The Infinite Monkey Cage - An Astronaut's Guide to Isolation

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by a stellar panel of space travellers as they get tips on surviving isolation from a group with a truly unique insight. They are joined by astronauts Helen Sharman, Chris Hadfield, Nicole Stott and Apollo 9's Rusty Schweickart to talk Space X, the future of space travel and how a trip to Mars will be the ultimate test of our ability to survive isolation.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox and this is the Infinite Monkey Cage. And yet again we are joined by a lockdown audience dotted around the country. Hundreds of people just staring at Brian Cox's

face on their laptop which of course is nothing unusual uh except uh I mean it is it's a smashing face for a screensaver but this time you can actually talk back to Brian Cox so for our audience here would you like to say hello to Brian Brian say hello back hello see it's, it's lovely, isn't it? It's just like having him around the house. But even better, because if you did have him around the house, what you'd have done is you'd have taken your NutriBullet and you'd have taken your kettle and you'd have tried to make some kind of cold fusion reactor and it would have been a right old mess.

What's a NutriBullet? You wouldn't know. Your man makes your drinks for you, but there is a secret process before your cocktails and fruit drinks arrive. Whilst most of us have spent months staring out of the window at the same old lamppost, we thought today we'd broaden all our horizons by inviting four people onto the monkey cage who have travelled around the globe while the globe of the Earth was rotating beneath them. Today we are joined, and it's such a great panel, they are always great panels,

but this is one of the most delightful. We're joined by four astronauts, and they are... I'm Helen Sharman, first British astronaut and Imperial College London's UK Outreach Ambassador. The place I would like to visit most in the universe is the Red Square Nebula, just for its amazing symmetry. Hi, my name's Chris Hadfield. I've flown in space three times,

twice in the shuttle, once in a Soyuz, into a couple of space stations, lived on the International Space Station for five months, had a chance to command it for a few months in my last period there. I'm currently doing a lot of different things, running a technology incubator and writing a fourth book. The place that I would most like to visit that I haven't been yet is the moon. I've dreamed about walking on the moon ever since, gosh, since I can remember. And I was hugely inspired to become an astronaut because of the Apollo astronauts who went there and walked on the moon. So that's where I'd like to go. I'm Nicole Stott. I'm an artist and an astronaut. I spent a little over three months

in space on the International Space Station and the space shuttle. I do artwork to share my spaceflight experience in a way that I hope encourages everyone to behave like crewmates here on Spaceship Earth. And the place in the universe that I most like to visit is more of the otherworldly places that are right here on our planet Earth and the moon. I'm Rusty Schweickart. I flew as a lunar module pilot on Apollo 9 back in March of 1969. That was the first flight of the lunar module. Got to do an EVA with the Apollo suit for the first time, et cetera, et cetera.

I've been retired for 20 years now and mainly since that time I've been working to keep asteroids from impacting the Earth along with Chris and Nicole and others and the place I'd like to visit most in the universe is the next meeting of the Federation of Sentient Culture somewhere in our spiral arm of the Milky Way. And this is our panel. There is something about the nonchalance, isn't there, of just hearing, yeah, I've been to a couple of space stations. Sorry, just that. And I think, yeah, I've not even been to Crete.

stations sorry just and i think yeah i've not even been to crint rusty you mentioned there at 51 years ago launching on the saturn 5 on apollo 9 and as we record just a few days ago we saw the the spacex launch the first test flight of a new space vehicle so how have things changed wow they've changed a tremendous amount, Brian. I mean, I was just thinking the other day, in fact, I think it was this morning, I was just thinking of everything new that's happened, and in particular, what you just mentioned. First of all, that was a Falcon 9, which 10 years ago was started by Elon Musk as a private venture. It's the first private spacecraft that's ever launched a human being into space, let alone to the International Space Station. He's recovered 87. He's flown 87 missions on that Falcon 9 that he's built and the one that flew the other night. The two guys on it,

the first stage came back and landed on a barge in the middle of the ocean for the fifth time. stage came back and landed on a barge in the middle of the ocean for the fifth time. And I think knowing Elon, he's probably going to try to launch it again for a sixth mission, you know. So, I mean, there's a tremendous amount that's changed. But I think the introduction of private industry into, you know, what was earlier a government only operation has made a huge change in things. And in terms of that capsule, I mean, we all saw those pictures. It's essentially just, it looks like a giant iPad inside now, whereas of course it was a test flight though, where you test flew. It was like a Tesla, right? Yeah, but you test flew the LM. What are the, is it other similarities in a way? I mean, we

have to remember, I suppose, that was the first flight of a new spacecraft and it looks so smooth and so effortless. Would it have been smooth and effortless as a test pilot? Well, you know, it's hard. I have a hard time putting myself in the place of the guys now because, you know, they're 50 years younger than I am. And now what I was thinking was, and by the way, it's really fun because you can get this on your own computer and do it at home. And I really recommend it. You go to the SpaceX site and you can get, I think it's iss-sim.spacex.com. And you can get a simulator of the manual controls that they see on their screens in front of them. It's exactly a simulation of the docking with the ISS. And it's really

fun to do. It's challenging, too. People get a good appreciation of what it's like to control a spacecraft and especially to dock in a controlled way. But I was thinking, you know, in a spacecraft that I flew, you had to have a rotational hand controller on one side and a translational controller on the other side. And now it's just a screen that you touch and push. I'm not sure that I don't like the old controllers. Frankly, it's more intuitive than pushing buttons,

but apparently it worked well for the guys. Helen, you flew on the Soyuz, which is essentially the same vintage as Rusty's spacecraft. It's a 1960s design, still flying beautifully. What were your thoughts on seeing the SpaceX, the Dragon launch and the contrast between the two capsules? So I agree with Rusty in many respects. The actual, when you have that physical exertion, if you have a bull valve to close, if you turn a knob and you feel it clunk into place,

you really do feel that that valve is closed. Just pushing little sort of touch sensitive bits on a screen, I can imagine needs an awful lot more trust and um in the actual technology than i had to let's say because i could feel it working but um we astronauts we had a great presentation by one of the astronauts the japanese actually soichi naguchi who's going to be going up on the next um hopefully the next crew dragon um over the summer assuming all goes well with this one and soichi was telling us how you know that um even the the the fingertips to the the gloves in his spacesuit um how they've been made so sensitive so that they can deal with all these things going on on the screen they're so sensitive

that he can even use his iphone using these gloves so yes i think there's been a huge amount of development the stuff i had was yeah it was stuff that's been old. It's tried and tested. So, you know, it's going to be reliable. So I had that sort of confidence that it would all work. First time you fly a new one, that's really the test pilot stuff. That's something quite different, I think. That reminds me of when they developed the automatic toilets for trains.

And it could all just be push button. And it would just go, boom, open, close, lock. But people would go, but how do I know it's locked? So they had to add a handle that basically does nothing. It's all right. No one's going to catch me having a wee because clunk. There's been a clunk sound and I pulled a handle. It's a fascinating part of that kind of humanity.

I still want to hear a clunk. I need a clunk and a handle. I wanted to ask you, Nicole, about this, again, SpaceX watching that, because I imagine sometimes amongst astronauts there's a bit of competition where people will say, you know, oh, well, you had luxury the way you went up. You know, the shuttle's just a big plane. Do you find watching SpaceX, what do you feel were perhaps the greatest differences, the greatest changes from your own experience?

Well, I think it was interesting to me that we went, I don't know if back is the word, went back to the capsule, right? After having that opportunity to fly on this winged vehicle, and especially from a landing standpoint. I don't know, Chris, you can speak to this too. You know, that little chirp on the runway after landing, that's nice. That's nice. You know, I looked, I, first of all, I have to say, when I watched this launch, I really watched it from, I don't know, it was more kind of a people side of it than, than the hardware, even for me as I watched it.

Both of those guys were in my astronaut class in the class of 2000, and their wives, Megan and Karen, all four of us, or five of us, I guess, started together as astronauts. And so it was so cool to me to see these guys flying as the test pilots on this new spacecraft and actually to feel like family as we watch them do that. Because I can tell you, it's a lot more difficult to watch somebody, you know, strap into a spacecraft and lift off the planet with millions of pounds of thrust underneath them than it is to be the person strapping in. Chris, you're the only person who's flown both, right? So you've flown Shuttle and Soyuz.

So how do you contrast those vehicles? And certainly with Dragon now, is that a real step forward? I mean, as Nicole said, it struck me that there's virtually nothing inside it apart from those three iPads. It's a beautifully designed... Dinosaur in there. Well, yeah, those three iPads. It's a beautifully designed... Dinosaur in there. Well, yeah, an inflatable dinosaur. It's quite a beautifully designed piece of science fiction, isn't it?

It is. The space shuttle looked like beautifully designed science fiction when it first came out in 81 as well. You know, the space shuttle had 500 switches and circuit breakers in the cockpit. And that may be as reassuring as a handle on the toilet door. But in fact, it's 500 mechanical devices that can fail. And in fact, the shuttle was completely fly-by-wire. When you pull back on the shuttle stick, you weren't connected to anything. You were just talking to, it was just talking to a computer. And even the Soyuz, Brian, I don't think I've ever told you this.

On my Soyuz flight, we were lying on the launch pad. And the Soyuz used to be completely analog. You know, it was just all manual. But they've slowly made it more and more computerized. We were lying on our back and they were having troubles getting ready for launch. And they had us reboot the Soyuz before launch. And as it rebooted, that noise came in of that Windows tone, you know, that you hear when you reboot. And it was just so funny, lying on our backs,

about to leave Earth. And I thought, okay, fine. Spiraling rainbow. So I kind of thought, you know, I used to be a test pilot as well. It's one of those things, you know, you're going to do something dangerous. You know that you, just like Bob and Doug were, are hugely ready. And statistics don't really matter at that point. Either it's going to or it's not. And you just have to accept that and do your absolute best. Fortunately, great engineering, a pretty good pedigree after 10 years.

And they docked with Space Station beautifully. Great ship. engineering a pretty good pedigree after 10 years and they docked the space station beautifully great ship yeah the fact that you know the fact uh brian that they didn't have they couldn't even feel it when it actually docked i mean that was an amazing thing in terms of the improvements in automation i mean we had no automation in terms of something like docking uh back you know 50 years ago but uh the fact that they didn't even realise that they couldn't even feel when they touched the space station was a great testament to the improvements.

That's got to be fun. But I think the really interesting thing that they've almost gone backwards in is the coming back to Earth, because, of course, Crew Dragon's going to splash down, like you did, Rusty. But, I mean, perhaps Chris might be able to answer this, because, I mean, in Shuttle, of course, Crew Dragon's going to splash down, like you did, Rusty. But I mean, perhaps Chris might be able to answer this, because I mean, in Shuttle, of course, you only could land on dry land. In Soyuz, actually, we had an alternative. It was designed

to land on dry land, but we could have ended up in the water and been quite safe had it done so. So having flown both, did it give you that greater sense of, I don't know, of comfort, knowing that whatever happened, you could return to Earth wherever you wanted in Soyuz? Or does it not matter? The space shuttle was incredibly fragile. No matter what failed, the only hope was you had to have enough systems still working and tires still good and temperatures and everything that you could land on a runway. I mean, that made the shuttle so complex to maintain. And I think we were going through an evolution and we're actually building spaceships now that are designed the way they're

always going to look. You know, it's like if you look at the Wright Brothers airplane or Blario's airplane, you look at those designs now and they look stupid. Like, why did they put the tail on the front, you know, and the engine? That's dumb. That's not a good idea. But at the time, it was the best we could think of. And I think the shuttle will go down in history as a fascinating, interesting design, but not the one that is going to reflect what the eventual shape of spaceships is going to be. And I love the fact that the whole, and Nicole as well, the whole time we were up on the space station, you could jump in your Soyuz and just push, you know, the burn on the engines. And if you landed anywhere, you had enough equipment on board and a safe enough system that you were going to make it back to the surface of the Earth okay. Chris mentioned that he's a test pilot from a test pilot background. I know,

you've got, what is it, 4,000 hours on jet fighters or something, again, military pilot. Nicole, engineering and Helen, chemistry initially, it wasn't chemical engineering. Chemistry, yeah. So I wanted to ask you all really how you see that being an astronaut changing in the 21st century now when, you know, we'll have young people listening to this. I suppose you don't have to be a test pilot anymore.

The goal is to make it safe enough and easy enough for anyone to fly yeah even robin could do it maybe i don't know maybe maybe not no no do you know what this when i was swearing because i was trying to actually just get one microphone plugged into the computer to try and remotely record this I looked for a minute when I and one of the reasons I would never have been in Apollo 13 or any of those other missions who's the guy crying and kicking stuff there was an error here they could medicate you that's what Brian says the whole time can we medicate him before every show I think I think brian to answer your question i think it's going to evolve from being from being professional astronauts like early on where you need

professional test pilots even if you go on on whatever airline you know once we get back to some sort of normal business with british airways the majority of people on board have zero qualifications you know they had a three minute briefing, a three minute briefing from... Yes, I'm so sorry. They've just started to medicate me and I've now moved into my, I believe I'm a dog position. This is one of the things that I find beautiful about recordings from home. What was I saying? Oh, yes, I remember. So right now, if you get on British Airways, most of the people just have a quick briefing from the flight attendant and they're they're air travelers. But you have dedicated professional crew. And if you look at Elon Musk's new vehicle, hopefully that's where they're headed the same way, where you've got dedicated professional crew.

You know what may be under the category of astronauts, but crew professional space flyers, and they will be the pilots and the operators of the vehicle. And then as the vehicles get safer and simpler and cheaper, then people will be able to fly in the back. I think that's happened on almost any high-speed transport, trains and airplanes, and it's going to happen with space flight. But we're just sort of in the early stages now, and I think it's natural and healthy. down into the cabin to serve coffee to the passenger in the shuttle going up to the space station. I mean, that scene is the epitome of what you just said. It's great. It inspired me.

Absolutely. Helen. Well, I was just thinking, even in the quite short term, it's likely that, from what I gather, it's likely that NASA as a space agency will probably only buy four seats on Crew Dragon, which means there's a possibility of another three people or extra cargo, but three other people could fly. Now, it could be if you're really rich, you could buy a seat and go as a tourist. It could be your research institute that chooses to buy that seat and send you. So I think it's this whole access to space. It will make it a bit cheaper,

but it means that it's not just space agencies that are going to fly their astronauts. It could be all sorts of different organisations that suddenly have an opportunity to send their employee or employees into space. And that is a real game changer. But I think, Helen, you're so right. It's like, and I want to be one of those employees

that gets sent out. Do you miss it? I think you're all retired from space flight at the moment. Maybe it's a question to each of you. Do you miss it? And would you, if Elon called up, would you be straight on that dragon? I'd go, yeah.

So start with Rusty, actually, because you've been up for 50 years. would you be on the dragon if he asked well you know people always ask that question would you like to fly again blah blah but i my answer is always the same which is you know that's for younger people i i i've been there done that and more important than been there done that is you want you need to have the opportunity i mean the beautiful thing about it is that yet another generation comes up and comes up and uh you know when i look at the world from my senior age position i really appreciate the phenomena of death. I mean, thank heaven, older people die and they get replaced by younger people.

So I really think it's a young person's game. Thank heaven. And that's where it belongs. I'd like to ask all of you actually to comment. I mean, we are all, you're all astronauts, we're all space fans. You hear criticism about spaceflight. I mean, in some sense, I suppose, the world that we find ourselves in now is not dissimilar to the world in 1968. certainly problems in America and so on. So how do you answer, maybe I'll start with Helen and move across the panel. How do you answer the criticism that we should be focusing on the problems here on Earth, which are great, rather than spending our money and time and energy and imagination in space?

I think it's one of those things where it's a bit like saying, should we spend our money on education or health or defence? It's not an or, or, it's an and, and. And then we just have to juggle how much of each. With space, we can improve life on Earth. We're designing drugs based on protein crystals in a very simplistic sense. We can use remote sensing and we can actually monitor now the temperature of the surface of the oceans which we couldn't do had we not got satellites up there in the first place so you know it's a useful vehicle to actually help us improve life back here on earth as well as like Rusty said it's just like being part of that future and space is our future. It's not just

improving life on Earth, but it will ultimately be our life off this planet. So I think it's lots of different facets to it all. I totally agree with that. First of all, I say, and I'm not the originator of this, as most things that come out of my mouth, but, you know, all the money that's spent in space. I mean, really, you know, it's all all of that is happening down here on Earth. I think that's an interesting thing to think about. We talk about, you know, spending all this money in space. And what Helen said, I mean, you know, when I flew to space the first time, my son was seven years old. You know, when I flew to space the first time, my son was seven years old. I would not have strapped on. And I believe all three of my colleagues here, you know, this was a bigger thing than just

the adventure of flying on a rocket ship, right? This, at least for me, I can say was about feeling like knowing I was going to be part of something that's bigger than anything I could do myself, perhaps down here on the planet. bigger than anything I could do myself, perhaps down here on the planet, and that it is all ultimately about improving life on Earth. Even when we talk about becoming a multi planetary species, which I hope happens to, there's there's some aspect of that that is about improving life here on Earth. And I think that's a really, really important thing to consider. And it's not just the science of what

we're doing. But you know, use the International Space Station as this example, this really wonderful example of how we have discovered that we can live peacefully, successfully with people from what is it you guys 1518, I can't remember different countries coming together to work in this place, this mechanical life support system in space that we've built to mimic what Earth does for us naturally. And, you know, I personally believe the ultimate benefit is about improving life on Earth for all of us, and that it helps us reflect even more on how we should be behaving like crewmates here on Spaceship Earth. Chris? Yeah, I don't know when the right time in history

is to do something magnificent. Like, how do you choose? And do you say, no, we can't do it this year. We should wait till next year or something, or wait until life on Earth is perfect before we attempt anything else. That's kind of ludicrous. There are almost 8 billion of us.

Everybody's scheming and plotting and working and having inspiration and ideas and trying to solve problems in a new way. And that's a huge strength for our species. We need to do it in a thoughtful and global responsible way. We need people to have that perspective. Elon Musk couldn't have existed 10 years ago with the things he's done. It's been the enabling technology that's allowed him to make that precision landing on the barge. You need three-dimensional positioning, high-speed computing. You have to understand hypersonic thermodynamics and everything else.

Meanwhile, we are doing things that just a couple decades ago were impossible. things that just a couple decades ago were impossible. And as astronauts, we also sort of become the face of the space agencies. And so we deal with people from all around the world on social media, you know, talk to millions of people on a regular basis. People need to be inspired by something that's greater than what's on their immediate horizons. We need it fundamentally. It's what allows you to imagine who you might be later in your life. So I, and then the last piece is we, people complain about, oh, it's so expensive. But I've never met anyone who has complained about the cost of space. Who actually knows how much it costs.

There's a perception, but you have to put it in percent. You have to put it into comparison to what we're spending on everything else. And then you can start to make an actual rational judgment as to whether this is a right little portion of our GDP that we ought to be spending. And I spent my whole life in it. I'm convinced it's the right thing for our species and the planet. That's why I worked at it my whole life. Hey, Chris, I wanted to pick up on something you said right there at the beginning. I thought that was really great. When is the right time to do something fantastic in history? And as most of

you know, I've used the metaphor of birth for a model for thinking of the future. And I was just thinking when you said that, that when it comes to birth per se, it's automatic. It's nine months, man. That's the right time it happens. And to a certain extent, I think that our move out into space is like that automatic nine-month period gestation. And mom may be doing all kinds of things during pregnancy, but nine months, I'm going to be out there, you know. And I think that's where we are. Now, the next part, though, is what's really important, I think, for us today. And that is, once we get out, once we are born,

then over time, gradually, we begin to, of necessity, assume more and greater responsibility for ourselves, our evolution, and where we're going. And I think that's the moment that we find ourselves in today. So to me, it's a great question, Brian, to ask. So to me, it's a great question, Brian, to ask. And I don't think, as everybody else has been saying, I don't think money has much to do with it at all. That's just a mechanism. There's an optimism across the panel, it seems, that we're talking about larger and larger numbers of people going into space.

And as you said, passengers, basically basically not merely people who are working and this is what originally the idea of this show was to talk about isolation but thankfully we've got 50 minutes in without getting anywhere near there um so i'm going to attempt it now um but i'm i'm fascinated when we talk for instance about that first human mission to mars and that is so different to anything else that any astronaut or cosmonaut has experienced, because even as far as the moon, you have a certain number of days and you should be able to get back. When you're talking about three years, when you're talking about that 18-month point of being away from the Earth, what do you think are those psychological issues of isolation and distance from other humanity that are going to be the biggest problems of that?

Nicole, if I can start with you. When we go further away from our planet, right, and we're thinking about these psychological things and the thing, and you mentioned it, that's going to be so different for us is there's going to be that line in time, that place in space where we don't see earth out the window anymore, right? We don't have that like, that like very visceral visual connection to our home anymore. And I think that's where things like painting on your iPad or playing your guitar on, you know, on the iPad or whatever the instrument, the holodeck, hopefully that would be nice, you know, whatever it is that allows us, you know, to do those human things that connect us to home is where it's going to be the biggest deal. We'll figure out food. I think we'll figure out radiation even, you know, it might be the little sponge thing or what, you know,

it's going to be very different. I think it's definitely not going to be what we do on space station. We couldn't support it. But I think it's more that loss of connection, visual, colorful, glowing connection to Earth. That's going to be the big deal. Can I just say, I'd add to that really, I agree it is, you know, it is the vast distance and that, that the fact that we may not even be able to see Earth at some point. But I think it's because we are used to being so connected that we can hardly imagine life without, which is why suddenly being isolated from a lot of our friends and family because we're so used to being with them and being in very busy, buzzing places in society.

It's hard when we take that away. But when I was in space, it was at a time when we could only talk to mission control, talk to the ground at all, really, when we were over the Soviet Union. And most of that was really over Russia, because then when we were around the other side of the Earth, so from two thirds of the orbit, we were out of contact with mission control. Now, we had an amateur radio station. So if somebody in the middle of the Australian outback just happened to be listening in, then we might have a bit of a chat with them. But basically, the only connection we had formally with the ground was about a third of the orbit, 30 minutes or so over the old Soviet Union.

And actually, the other side, then it was peaceful because we didn't have mission controls or yabbering on us. So, you know, do this, do the other. Don't forget this. I'll repeat that one. on us and said, you know, do this, do the other, don't forget this, I'll repeat that one by the way, you know. It was peaceful, we could get on with it, but we got on with it, I suppose, knowing that within 60 minutes or so, we'd be back around with another contact. So I think it's a question of the training for the Martian crews, getting them used to that period of isolation. So and the gap in their contact, you know, it can be it's going to be 20 odd minutes to get a communication from Mars to Earth and then another 20 minutes going back to Mars when Earth and Mars are in their furthest apart. So I think that that's a different way of working, but it's not insurmountable and they're not going to be on their own. They will be together.

So as long as they're a strong crew to really support each other and they know that the end is in sight at some point in 18 months after they launch, they can return to Earth. If you've got an end in sight as well, I think that really helps. A little like COVID-19. If you have the vision that the end is in sight, you know, it's easier to deal with it. I think there was the artist Louis Bunuel once said, solitude is perfect just as long as you know you're going to have someone to talk to about it afterwards and i think you know if you are going to be that person going to mars you you think well i'm okay the mars trip there's only going to be a few of us here for three years but after this i'm going to get invited to every single party when i'm back up should we should we get the woman who went to mars let's get the woman who went to mars let's invite her around you know chris what are

what are your thoughts on the challenges i suppose as helen said um and nicole said you're close to the earth on the space station ridiculously close actually it's about 100 miles isn't it or so 120 miles you can come back in a few minutes you what do you say? You hop in the Soyuz and press a button and down you go. How, roughly, how different will it be psychologically on a Mars mission? When I was actually on board the space station, I saw it in a bunch of different ways. And, you know, it was just a busy daily cycle. But I also looked at it as a little microcosm of humanity. I looked at my ship, you know, when I was the commander looking around. These are the confines of my ship. And you're right. You have the omnipresent, beautiful world constantly there in the window. It's very reassuring. It's also very mentally stimulating. You know, it's this wonderful permanent kaleidoscope of discovery beside you. And then I pictured if I could just fire the engines for 10 minutes and get going fast enough to leave, what that was going to be like. And I decided that if that happened, as I think Nicole said, as the Earth gets, you know, small enough that now you don't have it out the window again, I would then get my crew together

and say, okay, folks, we are no longer earthlings. We are now Martians. You need to change your entire mental framework of who you are. And I think it's something maybe a lot of folks have discovered in COVID. You can't be in love with your old life. You can't say that the patterns that I found pleasure in that have dominated the way that I behaved in my culture for the last however many years, you have to say to yourself, okay, that has stopped. And now we're doing something different. And we need to see ourselves fundamentally differently. Otherwise, there's no way you're going to stay psychologically healthy. If your whole motivation of staying happy on Mars is the day you get back to Earth, then you're not going to make it. You know, you're going to have to change what gives you pleasure and what gives you satisfaction. So to me, it's going to take a certain type of person to be able to successfully,

but boy, we really need those guitars on the spaceship. And, and, and, you know, and, and if you can have a holodeck, something that can, you know, almost all of us are reading more in COVID, that chance to, with your own imagination, escape from the confines of whatever your particular life is, that's vital to human mental health. And so we really need to think about that as well. It's going to be a wildly different existence for the first people, even just living on the moon, where you're not just there for a finite period. But eventually, as far as Mars, where as you say, it's, you know, maybe you're never coming back,

that's just going to take a whole different mindset. It's different than normal life. I think it's so cool what you said too, Chris, is that, you know, about needing to have the guitars is that, you know, if you think about it from the very beginning of humans in space, there has been art, there has been music. I mean, every step of the way. And I just love thinking about it, how, you know, because, and we've done a a really good and I speak for NASA really is like, NASA does a really great job speaking to the people that already love NASA and what we do in space and that kind of thing. But I think it's these ways that we put, like put the human in human spaceflight, that allows us to engage with even more people about it to, you know, make that make that connection again. And I think those same kinds of things are going to be happening when we go off to Mars. And, you know, make that, make that connection again. And I think those same kinds of things are

going to be happening when we go off to Mars and, you know, somebody's playing the guitar, doing a cover of some song. I don't know what it might be, but it's, it's, it's going to make that connection. You know, it's going to make that human connection to what's, what's happening in that place. Nicole, I love that thought and I want to extrapolate it to that initial scene in Star Wars in the bar scene, right? Because when we get out there and we do have that federation of sentient beings, you know, meeting, we're going to, it's going to be all kinds of art and song and rhythm and drinks. And, you know, I mean, I think that this is what's happening now. We are beginning to have this vision that as we move out, we are Earth

people. We're not Americans or Brits or Russians or whatever. You know, we are people from Earth moving out. And even our organization, the Association of Space Explorers, you know, we are people from Earth moving out. And even our organization, the Association of Space Explorers, you know, we all feel that, even though it's a little bit hard to talk about. But that, to me, is going to be a wonderful thing. And all that art behind you on the walls, you know, there are going to be hundreds of representations of that. And what's fun is the idea that we're going to bring, you know, Chris's song or your art or whatever it is, you know, out there with us. So I love the idea that we today are responsible for the culture that we are going to evolve into space with and contribute to it. And I can't wait. I mean, the imagination of what it's going to be like in that bar scene out of Star Wars is just great. Maybe that's where we all travel back to space. All of us. Let's all go. Yeah. You've sold it to me. I'm in. Yeah, we just have to make

sure that we're attractive enough to be invited as well, because there might be that thing where they, have we had that invite yet to the conference of the sentient beings of this galaxy i wonder why they've left us on off the list i don't know i don't know i know i just want to ask nicole about this because when we were talking about you know the great bringing together of human beings and sometimes during any any you know social media has is sometimes quite divisive as well. And Nicole, you were involved, weren't you, in the first Twitter connection in space? Well, it's kind of weird. I was involved with Jeff Williams in the first tweet up, what we called a tweet up from space, which was actually engaging with people who are very active on Twitter on the ground, right? I think, you know, Chris, tell me if I

think Massimino was the first one to do a tweet from the shuttle or one of his space flights. And of course, you were the master from Space Station with that. You taught all the rest of us how to really engage through that, through that medium. Um, but yeah, I, you know, it's, it's kind of cool how, um, I look at social media as this platform for positive, for inspiration, for a way to uplift. And it makes me so sad to see that not the way it is. I'm, I mean, I, it makes, it does, it really, it really does. But, really does. No names mentioned. Well, and it's not just about – but I mean, I think it's another case where if you look at what is presented from astronauts from space on social media, there is always something positive and is about who we are as human beings, the really very awesome things that we're doing off the planet for the planet. And I think it allows people to think about their own future in a way that they might not have before and in a positive way. Yeah. Can I just congratulate you, Rusty, by the way, never has the phrase no names

so clearly named an individual as it did just then. That was quite brilliant. I suppose because we are nearly at the end, and as usual, there's so much we haven't covered. Who would have imagined we wouldn't be able to cover all of space exploration in 45 minutes? But, Helen, I want to start with you. It's interesting when we've been talking about sometimes there are people who are critical of the idea of space exploration in 45 minutes but um helen i want to talk with you those it's interesting when we've been talking about sometimes there are people who are critical of the idea of space exploration but all of you i know go out and and talk to so many people and i wondered helen what

have you found have been those bridges to sometimes people who've been resistant about the idea of space exploration have you found that certain stories certain ideas are the ones where you can then see sometimes a cynical audience their eyes light up and go yes yeah I suppose if we're talking about adults rather than young people because younger people are just um they know it's their future and there is no doubt um I can't think of one young person who I've spoken to even in a big audience who hasn't already had this idea that yes, space is relevant and exciting. But I think for adults who can be a bit more perhaps a bit more sceptical about the whole thing, I think it's the idea that we have always explored. Humans, all organisms actually always explore. In fact, Arthur C. Clarke said that when an organism ceases to explore it starts to die

and I think when people start to think about that and realize well yes now we have you know there's parts of the earth I know we haven't actually been to and you know depths of the sea and all that we say we know more about the surface of the moon than we do the you know some of the deepest parts of the ocean but nonetheless the next the next part of Earth, really, to explore is upwards. We've been in the skies or mountains we did a number of years ago. And it is, space is the next frontier. That's where we're going. That's the bit to explore.

Our nearest neighbour, the moon, and then on to Mars and just generally explore other parts. And whether it's we're looking, sort of, whether exploring with our telescopes visibly what we can see, whether it's exploring with knowledge actually as well and just pushing forward the frontiers of our understanding through research and learning, or if it's that actual physical exploration.

I think it's just all part of this natural desire to explore and and it's a thing that you know that all organisms actually do and that's i think what makes people often um realize it's it's it's just something that we yeah it's we we have to do it it will prove life on earth but it will also be part of our future yeah it reminds me of when you were saying about the the C. Clarke quote, I think in a show we did a few series ago, we talked about the sea squirt, you know, a creature which eventually finds a place where it goes, I'm comfortable here, now I can eat my own brain.

And we kind of want to avoid getting so comfortable, we go, I don't need this anymore, do I? This curiosity can go in this pudding bowl now, can't it? I remember Steve Jones, you know, the great biologist, always says about that sea squirt, he says it dissolves its own brain. It finds a place, it will always be, dissolves its own brain.

That's known as tenure. Yeah. Every emeritus professor knows that. I think we've sadly run out of time, which is, I hope we can do this again. We had a question for the audience as well today, which obviously we put up on social media and they've replied. And we asked the audience, what do you most hope that we find on Mars when humans land there? So, Brian, what have you got there?

Well, as we're a non-political show, I'll read out Daniel Court's An Optician Travelling to Mars is the only sensible way to check your eyesight. I don't know if in the US you know what that's a reference to. Richard Waters says that what he hopes to find is my bloody car keys uh we've got this one this one uh from st gavelot said uh and it reminds me of a carl sagan i think it was carl

sagan he says a pre-emptive eviction notice due to our poor reference from the current landlord i think was it carl sagan who said that that's what we're tenants on the earth? And ultimately, we'll answer. I think it was Carl Sagan. Anyway, not a great anecdote, is it? And I can't remember the end. I would love it if this is actually where the show ends. This shows how long we've reached an age now

where we've been doing this show for 12 years. Was it Carl Sagan? I can't remember. Maybe it was Isaac Asimov. Let me remind you. Let me remind you, I have tenure. I'll just remind you. Yorkshire Tom hopes that we find some common sense there.

Ollie Thomas hopes his odd socks are there. They've got to be somewhere. Nick just hopes that it really does have a delicious nougat core. So, thanks very much to our panel. Nick Oldstock, Chris Hadfield, Helen Sharman and Rusty Schweickart. And what are we up to, Brian? Next week, we're looking at the sun.

Though not directly, of course, because that's very, very dangerous. So, don't this is again we have to be careful in terms of litigation and in fact it is true that brian and i have a very different relationship with the sun uh when we were on tour whenever we were in sunny places brian would normally put on factor 10 and put a bit of lemon in his hair and i normally kept my duffel coat on and that is true isn't it that is the difference between genuinely true we got off a plane at los ang, in Los Angeles, and he walked out with a rucksack full of books and a duffel coat.

They'd never seen anything like it. Well, unfortunately, the movie Paddington hadn't come out yet, otherwise I'd have been absolutely surrounded by people. Thanks very much for listening, everyone. Bye-bye. Thank you. In the infinite monkey cage. Without you traveling.

In the infinite monkey cage. Turn that nice again. Hello, I'm Scarlett and I want to believe. And I'm Scott and I don't. Join us for a podcast that's all about conspiracy theories and our quest to uncover the truth. Through facts. And I'm going to try and convert my boyfriend Scott to finally believe. And we'll see how many times you fail.

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