levitate and move an item an object? And then two
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: does that charge get used up when you pass over it?
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Probably not right, Yeah, So there.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Are folks who are doing this on Earth. They have
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: a special chamber they've been testing this stuff with, and
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: you can't levitate a whole lot like so far, they
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: were able to levitate a one killer gram flyer about
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: a centimeter above a moon like surface using like fifty
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: kilovolt source. So you know, these are like macroscopic quantities.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: This is not like a wasp or something. You know,
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: a kilogram is like a squirrel, So you can basically
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: fly a squirrel across the surface of the Moon. And no,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: it doesn't use it up like it can be static.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: You could have something hovering essentially infinitely long using electrostatic repulsion. Right,
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: it's stable the way like the Moon's orbit is stable,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: or on the Earth you could hover stably without expending
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: any energy over an electrically char surface.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I think that our mascot should be a squirrel hovering
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: in a little spacesuit.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: It's so cute. But is it peeing in that space shoot?
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: Is really the question.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: It either is or it's lying about it.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: There's so many ecologists who are going to be writing
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: me telling me, they're like, we actually don't be in
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: our wetsuits. You're you're sullying our good name. But anyway,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: all right, so this reguleth you could write on it.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: That would be sweet, But that wasn't helpful to the
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: astronauts when they were walking around, and a bunch of them,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: like John Young was reporting that, you know, he went
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: out there the first day, got covered in dust, and
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: then when he was trying to put his spacesuit back
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: on the next day, like the dust had gotten into
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: all of the seals, and so he was having trouble
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: getting like the helmet ring fastened well enough so he
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: could make sure that he wasn't going to get exposed
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: to the vacuum of space, and on Apollo fourteen, al
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Bean and Pete Conrad actually got like so much dust
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: on their spacesuit that when the lunar lander like went
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: back up and went to dock with the main spacecraft
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: that was going to take them back to Earth, the pilot,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: who was Dick Gordon, was like, no, y'all, ain't bringing
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: that junk into my spacecraft. You have to get naked
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and so before and so what they said naked in
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: the biography and I don't know, presumably that means down
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to their skivvies, but anyway, they had to take off
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: their clothes before they were allowed to get back in
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: because Dick Gordon did not want to be breathing in
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: these tiny razor blades, which totally makes sense to me.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's fascinating. You were talking earlier about how
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: this makes the astronauts' suit go from white to gray,
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: which is a big issue in regulating their temperature. I
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: think a lot of people misunderstand sort of how temperature
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: works in space. They imagine space is cold, and so
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: we probably need like a big blanket, right, But there's
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: something surprising about space, which is is actually harder in
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: space to cool down than it is here on Earth.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Right here on Earth, the way you cool down is
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: that there's air. Wind comes by and steals your heat. Right,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: you're losing heat to the air around you. You heat
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: up the air around you, and then wind comes by
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: and blows that away. You got to do it again
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: and again. So that's why a blanket is useful, or
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: a jacket or whatever. But there's no air on the
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Moon for you to lose your heat too. The only
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: way to lose your heat is to radiate it away
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: to glow. Everything out there in the universe that has
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: a temperature is glowing. Like if you put on infra
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: red goggles and look at your friend, you would see
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: them glowing. They're giving off photons, and out in space,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: that's the only way to give off energy. So it's
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: important to regulate your temperature. Like electronics on the space
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: station can overheat because it's harder to lose that energy
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: to cool down in space. So it's really important if
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: you're going to reflect the energy back, if you're going
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: to stay white, to not be covered in regolith.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Soviets sent a rover on the Moon. They
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: think that it got too close to like a crater,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: and it knocked a little bit of regolith on. I
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: believe partly it covered one of their solar panels. But
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the bigger problem was that there was a little heating
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: unit inside and with that little bit of insulation from
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the regolith, the whole thing overheated and then it wouldn't
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: work anymore. And so yeah, radiating your heat off in
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: space is a big problem.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: All right. So the Moon is covered in death dust,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: which you don't want on you and you don't want
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: to breathe and really really wants to stick to you.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Is there anything good we can say about this death dust?
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: They're positive about regulith.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: There is, But you know what, let's keep the listeners
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: on their toes and we'll take a break and then
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: we'll get back to that. Okay, So before the break,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Daniel wanted to know if there's anything good about the
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: regolith other than its ability to levitate very cute squirrels
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: wearing space suits on the lunar surface.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm pro universe. I don't want to just
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: be down in the moon. I'm always looking for, you know,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: the bright side of the moon.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, well, I have a friend who says that
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: I'm relentlessly pessimistic about space. So it's good that I
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: have you as a foil.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: To it, right, I'll try to be your yang.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's excellent. But okay, so let's talk about some benefits.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: So you can pile and you don't want the regolith
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: in your habitat, but the regolith being on your habitat
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: has some benefits. So when I first started thinking about
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: habitats in space, I had imagined these like glass domed
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: habitats where you're like looking out at the star. But
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: as I was looking at proposals for actual habitats in space,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: almost all of them included being buried under meters of
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: this regolith. And I know, right, so, sad, Wait.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: What's the point of being in space if you're just underground?
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, you could live underground here on Earth.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: You were supposed to be the optimistic one, Daniel.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I guess even if you're on the moon. If you're underground,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: you know you're on the moon, you feel closer to
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: the cosmos or something something like.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: And they'll probably be like portholes you can look out
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: of every once in a while, and the space walks
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: would still be cool. So one of the nice things
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: about having that regolith is that, as we mentioned already,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the Moon doesn't have an atmosphere like you have on Earth,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: so the radiation in space hits the surface, and we
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: don't really understand this radiation very well. So the fifty
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: years of data that we have from astronauts orbiting the Earth,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: all of those astronauts were orbiting within the magnetic field
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: that are our planet creates, and that shuttles a bunch
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: of the space radiation to the poles where you get
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the auroras, which are beautiful, and then a lot of
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: the rest of the radiation that gets through gets sort
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: of stopped by our atmosphere. So we don't get hit
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: by a lot of the space radiation, and neither do
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: our astronauts. So most of the data that we have
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: comes from the twenty four men who went to the
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: Moon for like two weeks, not a lot of data.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: There's reason to suspect that this radiation causes cancer, but
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: it's different than the kind of radiation we get on Earth.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: And when you provided us comments on the book, one
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: of the things that was interesting was I thought that
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: we knew that galactic cosmic radiation came from stars and
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: other galaxies exploding and then sort of like the shrapnel
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: is heading towards us. But you said, we're not actually
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: sure where that comes from. Can you tell us more?
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fascinating. You know. One way we can
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: learn about what's going on in the universe is just
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: picking up the messages that come to Earth. And mostly
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: that's photons, Like we see distinct galaxies because they send
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: us light, and we see other stars because they send
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: us light. But there are other kind of messengers. We
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: can also get messengers from distant galaxies and from other
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: parts of the galaxy and from other parts of the
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Solar System that are little particles, you know, like protons
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: and electrons and sometimes even like iron nuclei. And it
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: turns out space is filled with this stuff, and a
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: lot of it's a mystery. Like some of it, we understand,
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: a lot of the radiation that's in our Solar System
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: comes from the Sun, and stars don't have to explode
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: to send us little bits of stuff, Like the Sun
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: is pumping out solar wind. This is part of what
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: contributes to the plasma sheath around the Moon. It's not
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: just generating photons, but it's shooting out electrons and protons
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: and all sorts of massive particles are coming out of
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: the Sun. So if you're out there in the Solar system,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: you're going to be exposed to this stuff very high speed,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: like tens of kilometers per second for these tiny little bullets.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: So definitely probably bad for you. But that's just our Sun.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: And you know, we don't even really understand our Sun
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: very well. We have models of the solar radiation and
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: a lot of them don't really agree in detail with
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: what we see coming from the Sun because we don't
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: understand the physics of what's happening inside the Sun. And
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: then as you look at higher and higher energy particles,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: like particles going faster and faster, a lot of these
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: are generated outside of our Solar system. They come to
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: us from nearby stars, or from the center of the galaxy,
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: or from other galaxies. But the very highest energy ones
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: that are super crazy, like where a single particle has
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: as much energy as like a Major League baseball, these
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: things we don't understand at all, Like there's nothing in
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: the universe we know about that's capable of creating particles
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: at that speed. But we see them and they hit
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: the Earth and we know they're out there, So there's
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of mystery about what out there is pumping
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: out really weird particles. We call them cosmic rays when
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: they hit the Earth and create showers when they're in space.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: They're an important source of radiation that can kill people. Yeah.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you get hit with what is it called
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: a solar flare where you get a bunch of stuff
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: from the Sun all at once, they could kill you
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: pretty quick. As far as I understand, we don't understand
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: what like slow chronic doses over the course of a
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: life will do in terms of cancer or cognitive declines
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: or anything like that.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: And we haven't studied because it's basically unethical. It's like,
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: you know, put somebody in a particle beam, see what happens. Well,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: we know it's going to be bad, we just don't
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: know how bad or how quickly.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Right, Well, Brookhaven National Lab recently got a thing that
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: can simulate galactic cosmic radiation, so we're getting some data
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: on like what it does to rodents. But there's all
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: kinds of reasons that rodents are different than humans. Like
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: I think if radioactive particle stops in you, it releases
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a lot more energy than it would if it just
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: passed through you. So rodents, the fact that they're small,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: you'd expect the particles to be less likely to stop
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: in them than they would if they went through a human.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: That's just one of many reasons why rats are not humans.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: So it makes these things complicated, so we don't understand
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: it well. So if you were sending me out there,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I would want to be shielded from it so that
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: I just wouldn't know what was happening at all.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: So what's the best way to shield ourselves from all
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: this crazy death bullets from space?
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: The most common proposal right now, because it would require
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the least energy and would probably be easiest with the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: materials at hand, is to just take regolith and pile
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: meters of it on top of the habitat, so the
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: radiation hits the regolith and stops before it gets to
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: your habitat. And like everything about space is complicated, so
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: if it hits the habitat, you have to worry about
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: like this thing called spallation, which I'm sure Daniel you
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: know all about, but I'll try to explain it. So,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: like where a radioactive particle hits something and then breaks
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: into a bunch of new kinds of particles. So you
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: essentially get sprayed with like a shower of new radioactive stuff,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: which in some cases can be worse than the stuff
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: that was heading towards your habitat in the first place.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: So you don't want it to get to your habitat
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: at all. Is that reasonable, Daniel?
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's really reasonable. And you know, here's the
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: chance for me to be the optimistic. It sounds to
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: me like death dust can save us from the death particles, right,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: so like two deaths make life. It's like a negative
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: one squeared or something.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: No, that that counts as a good outcome on the moon.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: That's good. That's good, all right, So we can use
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: the regulator we pilot on top of our habitat. It
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: can protect us from this cosmic radiation. And there's lots
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: of it already there, it's easy to access. That sounds
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: great except the fact that it's going to ruin our
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: cosmic view from our moon living room.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Right, But it's also it's going to help you with
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: some more stuff. So the moon, especially near the equator,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: has intense temperature swings. So at the equator you go
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: from negative one hundred and thirty degrees celsius to one
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty degrees celsius during the day. That is
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: bad for humans, but that's also bad for equipment. So
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: like you get a lot of equipment that expands and
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: contracts as it goes from hot to cold and overtime.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Why are there such extreme swings on the Moon? I mean,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: the Moon is about the same distance from the Sun
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: as the Earth is Why are the extreme so severe
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: on the moon?
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Because the Moon lacks an atmosphere to buffer those temperature changes,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: and so when you're in the cold, you are in
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the cold. There's no sunlight to keep you warm, and
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: there's no heat that was absorbed and maintained to be
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: slowly released at night by the atmosphere. Does that sound
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: is that? Is that right?
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's just another reason why
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: it's nice to have an atmosphere because it buffers you
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: from this stuff. As you said, it holds in a
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: lot of heat that absorbs during the day. The Moon
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: actually has a tiny little atmosphere, like people say it
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: has no atmosphere, and technically that's true because what they
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: call it is an exosphere. There are some particles floating
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: above the moon. It's not like zero pure vacuum, but
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: it's not enough for the particles to actually like hit
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: each other or ever bounce, so they call it an
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: exosphere instead of an atmosphere. To have an atmosphere, you
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: have to have enough density the particles are like interacting
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: with each other. So there certainly are some particles around
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: the moon, but not enough to provide really any temperature buffer. So, yeah,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: the temperature swings are pretty extreme. And as you were saying,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: that's gonna be pretty bad fear equipment, isn't it.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, was that our first well, actually moment, I wonder
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: if we should track those. Yeah, it's fun to have
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: someone else knows something about it and can can add
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: some more knowledge than what you had. So yeah, these
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: temperature extremes bad on equipment, and also those like low
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: temperatures are just bad period. So I was reading the
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Resources series, like this series about resources in space and
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: how you can use them and what's up there by a.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Bidescu and Zacne and Zacney pointed out in one of
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: his chapters that when temperatures get cold enough, you reach
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: this point for some metals called the ductile to brittle transition.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: So often when you've got a metal, like if something
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: hard hits it, it just kind of dense and bends in,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: but it still maintains its overall structure.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: Is that what ductile means. It's like bendy and soft.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, I hadn't actually thought about that, but yes, that
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: is what ductile means. Okay, So then otherwise it's brittle,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: so it's more like a rock, like if you hit it,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: it's more like lid acrack and kind of fall apart.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: And one of the ideas for why the Titanic sank,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: even though it was this great engineering marvel, is because
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: it was cold enough that the metal it was made
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: have had hit its ductile to brittle transition. So when
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: it hit the iceberg, instead of kind of like just
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: denting in a little bit, which they were hoping that
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: the metal hull would do whenever it hit a hard object,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: instead it just kind of like cracked.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, so it went from like aluminum foil to glass.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Basically, they should have had more lifeboats. That's the real thing.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: That was the real problem. They didn't have enough life
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: boats for the people on the ship.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: But well, really they needed bigger doors, so you could
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: fit two people on those doors. I mean, that's really
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: the problem with the Titanic.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: That was the problem for Rose and Jack. That's true.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that would have helped everybody, but
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: it would would have saved one of them.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: Every little bit helps Kelly, every little bit.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: All be honest, it looked like there was enough room
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: for both of them on there to me.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: All Right, we're not going to answer that question on
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: today's episode. Okay, but you're saying that stuff on the Moon,
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: if it gets really really cold, is going to be
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: dangerously brittle, and it's just going to break more easily
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: rather than like bending if it gets bumped.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it might depend on the materials that you're using,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: So you're just gonna have to be careful about this
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So it's just it's got extra layers
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: of complication relative to doing things like mining and construction
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: on Earth. So there's going to be that extra layer
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of complication. And so if you've got regolith, it's going
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: to buffer these temperature swings and so you're not going
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: to get as cold or as hot, which is going
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: to be good for the humans. It's going to be
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: good for the equipment, and it's going to be good
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: for your heating and cooling bills, which is going to
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: be important because it's going to be hard to generate
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: power in space.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: All right. So living on the surface of the moon
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: pretty terrible. But living under the surface of the Moon
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: protects us from not having an atmosphere and the swings
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: in temperature and lets us turn the terrible death dust
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: into something positive. But that doesn't mean that living on
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: the Moon is still going to be easy. Let's take
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: a break and when we come back, we'll talk about
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: how to pay for and how to power it all.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: All right, So, speaking of your electric bills, is the
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: power in space going to come from? So On Earth,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: as of twenty twenty two, sixty percent of our electricity
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: comes from fossil fuels, and fossil fuels come from prehistoric
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: animals and plants that have been buried underground for a
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: really long time. Geologists are probably going to be really upset,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: but that's all I'm going to say on this matter.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: And so unless the Moon has some huge surprises in
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: store for us, we're not going to be using fossil
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: fuels on the Moon.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: You're saying there's almost no chance that there's a bunch
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: of dead aliens buried in the Moon that turn into
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: convenient fossil fuels for us.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I'm saying it's unlikely and we shouldn't bank on it.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: We should have another plan ready, all right.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: If you're going to send your kids to the Moon,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: you should probably not bank on dead alien dinosaurs.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, agreed, agreed, all right.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: But that's not the only way to get power, right,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: So what about some other ways to get power in
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: the moon.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: So some other renewable methods that we use on Earth
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: are also out of the picture. So there's no flowing water,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: so there's no you're not gonna have any dams, there'll
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: be no hydropower. Wind power requires wind. With only an
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: exosphere and not an atmosphere, you don't have enough wind.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: You got solar wind, but that's not enough to generate
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: any energy either.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not going to work. And geothermal
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: energy requires heat drawn from deep underground, and the Moon
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: is geolologically pretty quiet. We said silent, and we had
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: someone in our book correct us and say, well it's
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: it's quiet, it's not silent. There's still some stuff going on. So, Okay,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: it's a quiet moon, not silent. So if I were
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: sending my kids to the moon, which I would never do,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: I would hope that they had some nuclear power. And
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: nuclear power is something that a lot of folks are
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: not super comfortable with for a variety of reasons. Concerns
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: about using the products for making nuclear weapons, concerns about
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: what happens with the waste when it's gone, concerns about
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: what happens if a nuclear power plant like explodes. And
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I could go off on a long tangent about why
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: I think nuclear power might be better than things like
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: coal power, but I'm going to contain myself slightly, and
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I'll know that not everybody has problems with the nuclear power.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: For example, France's electrical grid is about seventy percent nuclear,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: so and they're not glowing too green over there. But
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: it's a different question entirely when you're launching those nuclear
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: materials into space, because those nuclear materials that you're gonna
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: need if your rocket explodes on the way up to space, now,
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: maybe that nuclear stuff has been spread all over the
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: area where the explosion happens. So for example, all.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: Right, hold on, because I think there's an assumption here, right,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: You're saying we can't do fossil fuels in the Moon
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: because there are no fossil fuels in the Moon. Now
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: you're talking about nuclear power on the Moon, and I
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: think you're assuming that we can't find fuel for nuclear
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: power on the moon. We still have to bring it
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: with us. And for fossil fuels, that's obviously absurd. You
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: can't bring enough fossil fuel because it's not energy dense enough.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: But uranium, for example, very very energy dense, tiny amount
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: of it can power things forever. I love the story
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: for example that like these days, when they build nuclear
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: power submarines, they don't even think about refueling. They just
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: build in the lifetime of fuel. It never refuels, like yeah, boom,
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: it's done. That's pretty awesome. It's just like a real
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: demonstration of the incredible energy density of uranium. But is
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: there no uranium to be found on the Moon? Why
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: do we have to launch it from the Earth.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. There is plenty of material
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: on the Moon to run nuclear power plants. It's just
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: going to be really difficult to extract. So it's in
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: sort of like low concentrations in various areas, so you'd probably,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: for example, have to process a bunch of regoliths to
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: extract the nuclear fuel from it. And so if we're
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: going to have people living on the Moon for a
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: very long time, I think eventually we would want to
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: figure out how to extract those materials to refuel or
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: start nuclear power plants. But initially, if you want to
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: get space research station or mining operation or habitat off
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: the ground, you're gonna want to bring the nuclear power
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: plant with you just to get things moving.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: And so you're saying it's dangerous to launch a rocket
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: with uranium or plutonium in it, because sometimes rockets go boom.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you can be careful about how you pack it.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: But so, for example, we have these radio isotope heater units,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: and so this is not really using radioactive materials to
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: generate energy, but just to generate heat so that on
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: those cold space nights, the equipment doesn't like just freeze up,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: and you use stuff like plutonium, americium and polonium. Did
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: I say that right? Americium?
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: I've never known how to pronounce that, and I've always
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: been terrified that I would be asked to on a podcast,
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: and so now you're living my nightmare.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, set us letters if I got it wrong,
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: and let us know how I should have said it right.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: And so these things they undergo radioactive decay, and when
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: that happens, they release heat, and the heat helps sort
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: of buffer the swing into super cold temperatures when robots
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: are working on the Moon in shadowed areas. But the
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Soviets launched the lunkat Moon rovers and they had planned
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: on powering one of them with polonium two ten. And
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, the rocket that was bringing the
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: rover up exploded and it spread polonium over various parts
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: of the USSR bad, right, yes, bad, not good, And
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: then you can scale up. So the next more sort
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: of complicated way to use radioactivity to power things is
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: called a radio isotope thermoelectric generator. So essentially you just
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: sort of add a thermo couple to get a little
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: bit of energy out of all the stuff that's happening.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: So you still get some heat and you get a
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: little bit of power, but like for two kilograms of plutonium,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: you get enough power to run a laptop. So this
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: is not like a super great way to get energy.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: It's not going to be enough to run like a
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: whole research station. So what we're gonna need are many
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: nuclear fission reactors. This is where you're like actually making
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: a fission reaction happen. You sort of can control how
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: much power you can make the reaction happen faster or
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: slower to sort of modulate the amount of heat that
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: you get. And we have some experience with these. So
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the US in nineteen sixty five sent up a satellite
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: we called SNAP ten A and it had a nuclear reactor.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: After forty three days, it kind of like stopped working
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: and so it's still orbiting the Earth somewhere. But the
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: Soviets were way more comfortable with this technology. They launched
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: over thirty and when they were done with these satellites,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: they used the rest of the fuel to push them
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: up into like a graveyard orbit. So there's a bunch
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: of nuclear reactors, like over thirty of them probably still
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: orbiting the Earth. But one of them didn't make it
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: to the graveyard orbit. Cosmos nine fifty four accidentally descended
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: back to Earth and it ended up falling over and
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: breaking up over Canada and spreading nuclear material over a
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: large swath of Canada, so you need to be careful
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: with this stuff.
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: But it's sort of amazing that they can make nuclear
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: reactors that's small. People imagine nuclear reactors. They're thinking like
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: three mile island. These like huge concrete domes like are
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: really massive. Operation. Remember that they've made these things small
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: enough to have like for them on an aircraft carrier
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: or a couple them on a submarine. So you know
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: when it's really important for like the military, scientists and
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: engineers are really good at making things tiny, and so
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: space can also benefit from this, right, like launching these reactors,
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: they really can be pretty small. But you're right, they
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: still have to have radioactive materials in them, and so
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: it's still dangerous to send these things up. But you
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: know the US has done this also, right, Like some
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: of our rovers on Mars are nuclear powered.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I don't think they're fission reactors, but the two simpler
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: versions that we talked about initially, those have been sent
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: in rover. Yeah, that's right by the US, but we
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: haven't sent nuclear fission reactors past the orbits around the Earth.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: I think we're going to need you if we're going
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: to have research stations and habitats and folks are working
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: on it. So in twenty fifteen, this group created the
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: Killo power reactor using Sterling technology yeh or krusty advertise
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: emphasize the y at the end. These authors are awesome.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: They always make sure that the acronyms of their projects
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: match up with something in the Simpsons. So they also
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: have the demonstration using flat top fissions, which is dough
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: I think was the name of the beer in the Simpsons,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: and the fission reactor Integrated Nuclear Kinetics Code or FRINK,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: which I think was the scientist and anyway, so what's
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: actually important is they were able to make a little
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: reactor that could probably power something like thirty US households,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and they're working on scaling this up and making it
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: portable so that it could go to the moon on Mars.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: So this is a technology that people are working on
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: and we're just going to have to figure out safe
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: ways to make sure that even if a rocket does explode,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: god forbid, that we've like clad the materials well enough
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: so that they would not be likely to break up
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: and scatter over land or something like that.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: All right, So nuclear power from a physics perspective totally
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: works on the Moon and is a good source of energy,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: and we have plenty of fuel here on Earth. The
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: challenge is just getting the fuel from here to the
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: Moon without killing everybody on the planet or causing.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Cancer, and making sure we can run these reactors in
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: the space environment, which is a complicated place to work.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: And then you have to make sure that you set
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: it up far enough away from everybody so that you're
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: not hitting them with doses of radiation. And so it's
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: this nice, reliable method that actually hasn't been proven in
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: space yet in the way you would need to set
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: up a habitat. But another kind of power generating technique
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: that we have a lot more experience with is solar.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: We're talking about all the sunshine we're getting on the
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Moon and how difficult it is because he's everything up.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: Why don't we just use solar power that cover the
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Moon in solar panels.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: So what's the problem, Well, solar on the Moon has
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: some of the same problems that we have with solar
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: on Earth, which is that when it's nighttime, you don't
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: get the solar power. And on Earth we solve that
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: problem with batteries, but on the Moon. That one night
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: on the Moon is equivalent in time to two weeks
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: on Earth. And so the battery packs that you would
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: need are going to measure in the thousands of tons probably,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: and I'm not actually sure we have the battery technology
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: ready to keep a habitat going for two weeks through
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: a lunar night.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: Wait, so you're saying a lunar night is two Earth
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: week long, Like, if you're on the Moon, you see
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: the sun for two weeks and then you don't see
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: the sun for two weeks. Yes, doesn't that depend on
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: where you are on the Moon or something.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I should have said at the equator. That's
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: important and we're going to get to that eventually. Thank
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: you for helping with my setup. Yeah. And these solar panels, like,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you can't just go to lows and pick up solar panels.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: These are solar panels that are going to have to
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: be able to survive those massive temperature swings in this
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: super harsh environment. So it's going to be sort of
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: harder to make these, and they're going to need to
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: be able to survive meteorite strikes. That horrible regolith when
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: you go to brush it off after it sticks, that's
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: going to mess them up also, So it's going to
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: be complicated, but there's an area where it's going to
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: be less complicated. So if you go to the poles.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: The poles on the Moon are nice because the Earth
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: is more tilted than the Moon is. The Moon has
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: a lesser tilt. So if you're at certain parts on
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the Moon, you're getting perpetually grazed by the sunlight. So
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: you're not getting hit by it straight on, but you're
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: getting sort of grazed off the side. And if you're
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: up on a rim, for example, where some of the
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: craters are, then much more of the time you will
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: be getting at least some sunlight. And so these areas
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: are known as the peaks of eternal light, but they
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: should probably be more like the peaks of pretty much
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: eternal lights. I think there's there's a spot where you
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: can get like ninety percent of the time there's solar power,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: so that helps a lot with these battery problems.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: But this is underlying issue that you're talking about, which
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: is batteries or I guess equivalently transmission, and that's that
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: like solar power, you have the power when the sun
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: is shining on the panel, and you don't have one,
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: it's not shining on the panel, and so you need
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: power regularly. But I guess my question is like, yeah,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: I guess you could use batteries, like use solar panels
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: to charge at batteries and then draw off the batteries.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Why not just like have a ring of solar panels
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: around the equator. Some of them are always going to
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: get sunlight, some of them are going to be in
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: the darkness, and then just you know, have wires. Basically,
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: why not just transmit the energy from the bright side
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: of the moon to wherever you are.
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is another option that could totally work. It's complicated,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: and I think you want to do things as simple
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: as you can initially, and most of the proposals that
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: I've seen involve going to the craters first, rather than
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: creating this system of solar panels orbiting the Moon that
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: transmit power down. But that is totally another option.
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well I was thinking even just on the surface.
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: But ye, power transmission is tricky, right, you generate power
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: on the other side of the Moon, you got to
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: get it here. You're going to lose a lot of
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: that energy and then you've got to maintain this like
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: moon size structure. There are some people who are talking
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: about building a particle collider around the equator of the Moon,
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: because hey, why not we always want one more particle collider,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: bro And that's one of the challenges is powering it
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: and maintaining that whole thing. A moon size structure is
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: not a small thing to keep running.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: And what's the benefit of having it on the Moon?
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Does the lower gravity help or something.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: No gravity doesn't affect particle colliders at all because particles
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: are so small they have basically no gravity. It's just
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: hard to find space on Earth for such a large device.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: You need a lot of people to sign off, and
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: you're running a tunnel under their backyards. And there aren't
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: so many objections on the Moon. So it's not like
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: a practical or a great idea. It's just sort of
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: like something people talk about sometimes got anyway. So you're
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: talking about solar panels on the Moon, and you're saying
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: difficult because you can't just use like generic solar panels.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: They're also going to get like destroyed by radiation and
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: by recolith So do we have any kind of solar
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: panels that will actually work and like last for more
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: than five seconds on the Moon.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Well, we have attached solar panels to rovers on the
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Moon and Mars and they've powered our rovers for a while,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: so we have figured out how to make this work.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: And one of the other nice things about being at
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: the poles is that rather than having these massive temperature swings,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: it's always just really cold. So at the poles, like
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: for example, at uh there's this ridge between the Shackleton
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and the de Gerlache. Oh my gosh, go ahead, everybody
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: right in and tell me how I totally killed the
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: name of that crater, because I'm sure I destroyed it.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: But it has like average summer temperatures around negative seventy
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: degrees celsius, which is about like ten degrees colder than
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: the average Antarctica temperature. But at least it's not swinging
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: as much, so at least you just your plan for
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the cold. You insulate, you heat, and at least you're
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: not dealing with the extremes. But the peaks are only
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: about one one hundred billionth of the lunar surface, which
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: is like two tennis courts. You can like spread it
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: out a little bit. If you're willing to like bring
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: longer poles and lift your solar panels up a little
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: bit higher. You'll get sunlight more of the time that way.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: But it's not a lot of land, less than two
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: tennis courts. So when you hear about the fact that
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: China and the US both want to go to the
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: poles because this area is great. Also, this is one
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: of the only places you can find ice, there's a
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: lot of geopolitical things to worry about in terms of
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: whether there's going to be a scramble for these particularly
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: great spots. So we got to three of the problems.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Getting that water and using that water is going to
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: be a real pain. Lack of an atmosphere, temperature, swings, radiation.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: That regolith is not good for growing things in like
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: as you can imagine, roots are going to have trouble
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: growing in tiny razor blades. There's also not enough carbon
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: or like nitrogen and phosphorus. In fact, I think the
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: most concentrated sources of carbon, and this will bring us
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: full circle. One of the most concentrated sources of carbon
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: on the Moon are the ninety six bags of feces
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: in vomit left behind by the Apollo astronauts' base poo
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: base poo. But technically that stuff still belongs to so
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: you are not allowed to start growing your veggies. In
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong's long lost bowel movements, I'm sorry lest.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: You kick off an international incident over space poo. Wow,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: that's right, all right. So there's lots of reasons why
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: living on the Moon is going to be difficult. There
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: sounds like there's some potential engineering solutions in some of
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: these cases, but it's definitely not a place where people
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: can look forward to retiring very soon. But tell us
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: a big picture. Are we excited about going to the moon?
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: I am excited about going to the Moon? I mean, like, yes,
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: these are big problems, but they're exciting problems to solve,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: and I think the Moon is going to be a
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: great place where we can learn the stuff that we
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: need to settle frankly better places like Mars. So we
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: can't figure out how bad is it that the Moon
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't have the same gravity as the Earth, because Mars
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: also doesn't have as much gravity as the Earth, how
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: bad is that radiation? It does burying yourself in regulus
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: solve all of the radiation problems, like it is a
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: great close, kind of easy to get to, place to
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: go to learn a lot of the stuff that we're
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: going to need to know if we want to live
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: and work in space. More So, I'm excited. I'm glad
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: we're going back. I hope it doesn't kick off any
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: geopolitical incidents, but I'm excited. Are you excited?
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: I am excited. I think in the history of humanity,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: we've solved lots of problems, from like how do we
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: get over that mountain? To how do we build something
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: that floats over that ocean? And where do we find
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: food on the journey? And all sorts of stuff, and
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: people have died and it's been painful, but we've always
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: figured it out, and because there always have been people
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: who just want to go and want to know and
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: want to see it and are willing to risk their
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: lives and to die to help push the envelope forward.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: And so I'm excited that there are people out there
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: willing to do it. I personally don't want to go
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: to the moon or ever leave the surface of the Earth,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: but I'm very grateful for those explorers among us, and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: we're going to help us take the first steps to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: being a galactic civilization one day.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: I love it all right, Daniel. This has been so
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: much fun, and thank you so much to the listeners
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: for tuning in. Feel free to email us at questions
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: at Daniel and dot org to tell us about all
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the words we mispronounce and to give us your thoughts
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: on the episodes or other topics you might want to
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: hear us talk about.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: I have a great week everyone.
• 1:01:16
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