Putting Humans on Mars, with Mike Massimino – StarTalk All-Stars

What will it take to send people to Mars safely, and bring them home again? StarTalk All-Stars host Astro Mike Massimino and co-host Maeve Higgins find out from John Charles, the Chief Scientist at NASA’s Human Research Program.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Massimino?

  This is StarTalk.

• 0:09Mike Massimino?

  Hello, this is Mike Massimino, talking to you from StarTalk All-Stars. I guess I'm actually an All-Star.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:17Mike Massimino?

  I haven't been an All-Star since I was 13-years-old in Little League. That was 40-years ago. But I'm an All-Star again, and you're host tonight. And I have with me, my friend... Wait, can I call you my friend?

• 0:28Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 0:29Mike Massimino?

  Maeve Higgins is my new friend. No, we're friends. And she's a tremendous, great, space enthusiast, but more important, a comedian, so she's gonna keep us laughing.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yeah, I can't wait to do this show.

• 0:42Mike Massimino?

  Thank you for being here.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  No, thank you for having me.

• 0:44Mike Massimino?

  You bet.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Your home is beautiful.

• 0:46Mike Massimino?

  Thank you. Uh, this is not my home, actually, but it is a nice place. And this episode, we have John Charles, my friend from the Johnson Space Center. He is a chief scientist at the Johnson Space Center.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:59Mike Massimino?

  And he's gonna talk to us about putting people on Mars. That's right. People like you and me, maybe not you and me, but people like us, real people, we wanna send them to Mars. And John is the person that's gonna make that happen. Is that right, John?

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mike, thanks very much. No pressure there. Yes, I'm the chief scientist for the human research program. There's a lot of chief scientists floating around NASA. I'm just one of them, but for the human research.

• 1:23Mike Massimino?

  Alright, so, let's talk a little bit about this now, John. The human research program, you're the chief scientist for that. What exactly is the human research program? And what are you doing as chief scientist?

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mike, the human research program is the way that we put the research together to send astronauts to Mars. The idea is that our work is focused with laser-like intensity on solving the problems of astronauts, as they leave low-Earth orbit and explore other destinations. We can talk about the moon, we can talk about asteroids, but the implicit goal is to send people to Mars. We've identified, let's say, 30-ish risks that need to be addressed as we send people beyond low-Earth orbit, risks that relate to their exposure to radiation and the effects of that, isolation and confinement. confinement, they'll be isolated and confined and autonomous, they'll be self-sufficient to the extent that nobody has ever been before.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  We have the ongoing issues of adaptation to weightlessness, the medical care, how do you take care of people, maybe there's just four or five or six people on this trip to Mars, how do you take care of them, how do they take care of themselves medically on a trip of two and a half years, round trip from Earth to Mars?

• 2:34Speaker 01

  There's so, so, so many issues. When did you start your research program? Like, when did it, like, start to be called the Human Research Program?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  The Human Research Program was initiated in 2005. That was just about the time that the Space Shuttle Program was going to be starting winding down. We had the last six years of shuttle missions. The Space Station Program was just getting wound up. The Space Station is our venue for the research that we're doing. And since then, our charter has been focused on sending astronauts beyond Earth, or specifically to Mars.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  So did this cross over with your time as an astronaut, then, Mike?

• 3:13Mike Massimino?

  Apparently so. Yeah, I was a shuttle astronaut back then in 2005. And, yeah, so, you know, they've been studying how humans can live and work in space. There's, as John says, there's many aspects to that, and primarily, you know, I think what we're focusing on today is how do you keep people healthy, healthy to withstand such a journey. And that's healthy, both physically healthy and mentally healthy. Because, you know, two weeks in space is one thing, it has certain effects on the body, and that's what, with the Human Research Program, they started studying.

• 3:55Mike Massimino?

  But really, I think the bigger focus is Space Station, as John is saying, where you're up there for longer periods of time, and now from Mars, you're going to be up there even, even longer, right?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Your time as an astronaut crossed over with the, like, beginnings of the Human Research, but like, the official Human Research Program, is that right? So, like, do you know if your time up there had any bearings on their research, and like, what your time could have? Contributed to your knowledge, Don?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Well, I'm quite positive that we made measurements on Mike while he was an active astronaut. We seldom let any warm bodies get away from us, especially if they're willing to come back a second time.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  That sounds very chilling. We never let any warm bodies get away from us.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  But, you know, the thing is not just surviving. I'm pretty confident we can survive on a trip to Mars and survive on the way home. Our goal is to make sure people arrive on Mars so they can do a lot of work. And you saw how much work Matt Damon was doing in the movie. He was by himself, but even when he wasn't by himself, the whole crew was working hard. Our goal is to keep people in sufficient condition that they can work as hard as they've ever worked in their entire lives because it's going to be required on the Mars mission to justify the truly tremendous expense and the multinational effort to get there. So our goal is not for you to get there, to stumble down the ladder and plant a flag and then, you know, scuff a little dust with your boots and get back in the rocket and blast off.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Our goal is for you to be on Mars for up to 18 months, working very, very hard, finding whether there's life on Mars, whether there ever was life on Mars, understanding Mars as a planet, and essentially justifying the expense of the mission. That's the challenge.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  So how long would the mission be altogether?

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Altogether, it's going to be 30 months, according to NASA's Design Reference Mission. And bear in mind that this is not yet an approved program. These are study parameters. But we expect a mission to Mars will be on the order of two and a half years, 30 months long, with about a six-month or so transit there, which just coincidentally looks like a space station duration. 18 months on the planet. Talk about your layovers at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. This is an 18-month layover on Mars, and then a six- or seven-month transit back to Earth, a total of two and a half years.

• 6:09Mike Massimino?

  John, this 30 months that it's going to take to get there, you explained six, six to go, 18 there, six back.

• 6:17Mike Massimino?

  And it's only certain times we can go, right? Could be even longer than that. But that's, why are we looking at that, those lengths of time? And why aren't they not longer or shorter?

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Well, that's sort of the minimum, minimum inclusive mission. It's the transit from Earth to Mars is dictated by orbital mechanics. And the Earth and Mars have to be in the right position for the trajectory to get from one to the other. You'd hate to show up at Mars's orbit and Mars not be there. So there's only a certain number of times, you know, in the Earth year and the Mars year when they're in the right positions with each other. And you can either...

• 6:51Speaker 01

  That would be so awkward if you showed up to Mars and Mars was not there.

• 6:54Mike Massimino?

  It would be disappointing.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  It would be like the worst barbecue ever.

• 6:57Mike Massimino?

  It'd be difficult to explain to Congress and your mom.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  But, you know, then you can either swing by Mars or just stay for maybe 30 days at the most and then come back to Earth. But the launch window for that return is rapidly closing by the time you get there. And if you do execute that, that quick return, you have to swing back through the inner solar system as close to the sun as Venus, which brings in problems with radiation exposure and heating and stuff like that, and still takes a long time to get back to Earth. So there's, there's really, if you think about it, there's really not a convenient way to take a short trip to Mars. The shortest trip to Mars is going to be on the order of 500 days. And that's just a flyby, a swing past, and then come straight back to Earth. And if it's going to justify, like I say, the expense of getting there, you may as well spend enough time there to do something meaningful.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  And that's really what's, you know, once you stay past the first 30 days or so, you're committed to the 18 months.

• 7:50Mike Massimino?

  Right. And that window, I mean, so that there's a sweet spot of when you can do it that quickly and get there in that six months. If you miss that window, you're waiting for a while, aren't you?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Right, exactly right.

• 8:00Mike Massimino?

  Yep. So there's a certain times when you can go and you can't miss the, can't miss the train.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  It's so stressful. I mean, when, when you say that, like, do you know how much money has already been spent? Like, when you say it's like a multinational effort and all these, all this expense so far, like, do you have an idea of that money?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the expense is mostly up until now on research and development.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Research, yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  So the space station is $100 billion worth of investment, as I'm understanding. Also, the work in the Orion capsule, which will take the astronauts from the launch pad, presumably at Kennedy Space Center, up to the Mars transit vehicle and then bring them back again at the end of the mission. The space launch system, the next-generation big rocket that's going to look like the Saturn V based on shuttle technology. You know, all those things have several billion dollars a year in budgets and they've been spending for several years. But, you know, the Mars program itself is still in the study phase and so nobody has actually told us to go to Mars yet. It would essentially be illegal for NASA to send somebody to Mars because Congress has not authorized that particular expenditure. So what we're doing, Congress has authorized us to research the problem and that's what we're doing now.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  What are your main, like, research things? You mentioned the radiation problem. What else are you looking at?

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Well, other things are the psychological aspects. Imagine it's just you and four or five of your closest personal friends locked up in a vehicle the size of, let's say, a Winnebago or two for two and a half years, face to face, with only each other to look at. And the longer the mission goes, up until the halfway point, you're going to be getting further and further from Earth.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  I think it would be good if you could choose who you went with. No? If it was like me, Michael Fassbender. I mean, who would you go with, Mike?

• 9:44Mike Massimino?

  Uh, I'd go with you. You want to go? John will go. They don't usually do that, though.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  You don't get to pick.

• 9:51Mike Massimino?

  No. That's why we have bosses, an A pick, and then you say, "Why'd you put...what the heck?" So that's probably going to be the tradition will continue.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:58Mike Massimino?

  Of how did they put these guys together? But, you know, John, we're going to move on to our cosmic query section. And we've got some related questions from our audience that Maeve will hit us up with now.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  So, here's a question. What kinds of people should be sent to Mars? And psychologists, journalists, medical doctors? And what do you think, John?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Well, my answer to that is NASA does a pretty good job of picking astronauts. And I'm not just brown nosing with Mike here, but it seems like that NASA can find people that are jet pilot, concert pianist, neurosurgeon, gourmet chefs. And you're gonna need that kind of skill mix with a small group of people going to Mars. Let's say four, or five, or six people. You're gonna wanna have people that can do everything. Even a botanist might be a good idea. There's probably gonna be at least one doctor in the crew, probably several people trained at the emergency medical tech level. But you need to have people that are gonna be good at fixing things, because inevitably things will break, and there are people that are just good at fixing things, and that's probably gonna be the most important person on the crew.

• 11:08Mike Massimino?

  What about the teamwork personality aspect of it, John? You know, you can be trained, but you're gonna be away together for a long time. You know, what about getting along?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Well, I know NASA is very good at selecting highly motivated, highly driven, individualistic team players. People that know how to be individuals and do their job uniquely and individually when it's required, but also how to blend into the team. At least, I'm told that, Mike. You have the perspective that I don't. Maybe that's not that way, but I think we're gonna find people that wanna go to Mars, that are motivated to go to Mars, that have trained themselves their entire lives to go to Mars, will learn how to be both the star of the team and one of the team players.

• 11:53Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, that's what people ask me a lot when I talk to people. You know, when I talk to people, the question they ask is how do you become an astronaut? And a lot of it is, you know, your skills and your capabilities technically, but it's also being a good team player and being willing to succeed and fail as a team. Help your buddies out when they need help, and getting help from them when you need it, and so on. And that sometimes is harder to find in people.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:23Mike Massimino?

  You can rate some of these other things, but it's hard to find someone that's gonna be a good teammate.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Is that like the psychology behind it? Do you look into that closely, John? Like, I think you said that, um... You feel like people would physically be able for the trip? But like, how big a priority is the kind of psychology behind the astronauts?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe we have several, nothing, you know, all of, all the risks are important, but we're really, several of them are long poles. We say long pole in the tent and radiation exposure is a long pole in the tent, medical care, autonomous medical care, nutrition, food, but, but among the top four is psychology, the psychological aspects of long duration flight. Both what happens inside of the person's psyche, inside your own head, and how you relate to other people. We're also very concerned about things like sleep quality, believe it or not, we're worried about how much astronauts sleep. Primarily because of concerns that, that sleep, if you don't get enough sleep, you don't do a good job as an astronaut. And also because Mars has a different day night cycle than Earth, and we're worried about people being able to synchronize their circadian rhythms on Mars.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  What's the cycle on Mars, do you know?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes. It's, it's thirty-eight minutes. It's a half a time zone off each day.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  So wait, so you get an extra, they would need to sleep more or less?

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Well, they would, they would have thirty-eight minutes at the end of each twenty-four hour cycle to figure out what to do for the next thirty-eight minutes. But, you know, and each day is going to be a little, a little bit long compared to your normal life on Earth. It turns out that some people can synchronize to that and some people can't synchronize to that. Some just, you know, blend in fine and some don't. And that's, but your question was, what are we doing? What, what kind of research? We're doing research in all those topics. We're researching the individual and how we can, primarily how we can help the individuals stay focused and stay efficient and happy and productive, even in stressful circumstances. We're doing team research and we're doing sleep and circadian rhythm research, you know, isolating people in labs that

• 14:21Speaker 02

  both in, you know, say in Harvard and Massachusetts or in Antarctica or in facilities elsewhere around the world.

• 14:29Mike Massimino?

  There's a lot to this, Maeve.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  There is.

• 14:31Mike Massimino?

  It's not just a trip around the corner. We're going a long way.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Uh, one question that came up again and again, um, is like, how do you keep people entertained? Say you're on this ship for six months getting there, like, and I guess a big part of life is like being happy, being social, being entertained.

• 14:51Mike Massimino?

  A happy crew member is a productive crew member.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 14:54Mike Massimino?

  Yeah. What do you, what do you think about that, John?

• 14:56Speaker 02

  Well, that's a, that's a topic that we are, believe it or not, also investigating where we're searching that. The, the goal is to have meaningful work to keep people motivated. Now, obviously on the station and on a Mars vehicle, there's going to be a lot of mundane work. There's going to be lots of housekeeping, lots of cooking and cleaning up, lots of scrubbing the toilet and scrubbing the walls and fixing things.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  It sounds like you're trying to put people off.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Also, yeah, but on a Mars trip, there's also going to be a lot of simulations. A lot of the, the work that Mike did before flight will have to be done in flight of ongoing training because there's, with a six-month transit, you don't want to train people to the peak of perfection, then give them a six-month vacation to forget everything they learned, then say, okay, today you land on Mars. I hope you remember how to do it. There'll be ongoing training during the entire time in flight.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  That's like in the summer of a school, like you get the summer off.

• 15:46Mike Massimino?

  Right. Everyone forgets what they learned. Yeah, you just, but it, it's, yeah, you want to do some things. We, even on the shuttle, we were only up there for two weeks, but when it came time to come home, we practiced, we had a little program to help us practice what we were going to do for, for landings. And it was, it was kind of an important thing to do. A simulation, yeah. And there's certain things you want in, may want, certain things you want really fresh in your mind and that's, that's it. But one thing that I, that I heard John, John say, I thought was really important was meaningful work. It needs to be something that you think is meaningful. You can't just say, all right, go around here and label all of your oranges. You know, it needs to be something that is meaningful and, and a hobby. For one, some of my friends have come back from, uh, I've never was on a long duration mission, but,

• 16:28Mike Massimino?

  but, uh, John, a lot of the guy, you probably heard this, a lot of men and women that come back say, you need a hobby. And, and most of them like photography. They take a lot of photos of the planet and they do interesting things with cameras and videos and so on, and the social media part of it, contact with your family and so on to keep you going.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Great, so this is a wider question. What would the average day consist of for the new Mars settlers?

• 16:55Mike Massimino?

  Who did this question come from?

• 16:56Speaker 01

  This came from Jason Hoyerman through Facebook.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's gonna look very much like you saw Matt Damon's day. I mean, you're gonna wake up in the morning and make sure the habitat is still intact and make sure your food crops are growing because we hope to be able to grow food on Mars to supplement the food that we're bringing with us. And there's gonna be, like I said, lots of important work to do outside the habitat, in your space suit, looking for evidence of life, looking for evidence to document the history of Mars. Probably gonna send robots, rovers and other kinds of robots out first to find interesting places. And one of the interesting aspects of sending people to Mars to look for life is the possibility that sending people to Mars to look for life will be exactly the wrong thing to do because astronauts, I'm sorry, Mike, astronauts are sloppy.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  Astronauts are leaky. Their spacesuits leak. They leak whatever's on the inside of the suit, which in this case might be microbes they brought with them from Earth. And wouldn't you hate to go sampling a source of potential life on Mars and find evidence of life and find out it came from Earth? So it's very possible we're gonna send robots out first to find and sample the venues that might have life and even confirm there's life and then send the astronauts out essentially to document it and clean it up or just make sure it's still intact so we leave it like we found it.

• 18:18Mike Massimino?

  So all fascinating stuff, but we're gonna have to take a short break. But we'll be right back with more StarTalk All-Stars. John Charles, can you hang around a little bit longer?

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Glad to, Mike.

• 18:31Mike Massimino?

  All right, hang in there, John. We'll be right back. Maeve, thanks.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 18:35Mike Massimino?

  Hang in, we'll be right back.

• 18:38Mike Massimino?

  Hi, I'm Astro Mike, Mike Massimino, back with you on StarTalk All-Stars with my co-host, Maeve Higgins. Maeve's still here?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Yep, here at.

• 18:49Mike Massimino?

  And John Charles, our guest, chief scientist on the Human Research Program. You're still with us, aren't you, John? So what's your Mike, I'm not leaving. Excellent. And during the break, we were talking a little bit about, you know, games you could play when you were, or we could play now, maybe, but games that we played as kids. And I remember this, uh, this game I played called Melvin the Moon Man. And it was back in the 60s, before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Melvin apparently did. And here we have it. See that graphic right there? One of our genius young people found this thing. But I played this game when I was, uh, when my parents went on vacation, because they couldn't, they couldn't, you know, put up with me anymore. They, they took off and they shoved me off of my Uncle Romeo and

• 19:31Mike Massimino?

  my Aunt Ann in Queens, New York, in College Point, Queens. And they dug this game, because you know, I was running around Queens causing trouble. At that point, I was like, I was like a four years old or something. And they gave me this game to play with Melvin the Moon Man.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  What was the aim of the game, to get him to the moon?

• 19:46Mike Massimino?

  The name of the game was to keep me occupied. But you can get into a lot of trouble in Queens, New York, back in the 60s.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  As a four-year-old.

• 19:52Mike Massimino?

  You know, New York City was a lot different back then, Maeve. You know, you're a young person. You don't know what it was. John, have you ever been to New York City back then? Yeah, a couple of times. Not back then, but since then. It's a lot of fun now. Now it's, but back then it was different. They had to keep me occupied.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  What would you say is more dangerous, Mars or Queens in the 1970s?

• 20:07Mike Massimino?

  Queens in the 1970s is really, you know, it's funny, I was, at my Uncle Romeo's, we were, I was getting ready to go work at the, at the Marshall Space Flight Center. John, I know you've been down there a lot, haven't you? Yes, yes, I have. I was a grad student at MIT, and I had this, this old car. It was, it was a very rare car. It was called a Disaster. There wasn't very many of them. And I had one of these vehicles. And, uh, I had to drive from New York down to Huntsville, Alabama.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 20:34Mike Massimino?

  For the summer. And, uh, my Uncle Romeo's neighbor, this guy named Matty, was a mechanic. And I brought my, before I would go on a trip, I brought it by Matt, to Matty's house. We're out in the, out in the street there, you know, in front of my uncle's house, working on a car. Like, Matty, make sure this car works. And he's like, why, what's the matter? And I go, well, you know, I gotta, I've gotta make it all the way down to Alabama. I'm afraid something might happen if I get stuck on the way. He goes, you worried about driving Alabama? Because do you realize where you are standing right now?

• 21:02Mike Massimino?

  So I think that, you know, in a lot of my emergency training and, you know, the survival training I did as an astronaut paled in comparison to navigating the New York City subway system.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Keeping a cool head.

• 21:14Mike Massimino?

  So I think, John, you guys should work that in into your, can you work into some kind of navigating New York into working into going to Mars?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  I'm just wondering how you fit in at Huntsville?

• 21:24Mike Massimino?

  I did, I did fine. Huntsville was great. I loved Huntsville, Alabama, and I, I think I, I fit in okay. As far as I know, I was all right. I didn't cause too much trouble there. But what are we talking about? We're talking about going to Mars.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  And about like humans going to Mars.

• 21:41Mike Massimino?

  Humans going to Mars.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  I'm like curious about the movie that you've mentioned a few times already, John the Martian. And I understand that like Andy, we're, did he get advice from NASA at some point? Like, it seems to be quite realistic, no?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  I think he talked to the scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory there in Pasadena, not far from where he lives. So I, I think he got a lot of first-class advice on sending robots to Mars and what it was like to send people to Mars.

• 22:11Mike Massimino?

  What, what did you, I get asked that question about that movie almost all the time. You know, whenever I speak, I want to know about Gravity or The Martian, that I like it. And from my perspective, John, I just, when I look see a space movie, I just try to look and see if the astronaut was cool.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:27Mike Massimino?

  I really don't, you know, to me, you know, George Clooney was cool.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was.

• 22:32Mike Massimino?

  I don't really, you know, whatever. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of science things wrong with it, but as long as George Clooney looked cool, that was fine. Matt Damon was cool. He got stuck with an antenna in the chest and sewed himself up. Now, I wouldn't, I would look at that and I would go, ah, and I would scream. But people think because I'm an astronaut, I would very coolly pull it out of my chest and sew myself up. Matthew McConaughey? You know, that guy needed, he needed a drink. He was a little bit too intense. I was, you know, a little disappointed with that, with that movie, Interstellar. Because, but I just look at the way the, the, the astronauts portrayed if he's cool or he or she's cool, I'm good with it. But John, what did you think about the movie to Mars? I'm sure you get questions all the time about that. What was your opinion?

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Well, I, I enjoyed it. I thought it was probably the best space movie since 2001. And we can argue about whether it was better than 2001. My wife says she prefers not to go to space movies with me because all I do is huff and puff and roll my eyes audibly during the, usually during the entire movie, but she said I would behave, I behaved myself well this time. In fact, the only snide comment that either of us made was, was one she made during one of the, the climactic EVA scenes. She noticed the astronaut was not tethered to the spacecraft and she said, that would never happen. How could that possibly, how could they make a movie with that in it? So, but otherwise I thought it was a lot of fun. You know, Andy has said that the, the opening event, you know, the, the, the wind that, that blows everything around and causes the problem

• 23:52Speaker 02

  couldn't happen on Mars. The atmosphere is too thin and the dust is not sandy, grainy, granular like that. It's, it's more the, the, the, the texture of smoke particles. So, and he said, I asked, I asked him that question during a Q and A one time and he said, yes, I know, but I needed to start the movie somehow. That's how I chose to do it.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Did you just, did you just show up at a Q and A like a regular citizen? Like he didn't know that you had all this like surprise?

• 24:16Speaker 02

  No, no, he actually came to Johnson Space Center and did series of, a series of book talks and Q and As for all of its nerds. So he was very well prepared for the audience and we all loved him.

• 24:28Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, John, John was a plant.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:30Mike Massimino?

  Going there and say, hey, what was wrong? But that was right. And the EVA scene, the spacewalk scene in the end, as soon as you mentioned that, my, my son and I saw it together. And he said the same thing. He goes, dad, what kind of spacewalk are you doing? Even my son, you know, my son was picked up on it.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:44Mike Massimino?

  Yesterday. It was very unprofessional the way they were tethered at the end.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  You were like, but wasn't it cool when he pulled the antenna out of it?

• 24:49Mike Massimino?

  Right. I said, yeah, don't worry about that. Matt Damon was a cool astronaut. Eric, this one's approved.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  I mean, it's good. It must be great. Like PR, right? Like that's like my, you know, when you see a great movie about space, like it makes you think highly of NASA for some reason.

• 25:04Mike Massimino?

  I think so. What do you think, John? I think that was, that was good for us, wasn't it?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  I agree. I, I, we got a lot. We certainly used it for a lot of publicity. We, we tried to link a lot of the one-year mission, uh, space station work to it and, and, uh, things like that. So, yeah, that was great.

• 25:18Mike Massimino?

  Johnny, but there's also this serious part to what the movie portrayed, which was, how do you keep a crew alive? Now, he was in a survival situation, but still, there, there must be a lot of parallels that with the work you're doing, to what you saw in that movie, right? Food and water and life support and so on, yeah?

• 25:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. Well, I mean, the, the food was, was the, one of the, actually, the potato was like another supporting actor in the, in the whole movie. And, uh,

• 25:42Speaker 01

  That's like in the whole history of Ireland.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Right. But, but Mike, your pal, Don Pettit.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Potatoes are huge for us.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Have you heard what Don Pettit said about potatoes in space, though, Mike?

• 25:53Mike Massimino?

  No, Don, Don Pettit is one of my best friends.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 25:56Mike Massimino?

  Uh, and a very entertaining guy and a genius. Very rare for an astronaut, let me add, you know? But what, what, what, what did he say this time?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  If Don Pettit said he's never seen a potato on a space station or the shuttle that was not sliced and had its eyes cut out. So there's no way a potato on this, uh, in space would have been able to grow and, and produce more potatoes.

• 26:17Mike Massimino?

  But Don, Don did actually grow stuff in space. And they are growing stuff on the space, but Don, Don grew his own, he grew a sunflower and he grew a

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Did he?

• 26:25Mike Massimino?

  squash. Yeah, that, it was kind of on his own.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 26:29Mike Massimino?

  But, uh, but he did his own little, but they have grown also lettuce on the space station as well.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  On purpose, yeah. We have special seeds. We fly up to do that, that kind of research to eventually lead to growing fresh.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  No, I knew it was on purpose. I didn't think it was like an accidental.

• 26:42Mike Massimino?

  No, what I'm saying, some, some guys grew, some astronauts might do things because they're interested in their own experiments.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 26:48Mike Massimino?

  But this was the, the lettuce was a real, growing the lettuce was a real, uh, project.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:53Mike Massimino?

  That they had and was successful. So you can't, to grow your own food in space.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  And then eat the results.

• 26:59Mike Massimino?

  And then eat the results. And they're, they're good, hopefully. Uh, well, go ahead, man.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I was just gonna ask about water.

• 27:05Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna ask. Like, how, how on earth could you provide water for people on Mars? Could you find it there? What's gonna happen there?

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Well, you, you have to bring it with you, probably, at least the starter kit for water. And then the, the, the point is, uh, with any luck, you can generate. Water out of in-situ resources and of course what you have on Mars in-situ is carbon dioxide. It's a very thin atmosphere, but it's almost completely carbon dioxide.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  And if you bring along the right kind of machinery that knows how to crack carbon dioxide. And if you brought along a tank of hydrogen with you, you can get oxygen and water out of the reaction of carbon dioxide and hydrogen using chemistry that is far beyond my capability to explain, but it's a possibility. So if you're there for the long term, you gotta plan ahead and either bring stuff with you or make it from local resources.

• 27:57Mike Massimino?

  You're also gonna recycle it, aren't you, John?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 28:01Mike Massimino?

  That's what we're doing on this. As my friend Don Pettit, who we referred to earlier, describes, "Today's coffee is tomorrow's coffee."

• 28:10Mike Massimino?

  Right? You drink something, you pee it, and then you drink it again.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  With some cleaning up.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  That explains Starbucks.

• 28:17Mike Massimino?

  There's a couple of steps in between there, by the way. But that's gonna be the plan too, I would assume, right, John?

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Exactly right, exactly.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  And what would it look like to live? Like, where would you live in Mars? Like, what would it look like? What would your, you know, I was gonna say tent. That's because I've seen the movie, but like, what would, like, where would you sleep and live?

• 28:39Mike Massimino?

  Habitat.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Your habitat, yeah, that's the word.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the habitat would probably look very much like you saw in the movie. And that was actually based on a habitat that we're doing studies in on the ground, which was, of course, primarily designed for studies back in the deserts. So it's probably gonna look something like a repurposed spaceship. It might be inflatable, it might be rigidized. Certainly, we're only just now doing research on the right way to do that, so there's no final answer yet.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  It sounds like the Burning Man festival. I don't know if you ever sent anybody on a research trip to Burning Man, where you have to like bring your own water and tents and everyone is really spaced out.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:19Mike Massimino?

  Woodstock.

• 29:22Mike Massimino?

  All right, I think, I think we're moving on to the queries. Yeah, what do we got? We got any good questions?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, some really good questions. One is for you, actually, Mike, and this is from Emerald Nutmeg on Instagram. I don't know if that's the real name.

• 29:36Mike Massimino?

  Emerald Nutmeg? Pretty cool name.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yep, a pretty cool person, too, because they say, yo, astro mizike, peace, my dude. That's how they open.

• 29:45Mike Massimino?

  Really?

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:46Mike Massimino?

  Okay.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  If you were standing in front of the future astronauts prior to boarding their ship to Mars, what advice or parting words would you give them?

• 29:54Mike Massimino?

  Bring me back a souvenir.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Really?

• 29:56Mike Massimino?

  That's what the first, I would be worried about me first. What advice would I give them? And John may have some good advice for him, too, I would think. But my, my advice is my advice that I give to all my friends when they, when the newer guys especially, and it's kind of interesting now as a former astronaut. There's a, you know, some of my friends I flew with, and there's also some of the newer people that are flying for the first time. And I tell them, enjoy it. Take a look out the window for me, because it is an extraordinary experience. And you never want to take it for granted, and I don't think astronauts do take it for granted. I think we do a pretty good job of appreciating what we get to do. But we never can appreciate it enough. And so my advice to them is you've been given the opportunity to do something great.

• 30:38Mike Massimino?

  And just enjoy, enjoy it as much as you can. Look out the window as much as you can and look out the window for me. And they usually say they'll do that for me, and then I'm jealous that they're looking out the window and I'm not. But that would be my advice. John, what do you have for them?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  I, I can't improve on that, Mike. I always say, you know, if Mars is not in your travel plans, you're on the wrong spaceship. But other than that, I think you've said it all.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Um, okay, we've got another question. Um, this one is from Matthew Dolencoff. Is it, um, is it ethical to pollute a planet with humans?

• 31:11Mike Massimino?

  Mm hmm, John?

• 31:12Speaker 02

  See, that's another topic that is actually being studied. Did you, did you know that Mars, that NASA has a planetary protection officer? And I don't think they wear the dark suits and the dark sunglasses, but they they actually do pay attention to the issues of contaminating Mars. And NASA also has or has a contract with an ethicist, somebody that advises us on exactly those issues. So we have to decide as a society whether going to Mars and determining whether there's, say, life on Mars and the importance of that, and think of the philosophical implications of that. But does that justify what will inevitably inevitably be a change in the way that life can live on Mars? And I'm thinking, you know, even of things like microbes, certainly nothing large enough

• 31:57Speaker 02

  to scuttle across a picture, a TV camera frame or something like that, but just what are the ethical implications? Those questions are still being discussed.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  So you have, I didn't know that NASA had an ethicist on there as like, yeah. What other kind of queries do they deal with, I wonder, this ethicist that works for NASA?

• 32:16Speaker 02

  We worry, we worry about things like the ethical limits to the research we can do in flight. When does it become coercion? You know, Mike can describe this a little bit better, probably, but the idea of putting somebody in space is a tremendous motivator to sign up for almost anything that somebody like me would like them to do. And when is, what are the ethical limits?

• 32:36Mike Massimino?

  Yeah. We will eat dirt.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Rice?

• 32:40Mike Massimino?

  I will do anything to fly in space when, not so much anymore because I've been there. But that it is an extremely good motivator and, but and so you have to be careful. And that's why a lot of times we need people like John and other scientists and our management to almost protect us from, because astronauts will will want to do their job and do almost anything and will sometimes take risks that we should, that our management would not feel comfortable with. And so we had, we had one of our sayings was you never ask the crew whether or not they're ready to fly, because their answer is yes. And so they can't say, well, they've said they would go. That's not, you need someone to make those decisions for you, because the crew is motivated to go and and they're ready to go, whatever, whatever the case may be.

• 33:23Mike Massimino?

  And you're talking about the, one of the things we learned, John, in my training as an astronaut was leave no trace. And we would actually go on expeditions to different parts of the world. We did a kayaking trip, a canyoning trip and so on. It was always this, if you're, if anyone listening is familiar with camping and leave no trace means you don't leave any of your stuff behind, and I mean anything. You, you take your stuff with you and you don't leave any trace that you were there. And that's, I think, the, what we would be doing on Mars as well.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  Have to.

• 33:56Mike Massimino?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 33:58Mike Massimino?

  So we have like 30 seconds. Can we get a quick one in there?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Yep. And what is the latest generation of propulsion that excites you the most? That is from Dane Wright in Facebook.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Boy, anything that gets you to Mars faster is better. For, for our purposes, the less time spent traveling, the more time on Mars is better, just because you're not exposing people to the deep space radiation and the weightlessness and, and factors like that. But sadly, we're looking at chemical propulsion or perhaps nuclear thermal propulsion, which might cut a, a month or so off the trip time, but no warp drive yet as far as I can tell.

• 34:31Mike Massimino?

  But that's what we need. Hey, we're gonna have to wrap up this part, uh, but stick around. John, you got some more time?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yes, sir, I sure do.

• 34:40Mike Massimino?

  Maeve, I'm gonna force you to stay here and we'll be right back with more Star Talk All Stars and more of the questions from our, from our audience.

• 34:51Mike Massimino?

  Welcome back. This is Mike Massimino with Star Talk All Stars here with Maeve Higgins. Maeve, thanks for hanging around.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 34:59Mike Massimino?

  And my good friend, John Charles in Houston.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Mike, I'm glad to be here.

• 35:05Mike Massimino?

  I'm glad you stuck around for a little bit more. We're gonna continue to talk about, uh, sending people to Mars and, and John is working that big time, uh, for real, getting, trying to get us there. John, what, what do you, how do you, you know, how do you weigh in on sending people versus robots? You know, we've got the rover up there and, you know, people think, oh, robots can do it. Why are we sending people? Why are we doing this in the first place? Why would we want to send people to Mars?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  One of the best comments I heard about that was by one of the PIs on one of the rovers, one of the investigators who actually sponsored the rover, and he said essentially, "I'm sending a rover because I can't go myself." And he says, "But if you look at the work that's done by a rover in a month, an astronaut could do it in about a minute." So the question is about efficiency and productivity and independence and things like that. The rovers are remarkably productive over an extremely long period. How many years have the rovers been running around far beyond their 90-day warranty period? And that's great. If you're happy with that kind of productivity and throughput for a bargain price, which is what the rovers give you, then that's a good program to send people to Mars.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  And notice that in the discussion between astronauts and robots on Mars, so far, the robots are winning. There are no astronauts on Mars, and look at all the stuff we've learned. But there's gotta be some benefit to having people, boots on the ground for a long period of time, skilled observational scientists, people that know what to look for, people that notice differences, you know, all the work that's done by the people all in the rover mission control back on the Earth, except they're able to do it constantly in real time, instead of having to wait for the 20- to 40-minute radio lag to send instructions to the rover. I don't think it's either or, I think it's both. I think you can see tremendous value to rovers and robots on Mars, and there has to be some tremendous value to putting people on Mars as well.

• 37:00Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, I saw some statistics somewhere about the amount of ground they covered on the Moon with people in just a couple days compared to the years with rovers on Mars, and how much more efficiently you can get, how people can get around so much quicker and do so much more when you have people on site.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  So it's not like just an ego thing?

• 37:26Mike Massimino?

  No, it's not. It's not just fun and games, is it, John?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  No, it's not. It's not fun and games.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  But what about the private, you know, that there's like a race on between, you know, NASA and then like SpaceX programs? What do you think about that? Like, are they gonna, if you, if you could arrange it so that like you could just go and be a tourist on Mars, could that happen even before you?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  You know, that's, that's very interesting. SpaceX and Elon Musk will be unveiling his detailed plans at a conference in Guadalajara, Mexico in September, late September, early October. And I'll be there, so I'm anxious to hear what those plans are. He, there is almost nothing that Elon Musk cannot do when he sets his mind to it. And I would sure like to see somebody like him take on the problems of going to Mars. All I can say is, as, as we plan these expeditions to Mars, and probably not until the mid 2030s at the earliest, we've identified lots of potential problems. And I think people expect their national space program, people expect NASA to be as risk tolerant and risk averse as possible. That is, we don't want to send people on risky expeditions at the government's expense. We

• 38:34Speaker 02

  send people on these incredibly expensive expeditions to bring back benefits to life on Earth, and that, but those benefits are, include knowledge of the universe, knowledge of the solar system. Other folks may not have the same motivations. I'm not saying that, that Musk is any less interested in safety than we are, but he probably has different motivations for getting there. And I think he's interested actually in colonizing Mars, which is not NASA's charter. NASA's intention is to bring everybody home that we send there eventually. So there, that's a difference, you know, it's sort of apples and oranges. We, NASA is cooperating, cooperating and collaborating with, with Mr. Musk on his plans. We're going to get tremendous data back if he's ever actually able to, to send a, a red dragon to Mars, and potentially it'll benefit NASA's own expeditions in the future.

• 39:18Mike Massimino?

  Well, you're going to be there for the announcement, John, so I think you're going to be a plant once again.

• 39:22Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 39:23Mike Massimino?

  Keep him, keep him, keep him honest.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  I can just see you at the conference, like with a newspaper with holes in it cut out.

• 39:30Mike Massimino?

  Hey, what is it? Yeah, here I am. But, but he wants to go. He's, he's thinking he's gonna go, he's gonna try to take a shot the next time that the window is open to get there in a short amount of time, right, in, in 2018?

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 39:42Mike Massimino?

  So we'll see, let's see what he can come up with. That would be great.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  He says he's gonna send a red dragon in 2018, and in 2020, and in 22, and 2025, he says he's gonna send his Mars colonial transporter. So we'll, we'll see how that works.

• 39:54Mike Massimino?

  All right, well, we'll look forward to hearing it. And I'm glad you're gonna be there to keep him honest. What about these, like, for example, some of these analogs that we have where people are pretending like they're on Mars and trying to learn stuff? You know, they, for example, this, there's something called High Seas, the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:14Mike Massimino?

  What's the story with these guys?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Well, there's a facility, and when you say Hawaii, you have to understand it's not in the tropical lush, beautiful Hawaii. It's on the side of an extinct volcano in Hawaii, so it looks very much like the moon or Mars. And it's probably not very picturesque, but NASA is interested, NASA has funded a study at High Seas. Not the entire facility, but one investigator's work. And we also have our own analog facility here at the Johnson Space Center called HIRA, the Human Exploration Research Analog, where we isolate groups of four people, crews of four people, for up to 60 days at a time to document the psychological aspects of isolation. And primarily, not just to torment these people, but primarily to test treatments and countermeasures.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I like how you say "not just to torment these people."

• 41:01Mike Massimino?

  Of course, that's part of it.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  That's a feature, but that's not the purpose. The purpose is to understand how we can keep them functioning healthy, happy, productive, efficient for long periods of time. We're also interested in the work the Russians have done in their chamber in Moscow, where they isolated people for 500 days a few years ago. And there's other facilities, Antarctica, you know, there's several bases in Antarctica, there's other Arctic bases. NASA is funding research in all of these places.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Did you say that the Russians did that, they isolated people for 500 days as part of their research?

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Yes, the Russians, the Institute of Biomedical Problems.

• 41:36Mike Massimino?

  It was not the Gulag, by the way, this is different.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  No, this is, this is a plush facility in a facility in Moscow. It's actually got wood paneling, it's very pretty.

• 41:45Mike Massimino?

  And I think the High Seas people, that program, they have people there for up to a year.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:52Mike Massimino?

  Is what, yeah, so.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 41:53Mike Massimino?

  There's a lot of these things going on, some of them, what do you think about some of these, these plans to send people to Mars, this one-way trip? You talked about getting people back. And I remember when I was, when, when John, when I, when I flew on the shuttle, I got, cause it's a government program. We got travel orders, you know, maybe like every time he goes, John, you get travel orders, right? Every time you go somewhere. And it says, you know, from Johnson's, you know, from Houston to San Francisco for a conference and return.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:20Mike Massimino?

  So since it's a government operation, when I went to space, I got travel orders.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:24Mike Massimino?

  And it said, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida to low earth orbit. And, and return. I am not joking. I still have these travel orders, right?

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Returning.

• 42:33Mike Massimino?

  And return. And I was really grateful to see that it said, and return.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:39Mike Massimino?

  But some of these people have got this idea, you're gonna go on a one-way trip and people are gonna hang out. And what do you think about that, John?

• 42:45Speaker 02

  I'm not a big fan of that plan. I don't think it's a good idea in general, and I'm not really impressed with that particular effort in particular.

• 42:51Mike Massimino?

  Right. There's a lot of, there's a lot of zany stuff going on where, you know, it's not an easy thing to do or else we would have already done it. And it's not that easy to get there. And going on this one-way trip, I, I, I don't think, I don't, I don't think it's a good, it's a good way to go.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  And besides, Mike, the point you made with the travel orders is you don't get reimbursed unless you come back to the home spate, the home spot. So.

• 43:11Mike Massimino?

  That's right.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Need to get paid.

• 43:13Mike Massimino?

  You wanna make sure you get your perineum and you're gonna, you'll be able to do, they're not, they're gonna take money up there. You're gonna have to come back for that.

• 43:20Mike Massimino?

  Alright, so we're, we're, we've got maybe about a half minute, a half minute left here. So I'm gonna put you on the spot. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Are we actually gonna go? John, what, what, what are we waiting for here? Cause we had one of my colleagues who's a newer astronaut was saying that, you know, uh, uh, the new class of astronauts, they say they're gonna send them to Mars. They said the same thing to my astronaut class 20 years ago. We gonna go or what? What's the story?

• 43:44Speaker 02

  I'm convinced we're gonna go. I'm, I hope it's in the 2030s. I, I, it is inconceivable that humans will not go to Mars. I hope it's NASA humans. I hope NASA's the agency that does it. But at some point, sometime, some agency and some administration and some nationality will decide it's the right time to go. I think NASA's doing the right thing by analyzing the risks and making it as safe and as efficient and as productive as possible to justify what will be a very large cost. But inevitably, somebody will go.

• 44:13Mike Massimino?

  There you are.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:14Mike Massimino?

  What do you think, Mave? We're ready.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  He sends like

• 44:16Mike Massimino?

  Not ready yet, actually, but we will be ready. All right, it's time for the lightning round.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:21Mike Massimino?

  Rapid fire, so, uh, John, are you ready?

• 44:24Speaker 02

  I'm ready.

• 44:25Mike Massimino?

  Okay, so, uh, Mave's gonna answer this question. I'm gonna hit this bell. I think I'm just gonna hit it whenever I want, but apparently there's some method to it. When I'm gonna hit this thing, uh, it's really great. You know, I rode my bike here today and this bell drives people crazy. I have a bell on my bike. In New York City, it's necessary because people are always in the way. Get out of the way. You just do this.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Hey, do you wear your space helmet when you're on your bike?

• 44:44Mike Massimino?

  No, I wear a bike helmet and I need more than that. It's one of the most dangerous things. I'm glad I got here. New York City's dangerous. All right, on bicycle. All right, so here we go. We're gonna do this. I'm gonna ring this bell, I guess, for the next question or whenever appropriate. Hit us. Lightning round.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Okay, here's a lightning round. Um, this question is from Jonathan Laird. He got, he got in contact with us through Facebook. Um, and he is asking Mike, and then after, I'm gonna put the question to you, Don. If given the opportunity, would you personally like to be among the first humans to colonize, move to, or visit Mars? Two parts.

• 45:20Mike Massimino?

  I would, uh, I, uh, yes, I wanna go visit and I wanna come home. John?

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Mike, I don't wanna go to Mars. I would like to go to the moon and I would like to go to the space station, but Mars, Mars is too far away and too dirty.

• 45:32Mike Massimino?

  There you have it.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  You don't wanna go to Mars. I wanna go to Mars.

• 45:35Mike Massimino?

  He wants to send other people there. What kind of example is that? Scratch that answer. You wanna send everybody else. The guy that knows most about it wants to send somebody else. There's something wrong with that. All right.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Okay, the next one is from Brandon and he, uh, he contacted us on Snapchat. This question, John, this is for you. Could we use artificial gravity by either spinning a habitation unit around, around a central support or by counterweighting it with another mass?

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, the answer is yes, and we're studying that. The Human Research Program is investigating whether that's a good way to, to provide treat, uh, countermeasures for people in space and whether it's cost effective. So, yes, yes, yes.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Great.

• 46:13Mike Massimino?

  There was the bell. Go.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Troy Shu on Snapchat. What should mankind's first words on Mars be? A reverence to Armstrong or not? What do you think, Mike?

• 46:21Mike Massimino?

  What do I think? Uh, I, Neil Armstrong thought of that stuff after he landed on the moon because he didn't wanna get distracted.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  What?

• 46:28Mike Massimino?

  You know that story, John?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 46:30Mike Massimino?

  He told, I asked him that question. He did not get a publicist, his wife, no one thought of that. He took care of it after he landed. So I think what you should do is get there first and then be inspired.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Instinct. Okay, great. Next question. This is from Taylor Lund. Um, Mass and Higgs. Oh, this is you and me.

• 46:46Mike Massimino?

  Okay.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Uh, my question is, would it make more logistical sense to build a possible settlement above ground, or to dig out a subterranean network of tunnels and caverns that would be protected from the environment, as well as give explorers access to subterranean geology? Can I just say?

• 47:00Mike Massimino?

  Yes.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna answer that question, I don't have a clue.

• 47:02Mike Massimino?

  Yes, and I will say, I don't care, I just wanna go. So we're gonna leave it. John, what do you say?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  I'd say tunnels, I'm all for tunnels.

• 47:08Mike Massimino?

  Tunnels.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, the next one, Radjule Alexandru from Facebook. Will you have the possibility to meet the Mars rover?

• 47:16Mike Massimino?

  Who will have a what?

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Will, will you have the possibility to meet the Mars rover? I guess whenever somebody goes to Mars, will they get to meet the rover?

• 47:23Mike Massimino?

  John?

• 47:24Speaker 02

  It's a big planet, depends on how good your aim is when you land.

• 47:27Mike Massimino?

  There you are, but will it still be there? If we get there a hundred years from now, like the stuff on the moon is still there.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  That's right, it'll be there for a long time.

• 47:34Mike Massimino?

  It'll be there for a long time, so, yes, just gotta, just gotta get there.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Last question. Okay, thinking big, this is from J Law on Instagram. If the magnetic field is what protects us here on Earth, is there any way in the future that we could come up with a way to mimic that on Mars? What do you think, John?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  That's a great question, in fact, guess what? We're looking at that in the human research program, and, and trying to understand exactly what the magnetic field's protective effects are, but I think for a short term at least, we're, we're okay even without a magnetic field.

• 48:02Mike Massimino?

  Yeah, but that is one thing that's helped us on Earth, uh, live here, isn't it, John? That they don't have on Mars, it's a big, it's a big deal, protects us, uh, and, and, yeah, that's not just, it's not, it's not so subtle, it's really important.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like magnetic field, coffee, Instagram, we need all those things.

• 48:18Mike Massimino?

  Yes, Instagram. What else? Bell, I'm gonna hit the bell.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Okay, great, okay, this one, do you think, this is from Joshua Mikail.

• 48:25Mike Massimino?

  Thirty seconds.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Do you think future colonies on Mars would be international communities? Or could they be like an American colony, a Chinese colony, a Brazilian colony, et cetera?

• 48:34Speaker 02

  I think they're gonna be international, just because of the cost of the expensive getting there, I don't think any one nation wants to pay that, that huge bill, but, uh, who knows what'll happen after they get there, maybe they'll split up into national colonies afterwards.

• 48:44Mike Massimino?

  I think that, I think they're gonna be international, cause this way we can pull food from all the, all the different cultures, and it'll be better eating, and share the expense, and I think they're also gonna have a component of commercial companies too. Alright, that's it. End of the lightning round.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Great job guys, you've won. Your prize is a trip to Mars.

• 49:02Mike Massimino?

  This was, this was, this was great. John, um, you gotta go back to work now and get us to Mars. Alright, I'll go on it. We're all counting on you. We've got plenty of volunteers just here in this building in New York City alone.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:16Mike Massimino?

  So, we're counting on you. Thank, thank you very, very much for joining us, John. I know you're a busy guy and we really appreciate it, uh, you coming and sharing with us and having some fun today. Thank you. Thanks for asking me.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Thanks, John. Bye.

• 49:28Mike Massimino?

  Thanks, babe. And, and Maeve, of course, uh, great, great to have you here.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so good to be here.

• 49:32Mike Massimino?

  Thank you very much for letting me in.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Good luck cycling home.

• 49:35Mike Massimino?

  I, I, yes, I'm gonna ring this bell with, I'm gonna take this bell with me and ring it and get people out of the way as I go down the, go down the Hudson Greenway here in the beautiful New York City. It's a beautiful day. And for all of you listening out there, thank you for listening to us. This is StarTalk All-Stars Mike Massimino, signing off. It's been a blast.