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Speaker 1: I want you to close your eyes for a second, seriously,

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if you can, if you aren't driving a car or

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you know, operating heavy machinery, just shut them.

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Speaker 2: Always a good disclaimer.

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Speaker 1: Right, so your eyes are closed, I want you to

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visualize a window, but not the window in your office,

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not your living room. You are standing in front of

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a heavily reinforced, quadruple paned bay window.

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Speaker 2: And the glass is probably freezing cold to the touch.

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Speaker 1: Exactly freezing cold. And outside that window is just this profound,

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infinite blackness. There are no stars yet, just a total void.

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But right in the very center of that frame there

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is a small, pale blue dot earth and it's glowing.

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It looks incredibly fragile against all that dark, and as

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you watch it, it just gets smaller and smaller, until

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eventually it just blinks out. It completely vanishes into the dark.

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Speaker 2: That is a wow. That is a terrifying thing to visualize.

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Speaker 1: Right you turn around, you look at the heavy metal

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of the airlock door behind you, and the realization hits you.

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You are not going back.

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Speaker 2: You're not for decades. That was just, you know, the

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the opening chapter of a sci fi novel. It was fantasy,

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but what we are looking at today is the very real,

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very rapidly approaching timeline where that exact view becomes a

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literal memory for actual human.

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Speaker 1: Beings, which is just staggering. Yea, we are talking about

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the reality of leaving Earth forever. Welcome to thrilling Threads.

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I'm your guide on this journey into the absolute unknown.

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Speaker 2: And I'm here to help untangle the massive, frankly intimidating

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stack of data, the physics, the biology that makes a

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journey like that even remotely possible.

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Speaker 1: And today we are pulling on a thread that leads

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directly to the Red Planet. We've been going through a

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really fascinating stack of research and analysis recently provided by

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the channel astrom, which also pulls in some incredible, really

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ground level insights from Veritasium.

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Speaker 2: It's a gold mine of a deep dive into the.

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Speaker 1: Material, it really is. And I have to say right

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up front, the mission today isn't just to talk about rockets.

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I feel like rockets are the easy part, aren't they.

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Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, relatively speaking, yes, we get so focused on

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the launch right, the fire, the smoke, the countdown. It's cinematic, it's.

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Speaker 1: The big show. Yeah, But the real challenge. The actual

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nightmare scenario begins the literal second those engines cut off

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and you're just drifting.

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Speaker 2: We are unspooling the harsh reality of colonizing Mars, not

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the glossy NASA Brisher version. We're gonna look at the

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dust that actively wants to choke your machinery. We're looking

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at the psychology of never ever seeing.

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Speaker 1: A tree again or breathing outside air.

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Speaker 2: Right. We're looking at the food that might actually poison

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you if you aren't careful. And the robot dogs. Yes,

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we have robot dogs on the agenda today that are

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probably going to be your best friends out there.

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Speaker 1: It requires a total shift in perspective. We're moving from

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this idea of visiting a world like the Apollo missions

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to living on a dead world, and that adjective is

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crucial here.

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Speaker 2: Mars is dead, and according to the sources we're pulling

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from today, NASA is projecting booths on the ground by

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the late twenty thirties.

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Speaker 1: Which is sharkingly soon.

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Speaker 2: It's tomorrow in aerospace years.

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Speaker 1: It really is. And some of the scientists cited in

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the Astrum analysis are pushing the timeline for permanent, actual

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colonies to around twenty fifty twenty fifty. That means the

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people listening to this right now, you listening to this

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on your commute or at the gym, you could be

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the ones standing in that bay window.

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Speaker 2: It's not for your great grandchildren, it's for us.

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Speaker 1: It's for us. But here is the twist, and this

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is what really hooked me when we were doing the

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reading for this. Mars is actively trying to kill you.

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It has a fatal flaw regarding human survival that we

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frankly just haven't fully solved yet.

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Speaker 2: Well it's not just one flaw, really, it's a whole

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cascade of flaws. Mars is like a puzzle where every

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single piece is made of radiation, or freezing temperatures or

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toxic dust.

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Speaker 1: So let's start where any journey starts, the commute. You

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pack your bags, you say you're tearful goodbyes to your family.

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You strap into the ship. How long are we actually

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stuck in the car, so to speak.

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Speaker 2: Well, assuming the orbital mechanics are lined up perfectly.

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Speaker 1: Which doesn't happen often right right, Earth.

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Speaker 2: And Mars only a line optimally about every twenty six months.

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But if you hit that window, you're looking at a

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criz of about seven to nine months for a standard trajectory,

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but under the most optimal high energy launch conditions, like

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if we really push the propulsion tech we're developing, we

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might get that transit time down to about three months.

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Speaker 1: Three months, Okay, I mean that doesn't sound entirely terrible.

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I've had college semesters that dragged on longer than that.

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It's basically a long stint on a submarine or a

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cruise ship. Yes, just a lot of download movies and

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freeze right ice cream.

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Speaker 2: It sounds totally manageable until you realize where you are

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physically located during those three months. You are leaving the

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safety of Earth's magnetic bubble.

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Speaker 1: Right, the magnetosphere. I remember this from high school science.

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It shields us.

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Speaker 2: Exactly here on the surface and even up on the

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iss to a large extent, we are shielded. Earth's magnetic

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core generates this massive field that basically deflects the worst

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of the Sun's anger. It bounces off, yeah, deflexs it

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around the planet. But once you head out into the

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deep black, what we call the interplanetary medium, you are

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completely exposed, exposed.

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Speaker 1: To what exactly like, what is actually hitting the shift.

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Speaker 2: Two main things. First, you have solar wind, which is

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a constant stream of charged particles coming off the Sun.

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And then you have the big one, cosmic rays galactic

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cosmic rays or GCRs.

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Speaker 1: The invisible enemy.

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Speaker 2: Precisely. These are high energy atomic fragments. We're talking protons,

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helium nuclei, and they are moving at nearly the speed

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of light. They don't just bounce off your ship's hull.

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They tear right through the metal, and they tear right

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through human tissue.

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Speaker 1: Wow, and this isn't just you know, get a bad

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sunburn levels of radiation, is it not?

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Speaker 2: At all? Prolonged exposure during transit can cause astronauts to

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develop cancer over the long term, obviously, but the research

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points is something even more disturbing, something much more immediate.

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What's that symptoms of Alzheimer's disease appearing before they even

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land on Mars.

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Speaker 1: Wait, seriously, so you could arrive on Mars, you're suiting up,

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ready to step out and start this brave new world,

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and your cognitive functions are already deteriorating.

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Speaker 2: That is a very real risk highlighted in the data.

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The research shows that when your brain is bombarded by

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these high energy particles for months. It physically damages the

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neural networks. It creates severe inflammation that mimics neurodegenerative diseases.

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You might literally forget how to operate the landing sequence.

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Speaker 1: That is okay, that's a hard deal breaker right there.

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We obviously need a shield. So what are the engineers proposing.

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I assume we can't just line the entire spaceship with lead.

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Lead is insanely heavy.

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Speaker 2: Lead is way too heavy to launch. Every single kilogram

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costs an astronomical amount of fuel. But here is the

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fascinating physics twist that Veritasian gets into. Lead isn't actually

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the best shield for cosmic rays anyway, It isn't.

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Speaker 1: I thought lead stopped everything Like Superman can't see through it.

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They put a lead blanket on you at the dentist.

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Speaker 2: For X rays, yes, lead is fantastic, But for galactic

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cosmic rays, no. When a high speed cosmic ray hits

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a heavy, dense atom like lead, it can actually shatter

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the nucleus of the lead atom. Oh wow, yeah, and

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that creates a spray of secondary radiation. It's exactly like

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shooting a high caliber bullet at a brick wall.

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Speaker 1: The wall breaks apart and you.

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Speaker 2: Get hit by the shrapnel. On the other side, the

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secondary radiation from the shattered lead can actually be worse

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from the astronauts than the initial cosmic ray would have been.

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Speaker 1: So what works better than lead? What doesn't shatter?

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Speaker 2: Hydrogen?

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Speaker 1: Hydrogen? Like the gas we're going to fill the walls.

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Speaker 2: Of gas well, materials that are very rich in hydrogen.

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Hydrogen atoms are tiny, they are the simplest atoms, so

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they're great at absorbing that kinetic energy from the cosmic

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ray without shattering and creating that secondary spray of shrapnel.

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So the main concept the engineers are working on right

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now is called the water wall a.

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Speaker 1: Water wall, So wait, are we living inside a giant

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fish bowl?

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Speaker 2: In a practical sense kinda, The most elegant engineering solution

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is to design the crew quarters, the place where you sleep,

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where you eat, where you spend the vast majority of

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your time, right in the very center of the ship.

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And then you surround that central cabin with the ship's

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water tanks.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I see, because water is h two zero two

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carts hydrogen.

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Speaker 2: It's packed with it, exactly. You absolutely have to bring

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tons of water anyway for drinking for hygiene, for the

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life support systems. So you just use it as your armor.

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You sleep and work inside a shelter made of your

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own drinking supply. It absorbs the cosmic rays beautifully.

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Speaker 1: That is such a clever use of mass. You take

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something you already need to survive and you turn it

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into a shield.

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Speaker 2: It's essential spacecraft design, double duty for every ounce. Now,

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there is a sci fi dream out there of using

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magnetic field generators to create an active invisible shield around.

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Speaker 1: The ship, basically mimicking Earth's magnetic field exactly.

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Speaker 2: But right now, the technology required to do that is

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way too big and requires entirely too much power. So

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for the near future, you're hiding behind a wall of water.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say we survived the commute. We drank

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from the walls. We didn't get Alzheimer's thanks to the

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water tanks. We look out that window and we see

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the red planet growing larger. We enter the atmosphere, we

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touch down. My first instinct looking at the high res

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photos from the rovers is that it feels weirdly familiar.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: It just looks like Arizona or parts of the Mahabi Desert.

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Speaker 2: It's what planetary scientists call the Uncanny Valley of planets.

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It looks just enough like Earth environments to trick your

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monkey brain into feeling safe, but it's wrong in all

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the critical lefal ways.

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Speaker 1: Let's look at the stats on that. The day length,

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for example, that seems pretty close to home.

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Speaker 2: It is remarkably close. A single day on Mars, which

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they call us All is twenty four hours, thirty nine

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minutes and thirty five seconds.

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Speaker 1: Which is shockingly close. It's almost exactly our day.

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Speaker 2: It's almost perfect for human circadian rhythms. NASA actually ran

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tests and found that people adapt to Martian time very quickly.

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You wouldn't really suffer from permanent jet lag. You'd basically

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just stay up an extra forty minutes every night, which.

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Speaker 1: Let's be honest, I do that anywayscrolling on my phone

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in bed. Right, we're already training for Mars, so the

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day feels normal. What about the seasons? I know Mars

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has an axis tilt.

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Speaker 2: Also very similar. Earth is tilted at twenty three point

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five degrees. Mars is tilted at twenty five degrees. This

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means Mars actually has distinct seasons.

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Speaker 1: It has a.

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Speaker 2: Winter and a summer. The sun rises in the east

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and sets in the west.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so you land, you step out, and it's a

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nice Martian summer day. What's the weather actually like? Could

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I go out for a walk?

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Speaker 2: This is exactly where the trap springs in the equatorial summer.

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Right at noon, the temperature can actually get up to

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twenty or even thirty five degrees celsius.

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Speaker 1: Wait, thirty five celsius. That's like ninety five degrees fahrenheit.

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That's a hot summer day in Texas. I could wear

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shorts on Mars.

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Speaker 2: I mean, if you didn't eat a full pressure suit

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to keep your blood from literally boiling in the vacuum. Yes,

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the temperature is balmy, but here is the massive catch.

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The atmosphere is incredibly thin. It's less than one percent

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of Earth's atmospheric volume.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so it's practically a vacuum pretty much.

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Speaker 2: And because it's so thin, it cannot hold heat at all.

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It's not like Earth, where the thick air acts like

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a blanket and stays warm long after the sun goes down.

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Speaker 1: So what happens when a cloud passes over, or when

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the sun sets.

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Speaker 2: Or honestly, just when you take a step into the

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shade of a rock. The temperature just plummets instantly. As

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soon as the sun dips below the horizon, the ambient

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temperature drops to minus forty three degrees celsius. Good grief,

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and right before dawn, the coldest part of the night,

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it's minus eighty celsius.

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Speaker 1: That is a massive violent swing. You'd be sweating at

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noon and freeze solid in the afternoon.

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Speaker 2: It gets weirder. The Astroum source describes this really bizarre

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head versus feet phenomenon.

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Speaker 1: Oh I love this detail in the deep dived material.

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This really helps visualize how truly alien the physics of

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that atmosphere are. Break this down for us.

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Speaker 2: So, because the air is so whisper thin, it doesn't

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circulate heat well at all. The heat you feel during

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the day primarily comes from the dark ground, absorbing direct

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sun light and radiating it back up just a few inches. Okay,

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So if you are standing on the marsh in equator

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right at high noon, your feet, which are touching that

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warm soil, might be feeling a very pleasant twenty three

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degrees celsius about seventy three fahrenheit.

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Speaker 1: Okay, comfortable feet, warm toes in.

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Speaker 2: Your boots, but your head, which is say two meters

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up in the air. The thin air up there hasn't

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been worn by the ground radiation at all. Your head

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could literally be in zero degree celsius freezing air.

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Speaker 1: So your feet are vacationing in Miami and your head

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is in a blizzard in Canada.

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Speaker 2: Essentially, yes, you are straddling two completely different climate zones

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just by standing up straight.

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Speaker 1: That is wild. That really drives home how hostile this

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environment is. Despite the visuals, it looks like a desert

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on Earth, but the physics are completely inverted. And speaking

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of alien landscapes, let's talk about the poles, because when

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I think of Mars, my mind just goes straight to

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endless red dust. But it actually has bright white polar caps.

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Speaker 2: It does, and they are physically fascinating. The caps are

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prime merely made of water ice, just like here on Earth,

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but they are covered by these huge, heavy slabs of

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frozen carbon dioxide dry ice.

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Speaker 1: And the source mentioned these incredible shapes up there, the

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spiral patterns.

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Speaker 2: Yes, they are highly visible from orbit. Beautiful massive swirling

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white spirals cut deeply into the ice. It's caused by

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the Coriolis effect.

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Speaker 1: The speed of the planet exactly.

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Speaker 2: The rotation of Mars twists the extremely cold winds as

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they move off the pole toward the equator. It carves

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the ice over millennia. It looks almost like a spiral

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galaxy printed directly onto the ice cap.

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Speaker 1: Nature really is an artist, even on a dead world.

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But this dry ice, it doesn't melt in the summer

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right because the pressure is too low.

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Speaker 2: Right. Mars is way too cold overall, and the atmospheric

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pressure is far too low for liquid CO two to exist.

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So when the harsh winter turns to spring in summer,

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the dry ice does something called sublimation. Sublimates it transitions

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directly from a solid block of ice to a gas.

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It completely skips the liquid fit, no puddles, just poof

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straight to gas.

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Speaker 1: Like dropping dry ice in a punch bowl at a

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Halloween party or a smoke.

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Speaker 2: Machine in a concert exactly, but imagine a planetary scale

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smoke machine millions of tons of dry ice. This massive

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rapid release of gas creates localized high speed winds, and

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this bizarre physics quark leads us directly to the phenomenon

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known as the white spiders.

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Speaker 1: White spiders, I have to say that sounds like the

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title of a sci fi horror movie.

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Speaker 2: It looks exactly like one two if you see the

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orbital photos. In the spring, the sunlight hits the ice cap,

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but the ice is somewhat translucent. The light penetrates down

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through the heavy slab of dry ice and hits the

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dark Martian soil underneath.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so the dirt gets worn.

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Speaker 2: The dirt worms up, which means the CO two ice

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resting directly on that dirt starts to turn to gas

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from the bottom up.

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Speaker 1: Oh, so the gas is trapped underneath the heavy ice.

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Speaker 2: Last exactly, it's completely sealed in. The pressure builds and

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builds under the ice until finally crack, the ice physically ruptures.

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High pressure CO two gas shoots out of the craw

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like a geyser.

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Speaker 1: Wow.

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Speaker 2: And as it blasts out, it carries that dark, fine

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Martian dust from the bottom up with it. It sprays

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this dark red and black dust all over the pristine

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white ice in these sprawling, creepy spider shaped patterns.

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Speaker 1: So the ground is literally exploding from the inside.

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Speaker 2: Out constantly all spring long. And all this erupting gas

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creates massive wind currents, and the wind well the wind

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brings the dust.

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Speaker 1: The fatal flaw. Let's talk about the dust, because here

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on Earth, dust is just you know, it's an annoyance.

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It's something I have to wipe off my bookshelf every

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couple weeks. Yeah, But on Mars, reading through this research,

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the dust sounds like an apex predator.

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Speaker 2: It absolutely is. Dust is the central dominating engine of

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all Martian weather. On Earth, our entire weather system is

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driven by water, right rain, ocean evaporation, clouds. On Mars,

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the weather is exclusively driven by dust.

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Speaker 1: So how does so much dust get up into the

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air in the first place. Is it just incredibly windy

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all the time?

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Speaker 2: It's actually a lot more complex than just wind blowing

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over dirt. First, you have dust devils. Mars experiences thousands

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of them every single year. They spiral up, sweeping across

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the plains, and they can reach eight point five kilometers

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into the sky.

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Speaker 1: Holl In eight point five kilometers, that's roughly the height

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of Mount Everest. A tornado of dust as tall as Everest. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Now, they aren't violent like Earth tornadoes. There are these thin, wisty,

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towering structures of dust just meandering across a desert. Because

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the gravity on Mars is so much lower, it's only

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about thirty eight percent of Earth's gravity. These columns can

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grow absolutely massive without collapsing.

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Speaker 1: That would be a terrifying thing to see out your window.

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Speaker 2: And they pump tons of fine dust into the upper

359
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atmosphere constantly. But the main mechanism, the really insidious one

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that lifts the bulk of the dust is a process

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called saltation.

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Speaker 1: Saltation. The Veritasium source used a really great analogy for this,

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the packing peanuts.

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Speaker 2: Yes, this is crucial to understanding why the dust is

365
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such an unsolvable nightmare. Imagine the really really fine dust

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covering Mars. You'd think it blows away easily in a

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breeze because it's so incredibly.

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Speaker 1: Light, right, like blowing flower off a kitchen counter.

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Speaker 2: Right, But because those particles are so microscopic and the

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Martian atmosphere is so unbelievably dry, they become highly electrostatic.

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They hold a static charge, they clump together tightly, they

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physically stick to the bedrock and to each other. Okay,

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it's exactly like trying to blow away a pile of

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static charge styrofoam packing peanuts. Have you ever tried to

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00:17:29,519 --> 00:17:30,279
sweep those up.

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Speaker 1: Oh, it's impossible. They just cling to the broom, they

377
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jump onto your hands, they stick to the floor exactly.

378
00:17:35,960 --> 00:17:38,640
Speaker 2: The wind alone can't move that fine dust directly, it's

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too sticky. But the wind can move the slightly larger,

380
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heavier grains of sand. The sand is too heavy to

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hold that static charge, So the wind picks up a

382
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grain of sand, carries it a short distance in the

383
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low gravity, and then drops it back down. Smash.

384
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Speaker 1: Oh, I see, it looks like a kindy hammer.

385
00:17:56,240 --> 00:17:59,759
Speaker 2: Exactly like a hammer. The sand grain crashes down into

386
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the static clumps of fine dust. The physical impact of

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00:18:03,119 --> 00:18:06,759
that heavier sand grain violently breaks the static bond holding

388
00:18:06,759 --> 00:18:10,039
the clump together, and it kicks the fine microscopic dust

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high into the air.

390
00:18:11,279 --> 00:18:13,240
Speaker 1: And because the gravity is so low, it just stays

391
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up there.

392
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Speaker 2: It hangs around in the upper atmosphere for weeks, sometimes months.

393
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Speaker 1: Okay, so we have all this extremely fine dust floating around.

394
00:18:20,559 --> 00:18:24,079
Why exactly is this the big fatal flaw? It sounds

395
00:18:24,079 --> 00:18:27,319
incredibly annoying, like having a permanently dirty windshield, But why

396
00:18:27,359 --> 00:18:28,599
is it deadly to a colony?

397
00:18:28,759 --> 00:18:31,960
Speaker 2: Because of the thermodynamic feedback loop, This is the really

398
00:18:32,039 --> 00:18:35,200
scary part of Martian weather. Dust floating high in the

399
00:18:35,240 --> 00:18:40,039
atmosphere absorbs incoming sunlight. It acts like a giant floating radiator.

400
00:18:40,240 --> 00:18:43,519
It actively warms up the thin air immediately around it, and.

401
00:18:43,559 --> 00:18:45,279
Speaker 1: Basic physics, warm air.

402
00:18:45,200 --> 00:18:48,319
Speaker 2: Rises, warm air rises. As that pocket of warm air

403
00:18:48,359 --> 00:18:52,119
goes up, it creates a localized low pressure zone underneath it.

404
00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:56,279
On the surface, that low pressure physically sucks in more

405
00:18:56,319 --> 00:18:58,000
cold air from the surrounding areas to.

406
00:18:57,920 --> 00:18:59,759
Speaker 1: Replace it, which creates more wind.

407
00:18:59,559 --> 00:19:02,599
Speaker 2: Which creates it's more wind. More wind drives more sand, grains,

408
00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:06,480
more saltation. More saltation kicks up even more fine dust,

409
00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:10,720
which then absorbs even more solar heat, which creates even

410
00:19:10,799 --> 00:19:11,400
more winds.

411
00:19:11,440 --> 00:19:13,079
Speaker 1: So the runaway engine. It feeds itself.

412
00:19:13,200 --> 00:19:16,240
Speaker 2: It absolutely feeds itself, and roughly every three Martian years,

413
00:19:16,480 --> 00:19:18,880
which is about five and a half Earth years, this

414
00:19:19,079 --> 00:19:22,359
localized feedback loop goes completely global. It doesn't just cover

415
00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:25,759
a city or a single crater region. The storm grows

416
00:19:25,839 --> 00:19:29,160
and connects with other storms until it swallows the entire planet.

417
00:19:29,319 --> 00:19:31,000
Speaker 1: The whole world goes dark.

418
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:34,119
Speaker 2: Total absolute blackout. To put it in perspective on Earth,

419
00:19:34,160 --> 00:19:37,599
when we have a really bad wildfire, season, you know

420
00:19:37,640 --> 00:19:40,359
when the sky turns that apocalyptic orange color and it's

421
00:19:40,359 --> 00:19:40,960
hard to breathe.

422
00:19:41,119 --> 00:19:43,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've all seen those photos from California or Australia.

423
00:19:43,920 --> 00:19:47,599
Speaker 2: During those events, the aerosol optical depth or AOD, which

424
00:19:47,640 --> 00:19:50,799
is how we measure atmospheric opacity, is maybe a four

425
00:19:50,920 --> 00:19:54,079
or a five. In these Martian global dust storms, the

426
00:19:54,119 --> 00:19:57,480
AOD regularly hits nine, ten or even eleven.

427
00:19:57,599 --> 00:20:00,359
Speaker 1: Good lord. So if I'm a colonist city in my

428
00:20:00,440 --> 00:20:03,559
habitat and I look at my reinforced bay window at noon,

429
00:20:04,240 --> 00:20:06,640
I don't see the sun. I don't see the horizon

430
00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:09,440
or the rover parked outside. I just see a solid

431
00:20:09,519 --> 00:20:12,559
wall of dark, swirling red brown.

432
00:20:12,680 --> 00:20:15,640
Speaker 2: You see nothing, Yep. It is effectively pitch black for

433
00:20:15,720 --> 00:20:18,599
how long weeks sometimes months at a time, the sun

434
00:20:18,640 --> 00:20:20,839
has just gone from the sky. And this is exactly

435
00:20:20,839 --> 00:20:23,880
where the fatal flaw hits our technology, right where it hurts.

436
00:20:24,200 --> 00:20:26,640
Because if you are an early colony and you are

437
00:20:26,680 --> 00:20:30,079
relying heavily on solar panels for your power grid, you're dead.

438
00:20:30,400 --> 00:20:32,880
You are in catastrophic trouble, which brings us to a

439
00:20:32,920 --> 00:20:35,359
really sad section of the research, the robot graveyard.

440
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:37,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, this part of the deep dive material was rough.

441
00:20:37,599 --> 00:20:40,680
We actually have real world case studies of our robots

442
00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:43,200
fighting these exact global storms and losing.

443
00:20:43,359 --> 00:20:45,279
Speaker 2: We do. They are the pioneers that found the edge

444
00:20:45,279 --> 00:20:46,039
of what's possible.

445
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:49,680
Speaker 1: Let's talk about opportunity. OPPI, the little rover that could.

446
00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:54,039
I think practically everyone on Earth got somewhat emotionally attached

447
00:20:54,079 --> 00:20:55,400
to that specific robot.

448
00:20:55,519 --> 00:20:58,880
Speaker 2: It's really hard not to anthropomorphize it. OPI was originally

449
00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:02,400
designed for a ninety day mission. Ninety days. It lasted

450
00:21:02,440 --> 00:21:07,079
fifteen years. Credible engineering, unbelievable, but it lived entirely by

451
00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:09,920
the Sun. It had solar wings, and eventually the Sun

452
00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:11,240
was permanently taken away.

453
00:21:11,319 --> 00:21:13,839
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, Oppy got hit by a

454
00:21:13,880 --> 00:21:16,480
massive global storm. Right it survived that one.

455
00:21:16,440 --> 00:21:19,559
Speaker 2: Yes, it did, and the data from that storm is wild.

456
00:21:20,119 --> 00:21:22,200
To give you a sense of the scale. On a healthy,

457
00:21:22,359 --> 00:21:26,680
clear sunny day on Mars, Oppy solar panels easily generated

458
00:21:26,720 --> 00:21:28,920
about seven hundred watt hours of energy.

459
00:21:29,039 --> 00:21:30,799
Speaker 1: Okay, seven hundred, that's our baseline.

460
00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:33,240
Speaker 2: During the absolute peak of that two thousand and seven

461
00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:36,160
global storm, the sky got so dark that the daily

462
00:21:36,240 --> 00:21:39,240
generation dropped to one hundred and twenty eight watt hours.

463
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:42,720
Speaker 1: That is a massive, terrifying drop, almost down to a

464
00:21:42,839 --> 00:21:46,000
sixth of normal power. What's the deathline for a rover

465
00:21:46,160 --> 00:21:48,200
like that? How much power did it absolutely need just

466
00:21:48,200 --> 00:21:49,640
to keep the lights on and stay alive?

467
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:53,279
Speaker 2: The absolute danger zone, the red line is anything under

468
00:21:53,319 --> 00:21:54,279
one hundred and fifty one.

469
00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:56,559
Speaker 1: So it was starving. It was actively dying.

470
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Speaker 2: It was starving to death. And you have to understand

471
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:01,920
the problem isn't just that the rover stops driving around

472
00:22:01,920 --> 00:22:06,359
taking pictures. The rover has vital systems called survival.

473
00:22:05,799 --> 00:22:08,200
Speaker 1: Heaters because it gets to minus eighty at night.

474
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:12,599
Speaker 2: Exactly, Mars drops down to minus seventy five or minus

475
00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:16,799
ninety degrees celsius in the dark. If the battery completely drains,

476
00:22:16,839 --> 00:22:20,039
the survival heaters shut down. If the heaters die, the

477
00:22:20,119 --> 00:22:25,519
delicate internal electronics freeze solid. The metal solder joints physically snap,

478
00:22:25,960 --> 00:22:29,480
the computer chips crack from the thermal contraction. The rover

479
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:32,000
literally freezes to death from the inside out.

480
00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:35,039
Speaker 1: Wow, So how on earth did APPI survive that two

481
00:22:35,079 --> 00:22:38,000
thousand and seven storm. If it was consistently pulling under

482
00:22:38,039 --> 00:22:38,960
the survival.

483
00:22:38,519 --> 00:22:42,079
Speaker 2: Limit, it went into an induced coma. The NASA engineers

484
00:22:42,119 --> 00:22:45,319
back at JPL shut down absolutely everything. No driving, no

485
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,559
robotic arm movement, no science instruments, and critically no communication

486
00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:52,079
with Earth. It just slept in the dark and hoarded

487
00:22:52,160 --> 00:22:55,920
every single precious wat of energy exclusively for those internal

488
00:22:55,960 --> 00:22:57,079
heaters and a work.

489
00:22:57,680 --> 00:23:00,279
Speaker 1: The storm cleared, the sun came out, and it woke

490
00:23:00,319 --> 00:23:00,680
back up.

491
00:23:00,799 --> 00:23:04,359
Speaker 2: It was a miracle of thermal management. But then twenty

492
00:23:04,400 --> 00:23:07,319
eighteen happened, the big one. The twenty eighteen storm was

493
00:23:07,359 --> 00:23:11,319
an absolute monster. The aerosol optical depth was so incredibly

494
00:23:11,400 --> 00:23:13,920
high the sky was effectively pitch black at high noon.

495
00:23:15,359 --> 00:23:18,720
Oppi's automated systems threw it into hibernation mode immediately, but

496
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:21,400
the storm just kept raging. It lasted way too long.

497
00:23:21,799 --> 00:23:26,279
The ultrafine static dust completely coated the solar panels, the

498
00:23:26,319 --> 00:23:31,599
batteries slowly drained to zero. The survival heaters eventually failed, and.

499
00:23:31,559 --> 00:23:33,880
Speaker 1: When the sky's finally cleared months later.

500
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:36,720
Speaker 2: NASA sent the wake up signal. They sent it over

501
00:23:36,759 --> 00:23:39,200
and over again. They beamed over a thousand commands to

502
00:23:39,240 --> 00:23:41,880
that spot on Mars, just hoping to hear a pingback.

503
00:23:41,559 --> 00:23:44,440
Speaker 1: And just silence, absolute silence, and it never woke up.

504
00:23:44,839 --> 00:23:47,079
That actually makes me weirdly emotional. I know it's just

505
00:23:47,119 --> 00:23:49,519
a box of wires and aluminum, but it feels like

506
00:23:49,559 --> 00:23:52,799
reading about an old school explorer dying of exposure in

507
00:23:52,839 --> 00:23:53,319
a blizzard.

508
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:57,000
Speaker 2: It is exactly that. It's a tragedy of exploration, but

509
00:23:57,119 --> 00:24:00,920
more importantly for us, it's a glaring warning sign. If

510
00:24:01,039 --> 00:24:04,039
human beings go there and we set up a habitat

511
00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:07,200
relying on acres of solar panels for our life support,

512
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,440
our oxygen scrubbers are heat, and a global storm hits

513
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:13,079
for three continuous months, you.

514
00:24:13,079 --> 00:24:15,559
Speaker 1: Just run out of power, the scrubbers stopped pulling CO

515
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:17,960
two out of your air, the habitat loses heat, You

516
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:18,720
freeze in the dark.

517
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:22,480
Speaker 2: Exactly. This is why the sources strongly argue that banking

518
00:24:22,519 --> 00:24:25,799
on solar power on Mars is a highly dangerous, potentially

519
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:28,920
fatal gamble. You absolutely cannot rely on it as a

520
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:30,960
critical baseline. You have to have nuclear power.

521
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: We'll definitely dig into the nuclear solutions in a bit

522
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:35,640
because that's fascinating, But before we get there, let's look

523
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:38,400
at the other major robot death mentioned to the Deep Dive,

524
00:24:38,759 --> 00:24:41,039
because it highlights a totally different problem with the Martian

525
00:24:41,079 --> 00:24:41,839
terrain itself.

526
00:24:42,279 --> 00:24:45,880
Speaker 2: Spirit right, Spirit was Appi's twin, and Spirit didn't die

527
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:48,440
from the darkness of a storm. Spirit died because it.

528
00:24:48,400 --> 00:24:51,400
Speaker 1: Fell into a trap, a trap like a sinkhole sort of.

529
00:24:51,599 --> 00:24:55,839
Speaker 2: Spirit got irrevocably stuck. And this completely exposes the major

530
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:59,200
limitation of what engineers call the wheel paradigm.

531
00:24:59,519 --> 00:25:03,920
Speaker 1: The wheel paradigm meaning we just assume everything should have wheels.

532
00:25:04,079 --> 00:25:06,440
Speaker 2: Right. We use wheels on all our rovers because they

533
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:10,279
are mechanically simple and very efficient on flat, hard surfaces,

534
00:25:10,759 --> 00:25:15,680
but wheels struggle massively in soft, unpredictable soil. Spirit was

535
00:25:15,759 --> 00:25:18,920
driving through an area they named Troy, and from the cameras,

536
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:23,000
the surface looked like completely normal, hard packed Martian dirt,

537
00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:26,319
but it was no lurking right under a very thin,

538
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:29,640
deceptive crust, there was a deep deposit of a mineral

539
00:25:29,720 --> 00:25:34,680
called jerosite gerosite. It's an iron sulfate mineral, and physically

540
00:25:34,799 --> 00:25:40,200
it's incredibly slippery and powdery. The Astrum source specifically called

541
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:43,559
it a sand trap. Spirit drove right onto it. Its

542
00:25:43,599 --> 00:25:46,319
heavy wheels broke right through that thin top crust and

543
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:50,079
they just started spinning. It completely lost traction. It was

544
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:51,759
like trying to drive a golf cart into a deep

545
00:25:51,839 --> 00:25:53,119
pit of loose talcum powder.

546
00:25:53,319 --> 00:25:55,960
Speaker 1: Oh no, And the more it spawned, the jeeper dug.

547
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 2: Itself in right exactly, it bottomed out.

548
00:25:58,039 --> 00:26:00,799
Speaker 1: But wait, why was being stuck fatal? Couldn't it just

549
00:26:00,839 --> 00:26:03,839
accept its fate, sit there and become a stationary science platform,

550
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:04,599
a weather station.

551
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:07,319
Speaker 2: It tried to do exactly that. It did stationary science

552
00:26:07,359 --> 00:26:10,720
for a while. But remember the axial tilt. Remember the seasons.

553
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:13,559
Speaker 1: Winter was coming, Winter was fast approaching.

554
00:26:13,839 --> 00:26:16,519
Speaker 2: As winter sets in the sun drops much lower on

555
00:26:16,559 --> 00:26:20,119
the horizon. To survive the winter on solar power, a

556
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:24,000
rover has to physically drive onto a north facing slope

557
00:26:24,279 --> 00:26:27,559
and tilt its body, tilt its solar panels directly toward

558
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,079
that low winter sun to catch enough rays.

559
00:26:30,319 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I never thought about that. It couldn't physically

560
00:26:33,279 --> 00:26:35,880
angle its space to the sun because its wheels were buried.

561
00:26:36,039 --> 00:26:39,039
Speaker 2: Exactly, it was stuck flat on its belly. As the

562
00:26:39,079 --> 00:26:41,839
winter progressed, the sun got lower and lower in the sky,

563
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,640
the angle of the light became too shallow. The power

564
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:48,079
generation plummeted, and eventually it hit a low power fault.

565
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:51,319
Without power for the heaters, spirit froze to death in

566
00:26:51,400 --> 00:26:53,079
the sand trap in twenty ten.

567
00:26:53,359 --> 00:26:56,920
Speaker 1: That is brutal. So wheels are a massive liability. If

568
00:26:56,960 --> 00:26:59,240
you hits off sand, you're dead. If you can't move

569
00:26:59,279 --> 00:27:02,000
to angle your panel, you freeze ye. This brings us

570
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:05,720
perfectly to the next generation of explorers. If we're gonna survive,

571
00:27:06,119 --> 00:27:08,119
we are actively trying to escape the wheel.

572
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 2: We have to. If the terrain itself is the primary enemy,

573
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:14,640
you need to completely change how you move across it.

574
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:17,519
You need to stop rolling and start walking or even

575
00:27:17,559 --> 00:27:18,440
better flying.

576
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:23,559
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the flying first. The helicopter Ingenuity. I

577
00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:26,359
absolutely love this little machine. It looked like a hobby

578
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,160
drone you'd buy at them all, but it's actively swing

579
00:27:29,319 --> 00:27:32,799
in an atmosphere that is, as we establish, basically a vacuum.

580
00:27:32,880 --> 00:27:36,759
Speaker 2: The engineering behind Ingenuity is just mind bending. To generate

581
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:39,480
enough lift to fly in a one percent atmosphere, you

582
00:27:39,519 --> 00:27:44,119
need incredibly lightweight materials. It uses these oversized, super rigid

583
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:47,920
carbon fiber blades and they have to spin unbelievably fast,

584
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:50,039
way faster than an Earth helicopter.

585
00:27:50,319 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just a tiny proof of concept hop right.

586
00:27:53,599 --> 00:27:57,079
The actual operational stats are incredibly impressive.

587
00:27:56,839 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 2: Very impressive. It ended up doing seventy two distinct flight

588
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:03,680
It covered a total distance of seventeen kilometers across the surface.

589
00:28:03,759 --> 00:28:06,359
It undeniably proved that aerial scouting on Mars is not

590
00:28:06,440 --> 00:28:08,279
just possible, it's practical, which is.

591
00:28:08,279 --> 00:28:10,400
Speaker 1: Huge because if you have a drone scouting ahead of

592
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:13,119
your rover, you can easily spot and just fly right

593
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:15,400
over the hidden jersyites sandtraps that killed.

594
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 2: To Spirit exactly. You map the safe routes from the.

595
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,759
Speaker 1: Air, But obviously you can't haul cargo or build a

596
00:28:21,799 --> 00:28:25,559
colony habitat with a tiny, fragile drone. You need heavy

597
00:28:25,599 --> 00:28:27,880
lifters on the ground that don't get horribly stuck in

598
00:28:27,920 --> 00:28:28,319
the sand.

599
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:32,599
Speaker 2: Enter the robodogs, yes, dogs. This is a really exciting

600
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:36,319
collaboration happening right now between Boston Dynamics and JPL, the

601
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:37,839
Jet Propulsional Laboratory.

602
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:40,880
Speaker 1: I think we've all seen the viral videos of Spot right,

603
00:28:41,319 --> 00:28:44,799
the yellow robot dog doing parkour, dancing to music, opening

604
00:28:44,799 --> 00:28:47,359
doors and labs here on Earth. But we're actually putting

605
00:28:47,359 --> 00:28:48,200
Spot on Mars.

606
00:28:48,359 --> 00:28:52,079
Speaker 2: We are. The initiative is called Project Braille, and the

607
00:28:52,119 --> 00:28:55,000
functional advantage of legs over wheels in this kind of

608
00:28:55,119 --> 00:28:59,240
terrain is just massive. Think about speed. A heavy wheeled rover,

609
00:28:59,359 --> 00:29:03,640
like Curiosity or Perseverance, has to move incredibly cautiously. They

610
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:06,680
top out at about zero point two kilometers.

611
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:07,759
Speaker 1: Per hour glacial right.

612
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 2: They have to carefully analyze every single pebble before rolling

613
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:13,720
over it. Spot, on the other hand, can hustle at

614
00:29:13,759 --> 00:29:15,640
five point eight kilometers per hour.

615
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,799
Speaker 1: That's a brisk human walk, that's jogging pace.

616
00:29:19,079 --> 00:29:22,799
Speaker 2: It's fast and terrain wise. It can step right over

617
00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:25,440
large rocks that would stop a rover cold. It can

618
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:30,640
easily climb steep unstable gravel slopes and critically specifically addressing

619
00:29:30,640 --> 00:29:34,240
the spirit rover scenario, if Spot loses its footing, if

620
00:29:34,279 --> 00:29:36,759
it falls down a slope or slips in soft dust,

621
00:29:36,839 --> 00:29:39,319
you can just scan back up it self rights automatically.

622
00:29:39,839 --> 00:29:43,039
A heavy wheeled rover flips onto its back like a turtle.

623
00:29:43,039 --> 00:29:46,240
It's a multi billion dollar piece of junk. It's dead.

624
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:50,079
A robot dog just rolls over, plants its feet and

625
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:50,880
stands up.

626
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,519
Speaker 1: That resilience is incredible, and there's a heavy artificial intelligence

627
00:29:54,519 --> 00:29:57,640
component here too, right because as we discussed earlier, you

628
00:29:57,759 --> 00:30:01,119
absolutely cannot fly or drive the things with a joystick

629
00:30:01,119 --> 00:30:01,680
from Houston.

630
00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:04,799
Speaker 2: No, the light lag makes remote control impossible. This is

631
00:30:04,839 --> 00:30:07,119
a huge factor in the mission design, depending on where

632
00:30:07,119 --> 00:30:10,039
the planets are in their orbits. The communication signal lag

633
00:30:10,079 --> 00:30:12,759
between Earth and Mars is anywhere from three to twenty

634
00:30:12,839 --> 00:30:14,400
two minutes one way, right.

635
00:30:14,279 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 1: Because radio waves are limited by the speed of light exactly.

636
00:30:18,039 --> 00:30:20,720
Speaker 2: So if Spot is trotting along and suddenly comes right

637
00:30:20,799 --> 00:30:22,920
up to the edge of a deep crater cliff, by

638
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,559
the time the cameras transmit that image to Earth and

639
00:30:25,599 --> 00:30:28,079
you scream and hit the brake button, and that signal

640
00:30:28,119 --> 00:30:30,200
travels all the way back to Mars, Spot.

641
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,359
Speaker 1: Has already been falling down the cliff for twenty minutes exactly.

642
00:30:32,519 --> 00:30:34,119
Speaker 2: They have to be able to see the cliff and

643
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:35,519
stop themselves instantly.

644
00:30:35,559 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 1: They have to think, so they use AI.

645
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 2: They are outfitting them with a specialized AI called Nebula,

646
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,319
and the proposed mission profile for this is straight out

647
00:30:45,359 --> 00:30:48,839
of science fiction. They want to send a coordinated pack

648
00:30:48,920 --> 00:30:52,559
of these robot dogs deep into uncharted Martian caves.

649
00:30:52,799 --> 00:30:53,720
Speaker 1: The lava tube.

650
00:30:53,759 --> 00:30:58,039
Speaker 2: The lava tubes these massive ancient underground tunnels. The pack

651
00:30:58,160 --> 00:31:01,200
swarms into pitch dark. They die, namically communicate with each

652
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:03,799
other to form a network. They map the intricate tunnels

653
00:31:03,839 --> 00:31:06,640
using light ar and they use their AI to decide

654
00:31:06,759 --> 00:31:10,240
entirely on their own which rocks and mineral formations are

655
00:31:10,319 --> 00:31:12,359
scientifically interesting enough to sample.

656
00:31:12,519 --> 00:31:15,319
Speaker 1: That is, I mean, that is both absolutely terrifying and

657
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:20,000
deeply amazing. A pack of autonomous thinking robot dogs hunting

658
00:31:20,039 --> 00:31:23,000
for science in a pitch black lava tube on another planet.

659
00:31:23,119 --> 00:31:26,759
Speaker 2: It's the bleeding edge of the future of exploration robots

660
00:31:26,759 --> 00:31:29,960
that don't just blindly follow a pre program script, but

661
00:31:30,079 --> 00:31:31,839
actively investigate their environment.

662
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:35,319
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's fast forward. The robots have scattered the caves,

663
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,920
the area is secure. The human crew arrives. We set

664
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:42,680
up the water wall habitat. We're safe from the radiation.

665
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,720
Now I'm hungry. It's been a long trip. We need

666
00:31:46,759 --> 00:31:49,599
to eat. And I've seen the Matt Damon movie The Martian.

667
00:31:49,759 --> 00:31:52,319
I know exactly how we solve this. We plant potatoes

668
00:31:52,359 --> 00:31:55,839
and the Martian dirt using well, using our own human waste.

669
00:31:55,920 --> 00:31:56,599
Right easy.

670
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,680
Speaker 2: It makes for a really great dramatic story, but the

671
00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:03,759
actual ole biochemistry of Martian farming is much much more complicated.

672
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:06,880
The good news upfront is that Martian soil, which scientists

673
00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:09,680
call regolith, actually does contain usable nutrients.

674
00:32:09,759 --> 00:32:10,319
Speaker 1: Oh it does.

675
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:13,839
Speaker 2: Yes, we've verified this. Scientists have run actual experiments here

676
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:17,480
on Earth using chemically perfectly simulated Martian regolith and they

677
00:32:17,519 --> 00:32:20,319
successfully grew tomatoes, spinach, and rye.

678
00:32:20,480 --> 00:32:22,440
Speaker 1: Okay, so we can have a nice fresh salad on Mars.

679
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:24,160
That sounds great, But there's.

680
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:27,839
Speaker 2: A massive catch. Two catches. Actually. First, there is absolutely

681
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:32,200
zero organic matter in that soil. It is completely sterile,

682
00:32:32,839 --> 00:32:36,440
crushed volcanic rock. There are no earthworms to erate it,

683
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:39,920
no natural microbes or fungi to break things down. It's

684
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:44,559
dead dirt. But the really truly big problem is the

685
00:32:44,599 --> 00:32:48,400
poison poison. The dirt is poisonous, highly poisonous. It is

686
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,359
saturated with a chemical compound called calcium.

687
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:54,000
Speaker 1: Perchlorate johnsum perchlorate. That sounds like an industrial cleaner.

688
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:56,319
Speaker 2: I shouldn't drink You definitely shouldn't, and you shouldn't eat

689
00:32:56,359 --> 00:32:58,839
it either. The regolith is absolutely full of it. It's

690
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:02,759
a toxic salt. Biologically, if a human ingests it, it

691
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:05,079
severely interferes with the thyroid gland.

692
00:33:05,119 --> 00:33:07,119
Speaker 1: Wait, so if I plant a potato directly in that

693
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:08,599
untreated Martian dirt.

694
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,599
Speaker 2: The potato plant's root system eagerly absorbs that perchlorate right

695
00:33:11,599 --> 00:33:14,200
along with the water and nutrients. The chemical gets stored

696
00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:16,799
in the potato itself. You eat the potato, you eat

697
00:33:16,799 --> 00:33:19,920
a heavy dose of poison over a short period of time.

698
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:23,160
It completely shuts down your thyroid function, wreaks havoc on

699
00:33:23,200 --> 00:33:25,319
your metabolism, and can easily be fatal.

700
00:33:25,599 --> 00:33:28,039
Speaker 1: So the very ground we are walking on is actively

701
00:33:28,079 --> 00:33:31,000
trying to kill us from the inside out. Is there

702
00:33:31,039 --> 00:33:34,000
a realistic fix for this or do we have to

703
00:33:34,039 --> 00:33:38,039
literally bring thousands of tons of potting soil from Earth

704
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:39,039
on starships?

705
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 2: Bringing heavy dirt is financially and logistically impossible. Fortunately, chemistry

706
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:49,200
gives us a relatively simple solution. Perchlorates are highly water soluble.

707
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:51,200
You can literally just wash the dirt.

708
00:33:51,119 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: Like, run it through a colander, just rinse it.

709
00:33:53,039 --> 00:33:55,039
Speaker 2: You put it in a processing vat and rinse it

710
00:33:55,079 --> 00:33:58,400
thoroughly with liquid water. The toxic salt dissolves out of

711
00:33:58,400 --> 00:34:00,519
the dirt and into the water. You drain the water

712
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:04,039
and you're left with clean save regolith ready for seeds.

713
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,720
Speaker 1: Okay, that sounds mechanically simple, but then you're left with

714
00:34:06,799 --> 00:34:10,559
thousands of gallons of horribly poisoned water. And water is

715
00:34:10,559 --> 00:34:11,760
your most precious resource.

716
00:34:12,119 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 2: True, you can't just dump the water, but there is

717
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:19,719
an even better, almost miraculous biological fix being developed. We

718
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:22,800
have discovered specific strains of bacteria here on Earth that

719
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:24,199
literally eat perchlorates.

720
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: They eat the toxic poison as food.

721
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:30,079
Speaker 2: They consume the perchlorate compounds for energy, and get this,

722
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,400
the metabolic byproduct the excrete is pure oxygen.

723
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? That's an unbelievable two for one deal.

724
00:34:37,559 --> 00:34:40,760
They clean the poisonous soil and generate breathable air at

725
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:42,599
the exact same time, exactly.

726
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:47,559
Speaker 2: It's perfect biological engineering. So safe farming is definitely possible,

727
00:34:47,639 --> 00:34:52,119
but it requires a massive, heavy industrial processing setup before

728
00:34:52,159 --> 00:34:53,960
you can safely plant a single seed.

729
00:34:54,079 --> 00:34:56,079
Speaker 1: Right, You're not just throwing seeds in the yard, not

730
00:34:56,159 --> 00:34:56,519
at all.

731
00:34:56,599 --> 00:34:59,639
Speaker 2: And regarding the whole fertilizer issue from the movie, yes,

732
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:03,000
hum waste absolutely works as a nutrient base, but you

733
00:35:03,159 --> 00:35:05,679
have to heavily treat it in a bioreactor to kill

734
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:08,880
the human pathogens first. You really really don't want to

735
00:35:08,920 --> 00:35:12,440
accidentally start a rampant cholera outbreak in a sealed colony

736
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:12,800
on Mars.

737
00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,039
Speaker 1: That would be a very dark end to the mission now.

738
00:35:15,079 --> 00:35:17,599
The Astrum Deep Dive mentioned a really interesting point about

739
00:35:17,599 --> 00:35:21,199
the psychology of food in these extreme environments, because food

740
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:24,960
isn't just raw caloric input, is it, No, not for humans.

741
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 2: Think about the sensory reality of the environment you are

742
00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:30,320
living in. You are trapped in a world made entirely

743
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,000
of aggressively red dust, gray metal bulkheads, and humming artificial

744
00:35:34,079 --> 00:35:38,239
lights for years. The sensory deprivation and monotony is going

745
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:39,760
to be incredibly intense.

746
00:35:40,119 --> 00:35:42,599
Speaker 1: Everything is totally sterile and dead.

747
00:35:42,760 --> 00:35:46,760
Speaker 2: Precisely so, imagine, after months of eating gray foil packet

748
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:49,719
nutrient paste, you finally get to bite into a fresh

749
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:54,719
hydroponically grown tomato or a blueberry. Just the physical sensation

750
00:35:54,800 --> 00:35:57,880
of it exactly, the sudden pop of the skin, the crunch,

751
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:01,519
the complex texture, the intense smell, well, the vibrant non

752
00:36:01,599 --> 00:36:06,679
red color. It obviously provides essential physical antioxidant's sure, but

753
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:11,159
the profound psychological morale boost of eating something genuinely alive

754
00:36:11,239 --> 00:36:13,199
and fresh is almost unquantifiable.

755
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:17,039
Speaker 1: A single blueberry could literally save an astronaut's sanity.

756
00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,280
Speaker 2: It really could. It physically and emotionally connects you back

757
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:21,760
to Earth in a very visceral grounding way.

758
00:36:21,880 --> 00:36:24,599
Speaker 1: Okay, so we have safe food, now we need a

759
00:36:24,639 --> 00:36:27,039
house to eat it in. We talked briefly about hiding

760
00:36:27,079 --> 00:36:29,800
in lava tubes, but if we aren't living like cavemen,

761
00:36:29,920 --> 00:36:32,079
how do we actually build structures on this with us?

762
00:36:32,599 --> 00:36:34,800
As we said, we can't ship heavy bags of Portland

763
00:36:34,800 --> 00:36:36,320
cement from a home depot in orbit.

764
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:41,679
Speaker 2: No, even with massive next generation rockets like Starship dropping

765
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:44,920
the launch prices, the cost per kilogram to get anything

766
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:49,000
out of Earth's gravity well is huge. Shipping heavy building

767
00:36:49,039 --> 00:36:53,360
materials like concrete or steel beams is completely insane. We

768
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:54,760
have to master something called.

769
00:36:54,599 --> 00:36:58,880
Speaker 1: Isru isru in city resource utilization, right.

770
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 2: Which is just very fancy aerospace jargon for living off

771
00:37:02,039 --> 00:37:02,440
the land.

772
00:37:02,519 --> 00:37:05,599
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate extreme camping trick exactly.

773
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:08,360
Speaker 2: So the premier plan right now revolves around autonomous three

774
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:12,760
D printing of habitats. Fleet of heavy duty autonomous construction robots,

775
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:16,639
maybe much bigger, heavily modified cousins of those Boston Dynamics

776
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,639
dogs we talked about, would arrive on Mars years before

777
00:37:19,679 --> 00:37:21,480
the first human crew even launches.

778
00:37:21,639 --> 00:37:23,360
Speaker 1: So the house is ready when you get there. How

779
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:23,960
do they print it?

780
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:27,840
Speaker 2: They autonomously excavate tons of local regolith, run it through

781
00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:30,159
processors to sift it, mix it with water ice they

782
00:37:30,199 --> 00:37:32,559
mind from the permafrost, or a special polymer binder they

783
00:37:32,559 --> 00:37:35,480
brought with them, and they slowly extrude it. They essentially

784
00:37:35,519 --> 00:37:38,800
three D print thick concrete like layers to build the

785
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:39,920
walls of the habitat.

786
00:37:40,119 --> 00:37:42,960
Speaker 1: So the house is quite literally built out of Mars itself.

787
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 2: Yes, but remember the intense cosmic and solar radiation. The

788
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:52,320
printed walls alone, unless they are incredibly thick, might not

789
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,079
be enough to safely shield the crew over a multi

790
00:37:55,199 --> 00:37:55,719
year stay.

791
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:58,559
Speaker 1: So what's the shield more water walls?

792
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:03,239
Speaker 2: Actually a simpler brute force approach. The plan is to

793
00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:07,440
use bulldozers to simply pile massive amounts of loose dirt

794
00:38:07,519 --> 00:38:11,159
raw regolith directly on top of the three D printed habitat.

795
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:13,760
Speaker 1: Just bury the houses under a huge pile of dirt.

796
00:38:13,960 --> 00:38:16,800
Speaker 2: Just bury them. We're tyking several meters of pack dirt

797
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:19,760
over the roof. That mass of soil will physically block

798
00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:23,400
the radiation just as effectively as the entire atmosphere does

799
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:24,039
here on Earth.

800
00:38:24,079 --> 00:38:26,679
Speaker 1: So visually, the first Martian colony is basically going to

801
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:28,760
look like a high tech village of hobbit.

802
00:38:28,519 --> 00:38:33,480
Speaker 2: Holes, precisely a series of interconnected mounds, snug incredibly thermally

803
00:38:33,519 --> 00:38:37,760
insulated against those minus ninety degree nights, and perfectly radiation shielded.

804
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:39,920
Speaker 1: Okay, I love the hot to hole aesthetic, but let's

805
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:43,079
talk about the most immediate need inside that hole breathing.

806
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,119
We need continuous oxygen, and we obviously can't bring enough

807
00:38:46,119 --> 00:38:48,119
pressurized scuba tanks to last to lifetime.

808
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:50,199
Speaker 2: No, the mass penalty would be absurved. But we have

809
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:54,119
some brilliant technological options. There is a module called MOE.

810
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:58,320
It's a phenomenally successful experiment that is actually already sitting

811
00:38:58,360 --> 00:39:01,280
right now on the surface of Mars physically attached to

812
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:02,360
the Perseverance rover.

813
00:39:02,679 --> 00:39:04,280
Speaker 1: How does m OCX actually work.

814
00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 2: It's essentially a mechanical tree. It sucks in the ambient

815
00:39:08,079 --> 00:39:13,119
Martian atmosphere, which remember, is ninety six percent unbreathable carbon dioxide,

816
00:39:13,559 --> 00:39:16,639
and it runs that gas through a highly advanced solid

817
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:18,440
oxide electrolysis process.

818
00:39:18,519 --> 00:39:19,960
Speaker 1: Electrolysis that takes a lot of.

819
00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:22,719
Speaker 2: Energy, right it does. It basically heats the CO two

820
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:28,199
up to incredibly high temperatures and electrochemically violently strips the

821
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:32,480
oxygen atoms right off the carbon molecules. It breaths in

822
00:39:32,679 --> 00:39:37,360
toxic CO two, and it actively exhales pure breathable oxygen gas.

823
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:40,000
Speaker 1: That is just incredible and it works perfectly.

824
00:39:40,039 --> 00:39:42,400
Speaker 2: You just take that toaster sized prototype box on the rover,

825
00:39:42,519 --> 00:39:44,000
you scale it up to the size of a small

826
00:39:44,039 --> 00:39:47,800
industrial fastory room, and you have unlimited breathable air for

827
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:48,400
a colony.

828
00:39:48,519 --> 00:39:51,239
Speaker 1: Wow. And what about water. We can't constantly be mining

829
00:39:51,280 --> 00:39:53,000
and melting ice if we're near the equator.

830
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:57,079
Speaker 2: For water, we rely on extreme closed loop recycling. We

831
00:39:57,119 --> 00:40:00,199
look to the International Space Station for this. On the

832
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:04,039
ISS right now, the environmental systems recycle over ninety percent

833
00:40:04,079 --> 00:40:09,679
of all water on board. They recycle everything, everything, urine, workout, sweat,

834
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:14,519
the ambient humidity from breathing. It all gets captured, aggressively filtered,

835
00:40:14,599 --> 00:40:18,320
chemically treated, and turned back into completely pure drinking water.

836
00:40:18,519 --> 00:40:21,760
Speaker 1: What's the astronaut joke. Yesterday's coffee is tomorrow's coffee.

837
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 2: That's the exact mantra. It sounds gross to us down here,

838
00:40:25,039 --> 00:40:28,440
but the filtered water is technically purer than what comes

839
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:29,639
out of most earth taps.

840
00:40:29,719 --> 00:40:32,079
Speaker 1: Okay, so we have air, we have water, we have

841
00:40:32,119 --> 00:40:32,719
a dirt root.

842
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 2: Let's go back to the power issue. You mentioned earlier

843
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,480
that solar power is the fatal flaw because of the

844
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:39,800
global dust storms. We can't have the lights and the

845
00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:42,079
EMACOS system shut down when the storm hits.

846
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:46,800
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. You need a robust, totally weather independent hybrid system.

847
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,000
Solar arrays are great for cheap, easy energy when the

848
00:40:50,039 --> 00:40:52,840
sun is actually out, but you absolutely must have a

849
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:56,800
nuclear baseline running underneath it. NASA is heavily investing in

850
00:40:56,840 --> 00:40:59,119
a program called the Kill A Power Project. Kill A

851
00:40:59,199 --> 00:41:01,599
Power That sounds delightfully intense.

852
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 2: It's a brilliant piece of engineering. It's a very small,

853
00:41:05,119 --> 00:41:09,880
incredibly compact nuclear fission reactor. The actual reactor core is

854
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:13,079
roughly the size of a household trash can. But that

855
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:18,519
tiny core provides continuous, totally reliable, uninterrupted electrical power for

856
00:41:18,639 --> 00:41:19,559
ten years.

857
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:21,719
Speaker 1: Straight, regardless of the weather exactly.

858
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:23,599
Speaker 2: It doesn't care if the sun is out or if

859
00:41:23,599 --> 00:41:26,840
there's a Category eleven dust storm raging for six months.

860
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:31,039
You desperately need that zero fail reliability for the habitat,

861
00:41:31,039 --> 00:41:32,400
heaters and the air scrubbers.

862
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: Okay, so logically, we have all the hard tech we

863
00:41:35,079 --> 00:41:38,400
have the nuclear trash cans, the AI dogs, the perchlorate

864
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:42,159
eating bacteria farms, the three D printed hobbit holes. The

865
00:41:42,199 --> 00:41:44,880
physics are largely solvable, but now we really have to

866
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,920
talk about the soft, highly unpredictable, squishy part of the mission,

867
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:50,719
the human, the humans, because this is the one variable

868
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,920
you absolutely cannot engineer away on a drafting board. The

869
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:56,280
crushing psychology of that level of isolation, it.

870
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:57,880
Speaker 2: Is unprecedented in human history.

871
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:00,000
Speaker 1: People always jump to make comparisons, right, they say, oh,

872
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:04,119
it's just like researchers wintering over an Antarctica or sailors

873
00:42:04,159 --> 00:42:07,000
on a nuclear submarine for six months. Is it like that.

874
00:42:07,199 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 2: It's superficially similar, but fundamentally different. In a research base

875
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:15,159
in Antarctica or deep underwater on a submarine, things get

876
00:42:15,199 --> 00:42:19,039
incredibly tough. Yes, But you always know, deep down in

877
00:42:19,079 --> 00:42:22,440
your subconscious that if you fall and badly shatter your leg,

878
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:26,320
or if someone has a severe psychod mental breakdown, a

879
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:28,039
vehicle can eventually come get you.

880
00:42:28,119 --> 00:42:30,800
Speaker 1: A helicopter can fly in, or the sub can surface.

881
00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:33,199
Speaker 2: Right. It might be heavily delayed by a storm, it

882
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:36,880
might take a week, but physical evacuation is structurally possible.

883
00:42:36,920 --> 00:42:40,159
On Mars. You are there. There is absolutely zero rescue.

884
00:42:40,159 --> 00:42:43,599
If something goes catastrophically wrong. You are fifty million miles

885
00:42:43,639 --> 00:42:44,679
from the nearest hospital.

886
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:48,360
Speaker 1: That is heavy and the astrom source specifically highlighted a

887
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:51,639
psychological trigger called the Earth gazing phenomenon.

888
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:56,199
Speaker 2: Yes, this is fascinating and terrifying. Up on the International

889
00:42:56,199 --> 00:43:00,320
Space Station right now, astronauts frequently spend hours in the

890
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:04,639
Kippola window just staring down at Earth. It's physically massive

891
00:43:04,679 --> 00:43:08,119
in their view, it's bright blue, it's highly dynamic. They

892
00:43:08,119 --> 00:43:11,000
can see swirling weather patterns. They can literally see the

893
00:43:11,039 --> 00:43:13,480
glowing lights of their home cities at night.

894
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:16,079
Speaker 1: It still feels like home, it feels physically close.

895
00:43:16,360 --> 00:43:19,679
Speaker 2: But on Mars. On Mars, Earth isn't a landscape. It's

896
00:43:19,760 --> 00:43:23,199
just a star. It's just a slightly brighter, pale blue

897
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:25,760
dot in the evening sky. You can stand on the

898
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:28,800
dusty surface, hold up your arm and completely cover your

899
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:31,559
entire home planet, everyone you have ever loved, every single

900
00:43:31,639 --> 00:43:34,800
human being who has ever lived in all of history.

901
00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:36,400
You can cover all of it with the tip of

902
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:37,239
your thumb, just.

903
00:43:37,199 --> 00:43:40,840
Speaker 1: Blotting it out completely. That level of absolute permanent detachment

904
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:43,159
from the human race. I honestly don't know if the

905
00:43:43,199 --> 00:43:46,360
human brain is biologically wired to process that without breaking.

906
00:43:46,559 --> 00:43:48,800
Speaker 2: We haven't been able to truly test it. We've done

907
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,480
isolation experiments in the desert, but the participants always know

908
00:43:52,559 --> 00:43:56,199
they can just walk out the door. That profound psychological

909
00:43:56,199 --> 00:43:59,519
break is a massive looming risk for the early colonies.

910
00:44:00,079 --> 00:44:02,320
And then you add in the inevitable social friction.

911
00:44:02,519 --> 00:44:02,679
Speaker 1: Oh.

912
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:06,639
Speaker 2: Absolutely, You are physically trapped in very small, claustrophobic spaces

913
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,360
with the exact same five or ten people every single day,

914
00:44:10,679 --> 00:44:15,480
while facing constant lethal external danger. It is the ultimate

915
00:44:15,719 --> 00:44:17,280
psychological pressure cooker.

916
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:19,920
Speaker 1: You need a crew of actual saints not to end

917
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:22,760
up at each other's throats. And beyond the mind, what

918
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:25,599
about the physical body. The Deep Dive mentioned the famous

919
00:44:25,679 --> 00:44:26,800
Kelly twins study.

920
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:30,239
Speaker 2: Right, NASA sent astronauts Scott Kelly to spend almost a

921
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,119
full year on the Iss and zero gravity, while his

922
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:35,960
identical twin brother Mark Kelly stayed firmly down on Earth

923
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,000
as a control subject. When Scott came back, the physical

924
00:44:39,039 --> 00:44:41,440
and genetic comparison was startling.

925
00:44:41,079 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 1: Because space is just generally terrible for the human body.

926
00:44:44,199 --> 00:44:49,119
Speaker 2: Microgravity is absolutely brutal. The lack of constant resistance leads

927
00:44:49,159 --> 00:44:53,119
to rapid, severe muscle atrophy and bone density loss. You

928
00:44:53,119 --> 00:44:55,440
have to work out violently for hours a day just

929
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:56,119
to walk when you.

930
00:44:56,159 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 1: Get back, and Mars gravity is only thirty eight percent

931
00:44:58,519 --> 00:45:00,679
of ours. So that's a constant problem exactly.

932
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 2: But it's not just muscles without strong gravity pulling your

933
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:08,519
bodily fluids down towards your legs. Massive fluid shifts occur.

934
00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,239
The fluid puls up in the head and upper.

935
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:13,719
Speaker 1: Torso, which causes what headaches.

936
00:45:13,639 --> 00:45:17,480
Speaker 2: Headaches, sure, but more alarmingly, it puts immense physical pressure

937
00:45:17,559 --> 00:45:20,519
on the back of the eyeballs. It severely flattens the

938
00:45:20,519 --> 00:45:24,559
shape of the eye, causing permanent vision degradation. In many astronauts, you.

939
00:45:24,559 --> 00:45:27,079
Speaker 1: Literally lose your eyesight because of the lack of gravity.

940
00:45:27,199 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 2: And then we get to the really deep stuff. The

941
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:30,360
DNA changes, right.

942
00:45:30,440 --> 00:45:33,320
Speaker 1: The study found his actual genes changed, yes, the.

943
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:35,880
Speaker 2: Length of his telomeres, the protective caps on the ends

944
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:40,920
of DNA strands physically changed. His active gene expression fundamentally

945
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:43,639
altered in response to the stress of the space environment,

946
00:45:43,880 --> 00:45:46,559
which clearly shows that the human body actively tries to

947
00:45:46,599 --> 00:45:49,639
evolve and adapt to fit the extreme environment it's.

948
00:45:49,519 --> 00:45:53,679
Speaker 1: In, which naturally leads to an absolutely massive, almost uncomfortable

949
00:45:53,760 --> 00:45:58,039
ethical question that the source material raised the concept of

950
00:45:58,119 --> 00:46:01,039
deliberate genetic modification for astronauts.

951
00:46:01,159 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 2: This is where we cross firmly from engineering into heavy

952
00:46:04,039 --> 00:46:07,880
sci fi territory. But it's being seriously debated by bioethicists

953
00:46:07,960 --> 00:46:11,679
right now. Should we preemptively edit the DNA of astronauts

954
00:46:11,679 --> 00:46:12,599
before they go to.

955
00:46:12,559 --> 00:46:13,960
Speaker 1: Make them better suited for Mars?

956
00:46:14,159 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 2: Think about the logic. If we definitively know that galactic

957
00:46:17,519 --> 00:46:22,000
cosmic radiation relentlessly destroys human DNA and causes cancer, should

958
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:24,960
we use crisper to heavily edit the astronauts to have

959
00:46:25,079 --> 00:46:28,840
hyper advanced DNA repair mechanisms like splice them with tartar

960
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:32,360
grades exactly like tartar grades, or certain highly radiation resistant

961
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:37,039
bacteria like Dinococcus radiodurans. If the weak Martian gravity destroys

962
00:46:37,119 --> 00:46:41,360
normal human bone density, should we artificially edit their genome

963
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:45,039
to produce impossibly dense, hyper strong bone structures.

964
00:46:45,119 --> 00:46:48,440
Speaker 1: But man, that opens a terrifying Pandora's box of ethics.

965
00:46:48,639 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 2: It absolutely does. The philosophical question becomes, are we sending

966
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:58,280
human beings to colonize Mars, or are we intentionally engineering

967
00:46:58,320 --> 00:47:02,719
a brand new, divergent speed of Martians. If you fundamentally

968
00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:06,079
change the core biology of a human to perfectly fit

969
00:47:06,159 --> 00:47:09,280
an alien world, are they still technically human?

970
00:47:09,519 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 1: That is such a heavy foundational question. It really makes

971
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:15,360
you wonder if we have to fundamentally re engineer our

972
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:19,000
own basic genetic code just to simply survive the environment.

973
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:21,079
Maybe the universe is trying to tell us we aren't

974
00:47:21,079 --> 00:47:22,199
meant to be there in the first place.

975
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:26,159
Speaker 2: It's a very valid perspective. And yet, despite the perchlorate

976
00:47:26,199 --> 00:47:30,079
poison in the soil, despite the massive Alzheimer's radiation risk

977
00:47:30,159 --> 00:47:34,400
during transit, the freezing minus ninety nights, and the brutal, isolating,

978
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:38,679
one way ticket nature of those early missions, Literally thousands

979
00:47:38,679 --> 00:47:42,280
of highly qualified people eagerly volunteer every time NASA opens

980
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:42,840
an application.

981
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: Why do they do it? What is that specific drive?

982
00:47:45,119 --> 00:47:47,360
Is that the ultimate fatal flaw of the human spirit

983
00:47:47,800 --> 00:47:49,119
that we just can't sit still?

984
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 2: Honestly, I don't think it's a flaw at all. I

985
00:47:51,719 --> 00:47:55,400
think it's our defining feature as a species. It's the raw,

986
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:59,639
unquenchable drive to explore the burning need to see exactly

987
00:47:59,679 --> 00:48:02,440
what it over the next hill, even if that specific

988
00:48:02,519 --> 00:48:06,000
hill happens to be completely devoid of oxygen and located

989
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:07,280
fifty million miles away.

990
00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: It's the exact same crazy, irrational drive that made our

991
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,239
ancestors push off from a perfectly safe beach and cross massive,

992
00:48:15,639 --> 00:48:18,920
violent oceans in tiny wooden ships. They didn't know what

993
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:20,440
was out there either, exactly.

994
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:22,960
Speaker 2: It's the stark difference between looking at the sky and

995
00:48:23,000 --> 00:48:26,159
feeling like a safe, comfortable prisoner on a beautiful blue

996
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:28,639
rock and wanting to be a pioneer in the dark.

997
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:32,119
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow, So let's wrap this deep dive up. We've

998
00:48:32,159 --> 00:48:35,440
unspooled the whole threat. Today, living on Mars is physically possible.

999
00:48:35,519 --> 00:48:38,239
The timeline is accelerating. We're looking at the twenty thirties

1000
00:48:38,280 --> 00:48:42,079
to the twenty fifties for real colonization. The crucial survival

1001
00:48:42,079 --> 00:48:44,840
tech is actively being built and tested right now in labs,

1002
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:48,719
the spot dogs, the MXI oxygen factories, the three D

1003
00:48:48,760 --> 00:48:50,280
printed robotic construction crews.

1004
00:48:50,519 --> 00:48:54,519
Speaker 2: But the inherent risks remain absolutely catastrophic right.

1005
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,039
Speaker 1: The relentless dust is just waiting to permanently kill your

1006
00:48:58,039 --> 00:49:01,239
power grid. The bitter cold is constantly waiting to crack

1007
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:04,480
your batteries. The cosmic radiation is waiting to degrade your

1008
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:05,920
brain before you even arrive.

1009
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 2: It is arguably the ultimate engineering and survival challenge in

1010
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:14,840
human history. It requires perfectly solving energy production, complex biology,

1011
00:49:15,239 --> 00:49:18,880
and fragile human psychology all at the exact same time,

1012
00:49:19,199 --> 00:49:21,199
with zero margin for error.

1013
00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:25,480
Speaker 1: And honestly researching all of this it brings up a profound,

1014
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:29,960
overwhelming new appreciation for Earth. Astra mentioned at the end

1015
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:32,920
of their video that they're intentionally focusing more on Earth

1016
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:35,400
based content lately, and after going through this, it makes

1017
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:36,079
total sense.

1018
00:49:36,199 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 2: It does. When you spend hours looking at exactly how

1019
00:49:39,000 --> 00:49:41,800
relentlessly hard Mars is trying to instantly kill you, you

1020
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:44,960
suddenly realize how incredibly hard Earth is effortlessly working to

1021
00:49:45,039 --> 00:49:45,719
keep you alive.

1022
00:49:45,920 --> 00:49:48,800
Speaker 1: The atmosphere of the magnetic field, the water cycle. Earth

1023
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:51,880
is essentially the only five star luxury resort in the

1024
00:49:52,039 --> 00:49:55,159
entire Solar System. Every single other planet is just a

1025
00:49:55,239 --> 00:49:57,119
spectacularly creative death track.

1026
00:49:57,239 --> 00:49:58,280
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.

1027
00:49:58,440 --> 00:50:00,960
Speaker 1: So here's the final provocative uestion for you, the person

1028
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,360
listening right now. We've spent this time talking about the

1029
00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:07,480
toxic thyroid destroying salts, the terrifying global darkness of the

1030
00:50:07,559 --> 00:50:11,119
dust storms, the mind bending isolation of seeing Earth as

1031
00:50:11,239 --> 00:50:15,119
just a tiny dot. If a seat suddenly opened up tomorrow,

1032
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:20,159
literally tomorrow morning, on a starship heading permanently for the

1033
00:50:20,159 --> 00:50:21,079
Red planet.

1034
00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:24,760
Speaker 2: A completely one way ticket, no return trip, no return, you.

1035
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:27,079
Speaker 1: Are officially one of the primary founders of a brand

1036
00:50:27,079 --> 00:50:30,039
new branch of human civilization. Your name goes down in

1037
00:50:30,119 --> 00:50:34,199
history forever, but you will never ever feel a cool

1038
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:36,639
ocean breeze on your face again. You will never smell

1039
00:50:36,639 --> 00:50:38,239
a pine forest after a rainstorm.

1040
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:39,840
Speaker 2: You will get to see the sun rise over the

1041
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:41,199
rim of Olympus Monds.

1042
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 1: You will see an entirely new world. So would you

1043
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:47,400
take the seat? Are you the restless pioneer who eagerly

1044
00:50:47,440 --> 00:50:50,480
accepts that massive, terrifying risk for the sake of exploration,

1045
00:50:51,000 --> 00:50:53,039
or are you the grounded guardian who chooses to stay

1046
00:50:53,039 --> 00:50:56,079
behind to enjoy and aggressively protect the pale blue dot.

1047
00:50:56,239 --> 00:50:59,519
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate defining go or stay decision.

1048
00:51:00,079 --> 00:51:03,199
Speaker 1: Really think about it and seriously let us know. Leave

1049
00:51:03,199 --> 00:51:05,360
a comment down below, send us a message on socials.

1050
00:51:06,119 --> 00:51:09,440
We genuinely want to know where you stand. On this because,

1051
00:51:09,599 --> 00:51:13,239
statically speaking, looking at the timelines and the human drive,

1052
00:51:14,159 --> 00:51:16,960
some of the people listening to this right now are

1053
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:17,800
actually going to go.

1054
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:20,199
Speaker 2: They are, and we'll definitely be watching from down here.

1055
00:51:20,639 --> 00:51:22,679
Speaker 1: That is it for this thread. Thank you for taking

1056
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:25,280
this journey with us, Stay curious and keep looking up