The Infinite Monkey Cage - Brits in Space

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Brits in Space!Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by astronaut and author of "The Astronaut Selection Test Book", Tim Peake, first British astronaut Helen Sharman and comedian Mark Steel for a Brits in Space Special. Tim and Helen talk about their different experiences of training to be an astronaut and the challenges of life in space. They also look to the future as the panel talk about the various options being considered for long term space flight with planned future missions to the Moon and ultimately Mars.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, welcome to the Infinite Mug Cage podcast. This is the podcast which is slightly longer, or sometimes actually very much longer, than the version you may have heard on Radio 4. And for purposes of balance, quite soon we're actually going to be using the podcast

to bring out much, much shorter versions, like about seven minutes, which are very much the best of what happened in our conversation about ravens or quantum cosmology. I didn't let you say anything, did I, Brian? Can I say something? No, no, no, it's fine. Anyway, listen. Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox.

In the last couple of years, many people have considered leaving the country. But we are more ambitious than that. We've decided to become Martians. But what skills will we need to take the monkey cage into space? Now, to be an astronaut, you need three things in particular, which is, I would say, peak physical fitness, peak mental agility, and highly absorbent underwear. And I have at least one of those things.

And I, Brian, shut up. I am very good at doing puzzles. And if I can do the Times crossword, I would say in under an hour. And if it takes more than an hour, it doesn't matter. I don't have to leave my armchair because of the... Anyway, look, so you... Today we ask, what does it take to be an astronaut and what lies ahead for human spaceflight? We're joined by two astronauts and, for balance, someone who isn't. And they are...

Hello, I'm Tim Peake. I'm a European Space Agency astronaut. And the most surprising thing that I experienced in space was seeing some lights flying in formation past the cupola window and then discovering that it was Russian urine leaking from the ISS. I'm Helen Sharman, I'm the first British astronaut, scientist, science communicator, not in that order, and the most surprising thing I experienced in space was a power cut. not in that order and the most surprising thing I experienced in space was a power cut I'm Mark Steele I was the eighth British astronaut

and I was I had a very similar experience to Tim but I can't use that anecdote now but the my hope really was to play cricket in space as I think is the one chance I'd have of ever hitting a six. And this is our panel. Can I just ask both you, Helen and Tim, I had heard that when the urine goes out and it kind of sparks stuff, does it kind of explode or it kind of... This wasn't where we were going to start,

but you brought it up, Tim, to be quite honest. So does that happen helen will be able to describe uh in the chemistry behind it but it just crystallizes instantaneously and then the light obviously reflects and that's what you see sparkling so yeah how did you how did you know it was Russian? Because it was... It was coming out the... It was coming out the progress vehicle. And I saw where it was coming from, so I actually went straight to the progress. And there I saw Yuri with a screwdriver,

swearing in Russian. And so I knew that that was exactly where the problem was. He had already realised that something was quite wrong because he'd seen the pressure dropping in the tank, so he'd gone down there to investigate. So I just went to tell him it is actually leaking out the side. Perhaps you want to come and take a look. That is very interesting.

That is an episode of You Bet I would like to see someone skill, which is to tell the nationality by the crystals of urine. So if anyone is thinking of doing a You Bet version in space, I'm available to host. Let's move on quickly. First of all, I want to know, what was the process of it? How did you become an astronaut? So I applied for a job, like most people do for any job.

Perhaps unless you're a comedian. I don't know if you apply to be a comedian. Perhaps you don't. We apply for every other job and are turned down. That's basically what happens, and then we have to. So, so yeah this was a position that was open all of a sudden and people from britain could apply and for a mission that had been created actually to put the first britain into space and i heard it before you know now we you know you look on the european space agency website but um but nowadays when i applied there was no website. So this was 1989

before the internet. And I heard about it on the radio. So driving my car home from work and heard an advert for a space mission, decided to apply. Never thought I would get chosen. But as it turns out, you never know, it's worth a go. And was it quite a rigorous selection process? How long did it take? So it was quite quick as space selections go because a mission had been already assigned about two years after the advert had been announced. So it was like a company had been set up to manage this mission, a British company to liaise with what the then Soviet Space Agency and as soon as they'd got an agreement they made sort of let out this advert to recruit their astronauts so it had to

be quite quick because then we needed to be in position I think it was actually five months later so in June I heard the advert in November I was already beginning my training and it's the training the centrifuges all the things that we imagine you have to go through when you're an astronaut you get turned upside down and in the training or in the selection when in the selection yes in the selection but in selection yes in the selection in fact the selection was the first time i actually went into a centrifuge ever and actually the last time so i didn't do any centrifuge in training it was all in selection so once they decided they'd selected you as far as they were concerned i was g force tolerant and they didn't need to worry

again but no there's a lot of this motion sickness testing as well so um the soviets were quite key i mean someone can tell us if they're still as keen but they were really keen to make sure that we didn't throw up in space um but i mean having never done it before i got no idea how i was going to feel and i was more worried about blacking out actually i've got um no idea how to really really cope with this because i've never never done the centrifuge ever i mean i bet being you know if you're a helicopter pilot you do centrifuges don't you every so often i haven't actually done the centrifuge no my first time in a centrifuge was during training in Star City in Moscow. So not even in selection?

Not even in selection. We had a very different selection process. I mean, yours was much more rigorous physically, I think. And it reminds me of speaking to some of my Canadian colleagues who do all sorts of bizarre stuff during the Canadian selection process, like having to dive to the bottom of pools and do the jigsaw puzzles and things and being locked in a room that's filling with water and having to do mental exercises before you can get out. The European Space Agency was actually very civilised in comparison.

A way to improve on GCSE results, wouldn't it? In the classroom. I'm just thinking how sad it is though. If you'd managed to do everything, you didn't vomit, you got to the bottom of the sea, you did all that stuff, but you weren't very good at jigsaws. That's a real... I can't find the corners. All of this in the psychological training, psychological testing for our selection,

was a lot of this on a two-dimensional piece of paper. Can you envisage what it's like in three dimensions twist around this this apparent shape 90 degrees in a certain way and what shape do you end up with um is it a b c or d that kind of thing so that was all done in a sort of a psychological testing profile that was that was similar to the european selection we had lots of psychological testing, psychological profiling throughout the whole year. So there was no way you could possibly cheat. So by the end of the year, they really had a good grasp on what your character and personality was like.

That's why that film was rubbish then, wasn't it, with Sandra Bullock in it, when she's just a complete introverted, introspective mess. In the selection process, she'd have lasted about three seconds, wouldn't they? She'd have gone, oh, I don't really... Get out! No, no, no. Mark, you don't remember the scene where she did a 300-piece jigsaw puzzle of Corfe Castle?

Yeah. So, I've seen it for her. The trick is, the whole film, you know, if Sandra Bullock had realised she'd got a backpack on in the first five minutes of the film, she'd have steered herself back to the space station and everything would have been fine and there'd be no film. Can I just say that

for people listening to Monkey Cage, you will have heard last week's episode where Robin also mentioned Corfe Castle in a different context. Would you like to tell people? No, I won't. You'll have to listen and find out some of my Corfe Castle secrets. Today's episode is brought to you by English Heritage.

He had an erotic dream about the masonry at Corfe Castle secret today's episode is brought to you by English Heritage. Yeah, he had an erotic dream about the masonry at Corfe Castle. Yeah, it was a show all about the science of dreams, right? It wasn't a halfway through show about periodic tables. Can I stop you there, Professor? I had a dream about Corfe Castle and it was eroticised masonry. But that would have probably meant... Sorry, Mark. No, my favourite mention of space ever in the media

was on The Weakest Link. My favourite answer ever on that programme. And the question was, what structure built in the 2nd century AD is said to be the only building visible from outer space? And the bloke said, millennium dome to be wrong for so many reasons tim you were um i suppose you took the traditional route in a sense you were test pilots yes before yeah um so yes yes, much more traditional.

Having said that, you know, my colleagues were not all military test pilots. And we have scientists, engineers, medical doctors, all selected in the European Space Agency, and school teachers as well within the astronaut corps. So we select from a much more diverse background now than when people might traditionally think back to the Mercury Gemini Apollo program and those early Russian cosmonauts as well who all kind of alpha male fast jet test pilot community so it's very different now and what's

fascinating is to see how the selection criteria has changed over the years as well from going that from that the very initial sort of testing of spacecraft into the unknown and pushing the boundaries to now looking at long-duration spaceflight. And as Helen was saying, you know, talking about medical fitness and psychological fitness, being able to live up there for six months, a year, looking forward to, you know, three-year missions to Mars.

Is that the biggest obstacle now, then? Because that's sort of, as the lay person, that's what you hear when they're talking about, for instance, people going to Mars. That seems to be the biggest obstacle, not the actual business of getting someone there, but of getting someone there without them going, so doolally, they can barely do a six-jigsaw piece of Lulworth Castle.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, speaking to some of the apollo astronauts there's a there's a huge shift in perspective from seeing the earth just in low earth orbit to seeing the earth from 400 000 kilometers away but even then the earth is is recognizable as as our home planet but when you've on a trip to Mars and the Earth disappears to just one of the other bright lights in the sky, just like any other star, and you really have lost visibility of your home planet, that will have a psychological impact on the crew. And you've got to make sure people are aware of that

and they're trained for that and they're the right character and personality to deal with that. And for that length of time as well, and the prospect that you're going on an extremely high-risk mission. I think it's also the communication, so from Earth to Mars. So in low-Earth orbit, it's pretty much instantaneous to get radio signals from the ground up to the space station.

But if you go to Mars, of course, it could take at best about four minutes to get a signal to Mars. Worse, when Mars is furthest away, we're talking over 20 minutes, and then another 20 minutes or so to get that signal or that reply back to Earth. So I think it's that isolation as well. It's not just sort of seeing the Earth. You know, the Apollo astronauts,

they went relatively for a relatively short time, actually. It's only been Soviets and the Russians who were up for actually for very long periods of time. They typically went for six months or even a year. And then now the sort of the Americans have started to join in on a space station. So they're going for longer duration missions as well. But they were used to going up for six months. And when I was up the back of the Earth, around the wrong side of the Earth to the Soviet Union, we had no communication with mission control whatsoever.

side of the earth to the soviet union we had no communication with mission control whatsoever so even in now in russian memory they are they may not have such a problem as going to mars as perhaps some of the americans might that's right and actually that's interesting because we we're almost having to train not just the astronauts for the future missions but train mission control as well well for the last 10 years the space station has become this fantastic scientific laboratory. And we have an amazing working environment, so we're putting a lot of science experiments up there. But it's almost become very routine.

Like Helen says, we've got instant communications all the way around the planet. We have very few moments of the day where we might have a couple of minutes of communication dropout, and you might not get your terabyte of bandwidth that you're getting down to Earth. And that kind of environment is great for what we need the ISS to do, but when we're looking towards the future

and we want to get astronauts and mission control trained back to being, or the astronauts, being much more autonomous, and mission control having to hand back that autonomy to the crew, that's something we're working on. We're talking about using the space station as a test bed for mars now and having perhaps a period of a couple of weeks where we actually do a simulated mars mission from on board the space station you talked about the psychological aspects of long duration space flight but could you just describe what it's

like i assume you can't really train for that launch and then being in space and then living in space for days at a time. Could you describe what that felt like from the launch up through to your first experience of space? Well, I think the launch, you can't train for the actual physical feeling of it, can you, Tim? You can do a centrifuge, but that just gives you g-forces. You can't really train for the vibration, hearing the clunks and bangs, and then suddenly as the light streams in through the window, once you've jettisoned the fairing, when you're out of the

atmosphere, seeing the earth for the first time, all those things. But I think what you can be selected for is a kind of a mentality, a psychological profile that's actually reasonably calm, the kind of person who takes a psychological profile that's actually reasonably calm, the kind of person who takes in information, processes it, and then works it out. You don't typically get astronauts who are really excitable, but neither do we get astronauts who are pretty depressive. I mean, that would make a pretty bad crewmate, wouldn't it, for six months, I imagine. So I think it's that psychological profile in the testing that actually does an awful lot and then once you've trained to do your mission then you just get on with the job you've been trained to do think things through if necessary but I mean for in

terms of a long period away from earth I was only away for eight days Tim you were there for what five six months yeah uh six months and uh and I was up when I arrived on the space station. Scott Kelly was my commander. He'd already been up there for nine months. And he was spending a year up in space. So that was really interesting to him and Misha Kornienko as well. Yeah, so it is when you go on the mission. For me, I think the launch itself was hugely exciting.

And like you say, you can't train for it. There's all these vibrations and everything. But the re-entry was was even more so and i remember jeff williams speaking to me the night before re-entry and i was kind of getting all my stuff ready to go and he said now tim re-entry is like nothing you have ever experienced before he said there'll be several times during re-entry when you think it's all gone horribly wrong he said he said it hasn't he said don't worry there are a lot of explosions there's a lot of noise there's a lot of vibration there's a huge amount of heat you'll be sweating buckets it's all perfectly normal the biggest thing i thought it was you know when the the parachutes come out because they there's

a big sort of hole really where the parachute's stored on one side i one side, I suppose, of the Soyuz, towards the top, but it's actually at the side. It's not physically on the top, because, of course, that top is connected to your other module to start with, before you've jettisoned that. So the parachute comes out from one side, and so the Soyuz itself swings quite violently, and it's not until you've managed to get the parachute straight above you

that that swinging sort of stops. But I think, I mean, in the training we had that profile, we knew the time and the g-force that was going to be created side to side, but actually feeling that, it's quite taken by surprise, I think. And how sort of closed in are you then when this is happening? Shall we demonstrate? All the people listening, we can demonstrate here. We are touching shoulders.

Yeah, you are. You get very friendly in the Soyuz. You get to know your crewmates very well, but you are literally touching, you're squeezed in there. And there's all sorts of stuff packed around you as well. Even when you're in the simulators in Star City, they're quite spacious. But when you get in the real Soyuz and they really pack everything in

and you're coming down with the science experiments around you as well, there's not an inch of space left and it's never it's never routine is it i remember because we we covered your launch tim on the but the launch and the docking live stargazing and i remember we were with chris hadfield when you were docking and i think you had a sort of a non-standard docking didn't you i think something broke on the spacecraft a retro rocket or something and we we were myself and dara going oh no what's happened it's gone it's reversing it's hard and chris is like no no it's just a they'll learn how to fly the spacecraft again and then they'll dock it yeah it was funny watching back i was watching chris's commentary back and it was great

um because he knew actually that it was a little bit more serious than he was letting on so he was just doing the cool calm astronaut it was very little bit more serious than he was letting on so he was just doing the cool calm astronaut it was very calm yeah yeah because the initial abort that's not unusual it happens occasionally with the sawyers uh and then yuri took manual control but the first manual docking um yuri was having a really hard time seeing the docking port the sun was setting so the whole space station was like a bright mirror reflecting all this light down the periscope. So he couldn't really see where he was going, and he was under a lot of pressure from Russian mission control to get it docked, get it docked, because as Helen said, we were running out of communication time over Russian territory,

so they wanted to do this whilst we had Russian communications. And yeah, things didn't go well at all during the first manual docking but yuri is uh he's a very cool russian cosmonaut six times up in space and just backed it off came back out into space again and then brought it back in for a textbook docking mark do you think you have the psychological makeup required that means you could have been an astronaut i am too scared to go on a waltzer. I have no faith whatsoever in whoever's put the rivets in planes, I find, utterly, utterly... However much I'm a fan of science over mysticism, once I'm in a plane, I find myself thinking things like, well, we're above the clouds, at least if the plane conks out, we can land on one of them.

I'm in complete awe, really, of Tim and Helen, because it's all the psychology of it, putting trust in the science of it. So when it swings violently or learn, oh, right, these explosions, that's all normal. No, that makes all normal. No. That makes you quite unusual. Would you not like to... I've got the experiments around you. It's like they've got a little sideboard and, you know,

all of the antiques are falling off the shelf. Would you not... I have to hold on to the test tube. Would you not like to see that? That's not too far off the mark. LAUGHTER Oh, don't drop the Russian urine! Would you not like to see that? That's not too far off the mark. Don't drop the Russian urine! We'd packed in so much into our soils when we were coming back,

and it was quite windy once we got lowish to the ground, and the wind then blows the parachutes a bit sideways, so you're coming in at a bit of an angle. So you've got these lovely what's called soft-landing retro rockets, and Tim will tellneud ychydig o'r llaw, felly rydych chi'n dod i mewn ar gyfer ychydig o oesgyrch. Felly mae gennych chi'r llaw sy'n cael ei enwi'n sgwrsio'n llaw, ac mae Tim yn dweud wrthych chi nad oes unrhyw beth fel sgwrsio llaw, ond maen nhw'n ei enwi'n llaw, sgwrsio llaw yn llaw, ac ar y ddechrau o'r Soys, mae'n ambell i un metr a hanner o'r graff, mae'r rhain yn ffeirio i wneud y sgwrsio'n llach. Ond os nad ydyn nhw'n ffeirio'n perpendigol, maen nhw'n ffeirio ar gyfer ychydig o oesgyrch, oherwydd bod y fwyaf yn yn gwneud eich parashewtion yn llaw, yna maen nhw'n mynd i'w gwneud i chi ddynnu'r llaw dros y llaw. a bit of an angle because the wind is blowing your parachute sideways a bit then they're going to make you tumble head over heels so we tumbled head over heels all the stuff that we'd packed into the soys not very well the stuff that we were holding on our bellies basically which had

come back in at five and a bit g so you know be pretty heavy on top of us all of that sort of tumbled around the soys we tumbled head over heels a few times ended on our sides and there's a split second when you know you stop tumbling and you think, great, OK, we're OK. And I can't remember which one of us said first, you OK? And then somebody else said, yeah, I'm OK, I'm OK. I said to end it, we're all all right. And then I was on the top, sideways,

and I remember turning my head round just to see, I could just about see the commander's hands and the engineer who was on the bottom was just covered in all of these things and he said there's the hands sort of gradually appearing and pushing through all this stuff um and that's how we landed that's like you dad on holiday we better stick the roof rack on we've got a lot more stuff you were lucky to get that stuff through security well i think was it you mentioned Scott Kelly.

I remember, I think, when he first went up, before you went up, didn't he? Because you're allowed to take certain luxury goods, aren't you? Certain goods you want. And whoever the commander was before him had taken up a gorilla costume, hadn't he? That was Scott who got it sent up by his brother, Mark Kelly, his twin brother, arranged it kind of under the radar.

So there were not many people who realised that was even going up, otherwise they would have stopped it, I'm sure. So it kind of got shoved in the top of one of the Cygnus or SpaceX vehicles and arrived on board the space station. When Scott first told me he had this gorilla suit, I said, what,

you mean like a mask or something? He said, no, I've got the entire gorilla suit. I didn't believe it. I said, how on earth did you get a gorilla suit in space? He said, look, I want to get dressed up in this thing and hide in Tim Coper's crew quarter. So when Tim goes in there, he's going to get the shock of his life. So he got dressed up and hid there and he said,

go and tell Tim he needs to go and make a call to mission control, which you can only do from your crew quarter. So I duly went and told Tim Coper and of course he went to his crew quarter and Scott burst out in his gorilla suit and scared the living daylights out of him. He got through all those psychological problems.

He's brilliant at doing jigsaw things. I want to know, how did this gorilla costume get through all of the dust tests? Because our clothes were designed not to create dust. Anything that we took, even mission patches, were supposed to be especially dust-free. So how can a gorilla costume be dust-free?

You'll have to ask Mark Kelly that, I think. He obviously pulled some strings. Can you describe the space stations you were on, just briefly? Because, Helen, you're on Mir, Tim on the ISS. Can you just characterize what that's like, living on that station? Well, as a comparison, I hope Tim won't mind me saying, but I have heard that if you had to compare the two, being on International Space Station now,

everybody says it's just luxury. You know, you've got your communications 24-7, you can have Heston Blumenthal food. I mean, it's all just absolutely amazing luxury and like living on a four-star hotel. And the Mir Space Station is like going on a family camping trip. We did look at a picture of the Mir Space Station today and we just said, it just looks like the worst shed that's ever been made. It's incredible. I mean, when you first see that, when you first... That's where we're going to live.

I mean, it's basic, but it works. And to be quite honest, the International Space Station now is still based on the Mir space station. The modular design, the main base block, is very, very similar, isn't it, Tim? So the technology's there. All you've got to do is keep air inside. You know, it relies on a couple of O-ring seals.

But it is quite basic. You keep air inside. You've got to scrub the air clean. And so long as you can do that and provide yourself with the right kind of, you know, the food and drink and so on, you've got something that's livable in. Now, a lot of people, I would say most astronauts,

would quite happily go into space in something that is, you know, a family camping trip. I quite like going of people, I would say most astronauts, would quite happily go into space in something that is a family camping trip. I quite like going camping anyway. I'm quite happy to rough it. So the fact that it was a bit, let's say, basic doesn't really matter. Submarines can be pretty basic, but people can survive in them. What's funny about the ISS is, as Helen says, actually half of it, the Russian segment, is just the Mir space station in a different configuration. But it's the same diameter modules. They really haven't changed anything. Same communication systems.

And then you move into what's called the American segment, but actually incorporates the Japanese, European, Canadian elements. And that's all very shiny. It's a wider diameter. Everything in the US segment flew up on the shuttle, so a much larger diameter cargo bay. So you get this real juxtaposition between coming from the cosy Russian segment, where they even have carpet

up the walls and on the ceiling, to this wide diameter American segment, which as Helen says, is much more spacious. We have exercise equipment in there. You even have flat screens, TV that you can watch and things like that. Luxury. You once told me that different modules got different noise. We talk about have new sort of flat screens tv that you can watch and things like that luxury but you once

told me that um but because different modules got different noise i mean i mentioned that you know we talk about the dust and so on um and dust has to be cleaned from the air as everything does and you have to circulate the air with fans in order to keep the air moving because you don't get the convection that we get on earth now the fans are quite noisy and i know on mir we had about 69 decibels of constant white noise from the fans so we had, and I know on Mir we had about 69 decibels of constant white noise from the fans, so we had to monitor our own hearing, and the astronauts get back to Earth, and the families all complain that the TV turned up too loud and so on,

because really hearing levels are damaged at length. But now it's got a bit better, and aren't different modules slightly different? Yeah, it's much better. I mean, generally it's about 30, 40 decibels, which is like a noisy office room, really, with lots of people talking. That would be about that kind of noise level. That's the majority of the space station. But if somebody's running on the treadmill, for example,

it can get up to 70. It's really, really noisy. So each module has its own idiosyncrasies, and some are noisy than others. Brilliant. Listening to two astronauts is just like listening to two people in any other profession. It could be two gas fitters.

Of course, when we were back in the space station, you used to make a terrible racket, terrible racket. Of course, they've sorted all that out now with your modern space station. We never had that in our day. We had the bloody clue. You couldn't have a gorilla suit up there. Terrible. All the dust would get a gorilla suit up there. Terrible. All the dust would get everywhere, all up your nose and everything.

Terrible when it was swinging about violently coming back onto the re-entry. They haven't got a clue what they're doing back in that office. The ISS, Tim, it's worth saying, it's one of the greatest engineering achievements, isn't it? It's a vast structure up there. It is. It's worth saying it's one of the greatest engineering achievements, isn't it? It's a vast structure up there. It is. It's phenomenal. When you see it for the first time from your tiny Sawyer spacecraft when you're rendezvousing and it kind of appears out of the dark, it's like Drax's space station in Moonraker

when it looms out at you. But it's the size of a football pitch, 400 tons of hardware. And inside now is all of the habitation modules. It's about the size of a football pitch, 400 tons of hardware. And inside now is all of the habitation modules. It's about the size of a 747, so there's actually plenty of space. But from an engineering point of view, it's phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. It's been up there for over 20 years now and inhabited for about 19, 18, 19 years of that. So it's not a young space station by any means but they do keep it very up to date everything's changing out we're changing new batteries new solar panel technology we've got wi-fi on the

space station that was introduced a couple of years ago tablets and and so whilst it's an old structure it's very much cutting-edge technology on the inside helen when when you were up there what was i mean first of all you i mean you were doing were up there, what was... I mean, first of all, you were doing experiments up there, weren't you? So what were the biggest challenges in the period of time that you were up there?

Challenges. I suppose, seriously, it was finding stuff. So the Mir Space Station had been up there a few years. I think it started off in, was it 86? I flew in 91, so it had been up there about five years with i think it started off in was it 86 i flew in 91 so it's

been up there about five years with different modules that's inter international space station sort of added to and built um miss space station in the same way um so it wasn't as big as it could have been when i was there but it was still i'd been up there a while and so um you know like any laboratory um where i'm sure brian won't saying, but scientists, we don't like to throw things away because it could come in useful at some point. And they've done the same with the space station. This particular gadget might come in useful. We'll

keep this experiment there because that might come in useful at some point. The spare toilet we had was completely stuffed full of things that might come in useful at some point. And there were things that would, they'd got things stored in places that weren't designed to store things, so elastic straps around the walls

that had been sort of jerry-rigged on so that you would put your camera there or your camera lens there as well. And so actually it was finding things I found. So my job, let's say, was to get out a particular experiment to look at ceramic films. So I needed to find a number of different...

Like a frame and the films themselves and some tools to work with the airlock with and so on. And they would all be in different places, but they weren't in the places that they might have been had they been stored correctly, let's say. So I ended up having to spend a lot of time just finding stuff. When we did a show about... what was it, about two years ago, I think it was in Trom Time, somewhere like that,

I forget which astronaut it was, says space travel would be impossible without Velcro. And I think the importance of things like that. So everything has a little bit of Velcro on it so you can stick it to the wall and wallpaper really, like a soft Velcro, so everything's

then got its place and it's fine when you know exactly where it should be. In fact, one of the tasks my crew had after I left was to barcode everything so that we could then actually find things much more easily, and I think there was a lot of rubbish that was jettisoned as well. One of my big feedbacks to all the technical managers back on Earth was that this is seriously debilitating and impacting operations. They need to do a good basic clear-out.

And that's what happened. Now, Mir and the International Space Station are our first steps out into space. So could we talk about the next steps? I suppose, Tim, the planned next step is the Lunar Gateway, isn't it, one of the main plans? That's right. Yeah, so the Lunar Gateway is to get back out beyond low Earth orbit

to support lunar operations again, a return to the moon, but this time in a more sustainable manner and a sustained presence on the lunar surface as well. So the Gateway is going to be a much smaller version of the International Space Station. And it's going to be in a highly elliptical orbit around the moon. It's about a seven-day orbital period. It will come about as close as 3,000 kilometers to the lunar surface and out to 70,000 kilometers on the far side of the moon.

And it will be able to facilitate lunar surface robotic and human missions. And because of that highly elliptical orbit, it means that you can quite easily change the plane of the orbit with low fuel usage. So you can actually support any part of the lunar surface. You're not just supporting uh just one area the poles or the equator or uh so you can really have many many missions to the lunar surface from the gateway it's going to be very much an international partnership based on the same international space station partnership first modules should be launching in 2022 so really in the next few years we're going to see that the construction happening and that that will be constructed obviously by crews that are on that space station so once the first module is

in orbit around the moon we expect astronauts to be there shortly afterwards absolutely yes first module will be a power propulsion element and then the second module will be a small habitation module and then a lunar lander and that's all going to happen between 2022-2024. So when Artemis 3 comes along and this is the first crewed mission on NASA's new Orion spacecraft, so SLS, the Space Launch System, will launch this phenomenal rocket larger than the Saturn V. Actually the Orion spacecraft is powered by the European Space Agency service module, so Europe is very much part of this mission too. That first crewed Orion vehicle will go dock to the Gateway,

and that will then have the first lunar surface operations again, hopefully 2024. So it's assembled first robotically, as it were, so you connect these three modules together, and then you see everything's working, and then crew go 2024 mark actually maybe could be the first the first comedian in orbit around the moon yeah i've put down for it so one of the things i find fascinating but many things i'm fascinated is just sort of so when you talk about the international cooperation, and so, in a sense,

you've got all this sort of amazing passion for science and just knowledge and so on that you exude so brilliantly, but it's all subject to the will of the people who control the world. So, you know, we all know, obviously, that the space race was fuelled by the Cold War and President Johnson said, I don't want to go to bed by the light of a communist moon, and that sort of thing,

and so that's what fuelled the space race. But that's now that the Cold War is long since gone, and so you talk about sort of international cooperation, as if this is just part of the language now that you would use, but that's very different, isn't it, from your sorts of missions, from your sorts of missions, from these sorts of missions being fuelled by something

that wasn't international cooperation. It was a very international hostility that fuelled it. So it is subject to that. I went to a very strange event on the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. I was in Paris.

I went to this utterly peculiar event that was so Parisian, nobody quite knew what it was. It was in the Grand Palais, which was this huge room, it was big as St Paul's, and there was a techno band playing in one corner, and then in the other corner there was a film of someone just banging a piano, and lots of people who dressed up for the night

were sort of just standing there watching it and applauding. And there was was food which was one ravioli that was 15 euros each things like that it was utterly parisian and then tim pesce tom pesce the astronaut was came out and was interviewed and it was just fascinating and we was talking so passionately about all these different countries coming together in order to to create these next missions and so onately about all these different countries coming together in order to to create these next missions and so on and i thought how different that was from the the original space race and it also made me think and i'm this is terrible because i'm going to bring in the subject that no one wants to bring in but it did make me realize he was i mean he was explicit about this that this is why he was passionate about the European Union

and about the sort of cooperation that comes from that. And I thought, well, it hadn't really occurred to me that that's one of the reasons why people in your profession... To you, international cooperation is something that fuels the very projects that you exist for, if you like. Absolutely, yeah. No, it's very true. And really, the Apollo-Soyuz missions,

they were the first breaking of the ice after the Cold War race, or the space race began. And ever since Apollo-Soyuz, we've just been building and building and building on that international cooperation. When you think think it's incredible that some of the events that have happened during that period and the tensions between the countries involved, and yet in terms of space, we seem to be able to transcend those political differences, very much like the scientific community as well,

and be able to have a long-term vision and a common goal and i think that's the the crux is that these these programs the objectives are so important to every nation that uh you know international cooperation is absolutely key and will remain so for the next steps to the gateway and beyond helen i mean i'm interested in in terms of public reaction as well which is when mark was talking about that, when we did the Apollo show, something a lot of people talked about was even though it was driven by this Russia versus America, when those astronauts were travelling around the world,

everyone always said, we've been to the moon. There was this sense amongst all of the different populations of all of the different countries that we, the human race, had gone to the moon. Now, when you speak to people about space exploration, do you feel that that is something that happens, that once the adventure happens beyond the parochial boundaries of the planet Earth,

people do see that as a uniting adventure? I think there's two sides to it, actually. I think people do see that this is something that we do as individual people go into space, but it's done to help people and it's done to progress exploration for everybody. Just as we all went to the moon, we are in space. We are on the International Space Station to a point. The Chinese aren't on the International Space Station, to a point. The Chinese aren't on the International Space Station. They're looking at their own space station

and their own lunar and Martian visits. So I think it's not completely there. But I think we're all still quite nationalistic about it. So, I mean, when Tim was in space, we in Britain were really, really excited about space. And then sort of waxes and wanes a bit and the italians are all very very excited now because luca parmitano is up there um and so i think you know the space agencies still fund a lot of this stuff and still work a

lot of the pr to make us very excited so i think there's there's bits of both but i think there's the the social media as well makes it more accessible. And I think also people are excited because they can almost envisage themselves going. Tourism has been spoken about quite a bit. We all got very excited about Mars and the Mars One mission. Remember all that discussion about should we go to Mars and not come back? And even though the mission was, of course, never going to happen, and it might be ethically unsound and all of that, nonetheless, it was great public debate. And we all thought about dying on another planet it got us thinking you know so

i think yeah people are starting to to feel as though um even though it might not be their country they're still kind of involved in some way now the lunar gateway it's very exciting to be going back to the Moon, multiple missions, surveying the Moon, the poles, places we haven't been. But I suppose ultimately the goal in most people's mind is Mars. We've mentioned Mars briefly. Could you comment on the difference between missions to the Moon, space stations in orbit around the Moon, and then sending humans to Mars?

Yes, I mean, it's an incredible challenge it's an order of magnitude greater than what we've managed to do previously in terms of the human physiology we haven't really touched on that much but the body changes so much when you go into space and you notice it straight away the first thing is you feel a bit sort of puffy faced and you get a headache often this intracranial pressure increases because all the fluid that's pulled in our legs shifts up to our chest and our head and our body reacts by getting rid of that over the course of about five to six weeks you actually lose you know almost five kilograms through body fluid getting rid of body fluid your bones and muscles atrophy your your skin ages, your eyesight changes, your immune system becomes more depleted, cardiovascular system changes. It's a fantastic

environment to study the human body. And so when we're looking at these trips to Mars, we have to be able to counteract all of these negative effects of spaceflight and try and remain fit and healthy because you're going to go back into a gravity environment when you land on Mars. And we spoke about that rough re-entry and the landing with no such thing as a soft landing. At least we have people to help us get out of a capsule and to make sure we're okay and to provide shelter and food for us. Those first crews landing on Mars are going to have to do all of that themselves and have to be in a physical condition after an eight-month journey. So the challenges are immense. We have to get better radiation shielding. We get exposed to the equivalent of about eight chest x-rays a day on board the International Space

Station. That's going to be much more significant once we go outside of Earth's magnetosphere on a journey to Mars. So radiation shielding has to improve, propulsion technology has to improve so we can make that journey a lot faster. And then we've got to have good habitation modules, infrastructure in place that allow us to live and work on the red planet. It's a huge, huge challenge. On the Moon, we're five days away from returning back to Earth. And if you have a gateway, you're only a few hours away from leaving the lunar surface and having the sanctuary of a gateway to go to.

You know, people talk about, you hear SpaceX and people like that are talking about going to Mars within a decade, and it sounds like, actually, we have problems to solve that may push it. I mean, I know it's an impossible question, perhaps, but, I mean, we're talking 20 years, 30 years? I would be extremely surprised if we have a human mission to Mars before 2030, certainly to the surface of Mars.

I think we might see an orbital mission, but I'd be extremely surprised if we see humans on Mars before 2030. Quite soon, though. So you're talking about a decade or so, possibly. Yeah, I think towards the end of the 30s is about as ambitious as we could get on Mars before 2030. It's quite soon, though. So you're talking about a decade or so, possibly. Yeah, I think towards the end of the 30s is about as ambitious as we could get, late 30s. And that's with assistance from commercial, both commercial and national space agencies working hand in hand.

Helen, you were saying earlier on about when talking about growing things in space. I mean, is that part of, I have read in the past, that that's part of the things we need to understand, that there has been the ability to start growing lettuce in space, but there is going to be a point in that 18 month journey where lettuce is not going to be enough and so is is that also within in the technological ambition there is also the ambition there with the organic as well yeah sure i mean think it's

i mean tim mentioned radiation which is the first big thing, because I suppose we could survive with food that we take, but that's hugely energetic. You need so much fuel to take the food. So if we can, once we're on the surface of Mars, if we can grow our own food there. But yes, as I understand, there is, Tim will perhaps correct me, but we've grown the salad-y stuff, so basil, lettuce. You grew rocket lettuce, didn't you?

Brilliant, rocket lettuce. I don't know, I'm sure you didn't choose that. But yes, so salad stuff from seed but not actually fruit not fruiting bodies matt damon supposedly grew potatoes on mars but we don't know that we can do that yet um so yes i'm sure people will want to to be able to grow food and have a sort of to be able to better recycle because i think the other big thing is um even international space station it recycles a lot of stuff but you know we still get rid of heat we still get rid of urine we've heard about of course and we there's a lot of waste still and so to have that much more of a closed loop system so we don't waste so much grow our

own food protect ourselves from from radiation damage and that that protection, actually, I'd like to see, not just perhaps with... We talk about shielding of spacesuits and habitats, but perhaps by taking drugs, we'll be able to protect our body from the radiation that we do actually incur, which I think will be beautifully synergistic with a lot of cancer therapy research

that's being done on Earth at the moment. So I'd love to see a lot more of that work just brought to completion and actually put to use on mars mark um i just wanted now you've listened to this for for the show by the way the one thing you've done to me which has really annoyed me is the moment you said by the light of a communist moon all i've had in my head is a lenin and stalin laurel and Hardy tribute act. It's ruined my concentration. What other five-year plan you've got me into? We will start by pushing the piano up one step. Anyway, so this is...

That's not a Russian accent. It doesn't matter what accent it is, it's Radio 4. Have you not heard some of the other shows, won't they get away with? But is there any particular experiment you think, this would be something wonderful to do in space? If you were given that opportunity, we'd put you on the waltzer, you've not been sick, we reckon you're ready for space. So is there anything you think, oh, that would be an amazing thing to do?

Well, I suppose, I don't know. Listening to Tim and Helen is just sort of what i'm fascinated by is just that that all the obstacles to go into mars they're not the ones that we thought that they would be so i remember being at school when the moon landings happened and i remember the teacher saying by the year 2000 we'll be on mars now i don't suppose he had any inside information uh mr hood at the time but that's the sort of feeling that that there was and now it seems to be as far away as as ever but all of the obstacles it was imagined at the time were technological ones about how on earth you get something that far but now it seems it's all it's all human it's all how do we feed ourselves how do we get how do we train someone

psychologically to be in that condition all all that time so um i don't know i just sort of i think that the the human side of experimentation is probably what's most fascinating rather than i'm sure you know when when we finally get there we'll find some rocks and muck about with them but uh but the amazing thing will be what can humans do you know just the the physical thing of a human being well that's why it's so much more captivating than some little clanky metal thing that we've sent up to various places and people lose it yeah yeah yeah clanky metal thing there's one on saturn probably i don't know but there's no it's a gas planet

just dissolved in there but you know it's all those human things what can you what what can a human do on mars you know, it's all those human things. What can a human do on Mars? You know, just walking on Mars would be... What's that like? That's what's captivating in the human mind, isn't it, I think, rather than sort of, you know, any chemical experiments and so on, even though they will be infinitely more valuable. But just what captivates the mind is that.

And the idea is... In defence of these clanky metal things i mean they can do some absolutely tremendous things and of course by sending them first they make the human mission safe um but clanky metal things can you know got much better let's say sort of um sensory acuity so they can really really they can they can um discover one molecule and determine exactly what that one molecule is made out of. A human can't do that. A human can perhaps work flexibly,

can decide that it's worth investigating that piece of ground over there because that looks different from that piece of ground over there, whereas a clanky metal thing will have been programmed to investigate two parts that might just happen to be identical. I'm not going to lie to you. We've landed on a comet you know cherry moth we can actually go that far and land on something that is flying past us that fast i mean i think that really got people excited oh it's wonderful it's extraordinary i wasn't seriously arguing that you know

is there any metal on this thing and no humans humans? Scrap it. But I think in terms of what captivates people, the lay person, it is, as Tim was saying, it's human beings going up to this thing, just by obviously personalising it. And the idea, I suppose, is to establish permanent bases on the moon, permanent bases on Mars,

and then we start to talk about the slightly further into the future a colony on mars and then human beings are spreading out into the solar system we become a space-faring civilization so what are your thoughts on that progress into the future when we i mean i suppose the question is can you see us becoming a truly space-faring civilization um yes i i can i mean definitely in terms of a colonization on on the lunar surface uh and onto mars absolutely um it's going to be very interesting to see how that develops in what kind of partnerships uh what sort of legal framework regulatory framework we'll have on the lunar surface on the martian surface um beyond

mars becomes very difficult again i mean if it's one order of magnitude to get to mars it's a whole different kettle of fish trying to get beyond mars um and deeper exploration to the solar system i'm not sure that humans in our organic form will ever leave our solar system maybe we will maybe some sort of post-human digital intelligence travelling at the speed of light will be what happens in a thousand years in the future or beyond.

But certainly in terms of becoming a multi-planetary species and having a colony on the moon, colony on Mars and maybe making it out to some of Saturn or Jupiter's moons as well. I think that is certainly a possible future for the human race.

It's interesting what you said there. You read the great evangelists for space. There's people like Robert Zubrin, who I know Elon Musk follows very closely. You made that point about different ways of living, different legal frameworks. It goes to what Mark said, actually. He sees that as one of the great benefits

because you put humans on a frontier and they do things that they don't do in the comfort of their own village or their own town or in this case their own planet and that that seems to me to be one of the most powerful reasons why we would want to explore is this the human the human why westerns are so popular isn't it it's like oh we've arrived in this, if you leave aside the slaughter of the people who are already there. But we arrive in this piece of land and we've got to work out our rules for ourselves. We can't just go by the ones we're brought up with.

So one of the great by-products of this exploration of Mars, the Moon and Mars and beyond, may be the development of different ways of living as a society. We're discussing this now, and obviously we're not involving every single nation on Earth. Nation versus state, that's another interesting difference to consider as well. There are some people who,

when the lunar astronauts went round to visit and trumpet how wonderful they'd done, there were some people around the world who were absolutely shocked and in horror about what had happened because their gods lived on the moon, and the moon had now been contaminated by humans, and they'd left behind bits of metal on the surface of the moon. So I think we have to be very careful

when we are thinking about why we go, what we're going for. And really, the idea of planting a flag on the surface and claiming it for a nation state absolutely abhors me, isn't it, what you think, Tim? Absolutely, yes. And also this concept of we've messed up this planet, so let's move to another. I mean, that is not anything like what we're discussing

in terms of space exploration. The two, they're not mutually exclusive what we're discussing in terms of space exploration. The two, they're not mutually exclusive. We're doing this in parallel. And many, many of the technologies that we're exploring in space exploration are absolutely going to help us overcome the challenges that we face back here on this planet. systems in terms of water purification systems, in CO2 scrubbing, in terms of the environment that we're studying from space, looking back at planet Earth, over 50% of all of our climate change data comes from space observations. So it is about, first and foremost, protecting the one place that we know where humans can live in the universe and that is planet earth there's nothing more beautiful than planet earth when you look into space and when people say what's

your favorite planet well it's earth because it looks beautiful and it's the only place that we can actually enjoy ourselves and survive in a in an environment that we are comfortable in well i was going to ask because you know i thought get some of your expertise on this is this idea of travelling to the moon. Now, you probably have had a similar experience as a working comedian where you've probably been with three other comedians in a Fiat Uno going from Truro to Aberdeen in bad traffic. So can you give advice to those astronauts who are going to go to Mars

about the things that will probably go wrong near one of the little chefs? I thought about that. Send comics up there. We'll be going, this is a doddle. I haven't got someone trying out their new material in the seat behind me while we're lurching wildly, re-entering the atmosphere. Well, we asked the audience a question as well, and today's question, it was,

if you could perform one experiment in space, what would it be and why? And our answer is i would send brian blessed and have him shout gordon's alive to see if his mighty voice can defy the vacuum of space oh it would have been great if he'd been an alien they'd have had to have a totally different poster slogan you're quite right oh he would have never got onto the spacecraft it It would have turned round. I'm not forgetting Brian had been on it. This one says, investigate the effects of microgravity

on the exact point of the death of a strawberry. Why? To take my mind off Brexit. That's from Georgia. This is from Aaron, who says the experiment that he would like to perform in space would be to see if Trump's toupee could reach escape velocity. This is one I don't know if...

Can you blow-dry your hair in space, or does lack of gravity make it impossible? Either of you. No, absolutely. I had long hair. Tim probably never had long hair in space. I'm sure I'd be much too cool for that. But no, I had long hair in space and because you've got to circulate the air because you don't get convection, so you circulate the air with fans. As the fans blow the air

around, you can go by a fan and you can get a blow dry by just being by the fan. Yeah, absolutely. That's fantastic. I'd like to take a flat Earth at a space to see what they do. Do you get that? Both of you get those people having a word with you,

thinking that you're just... I don't know what they think you're doing. Well, let's not even go there, because I've had those owners, and they just basically believe that everything is a fiction, and when the ISS goes past, that's just some kind of hologram. But they are saying that you've made it up absolutely yeah yeah and i find it incredibly frustrating but i've gone beyond that point now and i think that you know anybody who seriously thinks that the earth is flat so calm and measured to go through all that trouble of going through

all them psychological profiles and jigsaws and centrifuging things and extraordinary experiments. You've gone out into space, there's been a bloke with a gorilla costume who was up there six months, you ran a marathon up there, you swung wildly and there was explosions while you were coming back in and then you get back here and someone goes,

nah, you never went. It was funny, I heard... And you just find it a bit frustrating that's i mean or i heard charlie duke uh talking earlier this year and i i didn't realize he had a twin brother and he said during his lunar eva his lunar spacewalk his brother walked into mission control and there were so many heads turning and i thought thinking what is what is this publicity stunt going on? Charlie, you're supposed to be walking on the moon at the moment, right?

If the fat earthers then could have seen that, yeah. Brilliant. Mark, have you got any more there? No, go on. Oh, okay. To establish if breaking wind is a viable form of astronaut propulsion. Now, actually, that's...

But that doesn't really... Does breaking wind, because all of that stuff is... Conservation of momentum, it'll work. Does it? At some level. Well, technically, but you... It doesn't come out fast enough, I think. Is it?

Do you know what? That's one of the few challenges I can imagine a man in England's going, well, I'm going to prove something. You must have tried it. Sneezing's a better job, because that really does... You get a good bit of velocity coming out. It's about the mass as well as the velocity.

Equally scientifically, Daisy Hollywood has said that the experiment she would like would be to put Brian in orbit to see if he ages even more slowly in order to prove Einstein's general theory of relativity yeah it's quite subtle on the space station isn't it because you have a special relativistic effect because it's moving relative to the ground so that means a clock runs slow relative to the ground but also it's in a weaker gravitational field or space time is curved a bit less and therefore the clock runs

faster and so it's quite a delicate payoff between the velocity, the orbital velocity and the altitude and I don't actually know which one wins off the top of my head, do you remember? I think general relativity wins slightly and I think you come back to something like 0.07 seconds younger

after a six-month mission to space. But I don't know that for sure. I'll have to look it up. So there's the answer. So it's a measurable amount, then. It's not like a billionth of a second. No, I think it is a measurable amount. It's a very, very small amount. I know for the GPS satellites, satellite navigation,

they drift by 39,000 nanoseconds per day, the clocks. And 39,000 nanoseconds, that's a thousand millionth of a second. That light travels one foot per nanosecond. So 30 centimetres. So that's a 39,000 feet

positional error per day, if you don't correct. These bits always terrify me because i really have no idea when he stops there's a possibility of constant tag game of different oh new equation i just happen to know that number i don't just happen to know that number just happen anyway um thank you very much to our panel of the final show of this series. Thank you very much to Helen Sharman, Tim Peake and Mark Steele. This

is the end of the 20th series of the Infinite Monkey Cage. We'll be back in 2020 with the 21st series. And the only worrying thing is that if the world does continue to go in the direction that it seems to be going, we'll actually be back on the BBC Light programme. Sandwiched between the Clitheroe Kid

and the Billy Cotton Band Show. Anyway, to play us out, here's Housewives Choice. You had all the pounded egg again, haven't you? Thank you very much. Goodbye. Thank you very much. Goodbye.

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