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Support the Alzheimer's Society Forget Me Not Appeal by donating and wearing your Forget Me Not with pride this June. Help end the devastation caused by dementia. Search Forget Me Not Appeal to donate and get your badge. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas
science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodger, Commissioning Editor at BBC Science Focus. It's now been more than 50 years since any human being has set foot on the moon, but the ambition to do so again has been gathering pace over the last decade or so. But some scientists and researchers are looking further ahead and planning to establish a human presence on distant planets such as Mars. In this episode we speak to physicist and director of the Foundation for Space Development Africa
Dr. Adriana Murray, about her book, Out of this world and into the next. Notes from a physicist on space exploration. She tells us what plans to establish a moon base in the coming years can teach us about living on other planets. How we'll select the crew to take on this bold journey. and how the technology being developed can help us to live more economically and environmentally here on Earth.
So welcome to the podcast. Thanks very much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me, Jason. A pleasure to be here. So we're talking about your new book today, Out of This World and Into the Next, Notes from a Physicist on Space Exploration. So a lot of this is centered on forming a colony on another planet, specifically Mars. So first thing, if we want to get to Mars, we're going to need a means of getting there.
And currently, rocket technology is, while incredibly expensive, and just the sheer amount of fuel and the mass that that provides to the rocket is a bit of a hindrance. So what's the current thinking on new technology that will help us? make this trip Thanks, Jason. Great question. Off the bat, let me say, as a South African and as an African, I would not use the word colony. So I would say expansion beyond earth or settlement. But this is a frequently used word.
so perhaps that's the writer in me getting the terminology and i think the the culture and the spirit with which we go is crucial and perhaps that's why i would classified, yes, as an expansion beyond Earth. Perhaps I even prefer that to settlement because I believe it's not about moving away from Earth at all but rather expanding our perspective of the space that we live in.
which is not in the future limited to only Earth, but very soon we'll be including the surface of the Moon as a stepping stone to the surface of Mars. So, you know, on the propulsion technology side, not much has changed since the early 1900s. One of the fathers of rocket science, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, proposed first to use liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. to propel rockets off the surface of Earth into orbit and beyond.
when this was first demonstrated a few decades later and of course the first satellite a few decades later humans on the moon can we believe before the internet even existed in the 1960s and 70s so While there are of course cost limitations to propulsion systems, the technology basically exists. We don't need nuclear fusion-powered rockets, for example, or quantum computers.
to achieve this goal the tried and tested technologies would be good enough but as you say there are of course challenges around the sheer amounts of mass that we would be wanting to transport when we are thinking about taking people beyond earth and then i think the leaders developing more economic ways of getting large cargoes including crew from earth off world whether it be to the moon or mars or beyond
are perhaps a company called SpaceX, which I'm sure space fans are all familiar with. And then China, the 1.4 billion population countries, government, that's really... Rocketing ahead, could I say, in their space exploration program. I'm with success after success recently. I'm actually speaking from China currently. So it remains to be seen, you know, who does develop a launch vehicle that can launch, you know, perhaps certainly over 100 tons, hundreds of tons, maybe multiple launch vehicles.
Because we'll not only be delivering people with their life support systems, but also all the requirements to build infrastructure there. so i think spacex and the chinese space program are the two to watch in terms of developing the systems that can pull us off so what's the current thinking on the length of the trip if we were to go from perhaps from a sort of moon base rather than the earth to mars like how long are we talking about
so the rovers like the curiosity or the perseverance or the Tianwen mission that went to china's first mission to mars typically arrive in around seven months so that's the current current time frame which when I look back is really not incomparable to the across ocean journeys that our early ancestors would have made by ship.
so it's on the order of a few months we can probably reduce this time so there are proposals to reduce the stone to a few months so say maybe three or four months like having the journey. even more radical proposals using plasma-based propulsion systems or something like that, where we can accelerate at 1G for half the journey, reorient the spacecraft, decelerate at 1G for the other half of the journey to maintain Earth gravity throughout the trip.
this could reduce the journey to just over a month these kinds of propulsion technologies remain theoretical for now and test phase at least But yes, the Starship at the moment is probably, at least with what we're familiar in the public domain, the closest large vehicle to being able to achieve crew transport between Earth and Mars.
Yeah, we still look forward to the first orbital test of the Starship, which would of course be a necessary achievement to think about taking crew beyond Earth orbit to Mars. but it's an exciting time for space exploration i think spacex has got another test of the starship any minute now these are happening regularly so it remains to be seen the orbital success and then finding out exactly what the duration of the trip to mars would be on the starship
Yeah, so of course, once the crew are in the starship, you know, they need to be kept alive. Obviously, that's essential. So what sort of life support systems are in place? You know, how do they breathe? How do they eat? And that sort of thing.
so while living in earth orbit yeah as the father is that humans live beyond earth currently i mean we've had the international space station continuously inhabited for over 20 years now We've also got six Tychonauts living in the Chinese space station also in orbit.
and while this is not very far from earth for me it feels a bit close to home to to be a real adventurer just a few hundred kilometers above the surface this has been a fantastic test ground for keeping people alive in the environment that is space, exposed to radiation, vacuum, microgravity, etc. And we do indeed have good data and good experience on trips of approximately the duration of the trip to Mars. So people would typically live in the space station for six months or more.
And so this is a great data set with which to equip the crew traveling to Mars. so just a side note in terms of looking at the really important i believe parallels between space exploration and improving people's lives here on earth when we look at the fundamental technologies that will be necessary to provide basic resources for our 8 billion and counting population here on earth.
We can really be grateful for the space industry for leading to the sophistication of many of these technologies that we enjoy today. you know maybe people aren't aware that the first solar-powered satellite was launched just like a year later than the first satellite Sputnik. So in the 1950s already we were demonstrating solar powered capability in space because while fossil fuel has been a popular choice for most energy production here on Earth for too long perhaps.
In space, it's not feasible at all. So, you know, luckily we've been developing solar power technologies for decades to get the highly efficient and full photovoltaics that we enjoy today. That's power. So when we look at water. I'm arguably the next most fundamental resource Water of course being a source of oxygen at the same time as being a source of water for various applications. Also hydrogen as a source of fuel. So water is really a cornerstone of space exploration.
water filtration systems, systems performing electrolysis that split the hydrogen and oxygen to provide each separately or recombine to produce electricity and water at the same time. These kind of systems have been used in space exploration also since the 60s. So we're in a good position to use these robust, you know, what you want when you're sending crews hundreds of millions of kilometers away from Earth.
it's not necessarily to have brand new technologies fresh off the shelf or fresh out the research lab tried and tested technologies that have been around decades are good to have that sort of filtration and even the development of leds for growing food indoors or in confined laboratory spaces were sophisticated again by thinking about growing crops in the iss
And now we already see how critical indoor precision agriculture can be, whether it's on a rooftop using solar power, perhaps in a basement using LED lighting. The development of this precision agriculture, we could call it, is another critical element for thinking about.
perhaps growing food on the way to mars and certainly on arrival whether it be the moon or mars for providing fresh food and perhaps as a source of other nutrients or nitrogen itself or various applications of having an organic cycling mechanism like photosynthesis. or perhaps other microbes used for fuel cells, you know, the multiple applications of having other living species doing their thing along with the humans in such a space.
Of course, communication systems goes without saying how the space industry has, of course, not only revolutionized, but provided the infrastructure for our global communications network. providing financial transfer networks, obviously global communications, global positioning. you know earth observation data etc so yeah those are the primary categories that i think about when i think about living off earth those are power water food or nutrition let's say and communications
Of course, then you need some kind of shelter to house all of these technologies. But with those in place, then I think any human community can think about sophisticating further beyond that. And that applies not only to, you know, off-world communities on the moon or Mars, but like refugee camps, overcrowded urban centers.
you know, shelter, safe shelter, reliable park, clean water, nutritious food and communication systems I think are essential for human communities everywhere. So how about things like psychological effects? So being in close proximity with a small group of people, it can be challenging. What can we say about that? What measures do we have in place or even during the selection process, for example?
So the selection process should be really interesting and it's really difficult to predict how that may play out. so on the one hand we've got uh you know one of the richest people on the planet elon musk founder of spacex recently wanting to to skip the moon and go straight to mars so this is really a central endeavor for him and the team he's put together at spacex
It remains to be seen when they would get people to Mars. Then on the other hand, we've got the Chinese space program that has said publicly that they aim to have crew on Mars by 2033, I think it is.
so the next decade or so will be an interesting time i think the chinese space program will likely have their own national team that they would select you know there's maybe not too much mystery there about how that may proceed although of course a different skill set is required of humans setting up camp on another planet than perhaps the skill set required for living just a few hundred kilometers above the surface of the earth in earth orbit
But as a national program, you know, maybe we can predict how that will play out. On the other hand, looking at a private company like SpaceX, developing transport systems with capability to get humans to Mars, I think... it remains unknown how the selection of the crew that may eventually travel there would what that may look like Yeah, so that being said, I established Proudly Human when the Mars One project declared bankruptcy in 2019. I was one of the hundred.
international candidates selected for a one-way trip to mars which according to early predictions would have happened last year so needless to say that didn't go ahead Hopefully my signal from China is okay, but I am indeed still on the planet. Yeah, so proudly human the aim there was not to build the propulsion system because that takes probably two decades of experience and developing capabilities. SpaceX was established in 2002.
Chinese space program has been around for a decade or two so it's possible to get that together in a couple of decades but I wanted to look at the next aspect. as you've mentioned the selection of the crew and the kind of team spirit that you would want to encourage and the kind of conflict situations that you would want to mitigate and i thought the best way to do that would be through a kind of trial and error process
So what this would look like is in contrast perhaps to other programs to not simulate an extreme environment but to really go to an extreme environment and so while simulation projects you know underground or in a submarine or in the in some part of the desert
you know evacuation is typically possible within a few hours typically and so the extremity of the conditions is maybe more simulated than real so the idea with proudly human was to select and in the end we narrowed it down to three types of environment one being antarctica so the reasons for selecting this environment are it's true isolation so during winter
It's basically impossible to evacuate. You can't evacuate by boat because of the ocean freezing. Being evacuated by a plane or helicopter is an extremely treacherous endeavor. There are instances of people having been evacuated during winter, but only less than a couple to a handful in the total history of Antarctic exploration. so you're really there for good in the winter with your team and with the infrastructure that you brought with you
So the other added challenge is the cold. And when we look at the average temperature on Mars being negative 60 degrees Celsius, there are regions in Antarctica that are around negative 60 degrees Celsius during the winter. So that's a good comparison. Not being too heavily reliant on solar power. Mars does have around half of the incoming sunlight than Earth does.
compared to earth so in antarctica you would be forced to look at other sources of energy during the winter time whether that be wind or hydrogen fuel cells perhaps or modular nuclear reactors even so this is a great way to look at power redundancy systems redundancy of power is something you do want when you're in an extreme environment idea if your diesel generator breaks you do want multiple other options to fall back on
so that's a bit of thinking around antarctica i'll go through the environments and then maybe talk a bit about the psychology so the desert would be the next one and that's like playing around with extremely efficient water management so how would you extract your water if you're thinking about the moon or mars you may extract it from the ice that's present in the surface as detected by various missions
then how would you manage your water? So this would be critical, you know, water cycling systems. ambient humidity gatherers, atmospheric water extraction within the habitat, perhaps all of these kind of technologies integrated. and just looking at how efficient can you be with a group of people as well as preserving some level of cheerfulness in the group.
like how many like is a litre of water enough to shower per day you know questions like this we could answer and look at the results and the team's birth from being restrictive water wise so that's the desert and then the third environment would be under the ocean so this is a good approximation to being in space where you need to suit up to go on for example a scuba diving excursion
And I visited the Aquarius Reef Base, a unique undersea research facility, 10 meters, the top is 10 meters, the bottom 18 meters under the ocean off of the Florida Keys. yeah astronauts actually trained for the international space station it's actually built as an analog of the space station and again you need i think it's 17 hours of decompression to evacuate So it's a fairly rigorous evacuation process, perhaps even longer or comparable to evacuating from the International Space Station.
although of course with the recent astronauts spending rather longer in the space station than expected. A 24-hour evacuation from the space station may be possible but not feasible in many cases. So yeah, these were three environments we looked at in these truly extreme places. The idea is to cycle sort of not completely random, but crews of people, including the central expertise required. Obviously, these are medical capabilities.
engineering capabilities for the basic infrastructure. I would say the food side is the next most important once you've got your medical and your life support system going you do want to be able to share meals. decent meals hopefully so even a chef could be considered part of the core team researchers who are benefiting from being in this environment in the first place Do you want someone running karaoke periodically or brewing beer? These are other considerations to be made.
But basically to look through, let me wrap up, to look through what kind of activities sustain team spirit and a sense of community and a sense of vision and purpose within the group. and how can inevitable conflict be mitigated and quickly resolved. And I think rather than look at theoretical models of this, I think it's really good to iterate these kind of experiments through many.
Many iterations collect data and then draw conclusions from the data. So we are looking for a broadcast partner for this activity. So if anyone's interested, that's the next step for the Proudly Human Offworld project. So let's say everything's gone well and we've actually made it, we've landed safely. What happens next? How do we, for example, how do you go about building new structures? I think this is really fascinating.
in the past i was anxious to get to mars because the moon is really part of earth it's only one light second away you know the national systems the culture all of what exists on earth will most likely be copied on the moon and so for me mars felt like the ultimate adventure where we'd really get to rethink community structures governance regulatory systems and indeed human culture itself
However, now that we're going to the moon in the next few years, again, the US on the one hand, I think the dates are still 2026, although that's becoming diminishingly possible. so in the next few years let's say the u.s planning to send us and partners are planning to send crew back to the moon while china has said before 2030 for the chinese and partners crude based on them on the moon So we will see how this pans out and now I'm very keen to see how these structures are built.
ahead of the crew arriving. and then how the crew assists to expand these bases. Thinking about being underground is a good protection from radiation, so potentially already existing lava tube tunnels could be an option rather than excavating, which is obviously a mammoth task. requiring a lot of energy being the primary.
limitation here as well as of course the equipment that needs to be transported so an existing cave system underground is probably my favorite option which would of course need to be sealed and airlocks produced But the lava tube structure really lends itself, I think, to this like tunnels in between cabins. So you can put airlocks in the smaller openings and then have the cabins as larger spaces for all other activities.
yeah this is one option the easiest option is of course to just put up uh prefab structures on the surface that have been you know lightweight lightweight as possible given that they also need to mitigate radiation on the surface. but certainly the easiest way is to live in the land so i've gone in reverse order living in the land is probably what you would do initially putting up some prefab structures next and perhaps integrating these with some kind of underground structure
potentially previously existing could be one approach but it's really going to be exciting i think to see us and partners in china and multiple partners i'm a director at the foundation for space development africa and we are a partner on the international lunar research station with china
our africa to moon mission technology mission is going to the moon with the changa 8 mission with china in 2029 and this is when the base will be beginning to be constructed so it's going to be fascinating to see how this environment is dealt with
on a technological level preferably before the humans get there because the lunar south pole where we're planning to build the bases is one of the most extreme environments in the solar system temperatures there can drop below negative 200 degrees celsius So this is way colder than, for example, Earth orbit. So traditional satellites are graded to maybe negative 60 degrees Celsius. They get periodically warm by the sun on their trips around the Earth.
whereas the lunar south pole with its 14 days of lunar night It gets really cold. So the primary challenge or one of the many challenges is dealing with these cold temperatures and of course energy being the main factor there.
so let's see i think this is an exciting time for for human exploration let's see how it's done and talking about culture let's see how these two teams collaborate hopefully being the operative idea with each other both aiming for the rather small region relatively speaking of the lunar south pole So you mentioned there equipment, so obviously there's a limited amount of things that you can take. and if we're going to stay somewhere for an extended period of time
How would we produce our own new equipment, new tools, new clothing? Because we don't have a Star Trek style replicator yet, unfortunately. Not yet, not yet, but 3D printing capabilities have been demonstrated in both the ISS and the Chinese space station.
Various types from ceramics to metals etc. So we're on we're on a journey to getting to a replicator let's say but then again it really does make sense to to use the moon as a testing ground so in fact the environmental conditions on mars are easier than the moon the temperatures don't get as cold There's an albeit thin atmosphere that can protect slightly from radiation and regulate temperatures.
the carbon dioxide on the atmosphere provides an additional resource whereas on the moon it's like almost hard vacuum extremely cold temperatures 14 days of day 14 days of night etc so getting things right on the moon will be a great stepping stone to go further and when we look at the moon back to your question logistically speaking resupply from earth will be the primary way in which stuff is delivered So it's a couple of day journey to the moon.
And so if there's a critical resupply mission that needs to leave from Earth, it becomes an economic issue. And then, of course, reusable transport systems as have been developed by SpaceX and also China. are of course the future in the absence of any real revolutions and propulsion systems. As I've said, the technology hasn't fundamentally changed in over a century.
so reusability is something great that we are able to implement immediately and spacex has already shaved zero and and more looking at the future prospects for starship off the costs of launching things from earth
however you know when it comes to water for example which is rather heavy this is the reason why the base is a plan for the lunar south pole is that there is water present there so this is a fundamental resource as i've mentioned and the permanently shadowed craters found at the south pole There's a correlation between the cold temperatures and the fact that this water hasn't sublimated away.
This is then the location for this, such that the water, i.e. the fuel and the oxygen and, of course, the water for people and agriculture can be extracted locally. This will be the beginning. We know there is the surface ice there. We've seen it from orbit. So the next step would be to think about what other resources we might extract there.
you know how we may do that and how that may then feed into industry and then we back to your question which is how we process all of these things but I think it will be a learning process as we go and hopefully there are many young people thinking about these challenges already
because in the next 10 to 20 years i think the ideas about how to not only extract but process and manufacture on the moon will be a really hot topic So clearly you're very enthusiastic about this whole thing, but obviously the whole endeavour will be hugely expensive. And there are some critics that say, well, we shouldn't even be considering this due to the amount of money and resources that it's going to take, which they'd argue could be put to better use elsewhere.
So what are your arguments for taking something like this on? so interestingly before i get on to the question um africa to moon hasn't relied on any funding at all so far so all of our engineers a team of over 30 people have volunteered their time our scientists also part of that team china has offered space on their launches to the lunar south pole so we are piggybacking with the changa 8 mission We have brought partners on board from test facilities to manufacturing partners.
So through the sheer passion and excitement and vision of both our leadership team, the mission director, Carla Sharp-Mitchell, has formidable networks in space and engineering. And I think through the inspiration of this project, people have joined voluntarily. So there's an example of doing space with zero budget. We've demonstrated that it is possible. And I think this is a massive inspiration to the developing world that you don't need to get the billion dollars first.
You can actually start with a passion and work from the app all the way to the moon, as it were. And we're applying for a payload for a Mars mission, upcoming Mars mission as well. Technology at this point, of course. but back to the other question you know
How has investing on earth solved poverty? You know, I think that's the question people are wondering about spending their money or other people spending their money should answer. I would argue inequality has increased, propelled by COVID, various conflicts around the world. we are watching an increase in inequality.
And it's not a zero-sum game where these high net worth individuals need to decide are they going to invest in solving poverty or in... space exploration i think each person can make their own choice i think on the government level looking at a government like china arguably a very unique one with a very large population
and rather influential globally lately they've made a huge turnaround of their economy let's say over the last few decades So I would say they've simultaneously invested in mitigating poverty and indeed growing their middle class massively. I'm looking out the window here at the infrastructural developments that are underway. So I think, and their space program in parallel has achieved goals that others would have thought impossible over the short timeframe that they've achieved them.
So that's an example of a government that has chosen to do both, demonstrating that it is possible. And I think even thinking back to the technologies that I mentioned and how investing in space is investing in Earth. If we stay on Earth, you know, I think it remains to be proven whether Einstein actually said this, but somebody said that you can't solve the problems using the thinking that was used to create the problem.
so if we remain on earth and we don't explore whether physically or metaphorically beyond the paradigm that we find ourselves in we may find ourselves unable to solve the challenges that we face Saya... there are ways in which our society would be advanced by living on the moon or mars or beyond in ways that we can't even imagine there are also ways that we can already imagine like uh you know thinking about powers
thinking about water, thinking about food production. If we can demonstrate highly efficient use of these three in a sustainable way on the moon, then it becomes really difficult to justify the continued poverty in which so many people on earth live. without access to reliable power, clean water and nutritious food.
So I think there are massive parallels in the investment. So I think we can invest in alleviating poverty and space exploration at the same time. And as someone from Africa, that is certainly top of mind for me in these endeavours. So one final question then, are you confident that we'll be able to pull this off? Good question. I think these are an exciting few years coming ahead where I may not need to answer that question because we will see. We will see.
So with the US and partners and China and partners all aiming to put crew on the moon, you know, the fact that it's this competition again, I think is... a collaborative effort would be better but perhaps it will turn into that so if it has to be a competitive based way in which we get back to the moon then so be it but this will be a great test ground technologically speaking for preparing for further journeys
And if we manage to create permanently inhabited research bases on the moon, as I've said, this is a more extreme environment than Mars. so then all that remains to do as you have questioned earlier on is to get the economics right for the propulsion systems because technologically speaking and you know i consider myself a scientist and a technologist In my book, I do talk about the ethics and the cultural aspects.
But I think what remains then is really the business and economic side, and that's not really my sphere. So then I could say after crews are living on the moon, I would say the science and the technology is done. It's proven. then just a bit of courage is all that's required to expand further, perhaps some economic bravery. But I think these things do pay off, maybe not immediately in a financial sense, but as a society.
I think our perspective of reality will be advanced in such vast ways actually priceless ways. and i don't think putting a price tag on it really measures the kind of impact that it will have I think for those of us who dream about exploring beyond Earth, we will keep endeavouring. whether or not we have the budget and then it's up to those people with the budget to decide which aspects they'd like to fund but luckily we've got huge players in the game spending billions of dollars
Even to answer questions like, is their life beyond Earth? So the rovers on Mars are dutifully carrying out their tasks, looking for organics, etc. And the next step is really to get humans there to not only look for life, but to establish it. And so I would say, in summary, watch the space. It's going to be a hell of a ride the next few years for human space exploration.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Dr Adriana Murray. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed Check out her book, Out of This World and Into the Next, notes from a physicist on space exploration.
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