The Moon vs. Mars

for you after the show. All right, So today we wanted to talk We're still talking about space exploration. If you heard our previous podcast, we were talking about the the benefits and risks of manned space exploration versus unmanned

space exploration. And today we want to talk a little bit more about the idea of colonization, not just exploring space, but finding other places where we could live and do science and stay there for prolonged time periods of time, not just for a short visit and then pop right back. You get a good butt groove going on your space couch, Yeah, you need to exactly get so that that you know, you can sit there and essentially say it's somewhere like this place is mine. Not only do I have a flag,

check out the butt. It's not gonna fit your butt, I guarantee it. Um. Yeah. So, uh, you know, the can space become home? That's really the question we're asking. And the two main candidates that that I think most people think about when we talk about colonization, at least in the foreseeable future, like within the next few decades, would be either Earth's Moon or Mars. Those seem to be the two leading candidates when you agree so well,

they're you know, cooler than mercury, less totally poisonous than venus. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Okay, So, as we talked about in our last podcast, Uh, it's gonna be mega dangerous to go there. So because space wants to kill you, Yes, space wants to kill you. Anytime you leave Earth, you're you're taking a big risk. So what are the benefits? Why would people want to create colonies on the Moon and Mars? Well,

I can I can give you some overview about the Moon. Uh, specifically, I mean NASA was looking at the possibility of going back to the Moon and in fact ended up having a project in two thousand six called why the Moon? You know, why why would we go back there? And they came up with more than They actually asked people all around the world, like they were asking leading scientists and engineers as well as other people you know, thinkers, authors, all sorts, not to say that authors don't think all

that often. Uh so, I'm the son of an author. It's just a joke at my dad. So they asked all these folks like, you know, why should we go back to the moon, and ended up compiling a list of over two d reasons or more than two hundred reasons, I should say, and uh, but the they generally fell

into certain major category. Um. So for the Moon specifically, they said that they talked about just the idea of having a human settlement beyond Earth, this idea that this is another frontier that we can explore and uh and make a home on, and and that that's a powerful idea all on its own out the door, and that that could apply not just to the Moon, obviously, that could apply to any anybody that's out in space, but specifically they were referring to the Moon in this case.

They also said that you could pursue scientific study to answer questions about the history of the Earth, the history of our solar system, and the history of the universe and what our place is within that context. You know, these are big questions, and sometimes to get perspective, you've gotta leave stuff behind, you know, like our planet. And we could learn more about the actual history of the Moon,

like how was the moon form. We've got lots of theories on it, but this would help us, uh test those theories and see if the theories seem to hold true based upon the observations we can make their Beyond that, they said that you could test technologies, systems, and processes that we'd use for deeper space exploration and support future

missions to other places like Mars and beyond. So, in other words, used the Moon as a test bed so that we can learn oh well, you know, we've created the best practices that we need to make space exploration as safe and uh and and scientifically profitable as possible. H Yeah, not just a test bed, but it would

be an important staging point for actual missions, right sure. Yeah, you're talking about one six the gravity of Earth, so from yeah, yeah, compared to Earth, it is far easier to get a vehicle off the surface of the Moon

that it is on Earth. So if you were able to ship materials to the Moon and then put those materials together and then uh and then launch a ship from the Moon, then you could use as a staging ground a launch pad really, so you could use to go on deeper space exploration missions, whether those are manned or unmanned. You can even you know, launch unmanned missions from the mood if you wanted to um beyond that. It would provide a challenging objective that would require global

cooperation and participation in a peaceful way. In other words, this is something that goes well beyond the capabilities of any one nation. It would be a global effort. And the idea being that if you can create a challenge, a task that requires cooperation on this global scale, So we're talking about a peaceful effort where we can get some cooperation around the entire world to meet this incredible

challenge at hand. That's so that's one of the things that that programs like the Apollo are are are allouded for, you know, for even just within a single nation, bringing people together and making people figure out how to how to work, you know, between governments and corporations, and although the Apollo program certainly has, it's also other the other political side, which was it was part of the space race, where it was almost a afrontation confrontational thing between the

United States and the Soviet Union. Maybe it's right. I think I've read those people interpreting it in a in a kind of generous light, saying that the space race gave us a way to um to express our sort of international competitive instinct in a way that was not violent like the the the Olympics, but with a more

you know, nuclear threat behind it. As about to say, because when you think about it, the other side of the space race is saying, hey, I can put this thing into orbits, you better, but I can put it into Moscow or you know, Washington, d C. Depending upon which part you're in. So, but this would be a way of saying, instead of it being one pitting one nation against another in a race to get to a finish line, it's more saying, this is a challenge that's

worthy of us. Let's band together and meet it. So it's kind of an attempt to take that same sort of spirit of of competition, but instead of working against each other. We're working against a an external challenge that is pretty significant. Um, the sheer scientific findings. We were talking a little bit about those in the previous episode.

But but but you know, the the necessities that human beings have and in those kind of environments, you know, it's it's up on the International Space Station station they've got a water filtration system that can effectively recycle up to all onboard water, including your urine, sweat and tears. Um, like the water vapor you breathe out could end up being recycled. Yeah, yeah, which you know is a little bit water world. But but but other than that, is

is a terrific scientific advancement. Yeah yeah, So I mean that sort of stuff, the things that would become a necessity for us just to make this work could end up in you know, inspiring technology or directly spawning technology here on Earth that benefits everybody in some other way. Um. And and the only way you really get that benefit is if you really back the initiative to trying to do this. Beyond that, it also ex band's Earth's economic

sphere to the Moon. So like in other words, we actually we literally increase our potential wealth by including the Moon as part of that, and you might think like, well, what the heck is on the Moon? What's good to get there? Well, m real estate as a steel right now, But you know about that guy who's Yes, I do, I do know about that guy who's selling it. But um, if you're listening and you're tempted to buy a plot of land on the Moon, don't do it. No, it's

a shady deal. Yeah, the claimed will probably not be on her right but but there is stuff on the Moon that could be very useful. There was a discovery that the regules, that's the the dirt essentially the soil that is on the Moon. Um, it's also what we call really any any extra terrestrial dirt. Yeah, Mars has regules as well, but the regul on the Moon contains helium three in concentration is much greater than you would

find here on Earth. And helium, aside from being completely wasted, as a children's toy and awesome way to make your voice sound funny. Yeah you sound awesome. Yeah, I sure do. You should do a whole episode on helium. Yeah, but you mean literally, like we're on helium while we're doing the episode. It would have to be short because we could asphyxiate. But anyway, Uh, yeah, well, I think what you were going to say is that helium has lots of scientific uses, right. For example, you can use helium

to to to cool things. You know, use liquid helium, you can use that to to cool uh, scientific equipment that needs to be close to absolute Yeah, helium three can get things within a few thousands of a kelvin, like a single less than one kelvin. Zero kelvin is absolute zero. That means there is no molecular movement. Helium three potentially useful infusion. It is also potentially useful for

a fusion. Now, helium three because it's non radioactive, means that you could use that as a potential fuel infusion reactors and not have to worry about dealing with radiation. And you could essentially starts to produce uh protons as its byproduct. But you can control protons with a magnetic field. You can actually contain protons that way, So while it's giving off protons at high speeds during these fusion reactions, you could harness the energy and minimize any risk relatively

easy if you have enough helium. And when I say relatively This is still an incredibly complicated thing, but it's access to that helium would make this much easier than it is right now. It's also important for detecting things like neutrons, which you might not think is that important unless you happen to be checking for any sort of illegal smuggled plute plutonium which gives off neutrons as it decays. So it's a very effective detection method for for things

like neutrons. But we don't have a lot of it here on Earth. The Moon has lots of it from what we can tell. Uh it may be that shady parts of the Moon have a lot more of it than the sunny parts of the Moon, But at any rate, there is the possibility that we could end up using

the Moon as a resource for helium three. And then there is the whole idea of inspiring future generations of students to really focus on STEM fields so that you know, all the science and technology, engineering and math disciplines that could benefit from you know, students just flooding it because there's this this initiative to build a colony on the Moon. All of these are big reasons, and of course, like I said, they listed more than two hundred total, and

they all kind of fell into these broad categories. So that's sort of why we would want to look at the moon. Um. And now what about why we would want to go to Mars. A lot of the reasons are going to be similar. Things like the inspiring the generation of people. I mean, that's clearly going to be play a part. Uh. Science and technology would obviously play a part share uh, and also it would again be another global effort. Mars is a that's it is not

a small task either. That keep in mind the Moon is about two hundred thirty eight thousand, nine hundred miles away or three four thousand, four hundred kilometers from Earth. Yeah, Mars when it's at its closest point. Keep in mind that the orbital path of Earth and Mars means that sometimes they are quite far away. Yeah, they can sides of the Sun. Yeah, which means that Mars is further

away from Earth than the Sun would be. Uh. Well, at its closest point, it is about thirty three million, nine d twenty seven thousand miles away or around fifty four million, six hundred thousand kilometers and its furthest point it is two hundred forty nine million, two hundred thousand miles away or four hundred one million kilometers on average is about a hundred thirty nine million, eight hundred thousand

miles or two or twenty five million kilometers. So it's much further away than the Moon, and that that presents one of the many, many challenges when you compare the two. Not to say that either would be a cake walk, but there are some extra considerations you have to make depending upon which place you're choosing. Sure as as a launch pad, you know it could when when it's when it's further out than Earth two or or closer I suppose at that point than Earth, to certain things that

could be pretty cool. Yeah, you have to. You have to account if you're launching anything for Mars, you have to account for mars Is gravitational effect, which is not as big as Earths. It's around six Earth's, but still much greater than the Moon's, which is one six that of Earth's, so you still have to battle against gravity. You also have an atmosphere, although it's a thin one on Mars, and that can you know that also plays into the whole launch aspect and re entry and all

that kind of stuff. So Mars is a launching pad is certainly a possibility if you were able to build out a colony of sufficient complexity, but it's uh, it would be a larger challenge than to do the same thing on the Moon. Also, we were not sure what we could get resource wise out of Mars yet. We we don't have enough data to really say, yeah, if we want a lot of stuff that's oxidized, then we can get plenty of that. But that might not be

that we can rust stuff here on Earth. I mean, there might be really cool stuff there could be well, I mean, one advantage of a colony on Mars is that Mars is potentially the bigger research prize than the Moon. Sure, because nobody really thinks we're going to find evidence of life on the Moon, but it's who knows, you know, we might find evidence on Mars that there was once microbial life on the surface. Yeah, those canals didn't pan out, So maybe we'll actually see some some some microbial or

at least some evidence of microbial life on Mars. But that would hopefully that we didn't bring ourselves. That's a good that's good as well. Yeah, so there are definitely benefits for either. And I think that you know, we've always dreamed of exploring other place. Maybe always is the wrong word, but as long as I can remember, we dreamed of exploring, dream of exploring, like the bodies of

gods that were crossing this guy. Probably not, but you know, now we're we're definitely at that point, although we call those bodies of God's rockets, uh, but you know, we're at the point now where we do dream of the exploration and establishment of a colony somewhere else. And I think Mars has its own kind of appeal because while there are some major challenges that we're gonna have to talk about in a minute, uh, the fact that it is in some ways much more similar to Earth than

the Moon is. I mean, there is an atmosphere, even though it's not a breathable atmosphere, it's not very thick, uh. And there is more gravity on Mars, although it's not as great as Earth's gravity in uh, it kind of feels like that would be a better fit in some ways. So that kind of leads us into a discussion about what the challenges are of establishing colonies at either the

Moon or Mars um. And they share some stuff in common, but there are also some very you know, there's some things that are peculiar to just one or the other. Uh So, I mean the first problem is getting there. Not getting to the Moon is significantly less difficult than getting to Mars, so a couple of days. Yeah, Yeah, getting to the Moon is a few days, whereas getting to Mars, depending upon where Mars and Earth are along

their orbits. And yeah, hopefully we would sink that up so that it was a shorter trip, but the best estimates about a hundred and eighty days, right, Yeah, generally like six months tends to be the on the shortest of short And even then, you're not aiming at where Mars is. You're aiming at where it's going to be, right, you have to do a trajectory of where Mars will be by the time your spacecraft gets to that point in space. Yeah, we discussed last time what happens to

your body while you're in space on transit. In transit to Mars, dred and eight days in interplanetary space is not very cool. As it turns out, there's a lot of radiation going on in space. Yeah, there's a there's solar radiation there's cosmic radiation, cosmic rays. Uh, these are nasty things to encounter. It's not it's not something that you definitely it's not something you want to be exposed

to for very long. So it means that either you would have to shield your spacecraft in such a way so that it could block the majority of this radiation, which adds weight to your spacecraft, it makes it more difficult for you to have to launch it, or you just have to endure the danger of traveling through that. Now that that's just kind of a nonstarter, Like you just have to find a way to shield the astronauts right the the there was one study that was done, uh back by the f a A actually back in

two thousand five. If that said that if you were to take a journey to Mars and back. Now this was a thought of if we were to visit Mars but then ultimately return to Earth. As we'll discussed later on the podcast. Now the look at going to Mars essentially means a one way ticket because the difficulty of getting someone back to Earth is so great that it's it would push back the mission many more years for

us to be able to do that. So the FAA estimated that it would take about five and thirty six days in space total to get two Mars and back because remember those both planets are continuing to travel through space while you're going on this mission, which means that by the time you land on Mars, Earth is not where you thought it was gonna be like, So you actually have to wait for the plants to start to line up. Against that you can optimize your travel time.

Otherwise you have to worry about how much more fuel you're going to carry, which again changes all the other parameters of mission. It's really complicated in other words, like one change to one thing changes everything else. Um, they said that they estimated someone who would be between and thirty four years old would have a ten chance of contracting cancer if you're male, if you're female, seventeen. So uh, that's a that's a you know, that's a significant number.

That's just and that's just the trip. So Mars, as it turns out, does not have enough of an atmosphere to really block a lot of this nasty radiation, and it doesn't have a magnetosphere to repel cosmic rays, and cosmic rays are thought to possibly lead to diseases like Alzheimer's. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's not just cancer. There are a lot of nasty things that can happen to you upon exposure to this stuff. You are vulnerable to it while you are traveling to Mars, and you would still be vulnerable

on the surface of Mars. Will talk about a proposed mission to Mars that and how they are talking about getting trying to get around that, trying to keep people safe from this kind of radiation. But the point is that's something you gotta worry about. Now. The Moon benefits from being close enough to the Earth where not all of this radiation is going to hit the Moon, but it's still quite a bit still does hit the Moon. Yeah, the moon is is from what I read, and maybe

I'm wrong. I thought the moon was was pretty much just as bad a radiation situation as the surface of Mars. But the it's well, it's different because of the lack of atmosphere. That certainly plays a huge role with the Moon. But the advantages is the length of the trip, right, Yeah, you're talking about exposed as long on the way there, and the heathetically come home within a certain period of time,

so to to minimize your exposure exactly. Yeah. And and but so if we're talking about in both cases that they could build a surface on the structure that would protect you from the radiation or under the ground. Yeah, um, build a surface on the structure. I think that's what I said, build a structure on the surface. Sorry, Uh that would yeah, well, so that would keep you safe in either place. But the trip to Mars is unavoidable. It's going to be long, even in the best case. Now,

some other challenges to discuss. Uh. You know, we've also said in the last podcast about how long exposure to micro gravity can result in other problems, things like your bone loss, your your body fluids redistribute, and you can start to have cardiovascular and blood pressure problems. Uh. Now on a trip to Mars, that's dangerous. The ones you get to Mars, the gravity is a little bit better, so you you could avoid some of those problems the moon one six the Earth gravity, so some of those

problems would remain. Uh, big concerns like if you spend any appreciable amount of time on the Moon and then came back to Earth, you probably feel like you were wearing lead clothing. Um. And uh, and it's possible that you could be suffering from some of these problems like muscle loss and bone loss that uh, muscle less you can recover from, but bone loss is something that is pretty you know, pretty much permanent. Medical technology. Yeah, there's

no coming back. Now. Maybe by the time we actually have a colony on the Moon we can fix that. We'll have like Dr McCoy's little medical device that will magically restore bone loss, but right now we don't have that. UM, So both of those trips would have those issues as well, and that once you got to Mars you probably could avoid some of the muscle loss and bone loss stuff, but on the trip there you'd still have to deal

with it. Um. You don't have a breathable atmosphere in either location, so you have to make sure that you bring something with you. Now, in the case of the Moon, you pretty much have to bring all of it, I mean uh, and then continually resupply with Mars. There's talk of the fact that you might be able to get ice from Mars and then treat it so that you can make it a breathable atmosphere, but you would have to treat it because the stuff that is on Mars

is not friendly to human lungs. Oh. Yeah, it's another problem with Mars, isn't it. It's got some stuff there that we don't our bodies don't like. Yeah, the Mars regular, as it turns out, is pretty toxic overall. Um, there's a There are a lot of words here that I do not know how to say at all. Okay, um poison dust, poison dust, um, silicates, silicates, Yeah, Silicates are stuff that react with water to form things like hydrogen, peroxide,

hydroxyl and superoxide. UM and bt dubs. Water is in our lungs, so when you when you breathe silicates in quartz dust does the same thing, and it's blamed for for for lung cancer and UH silicosis in minors. Um which which is a terrible lung disease. UM uh gypsum Um is a sulfate material that forms again in the presence of water. It's not technically toxic, but it's an extreme ice, skin and respiratory irritant, like on the level of coal dust, um uh and uh perch perch lare it? Yes,

there you go that UM. It's which is a group of chemicals that are used as some oxidizers and rocket fuel um which can which can basically break down the thyroid gland too. So you have to make sure that whatever environment you have, you are completely free of these contaminants that could otherwise kill you, these toxic things that could kill you. It's not like you're going to be

running around barefoot in this stuff or anything. But you'd have to imagine that like the cleansing process to get like like anything that you took in from outside would have to go through the kind of DeCamp decontamination. Yeah, it would. It would be the it would be the space version of de lousing. It would be it would be this incredibly thorough process. It would have to be in order for you to avoid contaminating the habitable areas

of the colony. And maybe this gives us a moment to talk about what is actually feasible in terms of a habitable environment on these planets. Uh in, not planet the Moon and the planet Mars. We're not talking about these these big space cities like you see in the movies. I mean, in the near future, we're basically talking about living in a can. Yeah, a few, maybe a few cans that are connected by by tubes, underground cans well, especially for for Mars, it would have to be um

and we'll talk about the specific one. Mars one is the one will specifically talk about. But um, you know, the moon would probably be a good idea too, just so that you can avoid that radiation problem. But the other big issue of course with Mars is that it is so far away that you know, we could send materials there, but it's going to take the better part of a year to get there, depending upon where Earth

and Mars are in their orbits. So if you left your phone charger, yeah, or food food right, or that your oxygen making equipment isn't making oxygen at the rate you need it, then you're not in good shape mentioning food. This brings up another thing that's pretty interesting I read in a Slate article about Mars colonization. One issue is that we don't know what the long term effects of

being separated from Earth bacteria are on the diet. Like, so they're there's soil bacteria all over the Earth, and having good biodiversity of bacteria and the soil is apparently important for growing the kinds of crops that keep our gut flora healthy, right, right, um. There there's a project called the Human Microbiome Project that that has found that bacterial cells outnumber our cells in our own bodies like ten to one. We've got something like a hundred trillion

bacteria living in US at any given time. So really, were not so much human as we are bacteria planets. Yes, we are giant bacteria bags well by mass, we're a lot. We out number back, not out number, but our cells are bigger, we outmask but but but but any any given human contains up to like ten thousand strains of bacteria um. And and all of those are different depending

on what you eat and where you live. Like like, for example, if you eat a bunch of sushi, Um, there's there's a uh, there's there's a bacteria for that that helps you break down the seaweed, there's a bacteria for that. There's a bacteria. It's much better than there's nap for that. Um Yeah, well but so so yeah. If so, if you're on Mars and you you're eating food grown hydroponic lee on Mars, you're not getting that

biodiversity right. It has none of the If you're just growing out of water, you don't have that soil, and it would be just drastically expensive to ship dirt to Mars. Whether or not those bacteria could even live in those environments that we're artificially creating for ourselves is a questions. So those are the challenges. Let's talk a little bit about some of the proposed missions that either will or

would or could have the colony on Mars or the Moon. Well, okay, and and and this is this kind of ties back into the challenges as well, because because that the costs of doing all of this stuff is large end end astronomi dear s. I was avoiding that word, but there you go. Um uh yeah, grain at me like an idiot. I am an idiot looking at going to the moon.

Um about back in two thousand four, that's why the moon kind of concept um the the initial estimates were between a hundred and we're about a hundred billion dollars through um, but other people said that it could cost somewhere between two hundred fifty billions. And the Constellation program, which was a program that NASA had proposed back in the mid two thousand's that would have been our Moon

colony and future deep space exploration program. Uh. One of the major criticisms leveled against that program was that it was already going over budget and it was behind schedule, um and so it may have been that that one

billion dollar estimate was in fact low. I mean, it's it's hard to say when you first come up with these things because a lot of the challenges you will discover as you embark upon these projects aren't known at the beginning, right you start to discover them as you go along, and then you realize, oh, now I had

to take this into consideration. Wait a minute, now that I know this one piece of information that affects these other fourteen things I thought I knew before, and uh if I don't have any of the numbers in front of me, But if you look at any of the NASA programs, most of them have gone tremendously over budget, and not in those you know, like government spending kind of kind of ways. Just because of of what you

were saying. Yeah, I mean, not not to say that every NASA program has been a model of efficient management, because there are certainly cases of mismanagement within the Space program, but it's not like that's the one and only factor that leads to a project going over budget sure and UM. In contrast the Mars one cost um, which which is one of the projects we're probably about to talk about

in detail. UM their their estimated cost is UM about six billion dollars for the first colony of four people. This makes no sense to me, which is ridiculous. Although although Elon musk Um roughly estimated to Mars colony at only thirty six billion UM, and I would say they all had to go in Tesla's right, we had just getting the Tesla and launch it into space and then you could drive there and the nice thing is it's a silent ride. But you know, I am but it

wasn't before. But it's But it's ridiculous. It's crazy to me that the people are estimating going to Mars in this this six billion, this thirty six billion numbers. When we were talking about going to the Moon, uh, you know, almost a decade ago. For yeah, it's well, they're going to finance it by reality TV. So what's the problem. All right, Well, before we get into that, let me talk about the Moon one first. Because this this this

kind of predates the Mars one circus. I think it's it's safe to call it a circus, right, No, I well, so unfair. I don't want to I don't want to throw a wet blanket on Mars one. I'm just saying it. I'm very skeptical. I don't want to say I don't want to be a downer and say like, don't try. I'm just saying like, it's I don't know how you're going to do. We'll get into that. We'll talk about the Mars one fiasco in a minute. So, uh, I'm sorry, my my brain switched off. Now let's talk about the

Moon for a second. So NASA had the Constellation program that they had proposed where it would UH. The idea was to to create a crew exploration vehicle, which was eventually named the Orion, and the Orion crew Exploration vehicle was to replace the previous UH methods of delivering people into space UM and also to create a new type of heavy lifting vehicle, essentially a rocket, so that that would replace what in the Constellation program was the Area's

five rocket. So the Constellation program was meant to establish a presence on the Moon, a colony on the Moon, and then further go into space, perhaps eventually exploring and maybe even colonizing Mars and beyond. That was the idea, and some of the missions would be you know, unmanned missions that we would fire off from the Moon and etcetera. Uh. The problem was that the budget, it went over budget, it was behind schedule. UH. It had been criticized widely because, UM,

it's hard. It can be very difficult for scientists to justify the cost in the eyes of politicians and their constituents who don't see an immediate return on investment. UM. It's not to say that people all undervalue what science brings to us and they don't realize it. It's just

that it's a tough sell. Sure, Sure when when you're going you know, like like healthcare and food education and I mean granted these the work that we do in these endeavors can often benefit us in those arenas, but it's hard to make that direct connection when you are just trying to justify an enormous price tech. Right. So NASA eventually, first they shelved the program and then essentially the Obama administration scrapped it. So the Constellation program is

no more. The Crew Exploration vehicle lives on the Orion that has continued to be funded and developed, although now the focus at least in the short term, it's less on the Orion being an exploration vehicle and more for being a an alternative to an escape pod for the I S S folks, the International Space Station folks, so that way we don't have to depend upon the Russian soyas capsules. Instead we have our very own capsules we

could use um. And then there's also that heavy lifting vehicle that is still being funded, which would be used to put crew and cargo and heavy supplies out into space. It would be a necessary part of deep space exploration.

There's been a lot of criticisms directed toward the Obama administration for putting that into motion, because a lot of people said that really the Area's five rocket would have done all of that, and that if we had stuck with the Constellation program, we would already be preparing people to go out into space, like within the next two years, we could have had someone on Mars. That's the argument

that the critics have made towards this program. Where the truth lies, I don't know, because this is a complex issue. We've got a lot more than just the science and technology going on. You've got politics and economics, and eventually you get well beyond my level of expertise. So I don't know which side is the more realistic, but it's certainly it certainly does not look like we're going to have a lunar colony there anytime in the near future. Maybe we do within I don't know. Twenty is as

close as I would go. I know that Obama had talked about even establishing a a presence on an asteroid by in preparation to landing people on Mars by twenty thirty five sometime around then. But you know, it's there have been a lot of critics saying that, how can you expect us to do that when you essentially hit reset on the program we had designed to do those things. Uh, meanwhile, Mars one, So Mars one is a totally different animal.

It's a private approach as opposed to a government sponsored approach, and it's a one way ticket. Yeah. Yeah, you do not come back, at least, there's no mean right. Maybe you would, maybe you would live long enough for us to develop a way to get you back, but that the plan is that once you go, that's where you're going to be spending the rest of your days. It's on that red planet. It's a it's a run by a technically a nonprofit foundation that is run by a

for profit group. Yeah. Well really, what you have is you've got a for profit arm that does all the merchandizing and like we said, the Mark TV, the TV reality show that's supposed to be the no, that's supposed to be the main way for generating revenue. The TV reality show and merchandizing would generate the revenue needed to pour into the research, development, production and execution of this project.

So the the the idea is that through the applicant process and through the launch and through the settlement, um, you would be you know, yeah, yeah, doing a reality

TV series what these people are going through. You would have a Mars one big brother essentially is from from the very beginning where you have the selection process through the training process, and that training would probably involve putting applicants into hostile environments where they have to pretty much spend all their time within UH kind of like a biodome experience, you know, but put the someplace where they really could not venture beyond their their UH stations because

they would die. So something like Antarctica or whatever, you put the someplace where it would be really tough to survive. So that which yeah, yeah, for training purposes, but also it makes great television folks. Um I mean and in the way that interesting fact, I'm pretty sure that the Soviet cosmonauts were banned from playing chess after um, someone in Antarctica killed someone over the outcome of a chess match. That's so, this is a kind of TV that we

can look forward to on the Mars one projects. So so this does raise questions obviously, like let's a that let's say that everything goes really well and despite the myriad of challenges we mentioned, not to mention all the other challenges based upon the actual Mars one radiation, the fact that they have to to build these like what, They'll build the capsules and send them to Mars. That's the plan, right, and they the capsules land on the

surface of Mars. Rovers that they also put on the surface of Mars help bring those capsules to where they need to be, and then astronauts and the rovers together, the first group of astronauts, the first group of four would land on Mars and with yeah, so around the same time as what Obama's plan would would do through uh, through the new NASA initiative. UH. The they would use the rovers to help build the living space they would need.

So essentially, the rovers and the first group before would be in charge of putting together all the habitable space for the next group before and the next group before. I think there's twenty total. The plan was to send out another four people every um, every every so often, every every couple of years. So uh, at any rate, the idea of being the first four would have the most palatial estate for a while because they'd be the

ones in charge of putting it all together. But you know, to address that issue of radiation and the fact that they don't have the protection on the surface of Mars that we do on Earth, that talked about burying, you know, digging underground and putting some of the stations there. Some like the living quarters would be down there. According according to Mars, one five ms of or about sixteen point four feet of Martian soil would be equivalent to being

protected by Earth's atmosphere. And yeah, so, I mean it doesn't sound like it'd be of very comfortable experience. You'd be living underground on Mars with no way of getting back. Now, let's however, I mean, you know, it's a lot of people. You know, applications have gone, you know, everyone on the planets least well, they say they have at least a hundred thousands. Did I read some criticism It was something like they were counting applications that were started but not

completed or so That's why I say. They say, it's almost like when they talk about when a when a technology company tells about how many units they've sold, and they include all the units that they have shipped to retailers that haven't been sold to consumers, they've been sold to retail establishments, but they counted as units sold. Well, regardless, I would say that it's captured the public's imagination. Right. But see, here's here's the point I was getting at

before I went on my incredibly long tangent. So let's assume that they beat all the odds and somehow they managed to land these rovers the capsules. Everything works, They put it all together before I get there. They no one's killed each other. Everything's hunky dory. The four got people settled down for a long Martian nap, and uh, the ratings for the TV show start to slip, and then the TV show that doesn't receive the financial support

that it once had. What happens to those people that we've put on Mars And what happens when the TV show goes away when people stop buying Mars one trucker hats and T shirts. We're sorry, colonists, you have been canceled. Right, Yeah, what do we do? You know that's there's a Now we have a moral obligation, or at least an ethical obligation to the people we have put on this planet

to keep them alive. Like, well, that's weird that you'd have an ethical obligation to people who are put there by a private enterprise, you know, not by your government or something. I also wonder. I mean, again, this is the skeptic in me. You've got a nonprofit organization that's overseeing all of this, and there's the for profit side that is designed to get all the money for it, and the nonprofit side essentially has like ninety five controlling

interests in this private enterprise. Essentially, the nonprofit is in charge of making sure that the funds go to where they need to go with research and development and all this kind of stuff. Uh, the skeptic in me worries that that's this. I would like to think that everyone's on the up and up. But the skeptic and me can't help but say, you know, if this were a scam, this is a heck of a scam where you've got a non private organization that's essentially funneling all this money.

So I don't say that this necessary. I mean, obviously for it to work, they would have to have the people involved, Otherwise you don't have a product to sell. So I would like to think that this is mostly on the up and up, but at the very least, I have to say it seems overly optimistic, if not naive.

While we're on the negative side, I wanted to have another kind of dark concern I have about this is that, so we've talked about the inspiration factor that you know, so many kids wanted to get into science and exploration and engineering and stuff because of the moon landing. Uh and and are to the benefit of the Mars one if it succeeded and everything went according to plan, would be oh yeah, so we can renew that there's this new sense of adventure about going to space and kids

are really inspired. Is it possible that there could be the opposite effect. Now, if you have a reality TV show where, assuming something bad happens, uh, we're watching people slowly deteriorate in health over the course of eleven months until they all die. Could that have a to the opposite effect really discourage people? I think it certainly would. Yeah,

it's I agree that. And even if it just even if this were a project that just ultimately fails because it was too ambitious, like not saying that everyone is sincere in their desire of fulfilling this project. If it fails because it was too ambitious and uh, and they don't have a lot to show for it, that could end up hurting it as well. And it doesn't have to be a complete like disaster and ending the loss of human life for it to have a negative impact.

But then again, here we are naysaying, and we could have made a lot of these criticisms about the plan to put somebody on the moon a decade. I mean, that was ambitious. Lots of people said that that would be impossible, that it would result in the death of astronauts,

said it just that there was no point to it. Yeah, And and so I just want to I want to show prudence there, you know, I want to say like that I'm skeptical, but that if you're listening people involved involved in Mars one and you're really trying to do this, I mean, work on it. Yeah, I'm not trying to say stop. I will say I will say, if you are working for Mars one, that I find your approach to discussing the dangers of radiation to be a little carevilly.

For example, you remember when I mentioned that if you were between the ages of twenty five and thirty four and you spent um. So so if you're between those ages and you've spent a good amount of time in space, your chances for developing cancer if you're male increased by ten percent and female by about se um. And then Mars one's response to that, saying this is quoting from their website. Let's compare it to the people who do

not go to Mars in their lifetimes. Men have a twelve percent chance of contracting prostate cancer and women have a twelve and a half percent chance of developing breast cancer. That's in your lifetime. Okay, that's one specific kind of cancer to specific kinds of cancer. So we're talking. They're they're comparing a person's entire lifespan to the amount of time it would take just to go to Mars and then be exposed to radiation. So I think that that

is at best, that's misinformation. At worst, it's completely disingenuous, and it it misleads people into thinking that it's safer than it really is. And I I'm sure that assuming that they are all on the up and up, that through the screening process and the training process, all of that information will become much more concrete for the people who are are serious about pursuing this. I'm sure it would be disclosed. Yeah, But on the face of it,

it makes me uneasy. Yeah, yeah, especially when you're charging for applications and you're inviting the whole world to apply. You know, it's a little bit, it's a little bit squiggly. Jim Bob, you are going to go to Mars. Don't worry about cancer. So are we ready to talk about some other options? Let's okay. So we we've talked a lot about the Moon and Mars, and those are the big ones, I think, but our imagination doesn't have to

stop there. I mean, it's possible that we could colonize other places in the Solar system too, uh, And I wanted to talk about a few of those, and I want to start with one that's kind of kind of counterintuitive, but for a strange reason I think might be the most likely place, which would be asteroids. And the reason I think that is because asteroids have one of the most obvious financial incentives. Sure there could be could be

are chock full equil stuff. Yeah, there are asteroids that could have a lot of metals that are in the platinum family, which are exceedingly rare on Earth, super rare on Earth, but not so much in asteroids. And they say, like one asteroid could have more platinum group metals than have ever been mined on Earth so far and so and those are very expensive, you know, more expensive than gold usually, and they're also incredibly useful. It's not just

that they're pretty. We can use them in electronics, they're they're useful in platinum used in like in fuel cells, right, and you can use platinum and fuel cells that for catalysts, so that you can have hydrogen based fuel cells, I should say, because there are a lot of different kinds, but in hydrogen based fuel cells. More often than not,

the catalysts tends to be platinum. Uh. So this is really useful, highly valuable, and so there's a financial incentive for people to work really hard and invest lots of money to get there and set up shop. Now, the other side of that is that asteroids are extremely they're not friendly to humans because they don't have an atmosphere and they don't have a magnetosphere. Some some might be big enough to have a small magnetosphere, and there's not

signific not significant enough to protect us from radiation. So you'd still have that that space radiation problem unless you were to drill down deep or have very protective coating. Step one higher, Bruce willis step two. Yeah, but it's all the same stuff we've been talking about. There, You're you're exposed to radiation in a bad way. It's it's a low or micro gravity environment, which is a pro

and a coon on asteroids. Number one, it's a pro because it makes it that much easier to land and take off um, but it's a con because it has this negative effect on humans. And one of the pros also is that it might be much easier to build load bearing structures like living quarters and stuff on the surface of an asteroid, i'd because of that low gravity. Um,

it would require you know, just less material. Again, they're they're they're a little bit further out in the Moon, so so that can have a potential for yeah launch, They're they're near Earth asteroids and there are Main Belt asteroids and and so we've thought about both. It seems more likely to me that if we were to set up shop would be on one of the bigger, nearer Earth asteroids that they want to exploit. But also you could focus on Main Belt asteroids or even like the

Dwarf Planet series. Um, yeah, that's oh oh mega. Yeah. But like we've been saying that all these challenges are there, but these are other places we might look. Here's a really cool one I came across, which is and this is very fantastical. It's this is looking a long way in the future, not not any near term. But uh. I read uh Universe Today article that interviewed this NASA scientist named Jeffrey Landis, and he talked about an interesting

way of possibly colonizing Venus in the far future. Venus Venus which which can melt lead. Yeah, the surface of which can melt lead, boil sulfur the surface of screen. The surface of Venus has a pressure about ninety times that of Earth's atmosphere, so it's like a pressure that's not quite as much as the bottom of the deepest part of Earth's ocean, but like being at the bottom of some parts of the ocean. Um. See I'm seeing here.

It has a mean surface temperature of seven thirty five kelvin, which is about four sixty two degrees celsius or a balmy eight sixty three degrees fahrenheit. Yeah, like we said, melts lead, So drop your artillery shell and it's just liquid. All of your books catch fire. But this plan but so there it's well it's not so much a plan and that anybody's gonna do it real soon. But he just talked about it is a sort of thought experiment,

and it actually sounds really cool. So he had this idea that a balloon filled with breathable air would float in Venus's atmosphere because of Venus's atmosphere is so thick, so the density of this balloon full of air that we could have breathed would float in Venus's atmosphere at a place where the atmospheric pressure is about one bar or one atmosphere, which is totally livable for us. Um,

just floating in the atmosphere by itself. Are you telling me there's talking about a floating colony that he's talking about a floating cloud city on exactly. Yeah, it would be Lando Calarisians city on Venus. And um, yes, we've all seen that old adlay Williams in the cult forty five. What does it say? He says works every time. But yeah,

and so we'd all be chilling with Lando. Um. But but the cool thing about this is so just imagine you would counteract a lot of these problems if you're if you're in the atmosphere at this level, it would be a reasonable temperature at this level in the atmosphere because where this balloon would float would be comparable to Earth's atmosphere temperature. Um, it would be you would be uh safe from rapid decompression because the atmospheric pressure outside

would be about the same as it would be inside. Um. So you have all these cool benefits. Now you would have some problems number one, like how would you build this? Also, if I'm not mistaken, the clouds on Venus are made of sulfuric acid. That's exactly right, and it would be that that's one of the main problems he identified. He thought that the hardest part of this would be making the balloon out of a material that's sturdy enough to hold it and keep it in place and not not

too heavy at the same time to sink it. But that would be sturdy enough to withstand the corrosive effects of the sulfuric acid that would build up on the outside of the balloon. Um. But anyway, I think that's a really interesting idea. Uh. And then that of course leads to the other question that if you're talking about colonization, we're not necessarily talking about on the surface. So could we create floating cities and other gas planets like the

gas giants. The answer there is probably no, because gas giants like a Jupiter just has massive radiation stormy and yeah, it's Jupiter is just a death trap. Um. Really, like, it's way worse than just interplanetary radiation. Mars was hostile. You don't know anything yet. Seriously, Jupiter, it's like it's not just that you're you're lacking the protection of Earth, but you're subjecting yourself to additional radiation. Um. And there's a huge gravity. Well, and that creates a big problem. Um.

But so could we colonize other planets? Well, uh, here's one that's another weird option. What about Mercury. Well, you say, why would we colonize Mercury? And how could we do it? It's so hot. Mercury is actually not quite as hot as Venus, but it's almost as hot. So why would you do that? Well, it turns out the polar regions of Mercury might be safe temperatures, um, if you go

straight to the north or south pole. Uh. And another thing that's interesting is satellite data makes us think that there is probably water ice on the poles of Mercury, which is a sort of a must have. It's kind of it's way up there on our list of things what we want, um, and so you can get it this there might be other volatiles that would be useful for us. And one of the big pluses of colonizing Mercury would be solar energy. Okay, Now, the surface of

Mercury gets a huge amount of solar energy. It gets way more than the surface of the Earth does. And if you could set up shop on Mercury where you're collecting solar energy, you could create a just ginormous surplus of energy that's useful in space, be way more, way more effective than our our Earth based photovoltaics because of the yeah, proximity to right and so so that's one

big selling point of of Mercury. Uh. And so some people have even said, like, if you go way way into the future, I don't know if you've read about, like, uh, some of the plans for creating like Dyson spears. Have you ever heard of this concept where you would be creating just tons and tons of solar panels to harness all of the Sun's energy. Basically a lot of these plans involved something basically like, uh, turning the planet Mercury

into solar panels, like you're you're just mining it to death. Um. Of course that's so far in the future. That's it's basically fantasy, but it's an interesting idea. Um. So, then there are a couple other places in the Solar system we might look. I've already mentioned that Jupiter is kind of a death trap, but there are really cool reasons we might want to go to Europa, Yeah, which is still pretty rough. Oh yeah, I'm not saying we want to go there, like it'd be real nice, and I'm

saying there's there's a strong incentence. But yeah, like there are like they're like the amount of lethal radiation you would receive in Jupiter as uh you know, it's it's it's a huge amount, but uh it's only like one six that on Eurobo, which is still pretty nasty stuff. Well yeah, on one day, one day of surface exposure on Europa, they say is is a fatal dose of radiation for a human. So again you need massive protection.

Uh So Europa for those of you who don't know that, that's a moon of Jupiter and it's the place in the Solar system that we're that scientists are the most excited about life. They think that Okay, now Europa is covered in this icy crust, and underneath that icy crust, they're pretty sure there are vast oceans of liquid water, and they think in those oceans of liquid water, it's

entirely possible that there is microbial life. We just don't know, but that's on the radiation, some kind of eldriche horror. They think it's the best place to look um and so that's a really cool reason to go there. Um. Of course, the drawback of that is one of the

challenges to human colonization might be the same thing. Uh now, if there are alien microbes there, that might be bad times to be fair, to be fair, Yeah, the the likelihood of alien and and terrestrial biology being all um compatible in any way so like for it to be sort of a bacteria or a virus kind of thing is the likelihood is low because it's the development would have been so far separated that the chance that they're

being compatibility is also low. Well, it can still be toxic though, Oh yeah, so toxicity would still be an issue, but you wouldn't necessarily worry about catching some sort of weird European I don't know. No, it would be more likely that it would be something like you know, the the europa version of Chlistradian bata lineum, which causes botulism, which you know is a neurotoxin that can kill on the magnitude of nanograms. So yeah, or you can use

it to smooth out those wrinkles. I don't know. It sounds like you're saying like you're sure that it wouldn't have a biochemistry similar to Earth life. I would say that we don't know. We don't know whether it would. I'd say that it would be separated by enough time that the likelihood of it having compatibility would be low, not that not that it's I would just say that I don't think I could comment on the likelihood. I don't know why we would we would know one way

or another at any rate. Anyway, So yeah, well it would be because it's icy. Um, so it's yeah, it's very cold. As we discussed before, Jupiter's radiation is completely nasty. People have talked about one way to protect ourselves if we were to set up a colony on Europa would be to drill under the ice. And water is actually pretty good at shielding from radiation because of the hydrogen content in water. Um, so if you drill deep enough

in the ice, you would be protected on Europa, we think, yeah. Um. And so the Jupiter has other moons too, I mean there's there's Ganymede, which doesn't it doesn't have nearly as much radiation as Europa does have some magnetosphere as well, that's true, but there's not as much to do one. Have you ever been there? It was a slow place on a Saturday night and it's only Thursday morning. Ganymedes Gennamed is not a research prize like Europa is. Of course,

there's and then there's like, well there's also a Calisto. Yeah, okay, which is which receives even less radiation to the point where you know, maybe we don't have as much of a research base there, but it could be another launching pad for further deep space exploration. I want to talk about one more really cool possibility and that Saturn's moon tighten r. Have you all read about Titans. Titans cool because it's sort of like planet oil, not oil, but hydrocarbons,

you know. Uh So it's a planet that's full of we think methane and all these organic compounds, probably liquid lakes on the surface, and it has it's the only moon as far as I know, in our Solar system that has a dense atmosphere. Now, to be fair, when you say liquid lakes, we're talking liquid lakes and things like methane and ethane, not liquid water. Well, no, they think there might be some water, but we're not talking about all water. Yeah, it would be a lot of

methane and stuff. Uh, so that's really cool. But it's freezing. It has low gravity, and it's let me talk about how cold it is. So the butchure on Titan surfaces about negative two degrees eighty nine degrees fahrenheit. That's a negative a hundred and seventy eight degrees celsius um in for some perspective, I just quickly looked up the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, that's ever recorded on Earth anywhere.

That was a negative a hundred and twenty eight point six degrees fahrenheit or negative eighty nine point two degrees celsius, and that was in Vostok Station in Antarctica. Clearly, no no measurement has ever been taken. After I've told a really bad pun and Lauren has reacted because, let me tell you, there's no molecular movement in that room. The level of coldness is unimaginable. I mean, it's how cold this is. It's one thing they talked about is it's

so cold that the atmosphere is just extremely thick. You know, it's kind of a soupy atmosphere. You could you could wear wings and fly, you know, although you know it's I'm sure that we could work out the heat management system if we, you know, had the technology to get there. Yeah, yeah, and there. But it's full of resources, and that that's what's cool. I mean, it's like it's your interplanetary gas station. Well, yeah, some of the other planets may have lots of resources

that would be very useful to us. It's just the question of is there any way of getting there and getting the resources to where we would need them in a way that makes sense. Like Urinus might have lots of helium three on it, but to get out there and to get back take a monumental effort. So on the other hand, I would not recommend colonizing anywhere near Neptune because that's where event Horizon happens, and if you've seen it, you should know very very poorly. Yeah, so

you just you don't do that. Okay, Well, you know, I don't have any problem going to Mars despite Mars attacks. But let's I think that wraps up our discussion here. So the interesting thing here is that I don't think we're going to be abandoning these dreams of colonization anytime student, and I really hope that we're able to see um live to see some of these come to fruition. And while we do feel skeptical about the Mars One initiative, maybe that is the one that works out. You know,

it's too early for us to say. It may very well be that the ingenuity and determination the people who are on that program are up to the challenge of getting people on the planet and having them uh survive, and and really, if they are, we're going to find out so many amazing things that it's just gonna be a boon for for all of mankind. Really, whenever we go, and I think we will, it will be it's going to be pretty awesome. Yeah. So, I mean, I certainly

hope it works out. You know, don't don't let our skepticism translate into us being like we shouldn't try. I think all of us believe we should try. We just want to make sure that every effort that has made is our best effort. I think at a certain point that trying is even more important than than than whether we succeed or not. Yeah, and only there in an immediate sense. How only concerns I have, of course are

for people's safety. That's paramount obviously, and then to make sure that nothing we do ends up discouraging future generations from trying to look at how they mucked it up. Let's just let's just go to the bar, and I don't want that to happen. So so we're gonna sign off on this episode. But if you guys have anything to say about colonization space, what what you think are the best approaches, what what you think is uh the most likely scenario, or if you think it's just ridiculous,

you should let us know. I want to hear everything. Let us know. Send us an email are address as FW thinking at discovery dot com or go to FW thinking dot com. That's where you're going to find all the podcasts, the blog post, the videos, links to supporting articles that give more information about this kind of stuff. We think you're really gonna like it, and we will talk to you again really soon. Wrong for more on

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