Pod Insights Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe Exploration from the poles to the heavens About this episode Daniel and Kelly talk about difficulties encountered during polar expeditions, and how we can avoid making these same mistakes when we begin exploring Mars.
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Transcript 12,422 words · 8 speakers
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1:08 Kelly Weinersmith? Before the first crew leaves for Mars, it would be good to know what to expect. Yes, you want to know things like what kind of trajectory your spacecraft is going to take, but you also want to know some of the squishier stuff, too, like what kind of social problems might come up along the way. To help think through the problems you might encounter, it might be helpful to know what's happened in similar situations. But what would a similar situation look like? Well, OK, a trip to Mars will include separating crew members from their family and friends for more than two years, living in a cramped space with a small number of people who you may or may not like, days filled with tedious and boring tasks like fixing the toilet,
1:49 Kelly Weinersmith? and a diet of shelf-stable and maybe less-than-delicious foods in an environment where some small mistake could spell death for the whole crew. Turns out, all of those criteria are met by research expeditions launched to Earth's poles around the year 1900. Space will have fewer walruses and hopefully less cannibalism, but at least initially will probably have similar levels of misery, tediousness, stinkiness, and danger. So today, we're going to talk about two different polar research expeditions, and discuss how the problems experienced during these expeditions can give us some insights into how we should prepare for the first trip to Mars. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
2:45 Daniel Whiteson? Hi, welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I don't like being uncomfortable, but I do like camping.
2:54 Kelly Weinersmith? I'm Kelly Wiener-Smith. I'm a parasitologist, and I like gross stuff, and there's just not enough gross stuff at the poles for me to want to go.
3:04 Daniel Whiteson? Well, are you a camping kind of person? Do you like to be out there in nature on the edge of survival, making coffee over an open flame?
3:12 Kelly Weinersmith? I do, but I don't get to do it a lot because I married an indoor husband.
3:18 Daniel Whiteson? Sounds like you need a second outdoor husband.
3:20 Kelly Weinersmith? Is that an option? I don't know. I think Zach would say no.
3:24 Daniel Whiteson? You have my permission, but I don't know what that counts for.
3:26 Kelly Weinersmith? Oh, fantastic. Or I'll let Zach know. We went to a cabin once, and he called that camping, and then he was like, I've had enough. And so that's it. What about you?
3:34 Daniel Whiteson? I don't have an outdoor husband, no, but thank you for asking. But no, my question for you today is, what is the scariest or most dangerous outdoor camping expedition experience you've had? Have you ever thought, hmm, I'm not sure I'm going to make it back from this one?
3:48 Kelly Weinersmith? No, I don't think I've ever done anything that dangerous. And anytime that I have been scared, it's because I was camping and there were like loud people nearby who sounded like maybe they were getting violent. And so it was scary because of the other humans, not because of like wild animals or difficult temperature
4:07 Kelly Weinersmith? Conditions or something like that. I don't know that I've really gone out on a limb while camping. What about you?
4:13 Daniel Whiteson? I almost froze to death once in the Ozarks in a freak snowstorm.
4:17 Kelly Weinersmith? Whoa.
4:17 Daniel Whiteson? I was gonna go on like a week long backpacking trip with my wife Katrina. And we had this wonderful guidebook to take us through the Ozarks. And it said, you know, if people tell you it's gonna snow, don't worry, it never snows in the Ozarks. And the morning we started walking out, it started to snow. We were like, hmm, this is weird. But we just kept going because we had never bailed on a backpacking trip ever. And we were crossing streams which were frozen and the temperatures just kept dropping and dropping. And we had to stop at like three in the afternoon and try to set up camp. And it was like 10 degrees and our fingers were freezing. And we made the like terrible decision to cook dinner inside the tent because it was so cold. And we didn't burn the tent down, but we did like go to bed in the sleeping bags at like 5pm
5:02 Daniel Whiteson? because the temperature was so low. And we woke up at like three in the morning, having slept the full night and it was still like five degrees.
5:09 Kelly Weinersmith? Oh, no.
5:10 Daniel Whiteson? So we woke up in the morning and hiked right back out of there. And we were like, yeah, we're not doing this again. And we spent the rest of that trip in a cabin. So Zach would call it camping.
5:18 Kelly Weinersmith? That's right. Have you done any backpacking away from civilization since?
5:23 Daniel Whiteson? Oh, yes, absolutely. We've since taken our kids backpacking and made similar mistakes. This time being underprepared for mountains in the summer in California. Turns out when you go really high up, it can get pretty cold.
5:35 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, and I always get dizzy when I go really high up. I think everybody's maybe picking up on me being a giant wimp and having married a giant wimp. And you're totally correct with that assessment. Yeah, whenever I go mountain climbing with friends or something, we get a little high up and I'm like, sorry, guys, I'm dizzy. You keep going. I'm gonna eat my snack, got my protein bar, and I hang out.
5:53 Daniel Whiteson? Well, fortunately, humanity has learned a lot about the earth because there are people who are not like me and not like you and can survive crazy conditions to explore all the amazing and beautiful corners of this earth.
6:04 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, so the people who explore the poles are really amazing to me in part because it's like such a juxtaposition with my wimpiness. You know, so when I read about the expeditions to the poles, like, I don't really like being cold. Yeah, has a little bit of cold in the winter. That seems really nice. I have friends who go to Antarctica to like study seal diving behavior and I don't want to be that cold, but they're incredible. There are people who love this stuff and thrive on it and don't die.
6:31 Daniel Whiteson? And so is it hard for you to even like read about this? It's like while you're wrapped up in a blanket and sipping your warm tea, you're like, oh, this is too unpleasant. Or does it give you a thrill to hear about other people suffering?
6:41 Kelly Weinersmith? I don't revel in their suffering. It makes me feel justified in my decision to stay home with my warm blankets. You know, it's good that some people go out and explore the world and there'll be some stories today about an expedition that collected some data from the Arctic that's used now as like a baseline for understanding climate change. I'm glad there are people out there doing it. It just doesn't have to be me. I'm good. What about you?
7:03 Daniel Whiteson? I'm in awe of these folks, you know, the way they risk their lives, the way they suffer, the way they persevere. It's incredible. I don't think that I could do it, but of course, I'm not in that situation. I don't really know. There's been lots of times when normal people have had to do extraordinary things in order to survive. But this feels different because it feels like they've chosen it, you know, they could have stayed home with their blanket and their tea and had a more boring job. But I guess there was something in them that made them feel like I want to do something nobody else has done, even if I'm risking my fingers and my toes and my nose.
7:36 Kelly Weinersmith? Why do you think they do it? What do you think their motivation is?
7:38 Daniel Whiteson? I think they're outdoor husbands, you know, and that's just some of us are outdoor husbands and some of us are indoor husbands. I think it's just really who we are. Everybody's different and I want to explore the universe. I have this deep drive to understand the way the universe works, but I don't have a drive to physically explore the universe. I want to explore the universe mentally while staying home with my tea. And I think other people have that deep desire to see new things physically themselves, to be the first person to put their flag somewhere, who are excited about the idea of like living in Elon Musk's colony on Mars. I think we're all just built a little different.
8:13 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think we are all just built a little different. I think these expeditions are a combination of like looking for adventure, wanting to answer scientific questions, and then also a little bit in some cases of a drive for fame. So like famous Honestly, Roel Amundsen was heading to try to get to the North Pole first. And he had like the whole ship like packed up and they were on the way and he found out that actually someone had made it to the North Pole first and he wasn't going to get the first claim. So he turned that ship around, lied to his funders and headed to the South Pole, which he did get to first. And so I think in some cases, it's not like a desire to get a certain amount of information or to see a certain place. It's like a desire to like be number one, but I don't think that's the motivation for everyone. That's maybe just
8:58 Kelly Weinersmith? the motivation for some captains who have gone out there.
9:01 Daniel Whiteson? Well, lying to your funders resonates with me. There's definitely been times when I've gotten a grant to do X and then I'm like, hmm, that's not going to work out. I think I'm going to do Y instead. I don't know if that counts as lying to your funders, but you know, sometimes science takes a swerve.
9:14 Kelly Weinersmith? I don't think you're alone there. I've heard a lot of people say that they pitch grants for projects they've already done.
9:21 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah.
9:22 Kelly Weinersmith? So that they know they'll have it done on time and then they can use the money for the next thing. Anyway.
9:26 Daniel Whiteson? Maybe Elon Musk has already been to Mars and he's pitching it, but he secretly already has a base there. What do you think?
9:31 Kelly Weinersmith? No, I hope not.
9:33 Daniel Whiteson? No, I don't think so.
9:35 Kelly Weinersmith? Quick aside that I thought was super fun. So I was reading Fred Joff Nansen, sorry about the pronunciation. Part of his mission aboard the Fram was funded by Ringness Beer. And in his diary, which he knew was going to get turned into a book, he very regularly talks about how delicious Ringness Beer is. And the day they ran out, he says, it's a day of mourning when we ran out of Ringness Beer. And I'm like, to what extent is this advertising? Versus like actually being sad about running out of Ringness Beer. So anyway, some things haven't changed.
10:06 Daniel Whiteson? All right, but let's get back on topic.
10:09 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah.
10:09 Daniel Whiteson? Tell us why we're talking about polar expeditions today if our real goal is to understand what life would be like on Mars.
10:16 Kelly Weinersmith? Well, before you go to Mars, you'd like to know what kind of problems you should prepare for, what kind of things you're likely to experience. And there's just not a lot of exploration missions that are as intense as what a mission to Mars will be like. But the polar expeditions come close and they had a lot of problems that I think NASA folks are now anticipating and have Like incorporated into their mission plans. But there's just a lot of problems that get encountered that you're gonna want to avoid. And there's a lot of common themes when you're reading this stuff that make you think like, oh, all right, there's definitely some stuff beyond figuring out the trajectory and like designing the rocket or the ship that you need to be thinking about.
10:53 Daniel Whiteson? So going to Mars is gonna be uncomfortable. So let's think about the most uncomfortable anybody's ever been. That's basically the thought.
11:00 Kelly Weinersmith? You know, as I said, I hate being cold. So yes, hungry and cold. I don't like either of those things and a lot of people died hungry and cold at the poles.
11:08 Daniel Whiteson? So let's hear all about it. But before we do, I went out there and I asked folks if they thought that we could learn something about what life would be like on Mars without actually going there. So before you hear these answers, think for yourself. What do you think we can learn about life on Mars from uncomfortable experiences on Earth? Here's what folks around UC Irvine had to say.
11:33 Speaker 04 We probably learned some helpful tips and tricks, but I think just the scale of how much more difficult it would be to get to Mars makes things a lot harder.
11:41 Speaker 05 Even if it is might be useful, it is only useful the first team of expeditions.
11:46 Daniel Whiteson? I think that's the best chance we have to prepare for something as extreme as Mars.
11:52 Speaker 06 They're isolated for six months without any real way to resupply, you know, or get them out. So I remember there was like several instances where they got ill and then they had to learn how to, from training and from remote, how to take care of the illness, for example.
12:13 Speaker 07 The difficulty to getting to the South Pole is similar to the difficulty of getting to Mars, at least on a local level, right? Like you have to go to Argentina first, then the weather has to be completely perfect to get to the South Pole. Sometimes that takes several months for it to be good. And so I think that would prepare the travelers going to Mars mentally, like that uncertainty of, all right, we have this time window. If we miss it, we're gonna have to wait another amount of time, but you're still gonna be, you're going to still have to be just as prepared as you would have been before. It's probably a good way to train, right? Just send people to some cold, remote place and say, okay. Live by yourself for a year and see how that goes.
12:50 Daniel Whiteson? See your life in misery.
12:51 Speaker 07 Yeah. No, no. Uh, once traveling to Mars is its own thing. It's a lot easier to travel to the pole. For me, I don't have a very direct answer to that. I feel like it would be totally different.
13:06 Speaker 04 I think it does because there's hospitable environments. You learn how to manage those, so it's a stepping stone. Oh, there's huge parallels. That's why Antarctic stations are treated as a space analog, especially the one that the Australians run, where they have 10 people overwintering with no contact from the outside world for eight months in the year. And we see really interesting changes in immune system because you're not exposed to new introductions of microbes through that time. Uh, and there's social aspects as well, how you get people to keep their dynamic moving in a good way when they're so isolated.
13:44 Kelly Weinersmith? It was interesting to me, the variability in answers, where some folks were like, yes, absolutely, there's stuff to learn, and others were like, no, it's too different. Yeah, I could see both sides. And I do think that there's like a narrow window of Martian exploration where we can learn something from polar expeditions. And we're going to try to focus on that narrow window today. But what did you think of the responses?
14:06 Daniel Whiteson? Oh, I thought they were great. That last one is from my wife, Katrina, and she touched on the social aspect, which was really fascinating because I know that she studies how folks' microbes are similar when they live together in the Australian Antarctic station. And in order to study that, she had to have access to like, how many times the Australians, hmm, how do you say, transmit fluids among each other? And it turns out 10 people overwintering in the Australian station, there's a lot of fluid transmission.
14:36 Kelly Weinersmith? Oh, my gosh, we read a lot of stories about what happens at those stations. And that comports with what we had read. Yes, it's a very exciting place down there.
14:45 Daniel Whiteson? Lots of different potential matchups, and basically all of them happened.
14:49 Kelly Weinersmith? Not much else to do when you're down there, so you know.
14:52 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah, exactly.
14:52 Kelly Weinersmith? It's a way to pass the time.
14:53 Daniel Whiteson? Maybe that's a preview for what life will be like on Mars.
14:56 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, could be. It is a universal way to spend time.
14:59 Daniel Whiteson? So maybe outdoor husbands occasionally are indoor husbands in a different way.
15:03 Kelly Weinersmith? And then they get bored and they need to do indoor things. Yes.
15:08 Kelly Weinersmith? With other indoor people. If you'd like to weigh in for our next episode, feel free to send us an email at [email protected] . We'll send you the question and you can send us an audio file with your answer and then you can hear your voice on our podcast.
15:23 Daniel Whiteson? And everybody can hear your thoughts on the question of the day.
15:26 Kelly Weinersmith? Mm hmm. All right. So let's get started. So I picked two expeditions for us to talk about today that I felt like illuminated some pretty important social things that you'd want to think about. I also specifically picked missions that most people hadn't heard about already. So these aren't like the first person to make it to the North Pole, the first person to make it to the South Pole, because if you know about polar expeditions, those are the things you're most likely to know about that are Shackleton. And so these are research expeditions, which, you know, unfortunately, I'd like to think that people care more about research, but they sometimes don't. So our first expedition is led by Adolphus Greeley. Interestingly, he was in the Civil War
16:08 Kelly Weinersmith? and he got shot in the jaw. Maybe interesting was the wrong word for that, but he like got knocked out, he fell over and then he got shot again, but he survived and he wore a beard for the rest of his life. And he was on the correct side of the Civil War, I'll say. But he went through some intense stuff and then he got put in charge of this expedition that left in 1881.
16:29 Daniel Whiteson? So already this guy's a survivor. He experiences terrible pain and tragedy and just moves on.
16:35 Kelly Weinersmith? Yes. Yep. He's intense. He's a survivor. And I'll note that the story today is from a book called Labyrinth of Ice by Buddy Levy, and it's a great book. I recommend it.
16:43 Daniel Whiteson? Well, if I'm choosing somebody to head up my expedition to the poles that I'm funding, I definitely want somebody who's been through some suffering. So I want to see that on the CV. Experienced suffering.
16:51 Kelly Weinersmith? I want to see that too, but I think by the end of this story, maybe we'll both agree that Greeley isn't your guy in particular. He lives and that's great, but the rest of his crew.
17:03 Daniel Whiteson? So what was the goal of this mission? You said it was a research mission. What were they trying to learn?
17:07 Kelly Weinersmith? So one, they were setting up a research station and the goal was just to collect a bunch of environmental data, like temperature, barometric pressure, or stuff like that. They also were supposed to go look for the DeLonge Expedition, which was another expedition sent to the Arctic, but they were DeLonge gone. And oh, I'm so sorry. Maybe they actually weren't all dead yet at that point, but really didn't look too hard for them, to be honest.
17:32 Daniel Whiteson? I feel like that's the setup for so many tragedies. Like, hey, we sent these people to this dangerous place. They didn't come back, so now we're sending you to go figure out what happened. Like, I'm pretty sure I know what happened. The idea is don't send more people there. But anyway, you know, mission two gets sent.
17:48 Kelly Weinersmith? The survivors of the Greeley Expedition did get saved by a crew that went in to save them. So sometimes it works. But yes, I think a lot of the time you're just like throwing more dead bodies on the pile, unfortunately. Maybe that's a little cold, but it's cold out there.
18:02 Daniel Whiteson? It is cold out there.
18:03 Kelly Weinersmith? So many puns I'm gonna have for today. It's gonna be great.
18:05 Daniel Whiteson? But you were saying also that the point of this mission was just to get like barometric and environmental data. Like, we didn't know yet how cold it was at the poles and what the pressure was and what the weather was like there. That was still new to us?
18:16 Kelly Weinersmith? It wasn't totally new. So most of the folks who had gone to the poles were trying to reach farthest north. And so it was like a race to get there and then to come back. And it wasn't like systematic data collection. So his goal was to set up a research station and collect data in the same place over a long period of time to get like some really nice, solid baseline, not just like collecting random data points wherever you happen to be on a trip to try to make it to a place quickly.
18:42 Daniel Whiteson? All right. So how did this mission go? Was it fun from the beginning or did tragedy strike on day one?
18:47 Kelly Weinersmith? It was pretty good initially. So like, they got there and they set up the research station. They were collecting data pretty well. One of the secret goals Greeley had that he wasn't really supposed to be going for was to try to get as far north as anyone had ever gotten before, just to kind of like tie up that record. And they did that.
19:05 Daniel Whiteson? All right.
19:06 Kelly Weinersmith? I mean, the record was eventually beat, but like, he was feeling pretty good about that. They were getting their data. Things were going okay. But at the end of year one, they hit their first major snag. There were a couple like social problems before then, but at year one, the first resupply ship that was supposed to bring them supplies to like get them through to the next couple of years, left too late in the season.
19:27 Daniel Whiteson? What? How does that happen? They just like woke up late and didn't make it?
19:31 Kelly Weinersmith? Or? I mean, this was a government expedition. And so I think they were like government holdups and I don't know, one thing or another. And then you know, temperatures different between years and they just thought they'd be okay, but they weren't. And so by the time they got there, they hit a wall of ice and they were like, oh, well, we can't get there.
19:47 Daniel Whiteson? I mean, if I send people to a very unpleasant place and they're relying on my resupply, then I'm sending that resupply like a little early.
19:55 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah.
19:56 Daniel Whiteson? Just to make sure. So like, this is kind of shocking.
19:58 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, no, it is shocking. And really, his wife was mortified and very angry. So there was a like, letter writing campaign and the people in charge were like, okay, next year, we promise we'll send it sooner.
20:10 Daniel Whiteson? Next year, like, can they make it without this resupply ship? Is this just like extra biscuits and coffee? Or is it like essential supplies?
20:17 Kelly Weinersmith? So they did plan ahead, knowing that it's possible that the mission wasn't going to get through. And so they had enough food to get them through a year if the resupply mission didn't make it through. But they knew that by year two, if they didn't get a resupply mission, they were going to need to abandon the station and like high tail it out for an area where they were more likely to get rescued. And maybe there'd be some resupplies along the way where boats would have left like, this is as close as we could get. So we dumped the food here with like a flag. The plan was like, if you don't get resupplies for two years, then you need to go out and try to get help.
20:50 Daniel Whiteson? And were there any resources there? I mean, is it just completely barren where they were? Or could they like hunt polar bears?
20:57 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, so they were hunting, they were hunting wolves and foxes. And on this mission, they didn't have to eat their dogs, which is nice because I don't think they wanted to do that. So they were able to do some hunting, which was also nice for like getting out and mental health and stuff like that. So they were able to resupply themselves a little bit. But the big problem came in year two, where they sent out two boats and for a variety of reasons, like one hadn't been retrofitted soon enough because you need really strong boats because you're going to have to sometimes like crush through the ice to try to get forward if you think the ice is thin enough. And so for like a variety of fumbles, they kind of left late again.
21:37 Daniel Whiteson? Oh, man.
21:37 Kelly Weinersmith? And one boat was like, I'm going forward anyway. And then that one got stuck in the ice and sank to the bottom of the sea with a lot of the food.
21:47 Daniel Whiteson? Oh, Greeley's wife must have penned a really grumpy letter after that, huh?
21:50 Kelly Weinersmith? She was not so happy about the way this was all working out. It's so sad reading about it, you know, like they were standing on a hill, looking, hoping to see the ship. Cause there was a period where it looked like things were opening up and the ship could have gotten through, but like the food never came.
22:04 Daniel Whiteson? Why don't they resupply in the summer? This is crazy. Why wait for the ice to be forming so you have to race against the ice?
22:10 Kelly Weinersmith? They were trying to like leave in the summer, but it's a long journey at a time where boat rides are slow and they got out later than they had planned on in both instances. And so even though they should have left earlier, by the time they left, it was too late and it just didn't work out.
22:24 Daniel Whiteson? So is this resupply boat still like on the bottom of the ocean or did somebody eventually find it and pull it up?
22:29 Kelly Weinersmith? I don't know. So it was the Polaris and it's not one of the more famous ships to have gone to the Arctic. And so I don't know if anyone's bothered to pull it up. So it might still be there. I'm not sure.
22:40 Daniel Whiteson? It's amazing to me how hard it is to bring up a shipwreck, which means that like the earth is covered in shipwrecks, many of which maybe nobody can get to, or nobody ever will, which contain like vast riches and archaeological and sociological stuff that would be super revealing about the time. It's fascinating how close it is and yet how inaccessible some of this stuff is.
23:02 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, but like it totally makes sense to me. Like when I wear a wet suit and I'm like in the water and I go to stand up, if the wet suit is open a little bit and some water gets in there, like it's much harder. Like water is really heavy when it gets inside stuff. It makes sense to me that it would be hard to lift a boat out if it's stuck and then it's got all that water and the boat is heavy on its own. And so I think you'd rather just get the gold and leave the boat.
23:24 Kelly Weinersmith? If you can.
23:26 Daniel Whiteson? Or the coffee or whatever's down there.
23:27 Kelly Weinersmith? That's right. Yeah, definitely. You don't want to lose the coffee, although now it's maybe a little salty, a little less good.
23:31 Daniel Whiteson? All right. So Greeley goes out there, they try to resupply him twice, fail twice. What does he do? Does he decide he's going to live off polar bears forever or does he head home?
23:40 Kelly Weinersmith? So there's a disagreement in the crew. Some of the crew think like, look, we can make this polar bear thing work. Let's just stay here for another year. But Greeley is a rule follower in the army. And so he's like, no, we said that if the resupply didn't come in two years, we were going to leave and like meet everybody at this spot. And so he. Followed the rules and there were 25 men that set out and they were able to get like a I think called a cache where like some food got left for them and they found some of it. But in the end, 20 out of the 25 that set out, only seven of them survived and the rest of them died from starvation and exposure. So it was bad.
24:17 Daniel Whiteson? I mean, I've messed up research projects before, but nobody ever died because I was too late to file a report or run some calculation or something.
24:24 Kelly Weinersmith? This is why I decided to not be an ER surgeon because I thought, you know, like there's going to be a day where something goes wrong and someone dies and maybe you could have done something about it. And I don't know that I can handle that. Like major props to the people who do. We obviously need those jobs, but I was like, I, I don't think I want that on my shoulders. And Greeley had a lot of deaths on his shoulders.
24:45 Daniel Whiteson? I feel the same way you do. I couldn't handle the sort of mental load of knowing that my decisions caused somebody to die, even if there are also days where like I've saved somebody's life. That's one reason why I ended up in particle physics, because I felt like there's no chance anything I do is ever going to impact humanity really in any way. Not even like being able to develop new weapons, you know, like my parents were in the weapons program and obviously there are big moral consequences there because they're developing literal weapons of mass destruction pointed at civilian populations. And so I decided to be totally irrelevant. And but then later, when I grew up, I thought, hmm, it's kind of weird. Other friends I have, I have actually useful skills that can help people and save lives and whatever. I thought that might be
25:26 Daniel Whiteson? nice, but it does protect you against the days where, oops, I didn't get enough coffee and I accidentally cut off the wrong thing.
25:33 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, I made a lot of the same calculations and I'm totally happy where I am. I'm totally happy being mostly irrelevant, but sometimes amusing. That's fine with me. I hope I make some people chuckle sometimes and nobody die.
25:45 Daniel Whiteson? That's right. Anyway, these aren't the lessons of Daniel and Kelly's career choices. We're trying to learn from Greeley's expedition. So a lot of people died, very few made it back, and largely because they weren't resupplied. Is that right?
25:57 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah. So there's two lessons to get from this. And the first lesson is all about resupply. So just like a mission to Mars, there's like windows of time where resupply ships can leave. And things go wrong, so you need to be self-sufficient. So you know, you could imagine with SpaceX, if that window that opens up once every two years to send a resupply mission, you can imagine things going wrong and making it so that resupply doesn't show up. For example, maybe China attacks Taiwan and the special computer chips that are made in Taiwan can no longer be purchased. And maybe that's a problem for SpaceX. Or maybe SpaceX goes bankrupt and they're the only ones with the technology to get a resupply ship to Mars right now. Or Musk decides to invest all of his money in X and you're just left there.
26:39 Daniel Whiteson? But let's back up a second and think about why you need a resupply. I mean, the polar analog is interesting because those guys needed a resupply, even though they could hunt locally. Now, clearly on Mars, there are not polar bears. We're not aware of any large mammals you can eat. But technology has also improved. Is it absolutely clear that a Martian mission will need to be resupplied? Is it possible to just send a bunch of people there and have them be self-sufficient from the get-go?
27:05 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, so that is a great question and maybe something you should try to plan for, especially if your goal is to have like a settlement. Or you could just pack two extra years' worth of freeze-dried foods and plan ahead of time for them to not expire.
27:18 Daniel Whiteson? Polar bear jerky, I bet that's pretty good.
27:20 Kelly Weinersmith? Sure, yeah, delicious. I mean, I think you'd need a lot of space to do essentially subsistence farming for four people and survive just on that. So that would be a pretty massive undertaking. But you know, maybe you want to try to pack enough to buy yourself time for that next open window or pack cyanide pills.
27:42 Kelly Weinersmith? Got dark.
27:44 Daniel Whiteson? I thought first you were going to go into the like, maybe you should bring spices that would help you when you need to, you know, draw straws and decide who's going to be dinner and who's going to be at dinner.
27:53 Kelly Weinersmith? You know, I was reading this book by Eric Seedhouse that was all about like lessons you can learn from polar expeditions. And I was really surprised at how little he talked about sort of behavioral things that you could learn. But he brought up cannibalism like a bunch of times. And in this book, he kept being like, in this generation, they're all a bunch of wimps. And he had a whole section where he talks about how like, okay, say you do run out of food and you look Across the table and you're like, there's food.
28:19 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah.
28:19 Kelly Weinersmith? Who goes first? And he was like, well, the biggest one should go first because they require the most calories and can provide the most calories, which made me wonder if he's kind of like a short guy and he's like, and there's a bit of a bias there, but you know, the math checks out. But then he went and he talked about how you could like 3D print the stuff that you'd need to like butcher a body. And I was like, I would not invite Eric Seethouse on my mission. Like he is not coming with me.
28:44 Daniel Whiteson? Well, it seems like there are nuances there also, right? Like, do you need to eat a whole person? Can't you just be like, hey, man, you don't need both of those legs or, you know, let's cut a hunk out of that buttock or something, right? There are ways somebody could survive and still provide you food.
28:57 Kelly Weinersmith? Sure. Those would be some very difficult conversations.
29:00 Daniel Whiteson? So did Greeley do any of that? Do you think there was any cannibalism? I mean, people died, right? And other people were starving. Were they tempted to like, you know, cook up their mates and have them for a snack?
29:09 Kelly Weinersmith? So this is a pretty big controversy, actually, and we're going to return to it after the break.
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30:36 Kelly Weinersmith? All right. I know everybody's dying to know about cannibalism on the Greeley expedition. So the answer is, we really don't know. It sounds like Greeley genuinely was not aware of it happening, but all of the bodies of his crew were brought back to the US. And some doctors thought that there were signs on some of the bones that could have been indicative of flesh being cut away to be eaten. And so there were some grumblings about possible cannibalism, but it's thought that even if the evidence was pretty good, the government tried to cover it up because they wanted this to be an uplifting story about how at least seven people got saved, not a story about cannibalism in an army expedition. So it's unclear.
31:15 Daniel Whiteson? An uplifting story about how we failed to resupply 25 people and most of them died.
31:20 Kelly Weinersmith? Well, it's a sliding scale, I guess. Some of them made it back. I think they were really clinging to the silver lining.
31:29 Daniel Whiteson? All right. So then what would you say is the lesson we learned from the polar trips about how to resupply stuff on Mars? Make it self-sufficient, build in lots of buffer. What can we do other than thinking, wow, you gotta be brave to go on one of these missions?
31:42 Kelly Weinersmith? You know, it's going to be really hard to pack enough resupply to get a crew through an extra two years. And that would be extremely expensive to do. But I think you really need to think through, how do we make sure the resupply gets there? Can we give them enough extra supplies where it would be okay if we missed one launch window? What would that look like? Could we have like a backup plan where maybe the next mission won't be crude, but we have like duplicates rockets that just send food that we can dump somewhere on the Martian surface? You gotta plan for things going wrong, and it's going to be even more complicated for a mission to Mars.
32:17 Daniel Whiteson? Well, it sounds like we should pack some cyanide pills.
32:19 Kelly Weinersmith? You know, it might not be a bad idea.
32:23 Daniel Whiteson? Put that on the indoor husband's to do list. All right. So what other kinds of lessons can we learn from polar expeditions other than just like resupply is crucial and it's really hard?
32:33 Kelly Weinersmith? So Greeley had a big problem on his expedition, which is that he had at least three crew members who were just not listening, not behaving, and he had no ability to punish them. So his engineer, of which he brought one, was an alcoholic. And when it was time for them to leave the research station to try to like, go get help, he kept drinking the fuel alcohol.
32:58 Daniel Whiteson? What?
32:59 Kelly Weinersmith? And they needed that for their ships and to cook their food. And at one point, he's drunk and he grounds the boat and Greeley is like, I'm gonna shoot you. But then he realizes like, I can't because I have one engineer and I need this guy. And he didn't have a backup plan. So he like, made a note in a notebook, like, we're gonna talk about this with the government when we get home. And like, the guy just kept doing it. He kept stealing the fuel alcohol. He ended up being one of the first to die, which kind of solved that problem, sort of, in the harsh, you know, math of the Arctic.
33:30 Daniel Whiteson? But it doesn't solve the, we still need an engineer problem, right?
33:33 Kelly Weinersmith? No, that's true. But at that point, a couple other people had learned those skills, which is something they should have done before they left. So like, lesson one, duplicate skills. You need to have like, multiple people who know how to do the same job because you never know what's gonna happen. And so he had a similar skill problem with the doctor, who around year two was like, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. And Greeley was like, dude, we wouldn't have hired you if you were gonna quit halfway through. You have to keep going. And he's like, I'm gonna arrest you if you don't. And the guy's like, how can you arrest me? We're in the middle of nowhere. And Greeley was like, no, I can't. And he like, didn't provide any details.
34:11 Daniel Whiteson? What was this guy's plan? He's like, I'm with you on this mission, but I'm gonna stop being a doctor? Or I'm just gonna like, gonna walk home myself? Like, the guy's kind of stuck, isn't he?
34:20 Kelly Weinersmith? That is what I would have thought if I was in that position. But I think he was just like, I just want to chill. I want less work. You still have to take care of me. But also, he was involved in like, some mutinous conversations. There was like, somebody else who wanted to take control because they thought Greeley wasn't doing a great job. And so the doctor was offering to diagnose Greeley as being like mentally unstable, so that somebody else could take over. And Greeley got word that this sort of mutinous talk was happening, but he didn't do anything because he didn't have a lot of options.
34:51 Daniel Whiteson? Oh, man.
34:51 Kelly Weinersmith? And then the worst thing the doctor did in my mind, there was one guy who was like really sick. He had gotten frostbite and the doctor was like, look, I know we're all on rations. We're all starving to death, but this guy, if he's gonna make it, he needs extra food. So can we please give this guy extra food? And everybody's like, yes, we want to save this guy. Let's give him some extra food. And then Greeley saw the doctor eating the extra food that was meant to be for the other patient.
35:15 Daniel Whiteson? Doctor, I hate this guy.
35:16 Kelly Weinersmith? I know. He's such a jerk. He doesn't make it either, but there's nothing that he could do. And then the last guy, and this is why crew selection is important, turned out that this guy had been in jail for forging a check. And then when he got out of jail, he killed a man. And then he changed his name and he made it on the Greeley expedition. So not a great guy. And as they're all starving.
35:35 Daniel Whiteson? Really needs a better vetting system, like, you know, weed these people out before you take them on the mission.
35:41 Kelly Weinersmith? Right. Well, and so NASA has like a very stringent system for how they pick people who get to go to space. And so what makes me nervous is that when we start to open it up to like Musk will say, well, anyone who can afford to go, who are the people who are trying to escape Earth? Like, no doubt, there's a lot of like dreamers and researchers and big thinkers, but maybe there's also people who are just like trying to escape the law. So you're gonna have to be careful with who goes. But this guy's stealing their food while everyone's starving to death? And he at one point gets caught because he snuck in, ate some raw bacon, and then everybody was like, where'd the bacon go? And eating raw bacon had upset this guy's stomach, so he threw it up. And they were like, oh, there's the bacon. And so then he couldn't like pretend he hadn't stolen it.
36:23 Daniel Whiteson? I have a gross question. Are they so hungry that like vomited up raw bacon is still something you might consider like cooking up?
36:30 Kelly Weinersmith? I don't know. They had eaten fungus covered dog treats at one point. When they'd shoot an animal, they would start like licking the blood at like, and they were eating moss.
36:45 Daniel Whiteson? They'd be like boiling their shoes to make tea and stuff, right? These folks are desperate. So at some point, even vomited up bacon might be quite a delicacy.
36:52 Kelly Weinersmith? They are eating the leather in their clothes by the end. Yeah. So the book did not specifically talk about the fate of the regurgitated bacon. It wouldn't surprise me if. It had been consumed because when you're dying, you'll eat like anything, which I think is something we've talked about before. We have themes.
37:07 Daniel Whiteson? Imagine going to restaurants, seeing this stuff on the menu like shoe tea or fungus covered dog treats. Once vomited bacon, you know, it's amazing what people will eat though, when they got to survive, right?
37:19 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, yeah. The drive to live is pretty incredible.
37:23 Daniel Whiteson? But this is mostly a lesson about picking your crew and what you can do when you're out there. I mean, this guy's the captain of the ship, doesn't he basically have complete authority that can't he execute people if he has to in order for the mission to succeed?
37:35 Kelly Weinersmith? So yes, he has that power, but he was a little concerned that if he exercised that power, it would reflect poorly on the mission. So he held back for a long time, but this guy who was stealing the food, he was getting stronger while everybody was getting weaker because they weren't eating, but this guy was eating more. So eventually Greeley was like, all right, we're gonna have to shoot this guy and he couldn't do it because he was too weak to like get up. So he told two other guys like, you've got to go shoot. I think the guy's last name was Henry and they did. And so eventually justice in a way was served. What are the lessons here? So one, you need job redundancy because this got Greeley in a hole a bunch of times.
38:16 Kelly Weinersmith? There were a lot of times where he clearly should have punished someone or locked them up, but he's like, he needed their skills.
38:21 Daniel Whiteson? So you're saying we need like two engineers and two doctors and two cooks or whatever?
38:26 Kelly Weinersmith? Or you at least need skill redundancy where like maybe your doctor also knows the main tasks of the engineer. And the engineer knows a lot of what the navigator needs to do. And so, you know, I mean, I feel like in an ideal world, you'd be able to bring like a couple of all of these people, but probably you're just going to need to have redundancy and skills within the crew.
38:48 Daniel Whiteson? So everybody's got to be a doctor slash cook slash engineer?
38:51 Kelly Weinersmith? Which requires a lot of prior planning and I think NASA does do that kind of like cross training ahead of time. But you know, it would be good if Musk also had that kind of stuff on his mind. Also, there was no jail cell, which kind of limited his options for what he could do. But he also couldn't afford to lock up members of the crew a lot of the time, like if he locked. Locked up the engineer, then he still can't use the engineer's skills.
39:14 Daniel Whiteson? Wait, but help me imagine where they are. I mean, they're on a polar expedition. Are they sleeping in tents? Have they built some sort of temporary structure? I realize now I don't have like a mental image of where these folks are living.
39:24 Kelly Weinersmith? So initially, they were living in a research station where they probably could have like walled off part of it to make a jail cell.
39:30 Daniel Whiteson? So a research station is like a building, somebody built a building out there?
39:34 Kelly Weinersmith? Yep, yep. They brought building supplies and they put it together and it was a nice station. Actually, in a future expedition, I think it was Perry who stopped by and credited his survival with being able to like, hang out in the station that had been so well built that like years later, he could still go there to warm up.
39:49 Daniel Whiteson? Indoors are nice places. Yes.
39:50 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah.
39:51 Daniel Whiteson? I'm pro indoors. All right. So they had indoors on this research station. That's great.
39:54 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, my indoor husband would love that. So.
39:57 Daniel Whiteson? If you could get him out there.
39:58 Kelly Weinersmith? That's right. But you know, then at some point they are living in a tent. And so a jail cell would have been difficult, but a plan would have been helpful. He should have been able to see that this was a possibility that would come up, that they wouldn't be able to like put someone in a jail cell and have a way to deal with it instead of making a note that like, oh, I'm gonna tell the government that you engaged in mutiny when we get home. But for right now, we've got nothing. And so, you know, on early naval expeditions, flogging is something that they would do. It was like a quick thing where you like really hurt someone enough that they don't want to do the thing again, but then they can go right back to work. And you don't need to like confine them in a certain area. And I'm not saying that I am pro corporal punishment. I'm giving the history of punishment options.
40:40 Kelly Weinersmith? But like whatever they decide to do, they needed to have a clearer plan and really needed to feel like he was empowered to carry through on those plans. And it just seemed like that did not happen for this mission.
40:51 Daniel Whiteson? Well, it's interesting that people would act this way on this mission because it feels like sort of counter to their own interests. I mean, everybody's got to pull their weight for this whole mission to succeed. And this mission has to succeed for people to survive. So it feels like that would provide a lot of pressure for people to toe the line and be part of the team and stuff. It's amazing to me that even under those conditions, some folks are like stealing the bacon and deciding to not do their job anymore.
41:15 Kelly Weinersmith? There was a ton of variability, actually. So you know, there's the guy who's stealing the bacon, but there were also members of the crew where like. Like, somebody was dying because they were starving and they'd take some of their food and they would feed the other person and try to like, help them and like, there were literally stories about them like, cradling each other's heads and trying to like, spoon feed them because they were too weak to eat. So like, there was a lot of compassion and a lot of examples of people being willing to like, risk their lives to help other crew members. But then there's the guy who's stealing the bacon. And so, I think you've got to be careful about who you send up there. And then you need to have a system for making sure that the people who don't behave the way you want them to, there's some way to keep them from doing that again.
41:54 Daniel Whiteson? So Greeley is one example, and he seems like a little bit of a weak leader. Like, he had some of these tools and he didn't use them, and maybe that would have helped him keep his crew in line. Is that a general thing in these polar trips and in these crazy expeditions and on, you know, long voyages, that the captain is not really feeling like they have these tools at their disposal because it'll ruin morale or whatever? Is Greeley unusual, or this is a common theme?
42:17 Kelly Weinersmith? The next story we're going to talk about is another case where a leader had a little bit of trouble maintaining order for a different reason. So it's not like this is the only story of a leader who has sort of trouble with maintaining order. But there were some who were definitely more successful. So Ernest Shackleton, for example, when his boat, the Endurance, sunk. First, he did a really great job of managing the personalities. So there were like, three or so guys who were just like, super annoying and super negative. And Shackleton was like, "You guys are sleeping in my tent." And he just made sure that like, their negative attitude didn't like, seep over into the other crew members. And he was more willing to threaten people. So for example, there's this story where there was a stowaway on the Endurance, and they discovered it after they had left. It was too late to return the guy who had stowed away. And so Shackleton
43:02 Kelly Weinersmith? said to him, "Okay, but if anything goes wrong, you're the first one we're gonna eat." And I think threatening cannibalism is probably a pretty good way to keep people in line. And he also like, was better about reminding people about the documents they had signed ahead of time, where they promised to follow the rules. And he was just a bit more assertive.
43:20 Daniel Whiteson? All right. So then, what's the takeaway? You're planning a mission to Mars, you're keeping Greeley's experience in mind. You have your own experience as a parent, flogging your children when they get out of line, you know, or at least, holding that Possibility over there.
43:31 Kelly Weinersmith? I've never hit my kids, but I think the point is you need to have a plan that you are willing to execute and that everybody knows could happen ahead of time. And that might not solve all of the problems, but at least then you've got some path forward and some legitimacy.
43:46 Daniel Whiteson? And you have some credibility that the negative outcomes are going to keep people in line, right?
43:49 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, you hope.
43:50 Daniel Whiteson? You hope so. Yeah. That's a real challenge, you know, being a leader of a mission like that, you know, really being willing to follow through on those threats because otherwise they're empty and then you have no power.
44:00 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah. So you need to be careful about picking the crew, but you also need to be careful about picking the leader because you could argue that if Greeley had been a little bit more assertive and had a little clearer plan, maybe some people could have lived longer and maybe they would have made it to the resupply ship if Henry hadn't been stealing food for so long, if the cook hadn't been drinking the fuel alcohol that they needed, you know, to keep warm and stuff like that. You need a leader who's willing to follow through on this stuff.
44:23 Daniel Whiteson? I mean, I know as a parent, you don't make threats you're not willing to follow through on because sometimes you have to. And if you're like, finish your dinner or nobody's going to go into that movie. And you're like, oh, man, I kind of wanted to go to that movie. You gotta be willing to do it though.
44:35 Kelly Weinersmith? No, those moments suck. I hate those moments where I'm like, oh, now I don't get to do what I want to do because I'm punishing you. Or the moments where you know, your kid really wants to do something and you want to let them do it, but you're like, you kept pushing. I remember once my daughter, like I told her, you do that again, blah, blah, blah is going to happen. And she looked me in the eye and she said the thing again. And I was like, I have conflicted feelings on the one hand. Wow, that took some chutzpah. I'm proud of you for like, being tough, but on the other hand, go to your room. You're not going to the camp out or whatever.
45:06 Daniel Whiteson? Yeah.
45:07 Kelly Weinersmith? Interesting watching them grow and try stuff out.
45:10 Daniel Whiteson? It's a wonderful challenge, everyone. Yes. All right. So what else did we learn from the polar expeditions? We talked about resupply. We talked about punishment and management. What else do we need to worry about on our Martian mission that we can learn about from our polar experiences?
45:25 Kelly Weinersmith? Well, we're going to take a break and then we're going to talk about how psychology can be a problem on polar missions.
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46:47 Kelly Weinersmith? All right, we're back. So the last example for today is the Mossin Expedition. And this is a guy from Australia who went down to Antarctica around 1911 to collect a bunch of scientific information about Antarctica. So this is another, like, it's not a race to the pole. It's just going out there to try to collect data about this difficult environment. And he had a really hard time. Like, he went out with these other two guys. One of the guys fell through a crack in the ice and they just never saw him again because he fell down through the ice so far with, like, a bunch of their resupply stuff. And so now they, like, didn't have a lot of food and they were racing back as fast as they could. And one of the guys just kind of died from hunger and exposure. Mossin, who's, you know, the leader of this expedition, he's trying to race back in time,
47:31 Kelly Weinersmith? but he, like, falls down another one of those, like, cracks in the ice, but he manages to pull himself up. And when he gets back, he looks out and there's the boat sailing away for the season. He had just missed it.
47:43 Daniel Whiteson? Oh, no.
47:44 Kelly Weinersmith? I know. Like, so you'd think that he'd be the one who would have a mental break. But it turns out, they, the crew hadn't given up on him, so they left some men behind to watch out to see if Mossin and the rest of the guys on his expedition got back there and they had resupplied enough to get them over the winter. And so they've got this chance, right? And the boat's gonna come back. And so Mossin's there with some other guys. And one of the guys there was a 29-year-old named Sidney Jeffries. And he was the only guy there who knew how to use the wireless telegraphy system. So he was the only one who could communicate with the outside world. And Jeffries started to have a mental break. He starts trying to start fights with people. He's like, I can tell you're trying to be a jerk. Let's go to the other room and fight.
48:28 Kelly Weinersmith? And the other guy's like, I don't know what you're talking about, man. I'm reading a book. And he's just like trying to chill. And then at one point, Jeffries is challenging other people to duels. And so they have to lock up all of the weapons. At one point, he's telling Mossen about a disease he had of the type that we usually don't talk about in polite conversation.
48:46 Daniel Whiteson? Does it come from fluid transmission?
48:50 Kelly Weinersmith? It does come from fluid transmission. Yes, that's right, a theme.
48:52 Daniel Whiteson? Yes, be careful of those indoor husbands. Some of them are diseased.
48:56 Kelly Weinersmith? That's true. Yeah, probably some of the indoor wives too. You just, you know, you gotta watch out. So Mossen goes to talk to the doctor and is like, oh, okay. So, you know, Jeffries has that disease. And the doctor's like, no, that's a hallucination. Nothing is wrong with him in that regard. There was no dirty indoor wives causing any problems. And then Jeffries also starts storing his urine because he thinks there's some like medical reason he should be doing that. He also stops bathing. He's letting his hygiene go, so he smells bad. But perhaps most importantly, he's in control of the communication system and he starts telling the outside world that actually everybody but him has lost their mind and everybody's trying to kill him. And he won't let anybody else communicate with the outside world.
49:41 Kelly Weinersmith? And so what is the lesson here? So this guy, you know, when he gets back to Australia, it turns out he needs to end up in an asylum. He spends the rest of his life there. He probably had the onset of something like schizophrenia, which happens often in your early 30s. This guy was 29 years old. And so I think the lesson here is, one, if you take young people with you, there are a fair number of diseases that don't become apparent until you're like in your 30s. And so there's some chance that you're going to be dealing with these problems when you're in this harsh environment. But more importantly, people break sometimes. Like even people who don't have like underlying mental health issues will break under difficult conditions.
50:24 Kelly Weinersmith? And so you need to have a system, which means you need to, you know, maybe have some therapists with you on the trip, or you need to try to see if you can get some shelf-stable medication that you can send with you. Like you need to have a plan for what happens when things go wrong, because even the humans that seem the most stable, when you hire them onto the crew, they're not necessarily going to stay stable the whole time.
50:47 Daniel Whiteson? But some people survive this experience without their minds cracking. Is it thought that this guy was more susceptible to it? He already had these mental issues and this tough experience brought it out? Or was he like totally sane and the experience itself just broke him?
51:00 Kelly Weinersmith? I don't think we have great information about what this guy was like before the trip. It could be that this experience broke him, although he did volunteer to be one of the people who stayed. So he must have kind of felt like he had a handle on the situation. So first of all, we read a bunch of astronaut memoirs and a bunch of astronauts lie about their mental health. It totally makes sense because if they say, I'm feeling anxious, maybe they don't get to go on another trip to space. Right? So they have every incentive to say that they're fine. And so there's plenty of stories. A lot of the stories are medical, like there was a guy who thought he was going to have a heart attack. A couple of days before he was supposed to go up to space, but he lied and went to like a doctor covertly and didn't tell anyone else about it because he didn't want anyone to know. And then there's also people who passed the tests, maybe really were fine and then break later.
51:45 Kelly Weinersmith? So for example, Lisa Noack was a NASA astronaut. She went up on the shuttle. She started dating one of the shuttle astronauts. He left her for another woman and she tried to kidnap the other woman. And it's not clear what she planned on doing with her after that. And so-
52:02 Daniel Whiteson? Is this the one who drove cross country wearing astronaut underwear?
52:05 Kelly Weinersmith? So she would say that actually she hadn't worn it and that she had twins and that those diapers were from a prior trip she went on and she just forgot to throw them out. But yes, I think that's exactly what happened. She had rubber tubing and she was arguing like, I was using the rubber tubing for exercise. Like it was a tension thing and it seems pretty clear that she was planning on trying to kidnap this woman. And it's not clear what she was going to do with her after that.
52:28 Daniel Whiteson? I think the lesson is don't date astronauts or don't date people who have the mental fortitude to go on these missions. Because there's clearly something weird about those folks, you know? More power to them and I'm glad that we have them. We've learned so much about the poles and we potentially will learn a lot about Mars. But I'm not sure those folks need to be in the reproductive pool, you know?
52:48 Kelly Weinersmith? I don't know. I think there's a lot of people who would say that astronauts are like the best of us. I don't think there's a lot of people advocating for pulling them out of the gene pool. You might be on your own there.
52:57 Daniel Whiteson? It's interesting because if we build a colony, it's going to be populated by those folks and they're going to be reproducing. And so if it takes a certain kind of person to be willing to go on that mission, then your colony is going to be filled with those folks. The same way that like colonies a few hundred years ago required some fortitude and some risk taking, and they're definitely not representative samples of other countries, right?
53:17 Kelly Weinersmith? Sure. But then also they'll have kids and maybe their kids will be more like a representative sample from the country that they came from. And I think no matter who you send, you need to have a system in place for what happens when someone has a mental health crisis. Cause I just think that it's unavoidable, no matter who you pick, that at some point, there's going to be a problem with someone. And on the ISS, they have a system. You're supposed to tie somebody up, put a towel underneath their chin and duct tape their head to something so that they can't move. And then I think you're supposed to offer them like an oral, something like a tranquilizer to calm them down. And if they refuse, you can also like inject it. And so essentially the plan for the International Space Station is to just immobilize someone until you can get them home, which will only take a couple of days.
53:59 Kelly Weinersmith? But it gets much more complicated if you're stuck on Mars for two years and you're worried that they're going to try to hurt themselves or hurt somebody else. Usually it's hurt themselves, not hurt somebody else. But like having a system in place for that, like, are you just going to trank someone for a year and a half? That doesn't seem feasible or good for the person being knocked out for that long.
54:17 Daniel Whiteson? No, but it might solve some of your other problems. Like, hey, this person turns out to be dinner, right? They go crazy or they break the rules. Like, oh, maybe we don't need a resupply.
54:25 Kelly Weinersmith? See, you should be going to space. You are apparently comfortable with any of the difficult decisions that need to be made. I'm not sure I'd want to be on your crew, but I think maybe you should go.
54:35 Daniel Whiteson? No, I'm comfortable having a podcast conversation about these difficult decisions. But when rubber hits the road or, you know, ice hits the tent, I think it'd be a lot harder to do than it is to talk about.
54:46 Kelly Weinersmith? Yeah, fair enough. So those are the lessons for today. You know, when you read about these stories, there is a lot of really exciting inspirational stuff that's going on. People really pushing the limits and people who are just really excited about getting answers, doing like whatever it takes to get those answers. But there's also a lot of difficult stuff along the way that if you plan for, hopefully you can avoid, or at least minimize the negative impacts of. So let's hope that Elon Musk is doing sufficient planning for his first trip to Mars, which he's hoping will happen in the next, you know, decade or so.
55:16 Daniel Whiteson? I think the takeaway for me is that we imagine these expeditions to be voyages or scientific journeys, but these are people and these expeditions have people on them. And so they have people problems and people problems come with people and you can't escape them. And so you gotta be prepared for them. You know, people gotta go to the bathroom and people are gonna be jealous and mad and go crazy. And you can't pretend that just because you have noble goals that are universal or deep and fundamental, that you're somehow just gonna magically avoid those issues. So yeah, you gotta be prepared. Bring your astronaut underwear and bring your astronaut tranquilizer.
55:51 Kelly Weinersmith? Amen. I think especially with space, people tend to project utopias and think that everything's gonna be great up there. But I think humans are gonna bring all their problems with us into the heavens and we need to plan.
56:01 Daniel Whiteson? All right. Thanks, everyone, for taking this voyage into our historical expeditions and what we can learn from history about the problems we'll face in the future when humans, we hope, one day do start to colonize the solar system.
56:20 Kelly Weinersmith? Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you.
56:26 Daniel Whiteson? We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe.
56:32 Kelly Weinersmith? We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you.
56:38 Daniel Whiteson? We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at [email protected] .
56:45 Kelly Weinersmith? Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms, you can find us at D and K Universe.
56:54 Daniel Whiteson? Don't be shy. Write to us.
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