Dava Newman: Space Exploration, Space Suits, and Life on Mars | Lex Fridman Podcast #51

The following is a conversation with Dava Newman. She's the Apollo Program Professor at MIT and the former Deputy Administrator of NASA and has been a principal investigator on four spaceflight missions. Her research interests are in aerospace biomedical engineering, investigating human performance in varying gravity environments. She has designed and engineered and built some incredible spacesuit technology, namely the Biosuit that we talk about in this conversation. Due to some scheduling challenges on both our parts, we only had about 40 minutes together. And in true engineering style, she said, I talk fast, you pick the best questions, let's get it done. And we did. It was a fascinating conversation about space exploration and the future of spacesuits. This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on Apple Podcast, support on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. 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You circumnavigated the globe on boat. So, let's look back in history. 500 years ago, Ferdinand Magellan's crew was first to circumnavigate the globe, but he died, I think people don't know, like halfway through, and so did 242 of the 260 sailors that took that three-year journey. What do you think it was like for that crew at that time heading out into the unknown to face probably likely death? Do you think they were filled with fear, with excitement? Probably not fear. I think in all of exploration, the challenge and the unknown, so probably wonderment, and then just the, when you really are sailing the world's oceans, you have extreme weather of all kinds. When we were circumnavigating, it was challenging, new dynamic, you really appreciate Mother Earth, you appreciate the winds and the waves. So, back to Magellan and his crew, since they really didn't have a three-dimensional map of the globe, of the Earth when they went out, just probably looking over the horizon thinking, what's there, what's there? So, I would say that the challenge had to be really important in terms of the team dynamics and that leadership had to be incredibly important. Team dynamics, how do you keep people focused on the mission? So, you think the psychology, that's interesting. There's probably echoes of that in the space exploration stuff we'll talk about. So, the psychology of the dynamics between the human beings on the mission is important? Absolutely. For a Mars mission, it's lots of challenges, technology, but since I specialize in keeping my astronauts alive, the psychosocial issues, the psychology of psychosocial challenges, psychosocial team dynamics, leadership, we're all people. So, that's always a huge impact, one of the top three, I think, of any isolated, confined environment and any mission that is really pretty extreme. So, your Twitter handle is Deva Explorer. So, when did you first fall in love with the idea of exploration? That's a great question. Maybe as long as I can remember, as I grew up in Montana, in the Rocky Mountains, in Helena, in the capital, and so literally, Mount Helena was my backyard, was right up there. So, exploring, being in the mountains, looking at caves, just running around, but always being in nature. So, since my earliest memory, as I think of myself as kind of exploring the natural beauty of the Rocky Mountains where I grew up. So, exploration is not limited to any domain, it's just anything. So, the natural domain of any kind, going out to the woods into a place you haven't been, it's all exploration. I think so. Yeah, I have a pretty all-encompassing definition of exploration. So, what about space exploration? When were you first captivated by the idea that we little humans can venture out into the space, into the great unknown of space? So, it's a great year to talk about that, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. I was alive during Apollo, and specifically Apollo 11. I was five years old, and I distinctly remember that. I remember that humanity, I'm sure I probably didn't know their names at the time, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and never forget Michael Collins in orbit. Those three men doing something that just seemed impossible, seemed impossible a decade earlier, even a year earlier. So, the Apollo program really inspired me. And then I think it actually just taught me to dream. Any impossible mission could be possible with enough focus. I'm sure you need some luck, but you definitely need the leadership, you need the focus of the mission. So, since an early age, I thought, of course, people should be interplanetary. Of course, we need people on Earth, and we're going to have people exploring space as well. That seemed obvious at that age, of course. It opened it up. Before we saw men on the moon, it wasn't obvious to me at all. But once we understood that, yes, absolutely, astronauts, that's what they do. They explore, they go into space, and they land on other planets or moons. So, again, maybe a romanticized philosophical question, but when you look up at the stars, knowing that there's at least 100 billion of them in the Milky Way galaxy, right? So, we're really a small speck in this giant thing that's the visible universe. How does that make you feel about our efforts here? I love the perspective. I love that perspective. I always open my public talks with a big Hubble Space Telescope image, looking out into, you mentioned just now, the solar system, the Milky Way. Because I think it's really important to know that we're just a small pale blue dot. We're really fortunate. We're on the best planet by far. Life is fantastic here. That we know of. You're confident this is the best planet? I'm pretty sure it's the best planet that we know of. I mean, I search my researches in mission worlds, and when will we find life? I think actually probably the next decade, we find probably past life, probably the evidence of past life on Mars, let's say. You think there was once life on Mars? Impossibly, yeah. Do you think there's currently? I'm more comfortable saying probably 3.5 billion years ago, I feel pretty confident there was life on Mars, just because then it had an electromagnetic shield, it had an atmosphere, has a wonderful gravity level, 3 Hg is fantastic. You're all super human, we can all slam dunk a basketball, it's going to be fun to play sports on Mars. So I think we'll find past, fossilized, probably the evidence of past life on Mars. Currently, that's again, we need the next decade, but the evidence is mounting for sure. We do have the organics, we're finding organics, we have water, seasonal water on Mars. We used to just know about the ice caps, you know, North and South Pole. Now we have seasonal water. We do have the building blocks for life on Mars. We really need to dig down into the soil, because everything on the top surface is radiated. But once we find out, will we see any lifeforms, will we see any bugs? I leave it open as a possibility. But I feel pretty certain that past life or fossilized lifeforms we'll find. And then we have to get to all these ocean worlds, these beautiful moons of other planets, since we know they have water. And we're looking for some simple search for life, follow the water, you know, carbon based life, that's the only life we know. There could be other life forms that we don't know about, but it's hard to search for them because we don't know. So in our search for life in the solar system, it's definitely, you know, search, you know, follow the water and look for the building blocks of life. So you think in the next decade, we might see hints of past life or even current life? I think so. That's pretty optimistic. I love the optimism. I'm pretty optimistic. Do humans have to be involved, or can this be robots and rovers and... Probably teams. I mean, we've been at it on Mars in particular, 50 years, we've been exploring Mars for 50 years. Great data, right? Our images of Mars today are phenomenal. Now we know how Mars lost its atmosphere, you know, we're starting to know because of the lack of the electromagnetic shield. We know about the water on Mars. So we've been studying 50 years with our robots, we still haven't found it. So I think once we have a human mission there, we just accelerate things. It's always humans and our rovers and robots together. But we just have to think that 50 years we've been looking at Mars and taking images and doing the best science that we can. People need to realize Mars is really far away. It's really hard to get to. You know, this is extreme, extreme exploration. We mentioned Magellan first, or all of the wonderful explorers and sailors of the past, which kind of are lots of my inspiration for exploration. Mars is a different ballgame. I mean, it's eight months to get there, a year and a half to get home. I mean, it's really extreme. Harsh environment in all kinds of ways. But the kind of organism we might be able to see hints of on Mars are kind of microorganisms, perhaps. Yeah, and remember that humans, we're kind of, you know, we're hosts, right? We're hosts to all of our bacteria and viruses, right? Do you think it's a big leap from the viruses and the bacteria to us humans? Put another way, do you think on all those moons, beautiful, wet moons that you mentioned, you think there's intelligent life out there? I hope so. I mean, that's the hope. But, you know, we don't have the scientific evidence for that now. I think all the evidence we have in terms of life existing is much more compelling, again, because we have the building blocks of life now. When that life turns into intelligence, that's a big unknown. If we ever meet, do you think we would be able to find a common language? I hope so. We haven't met yet. It's just so far. I mean, do physics just play a role here? Look at all these exoplanets, 6,000 exoplanets. I mean, even the couple dozen Earth-like planets that are exoplanets that really look like habitable planets. These are very Earth-like. They look like they have all the building blocks. I can't wait to get there. The only thing is, they're 10 to 100 light years away. So scientifically, we know they're there. We know that they're habitable. They have, you know, everything going for them, right? You know, we call them the Goldilocks zone, not too hot, not too cold, just perfect for habitability for life. But now the reality is if they're 10, at the best, to 100, to thousands of light years away. So what's out there? But I just can't think that we're not the only ones. So absolutely life, life in the universe, probably intelligent life as well. Do you think there needs to be fundamental revolutions in how we, the tools we use to travel through space in order for us to venture outside of our solar system? Or do you think the ways, the rockets, the ideas we have now, the engineering ideas we have now will be enough to venture out? Well, it's a good question. Right now, you know, because again, speed of light is a limit. We don't have warp speed warp drive to explore our solar system, to get to Mars, to explore all the planets. Then we need technology push, but technology push here is just advanced propulsion. It'd be great if I could get humans to Mars in say, you know, three to four months, not eight months. I mean, half the time, 50% reduction. That's great in terms of safety and wellness of the crew. And orbital mechanics, but physics rules, you know, orbital mechanics is still there. Physics rules. We can't defy physics. I love that. So invent a new physics. I mean, look at quantum, you know, look at quantum theory. Yeah, you never know. Exactly. I mean, we are always learning. So we definitely don't know all the physics that exist too, but we're, we still have to, it's not science fiction. You know, we still have to pay attention to physics in terms of our speed of travel for space flight. So you were the deputy administrator of NASA during the Obama administration. There's a current Artemis program that's working on a crewed mission to the moon and then perhaps to Mars. What are you excited about there? What are your thoughts on this program? What are the biggest challenges do you think of getting to the moon, of landing to the moon once again, and then the big step to Mars? Well, I love, you know, the moon program now, Artemis. It is definitely, we've been in low earth orbit. I love low earth orbit too, but I just always look at it as three phases. So low earth orbit where we've been 40 years. So definitely time to get back to deep space, time to get to the moon. There's so much to do on the moon. I hope we don't get stuck on the moon for 50 years. I really want to get to the moon, spend the next decade first with lander, then humans. There's just a lot to explore, but to me, it's a big technology push. It's only three days away. So the moon is definitely the right place. So we kind of buy down our technology. We invest in specifically habitats, life support systems. We need suits. We really need to understand really how to live off planet. We've been off planet and low earth orbit, but still, that's only 400 kilometers up, 250 miles, right? So we get to the moon. It really is a great proving ground for the technologies. And now we're in deep space. Radiation becomes a huge issue, again, to keep our astronauts well and alive. And I look at all of that investment for moon, moon exploration to the ultimate goal, you know, the horizon goals, we call it, to get people to Mars. But we just don't go to Mars tomorrow, right? We really need a decade on the moon, I think investing in the technologies, learning, making sure the astronauts are, they're healthy, you know, they're safe and well. And also learning so much about in situ research utilization, ISRU, in situ resource utilization is huge when it comes to exploration for the moon and Mars. So we need a test bed. And to me, it really is a lunar test bed. And then we use those same investments to think about getting people to Mars in the 2030s. Lex Mayer So developing sort of a platform of all the kind of research tools of all the, what's the resource utilization, can you speak to that? Jennifer Yeah, so ISRU for the moon, it's, we'll go to the South Pole. And fascinating, we have images of it. Of course, we know there's permanently shaded areas and like by Shackleton crater, and there's areas that are permanently in the sun. Well, it seems that there's a lot of water ice, you know, water that's trapped in ice, and the lunar craters. That's the first place you go. Why? Because it's water. And when you want to try to, it could be fuel, you know, life support systems. So you kind of get and you go where the water is. And so when the moon is kind of for resources utilization, but to learn how to can we make the fuels out of the resources that are on the moon, we have to think about 3D printing, right? You don't get to bring all this mass with you, you have to learn how to literally live off the land. We need a pressure shell, we need to have an atmosphere for people to live in. So all of that is going to bind down the technology doing the investigation doing the science, what are the basically called lunar volatiles? You know, what is that ice on the moon? How much of it is there? How what are the resources look like? To me that helps us that's just the next step in getting humans to Mars. And it's cheaper and more effective to sort of develop some of these difficult challenges, like solve some of these challenges, practice, develop, test and so on on the moon. Absolutely. Absolutely. And people are gonna love to, you know, you get to the moon, you get to you have a beautiful Earth rise, I mean, you have the most magnificent view of Earth being off planet. So it just makes sense. I think we're gonna have thousands, lots of people, hopefully 10s of 1000s in low Earth orbit, because low Earth orbit, it's a beautiful place to go and look down on the Earth, but people want to return home. Think the lunar explorers will also want to do round trips. And you know, be on the moon three day trip, explore do science also because the lunar day is 14 days and lunar nights, also 14 days. So in that 28 day cycle, you know, half of it is in light half of its in dark. So people would probably want to do, you know, couple week trips, month long trips, not longer than that. What do you mean by people? What do you people explore? Yeah, astronauts are going to be civilians in the future to not all not all astronauts are going to be government astronauts. Actually, when I was at NASA, we changed, we actually got the law changed to recognize astronauts that are not only government employees, you know, NASA astronauts or European Space Agency astronauts or Russian Space Agency that astronauts because of the big push we put in the private sector, that astronauts, essentially, you're going to be astronauts, you get over 100 kilometers up. And I think once you've done orbital orbital flight, then you're an astronaut. So a lot of private citizens are going to become astronauts. Do you think one day you might step foot on the moon? I think it'd be good to go to the moon. I'd give that a shot. Mars, I'm gonna, it's my life's work to get the next generation to Mars. That's that's, that's, that's you or even younger than you, you know, my students generation will be the Martian explorers. I'm just working to facilitate that. But that's not going to be me. Hey, the moon's pretty good. And it's a lot tough. I mean, it's still a really tough mission. It's an extreme mission. Exactly. It's great for exploration, but doable. But again, before Apollo, we didn't think getting humans to the moon was even possible. So we kind of made that possible. But we need to go back. We absolutely need to go back. We're investing in the heavy lift launch capabilities that we need to get there. We haven't had that, you know, since the Apollo days, since Saturn V. So now we have three options on the board. That's what's so fantastic. NASA has its, you know, space launch system. SpaceX is going to have its heavy capability. And Blue Origin is coming along too with heavy lift. So that's pretty fantastic. From where I sit, I'm the Apollo program professor. Today I have zero heavy lift launch capability. I can't wait. Just in a few years, we'll have three different heavy lift launch capabilities. So that's pretty exciting. You know, your heart is perhaps with NASA. But you mentioned SpaceX and Blue Origin. What are your thoughts of SpaceX and the innovative efforts there from the sort of private company aspect? Oh, they're great. Remember that the investments in SpaceX is government funding. It's NASA funding, it's US Air Force funding, just as it should be. Because they're betting on a company who is moving fast, has some new technology development. So I love it. So when I was an athlete, it really was under our public-private partnerships. So necessarily, the government needs to fund these startups. Now SpaceX is no longer a startup. But, you know, it's been at it for 10 years. It's had some accidents, learned a lot of lessons. But it's great because it's the way you move faster. And also some private industry folks, some private businesses will take a lot more risk. That's also really important for the government. What do you think about that culture of risk? I mean, sort of NASA and the government are exceptionally good at delivering sort of safe, like there's a little bit more of a culture of caution and safety and sort of this kind of solid engineering. And I think SpaceX, while it has the same kind of stuff, it has a little bit more of that startup feel where they take the bigger risk. Is that exciting for you to see, seeing bigger risks in this kind of space? Absolutely. And the best scenario is both of them working together, because there's really important lessons learned, especially when you talk about human spaceflight, safety, quality assurance. These things are the utmost importance, both aviation and space, you know, when human lives are at stake. On the other hand, government agencies, NASA can be European Space Agency, you name it, they become very bureaucratic, pretty risk averse, move pretty slowly. So I think the best is when you combine the partnerships from both sides. Industry necessarily has to push the government, take some more risk. You know, like there's smart risk, or I actually gave an award at NASA for failing smart. Failing smart. I love that. You know, so you can kind of break open the culture, say, no, look at Apollo, that was a huge risk. It was done well. So there's always a culture of safety, quality assurance, you know, engineering, you know, at its best. But on the other hand, you want to get things done. And you have to also get them, you have to bring the cost down, you know, for when it comes to launch, we really have to bring the cost down and get the frequency up. And so that's what the newcomers are doing. They're really pushing that. So it's about the most exciting time I can imagine for space flight. Again, a little bit, it really is the democratization of space flight, opening it up, not just because the launch capability, but the science we can do on a CubeSat, what you can do now for very, those used to be, you know, student projects that we would go through, conceive, design, implement, and think about what a small satellite would be. Now they're the most, you know, these are really advanced instruments, science instruments that are flying on little teeny CubeSats that pretty much anyone can afford. So there's not a, there's every nation, you know, every place in the world can fly a CubeSat. And so that's... What's a CubeSat? Oh, CubeSat is a, this is called 1U, and CubeSats we measure in terms of units. So you know, just in terms of I put my both my hands together, that's one unit, two units, three. So little small satellites. So CubeSats are for small satellites. And we actually go by mass as well, you know, small satellite might be 100 kilos, 200 kilos, well under 1000 kilos. CubeSats then are the next thing down from small sats, you know, basically, you know, kilos, tens of kilos, things like that. But kind of the building blocks, CubeSats are fantastic design, fantastic design, it's kind of modular design. So I can take a 1U, one unit of CubeSat. And, you know, but what if I have a little bit more money in payload, I can fly three of them, and just basically put a lot more instruments on it. But essentially, think about something the size of a shoebox, if you will, you know, that would be a CubeSat. And those, how do those help empower you in terms of doing science in terms of doing experiments? Oh, right now, there's getting back to private industry, Planet, the company is, you know, flying CubeSats, and literally looking down on Earth, and orbiting Earth, taking a picture, if you will, of Earth every day, every 24 hours covering the entire Earth. So in terms of Earth observations, in terms of climate change, in terms of our changing Earth, it's revolutionizing, because they're affordable, we can put a whole bunch of them up. The telecoms, we're all, you know, on our cell phones, and we have GPS, we have our telecoms. But those used to be very expensive satellites providing that service. Now we can fly a whole bunch of modular CubeSats. So it really is a breakthrough in terms of modularity, as well as cost reduction. So that's one exciting set of developments. Is there something else that you've been excited about, like reusable rockets, perhaps, that you've seen in the last few years? Yeah, well, the reusability, you had, the reusability is awesome. I mean, it's just the best. Now we have to remember, the shuttle was a reusable vehicle. And the shuttle is an amazing, it's an aerospace engineer, you know, I mean, the shuttle is still just the most gorgeous, elegant, extraordinary design of a space vehicle. It was reusable, it just wasn't affordable. But the reusability of it was really critical, because we flew it up, it did come back. So the notion of reusability, I think, absolutely. Now what we're doing with, we, you know, like global we, but with SpaceX and Borgene, sending the rockets up, recovering the first stages where if they can regain 70% cost savings, that's huge. And just seeing the control, you know, the control and dynamics, just seeing that rocket come back and land. Oh, yeah, that's... It never gets old. It's exciting every single time you look at it and say, that's magic. So it's so cool. To me, the landing is where I stand up, start clapping, just the control. Yeah, just the algorithm, just the control algorithms. And hitting that landing, it's, you know, it's gymnastics for rocket ships. But to see these guys stick a landing, it's just wonderful. So every time, like I say, every time I see, you know, the reusability and the rockets coming back and landing so precisely, it's really exciting. So it is, it is actually, that's a game changer. We are in a new era of lower costs and a lot, the higher frequency. And it's the world, not just NASA, it's many nations are really upping their frequency of launches. So you've done a lot of exciting research, design, engineering on spacesuits. What does the spacesuit of the future look like? Well, if I have anything to say about it, it'll be a very, it'll be a very tight-fitting suit. We use mechanical counterpressure to pressurize right directly on the skin. Seems that it's technically feasible. We're still at the research and development stage. We don't have a flight system, but technically it's feasible. So we do a lot of work in the materials. You know, what materials do we need to pressurize someone? What's the patterning we need? That's what our patents are in, the patterning, kind of how we apply this. It's a third of an atmosphere. Just to sort of take a little step back, you have this incredible biosuit where it's tight-fitting, so it allows more mobility and so on. So maybe even to take a bigger step back, like what are the functions that a spacesuit should perform? Sure. So start from the beginning. A spacesuit is the world's smallest spacecraft. So I really, that's the best definition I can give you. Right now we fly gas pressurized suits, but think of developing and designing an entire spacecraft. So then you take all those systems and you shrink them around a person, provide them with oxygen debris, scrub out their carbon dioxide, make sure they have pressure. They need a pressure environment to live in. So really the spacesuit is a shrunken spacecraft in its entirety, has all the same systems. Communication as well, probably. Yeah, communications, exactly. So you really, thermal control, a little bit of radiation, not so much radiation protection, but thermal control, humidity, oxygen debris. So all those life support systems as well as the pressure production. So it's an engineering marvel, the spacesuits that have flown because they really are entire spacecraft, that is small spacecraft that we have around a person, but they're very massive, but 140 kilos, the current suit, and they're not mobility suits. So since we're going back to the moon and Mars, we need a planetary suit, we need a mobility suit. So that's where we've kind of flipped the design paradigm. I study astronauts, I study humans in motion, and if we can map that motion, I want to give you full flexibility, move your arms and legs. I really want you to be like an Olympic athlete, an extreme explorer. I don't want to waste any of your energy. So we take it from the human design. So I take a look at humans, we measure them, we model them, and then I say, okay, can I put a spacesuit on them that goes from the skin out? So rather than a gas pressurized shrinking that spacecraft around the person, say, here's how humans perform. Can I design a spacesuit literally from the skin out? So that's what we've come up with, mechanical counterpressure, some patterning, and that way it could be order of magnitude less in terms of the mass, and it should provide maximum mobility for a moon or Mars. LUIS So what's mechanical counterpressure? Like, how the heck can you even begin to create something that's tight-fitting? And still doesn't protect you from the elements and so on, and the whole the pressure thing? JILL That's the challenge, it's a big design challenge. We've been working on it for a while. So you can either put someone in a balloon, that's one way to do it, that's conventional, that's the only thing we've ever done. That's a gas pressurized suit. So put someone in a balloon. It's only a third of an atmosphere to keep someone alive. So that's what the current system is. So depending on what units you think, and 30 kilopascals, you know, 4.3 pounds per square inch. LUIS So much less than the pressure that's on Earth. You can still keep a human alive with 0.3, and it's alive and happy. JILL Alive and happy. And you know, you mix the gases. We're having this chat, and we're at one sea level in Boston at one atmosphere. LUIS Oxygen and nitrogen. JILL Oxygen, nitrogen, you put a suit, if we put someone to a third of an atmosphere, so for mechanical counterpressure now, so one way is to do it with a balloon, and that's what we currently have. Or you can apply the pressure directly to the skin. I only have to give you a third of an atmosphere. Right now, you and I are very happy in one atmosphere. So if I put that pressure, a third of an atmosphere on you, I just have to do it consistently, you know, across all of your body and your limbs. And it'll be a gas pressurized helmet. Doesn't make sense to shrink wrap the head. See the blue mangrove. That's a great act. But we don't need to, there's no benefits of like shrink wrapping the head. You put, you know, gas pressurized helmet, because the helmet, then the future of suits you asked me about, the helmet just becomes your information portal. So it will have augmented reality. It'll have all the information you need. Should have, you know, the maps that I need. I'm on the moon. Okay, well, hey, smart helmet. Then show me the map, show me the topography. Hopefully it has the lab embedded too. If it has really great cameras, maybe I can see with that regolith. That's just lunar dust and dirt. What's that made out of? We talked about the water. So the helmet then really becomes this information portal is how I see kind of the IT architecture of the helmet is really allowing me to, you know, use all of my modalities of an explorer that I'd like to. So cameras, voiceover images, if it were really good, it would kind of be, would have lab capabilities as well. Okay. So the pressure comes from the body, comes from the mechanical pressure, which is fascinating. Now, what aspect, when I look at bio-suit, just the suits you're working on, sort of from a fashion perspective, they look awesome. Is that a small part of it too? Oh, absolutely. Because the teams that we work with, of course, I'm an engineer, there's engineering students, there's design students, there's architects. So it really is a very much a multidisciplinary team. So sure, colors, aesthetics, materials, all those things we pay attention to. So it's not just an engineering solution. It really is a much more holistic, it's a suit, it's a suit, you're, you know, you're dressed in a suit now, it's a form fitting. So we really have to pay attention to all those things. And so that's the design team that we work with. And my partner, Ghetradi, you know, we're partners in this in terms of, he comes from an architecture, industrial design background. So bringing those skills to bear as well. We team up with industry folks who are in, you know, athletic performance and designers. So it really is a team that brings all those skills together. So what role does the spacesuit play in our long-term staying in Mars, sort of exploring the, doing all the work that astronauts do, but also perhaps civilians one day, almost like taking steps towards colonization of Mars? What role does a spacesuit play there? So you always need a life support system, pressurized habitat. And I like to say, we're not going to Mars to sit around. So you need a suit. You're, you know, even if you land and have the lander, you're not going there to stay inside. That's for darn sure. We're going there to search for the evidence of life. That's why we're going to Mars. So you need a lot of mobility. So for me, the suit is the best way to give the human mobility. We're always still going to need rovers. We're going to need robots. So for me, exploration is always a suite of explorers. Some people are going to, some of the suite of explorers are humans, but many are going to be robots, smart systems, things like that. But I look at it as kind of all those capabilities together make the best exploration team. So let me ask, I love artificial intelligence and I've also saw that you've enjoyed the movie Space Odyssey, 2001, Space Odyssey. Let me ask the question about how 9000, that makes a few decisions there that prioritizes the mission over the astronauts. Do you think from a high philosophical question, do you think HAL did the right thing of prioritizing the mission? I think our artificial intelligence will be smarter in the future for a Mars mission. It's a great question. The reality is for a Mars mission, we need fully autonomous systems. We will get humans, but they have to be fully autonomous. And that's a really important, that's the most important concept because there's not going to be a mission control on earth, 20 minute time lag, there's just no way you're going to control. So fully autonomous, so people have to be fully autonomous as well, but all of our systems as well. And so that's the big design challenge. So that's why we test them out on the moon as well. When we have a, okay, a few second, three second time lag, you can test them out. We have to really get autonomous exploration down. You asked me earlier about Magellan, Magellan and his crew, they left, right? They were autonomous. They were autonomous, they left and they were on their own to figure out that mission. Then when they hit land, they have resources as in-situ resource utilization and everything else they brought with them. So we have to, I think, have that mindset for exploration. Again, back to the moon, it's more of the testing ground, the proving ground with technologies. But when we get to Mars, it's so far away that we need fully autonomous systems. So I think that's where again, AI and autonomy come in, a really robust autonomy, things that we don't have today yet. So they're on the drawing boards, but we really need to test them out because that's what we're up against. So fully autonomous, meaning like self-sufficient, there's still a role for the human in that picture. Do you think there'll be a time when AI systems just beyond doing fully autonomous flight control will also help or even take mission decisions like Hal did? That's interesting. It depends. I mean, they're going to be designed by humans. I think as you mentioned, humans are always in the loop. I mean, we might be on earth, we might be in orbit on Mars, maybe the systems that land are down on the surface of Mars. But I think we're going to get, we are right now just on earth-based systems, AI systems that are incredibly capable and training them with all the data that we have now, petabytes of data from earth. What I care about for the autonomy and AI right now, how we're applying it in research is to look at earth and look at climate systems. I mean, that's the, it's not for Mars to me today. Right now, AI is to eyes on earth, all of our space data, compiling that using supercomputers, because we have so much information and knowledge and we need to get that into people's hands. We need, first there's the educational issue with climate and our changing climate. Then we need to change human behavior. That's the biggie. So this next decade, it's urgent we take care of our own spaceship, which is spaceship earth. So that's to me where my focus has been for AI systems, using whatever's out there, kind of imagining also what the future situation is. What's the satellite imagery of earth of the future. If you can hold that in your hands, that's going to be really powerful. Will that help people accelerate positive change for earth and for us to live in balance with earth? I hope so. And kind of start with the ocean systems. So oceans to land to air and kind of using all the space data. So it's a huge role for artificial intelligence to help us analyze, I call it curating the data, using the data. It has a lot to a visualizations as well. Do you think, and a weird dark question, do you think human species can survive if we don't become interplanetary in the next century or a couple of centuries? Absolutely, we can survive. I don't think Mars is option B actually. So I think it's all about saving spaceship earth and humanity. I simply put, earth doesn't need us, but we really need earth. All of humanity needs to live in balance with earth because earth has been here a long time before we ever showed up and it'll be here a long time after. It's just a matter of how do we want to live with all living beings, much more in balance because we need to take care of the earth and right now we're not. So that's the urgency. And I think it is the next decade to try to live much more sustainably, live more in balance with earth. I think the human species has a great long optimistic future, but we have to act. It's urgent. We have to change behavior. We have to realize that we're all in this together. It's just one blue bubble. It's for humanity. So when I think people realize that we're all astronauts, that's the great news is everyone's been an astronaut. Spaceship earth. We're all astronauts on spaceship earth and this is our mission. This is our mission to take care of the planet. And yet, as we explore out from our spaceship earth here, out into the space, what do you think the next 50, 100, 200 years look like for space exploration? I'm optimistic. So I think that we'll have lots of people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, who knows, maybe millions in low earth orbit. That's just a place that we're going to have people and actually some industry, manufacturing, things like that. That dream, I hope we realize getting people to the moon so I can envision a lot of people on the moon. Again, it's a great place to go. Living or visiting? Probably visiting and living. If you want to, most people are going to want to come back to earth, I think, but there'll be some people and it's not such a long, it's a good view. It's a beautiful view. So I think that we will have many people on the moon as well. I think there'll be some people, you told me, wow, hundreds of years out. So we'll have people, we'll be interplanetary for sure as a species. So I think we'll be on the moon. I think we'll be on Mars. Venus, no, it's already a runaway greenhouse gas. So not a great place for science. Jupiter, all of within the solar system, great place for all of our scientific probes. I don't see so much in terms of human physical presence. We'll be exploring them. So we live in our minds there because we're exploring them and going on those journeys. But it's really our choice in terms of our decisions of how in balance we're going to be living here on the earth. When do you think the first woman, first person will step on Mars? Step on Mars? Well, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it happens in the 2030s. 2030s? Say mid, you know, 2020, mid-20, you know, 2025, 2035, we'll be on the moon. And hopefully with more people than us. But first with, you know, a few astronauts, it'll be global, international folks. But we really need those 10 years, I think, on the moon. And then so by later in the decade, in the 2030s, we'll have all the technology and know-how and we need to get that human mission to Mars done. We live in exciting times. And, Deva, thank you so much for leading the way. And thank you for talking today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to this conversation. And thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App. Remember to use code LEXPODCAST when you download Cash App from the App Store or Google Play Store. You'll get 10 bucks, $10, and $10 will go to FIRST, a STEM education nonprofit that inspires hundreds of thousands of young minds to learn and to dream of engineering our future. Thank you and hope to see you next time.


Donald Knuth: Ant Colonies and Human Cognition | AI Podcast Clips

You did mention that you thought that an understanding of the way ant colonies are able to perform incredibly organized tasks might well be the key to understanding human cognition. So these fundamentally distributed systems. So what do you think is the difference between the way Don Knuth would sort a list and an ant colony would sort a list or perform an algorithm? Sorting a list isn't the same as cognition though, but I know what you're getting at is, well, the advantage of ant colony, at least we can see what they're doing. We know which ant has talked to which other ant and it's much harder with the brains to know to what extent neurons are passing signal. So I'm just saying that ant colony might be, if they have the secret of cognition, think of an ant colony as a cognitive single being rather than as a colony of lots of different ants. I mean, just like the cells of our brain and the microbiome and all that is interacting entities, but somehow I consider myself to be a single person. Well, an ant colony, you can say might be cognitive somehow and I mean, okay, I smash a certain ant and the organism's saying, hmm, that stung, what was that? But if we're going to crack the secret of cognition, it might be that we could do so by psyching out how ants do it because we have a better chance to measure the communicating by pheromones and by touching each other and sight but not by much more subtle phenomenon like electric currents going through. But even a simpler version of that, what are your thoughts of maybe Conway's Game of Life? Okay, so Conway's Game of Life is able to simulate any computable process and any deterministic process is. I like how you went there. I mean, that's not its most powerful thing, I would say. I mean, it can simulate it but the magic is that the individual units are distributed and extremely simple. Yes, we understand exactly what the primitives are. The primitives, just like with the ant colony, even simpler though. But still, it doesn't say that I understand life. I mean, it gives me a better insight into what does it mean to have a deterministic universe? What does it mean to have free choice, for example? Do you think God plays dice? Yes, I don't see any reason why God should be forbidden from using the most efficient ways to. I mean, we know that dice are extremely important in efficient algorithms. There are things that couldn't be done well without randomness and so I don't see any reason why God should be prohibited from. When the algorithm requires it, you don't see why the physics should constrain it.