Welcome to text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland dum an, executive producer with I Heart Radio and I love all things tech, and today it is time for another tech stuff classic. Hey, today's topic it comes all the way from June tenth, two thousand thirteen. Wow, I was doing this all the way back then. This episode is called get your Podcast to Mars, a classic Arnold Schwarzenegger reference. I hope you guys enjoy this classic episode. It's kind of an interesting approach to this, this question of when are we going to actually set up a colony somewhere other than on Earth, like like on Mars, and and proposing the fact that it can be not only commercial but um but but driven specifically by public interest. Really, I mean because because here's the thing is that we know that the government officials that are behind things like like the space industry in the United States anyway, are facing increasingly difficult battles in in funding. Right. It's it's getting harder and harder to get a working budget. And some of that is due to problems that the various space industries have had, like specifically what NASA has undergone. Where NASA has had a few projects more than a few, maybe that some would argue we're improperly governed so that they ballooned out of control as far as budget and timeline is considered. And part partially this was also due to just uh, everyone at the outset and not understanding exactly what kinds of issues we're going to crop up along the way and what kinds of problems would need to be solved right, And sometimes it was because you know, it wasn't necessarily mismanaged meant, but it might be that you know, you have very limited uh people you can go to when you need something like an enormous rocket, and if the only company that provides the enormous rockets that you need says, you know, I know that originally we were going to say that this was going to be you know, twenty million dollars per rocket, but in reality, it looks like it's gonna be closer to sixty five. You don't have a lot of options left. So it's I don't mean to suggest that NASA was really bad at managing this stuff. It's just that a lot of a several high profile projects uh, ended up getting bogged down in lots of problems, which and when you're and when you're publicly funded, it's a lot more difficult to handle that This this private funding could hypothetically, you know, eat around some of those problems. You can sell more advertising space or something like that. Right, I mean that that's the whole idea behind the privatization of space exploration, right, is that they aren't uh, they aren't tied down to things like tax income. They don't have to go and petition they have to answer to the taxpayers. That's right, that's right, But they do have to raise those funds some other way because it's not like they just magically have access to those giant rockets. Uh. The supposed funds that MARS one will require to to establish the settlement is six billion dollars. That sounds so low, phenomenally low to me low, but but it's it's starting with just four settlers UM to to expand hypothetically by teams of four every two years, and they're aiming for the first round of settlers to to land in UM three. Uh. Is the is the current proposed date, which is sen years away. Yeah, I mean this isn't that. This is already blowing my mind and we haven't even gotten into what the actual challenges are yet. But just the challenge of getting the materials together, testing your your various acecraft, because obviously you're going to have to design special spacecraft for these teams to go up in. And they're they're talking right now to Elon Musk and the other kids are at SpaceX using their their stuff, which would be important. I mean, like using the Dragon spacecraft that kind of stuff. Uh, obviously that would be something they'd have to take into consideration. It just seems it seems really ambitious. That's not to say that it can't be done or that they shouldn't try. I think being ambitious is fantastic. It's just one of those things where, having seen how difficult it is to get a space project and I hate to use this phrase off the ground, uh, tells me that things are going to have to go really really well for them to make that budget and to make that timeline. Maybe it will, but let's let's talk a little bit more about what this whole project is. So, yeah, the first team lands, and now the thing is that in order for anyone to land on Mars and have any expectation of being able to survive there. Other stuff is gonna have to get there first, a whole bunch of other stuff. Yeah, because Mars doesn't have any supermarkets, so you would need some way of getting supplies there. And I mean, you know, you can't just pack everything you would need in your single rocket. That would be very inefficient. That would be way too much weight, right. Yeah, The more weight you add to your launch vehicle, the more fuel you need. And the more fuel you need, the more weight you add to your launch vehicle, there does come a point where your launch vehicle is too heavy for you to be able to launch it using the fuel sources that we typically use here on Earth. And and they are they are planning a space launch rather than an Earth launch of the actual crew module. Interesting, I did not read that part, So you'll have to tell me more about that if if you get a chance. Sure. But but let's let's let's back all of this back up the So, So, the Mars one project is run by the Bye Bye Bye two parts. It's a there's a nonprofit foundation called Mars one and there's a for profit company called Interplanetary Media Group, which makes me laugh so hard. That they are interplanetary serving all your needs, whether you are on Earth or somewhere else. That's why I do wonder whether whether the nice people who founded it are on Earth or somewhere else. There is a fair, fair request. Are you from here? This? This is these but both of these of these organizations are are are based in the Netherlands, co founded by bob's Landsdorp and are no wielders. And uh Landstorp says that he got the idea when he saw the revenue figures for the International Olympic Committee a bunch of years ago and said, hey, there's money there, there's money there, There's there's money in in televising these epic human events. And you also uncovered that that Interplanetary Media Group the you know, they're they're different organizations that own shares in Interplanetary Media Group. Who owns the majority. The Mars One Foundation owns almost of the shares in Interplanetary Media Group. The nonprofit arm of mars One owns nine of the for profit arm of the project. It's it's also the sole supervisor of the for profit sectors operations weight. So the nonprofit organization oversees the for profit arm of this. Now, now this is just it raises alarm flags in my mind. However, I will say, if this works, it's a brilliant way of of funding this because the nonprofit part can take them any money that's generated from right, and there's no there's no processing fee or whatever you want. There's not a convenience fee because they have this governance and they have this ownership of the the for profit arm. And if that money indeed is going to fund this Mars project, that's exactly what they're going to need in order to have that. That a massive amount of capital they're going to need, right, because because the foundation is going to be is going to be the owner of the settlement on Mars and uh and the employer of the mission teams. Right, and then I am G. The the media group is essentially in charge of of generating funds through things like the televised broadcast of the process of selecting people to go to Mars even and then once they get there, their ongoing experience on Mars to be live stream televised seven s five days a year. Yeah, it's Big Brother Red Planet edition. And then they also but they're also going to be generating money through things like merchandizing, right right, And I am G will in fact hold exclusive um to use this project to generate revenue through broadcasting, advertising, etcetera, etcetera. Right, So you've got this interesting approach to trying to UH to fund space colonization. Obviously, the only way this really works is if it captures the public's attention enough for them to want to watch it, right, because otherwise that flow of revenue isn't going to come from to dry up immediately, and then they don't have any money to build or buy all the stuff they need in order to get things to Mars. So let's talk a little bit about what they are looking for, because clearly they need to have people want to go. And I would I would argue that that part of this, this application process that we're about to talk about, proves that the interest is there, because within the first two weeks that applications were open, they got seventy eight thousand applicants. Yeah, that's that's a that's a huge number. And the application process is still open as of the recording of this podcast, right, Yeah, this is UH. It opened in April. We are recording this in May, and it will be open until August one, right, so so there's still time, still time, And they say that they expect half a million applicants by the time it's all over, because obviously that that first rush is from all the people who hear about it at the very beginning. Now, before you rush out and fill out your application, maybe you should uh learn a little bit more about the parameters of the mission. This is more likely than not a one way ticket. You will not be coming back from Mars. If you were to go to Mars on this mission. Um, there is every possibility that that is where you would have to spend the rest of your life. The the expense incurred to get you back here would basically not be worth you. Well, no no offense to you beyond that, I mean, just the logistics of designing a spacecraft that could and back. Yeah, you'd have to have even more fuel so that you could escape the gravity of Mars. Remember, Mars's gravity is not that different from Earth's, so you would have the same issue. Now that the atmosphere is thinner, so you'd have less air resistance, but that's kind of negligible when you're talking about gravity. Um, so I mean to to create a spacecraft that could get there and then launch from the surface and come back is beyond the scope of this project. So that leaves you literally on Mars. So if you don't want to spend the rest of your life there, you probably don't want to. UM to apply, to apply very seriously, They're they're looking for people who are at least eighteen years of age or older, keeping in mind you will be ten years older if you were selected to be one of the four people who go up on that first launch. As of as of May seven, the oldest person to apply was seventy one years old, UM, which seems like probably he won't be chosen. Yeah, now we don't know that for sure. And it's interesting that how they're going to go about choosing the people who go through this as right, there's there, there's there's first of all, a whole bunch of of application of selection criteria and did you want to do you want to sure sure that they're looking for people who have the following characteristics, And this is because they need people who are going to be psychologically prepared for the challenge, for the training and for the trip and to be stuck on Mars for the rest of their lives, right, and they have to only be have the psychological uh foundation, but they also need to be willing and able to pick up new skills because clearly you're you're talking about a tiny number of people ultimately on that colony. It's just, you know, not not many at all. So you everyone needs to be able to do pretty much everything. Just like astronauts aboard the International Space Station have to be adept at working with all the different systems and be able to react if anything goes wrong. The same thing holds true on the colony. So you know, it's if if you were to apply, you'd have to be willing to go through some very rigorous training to learn how to deal with any situation that they can come up with that could conceivably happen while you're on the colony. And the plan is for about six six to seven years of training before launch, right for the first group, which you know also on television. So the characteristics they're looking for, they're looking for resiliency, and they they break these out by practical applications. So for resiliency, they mentioned that your thought processes have to be persistent. You persevere and remain productive even under difficult circumstances. You see the connection between your internal and external self, meaning that you're very self reflective. Is get a little metaphysical as they go on. You are at your best when things are at their worst. That is not me. I'm already out. I mostly turned snarky when things are at their worst. Yeah, yeah, you do. Also when they're at their best. You have indomitable spirit. Nope, mind's totally domitable. You understand the purpose of actions may not be clear in the moment, but there is good reason, and you trust those who guide you. That's terrifying to me, which is essentially saying shut up and do your work. And um, I understand what they're saying. They're saying like, look, we may tell you to do something that requires you to, uh to endure uncomfortable circumstances for an extended amount of time, but trust us, it's it's all on your best interest. That always That always gets me a little worried, uh, they and that you have a can do attitude. The next criteria is adaptability. Clearly this would be necessary on this kind of project, right right, like like like Jonathan was saying, a second ago, you need to be able to do freething up there, so out there right, And I love that one of them. One of the I won't go through all of the practical applications of this one, but one of them is you know your boundaries and how and when to extend them. I didn't know the boundaries were that flexible, right, Like I guess if you have boundaries of watch one of those international boundaries. It's kind of you know, always always in question, where it's just the dotted line instead of the solid line. I think maybe it's like you would be willing to do this and no more, but you in certain situations will be willing to do yeah again, kind of terrifying. Um. And then next would be curiosity, which again if you don't have a sense of curiosity, I can't imagine tomorrow unless you're just sick of everyone here, of which I mean maybe you are. Maybe you're just a Missinthrop and total misinthrop. So it would just be like the Algonquin round table, but in space, which would be kind of awesome. So which would I would watch that show and they talk about the desire to transfer knowledge to others and not just showcasing what you know or what others do not know. I think that knocks me out too, because I prefer the second version of that. No, seriously, that's one thing I actually do like. I like to I like to share knowledge because I find knowledge exciting. That's that's probably why you're on a podcast that that is a couple of them. And then there's the ability to trust, which would be very important since you're working with people who you know your life depends upon their work, just as their lives depend upon yours. And then you have to be creative and resourceful, which means that you know, I kind of have a hacker mentality that if a problem comes up, you find a way to solve it, even if you don't have a like a a manual that tells you what to do in that specific situation, that you can adapt to the situation as necessary. You know, maybe the manual tells you to react a specific way if one particular situation arises, but maybe the situation is more complicated than that, and you can't just do one solution because that's not going to meet all the criteria to fix the problem. That's why you have to be both creative and resourceful. So that's that's like the basic um features that they're looking for in the people who apply, and then the way they choose or the way they start to narrow down the candidates is also kind of interesting. Like I said, the applicant pool was opened up on April, I said April. It was on April. And it costs. It does cost money to apply, between five and seventy five dollars, depending on the wealth of your country of origin. Gotcha, So if you're from a more affluent country, then your your application fee will be higher. I think the fee here in the United States is thirty eight dollars. Interesting, So it's thirty eight that I'm curious to see which kind trees are on the top of the scale. I did not look that up, so I have no idea. But I'm just wondering out loud, because you know, it's that it's that national pride coming out. What do you need thirty eight dollars? Why aren't we so many five dollars? Not that I'm applying this. This this applicant pool is going to be pared down during the course of several rounds um The first is by popularity, because part of the application is is you know your your resume and this very short psychological work up, and then part of it is a YouTube video that you are supposed to upload. So how many people are watching and liking your video. It's like having a cloud score for going to Mars. Yeah, and again I could see someone who is just really misanthropic winning just because people are like, get rid of this guy into space, um so so. So this first round is going to be by the by the popularity of your of your YouTube video. It's like American Idol, but you shoot him into space ahead, um and and by by the application material the company is actually looking at your resume. Rum in this I don't want to send a whole bunch of people who obviously have no business working any kind of intricate system. Yeah right, there's there's no point in advancing those people to the next round. The next round, speaking of, is going to be selected down by region and based on the person's health. Various background checks and in person interviews also very important. Obviously, you want to have people who have those features we talked about earlier, that are well rounded, that can work well with others. You don't want to send a bunch of psychopaths up in Mars, people who don't care about anyone else, because that would be well counterproductive to the mission at large. Sure sure, missent tropes, yes, Uh, total psychopaths, no, not so much. No. Um. After that, you're going to start seeing more of a more of a crowdsourcing process, um via via reality TV shows, um, Internet polls, stuff like that. Right, even when they narrow this down to their pool of potential astronauts, and I think they're they were aiming to get to around forty total when they finally boil it down. I've seen a couple of different numbers. But but but yeah, the idea being that not all forty of those people would necessarily end up on those colonies. It's rather that this is the pool of astronauts that could go up. And uh, then throughout the television series, we might even see something where the audience decides which are which four would be the first ones to go right, right, It's it's gonna be They're they're gonna start narrowing it down by by TV and stuff, and uh to two people, a man and a woman would be selected from each applicant country, um, and then they will them plus a few judge favorites who are not crowdsourced will proceed to an international round and then be grouped into four's, um, some fifty teams of four people and uh, which which will be narrow to six teams who will train full time. Got so then you're down. Then you're down to that, right right? Um? And then yeah, in two that would be when um, they would select whatever groups are ready to go. The company would select the groups that they think are good to actually astronaut and um, and then the world gets to call in and vote on which people get shot into space. This is incredible, all right? And then um, uh you had a specific quote from someone who had applied, right. Yeah. NBC News found out that sci fi author David Brynn Um, who wrote for example, The Postman, I Believe and and a bunch of other stuff, he told NBC that that people can't imagine any sane person making this choice. Uh. Editors note, did the choice to go to Mars forever and never come back simply aren't envisioning the wide range of human diversity? Um? And and was just talking about, you know, the act that he's got three kids and that at the very early state that Mars one was going to launch, he would be he would be seventy five, which means his kids are grown up and on there. They're doing their own thing at that point. They're in their careers. So it's not like it's not like he's abandoning children. Sure, sure, and you know he might choose to to spend these last fewyears years of his life doing something truly remarkable, interesting. And we should say that the the early stages of this would require, uh, the candidates who were selected to move on in the process to go undergo some extensive training, like we've mentioned before, but they'd probably be going someplace really remote and pretty desolate. Yeah. One one of the plans of the group is to um to create on Earth in in in some cold, desolate desert tundra kind of area, a UM a little foe Mars base for training purposes. That will become really important because you have to know, you have to understand what are what's the harsh reality of trying to live on Mars. Hey, guys, I just heard from the Spiders of Mars as a band that I follow, that it's time for us to take a quick break, all right, So we've laid out what the project wants to do and kind of their general approach, the idea of sending up supplies ahead of time and then landing people hopefully by three um and uh four people and then initially and then another four every two years, and that they're having this Mars colony. So let's talk about why this would be a monumentally difficult task, like what what are what are the challenges that they face, because there are quite a few. Um, you're you're you're dealing You're dealing with not only when you get to Mars, um it not not having an atmosphere, the thin atmosphere doesn't have a breath, right correct, sorry, and not having the atmosphere that Earth does that lets you you know, go out barefoot and walk around right. Um yeah, not only that, but there's uh, well we'll get into it. Let's let's start with them. Well let's start with dirt. Yeah, because because Mars dirt is toxic. Yeah, just like Britney Spears, No way, she just did that song. That's I guess. I guess you could say either one that you wanted to. I'm not going to argue either point. So the dust that covers Mars is called regular. If I am pronouncing that correctly, are excellent win um it's it's really human unfriendly it. Um contains a bunch of things, for example, uh perchlorate per chlorate, thank you, which which is a group of chemicals that are used as oxidizers in rocket fuel. And if that doesn't give you an indication, it sucks to to breathe in. Exposure can can cause serious damage to your thyroid. UM, which is an important bit UM. Lots of silicates UM, silicate silicic uhcts, most commonly including feldspar, pyroxene, and olivine, all of which react with water to form hydrogen, peroxide, hydroxyl and superoxide UM, all of which quartz dust does and UM is blamed for things like lung cancer and uh silicosis in miners, which which basically means that you inhale this this dust and it reacts with the water in your lungs and it is not good right right, This is it starts to form chemicals that can be very harmful and lead us to a not living situation, right right. Another another thing in there is gypsum um, which is a self fate mineral that forms again in the presence of water. This one isn't actually toxic the way that the silicates are, but on the level of coal dust, it is an eye, skin and respiratory irritant. So obviously we would have to take precautions against getting dust into any habitable area in the Mars one colony, right, and again because of the atmosphere situation, you're not going to have people running around barefoot in Mars dust. However, it's a very sticky substance really, and especially due to um. Just like static electricity, it's going to wind up getting on all the equipment, and you know, even if you get it out through through air filters in some kind of airlock, it's going to get into the system. Yeah, it's it's one of those things where you really have to design like a clean room type environment, the same kind of environments that we think of for creating a microprocessor, where even a single mode of dust can ruin a sheet of silicon wafers when you're trying to design a microprocessor, because you're designing things on such a tiny scale, we would need that level of precision to to ensure the health of anyone who's living on one of these colonies. Not to say that it can't be done, but when you are doing this on another planet that's already essentially trying to kill you, it's a really really tough challenge. The way the way I've seen it described is that it's it's not so much that at a certain point you're never going to get the dirt completely separated from your living quarters, and so it's almost more of a of a what can we do to combat the issues that this dirt is going to cause some sort of chemical scrubbing process that could make this inert, or or some kind of medical process that we can act upon the poor human people that are out there, because it's gonna it's gonna affect them right right. So to to even think that we could create a system that would negate all of this is probably being a little too Yeah, you definitely can't just assume that, because as soon as you do, then tragedy can strike. Well, there are there are other challenges as well, not just the the dirt. Uh, there's also radiation before you even get to the planet. Yeah, because a journey to Mars is going to take months. Uh, And that's because the way that Mars and Earth line up, you have to figure out the right trajectory to launch to get from Earth or even Earth's orbit uh to Mars in the most efficient way possible. So when the Curiosity Rover launched, you know, if you were to look at the closest point between well, when Earth and Mars were closest together, if you were somehow able to maintain that distance and go from Earth to Mars, it might take you a few months to get there. It took Curiosity Rover more than I think, like eight months to get there. You might say, well, why is that so, Well, it's because we can't get those plants to stop moving. They keep going around the Sun, which continues moving through space itself. So what you're talking about is trying to create a trajectory that's the most efficient pathway between Earth and Mars, and it's not. It's not a straight line because you can't do that. You know, you would end up being where Mars was as opposed to where it is. So you have to actually aim for where Mars will be. So uh, that means that your journey through space is going to take some time. If if you did it at the speed of light, it would be fourteen minutes. We cannot go at the speed of flames, right, so it's going to take months to get there. And the downside of that is that space has got some nasty radiation out there that can kill you. UM. So if the vacuum is not bad enough, the radiation is worse. So on Earth we are very well protected. In fact, one of the reasons why we have life as we know it here on our planet is because our plan has two things really helping us out. One is the atmosphere we have, which helps uh reduce the energy of any incoming radiation radiation particles coming into the atmosphere slow stuff down. Um. And then also we have a magnetosphere, this magnetic field that surrounds the Earth that repels a lot of the part icles that otherwise we bombard. Our planet, Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so it's not as protective, and there is no magnetosphere around Mars, so there's not that magnetic you know, you can think of it almost like a force field. There's not that magnetic field that can repel UH charged particles as they come blasting through space. And what's blasting them, you might ask, the Sun? Yeah, yep, the same thing that allows life to happen here on Earth in almost every case. I mean, there's some some life out there that that relies on chemicals that are produced geothermically, but but most of it is through some kind of root of photosynthesis and then eating things that are synthesized exactly. So, so the Sun is responsible for most of the life on Earth. It's also blasting out stuff that would kill you. Now you might think, well, what about people who are aboard the space station. How do they managed to stay up there so long? It's a lot of shielding still inside the magnetic field of Earth, correct, And they're really only supposed to stay there for a few months at a time. One of one of the many reasons why they try to bring people back pretty right, Yeah, Another one being things like bone loss, which you can suffer if you're out in space for a very long time. So if you are going out from Earth to Mars, you will eventually get to a point where you leave Earth's magnetic field while you're in space, and once you leave that magnetic field, the only protection you have from this kind of radiation, this cosmic radiation, and and it's radiation in a different form than you know it's not energy beams coming at you like you would think in a in a nineteen fifties science fiction film, Cosmic radiation or cosmic rays are not made up of light energy. They're actually, uh, the nuclei of adams like hydrogen and helium and iron that are traveling at hundreds of thousands of kilometers per second through space that have been ejected by the Sun. And that the in fact, the University of Rochester Medical Center published study not that long ago that suggested that long exposure to this kind of radiation could increase the risk of developing diseases like Alzheimer's. So uh, you know, exposure to this stuff is dangerous. So you would have to build some form of shielding within your spacecraft so that if there were a period of cosmic radiation, the soun's not constantly blasting this stuff out. It comes in these little short bursts. But if you were to detect such a burst coming at the spacecraft, you would have to be able to go into a specially shielded compartment and waited out and it usually lasts a few hours. So actually Mars one is fairly cavalier and saying like it wouldn't be a very comfortable, uh situation. You'd be kind of in cramped quarters for about you know, three or four hours, but you know after it's over you can come out. It sounds to me like you would be essentially need to knee with the rather astronauts waiting for waiting for this to finish well, but you're clearly best friends with them, after going through six years of extensive training on a desert base on Earth, hoping no one TV cameras in your face because no one has cracks under that kind of pressure, right, and hoping that no one had the chili uh space meal just before space Chili be bad boy. Chris would have appreciated that joke like crazy. Well, anyway, that's something you would really have to deal with on that whole trip from Earth to Mars. Once you get the Mars, the thin atmosphere does provide some protection. Uh. In fact, I saw one report that suggested that, uh, information from the Curiosity Rover may show that it's non lethal levels of radiation. Now that does not mean that there, Yeah, you might it might still increase your chances of developing certain diseases, but they it wouldn't outright kill you like there there are radiation levels that are so high as to give you radiation poisoning, which can be lethal. But the point that he was making was that, Uh, they aren't that intense on Mars. Now we're recording this, uh, just a day before NASA releases more information about the radiation on Mars. So um, by the time you hear this, we'll know more about it. But Lauren and I don't because we can't see into the future. So how does Mars one expect to deal with the radiation problem on Mars? Well, even with it being non lethal, obviously, you don't want to have prolonged exposure to radiation if you can help it. So they are proposing that they will have the habitat part of Mars one, the place where the astronauts actually look, or the colonists if you prefer, where they actually live and do most of their work, will be underground, so somehow using rovers, They're gonna launch rovers up before they launch, launching the ast along with some supplies and stuff like that. In fact, I think the first the first scheduled landing would be just supplies and then the second round would have the first rover landing. The rovers are going to be these robotic rovers just kind of similar to the Curiosity rover, but with a lot of construction ability, like they'd obviously have to be able to dig out and put up structures for the incoming colonists, the idea being that the colonists would arrive in mostly everything would already be together, right right, Yeah, the I've got a little bit about the timeline. Do you want me to do? Well, yeah, sure, we can talk a little bit about that and then jump back to to this. But well, let me just say this. The whole idea about putting it underground is that by being under the soil, which we've already established is dangerous stuff all on its own, the soil would protect against radiation, and that, according to mars One's frequently asked question section five meters of soil, which is about sixteen point four feet of soil, would be equivalent to being protected by Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere. So they would dig down five meters and put the habitats that far down, so almost two stories if you're thinking of of of a building, so you would imagine that you would arrive on Mars and then go down two flights of stairs and be two flights of stairs underground and that's where you live, right. The The idea is to UM UH launch supply mission starting in UM, rover launch in UM. Also starting at that point a live video stream from from the rover which features heavily and their their stated timelines on their website, which cracks me up just a little bit. And I understand that this is how they're making money, but it's you know, they're very like scientific advancement live on video and I don't know, it's yeah, it tickles me, UM, but we're in that post real world world. I guess, yeah, it's it's it's true, UM, but so so yeah, so and then would be when UM the settlement come opponents would launch, including two living units to life support units, more supplies, and a second rover along with the second video stream UM. And then yeah and then again, like we said, two, would be when the astronauts would launch and would be when they would land along with UM five other cargo missions that year. Yeah, and the rover's job would be to actually collect those uh, those bits that landed and and to put them together and to assemble them. And that blows my mind. The idea of a rover capable of of maneuvering, lifting, carrying, and positioning these various modular components so that it can make a living space for the astronauts by the time they land. That's a really sophisticated job for a robot to do, and and robotics is advancing continually. But they're talking about launching this critter in that's five years off, right, which means that they have to start building it right now. They can't. You know, these things take a lot of time because they have to build it, they have to test it, make sure that's going to withstand the pressures that needs to that can actually fulfill the functions of the mission before they even try and launch one. And of course it's also all assumes that all these launches are successful, and I mean, we certainly hope they are, but there's never a guarantee, you know, you can never be completely certain. Hey, guys, I just gotta visit from this dude named Marvin from Mars. He tells me that it's time for us to take another quick break. Going back to the Mars. One fact about the radiation, they also had this helpful section which I found, uh again a little scary as described in an f A. A And University study from two thousand five, a journey to Mars and back. In the case of the study, toting five thirty six days in space would mean the chance of contracting cancer for twenty to thirty four year olds is around ten for men and seventeen for women. But let's compare it to people who do not go to Mars in their lifetimes. Men have a twelve percent chance of contracting prostate cancer and women have twelve point five percent chance of developing breast cancer. Or let's compare it to people who smoke. Smoking more than five cigarettes a day leads to a twenty four point six percent chance of developing lung cancer for men in their lifetimes and eighteen point five percent for women. And finally, our restaurants will spend only two d to two hundred twenty days in space compared to five dred thirty six days the study mentioned above. Staying in Mars will result in much lower doses even if astronauts stay for a long time. These these numbers, um, I didn't actually you would put them in our notes and I and I kind of glanced over them, and I was just noticing that that's not necessarily those numbers don't all align because we're talking about very specific different types of cancer caused by very specific carcinogens. Not to mention different time frames. They talk about how the lifetime versus over a lifetime, over groups, and exactly a lifetime versus a trip. This is this is a tiny bit misleading and us shockingly unscientific for a group of people who are looking to go to Mars. Right. Yeah, when you say a tiny bit misleading, you are understating it drastically. I think I think you're giving them too much credit because uh, and I mean I want us to have colonies on the Moon and on Mars. Trust me, I think that that would be amazing and a phenomenal human achievement. But I don't think we get there by downplaying some of the very real, uh challenges we face and and the way that this is worded. I agree with you, Lauren, this is not a very realistic like It's it's like smoke and mirrors, right because you're you're saying, hey, look, you might have if you were in going on the space, you might have a increase in developing cancer, but throughout your life you could have this much. Yeah, but we're not talking about throughout my life. I'm talking about like on a road trip. Especially when you're when you're recruiting essentially civilians to to get into this project. It's it's so hazardously misleading to put those kind of numbers in someone's head without without That's that's irresponsible, is what that is. When you're encouraging eighteen year olds to hop on YouTube and apply for your program, and you're and you're basically lying to them with statistics, right, if you're not lying, I just went off a little bit. You should you should know. That's why I included that. Actually what Jonathan does, That's why I included those bullets because when I read that, I had that same reaction that you did. But I also, you know, took a bed drole before I came in here, so I'm a little calmer. I wasn't doing it to calm myself down. I was doing it because you know, spring has sprung. So then let's talk about life support systems. Now. I was very curious to hear how they were going to provide life support on Mars. We've already ascertained the soil is dangerous the atmosphere is not breathable, so how do you know? And and getting supplies from Earth while that will continue to be a thing, obviously that's not going to be steady and constant. You're going to get them in in bursts of deliveries, and that you have to have some sort of self sustaining element or else. You know what happens when it's trail. Yeah, eventually everyone gets dysentery, I mean exact space dysentery. Well, what happened? Well, my my question is if let's say that, let's say that you don't have that self sustaining element there, what happens when the television show gets canceled? Right? That's that's a sobering thought. I mean, the main way that they're going to be able to to keep people alive on another planet is through television. If people stop watching television, people die, right, I mean that's that's what the story is. So you have to have some sort of self sustaining element to it or else you're you are consigning people to potential Nielsen raying actual death. Yeah, like your show died, so did your astronauts. I mean that's terrible. But anyway, so so they have addressed that, and this is how they plan on providing life support. So what are the things they're gonna need. They're gonna need water. Well, they're saying what they're going to do is they're going to extract water from the soil of Mars, this incredibly toxic stuff. What but but we know that Mars has some ice on it. So the plan is to dig up huge amounts of dirt and put them through what are called extractors, and the extractors will heat up the soil which will melt the ice and turn it into water vapor. It will then condense and filter that water vapor to turn it back into water, and then that water will become the drinking water and also the water for the food supply aboard the colony, aboard at the colony. And uh, the idea would that be the each life support unit on Mars would have about fifteen hundred liters of reserve water as well as the water that's actually providing to the colony on a daily basis. So that way, by the way, they're getting power through solar panels, that's the ideas they used. They use solar panel arrays to generate the electricity they need to run the colony. But in the case of something like a dust storm where you don't get that solar power, you have to be able to still have access to the things that keep us alive, or you've just again killed the entire colony. Um. So that that's how they're answering water. So what about oxygen, Well, oxygen, they're also looking at the water. Some of that water that they will be gathering from the soil, they expect to pour some energy into it to break those molecular bonds. And we know that the two elements that make up water are hydrogen and oxygen. So you release hydrogen and you release oxygen. The oxygen you then mixed with nitrogen, which you can get from Mars's atmosphere, and make it into an a breathable mix, because pure oxygen would not be a good idea. You want to mix that. You know, here on Earth, the most abundant element in our atmosphere is nitrogen. You know some people don't know that, but that's in fact what their oxygen will mostly get you high, yeah, and then dead, and then you can be quickly. You can't have you can have pure oxygen um for long anyway, so you would mix that together to make the habitats air supply, not the band. And then finally, where are they getting the food? And some of the foods coming from earth, they will be supplied, but that's supposed to be the kind of like emergency rations. The plan is to use hydroponic farms. Hydroponic farms don't require soil to grow plants and to use special L e d s to provide the specific wavelengths of light that those plants will need to grow. So these L e d s will because their l eds they draw a very little power, so you don't have to worry about running a whole lot of power to them. They will then give that that specific wavelength that will give the plants the best chance to really grow in that environment. And since since are doing this all of us underground, you don't have the cheery Martian sunshine to fuel year right exactly, So so you've got you're you're doing it all inside. That will also mean that uh, it will use the carbon dioxide generated not just by people breathing, but they'll they'll also harvest CEO two from the Martian atmosphere as well, and so that that's how they answer the water, oxygen, and food problems. Uh. That sounds like an oversimplification to me too. Again, this is talking about systems that we have not we've proven that they can work on Earth, but you know, to expect that all of these are going to work on Mars is Uh? I mean, I would hope they would, but it seems very optimistic, especially within the timeline that they have granted, because we haven't run those kind of tests to make sure that we could do this kind of thing. Um. And I would kind of want us to have a pretty confident, a pretty high confidence level that would work before one of the astronauts especially, I would want that thing. And they're talking, they're talking about the habitats and the rooms that they're in being in these inflated uh essentially kind of like inflated tents in a way, which makes me wonder how they design it so it can withstand the fact that there are nearly seventeen feet of soil on top of them. All the all the all the artistic drawings of the plans that I've seen have have been these these kind of bubbly little capsules above ground, So I'm not sure. And those are supposed to be the other like the life support units and stuff, the habitats, the places where people live are supposed to be undergrad Like if you look at some of those pictures, you'll see like there there seems to be something that looks like a tunnel that's built up a dome of Earth. But yeah, I don't don't. I mean, you know, and it's I think it's fair to to kind of put this stuff out there, and especially since they're doing this essentially for profit, um and it's all proprietary, keeping everything a little bit close to the chest, I could, I could Devil's advocate being part of their strategy. Well. And also there's there's an argument that you can make saying that, uh, we're working on the initial stuff now, we have the plan to launch by and between now and then, we may have developed the technology necessary to meet those challenges. I guess this is the same sort of thing questions, right, Yeah, and it's you know, it's it's my My biggest question honestly, is is why we're looking at Mars and not say the Moon. I have that same question. I think, well, I mean, you've got some other problems with the Moon. We have a one six the Earth's gravity, for example, which again raises the question of things like bone loss, and the Moon is actually more toxic than Mars from what I understand, um, in terms of the particulate, but it's also much closer, very much closer. If things go wrong, it's a lot easier to correct. Right, Yeah, you're talking, and we've already got the the experience of sending people there and coming back, you know, unless you believe the whole uh television studio thing. Right, Uh, but but that did go to the Moon in nineteen but the nine one was on a movie studio, was on general ben that that aside. I mean, it's my just just the ethical questions that this raises of whether or not it's it's okay too to a send people to Mars on one way ticket at all, and and be to do it under the restrictions of reality TV. I mean, I think that anyone who's watched any amount of reality TV has seen that group breakdown that inevitably happens and is and is partially, um I think, fabricated for the enjoyment or or at least schadenfreud of the viewers, wherein the group just hates each other and and someone gets kind of Lord of the Flies out, and I just don't don't. I don't want to watch that. I I don't. I mean, I don't know, Like, of course I want to watch people go to Mars. That's terrific and fascinating, agast science and you know, human exploration. But at the same time, I don't. I almost don't. Thinking about it makes me nervous for those poor people. And and you know it very well. Maybe that the popular approach that they're taking this, this kind of you know, pop culture approach almost to the whole project, uh is is really not indicative of how serious they are. So a lot of the judgments that we're making a lot of the conclusions we are drawing, it's all based off of the approach we have seen. So maybe a lot of our concerns that we've raised are already well in hand. We you know, I'll go ahead and say that might be the case. Uh And it very well could be. That's just our ignorance of the project that leads us to the skepticism. But anytime you're talking about people's lives, I think critical thought and skepticism need to be employed. Uh. Fully so that you can make sure that these people know what they're doing. They are very serious about it actually succeeding. They're going to take every precaution they can to protect the people's lives who are involved, that the mental and physical health of these people, and and to to if all of that pans out, then the potential scientific information we can get from this experiment would be amazing and the phenomenal. So I want it to work. I really do, and and like, like, like we say a lot here and also on our other podcasts, forward thinking, even if it doesn't work out, even just trying could lead to terrific scientific advancement, right anyway. I mean, the space industry alone has created so many different advancements in technology and just things that we rely on on a daily basis now that that could very well be the case. So I really do hope that that all of this is completely on the up and up, and that uh, that we see some real results from this. I just you know, it's just enough warning flags for me to be really cautious about it. But the same time, like, if there's no risk, there's no reward, right, And I know that there are a lot of astronauts out there who have done some phenomenal things that a lot of us would consider crazy. I mean it was just people from from the test pilots who are first testing the the spacecraft before it ever left the Earth's atmosphere, to the people who have gone up to the Moon or the International Space Station. These are phenomenal feats and they require a great deal of courage and determination, more than I possess, frankly, and I think it would be a shame to not encourage that. I definitely want to see that kind of indomitable spirit continue. I just want to make sure that it's the right the right project. And uh, and so far I'm not fully convinced with Mars one. That's not to say that maybe in the year maybe I'm I'll be I'll say, oh, they've met every single one of my concerns with lying colors, and now I'm totally on board. It could happen, but but we'll have to We'll have to see what what develops. Yeah, what would it take for you to go to Mars, Lauren? I would not go to Mars. I mean I just nope, especially under restraints. I mean, to be fair, I also would not appear on a reality TV show, period, So that attitude news for you, Lauren. There are cameras everywhere I've been doing the House Stuff Works reality TV show we launch any minute now. It's mostly us sitting at our desks with headphones on, not paying attention to each other. It's not terribly exciting, I'll admit, but you know, I've got high hopes. Occasionally see things like Josh talks to Chuck, I expected to drive a lot of views. I also would not go to Mars unless there was a return ticket, in which case maybe, but but with no return ticket, not all my stuff is here. So that alone makes it really hard for me to say goodbye. Yeah, that's that. I'm a materialist. But come on, you know my Xbox is over here. I worked hard on that gamer score. And that does it for that classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for topics for future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter or Facebook to handle for both is Text Stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.