Familes in space

Can humans safely have babies in space? Daniel and Kelly talk about what we know about human health in space, and our prospects for starting families there. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Audi adults. If you're listening to this show with kids,
we just wanted to give you a heads up that
we're talking about the birds and the bees today, So
decide for yourself if it's time to switch to a
different episode of Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. Giving birth
is a truly profound and beautiful experience, but also it
really sucks and it's super dangerous. According to UNIEF, there

(00:29):
were two hundred and eighty seven thousand maternal deaths in
twenty twenty. That's down from four hundred and forty seven
thousand deaths in two thousand, so that's great news, But
labor and delivery remain super dangerous. Not all places are
equally dangerous, though, A lot of danger is removed when
you have access to nearby healthcare, which is why I

(00:52):
find myself a little concerned when Elon Musk proposes we
send one million people to Mars in the next thirty years.
No humans will have ever been quite so far away
from a hospital. And on top of that, Mars is
a much harsher environment than Earth, for reasons we'll discuss today.
The Martian environment could pose a lot of additional challenges

(01:12):
for pregnant moms and their babies. Can moms survived this
process and what about their babies? So today we're talking
about conception, pregnancy, labor, and subsequent child development in space.
Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Hi.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I've continued in
my family's tradition of being born in one continent, raised
in a second, and having a child on a third.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Oh wow, go through the Where did you come from?

Speaker 3 (01:57):
I was born in Israel, which technically part of a
raised in America, and one of my children was born
in Switzerland near the particle collider.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
That is very cool. I have no crazy travel stuff
like that. I was born in New Jersey, raised in Ohio.
Then I went kind of all over the US for
a while, but I've pretty much lived on this continent.
It's exciting. Oh yeah, and I'm Kelly Wienersmith. I study
parasites and mostly stay here.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
All right. Well, then my question for you today, Kelly
is where is the strangest place you've ever heard of
a baby being born?

Speaker 1 (02:31):
So in Antarctica. There's this slice of Antarctica that has
three overlapping land claims. So the UK, Chile, and Argentina
all claim this chunk of Antarctica, and for geopolitical reasons,
there's it seems this desire to have babies on this
land chunk, so that if we do ever go back, Yeah,

(02:52):
this is a great story. So if we do ever
go back to an era where sort of history matters,
and you could say, well, like, yes, there's overlap claims,
but we were here doing science and having babies and
and so I don't remember which it was, either Argentina
or Chile. They flew a pregnant woman out to the
middle of nowhere so that she could have a baby.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Who agrees to that? Who agrees to have your birth
be part of like geopolitical discussions.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
I mean, it's an interesting birth story, but I don't know.
And then the other nation to one up them, had
a baby conceived and born on their research base, and
so there's this like wit zach and I call it
counter stork technology or something like instead of yeah and
so so, yeah, I think that is the weirdest birth

(03:40):
baby birth story I have heard, what about you?

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Oh my gosh, that totally tops it.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
Now.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
I mean I've heard of babies born like in transit
in the ocean, like you know, between continents. But I
was wondering if babies had ever been born under really
difficult circumstances like that. But I have to question, like
the moms, like are they really nationalistic? They really want
to play a role in these arguments between countries, like

(04:07):
literally being upon in global diplomacy. That's crazy to me.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
I mean, I I feel like the dad's decisions could
have been you know, part of it too. But but yeah, no,
I think parents, you know, having kids as part of
geopolitical one upmanship is not amazing, is it, TMI. We
can delete this if it is to mention that my
son was born on Halloween and they were little cat
ears over the like blanket on my knees when I

(04:33):
was giving birth to my baby because the doctor had
dressed up as a cat, and it was a weird experience.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
That's not to you, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, So, you know, I think pregnancy is always a
little bit weird, but sometimes it's just weirder than other times.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Well, here's hoping that all of your pregnancies are smooth
sailing and do not involve diplomats arguing outside.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
So geopolitics, complic and other things that can complicate life
are being a difficult environments when you need to give birth,
and there's maybe no environment more difficult than space. And
today we are tackling a question from a listener we
got that was inspired by the episode where we interviewed
Erica Nezvold, and here is the question.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Now, Hi, Daniel, ye Kelly. My name is Glenn Rosas.
During your recent interview with Eric and Neswold, a question
occurred to me. Now, we cannot be an air planetary species,
and let's we're able to have babies up there, and
we know from our experience on the ISS that micro
gravity is not good for human physiology in the long term.

(05:42):
So where can babies safely just date and womb away
from Earth? Thank you so very much for everything you do.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, Kelly. This seems like a pretty basic question about
space exploration because I imagine we're not just going to
send like one generation of astronauts to colonize the Solio system.
Those folks are going to want to have kids, and
we're going to want to perpetuate the species. You know,
Elon Musk is always talking about making us multiplanetary, that
involves having kids off Earth, right, So I hope that

(06:11):
we have like a really solid, well researched answer to
this because everybody's rushing into space, right.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Well, I think you can explore space without us having
the answer to this question, no problem. And Elon Musk
would argue that you could just send something like a
million people to space. You don't have to worry about
reproduction initially, you can get the whole thing up and going.
And he's doing his best to create a million babies
to send to Mars. He's still got a little bit
of a way to go, but he's getting there. But

(06:37):
you know, I do think that before we send people
to settle Space, even if you send a million people there,
I've met humans, there's going to be babies, whether you
plan on them or not.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
A million people are going to want to entertain themselves
and making babies. This part of that.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Yes, you told me that, Katrina. Let you know once
that in Antarctica there is a lot of these sorts
of activities as a way to pass time. Imagine that
human behavior will follow us to these other isolated and
confined environments.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Yes, because they actually mandate your schedule in that Antarctic
Research Station. It's eight hours of sleep, eight hours of work,
and then you have eight hours like you gotta do something.
And there's only so many times you can watch the
same set of DVDs that are down there. You know,
they don't have internet streaming, and so, yeah, people entertain
each other. That's right, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
That's right. Card games get boring, you gotta do something else.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
So we should know the answer to this question. We
should understand whether this is something humans can safely do
off Earth, and then we should figure out like how
we can figure it out. If we don't have the answer.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
I would absolutely agree with you, and I think that
for a lot of folks, and for me in particular,
when we started researching a city on Mars, we didn't
know actually where we stand in terms of our understanding
of how reproduction works in space. So let's back up
a bit here and ask our audience what do they know?
What do they think? Is it safe for humans to
have babies on Mars?

Speaker 5 (07:57):
I would say main obstacles are psychological, medical, gravitational and
radiation exposure is also a problem.

Speaker 6 (08:10):
If it's barely safe to have humans on Mars right now,
grown adults who are trained to do it. Having babies
on Mars doesn't seem super safe or ethical.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, I think that should be perfectly safe.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
My bed is yes, but you may have higher rates
of cancers and other bone density issues.

Speaker 7 (08:29):
I'm gonna say that you'd be lucky if your children
survive the harsh climates and thin atmosphepere that doesn't have
breathable air and that has low gravity.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
On the surface.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
It's not safe for humans to have babies on Mars
because it's not safe for all humans to have babies
on Earth.

Speaker 8 (08:49):
I don't see any reason why not. Yes, it would
be dangerous. However, we should have developed a safe as
it can be environment for humans to live anyway. So
what difference does it make if that human is a
little one.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (09:05):
Maybe, I think given that Mars is full of kind
of toxic things like heavy metals and other contaminants in
the soil, it might be really difficult to bring a
child into the world that was healthy.

Speaker 4 (09:21):
The more different the Mars environment is from the Earth environment,
more likely it is that our offspring will be different.
I think we will have to use the precautionary principle
and play it safe.

Speaker 8 (09:35):
No, it is not safe for humans to have Martian babies.

Speaker 6 (09:38):
We are very much custom built for this planet and
likely with pore adaptability for another planet.

Speaker 5 (09:42):
Of course, it's dangerous for a woman to give birth
on Mars.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Mars wants to kill you.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
I'm not really sure that it's safe to have babies
on Earth. Seem to need an entire hospital at your
disposal to be able to do it here. The lower
gravity environment may have fit the bones. Other than that,
I'm in a.

Speaker 10 (10:01):
Lost Ultimately, it probably will prove to be safe. Radiation
damage to the parents would be important, and maybe at
some point we can re engineer our genes to withstand
more radiation. After all, cockroaches do that quite well. Maybe
we can borrow their genes.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
So a lot of skepticism here. Yeah, folks have been
reading your book and listening to us talk about the
crazy dangers and the environment of space and realizing how
culshy we have it actually here on Earth. Giving birth
in Antarctica is probably really safe and comfortable compared to
anywhere else in this Solar system.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
That's true. But you know, there were also some folks
who who felt pretty confident that we would be able
to have babies on Mars, no problem. And I should say,
right at the beginning, it's totally possible. They're right, We
really just don't know. And at the beginning of the
space Age, there were a bunch of medical doctors who
were concerned that just sending humans up into space we
would die. Like if you were essentially in free fall

(10:57):
experience and no gravity, you wouldn't be able to swallow,
you'd never be able to eat. It would just be
a total non starter. So there is a long history
of worrying about things that don't end up being a problem.
But I think we have pretty good reason to suspect
that some of these things will be problems.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
You know, sometimes these problems go away only because you
do worry about them. I mean, my Jewish heritage tells
me that worrying solves problems, and so, you know, don't
be down on people worrying, but less joky. I think
it's important to remember that our perspective is constantly shifting,
and that it's really hard to put yourself in the
minds of people who knew less about the universe. You know,

(11:32):
folks who thought maybe there was life on Mars and
who didn't know what space was like because it was
before the era of space exploration, and so it's easy
to look back on those folks and be like, ha ha,
what a bunch of goofs. But remember they really didn't know,
And people are going to look back on us in
one hundred years and be like, ha ha, what a
bunch of goofs. They didn't know xyz. But you know,

(11:52):
everybody's just doing their best.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of your current
experiences do color the way you look either forward or back.
You know, like if we were a couple hundred years
in the past, anywhere on Earth where someone got pregnant,
there'd be a pretty good chance that mom or the
baby would die, Like you would be more concerned about it.
But now, at least if you live in the United States,
for most people in good areas where there's affordable well,

(12:16):
I don't know if there's a lot of affordable healthcare
in the US, but where you can access healthcare, you know,
you expect that you're going to survive through labor. But
that's not even true in a lot of different places
in the world. And so, you know, I think a
lot of us don't hear about mothers and children dying often,
though of course it still happens, but maybe that makes
us think it'll be easier just about anywhere we go.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
All right, So we do have some experience in space, right,
We've been sending people to space for fifty years or
so and even living in space on space stations. What
do we know from our experience in space stations about
women's bodies and conception and reproduction in.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Space, Well, not a ton. So only fifteen percent of
the people who have ever been to space have been women, which,
like that percentage surprises me. So we've sent something like
seven hundred people to space, so that's still like a
fairly large number of individuals and a decent number of women.
But they've all been, you know, up there for different
amounts of time, doing different kinds of missions, so the

(13:10):
data from all of them isn't necessarily super comparable. And
the longest consecutive stay by a woman is three hundred
and twenty eight days by Christina Koch. No other woman
has stayed up for even a year up until this point,
and so we don't have a lot of data on
adult women bodies. We do know that bodies in general
tend to start falling apart when you're in free fall,

(13:30):
so you're experiencing something like no gravity. And as we've
talked about on other episodes, muscles and bones degrade, visions,
vision degrades, and we think all these problems are associated
with low gravity.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
And do we know, even from our limited data, if
it affects women differently, Like obviously women's and men's bodies
on average are different. Does freefall affect them differently?

Speaker 1 (13:49):
That is a great question. It is possible that someone
has done that study, and I haven't seen it. I
didn't when I was reading like various reviews, I didn't
see a lot of you know, people saying things like
and bone atrophy is way worse for women or way
worse for men. So it's possible we know that, but
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
And the effects that we do know about which ones
are maybe most relevant for pregnancy and conception and birth
and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
I think the data related to muscles and bones are
particularly concerning so astronauts in general, not necessarily just women,
but the entire pool of astronauts that have been studied
on this question lose one percent of the bone density
in their hip per month. You know, when labor kicks
in and you're hoping that your hips are not going
to break like that sounds pretty scary. There's also been

(14:32):
a study where they sent rodents to space when they
were pregnant, and then they brought them back down to Earth,
and those rodents had to do a certain type of
contraction twice as much, And the thought was that their
muscles degraded in space, so the kind of muscles that
they needed for contractions just weren't as strong as they
should be. So they were in labor for a lot longer.
And any of the women out there who have been

(14:53):
in labor, they can all agree with me. You don't
want that to last any longer than it has to,
especially if you didn't request the epidural soon enough and
you do it naturally.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
So the effects in the human body are primarily muscle loss,
which is going to impact going into labor. Bone loss,
and you need your bones also, don't You need to
provide basic building blocks to build your baby. All those
ingredients are taken from the woman's body, right, So if
you're losing them because of the environment of space, and
you're losing them because you're pregnant, that seems kind of
dangerous for the mom's health.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, no, absolutely, that seems dangerous for the mom's health.
I mean, so you could send her up there with
the right kinds of foods, the right kinds of nutrients.
We do know that when you're in freefall, you lose
a lot of fluids, So your body is kind of
thrown by the fact that a bunch of fluids are
so high up in your body, so you end up
peeing out a lot of it. We're not really sure
what kind of problems that's going to cause. Additionally, you know,

(15:45):
muscles are important for how our cardiovascular system works. They
like push back against our blood vessels, and so women
who have had cardiovascular problems related to pregnancy might be
particularly at risk when they're in an environment where their
muscles are even more degraded than usual. So there's a
lot of problems that are sort of hinted at by
what we know about what happens on space stations. But
no woman who's been to space, as far as we know,

(16:08):
has been pregnant or gotten pregnant, and as far as
we can find solid evidence for, and Zach and I
disagree about, you know, whether or not this has happened.
We don't even know if sex has happened in space.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Yet another thing I wonder is, you know, when a
woman is pregnant, she's told to have exercise certain ways
and eat certain ways in order to you know, counteract
some of these effects and support the growth of the baby.
And then also when you go to space, you're told
do certain exercises, drink more fluids. Whatever. Do you think
any of those instructions disagree, are they in conflict or

(16:38):
you know what a pregnant woman in space basically just
like do both of those things, like eat lots of
protein and make sure you get extra exercise to avoid
boring loss.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, so that's a great question. So I remember when
I was pregnant, I was told, you know, like you
should exercise a lot, but don't overdo it because if
you know, you don't want to for a variety of reasons,
you don't want to overdo it. But women or people
in space are supposed to exercise something like two to
three hours a day every day, and so it might
be difficult to balance not overdoing it with making sure
that you're keeping your bones and muscles strong enough. Also,

(17:09):
you know, we change our diet in a lot of
ways when we get pregnant. So for example, you know,
I didn't eat any processed meats because there was some
concern of listeria and what that could do. So there
were like no turkey sandwiches for me during my pregnancy.
It was a massive hardship. But the environment, like you know,
the space station is notorious for having like all kinds

(17:30):
of weird stuff like growing on the other sides of
the panels. People are more likely to get sort of
like weird infections on their skin. Their immune system is
already a little bit immunocompromise, so people who have for example,
herpes latent herpes virus in their body, like the herpes
virus wakes up because the immune system seems to be
suppressed in some way. And so you know, these are
a lot of things that you could imagine possibly being

(17:52):
a problem for the mom or the baby, but we
just don't have a lot of a lot of data
on any of it.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Well, here's another potential problem. Since we've had children and
two continents, we've discovered that the cultural norms for what
pregnant women should do are very different. So, for example,
here in the US, if you're pregnant and you're having
caffeinated coffee, everybody's like, how dare you? That's so bad
for you. But if you're in France, everybody's like, one
cup of coffee a day, no big deal, It's not

(18:18):
that big a deal. But if you have salad, oh
my gosh, they give you the look of death. Right.
Salad is because of the risk some lettuce has things
growing on it. Like basically, you just don't eat salad,
and all kinds of soft cheeses you just don't eat
in France when you're pregnant. So the kinds of things
that people judge you for are very different different continents. Now,

(18:40):
imagine you're in the International Space Station. Do you follow
the French rules the American rules? Doesn't matter where you
launch from your citizenship? Like, who gets to judge you
about your pregnancy decisions?

Speaker 1 (18:51):
I mean maybe everybody gets to judge you, because space
is a global humankind activity, you know, And so says
if moms aren't getting enough judgment, we can even more
in space.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Awesome. Well, let's talk about how you get pregnant. You
referenced this. We don't know that anybody's actually ever done
that in space, But what do we know about the
science of reproduction? Is it possible? Is there anything we
know about reproduction that would suggest that it's more difficult
or easier or just weirder in space.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
So there have been some studies looking at sperm, for example,
that have found that, like it was bull sperm move
a little bit faster. But there was recently a study
that found that sperm sent to space we're sort of
behaving weirdly. So, like the data that we have on
just about everything related to reproduction in space is really
haphazard and often gives conflicting results. And partly this is

(19:39):
because NASA is really queasy about sex and reproduction, and
partly that's because they don't want to be spending money
and then needing to go in front of Congress to
justify why like geckos were having sex in space, like
why is that important? And I've asked a bunch of
NASA people. I was like, is this is it fair
to say that NASA doesn't really want to fun stuff
like this? And they're like, no, absolutely they don't. And
so so you'll get studies that manage to get up

(20:02):
there because they're sort of studying something else. Related to
reproduction in space, and then the reproduction stuff will kind
of be a sideshow. But there have been some studies,
including one on Earth, looking at cells associated with decidualization.
So this is how the uterus prepares for implantation, and
it looks like something about gravity is required for this

(20:22):
process to go.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Well, so what is the process I'm imagining deciduous trees?
Is there some analogy here to what's happening in the
lining of the uterus, that's a good question.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
So there could be so deciduous trees shed their leaves
and the uterus is sort of ripening and thickening and
providing more of like you know, sort of blood and
food for possible implanted embryo, and then you know, once
a month that sheds, And so I hadn't put that together,
but way to go, Daniel, That's almost certainly what it means.
And maybe gravity is to some extent required for that.
Oh and so we could have trouble getting pregnant for starters.

(20:55):
Don't necessarily know that we will, but it's possible. And
there's already a bunch of people on Earth who have
fertility issues and find it difficult to get pregnant in
the first place, and some of those issues I guess
could be exacerbated when we get to space.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
All right, So say I give you a large budget
to answer this question. What experiments would you do and
how do you do it in a way that's ethical.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
That is a great question, and I'm going to answer
it after the break when I take you to the moon.

(21:35):
All right. So we talked about some of the problems
that have been sort of hinted at by having humans
on the International Space Station on how these problems might
indicate how reproduction could go in space. And Daniel asked
me what experiments I would do to try to figure
out if it's safe to have babies in space.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
Without worrying about what you're gonna have to say in
front of Congress.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
That's right. Oh, I don't know that there's any solution
for that. Maybe you get a private company to fund
these research experiments. That's that's above my pay grade. But
if somebody gave me a billion dollars or more, probably more,
what I would do is I would either send satellites
out past our magnetosphere and start spinning them to create

(22:15):
something like Martian gravity. Mars is where most of the
space settlement advocates are pushing for us to end up
and so Mars has forty percent of Earth's gravity. We
already know that being in free fall and experiencing something
like zero gravity is a problem. So if you're in
a satellite that's rotating, you could make Martian gravity and
you could try to get a handle on you know,
does forty percent gravity, for example, remove all of the

(22:38):
problems with bone density. Is forty percent gravity enough to
keep bones and muscles strong? We don't really know the
answer there.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
We don't even know the answer to what happens to
your bones if you live on Mars for quite a while.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
No, nope, nope, no, no, boy. I mean there's Jacks,
the Japanese Aerospace Agency. They have a module up on
the International Space Station that now has oh the acronym
is Mars, but I forget what it stands for. It's
got these little wheels where one size has rodents that
spin to simulate different gravity regimes, and another side the
wheel doesn't spin, so you can see what happens in freefall.

(23:08):
And so we now have some systems to start to
get a handle on that, but we don't have loads
of data coming from that system. Yet.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
All right, so you create the Martian environment in near
Earth orbit by using centrivical force. But I want to
know what you're going to do in that environment. What
experiment is Kelly setting up to answer these sixy questions?

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Well, you know, for starters, I would just put like
a rodent colony in one, a mouse colony in another,
maybe I don't know, a vole colony in the third,
and just kind of see like can they survive through
multiple generations? And then you know, every once in a while,
harvest some of them and look to see if you know,
there's anything weird happening with any part of their physiology.

(23:45):
And another reason why you'd want to put them out
in orbit, but you know, out past our magnetosphere, is
that you could also start to get a handle on
how space radiation is impacting their bodies. You know, is
that causing mutations that are resulting in problems down the line.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
And you're doing this in rodents because you don't care
about rodents feelings and whether their babies are mutated, or
because rodents are very similar to people in terms of
their reproductive systems, or why rodents.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Well, first of all, I'll say that I adopted a
rodent as a pet when it was done with some
cancer research because I like rodents very much. I think
they're very cute.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
I had rats as pets. I love them. They're absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Are absolutely wonderful. I had one sitting on my shoulder
while I was working for a while while I had it.
But it's very cute. So rodents are like humans in
a lot of ways, but they're also not like humans
in a lot of other ways. And so if it
worked with rodents, I would feel like, Okay, we've to
some extent convinced ourselves that we've gotten over the first hurdle.
And then after that I would say, you know what,

(24:43):
probably these satellites are just they're not going to be
big enough to do what we need to do next.
So maybe the next step is to head to the
moon and set up a research station.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
The real barrier is ethical, right, Like you wanted the
answering humans, but you can't just start with humans. You
can't just like put humans there and have them reproduced
and see whether the babies come out weird, right, because
you can't just make weird babies in your science experiment.
But it's okay to do with rats. So how do
we get from we can't do this experiment of humans too?
We can do this experiment of humans. Do we need
to convince ourselves it works on rats and then on dogs,

(25:13):
and then on pigs and then on monkeys. Is there's
like a stair step ladder where at some point we
feel like this is a reasonable chance to take with people.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, so that's a great question. And there's not like
a global pre existing, you know, step ladder that's been established, Like,
first you do this and then you can test it
on humans. What I'm proposing is what I would feel
comfortable with, and so you know, I'd feel comfortable trying
it out on rodents first and then maybe scaling up,
like you know, have some dogs at the research station
and see how they do. People like having dogs around anyway,
and then send up chippanzees. But of course that is

(25:44):
ethically difficult, and so it's not clear how easy it
would be for you to get permission to do something
like that. But then maybe you could say, Okay, we're
gonna have a woman conceive on the moon, and we're
gonna check her out every single day, and if anything
looks like it's going wrong with mom or the baby,
we immediately bring her back to Earth. So one of
the great things about the Moon is it's about three

(26:05):
days away, whereas Mars is six months away at best,
if you're at the right window where you can leave
for it, which only opens every two years. So testing
stuff out on the Moon, if something goes wrong, you
can send them back really quick. Also, the Moon has
one sixth the gravity of Earth, and so if things
go well at one sixth Earth gravity, they're probably going
to go great at Martian gravity, which is even higher.

(26:26):
That's kind of how I would do it. I'd test
things out in satellites and then move to the Moon
and sort of slowly scale up until I convinced myself
this is safe to do on the Moon. Now we're
ready to start trying it farther out. But what do
you think if you were in charge, what would you do?

Speaker 3 (26:39):
Oh? Man, This is why I do particle physics, because
you don't need IRBs or ethical questions when you're smashing
particles together. This is even why I avoided any part
of physics that has like immediate applications. You know, my
parents worked in weapons programs, and I was like, yikes,
that's too complicated morally for me. I really like to
separate my research from these moral quests. And even though

(27:00):
the more questions are really fascinating, I don't want to
be in charge of making those decisions. And I can't
imagine experimenting on my baby like the women you talked
about who are willing to give birth in Antarctica. That
definitely comes with additional risks, right. I remember when we
were having kids, I wanted to absolutely minimize the risk
in every direction, because this is your kid's life you're
talking about. So I can't imagine saying like, yeah, let's

(27:22):
go get pregnant in a place nobody's ever gotten pregnant before.
I just can't imagine being in that place. But hey,
everybody's different, you know. Some people want to break barriers,
But tell us what is unusual about the Moon's environment,
Like you told us about the effects on the human
body a free fall, But on the Moon there must
be other things that we have to worry about specifically.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, so let me back up real quick for the
ethics issue. And so I agree, this is like a
difficult ethical thing to build up to. And you know,
the first woman who gets pregnant on the moon, Like,
I would not want that to be me, but what
I would not let it be me? But uh, But
one of the things that I worry about is that
space tourism increases, and you know, people get more alone

(28:03):
time when they're up there. I'm worried we're going to
get these data accidentally and in a like non consistent way,
and so I would love to see us investing in
getting some more of these answers in a more consistent
way so we can let people know what the risks
really are. And I'll note that I also did everything
I could to reduce risk during pregnancy. But I met
plenty of people who I would say, like, here's what

(28:23):
I think the risks are about giving birth on Mars,
and they either thought that I was like over selling
the risks. Like one of them said, you know, wombs
are a neutral buoyancy tank. Gravity's not going to matter.
It'll be fine. I would have babies on Mars. And
so there are people who are not wospbags like you
and me, and would be willing to do it. But
that's not me yet.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
No, as long as people know what the risks are
and are well informed can make their decisions. But I
guess they're ethical issues. They're like, we don't let people
make some decisions about their babies, Like we don't let
people engineer their babies DNA, Right, just because your parent
doesn't mean and you have complete control over the pregnancy
and this kind of stuff. So there's some really tricky

(29:05):
issues there, even if we have some initial data.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
And you know, parents can sign consent forms but their
children can't. And we don't actually know that babies who
are born on Mars could ever return home. So maybe
developing in a lower gravity environment means your body would
never be strong enough to survive Earth gravity. But you
asked me about the Moon.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
Yeah, because I was listening to you say that we
could always bring the mom home, she's only three days away.
But I was wondering, aren't there some situations where a
problem has cropped up which is not reversible just by
going back to Earth. What are the particular dangers of
getting pregnant on the moon.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, so this is a tough question. Okay, So say
we do get our research station on the moon, and
the rodents are doing great on the Moon, so then
we know that reproduction at low gravity one sixth of
Earth's gravity doesn't cause any problems. We maybe at this
point have hopefully already figured out what happens when you're
exposed to space radiation and how to shield against that.

(30:02):
Because the Moon has no atmosphere and no planet wide magnetosphere,
so all the space radiation hits the surface of the
Moon straight on. So hopefully we've figured out radiation shielding,
so that's not a problem.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
What about the regolith on the Moon. Is there anything
weird about that that we have to worry about?

Speaker 1 (30:18):
I mean, that is some nasty stuff. So like you
probably want mom to stay inside the entire time, you
probably want almost everyone to stay inside most of the time.
So the problem with the regolith is, and we talked
about this in our episode about challenges of working on
the Moon, it is electrostatic, so it clings. It's also
really fine pieces that are also super jagged, and so

(30:39):
there's concern that if you breathe it in it's going
to cause what's called stone grinder's disease here on Earth,
where essentially these tiny sharp particles scar your lung over
and over again, making it really hard to breathe. So
we're going to have to be super careful to make
sure that we don't bring any of this into the
habitat with us. And between not going outside often and
radiation shielding, which is often in the four of or

(31:00):
often proposed to take the form of burying your habitat
in this regolith, you're not gonna be going outside much,
and we don't really understand the implications of that. So like, yes,
there could be some mental health implications of never going outside.
But part of how we extract calcium from food and
then incorporated into our bodies is by using sunlight to
produce vitamin D. So if you are underground all the

(31:23):
time and not getting any sunlight, is that going to
mess with your ability to produce your own bones and
then to produce the bones in the fetus, We don't know.
So maybe you'll have to sit in front of those
like full spectrum lights all day long to try to
get yourself enough vitamin D so you can make this stuff.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
So you'll be nicely tanned.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
So you'll be nice. Yeah, I guess that's good. So
the moon is sort of like Mars light, Well, I
guess it's more extreme in terms of gravity. If things
work on the Moon you can have pretty good confidence
that a lot of things will be okay on Mars,
and if things don't go well, you can get home quickly.
But so let's go ahead and head out to So
Mars is on average one hundred and forty million miles away,

(32:04):
really far. With current propulsion techniques, it takes six months
to get there, and you can only leave every two
years when like an orbital when a window opens up
in Mars and Earth are and sort of like the
right locations as they're traveling around the Sun, so that
you could get to Mars as fast as possible. And
that means that if you're out there, you are like
on your own. If you need medical equipment, you are

(32:25):
not going to be getting a resupply ship, and so
there's a lot of planning that you need to do.
I was going to ask during Katrina's pregnancy, were there
any medication she needs, but maybe you don't want to
share that on air.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah, Katrina is type one diabetes, so her pregnancy was
considered high risk. And actually when she was pregnant with Hazel,
near the end of it, she stayed in lab very
late one night and missed the last bus home and
she ran to catch it and sprinted at like thirty
eight weeks pregnant, and then started feeling out very good,
but came home and went to bed. At two o'clock

(32:57):
in the morning, she woke up and she was like,
something is wrong. So we rushed to the hospital and
something was indeed wrong. She had help syndrome, which can
be very dangerous, and the doctor was like, this will
kill your wife very soon. But the cure is we
just take the baby out. So she had an emergency
sea section, and so we were very glad to have
excellent medical facilities nearby. And I imagine if you're going

(33:18):
to build a colony on Mars and consider having pregnant
women there, that you're going to want excellent medical facilities there, right.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yes, right, And I don't think we've gotten far enough
in any of our planning to say, like, Okay, the
third rocket is going to be filled with just equipment
for sea sections and stuff. But there's a lot of
equipment that we need to keep women and babies alive.
And that equipment is why we do so well. So
you know, I ended up having hypertension for both of
my pregnancies. I had to be induced, which meant I
needed oxytocin, which needs to be refrigerated at stable temperatures.

(33:49):
There was a study in Sub Saharan Africa that found
that a bunch of women were hemorrhaging. So oxytocin is
also used not just to induce the contractions that you
need to start labor, but all so to cause additional
contractions to pinch off blood vessels and stop hemorrhaging if
a woman is hemorrhaging at the end of labor, which
is the way most women die if they're going to
die in pregnancy. And this oxytocin wasn't working as well

(34:11):
in some regions of Sub Saharan Africa, and the hypothesis
was that somewhere along the trip that it made to
Sub Saharan Africa, the refrigeration broke down and this, like
unsteady temperature, caused it to not be as effective.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
So it only needs to be cold when you delivered.
It needs to never have been warmed up.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Ever, Yes, so you need backup refrigerators. You need to
figure out how much oxytocin you need. You need a
sea section equipment. You need blood pressure medication and that
needs to be shelf stable for as long as it's
going to take for resupply to get out there. There's
just a lot of stuff that keeps humans alive in
western countries that you know. Some people tell me, hey, look,

(34:48):
we don't have to bring that stuff with us. There
are women who give birth all over the world without
that stuff, And well that's true. I think I think
that our lack of ability to provide adequate medical care
to women in like remote region isn't good. It's not
something we should be bringing with us out into space.
We shouldn't be like, oh, we do it there, we'll
do it in space too. But I've gotten off track.
There's a lot of planting that you need to do.

(35:10):
Mars offers a couple unique additional challenges. That regolith on
Mars is worse in some ways than that reguleth on
the Moon. And one of the ways that it's worse
is that it's laced with perchlorates. These are endocrine disrupting chemicals.
They mess with the stuff that your thyroid does, and
the Food and Drug Administration warns that for fetuses, being

(35:30):
exposed to perchlorates can mess with nervous system developments.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
But what are perchlorates? Are they an organic molecule. How
they made? Like, why do they exist on Mars not
the moon?

Speaker 1 (35:39):
The Moon has a lot less of a bunch of
things like carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus. The Moon just sort of
generally seems to be poor and a bunch of stuff.
Mars has more stuff available to be reacted with and
somehow that results in perchlorates would be my best answer,
But do you think you can sort of summarize it.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
Well, I'm definitely not a chemist, but perchlorates our combination
and oxygen, and I think there is more chlorine in
the Martian soil and then the UV hits that and
forms these perchlorates. But basically, these things are a simple
chemical compound, but they're bad for us. Can you tell
us why they're bad? Firms? From like the biological point

(36:16):
of view? Why is this thing so dangerous for fetuses?

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Sure? So, I believe the answer is that our thyroid
there's a iodine that our thyroid collects and uses to
make hormones, and perchlorate sort of interrupt the ability of
the thyroid to use the iodine to make the hormones
that it usually makes, and when that gets disrupted, you
get problems with metabolism and nervous system development.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
So that sounds especially bad for fetuses.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yes, yeah. And a reason that this becomes particularly relevant
is not just because if you go outside you might
accidentally bring it back in if you get regolith on
your suit, but also when you grow plants in dirt
or soil that has perchlorates, the perchlorates get pulled out
of the soil and go into the plant tissues. So
if you're growing your plants in either water that has

(37:03):
happened to take up some perchlorates because perchlorates are water soluble,
or you haven't gotten all the perchlorates out of the dirt.
If you decide that you're going to like be old
fashioned and grow your food in the dirt, then you
have to be concerned that mom's taking in these perchlorates.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Wow, so mom can't eat any food grown on native
Martian soil basically.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Well, so this is where I can hear the space
settlement advocates yelling while you're over selling the difficulty. It's
water soluble, so you could just bring regulyth in and
then rinse RNs, rins insurances, rens, rents, rent rents until
it's gone, and then you could grow in it, but
now you also have to make sure that you don't
have chlorates in your water. And I talked to a
friend of mine who's a geologist who works with perchlorates,

(37:43):
and I was like, does that sound like just print
RNs rents are insurants? Problem solved? And he goes, I
don't know, man. All I can tell you is that
I only work with this stuff in fume hoods. That's
how nasty it is. I will only work with this
if there's a fume hood on. So I would be concerned.
Like when we bought our farm, if they had said, well,
if you rinse the soil the endercrendisrupt chemicals that are
in there, yeah, it'll be fine. You can still grow
food for your family, I'd be like, I'm living somewhere else.

(38:07):
So anyway, you're just gonna have to be really careful
to make sure that this like pretty nasty toxin doesn't
get into your food or water in any way. But
let's take a break and then we will talk about
what will happen if it turns out that Martian gravity
is just not going to work for human reproduction. All right,

(38:42):
So what if you get to the moon and you
find out that reproduction is just not working at one
sixth of Earth's gravity. You know, like moms bones are breaking,
she doesn't have the right muscles for contractions. The baby
is just not developing at all, and it's just you know,
development for the baby is just not going according to plan.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
And this is not outrageous. Right, Basically every human ever
conceived and carried and born has been within one G
and using the benefit of the Earth's atmosphere, and so
there's reasons why evolution may be dependent on it. Right,
It wouldn't be ridiculous to discover that these are necessary
for humans to conceive in birth successfully, right, right.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yes, this is the environment we're adapted to. It wouldn't
be surprising to me if we needed And so you know,
maybe some people would say, Okay, it didn't work on
the Moon, but the Moon has one sixth of Earth's gravity.
Maybe Mars's forty percent will be enounced. So maybe we
go out there and we discover actually, the rodents can't
make it work at forty percent either. We talked to
some space settlement advocates who are like, well, there's another solution,
maybe you just need Earth gravity. Well, you're pregnant, in

(39:45):
which case we can put you on like a banked
racetrack and create one g And I puked a lot
during my pregnancy. I think I would be puking a
lot more under that scenario.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
I'm imagining those devices they use to test astronauts for
high GI where they like put them in those chairs
and then spin them around. And you're saying, no bed rest,
You got to sit in one of those things the
whole pregnancy, Oh my god, I.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Mean, Or maybe you only need to sit in it
at night, like eight you just sleep in it eight
hours a day. Maybe that's enough to make you strong enough.
Like we just we really don't know. But say, say
women decide they don't want to do that, they don't
want to spend their pregnancies on a banked racetrack. The
rotating space settlement people argue that now they are the

(40:30):
only game in town. So these rotating space settlements, they
are these giant structures. They can take a variety of
different shapes, but the one that I immediately imagine looks
sort of like a bike wheel and it kind of
spins and you live around the rim and you can
simulate gravity by spinning fast enough.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
So you're saying, if it's not possible to have babies
in Martian gravity and nobody wants to sit in one
of those spinning racetracks, then you basically can't be on
the surface of Mars. You have to go up into
space and simulate Earth grapt in a space station.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
I mean, maybe you could just put on like an
incredibly weighted suit on Mars so that you maybe that
would keep your muscles and bones strong enough. We just
we don't know. I'm saying that it's possible that we
will discover there's no easy solution to forty percent Martian gravity,
and then the rotating space station people can stand up
at the conferences and say we won, we won.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
But also you're just talking about the pregnancy itself. What
about the development of the kid, right, Like, what if
you need gravity to grow up into a normal human being,
then this kid's going to be on a racetrack until
they're eighteen or up into space.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
You can't go back down to Mars, right And so
I feel like this is where questions about social issues
start to come into play, Like what if some people
want to live on the surface of Mars, but moms
and children need to live in these rotating space stations.
You know what kind of social dynamics does that create?
And you know, maybe you only need to live in
a rotating space station if the child ever wants the

(41:58):
option of returning to Earth. Maybe you can develop on
Mars if you never plan on leaving. Like we just
we don't know how this kind of stuff will play out,
Like this is the current state of our knowledge.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
What a crazy decision you'd have to make for your kids,
Like you get to grow up on Mars, but you
can never go to Earth. That would be insane.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
I mean, Earth is so awesome, Like I mean, I
can imagine my family moved from Ireland to New York City,
and I can imagine someone being like, well, what if
if you're born in New York City but then you
never get to go back to Ireland, Like what are
you doing to your child?

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Well, you should feel responsible for raising your kids in Virginia.
I mean, they didn't have a choice in that, right,
they have to always tell people they come from Virginia.
You settle them with that their whole lives.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
They seem very happy, They seem very happy, and in fact,
you know when we lived in California, we experienced an earthquake,
and I think that would scare Ada quite a bit
if she had been a bit older.

Speaker 3 (42:49):
She just they just have to learn to ride it out.

Speaker 7 (42:51):
You know.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
It's fun. It's like a theme park ride.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
You know.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
She also is I hope she doesn't listen to this episode.
She's a little scared of some theme park ride. Me too, Yeah, yeah, no,
some of them are intense. When I went to Cedar
Point last time, I like the rides that I used
to love. Now when I go around the corner, I like,
you know, my arms are in the air, I'm screaming,
and then I pass out around the corner, which makes
me think I'm probably not a good candidate for those

(43:15):
banked race tracks either, spend the whole time passed out.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
One more reason why you shouldn't go to space.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
As if we needed another one.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
All right, So we were talking about having moms and
maybe even their kids in high G environments near Mars.
If we think that it's probably not possible to carry
the pregnancy and give birth and maybe raise your kids
in Martian gravity.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
You could abandon the Mars plan altogether. With and these
rotating space stations could go anywhere. So a lot of
the places that they're proposed are at like Lagrange points,
where the gravitational pull of various objects more or less
cancels out, so you don't have to use a lot
of fuel to stay in one place. But you know,
you could put them near the asteroid belts for resources,
or near the moon or whatever. They could go anywhere.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
I like your zz top pronunciation of Lagrange points. That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
Oh now, how am I supposed to say it?

Speaker 3 (44:01):
Well? I think it's not named after the town in
Texas Lagrange, but probably the French mathematician Lagrange. But you know,
maybe I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Oh no, I'm thinking about all the conferences I've been
to now where I've said they're wrong. That was good.
I also apparently have been saying magnetosphere. It's magnetosphere or
something I've been Anyway, I'm an embarrassment to my children

(44:29):
and always will be.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
No, I'm going to talk about Lagrange gians from now
on in particle physics.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Okay, good, Well, your class will be more interesting because
of it, I'm sure exactly. But you know, these rotating
space stations, it's worth noting they're going to be difficult
engineering challenges, and we haven't built them yet. So, like,
you know, if you think about how big the International
Space Station is, to make a station that could hold
a lot of people and not have to spin so
many times that you'd feel sick due to the spinning,

(44:53):
you would probably want it so that the wheel of
the rotating space station could fit around the International Space Station.
So you know, I guess the diameter of the wheel
would be the same as the length of the International
Space Station at its widest point. And already the International
Space Station is one of the most expensive things that
has ever been made, and it's not rotating, and so

(45:14):
when you start, you know, thinking about how you're going
to make these, it's going to be tough. Not possible,
but it's going to be tough, and it's not the
kind of thing that, like, you know, if Musk sends
people to Mars and they start reproducing in the next
few decades, these sort of rotating space stations might not
be available yet so that you could like shuttle them
up there to try to save their lives.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
But Kelly, I've heard entrepreneurs say with confidence, will have
our first rotating space hotel in twenty twenty seven. Are
you saying that's over sold?

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably over sold. I mean
I could be wrong. Rotating space hotel by twenty twenty
seven really.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Huh m hmmm, okay with great confidence?

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Wow, And is it going to be rotating at one
g or just providing enough gravity that you're not going
to be incomplete free fall?

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
I feel like you want at least enough gravity to
make sure that, like when you're in the bathroom, everything
moves in the direction you want it to. That makes
everything cleaner.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Well, maybe they can have a swimming pool at the
center of it, like a zero G bubble of water
really can float in. That would be amazing.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Did you watch there was a movie with Chris Pratt
and Jennifer lawrenceingers, Yeah, where the gravity gave out and
the fiction and the water in the pool was anyway,
that was a scary scene. But yeah, okay, So maybe
we will have tourist hotels by twenty twenty seven. I'm
a little skeptical. I don't think they're going to be
out at Mars at that point, and I don't think
they're going to be big enough to be a permanent

(46:32):
housing structure for thousands of people. I could be wrong,
So there's one other place that folks propose if it
turns out gravity is a problem. And you are probably well,
you know me, so you're probably not going to be
surprised what the answer is because I've probably oh yeah,
because you were on the call where we interviewed Guermo
Sunline for Daniel and Jorge explain the universe. But yes,

(46:52):
Venus is the other place where people are proposing.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Venus is the goddess of fertility, right, so oh.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Yes, yes, appropriate, And no one's proposing the surface of Venus.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
And why is that, Daniel, Because the surface of Venus
is totally inhospitable. It's very high temperature, it's very high pressure.
It's crazy like the things we've landed on the surface
of Venus have lasted for like minutes or hours before
being melted and crushed. It's also like sulfuric acid rain.
It's basically not the kind of place you'd want to go,
even if you were like the rock. Not to mention

(47:24):
a baby.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Anytime I read about Venus, it's always compared unfavorably to Hell,
and as being like worse than Hell. But some folks
note that if you are up in the atmosphere, there's
a part of the atmosphere where you are like above
the sulfuric acid clouds and you're experiencing one G and
the atmosphere is thick enough to protect you from space radiation.

(47:47):
So if you can make a floating environment, then you
could have the one G that maybe we're going to
need to have babies. And so you know, I think
the humans to Venus people would say, if we think
this gravity thing is a serious problem, we should be
serious about floating habitats in Venus.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
That only makes sense to me if you want to
live on Venus anyway, Why otherwise would you go to
Venus to have babies, Right, Like, if you're going to
colonize Venus. Sure it's nice if you're going to have
babies on Venus, but if your goal is to colonize
Mars and explore the outer Solar system, doesn't seem to
me to me much in advantage to have like a
terrible floating place just above Hell that you could also
go to to have babies.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Well, so I think they're saying that we just need
to find the places in our solar system where we
can create self sustaining settlements, and that we haven't been
serious enough about considering Venus as one of those places.
So this isn't just like a nice place you go
during your pregnancy vacation. This is like where humans are
going to live out their lives and have families.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Oh, I seem forever, let's move closer to the Sun
instead of going out to explore the universe. I don't know,
it feels like going backwards to me. Not a big
fan of move in Venus.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
I mean, I'm not signing up for any of these plans,
to be honest. So so I thought maybe we could
wrap up by talking about how optimistic I am that
we're going to be able to get this research done
before the tourists start giving us the answers. And to
be honest, I'm not super optimistic right now. So, as
I mentioned, NASA's super squeamish about funding stuff like this,

(49:16):
So we're not getting government funding, and it's hard to
imagine companies being able to find profitable routes to finding
the answers to these reproduction questions.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Well, I know you don't like Elon Musk questions. But
do you think Elon's new influence on the government might
change that because he's a big proponent of making the
species interplanetary, and I know he likes to rush to
the sexy bits without necessarily doing all the homework. But
do you think like doing studies about pregnancy and childbirth
and space could maybe tickle those guys fancy?

Speaker 1 (49:47):
I mean, that could be a silver lining. Musk does
not seem concerned about these questions. It doesn't seem to
me like he would want to be pushing the government
to spend a bunch of money to get the answers
to these questions. I think he feels like we will
go out there and find the answers to these questions
when we.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Get there, maybe with tragic consequences.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, I mean I think that they that Musk and
others think that, you know, people like me are way
too risk averse. It'll probably be fine, and if not,
we'll just let natural selection take care of things, which
is of course, like that means a lot of death.
It's like a way that hides the fact that lots
of death could happen. It would be great if there
were funding. I think there are a couple companies that
are trying to study reproduction in space with the hopes

(50:27):
that the research will produce patentable technologies that can then
be used to pay for like the next step in
the process. I hope that works out. It's hard for
me to imagine, Like, I don't know. Maybe maybe you
do learn something about reproduction of microgravity that produces some technology.
That would be great.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
But people having babies on Earth in risky environments, you know,
people living in the Ukraine near Chernobyl exposed to higher
radiation or whatever. Can we do something learning from those
experiences those risks people are already deciding to take and
extrapolating from there.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
I mean, that's a great question. So the radiation and
Chernobyl that we would maybe be learned something from is
different than the kind of radiation we expect we're going
to experience in space, So I don't think you're going
to get a lot of great data from that.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
What about pregnant stewardesses, because they spend a lot of
time at high altitude and they're exposed to more space radiation.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
If it turned out that they had more radiation associated
issues with their pregnancies, that would be good reason for
us to worry. But if they were fine, that wouldn't mean,
for example, that things like partial gravity is not going
to be a problem anymore. So there are some environments
that give us some insights, but the data are going
to be hard to collect in a systematic way, mostly
because of ethics associated with, you know, doing experiments with

(51:34):
humans like you wouldn't want to send the pregnant stewardess
up like more often to see if the extra radiation
causes problems.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
You and your friend Cap o'hennon have a show on
exactly this question, don't you.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Yeah. So she wrote this book called Eve about the
evolution of the female reproductive system, and she contacted me
and she was like, you know how much reproduction sucks
on Earth. I'm like an expert in that, and you're
an expert in how awful space is. We should do
a show together where we sort of jokingly inform people
about that. We could hire some artists to create outfits
that sort of imagine ways we might be able to

(52:05):
help women have safe pregnancies and labors in this environment.
And we did the show at the MIT Museum, and
we're going to do it at the Royal Institute of
London on April seventeenth, and we might have a couple
other shows in the UK. We were there, so you know,
maybe we can all laugh about this problem together.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
If you don't have answers, at least we have jokes.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
The motto of this podcast is well, that's right.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
It's you know, the best way I know to live
a life.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
All right. So let me end by asking you when
do you think the first baby's going to be born
on Mars? If you had to put a year on it.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
So I think the answer is going to depend on
geopolitics and stuff like that. I would like the answer
to be thirty years from now or something, because I
think thirty years would be the right amount of time
to sort of biology research can't be rushed in a
lot of ways, Like you just you have to live
through the generations that it takes. And you know, if
you can successfully have a baby on the moon, you

(52:59):
probably want to stay there for a couple of years
to make sure they develop, okay, and maybe that they
go through puberty. Okay. So I just I feel like
we want to do this slowly, but I can also
imagine that you know, with Musk's newfound geopolitical clout. If
he is able to stay on his timeline, he could
have people finding the answer in what I think are
unethical ways much sooner. So I guess I hope the
answer is decades.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
But do you fear it might just be a few years?

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Yeah? Yeah, what do you think?

Speaker 3 (53:25):
I think it'd be foolish to predict the future, That's
what I think. So I'm curious to see what happens.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
I'm curious and scared. So anyway, write your senators and
tell them that they should be funding sex and space.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
That's right, and let's hope that the first baby's born
in space and on Mars are happy and healthy.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
See you next week. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is
produced by iHeart. We would love to hear from you,
We really would.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
We want to know what questions you have about this
Extraordinary Universe.

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