Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
A City On Mars
Can humanity really make Mars our next home? Strap in with me, Simon Devere, as we traverse the uncharted territories of space colonization, fueled by insights from "A City on Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. Prepare to confront the stark health realities awaiting us in the cosmos, from the battle against muscle atrophy to the siege of radiation on our cells. This is not just about the majestic rockets and star-studded dreams—it's a deep dive into the intricate ballet of maintaining human life where no man-made structure has ever stood.
Join us on Mind Muscle where we decode the rigorous fitness regimes and nutritional blueprints essential for spacefarers. I'm pulling back the curtain on the pristine image of astronauts to reveal the gritty details of their extraordinary lives, the physical toll of microgravity, and the psychological labyrinth of long-term space missions. It's a candid conversation on the triumphs and trials of those who dance among the stars, and how music, of all things, can be a lifeline in the silent expanse.
Cap off your cosmic journey by wrestling with the AI conundrum alongside Margaret Mitchell's critical eye, and sink your teeth into the meaty discussions of health and nutrition in the final frontier. As SpaceX gears up for an IPO that could skyrocket public interest, we scrutinize the reality behind the razzle-dazzle, measuring real progress against the buzz. From the practical to the philosophical, we're lifting the veil on space health, inviting you to join the discourse that could shape our interplanetary future. Keep lifting and learning, right here on Mind Muscle.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast. He is your host, simon Devere, and welcome back to Mind Muscle, the place we study the history, science and philosophy behind everything in health and fitness. Today I am Simon Devere and there is nothing new except all that has been forgotten. So recently I finished up a book called A City on Mars Came out in 2023. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. If you guys want to pick it up, it's a fun read.
Speaker 1:In short, we're not going to do a book review, but the book is basically taking on the idea of space colonization, not from the standpoint of is this a good or bad idea. The book more takes on. What will we actually need to do in order to make that less science fiction, more science fact, if you will? So, first off, I do recommend the book, just because it's a fun read, but it did bring to my attention many of the issues that deep space travel, or colonization, presents to human thriving, namely in the realms of health and nutrition. But up top, let's get this out. This is like the disclaimer at the beginning. Keep in mind, today's episode is again going to be almost purely theoretical, as we extrapolate from the literature that is available on the effects of deep space travel. But again, there's a lot of. I'm not an expert in this, nor is anybody else, because we don't have any studies on deep space travel, because it's never been done, but again, we do actually have a pretty wide amount relatively, but we do have some health information on many of the astronauts that have been going up to space for many years now. There are some issues with those sample sizes. We'll touch that later. But again, we're going to focus mostly on looking at the available literature and, of course, attempting to extrapolate from that how these challenges may figure into deep space. But let's just flag it up front A lot of this is going to be theoretical, should not be treated as gospel or the way that these things will develop.
Speaker 1:I think this is a fun topic. We do have a little bit of studies, so I think we can have a little bit of fun and take some guesses about how this may play out. And again, I don't have any pretensions that I'm the expert these people need. But again, what I do get to see are the pieces that are available in the. I'm going to stop using the term mainstream because I feel like that's used by a pejorative, so I'm going to use the term, the popular press, and what I obviously mean by that is anything that's popular. If I go into the iTunes store and your podcast is in the top 10, though you may not consider that mainstream I do Just any of the most available content creators, whether they are establishment or not, if they are popular.
Speaker 1:I tend to notice most of these articles are focusing on the same thing, and I think that perhaps, if we do look at the available literature, we might be able to ask some better questions than I believe the discourse is providing presently. Let's give a few examples, if you will, and again, these are not necessarily in my wheelhouse, but we can either add Haman and me as a trainer who doesn't have a right to think about these things, or we could try to give counter arguments to the points that I'm going to make. The latter would be more intellectually honest, but if you just want to write me off as a guy who isn't deserving of having an opinion, you're certainly. Almost anybody would be qualified to write me off in that regard. But maybe you've seen these articles about.
Speaker 1:Why are we thinking of colonizing space? One of the top answers is obviously overcrowding, which, again, I guess I would just go and look at population data before I would make that my main premise of why humans need to leave Earth. I'm not sure that that is the direction Demographics indicate that we're headed right now. Most wealthy countries are not replacing their populations. The countries that have replacement level birth rates all tend to be in what we would call the developing, or they used to call the third world whatever word you like but that's where it is. It's not in the wealthy countries and anyway it's actually just not looking that strong. That overcrowding is going to be a huge problem in the future. The current projections we are on don't really indicate that that actually is a massive problem, another one that I see coming up a lot in the popular press.
Speaker 1:Of course we're doing this to save humanity. We have an impending climate disaster and just in case we wreck the Earth, we should have a backup plan. So I think there's an obvious contention of that that I actually have seen some people make. That's well, if we just take the same people that destroyed the planet and put them on Mars, what's the chance they don't destroy Mars? That one, I think, is more obvious than the one that probably should be a little bit more obvious, and it's that, first off, we all know the difficulties that we would have with modeling or projecting anything, let alone predicting the damage of climate change moving forward. But for the sake of this point, let's just restrict it to the worst case scenarios. Find the worst case model that you can show for what Earth will look like in climate change and then now compare that environment and its ability to support human life versus Mars or versus any moon base or an object, and what you'll kind of quickly realize is actually, even like a vastly reduced quality of life on Earth still has a better potential of supporting human life than any of the other locations that people are talking about. So again, I don't think this completely writes that off, but just the means that it would take to make Mars habitable are going to be less than even making the worst case scenario on Earth habitable for humans, just based on a lot of factors the gravity, the atmosphere. We'll touch on all that stuff later as we start diving into it. But I don't know if avoiding the ill effects of climate change, I'm not sure that's a great reason and actually full disclosure. I actually regard us becoming an extraterrestrial species as a very worthwhile goal of our species.
Speaker 1:Again, I'm questioning the reasons that I see given. Now you know another one. Obviously we're going to do some mining and we're all going to get rich Not possible. But then I just do question the who is we in that we are going to get rich? Because it's going to send me a check? I doubt it. If that were to take place, I imagine a very small group of people would get rich and everybody else would get. You know, you got a nice iPhone or something. You could watch them getting rich and the things they spend their money on. But that's about as close as I think it will get to you being enriched by it, if I'm being honest. But hey, we can all buy stock, do whatever. Yeah, whatever, someone's going to make a ton of money Ph level every month, every dollar.
Speaker 1:This one might be the worst one and I actually saw this in. It's funny because one of these tech guys had had a big meeting and he had all his you know reasons prepped and actually a question from the audience kind of killed him on this one. But you know, of course we might need to evade super intelligence if chat GPT becomes self-aware and Same tech founder actually tried to sign an open letter to pause it, and it still hasn't become self-aware. But let's just say he's right. Let's say that that we are really, really close to Superintelligence, that jet GPT is not artificial narrow intelligence, that it's already a GI and that it's getting ready to jump to superintelligence. You know, I don't believe any of that, but a lot of people do, so let's follow their premise we need to leave earth to evade the super intelligence that is going to try to kill us here on earth. Now audience member raised the hand and said why wouldn't they follow us to Mars? And then tech founder didn't have an answer for that. So, again, this is where I have this ego, or this just absolute audacity that I think I may have something to add to this, simply because I Think, at this juncture, we are not really asking great questions.
Speaker 1:These are probably just a short list of some of the dominant themes you're seeing in in articles about space colonization, and I don't think any of them are actually that Relevant or pertinent to the task that we have at hand, and again, we're actually talking about somebody who I Find this a great goal, quite frankly, you know. Another fallacy that I'll note, though, is Whenever you start doing what I just did and question those common narratives, you'll get accused of being a Luddite or you know, trying to resist human progress. There's even a set within this particular group that will Say that your resistance is actually unethical, because my resistance here in the present is actually slowing down the pace and they're not going to be able to build their sentient AI's. And if they can't build A thousand, you know sentient AI's, I am the one who killed them. It is, and these are not my arguments, by the way.
Speaker 1:I don't believe any of this, but many people with a lot more power and influence than myself do. They would argue. People like me Would be saying that when, when the oceans were being explored, that I would be arguing to stay in Europe. And again, I think there's like some really fundamental things that they don't ignore. I know they think that's a great example, but and and this is actually going to be kind of the focus of the episode but Exploring space is different than exploring Earth.
Speaker 1:So extrapolating from the age of exploration on Earth how that went and then extrapolating that experience out into space, I think that is actually Painfully naive and again ignoring the reality that is this cold, indifferent landscape that is space. I Get it that when the people set off from Europe, they they maybe didn't know where they were heading but we do and there was land on the other side that had Climates and things that actually were, you know, relatively Really similar to the world that they lived in. This age of exploration is a fundamentally different challenge and I think that analogy is is very bad Because it makes it seem a lot simpler than it actually is. If we use Earth exploration as a proxy for the challenges we're going to face in in space exploration, that proxy is making the task seem a lot easier than it really is. So anyway, again, I actually do regard Deep, deep space travel or, you know, long-term colonies in space, as a completely worthwhile goal and ambition of our collective human effort, if you will. So I I'm not going to be questioning Whether we should do this or not. That that's a valid discussion to be had.
Speaker 1:Where you are, again, what I kind of want to focus on with with our discussion. I really want to focus more on the health, fitness, nutrition side again, because I can actually speak to that a little bit and I think we can extrapolate from there. Obviously, we're not going to talk about what we'll. We'll mention it quickly, but I'm not even gonna offer you guys solutions on how we mitigate the impacts of of radiation out in deep space, the propulsion systems, the fuels that's clearly a discussion for other people. But I also think that there is a lot of value focusing on more like the rubber meets the road, the nuts and bolts things, because it can kind of establish how far out are we really. And so, again, today's discussion I really do, even though it's super fun and we might touch on a few here and there, let's try to avoid the plots of our favorite science fiction stories and focus on what it is actually going to take to put humans out in space. So, again, if we are ever going to make this into scientific fact, not science fiction, we are gonna have to focus on some of these things that are a little less interesting. You're not gonna get like a cool video of bone density law studies. So, yeah, I am gonna use our time together to focus on some of the less interesting but what I think are at least, if not more important than some of the other problems that I know we are given a lot of effort to try to solve. So, yeah, with that out of the way, I think, the way we're gonna break it up, let's focus first on we'll run down just real quick the health impacts of being in space. A couple themes that we introduced there are gonna pop back up again when we start talking about how to work out and get our proper nutrition in space. But so I think first it'll benefit us just to run down quick list of some of the health challenges and then obviously some of those are gonna come up again when we get back into the workouts and nutrition. But yeah, so without further ado again, I guess I wanna start just in.
Speaker 1:That analogy of exploring Earth is nothing like exploring space. The environment is again entirely different. One of the most important or the biggest differences that really impacts not only human health but the technology we have to use. You name it. This is gonna have impacts across the board, but it is the impacts of microgravity. So if you actually get to Mars, the colonists there would be experiencing about 38% of Earth's gravity. We know from putting people in space for a few years now that this can lead to muscle atrophy, bone density loss, cardiovascular deconditioning. So you are gonna have to have some means to be able to perform regular and rigorous workouts. This is something that we will touch on later. Of all of the problems that we're gonna discuss today, that may be the easiest one Training in space because the rules of training don't change. It's not that hard a problem, but there are definitely, because of gravity, some things that we have to consider.
Speaker 1:Another big change in space is actually the increased radiation exposure. There's no atmosphere, and out in deep space the amounts of radiation are much higher than anybody would experience within Earth's protective magnetic field and atmosphere. So whether you are doing a deep space trip or you're actually living on Mars, you would be exposed to much higher levels of cosmic and solar radiation. We do know that increased exposure to radiation of course carries an elevated risk of cancer, degenerative diseases, cardiovascular disease, and this has something that we do have small sample size. But of the Apollo astronauts, they were roughly four to five times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than other astronauts, not average Americans, other astronauts. So I think that actually is quite meaningful and kind of speaks to the fact that we don't, or even short exposures to deep space and the radiation. Well, we don't even go out to deep space yet. So a moon mission. These astronauts were exposed to way less radiation than what anybody moving out to Mars would be exposed to. So, of the Apollo astronauts, it 43% of them who have died did so from cardiovascular disease.
Speaker 1:So, again, one of the technologies that you're gonna need to bring online before this could even be possible is some means of protecting your astronauts from radiation. So, right now, just doing one trip to Mars would exceed the lifetime dose of radiation that NASA currently allows for an astronaut in its entire lifetime. That being said, I doubt it would actually be hard to find astronauts For them. This is something that they tend to want to do, and it's not gonna be hard to find astronauts who would be willing to accept that risk. The challenge is gonna be in finding non-astronauts who are willing to accept those health risks, and this actually does bring me to a quick sidebar that I just wanted to bring up, that astronauts in no way are normal people. Astronauts are some of the most exceptional people in every way in health, intelligence, athletics, you name it. It's incredibly competitive to actually get to fly on any space mission. So, again, even the studies that we have, which are not good as it pertains to cardiovascular disease. Keep in mind these are roughly the equivalents of, let's say, like Olympic athletes or Navy SEALs. These are not normal people.
Speaker 1:I think it is reasonable to assume the health impacts in non-astronauts are probably going to be a lot worse than we have observed in astronauts, for a number of reasons but one because, again, becoming an astronaut is highly selective. Nobody has ever made it into space without excelling at pretty much everything. But additionally, even the studies we have, it's fair to assume that there are more health complications than our studies show. And this again gets into sort of the astronauts and doctors. To be quite frank and this is coming from the astronauts and doctors themselves they have a very complicated relationship. Doctors are the people that can ground astronauts. So astronauts are pretty clear in this that they lie to their doctors when oftentimes they know they're sick. And you never tell the doctor who's controlling a flight that you're sick unless you want to be grounded, which none of these people do. They have tried very, very hard and excelled at a lot of things to get to where they're at. So trust me, if you got a little head cold or something, and even though it says you're not supposed to do that, from what I hear, astronauts tend to lie about those things. So I again think, as we try to extrapolate from the known health impacts to astronauts, we do need to keep in mind one, the health impacts are probably worse than reported and two, the non-astronaut population is not going to fare as well as this population of astronauts or our first people up in space are probably going to be. They're going to fare some of the best, just for obvious reasons they were the best. That's why they were selected to go in the first place. So all that just to say. I do think that it's going to be hard to draw conclusions to a general population from studies on astronauts for those reasons they're physical, intellectual outliers who lie to their doctors.
Speaker 1:But anyway, one of the things I found interesting obviously sleep is very important, whether you are on earth or out in space. Arguably it's more important in space because you're probably doing an important mission that everybody's lives on the ship kind of count on. So yeah, sleep very important. People on earth generally don't get enough. In space, sleep's a little different because obviously you're not on earth so you don't have a 24-hour day. They do still keep the 24-hour day but like, let's say, you were on the International Space Station. In a 24-hour period, you're going to see about 16 sunrises and sunsets per day, so we're obviously not using our circadian rhythm to dictate when we do things. Being in space is a little like being in a casino. You got to look at the clock, otherwise you're probably going to lose track of time pretty quickly. Time is experienced very differently in space. Again, a lot of the cues that we get throughout the day from the light are completely irrelevant in space. But that being said, though, after a little bit of acclimatization, most astronauts don't really have a hard time sleeping. So I don't think there's like any great challenges that will be presented in that.
Speaker 1:One note that I just kind of found fun, because I'm usually making fun of people forming too many opinions from watching movies. But the astronauts really do wake up to music. I was reading this story and then it was kind of reminding me because so many movies in space, like the first shot is like a shot out the window of the spacecraft with some song playing in the background and the person kind of waking up. And that's actually true to form Because, again, you don't have the light to wake you up. So it is very often that they use music Another anecdote I liked from our NASA astronauts. But I guess the families down on earth are the ones who picked the song that will wake you up. So it's a fun game to try to pick out which song is yours, and that's something that seems like a small thing but actually is a big deal, because this will jump us into the next point.
Speaker 1:But stress due to isolation and confinement is a big big deal. So little things like that that could seem not that important, like looking forward to a song that your family might have picked for you. The people who have really been to space say that that's a big deal for them and that actually gets them through the isolation and confinement that's kind of central to the work they're doing. But again, stress is a big deal on any mission. If you were going to do a longer mission now, obviously the psychological makeup of the individuals and the group that you put together is going to be very, very key for success. You're going to have to really understand the psychological profiles of every person you put into a mission like that, and then you're also going to need strategies like the wake up songs or just various things that could provide some mental health support. As communication has gotten better, with some of the missions we've been able to do email some communications. Again, I don't know how that works actually out in deep space, but it's important. I know that and it was even mentioned.
Speaker 1:Just a back to the psychological importance of reducing stress. Astronauts have said that if a teddy bear is going to help you get to sleep, then it's actually an essential item for the mission. So even though this can seem like not as important a technical problem as some of the other things, this one really is a very, very big problem actually and I am sure that we have plenty of methods to work at it. But having systems in place to deal with the stress and the psychological effects of isolation and confinement is a big deal in a mission like we're talking. If we're going to deep space or Mars, we've never gone that far. The timelines would be much longer. Now we'll fly over this one a little quickly, but probably put it talked about this earlier on.
Speaker 1:But lacking gravity is actually going to impact a lot. It's not just the muscle atrophy and it's not just the bone density loss. When we actually get into the circulatory systems. How fluid redistributes the body, the immune system, evacuation, birth there's a lot of things that are kind of reliant on gravity driving certain actions, and so we just well, some we don't know. Obviously, childbirth, we don't know much about that, but this was a funny one.
Speaker 1:In the 1950s there was a patent made Because, again, I think it's worth reminding people have been talking about space exploration more than just in the last year or so. I think that we forget that we've already done some things, and as we are hyping up this nest cycle, we're kind of ignoring the fact that we've already tried a few things. And so one patent that I saw that existed in the 50s, when we were talking about the idea of putting people up into permanent space stations, was basically like a centrifuge-like thing. So let's say that you get pregnant, they would put you in the centrifuge and it would spin and that could create the gravity that we would need to help the fetus develop properly and give birth. But anyway, I don't know how many people would want to sit in one of those things for nine months or if that's what was acquired. But all that to say, if we're going to make permanent colonies or settling, that might be something you want to figure out first is what does birth look like in space? How are you going to deal with that? But even just smaller things.
Speaker 1:It's known that when you go into space without the gravity, fluids tend to pool in different parts of the body. It can disrupt hearing, balance, eyesight. The longer the missions go, the bigger these problems obviously get. We've set certain thresholds and any mission to Mars would obviously be exceeding those by many, many factors. Now, kind of Mars specific, if you will, mars does have a very thin atmosphere. It's most of carbon dioxide, so colonists would obviously need a supply of breathable air. Where that's coming from, who knows? It's probably going to have to be shipped in.
Speaker 1:And now I'm a little out of my wheelhouse here, but so I know that there's this period that's called the transfer window. It happens, I think, every. It's either four or two years. Go look me up, get the real number. But that's when Mars and the Earth are the closest. So anyway, it isn't easy supplying a Mars base with regular anything, but that's obviously something that would just need is regular breathable air. There's no atmosphere on Mars, also just a very different environment.
Speaker 1:Circling back to this ain't like going from England to New England, when you land on Mars, you're going to be dealing with like dust storms that have radiation particles in their temporary extremes that you've never felt, lower gravity. There really isn't Earth proxy. The closest thing that you could get would maybe be like some of the stations down in Antarctica, or maybe living on a submarine. Those environments would be closest to living in a Mars colony, quite frankly. So again, I don't think we should have in our heads like the age of exploration here on Earth. The environment is so different you really have to take that into account and imagine that the lives people would be living are also going to be fundamentally very, very different. So now, with all that out there, we're going to have to circle back to these. But I do want to focus more in on just the nutrition component of all of this, so similar to having to provide air to an environment.
Speaker 1:If we're doing a Mars base, also nutrition is going to be critical for any long mission. If you're doing the long space flight out obviously no resupply You're going to have to do that in one fell swoop. If we're setting up a base now, we can open up the possibility of being able to resupply it, but again you're going to need to be able to send enough that it can cover those gaps in the transfer window, which I believe is two years, but anytime you would resupply you're still going to have to have. Longevity, basically, is going to be really important. Even if you're doing resupply missions, the food is going to have to have a really long shelf life and then it can't lose nutrition, quality, taste, safety in that process. The packaging again we talked about this with impact to the human body, but deep space the radiation is different, so we're going to need some different type of packaging to protect the food from the environment. The radiation can actually degrade the quality of nutrients over time. So if we're storing all this food for, say, a year and it's out in this environment, you're obviously going to need something to control and protect for that.
Speaker 1:Mres obviously the military uses this. Astronauts have used this for a long time. I'm sure we would be using something similar. One drawback though and this is less of a problem on shorter missions, but a lot of people actually don't really like MREs. Some of the astronauts call them meals rarely edible or meals regularly requiring enemas. So, again, on shorter missions, that's not a big problem, but as the missions get longer, actually this does become a really big problem. Back to the polar exploration and this, you know stuff we're doing down in Antarctica right now.
Speaker 1:Good food is one of the most important psychological factors in day-to-day well-being and can really extend the amount of time that people can stay in environments like that. If you can't secure that, people just kind of burn out a little bit faster. Quite frankly, you know fun story to me that we got from a space exploration. But so I guess when you are up in space again, one of the impacts of you know radiation can be that it actually dulls some of our taste receptors. So in space foods taste differently. This is what the astronauts say anyway. And so the spicy flavors, sour and sweet things are generally more appetizing in space. And there's a fun anecdote in a city on Mars, but about how taco seasoning. I think it's a vasco, but that can become basically like like cigarettes in jail or like it becomes like a form of currency, because taco sauce is one of the most valuable commodities when you're traveling in space. So again, do not underestimate the importance of having food that is tasty and enjoyable.
Speaker 1:If you can't solve that problem, the chance that your mission goes long and well is not good. If we're talking longer missions in deep space, you're going to have to have not only balanced and nutritious food, but stuff that again can be transported into deep space and is at least somewhat tasty. One aspect you also have to consider is that and we touched on this, but it's going to be highly unlikely that you're going to be able to have constant resupplies or any regular, so there has to be some effort of sustainability. This is another anecdote that I like from current space travel. But astronauts talk a lot of yesterday's coffee and what yesterday's coffee is. If you're drinking any water today, there's a really good chance because they filter and use all the fluids on board and recycle it that you're actually drinking yesterday's coffee.
Speaker 1:But anyway, I just thought that was funny and obviously, if you were talking about a long mission, we're probably going to have to have it even more ways of being somewhat sustainable. All right, we'll reference a science fiction movie, but the Matt Damon one, where he goes to Mars and he grows some shit potatoes. You might actually have to come up with something like that. You have to have some food that you could at least grow on the way. You're not going to be able to resupply everything. Good news to that, though, is they actually have pulled off some peppers, because, again, astronauts really love Tabasco sauce. So we have pulled that off. But again, people like nice things. I don't think they were supposed to bring alcohol up, but I'm pretty sure the Russians have on the International Space Station, and for the chance that you would like, ever grow enough potatoes to make a bottle of vodka unlikely looking at like eight kilograms of potatoes to get one bottle.
Speaker 1:So, again, I think it's going to be very, very difficult to source and supply a diet that would sustain people in every way Nutrition, psychology, taste, you name it. But again, best practices we have is looking at polar exploration, and so, yeah, I just take that at face value that there are a lot of psychological challenges in addition to sourcing, sustainability. Those are all going to be major issues in deep space travel or colonization. Save this one for last, actually, because I really do think this is the easiest one, and working out in space, of all the challenges that we talked about today, is, again, I think, the easiest, because, basically, the principle is good training Don't change in space, the environment does.
Speaker 1:So you have space considerations. There's no gravity. We're clearly not using external loads. You could lift 600 pounds with a pinky, no problem in zero gravity. So there are different types of equipment and things that the astronauts have to use, but we've pretty much sorted all that stuff out. I don't think that this is going to be one of the major challenges, as much as I would like to maybe consult NASA on some workout stuff. But that's just because I always wanted to be an astronaut. That'd be cool to work on something like this. They pretty much got this part sorted out.
Speaker 1:But first I will say up front that actually some astronauts have come back in better shape from missions. Don't count on that Challenges we mentioned about the radiation and gravity. That's not a rule, but it is possible. You actually can make gains in a space station. But another thing I think we should mention is that it is mission essential, so time is specifically set aside for it. You have to work out, and the reason is again just the impacts of microgravity. Every single thing that you do in space is easier just walking going anywhere. So this to me is almost like the opposite. When we're talking fat loss and I'm encouraging people to get neat, they're non-exercise activity thermogenesis up. The low gravity environment just makes it. So you're neat, basically does nothing. You're not overcoming gravity ever. So again, just even if you're doing your job around the space station, the chance that you get any sufficient work is not good. So workout time is required Again. Think about our sample size Astronauts. These are going to be generally fit people who are already disciplined, so it's again not that shocking that some have been able to improve their fitness while on the space station.
Speaker 1:But I don't touch on, though is the equipment differences. So most of what we have on our modern missions have been a stationary bike, a treadmill and then a strength training apparatus. But all of this equipment looks really different than it does back on earth, again because of lack of gravity. So the treadmill they actually have like what kind of look? Like some bungees or cords that you just attach roughly to the shoulders and they keep you on the treadmill Instead of bouncing around the cabin. The stationary bike is similar, but you don't need a seat, there's just a couple of pedals. But here's one thing that I didn't think of you actually can't just use like any old apparatus, because the vibration that's created from your working out can actually start to create its own gravity. So, believe it or not, exercise if you don't have the right equipment on a space station can actually disrupt the experiments that they're doing on the space station. So, yeah, that was just something that was not intuitive to me, that even just pedaling a stationary bike could actually generate enough gravity in that environment to alter the experiments that they're up there to do in the first place. So that's just a consideration I've never had to make in gym design. That I found really interesting.
Speaker 1:And then for strength training, obviously they're not using external loads. You can't pick up a dumbbell and squat, but you can do basically any type of pulling exercise or using springs, bands, stuff like that to load any movement. And so you know, springs, bands, stuff like that all works. But they actually have a most advanced device they use is something called the advanced resistive exercise device, and this thing looks cool. Basically it creates a platform that your feet can stand on. So while you're pushing against that like, let's say, you're doing a deadlift your feet are on the platform, you grab the bar that's there and you can actually execute a deadlift in a zero gravity environment because you're pulling actually against a set of springs that generate the resistance. So yeah, just as someone who likes to play with different machines, this just looked really cool. I would love to play with one of those.
Speaker 1:Though I did mention at the top of this section that some astronauts have come back in better shape, that's not the rule. It's not like it's a great fitness camp. Many astronauts do complain about muscle loss, chronic back pain and bone density loss. So there's some of the most common issues. That's why working out is so important and that's why they have dedicated the amount of infrastructure to fitness on board space missions. The lack of gravity just quite simply does seem to weaken the body. This is something that must be accounted for on a long mission, the type of degradation that we have seen on some of our shorter flights. It would not be inconceivable, if we took one of these longer flights that by the time the astronauts got there, that they would be physically incapable of performing whatever task, that they're supposed to build a colony or start mining some really expensive stuff. So yeah, if we don't really solve those problems in routes, the chance that we even have any people that will be capable of doing the work that needed to be done not good. One of the most common things that astronauts do complain about coming back to Earth is going to be chronic back pain. And then again, I just want to remind us that we are talking about much smaller doses of deep space travel that are already turning up these issues. So I think it is again fair to assume that on a trip to deep space or in a space colony, that we can actually expect these effects to be even larger than we've observed to date. So, yeah, that kind of runs down to stuff that I want to talk about with regard to our health.
Speaker 1:Now, that being said, there's still two different approaches. Well, there's many more, but I think we can break down the approach to how we do this in two major camps. We've got the weight and go big versus the small and incremental. Not going to take a side in this, I just want to present, because I think there are pros and cons to each one. So let's look at that instead of weighing in on what the best way to do it is going to be. So, weight and go big, like the name implies that this would focus on launching large, well-equipped missions with many people, substantial infrastructure and after lots and lots of preparation and technological development. Advantages to this time is that this is going to allow you time to develop and answer some of the questions that we brought up, some of the technologies and the systems that you'll need to do it. Economies of scale are also going to be something you're going to be able to take advantage of if you weight and build out these operations into large-scale operations instead of doing them in small batches. Psychological benefit, but a large mission, I think, can capture the public imagination. That being said, though, I've certainly watched them land the Falcon rockets. So yeah, with a small and incremental approach, maybe we can still capture the mines.
Speaker 1:I would say big risk associated with weight and go big is just that risk. Concentration you put a lot of eggs in one basket on a big mission like that. If there's failure on that, you just lost a big-ass mission. Obviously longer preparation time, technology change in those times that's maybe something that you're not going to want to consider. And then this approach again, to me would probably take higher upfront investment. If you go incremental and small, you can probably dole out the cost. You're going to spend more in the long run that way, but you can space it out.
Speaker 1:That being said, though, I do think the weight and go big is probably best for projects like building a colony or like a large space station, small and incremental. I think some of the advantages are going to be a little different with that approach If we were to go that route. It's going to give us a little bit more flexibility and adaptability. We can adjust our procedures based on the previous outcomes of missions. Now we can spread the risk out a little bit. Any one mission failing wouldn't be catastrophic and this way again I think this could also get just as much excitement. Just with we have that steady trickle of an exciting launch here and there. Maybe it keeps the public interest and the will involved. I don't know the disadvantages I would say is it probably takes longer to achieve. If your goal is colonization, it probably takes longer this way, probably a higher cumulative cost, and it is going to require a fair amount of coordination and complexity to have any chance of success. That being said, I think the small and incremental approach probably is going to be best for closer settlements, maybe moon bases, asteroid mining, stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to jump out of this section but just remind you guys that right there, purely theoretical side of it, that I think is a very open debate as to which the best approach really is. But anyway, now that we've covered some of the health, I hope we can start asking some better questions than I'm seeing float around, because now we're going to get to the opinion portion of the program. Again, as someone who respects this goal as a really worthwhile goal for humanity, the market participant and trader in me right now is saying sell the news. If you know what I mean. I think the hype and the motivation to drum up that hype is quite large right now and, as we kind of ran down today a lot of the impacts to health, I think maybe we're farther out than it seems following this issue in the press. We can just take a slight turn for a second.
Speaker 1:I want to revisit that AI pause letter back in March of 2023. And as I get into this, I know how unpopular what I am about to say is, because I'm not finding many people in real life that agree with this, but I don't think I've laid it out this thoroughly before. So I think we have a teachable moment about what could be going on with space exploration, with AI. So if I can just remind you guys that in March of 2023, the Future of Life Institute put out an open letter asking us to pause AI or these are my words now terminator, skynet, paperclip problem. Trust me, bro, lots of scientists, but anyway, they put out a letter saying that they were deeply concerned with the fate of humanity and that we must pause AI and sort these problems out. The letter got a lot of attention, but it also didn't Well, first, let's just be honest there was a lot of signatures on it from people who didn't actually sign it. Number of scientists whose names are on there did not actually support it, and that didn't really get covered. As time moved on, the Future of Life Institute itself was funded back in 2015, not solely, but major contributions by Elon Musk, who was the top signatory on that open letter.
Speaker 1:I just want to remind people that Elon, over the years, has made many, many promises about AI, that kind of follow the longer arc of tech promises almost going back to like the mechanical Turk. Anyone remember that? But anyway, there's this long arc of people over promising that technologies are going to be ready and game changing and then they don't come online. If you've been following the full-stealth driving Teslas in 2019, they were supposed to be full-stealth driving, they were supposed to not be depreciating assets and they were supposed to be robotaxis, so none of that happened, by the way. So, anyway, for me, who's very, very jaded? I did kind of look at this like, oh, it's funny to me that all the people who are affiliated with companies, who are behind in AI, are asking to pause and nobody affiliated with companies out at the front is. But I did kind of look a little harder, since that was the feeling I was having.
Speaker 1:And then one of the papers that was even cited in this open letter is called Stochastic Parrots and it was written by a scientist named Margaret Mitchell. But unfortunately, mitchell actually wrote a separate piece saying she did not support the letter, even though they used her work in it to make their case. And so let's just go to Margaret Mitchell's words. So she says well, there are a number of recommendations in the letter that we agree with and proposed in our 2021 peer-reviewed paper, known informally as stochastic parrots, such as Providence or watermarking systems, help distinguish the real from the synthetic. They are overshadowed by fear-mongering and AI hype, which steers the discourse to the risks of imagined powerful digital minds with human competitive intelligence. Those hypothetical risks are the focus of a dangerous ideology called long-termarism that ignores the actual harms resulting from the development of AI systems. Today, the letter addresses none of the ongoing harms from these systems, including worker exploitation, massive data theft to create products to profit a handful of entities, the explosion of synthetic media in the world, which both reproduces systems of oppression and agendas are information ecosystem, and the concentration of power in the hands of few people, which exacerbate social inequities.
Speaker 1:So there's more and we'll get there, but this was a lot of my frustration and why I keep framing it that way when I talk about this issue and people counter with the plot lines of science fiction movies. Stop, there are real issues that you could be talking about instead. I saw those same movies and, to be honest, we probably had these discussions back in the 80s or the 90s when those movies came out. I'm done, and you should be too. We need to focus more on the rubber meets the road, real problems, and I don't think people are discussing them when we get into the hype cycle. Let's let Margaret finish up, though. Well, we are not surprised to see this type of letter from a long-termist organization like the future of life institute, which is generally aligned with the vision of the future in which we become radically enhanced post humans, colonize space and create trillions of digital people. We are just made to see the number of computing professionals who have signed this letter and the positive media coverage it has received.
Speaker 1:It is dangerous to distract ourselves with fantasized AI enabled utopia or apocalypse, which promises either a flourishing or a potentially catastrophic future. Such language that inflates the capabilities of automated system and anthropomorphizes them, as we note in stochastic parrots, deceives people into thinking there's a sentient being behind the synthetic media. This not only lures people into uncritically trusting the outputs of system like chat, gbt, but also misattributes agency. Accountability properly lies not with the artifacts, but with their builders. Thank you for sticking with me through that, because I really do think that I can draw this back to the issue we talked about today.
Speaker 1:With AI currently, right now, I believe that there is a lot of hype driving most media coverage, just like Margaret Mitchell said. But when I've been saying it for the last year, it doesn't matter, because I'm just a trainer. So anyway, there's my appeal to authority. Somebody smarter than me said it, so maybe people can listen. But if you go out and look in the media. Right now with AI, it is all doom or boom For one second. Can we just please set aside the generative AI debate and just go listen to what people are actually saying and then swear to God, we can get back to all the debating later?
Speaker 1:Zidario Amorti, who has raised 7.3 billion for his startup. He says that there's a 10-25% chance that AI technology could destroy humanity, but if that doesn't happen, it'll not only go just fine, it'll go really, really great. Fei-fei Li has said that AI could pose catastrophic risks to society, but includes that the rubber meets the road. Practical problems of misinformation, workforce disruption, bias and privacy infringements are more likely than the apocalyptic scenarios that we hear unfolding. There is just a massive bit of irony that I cannot get over.
Speaker 1:And so much of this debate unfolds on Twitter. That is owned by somebody who's trying to launch an LLM to rival chat GPT, so your debate on Twitter is training an LLM. That's just funny. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter what opinion you're putting out there on Twitter. You're helping train a language model with that. So if you're against it, perhaps you should see yourself out of that debate. I don't know, but the founder of that company is also trying to build a neural link while putting out an open letter saying he's going to help the fate of humanity. I literally can't keep up and I don't know which it is. So part of it wants me to get people to pick a side and stay there. But no, anyway, I actually don't care which side of the debate, because it's new, none of us know.
Speaker 1:All of this is fair, but as it pertains to the AI debate and I am going to come back to space here in just a second both sides of this debate share the view that AI is gigantically powerful, but that it's either going to destroy us or save us. Probably true either way, right. But I have to point out that this is also a very self-serving view that puts their work at the center of everything, and right now, a lot of these are being used to drive finance and funding into the space, if you know again. So space like AI. Now we'll circle back, but space is also a very popular investment theme right now.
Speaker 1:As such, you need to have a healthy dose of skepticism with what you are seeing in the popular media. So this isn't to say that these are not going to be big game-changing things. The internet was a big game-changing thing. That being said, the stock prices in 2000 were way overcooked, and this is the similarity that I'm seeing right now with our media and with the way these issues are being talked about in the popular press. There's a lot of great companies that have convinced me. They have great products whose stock charts still look like Cisco and Oracle in the year 2000. So, if you missed that, oracle took 13 years to regain its 2000 peak and Cisco is currently trading at 62% of its 2000 peak. So again, I would just I think that right now is probably a good time to have again just ask a few questions. I'm not saying these are not going to be game-changing technologies. I just think that with both AI and space, there's a lot of doom and boom that I actually think is serving the companies that are trying to bring attention and finance into the space.
Speaker 1:All right, let me circle back and get back on topic, though. We covered a lot today. We looked at the obstacles that are going to be presented by the harsh and indifferent reality that deep space is. We covered some of the motivations behind humanity's pursuit of the goal, contrasting the aspiration with the realities, and obviously I don't know if I buy into the popular reasons that I'm seeing for space exploration, namely overcrowding, climate change, economic gain or evading superintelligence. I don't think any of those are great reasons, but I do remain a huge supporter and proponent of just the human exploratory spirit and it really isn't my intention to pour any cold water on the idea.
Speaker 1:What I did want to do today was actually get our focus on health nutrition. Some of the rubber meets the road challenges, so that we can almost have I don't know almost a checklist of sorts to track how far out we really are, because if we're engaging these things in the popular media, I'm not sure that we're going to be getting great information. If you want to really keep stock on how close or how far out are we when we start answering some of those questions. I don't think I answered anything today, but when we begin to answer some of the questions that face human health in space, then I think we're going to be a little closer than we are right now. These issues, I admit, are less interesting and less visible than rocket launches, but I am going to continue to argue that they are at least as important, possibly more so. If we can't get humans out there, I'm not sure what the point actually was.
Speaker 1:Obviously, the environment of space is going to create a ton of challenges to health. Number one the impacts of microgravity, of radiation. They are going to impact everything from our basic bodily functions to the nutrition qualities of our food. We have to have answers for these things before anything like this is actually possible. We're going to need food with long shelf life or packaging that can withstand the conditions, or we're going to have to have ways that we can actually procure food while we are out there in space. Again, these are just those kind of rubber beats the road boring things that I just want to point people's minds in, as this debate is just going to get larger.
Speaker 1:Immediately, there's a SpaceX IPO coming up. The horrible capitalist in me thinks you're going to see lots and lots more press coverage on this, and it's going to get worse and worse as we get closer to the IPO. But why worse and worse? I mean trying to motivate you to be active in finance. That's kind of my jaded take of following finance very closely. So, again, and part of why I put this out there, too, though, is it is actually going to be fun to come back and see how all of this fared Just like I was saying, with the open letter. It's a great habit to go back and check.
Speaker 1:As I think I made time to qualify, I'm not the expert on any of this. That being said, I do think that we are able to ask some questions that I'm not seeing people ask in the popular discussion. So if I think that I added any value, that's it right there. I am very interested to follow this, like anybody else. To be totally honest, and as I touched on, I legitimately think there are multiple approaches to accomplish this goal. I don't know what the right answer is, so I hope nobody, coming back from this episode, thinks that Simon even has a systemic belief on how this should go.
Speaker 1:I find this story really, really interesting and I want to keep monitoring the developments as they go and then, as I'm trying to understand what the pace is, the list I gave you guys today around the health things. That I think is really going to be a more reliable metric on how far out we are than some of the other aspects that I see the popular press focusing on today. But anyway, guys, hey, might as well recommend the book again, the book that motivated all of these thoughts. For me that is again going to be a City on Mars 2023, kelly Weiner Smith and Zach Weiner Smith. Really fun read. That just got my mind thinking about what are the challenges to health, nutrition and fitness that we need to meet in order to make one of our favorite science fiction plots actual scientific fact. So, anyway, if you enjoyed this, make sure to share this with somebody else that might too. Let's keep growing our community. Do what we do. Remember mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined. There are no gains without brains. Keep lifting and learning. I'll do the same.
