companies want us to feel good about buying their products while the damage is being done far away this is this we don't even as i made much. more welcome to take over asian or a space sophie shevardnadze interplanetary flights may be just decades away. but what will they be like and are we ready to embrace the interstellar age well i ask nasa planetary science researcher professor james.

jimbo welcome to the show it's great to have you with us so jim scientists say that they sun will expand into red giant and eventually destroy last on earth how much time do we have. well so if that's actually true and but i wouldn't worry about it it's going to take at least maybe 5000000000 years or so the sun is a typical star there are hundreds of millions of stars like that in our own galaxy and so astronomers can monitor the life cycle of stars like our sun and we know the sun is about 4 and a half 1000000000 years old and it stars like the sun last around 9 or 10000000000 years so don't lose any sleep over it but it's true that some day the earth will be destroyed by our own star well look at the world we'll live in nj and i mean the growing number of conflicts on the climate change is recognised as another existential threat we're facing what makes you think that well if there arrived for

even another 1000 years before you have billions that's a great question i mean fundamentally i'm an optimist i think that we've already seen well i know that we've already seen just incredible advances in science and technology medicine communication transportation just in the last few 100 years and i think that you know that's what's going to help us survive as a species that's what's going to help us learn to live in a sustainable way on this very precious and rare planet that we live in to maintain the environment that is conducive for for a good quality of life so so i'm an optimist i believe in science and technology and and that the scientific method can make our lives better and it has and will continue to do so as we go into the future you know i'm sure you know this asked a physicists and cosmologists marchin rees i was speaking to him recently and he

told me that there was no plan b. for us. do you think there were east or there is not. well i mean right now that's true that's absolutely true we we are made for this planet for this environment we have evolved to for this life around this star in this kind of an atmosphere with this temperature and this pressure and this composition so you know earth is our home and earth will always be the home planet of the human species and so there is no plan b. of course you know there there is lots of interest in exploring the rest of our solar system and settling you know sending people to the moon on a lunar base sending people to mars maybe other places in the outer solar system establish research stations and bases maybe tourist destinations but the earth is always going to be humanity's home and everywhere else we go will have to figure

out how to carry the earth's environment with us in the space suit or habitat were somehow figure out how to modify those environments maybe underground caves or whatever to be more earth like so so i agree there is no plan b. for the species but there is a plan to explore and to push our species out into our own solar system talk about that let's talk about that and we'll start with mars colonizing mars so the main problem with terra forming mars for instance is that atmosphere is just thing for us to survive there and i've heard the idea that it is possible to thicken marshes atmospheric by releasing the so-called greenhouse gases now here in our nurse we produce this gases from agriculture and waste but why do we get them when lars. right no that's a gets a great question and you know mars has polar caps with water ice and carbon dioxide

ice it has a composition very similar to to the earth actually all of the rest real planets have very similar composition so there is methane gas and other other kinds of greenhouse gases that are stored in the planet just like inside the earth so all that is possible but the timescales sofi are really long you know it's it's taken humanity 200 years or so basically since the industrial revolution to start to change our own climate with greenhouse gases like c o 2 to change the climate of a planet like mars which with a much thinner atmosphere would require a lot more time and some pretty industrial scale processing and creation and release of greenhouse gases we're talking hundreds of thousands of years to really terra form a place like mars so in the near term we're really talking about people living in

spacesuits and habitats and environments that we create on mars that are a little mini versions of earth's environment. so when you know that marsh lost its magnetic field when millions of years ago on this amazing nasa physicist jim greene came up with the idea of creating an artificial line is that feasible is a something that could work well you know the wonderful thing about science is that that you can speculate you can hypothesize you can come up with ideas and models and that's just an idea it's a model you know if it were if it were possible to you know to somehow tap into mars internal heat if there's enough left to to to you know create this kind of a magnetic field right now my opinion it's sort of science fiction because it required. there's a scale of planetary engineering that we're just not capable of as

a species but but like all good science fiction we can kind of imagine a future where we could change our planet's climate or you know locally change the planet's magnetic field for example so possible sure you know one can imagine some scientifically developed steps engineering steps to head in directions like that but is it is it practical practical probably not and certainly not anywhere in the near term. all right but scientists today already create artificial atmospheres and sealed testing chambers right so theoretically it is possible to create an artificial atmosphere in marshaling like not satellite stations but cities that could accommodate heiress population i mean you're saying it will surely work here on a special suits but why can't we just create like a special minnesota. absolutely we could certainly do that with but domes or covered structures or you know the mars has some natural environments like these

lava tubes that volcanic lava used to travel through like you see these kinds of lava tubes in places like hawaii or iceland on the earth and there are buried caves basically and if you just seal them off from the from the surface you could create an environment in in a place like that that is very earth like with with oxygen and nitrogen and high pressure and normal temperature shirtsleeve temperature or you can imagine dome structures or small habitats you know what you're probably familiar with the movie the martian that came out a few years ago the movie in the book you know they imagine some some pretty decent sized habitats and structures where they created an earth like environment i think those are all very very possible the engineering is challenging but not impossible and i think it's going to be part of the future of people eventually settling mars in the next few decades so once again martin rees well where's. tell me that the people who colonized loris will have to be

a different kind of species because they will need to adapt to this long term travel in outer space and harsh ready ation do you think that will have to sort of mutate if we want to get off earth eventually. well i mean you know evolution is slow and it is forced by environmental changes certainly as well as mutations and we've seen that throughout the history of life on our own planet so the 1st people who go out to live on mars to stay or to live on the moon to stay or to go live on jupiter's moon europa to stay will sort of suddenly be in a very different environment than the one in which their ancestors were raised in and so one can imagine that there could be favorable mutations to radiation that allow allow that trait to be built up over time you know we don't know we don't

know if if women can have children in space we just don't know what is the effect of gravity on the development of a child. you know what goes on in a way he wasn't or a better eye or a foetus to 2 to actually develop into a healthy human it may take so much inside the tomb. in space supposedly that it's not possible as of now that's what i've heard. well it just it depends i mean there are there are more and less benign radiation environments in space around jupiter for example huge enormous radiation environment very intense it's difficult for our robotic spacecraft to survive in that environment let alone a living you know beings mars is kind of is different it's it's a different radiation environment than the earth it's not as protected as the earth is but there's a variety of calculations that show that you know people should be able to survive there there may have to be some special shielding in there in their habitats or in

their space suits etc but it shouldn't be too crazy harsh like other places in the solar system but let in general what abilities or features should humans have to survive in this new habitat maybe maurice or any other planet. i mean i think probably the number one. skill that we will have to develop is sustainability is the ability to live off the land as much as possible to kind of break the supply chain of having to bring everything from the earth and figure out how do we extract water and oxygen from these rocks or from these polar cap deposits how do we use the materials that are around us as building materials how do we shield ourselves from from radiation or just from the the very thin atmosphere how do we protect ourselves and keep our atmosphere in using materials

around us where do we get our energy how do we make ourselves completely self-sufficient solar energy nuclear energy other geothermal wind other sources you know all of that that we think about when we think about pioneers settling new lands they have to learn how to live off the land and going out into space the moon mars other places will be the extreme test of that for the human species. planetary research professor in. the future of space exploration.

as budget we talk about trump he's gonna demystified this whole political space if you weren't clear before like these folks are no better than us so you know i you know you can reach out to friends say you know take responsibility maybe run for office at the end of the day you know i don't see how we move a lot a system where these people get away with you know misrepresenting us why not step up and do it yourself.

thank you. we're back with nasa planetary science researcher professor jim balance talking about our sol are system acceleration so to find the international space station for instance requires huge resources and it is located it relatively close to earth which makes it possible sustain it how are colonies on mars going to sustain

themselves i mean would it be like in martian the one that you know to. growing potatoes and recycling waste. right certainly there will have to be they will have to figure out how to live off the land you know initially one can imagine lots of building materials and water and maybe even oxygen coming with them in the the pretty large space ships it's going to take to get there even just to go to the moon it's a pretty big space ship and you can imagine there being lots of room for cargo as well as people so food and water oxygen bringing a bunch of that initially is probably the smart thing to do but then there are the 1st settlers they're the 1st towns and villages that are built up small numbers of people they're going to have to learn how to get construction materials and make you know bricks and structures out of the rocks and how do you pull the iron out of

that and other other metals that they might need how do they get oxygen out of the c o 2 out of the water ice that they can find in the ground breaking up the hydrogen and oxygen you breathe the oxygen you can drink the water you can use the water as a shield against radiation if you build your structure the right way so all of these things and there's a lot of research being done here on earth today by nasa by the russian space agency by the european space agency the japanese space agency in many different countries thinking about how do we extract resources from those environments out there in space so that they will help us survive. so let's try to reverse the perspective once we colonize other planets and have a sort of a life ready in waiting do you think it will devalue life on earth how i make things like nuclear war more likely to happen for instance. i look i tell you i'm an optimist i have exactly the opposite perspective. i believe and i truly believe

that that the ability to learn how to sustain ourselves and your groups of people who have to work together out in harsh environments on the moon or mars or other places learning how to live off the land learning how to completely recycle everything and use everything to its maximum efficiency and maximum potential i think all of those skills all that engineering all that knowledge will come back to the earth and they will help us live better lives on the earth we can solve a lot of our energy problems we can solve a lot of our waste problems we maybe can solve a lot of our social problems because what we have to realise we are all living on a small fragile spaceship together and it's really no different than a bunch of people in a harsh environment trying to rely on each other to survive we we are interconnected on this planet and we rely on each other everywhere around the world

to survive as a species so i think all of that's going to come back and in fact that's why we explore space in my opinion to learn more about our home planet how to sustain and better our lives here because of course most of our species will remain here on this planet and only a small fraction will be in fortune enough to go out there and explore and settle so i know you're an optimist but i just so want to bring that up where a rat ray that and what he wants suggested that every colonization that humankind undertakes the eventually entails destruction and devastation whether it's here on earth. or anywhere else what is your take will we destroy other planets just like well almost destroyed our own. the certainly i don't deny that there is that potential and that makes for great science fiction of course because it is the history of our species it's not a it's not a very pretty history of course we have to learn from it we have to learn you know

what we did wrong what we can improve how can we you know achieve that that betterment of our species by learning from the past so i i think of course when we get to another planet or moon or elsewhere in the inner solar system . we don't think there's anybody living there right now there could perhaps be microbial life deep underground in some of these places we don't know of course there could be life in the oceans of jupiter's moon europa we don't know so you know there's the potential and maybe an ethical responsibility that we need to find that out before we go to some of these other places but we're also going to have to exploit some of the resources we need to you know find the water find the oxygen find the building materials figure out how to grow food. you know those those have all been part of settlement in the past and can we do it responsibly can we do it

sustainably can we do it in an ecologically friendly way for that environment i think these are big challenges for us i'm an optimist i think we will rise to the challenge so you've been saying that you would actually take approximately 40000 years to get to the next star and that means that tales of thousands of generations will die and be born during this trip i mean 1 may be easier to build like a new planet than to fly thousands of years without a firm guarantee of achieving the goal. sure no i agree and you know it's tens of thousands of years using current technology. propulsion technology is always advancing there are radical ideas that don't you know defy the laws of physics that could potentially get us out into interstellar travel faster than that so you know but it's still hundreds maybe thousands of years so still many generations to do that so you're right we have in our own backyard in our own solar

system you know a number of places planets moons asteroids comets that we want to explore that could have the resources that could support a small human civilization expansion of human civilization into our solar system there's a penalty of course a lot of science fiction books and television shows and movies that explore this theme and much of it is based in reality there there are resources out there that we can use to survive and there are ways that we can travel around in our own solar system that art generational that take years or decades maybe to go out to really distant destinations so so you're right in that the prospect of interest teller travel is daunting stream lee challenging but maybe that's what's causing us to focus mostly in our own solar system we're near term the next few centuries thinking about settlement well i've heard that and nothing engineer has recently

come up with this concept of a revolutionary engine that could take us to the stars at the speed of light and without any feel at all some scientists have already called this idea crazy is it if somebody told me as a scientist hey you know what i'm going to get you something for nothing i'd be skeptical so i'm certain there's a lot of skepticism especially if it's the no fuel part. and we should be skeptical but you know science doesn't work as a democracy science works on. hypothesis and test so let's see some tests of this engine technology for example and that's the kind of way to convince skeptics i left move to the moon for a little bit because you've been saying also that the moon is peril in moving away from the earth and that means that one day will hardly be able to spot it in the night sky how will this affect our life here on earth i mean if the laws of gravity

effect they. would also affect our ability to walk or fly exciter i don't know right and the effect you describe is absolutely true but very very slow it's it's centimeters over centuries it's really slow we can measure it super accurately because of the the mirrors that the astronauts left on the moon you can bounce a laser beam off of those mirrors from the earth and get the distance to you know sub millimeter distance so it's really slow and so we're talking about millions and millions of years for the moon to move significantly away and that will lower the tides of course because it's the gravity of the the moon and the sun a little bit as well that that create the tides it won't fundamentally change the you know the gravity of our environment etc it will be sad because there won't be any total solar eclipses anymore because the moon won't be big enough in the sky to completely block the sun but that's all millions of years in the future so will the

moon become like a separate planet one day or a big rabbit headed to another planet like mars for so. no what the scientists what my colleagues believe will happen is that the moon will you know rotates around the earth every $28.00 days now and the earth spins once on its axis every day it will eventually move away to the point where the earth and the moon are both locked into a rotation around each other it's called synchronous rotation and many moons in the solar system are exactly that way they're locked with their parent planet and so that in millions of years from now the moon will will stabilize and this position is just locked in the same orbit as the spin rate as our planet no ok i say well what about the human exploration of space in general well both are getting better and super intelligence on those there are well there any any practical made for sending humans into space at all. yeah you know that's that's

a great question you know the the practical side of it is has always been that the the the engineering the technology the science needed to get people into space has spurred all kinds of innovation for those of us still here on the earth all kinds of amazing technology advancements and propulsion and software and guidance and control and. you know you name it the space program has communications space program has had enormous influence on life on the earth but that hasn't been the the real motivation to do it of course you know early in the space program in the in the sixty's was the cold war right it was the desire for you know our way of doing it is better than your way of doing it kind of thing and demonstrate national prowess today that still many countries getting involved in space exploration as a way to prove that they have reached a certain level of engineering and science sophistication it's almost like becoming

a member of an exclusive club and more and more countries are becoming members of that club you were a tour guide about site saying opportunities and extend it is our solar system has to offer like hiking on the moon or skiing on pluto so far term forming one planet for our sins to be paramount and death are well this require another giant leap for our civilization to tap into other planets or terra forming one makes terra forming all the others a lot easier. now it's a great question and of course i don't know what the future holds but i don't think we need to terra form the other places out there to become interplanetary tourists you know think about it if you want to go scuba diving to an amazing reef in the caribbean or something like that you you go you find it a guide you get equipment special equipment because it's an environment that you.

we're not going to survive in without special equipment you get special training and if if you don't if you're not careful you're going to get injured or die right but we do it even though we're not meant to be down there at those depths you want to go climb mount everest or some other big mountain. we're not meant to be there are unless we have special equipment to must we have special training special guides will get her to will die trying to do that and yet people do it i think it's exactly the same when we go to the moon we go to mars asteroids comets all these destinations that we're learning about we'll have to get special equipment we'll have to get special training special guides and if we're not careful we're going to get hurt or we're going to die and so i think it's there's the adventure tourism model that i think will work for interplanetary travel and it's just going to take decades to centuries but not many to get to the point where getting into space is

relatively routine like getting into an airplane and traveling around the world is today right thank you so much for this wonderful any and all opportunities that we have in terms of interplanetary travels and great talking to you will we're talking about the possibilities of interstellar flight. as planetary scientists researcher professor and. that is it for this edition of visionaries and i'll see you next. no not once i. don't want the definitions and i'm bad and the.

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