The Insane Biological Cost of Living on Mars - Scott Solomon - #1065

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
What's the NASA Chappier experiment? It's just hit the 100 day mark.

**Scott Solomon** (0:06)
Yeah, it has. Yeah. So this is basically a, it's a simulation. It's a way of trying to understand what life would actually be like for people living on Mars. And the way that they're doing this is by, they've created a mock up of a space settlement. And they've built it in Johnson Space Center in Houston. So just down the street from me here really. And it's built to be kind of like what they think it would actually be like on Mars, right? So they actually 3D printed it, which is one of the technologies that has been suggested for how we might build structures on Mars. And then a group of, I believe, it's four, a crew of four people have entered it and they are living inside it, as you said, for 100 days so far, but the plan is for it to last a full year. So this is kind of like a thing that people do when they're trying to understand what different aspects of space settlement might actually be like, is they create what are called analogs, basically a model that sort of replicates some aspect of a space environment, a space settlement in this case. And then they put people inside and try to sort of understand what happens. So this is the second one that they've done. They did a full year already.
And this is the second full year study of people inside this kind of mockup of a Mars habitat.

**Chris Williamson** (1:44)
How much do you think they're testing physiological change versus psychological change?

**Scott Solomon** (1:51)
Yeah, I think a lot of what these analog studies try to get at and is true of this study as well, is the psychology, because of course they can't replicate a lot of the physical conditions of being on Mars. You know, there's one third, the Earth's gravity, right? They're not simulating that. There's probably going to be a lot higher radiation exposure in a Mars habitat, and they're not simulating that. Excuse me. So some of the things that they can simulate are, of course, being in a confined space, being in an area where, you know, you're limited to what you brought with you. They're not able to kind of come and go, and they're not able to bring new materials and supplies in or out.
And, you know, another big part of it is sort of the interaction between the crew members. So what is it like to be, you know, more or less stuck with just the other three folks that you brought with you for an extended time period?

**Chris Williamson** (2:56)
It's the most boring episode of Love Island ever filmed, but it lasts for an entire 12 months.

**Scott Solomon** (3:01)
I really think they could make some reality TV shows out of these analogs, because there's quite a few of these types of things that are in different places. I went and visited one of them actually, when I was researching my first book, which just touched on the idea of how we might change in space. That was out in Utah. It's called the Mars Desert Research Station, and remote facility in a place in the desert that really looks like Mars. I went out there and visited a crew that had just begun a simulation. It was fascinating to see what they're doing and how the ways that they try to make it feel realistic and the things that they try to learn. There's a whole bunch of these.

**Chris Williamson** (3:44)
How much is space exploration an evolutionary event versus a technological one?

**Scott Solomon** (3:51)
Well, that's really the thing that I'm most interested in. So my background, I'm an evolutionary biologist, and so the thing that got me most interested in this topic of how will people be affected by being in space is the question of, would making a long-term settlement on Mars or anywhere else lead to evolutionary change? From my perspective, I think it's inevitable. I think basically if you are creating a situation where people are not just going and coming back, but they're going to live there, in other words, they're moving there, that's where their lives are, and most importantly, they're having families there. They're raising children there.
Once you start talking about a multiple generation, a generational presence on another world, we should expect evolutionary change. That's how evolution works, right?

**Chris Williamson** (4:49)
Well, migration in the past has caused divergence, right? What was that? Homo floresiensis?

**Scott Solomon** (4:57)
Floresiensis, yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (4:58)
Floresiensis, the pygmy people. So, you're an evolutionary biologist. I've been telling this story on the show for ages. Can you tell me if this is true or not? So, I'd heard they were Indonesia, right?