S1E8 - Terraforming Mars (Martian Science) - Gaming with Science

Episode Transcript
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Laura (00:00):
Music.

Brian (00:06):
Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast
where we talk about the sciencebehind some of your favorite
games.

Jason (00:12):
Today we'll be talking about Terraforming Mars by
FryxGames. Hey everyone. Jason,here with a quick heads up about
today's episode, we noticethere's a few little audio
hiccups and hangs throughout theepisode, nothing huge, but it
seems that the server we wereusing to record the audio was
lagging a little bit in theprocess. We're sorry about that,
and we're going to work to tryto make sure it doesn't happen

(00:32):
again. So with that, thank you,and on with the show.

Brian (00:35):
Hey, I'm Brian.

Jason (00:36):
This is Jason.

Laura (00:37):
This is Laura,

Jason (00:38):
and welcome back to gaming with science. We have
another special guest startoday. This is Dr Laura Fackrell
from NASA's Jet PropulsionLaboratory. Laura, can you give
us a quick introduction toyourself? Please?

Laura (00:48):
Sure! I am Dr Laura Fakhrill, I am a geologist by
training. So a lot of what I do,I'm familiar with a lot of
things about rock and geologyand place, tectonics and all
sorts of things, but what Iapply that to is really niche
area called geomicrobiology,which looks at the interactions
with microbes and rocks and alsoplants. Is something else. I've
applied it to you. So my currentwork, I focus a lot on, how do

(01:10):
you take the materials that areavailable on the moon, or that
would be available on the moonif humans were there, and trying
to turn that into something thatcan support agriculture.

Brian (01:20):
That's super cool.

Jason (01:21):
Yeah. And the reason why I asked Laura to be on this
episode is because I knew herwhen she was a graduate student,
when she was doing basically thesame things, but for Martian
soil, right, correct? Yes, orMartian regolith, I guess it's
technically not soil. We can getinto the difference of that a
little bit later. So first off,the fun science fact, Brian,
what fun science have youlearned recently?

Brian (01:40):
Oh, well, I usually try to find something that I think
is themed. So this was makingthe rounds a couple years ago,
right around the release of TheMartian. Maybe you saw this
about, can you survive on a dietof nothing but potatoes? Did you
see this making the rounds? I'msure everybody did.

Jason (01:54):
I didn't actually, no.

Brian (01:56):
Oh, you didn't? So the short answer is, sort of, you
actually can't get vitamin B12from potatoes. You need to, at
least not in the current form.Of course, in the movie The
Martian, he get plenty ofvitamins to take that presumably
would have provided B12. Thememe was that you could survive
on a diet of potatoes andbutter, the butter providing the
vitamin B12. Can you survive fora long time on that diet? Yes.

(02:19):
Would you be healthy on thatdiet? Almost certainly not. So
those are different things. Isuppose. I also saw a study
recently where somebody tried tosimulate, can you grow potatoes
in simulated Martian regolith?And they said, sort of. So maybe
it's not completely out of thequestion.

Jason (02:36):
Yeah, and I assume when you're marooned, if you're
marooned an entire planetaryorbit away from Earth. Survival
is number one. You can worryabout quality of life after
that,

Brian (02:44):
Yeah, but you're not gonna get scurvy. Potatoes
actually have a good amount ofvitamin C in them. They provide
a lot of calories. They are agood plant for that purpose.

Jason (02:52):
Okay, so everyone probably got from the show title
we're talking today aboutTerraforming Mars by FryxGames.
So little background about thegame itself. First, FryxGames is
a Swedish company. It'sdistributed by Stronghold games
here in the US, FryxGames isactually a family business. You
look on their website, they'reall members of the Fryxelius
family, which is just an awesomesurname. It's like, I'm jealous

(03:14):
of their surname. And JacobFryxelius is listed as the
designer of the game with his Ithink his brothers, Isaac and
Daniel, being given artistcredit. It's a fairly standard
strategy game, one to fiveplayers. So it does have a
single player mode, hour and ahalf to two hour run time. It
lists when Brian and I played.It took about two and a half
hours for us to go through itages 12 plus, which I definitely

(03:37):
get. I mean, I think you canplay it younger than that. But
there's a lot of strategy andplanning and stuff in this that
probably make that ageappropriate and well, MSRP is
about $70 US, although I sawthat even the company itself had
it on like a 10 or $15 off sale.So you can probably get on sale
somewhere. Big thing with thisis that it is number seven among

(03:58):
all board games on Board GameGeek, wow, which means that
nearly 100,000 people rate thisas one of the best games of at
least the last 20 years,possibly ever.

Brian (04:06):
And Board Game Geek people are notoriously fussy,

Jason (04:09):
yes, so like this. This is a little bit intimidating.
This will actually be veryintimidating when it comes time
to give our grades at the end,because if we start disagreeing
with Board Game Geek on this,uh, there, may be some flak
headed our way. What's the gameconsist of? So physical
components. You have the boarditself, which is a giant map of
Mars that has a whole bunch ofhexes on it, each representing
about 1% of the Martian surface.And it's where you track your

(04:33):
terraforming progress, where youput down ocean tiles and forests
and cities. You also track theMartian temperature and air
pressure, slash oxygen. Andthere's a few other things, like
the victory point track and afew other minor bits, but it's
got most of it right there.You've got your player boards
where you track your resources.There's a deck of project cards,
which are the things you'redoing to try to terraform Mars,

(04:54):
little bits that you put on theboard to mark when something has
been terraformed. And then tonsand tons of tiny little acrylic
cubes, which I'm inordinatelyfond of. I don't know what it is
about a clear, slightly coloredacrylic cube I just love but any
game that has that just goes upa few points in my mind. This
one's especially fun because ithas two types. It has the little
colored ones to mark theplayers, and then it has

(05:16):
resource cubes, which areactually opaque and metallic in
copper, silver and gold, and thegold ones are even a larger
size. And there's just somethingreally satisfying about having
to pile of these little solidgold metallic cubes on your
player board. It's just reallyfun.

Brian (05:29):
I'm curious if you could go to Etsy and get actual
upgraded metallic, trulymetallic ones, so that they
clink when you put them down.
Oh, I'm sure you can. It's likeevery game out there has some
sort of upgrade and somethinglike this, I'm certain of it,
and I would be highly tempted todo that if I owned the game
instead of you.
You can get it for me as apresent.

Jason (05:49):
So how do you play the game? Well, the goal of the game
is to terraform Mars, and yourepresent one of several
companies that are trying to dothis. And I must admit, when I
first read that, I thought thiswas like, Oh, great, we're now
in a corporate dystopia. Andthen you read the background,
and it's actually not it'sactually surprisingly
optimistic. The game starts 200years in the future. Earth is

(06:10):
running out of resources, fine,but there's no talk about like,
a climate crisis, no talk aboutwars or anything. There's a
benevolent world, unifiedgovernment that is funding this
through a universal tax. Thecompanies are subsidized to go
out make Mars terraformed.

Brian (06:24):
Yeah, it's a corporate utopia, not a corporate
dystopia.

Jason (06:27):
Yes. I mean, I'm sure you could get into the details there
and have some fun, like roleplaying or fiction there, but
the way it's set up, yeah, it'sactually more of a corporate
utopia. And then Brian pointedthis out as we were playing, the
game is competitive, becauseyou're all trying to be the best
Terraformer and ultimately win.But at the end of the day, it's
also cooperative, because nomatter what happens, Mars gets
Terraformed, there's pretty muchno way for someone to, like,

(06:48):
Screw Mars over and really messthings up.

Brian (06:51):
Other than the one thing that I did where you can
actually explode some nuclearbombs to increase the
temperature, which does create,you know, a little fallout zone
in one tile, so whatever.

Jason (07:02):
1% of the Martian surface, it's fine. The way the
game plays out. You take turns.You draw your cards. You have to
pay resources in order to keepcards. You take turns playing
your projects. You gatherresources at the end of each
turn. I don't know why yougather at the end ins tead of at
the beginning. I assume it hassomething to do with the way

(07:22):
they wanted the game to playout. But most of it has to do
with playing your project cards,which are things that will like
increase temperature or increaseoxygen or start building up
engines that you can do, or youbuy milestones or sponsor
rewards that give people victorypoints, just all sorts of
things. And this is where Ithink the deep gameplay comes
in, and why it's number seven onBoard Game Geek is because since

(07:42):
you're drawing relatively fewcards, and you can only keep a
small subset of them, unlessyou're super rich, then you can
never really guarantee whatyou're going to get. And there's
a lot of different strategiesyou can pursue to try to get
victory points. You can try tobuild a whole bunch of plants
and forests to get stuff. Youcan try to build cities. You can
get extra bonus points on onething. You can just try to
terraform the heck out of Marsand get the most victory points

(08:03):
that way. There's a bunch ofdifferent ways to try to pursue
victory, and it's not alwaysobvious who is winning because
of that. So I think that's wherethe deep gameplay comes in.

Brian (08:14):
Would you consider this to be a Euro game?

Jason (08:17):
I'll be honest, I don't have a good definition of a Euro
game. There probably is one outthere. I just sort of have a it
feels Euro ish, but my feel of aEuro game, is kind of it's
always, there's 10 things youwant to do, and you can only do
three of them. And I didn'tquite feel like that or,

Brian (08:32):
no, it doesn't. It doesn't really feel like that.
Is it? There's always somethingfun that you can do. There's
just different things to do.

Jason (08:38):
Yeah. So I could be very wrong about that. Like I said, I
said, I didn't have a goodworking definition of a Euro
game anyway. That's the gameitself. We'll talk about fun
later, but 100,000 people can bewrong, but probably aren't so
but let's get down to thescience.

Brian (08:53):
Well, wait, Laura, did you get a chance to play this
game? Have you played thisbefore? Did you get a chance to
look over it?

Laura (08:58):
I have not. When you guys introduced it to me, that was
the first time I'd actually seenit. It was really intriguing. It
looks like there's a lot ofstartup that takes a while to
kind of like figure out all thepieces. It looks like it's a
very well thought out, very,very fun, lots of really cool
things there.

Brian (09:12):
I think a lot of games like this always look really
intimidating, but honestly, like15 minutes around the table,
you've got it, and I hope we getto play it with you at some
point.

Laura (09:21):
Yeah, sounds like more of a business side of the aspect of
terraforming Mars,

Jason (09:25):
Yeah, and in fact, so the version that Brian has has, I
think it's a first expansion orsomething. It has a bunch of
corporate cards that we did notplay with, which actually get
more into the economics and thebusiness side of it, as opposed
to just the basic terraforming.But they recommended not
starting with that, and I cansee why they had a lot more
complexity and time to it. So wejust played the basic all you're

(09:46):
doing is funding projects toterraform the planet. We have
this bad habit. We need to finda host that we can actually play
a game with before we get themon here, because so far we're 0
for 3. Oh, well, we provide gameknowledge. You provide. Science
knowledge, we're good.

Laura (10:01):
I definitely enjoy a lot of games, though. So this is
just another example. I'lldefinitely add it to my
repertoire.

Jason (10:06):
Well, now let's get down to the science. And this is what
we really needed Laura forbecause, I mean, Brian, I were
both plant scientists.Terraforming Mars involves
plants, but none of them canlive there right now, and we
don't know that much about howto make that happen. Laura, I
guess maybe for background. Canyou give us some of the basic
stats of Mars? I mean, I thinkmost people know Mars is our

(10:26):
fourth planet. It looks red. Butcan you give us some background
so people understand, like, whyis it that we're fascinated with
Mars? Why is it people eventhink it's possible to terraform
it, that sort of thing?

Laura (10:37):
Sure. Well, Mars is pretty cool. A lot of people
talk about, like, the planets.They talk about, Venus is
Earth's twin because of the samesize, but Venus and Earth are
actually very different in a lotof their characteristics. But
Mars and Earth are kind ofanother sort of twin. They're
different sizes, but at onepoint, Mars is actually, we
think, a lot more similar toEarth in its character, and that
had like liquid water on thesurface. It may have been

(10:59):
slightly warmer with a moregenerous atmosphere. So there's
a lot of things that havechanged about Mars over that
time. But because Mars issmaller, it cooled off very
quickly, and it wasn't able tosustain that atmosphere during
the early solar system, whenthere's a lot of bombardment and
things are being stripped away.And so it lost its ability to
keep that atmosphere, and nowit's very dry, very cold. It

(11:20):
does have seasonality to it, butthey're pretty cold, so it
ranges from probably likenegative Celsius a little bit.
So it does overlap withtemperatures we see here, but it
gets way colder than anywhere onEarth ever does during different
times of the scope, and it'sdefinitely extremely dry. The
driest places on Earth, like theAtacama Desert, or certain areas
of Antarctica, are wet for Mars.

Brian (11:42):
So is there any water in the atmosphere, or is it all
gone?

Laura (11:45):
There's not much in the atmosphere, except for
temporarily. The atmosphere isactually very thin, so margin
about 1/3 of the gravity andlike extremely thin atmosphere,
mostly carbon dioxide, with alittle bit of nitrogen and
argon. But there's not a lot ofwater in the atmosphere. Most of
the water is frozen in ice, andit can sublimate directly to
gas, but it doesn't stick aroundfor very long.

Brian (12:05):
It just vents off into space, or it gets destroyed?

Laura (12:07):
A lot of it escapes with spaced and then there's a lot of
different things that happenwith it. But yeah, it doesn't
stick around. It never staysaround in liquid form. So we
don't get a lot of liquid waterin the air. So like, it'll
escape into the atmosphere, andthe atmosphere is so thin. It
just the escape rate and therate at which water is input
into it, that balance justleaves it to be pretty dry.

Brian (12:25):
We didn't really talk about this. We talked about in
Compounded I think we intendedto talk a little bit about the
phases of matter and how you cango straight from solid to gas,
and then didn't actually talkabout it and how that's affected
by pressure, right? So in thiscase there, there's just not
enough pressure or temperatureto maintain liquid water?

Laura (12:41):
Yeah, pressure comes from the atmosphere. So atmospheric
pressure, there's not enoughthere to keep water in its
liquid states, but it's so coldthat it does stay solid pretty
well.

Jason (12:49):
Yeah, I was reading somewhere that apparently the
stats are, if you were toactually take all the water ice
that is frozen in the Martianpolar caps and melt it,
apparently it would cover theentire martian surface to, like,
11 meters deep for a little bit,and then, like Laura said, it
would be lost.

Laura (13:05):
Yeah, there's a lot we don't know about how much water
is actually on Mars. Theirestimates come with a large
range of error, because there'sa lot that we still don't know.
But we are learning a lot everyday.

Brian (13:13):
So this idea of the of the atmosphere being so thin
because the planet is so small,I mean, could you have a thicker
atmosphere on Mars? Is itpossible?

Laura (13:21):
So that's one of the big questions in terraforming. I
should clarify that I'm not anatmospheric scientist, but if I
get something wrong, Iapologize. But I was talking to
a lot of people who areatmospheric scientists recently
at a conference just a few daysago, and there's actually a lot
of talk right now. For those whoare looking at terraforming,
they look at nanotechnology. Andso if you take like because it's
not only water ice, but there'salso dry acid Mars. And if you

(13:42):
kind of evaporate the thingsthat are frozen in the ice, and
use nanotechnology to kind ofhelp you with that, I didn't
look into the details of howthat would work, but they're
able to they they were lookingat the current escape rate of
molecules, and like, the currentrate at which the sun strips
away the atmosphere, and thetechnology that would be helpful
for like seeding the atmosphere.They think that there's a way
that they could do that, notwith current technology, but

(14:04):
that that's a path forward tolooking at actually creating a
new atmosphere on Mars, then itcould sustain it in the current
solar system dynamics.

Brian (14:11):
And I guess there's also this, can you maintain it over a
geologic time scale, or just thetime scale that humans care
about?

Jason (14:17):
One thing I found while doing research is that one issue
with Mars maintaining itsatmosphere under current
conditions is that it doesn'thave a magnetic field that
apparently died about 4 billionyears ago. And so the solar wind
just basically is constantlystripping stuff off of Mars,
anything that's light. And soanything you put up there, if
it's a light element, then itgets stripped away, which I'm

(14:40):
guessing, is why Mars has solittle nitrogen in its
atmosphere compared to Earth,but I don't actually know that.

Laura (14:45):
Yeah, that's a really good question. I do a lot with
nitrogen. That's a big part ofwhat I look at is how nitrogen
is available and how you can dothat in the soil. But yeah,
there's a lot of pondering onwhether nitrogen is in the
atmosphere or whether, in thepast, Mars had a lot of
nitrogen, and they assume that.Probably did, and that if it
just escaped, they're like,where is it? Now, that's a big
question we don't have a goodanswer to yet.

(15:05):
So what we need to do is, youknow, based on the documentary,
The Core, we need to go restartthe core, right?
The Core is like, the worstgeology,

Jason (15:14):
Yeah. However, that actually does relate a little
bit to the game, because one ofthe projects you can build is
equatorial magnetic fields, orsomething to essentially create
an artificial magnetic field forMars. That is still like very
science fiction. But someone didpoint out that if you were to
put a very powerful magneticfield at let's see, it was one

(15:35):
of the Legrange points which wetalked about in a previous
episode. So one of these stablepoints in between Mars and the
Sun.

Brian (15:41):
Oh, a magnetic shield.

Jason (15:43):
Yes, if you put a powerful enough shield there, it
would actually deflect the windenough to maintain Mars's
atmosphere. We don't currentlyhave the technology to build a
powerful enough field, butapparently it's only, like, 10
times higher than we cancurrently build, which, like, is
a lot, but that's notinsurmountable. Is like that
could actually be feasiblesometime in the next century.

Brian (16:04):
How do you power something like that?

Laura (16:06):
Well, the person I was talking with a few days ago, who
is an atmospheric person, wassaying that the current escape
rate, you might not even need amagnetosphere or the ionosphere
to protect it, that the magneticshield at the current loss rate
might not be necessary. But atthe past last week, when someone
was a little more active in itsyounger states, when it was very
active, very active, it's it'svery hard to predict, and that
solar wind is a lot morechaotic. It would have stripped

(16:27):
away anything, and then Marsdidn't have enough volcanic
activity to replenish its ownatmosphere. That's part of the
story too. Is also the currentdynamics of the sun, and what we
understand about that would playinto it a lot.

Brian (16:37):
I guess we should get away from the atmosphere and let
you focus on the stuff that youactually want.

Jason (16:42):
Yes, the geology. There are three aspects the game has
as key terraforming metrics. Oneis the atmosphere, which we
talked about already. They use,specifically oxygen. And I've
got to say, I'm impressed at theresearch done in this, because
they didn't just pull numbersout of the air. No pun intended.
They actually did research onwhere do people live at the

(17:02):
extremes on Earth? Okay, if wecan get Mars to that, we're
probably okay. So a common onecoming up was like La Paz
Bolivia, which is something like5000 meters above sea level.
It's very thin atmosphere. It'sabout 14% atmospheric pressure,
oxygen, which is the goal in thegame. Also its annual
temperature. Average annualtemperature is about eight
degrees C, which is your goal inthe game. Once you reach eight

(17:25):
degrees C average temperature onMars, you have terraformed it
temperature wise. And then thelast one is water, so air
temperature, and then water,which I don't know where this
one came from. They said if youget specifically, 9% covered,
that's enough to have a stablehydrologic cycle, so stable,
like evaporation, clouds, rainand it kind of being self

(17:46):
sustaining, as opposed toconstantly having to feed stuff
into it. So those are your threegoals.

Brian (17:51):
Some of these metrics also create positive feedback
loops, right? Yeah. You reach acertain temperature, you get to
add water, you reach a certainatmospheric pressure, you get to
add heat.

Laura (18:00):
And the atmospheric pressure would also play into
how stable that hydrologic cycleis. I feel like there's a lot of
things that would overlap. Sothat's a really complicated
model.

Jason (18:08):
Yeah. But now let's get down to the part, because one
part of the game, a veryimportant part, is basically
planting trees on Mars. It'sgreening the planet. And this
sounds like it's right in yourwheelhouse. What do we need to
do to terraform Mars like that.What do we need to actually get
things growing, assuming we canget, like, atmosphere and heat
and stuff more or less undercontrol? Well, on a large scale.

(18:29):
So this is

Laura (18:29):
a really great balance, because there's like, the small
scale. Can you just take a smallamount of Mars materials and do
like, a garden inside of aclosed habitat, versus Are you
trying to plant forests on Mars?That's a huge difference. And I
think the technology you did foreither would be different, but a
couple of things. So one of thebiggest things about Mars that
makes it difficult to growthings is that salinity. So if

(18:49):
you take, like, a evaporativeenvironment, you have a lot of
salts being left behind. So ifyou look at a lot of deserts on
Earth, or even just really dryair, like Antarctica would be a
polar desert, and there's, like,a lot of salts that get left
behind as the water evaporates,and you just build those up over
time. And Mars has had 1000s ofyears to be dry, and so there's
a lot of salt that's been leftbehind, and a lot of those salts
are very soluble, so you couldpotentially rinse them out of

(19:11):
the soil, but that takes a lotof water. And so how you do that
in a way that's actuallyfeasible, and how you take the
materials that are there andtransform them into something
that could support an entireforest would be a quite a
challenge. There are benefits,in the sense that all the
minerals, the nutrients arethere to Mars has a lot of
phosphorus, more than Earth,actually. So there's a lot of
phosphorus on Mars. There's nota lot of nitrogen. But

(19:33):
potentially you could producenitrogen through waste, or if
you put that back into theatmosphere, in some way, there
are trace nitrates, but like,parts per billion is the most we
found so far. But there'sprobably enough potassium if you
harvest it from the rightplaces. So these are NPK and
nitrogen phosphate, potassiumare some of the biggest
nutrients that you need forplants, but everything else is

(19:54):
there in sufficient amount,calcium, magnesium, plenty of
that. Sulfates are a very commonthing on Mars. Is probably too
much sulfate, in fact, but thoseare easy to dissolve out. And so
finding ways to balance thatwould probably be a big factor,
and doing that and having enoughwater to actually do that would
be a challenge.

Brian (20:11):
So what's the best way to address the nitrogen limitation

Laura (20:14):
I think one way is through just if you're taking
issue? Then,
people to Mars or takingnitrogen waste, and so the human
waste, any gardens are growingwithin a closed habitat, all
that plant waste, there's quitea bit of nitrogen in that. And
so we can figure out how torecover that and use things like
denitrification. The nitrogencycle is really complex and very
biologically driven kind ofcycle on Earth. And so you have

(20:36):
the denitrification takesnitrates and returns it to N2O,
probably the easiest way to saythat turns it to the atmosphere.
And so that will give you anatmospheric nitrogen. And you
also have nitrogen fixation,which some plants can partner
with certain bacteria to do, andthat can kind of bring it out of
the atmosphere into a formthat's bioavailable. So there's
this whole cycle of nitrogenthat would go along with the

(20:58):
hydrologic cycle to kind ofunderstand how that might be a
function,

Jason (21:02):
okay And here we have where the Martian is accurate,
because the was reusing recycledhuman waste in order to grow his
potatoes, because they neededthem as a source of nutrients. I
remember I read years ago. Itwas one of the Martian rovers
was testing the soil, and theykept talking about how, if you
add water to it, it would getvery caustic. Is that because of

(21:23):
all these salts?

Laura (21:23):
That's part of it, that's also because of there's other
things. So there's a specifictype of salt called
perchlorates, and chlorates thatare in the soil of Mars, and a
lot of other magnesium chloridesand things that are exothermic
when they react with water. Sothere is a lot of stuff in this
well that has been dry for along time to be added water. So
you can have quite a lot ofexothermic reactions. You can

(21:44):
have a lot of peroxidereactions, and a lot of
different things that couldpotentially do things to the
soil. You also have a lot of pHranges. And so depending on
where you are in Mars, theminerals that are there indicate
that it was acidic or alkalineor somewhere in the middle, so
circumneutral. There's a lot ofpH ranges. So depending on what
particular minerals that you putthat water in, you might get a

(22:04):
lot of pH reactions

Jason (22:07):
those, as far as life is concerned.

Laura (22:08):
Well with exothermic reactions that give off a lot of
heat, well, I guess if you'reholding it in your hand, and you
drop water on it, and you have alot of heat release, it could
burn you. But for like, life,it's more of a challenge in that
for any kind of microorganismlike a bacteria that's living

(22:29):
there, they have to know how tomanage that heat in a way that
doesn't, like, kill them. Thereare things that can figure that
out and use that to theiradvantage. They can actually use
that heat to, like, help it outwith a lot of life has figured
things out like that on Earth inthese crazy environments, but
that would be really difficultto get energy out of that system
in the right way for it to besupportive of life.

Brian (22:48):
Also sounds like one of these opportunities for a
feedback loop. If you haveliquid water, and it's mixing
with perchlorates and thenreleasing heat, then you're
heating the soil.

Laura (22:55):
Potentially, I'm not sure how much heat, how much would be
there to heat it up and like, ifthere's other things that are
going to counteract thatchemically, that would absorb
the heat. That's hard to know. Idon't think we know enough to
really predict that accurately.

Brian (23:07):
Oh, also, I said the soil word. So maybe we should talk
about the difference betweensoil and regolith.

Laura (23:11):
This is one of my favorite discussions about Mars,
Regolith and soil. I think itdepends on how you're defining
soil, so if from a geochemist'sperspective, so as a geologist,
I would call regolith soil, andthe same way that I would call
like the much like in Antarcticawhere you have like, this very,
very rocky material that isbasically it's soil. That could
be the same argument forregolith versus soil. And so as

(23:33):
a geochemist, I think of soil assomething that, over time, has
developed and weathered and kindof stores the history of that
area. And so I don't think of itnecessarily for specifically for
growing plants. So that's onefeature a soil can do, but it's
also that it just stores thechemical history, and, like the
geological history, theweathering history. So how the
rocks have weathered over timecan be stored in that package of

(23:54):
material. And so I feel like inthat sense, it is a soil, and
that's what we can we can tell alot about the history of that
area and how things haveweathered, and the behavior of
different things in that system,from that package of soil, but
from an agriculturalperspective, it's very much not
really a soil and this says it'snot to develop into these, like
really nice horizons and layers.There are organics on Mars, but

(24:15):
not enough to be like this richorganic layer and the O horizon,
or like an A horizon. So there'sall these different things that
go into soil science that wethink that we think of from a
crop and soil scienceperspective for like,
agriculture, that it's missing.And so in that sense, it's kind
of good to differentiate thatit's not really a soil, it's
more like a regolith so itdepends on what context you're
using the word.

Jason (24:33):
okay. So like, regolith is usually like, it's the ground
up rocks on the surface of aplanet. And then most of the
time when we talk about soil,it's like, okay, it's then been
altered by life into besomething else, but you're
saying you can also have a widerdefinition.

Laura (24:47):
Yeah, soil is part of regolith on Earth. So Earth has
regolith too, and it includes,like, the soil down into like
slightly weathered bedrock. Andit's kind of like a hazy line
where one starts and the otherends. But. Once you, like, reach
past, like the weathering frontand there's no longer
weathering, that would be likethe bedrock, but above that,
where you have active weatheringgoing on, you have different

(25:07):
types of stages. Soil isincluded in that package.

Brian (25:10):
Ooh, now I've got another thing I want to add to my
mineral collection. I need someearth regolith. So how do we get
started? I mean, what? What arethe first things you would put
into an enclosed environment onMars to start turning that
regolith into soil?

Laura (25:25):
That's a sorry, that's a complicated question to think
about. So it depends on whatyou're doing. So it also depends
on your approach. There's lotsof different ways you can grow
plants. There's hydroponicsystem, or aeroponics and
aquaponics and all sorts ofproduct variations. That
basically means growing withwater, or like, Aeroponics is
spraying the plants a little bitto support them, but it's like

(25:45):
in the air. Essentially,aquaponics involves fish. And so
you have, you create your own,like mini cycle, or mini system,
where the fish kind of providesome nutrients to and then you
kind of, like have thatrecycling system. So there's a
lot of different approaches youcould use that don't even
involve regolith directly, youstill have to extract any
fertilizers or water or othernecessary resources or even kind

(26:07):
of rooting mediums that arecommon in hydroponics. You'd
still have to obtain that fromregolith or from ice mixed with
regolith. And so it doesn't takeregolith out of the picture. But
there's a lot of approaches youcould do that don't even
directly grow it in the regolithby itself. But there are also
plants that benefit from havingthat kind of soil, like
environments, that could useregolith as a component into how

(26:28):
you develop growing mediums foror like a potting mix and so you
just gotta think of it like ifyou're making up anyone as a
gardener, if you're making apotting mix on Earth, you add
those different ingredientstogether, maybe you have some
peat or some coconut coir withsome perlite and some sand, and
that makes a really greatpotting mix. And so what are
equivalent ingredients that youwould need on Mars to do
something like that? And so Ifeel like that's a great place

(26:49):
to start thinking about, whatare we growing? And so the
organic material the earlysystems will probably largely
rely on hydroponics, becausethere's a lot of processing we
have to do to the soil before itcan be used to actually grow
plants. And so in order to havethat support there while that
processing is happening, andthat processing has to happen
with other things too, likebiomining or even just getting
water out as well. So you'redoing these processes either

(27:10):
way. And so you're doing thisprocesses on the side, you have
to start with something. And soyou might start with a more of a
hydroponic system, and havemostly lettuce and things that
provide nutrients that are hardto keep stable over that long
trip to Mars. So that's one ofthe reasons to grow a garden on
Mars. It's not just for food,but for specifically, for
nutrients and minerals, forvitamins that are very unstable,
and so it would degrade by thetime we got there that humans

(27:32):
need to survive. So that's whatyou kind of start with, and then
you expand from there and kindof diversify from that.

Brian (27:38):
Gotcha. So again, we want to avoid the space scurvy,

Laura (27:40):
Yes, correct.

Brian (27:42):
Okay, that's very cool.

Jason (27:44):
So here's a question, Laura, if you were in charge of
this benevolent world governmentthat wants to terraform Mars,
what would be your toppriorities? It's like if you had
to look at the planet from wherewe are right now and say, Okay,
our end goal 500 years from nowis to be able to have people
walking around on the surface ofMars, breathing and not dying.

(28:05):
What would you do? What wouldyou start that process with?

Laura (28:07):
That's a really tough question, because, and that gets

Jason (28:07):
Agreed, and that is one thing that I've seen come up in
really nuanced in the sense of,do we even want to terraform
Mars? Is one of the bigquestions. Is there a benefit
into preserving Mars as it is?And perhaps in this, in this
particular the way that the gamewas framed it, we've kind of
reached a point where we haveto, because we need those
resources, and so we don't havemuch option. That's a whole
nother ethics question there.And get into the lot of that,

(28:29):
but there's a lot we can learnfrom Mars in its current state,
about about Earth and about howit's evolved, and about
prebiotic chemistry. And solike, what is the chemistry you
need to make life, or even earlylife, if Mars managed to get
life in the end, if Mars hadenough time with enough with
the conversations, because thereare people who are talking about
those good conditions for lifeto develop, what does that life
look like? And what are the whatthe can that teache us about

(28:49):
life on Earth and like how it'sdeveloped, what it takes to for
Terraforming Mars right now, orstarting colonies on Mars or
life to start. And so there's alot of questions that are
preserved right now on Mars,that plate tectonics have
recycled. On Earth, we havevery, very few physical places
to test that. And all thosephysical places have been
greatly altered by weatheringand plate tectonics and things
like that. So it's not reallypreserved very well. So if you
head over to Mars, you have thatpreserved. There is no plate

(29:12):
tectonics recycling the crust,and so we can study that there.
And so how do you preserve thatscience that we're trying to
learn about now? And maybe 200years in the future, they've
already gathered all the samplesthey need to do that, and so
they can kind of set that aside.But then also, how do you do it
sustainably over time? And so Ifeel like we tend to alter
things in a way that's for thecurrent generation, but you want
to do it for hundreds ofgenerations. Like, how you

(29:34):
balance that? And so prior toknow, things that aren't just
like the flashbang, let's do itright now, and it works. But
like, will it work for a longtime?
whatever. And that's one thingI've come up is the ethics of
it, and should we be trying toterraform this other planet

(29:56):
which is really hostile to Earthlife at the moment when we have.
Have another perfectly goodplanet that maybe we should just
fix up and make a bit nicer.

Laura (30:04):
Honestly, if we have the technology to hear it from Mars,
and we have the technologyterraform Earth, or if we get to
that level where we canterraform an entire planet, we
can fix Earth. And so why aren'twe doing that's kind of one of
the things I bring up.

Jason (30:14):
Yeah, it was interesting reading the groups that are
currently involved in this. Soone has gone defunct. There was
the Mars one colony mission Iread about, oh, no,

Brian (30:24):
wait, is that the Is this the reality show?

Jason (30:28):
Maybe their funding model was that they were going to be
selling documentaries of theselection process. But the
really interesting thing is thattheir goal stated was a one way
ticket to Mars of their finalpeople, which I think were going
to be 40 people, they were goingto send, and they were not going
to have a way to come back. Notsurprisingly, many people

(30:48):
thought that this was a suicidemission, and they had trouble
getting funding. I don't blamethem for trying. I mean, as far
as a dream goes, that's reallycool. And they had nearly 3000
people apply for one of thesespots, but their group,
unfortunately went bankrupt in2019 so that is no longer on the
table.

Brian (31:05):
Oh, they didn't even get taken out by covid.

Jason (31:09):
No, and then the other one, the one that most people
hear about, is Elon Musk, whohas his goal of using SpaceX to
start a Martian colony. I thinktheir current plans are like a
first mission in 2029 orthereabouts, and then some sort
of base by 2050s there's lots ofdiscussion about how feasible
that is, but they apparentlythink it's feasible enough that

(31:31):
actually there is a clause inthe Starlink satellite system
that if you use that satellite,you are agreeing that Mars is
basically A politically distinctentity and not subject to

Brian (31:42):
I'm sure that'll hold up in international courts.
Earth's meddling.

Jason (31:45):
Yes, it's one thing that means nothing right now. It's
just an ideological thing. But Ithought that was cool. It's
like, oh, that's one of thethings they sneak into the End
User License Agreement. You haveto agree that Mars is

Laura (31:56):
That's crazy. Well, that's another huge area of
independent.
like, work that needs to be donethat I am not an expert in, is
the government and the policiesthat go into how you ethically
build a society on anotherplanet or even another moon.
Like how, even how we're goingto do that for the moon. There's
a lot of things that we need toestablish, ethics wise and legal
wise to make that fair. Theethics are a huge part of it.

Brian (32:17):
Like, can you have children on Mars? Yeah, because
if you can't, that's not goingto work, particularly without a
magnetosphere and with lowgravity and with nutritional
it's just there's a bunch ofreally fundamental questions
that maybe need to be discussedbefore you start sending people
to Mars.

Jason (32:35):
And I gotta say, like science fiction is a rich mine
here. People have been doingthis for decades, and I know
there have been specific storiesI've read that have talked about
each one of these things. So onethat talked about the issues of
bearing children on the moonwith low gravity and the genetic
engineering that had to be that.I'm sorry I don't remember which
story it was 20 years ago. I didgrow up on classic science
fiction, so things like theMartian Chronicles from Ray

(32:57):
Bradbury. I think Bradbury kindof knew that Mars was a dead
planet, but he still maintainedthat little older mystique of
like, there could becivilizations there and stuff.
And if you haven't read them, Istrongly recommend it. They're
great stories.

Laura (33:10):
Yeah, there's quite a rich history of science fiction
for terraforming Mars.

Brian (33:14):
Yeah, and the game designers specifically cite
Stanley Kim Robinson's Marstrilogy as inspiration for this
game, three books, red Mars,green Mars and blue Mars,
detailing the 200 yearterraforming of Mars. Yes, rich
mine here people have exploredall sorts of like political
organizations and the physicsand the chemistry, the biology,

(33:34):
the ethics. So, yeah, that's agreat thing about science
fiction. It lets us ask, whatif, about things that haven't
happened yet.
Looking a little bit moremodern. Of course, we've got The
Expanse series, which takes thatidea, sort of and like, applies
the science and the culture andthe politics, and takes all that
very seriously.

Laura (33:50):
Yeah, I have watched that one pretty recently. And there's
a lot I love how it dives intothe human health aspects and the
politics a little bit. And Imean, there's a lot we don't
understand about how humanhealth is going to respond to
partial gravities. We have twoendpoints. We have Earth gravity
and we have microgravity. That'swhere we have most of our data
from, and a lot of that datacomes from very athletic
astronauts. Those kind of a verynarrow data point to this draw

(34:10):
from. There is definitelyeffects. And so it's interesting
to see how that might play outin kind of like that world, at

Jason (34:16):
Although, I think we can all agree the height of science
least.
fiction for this was the Starson Mars, reality TV show that
came out last year on Fox, wherethey crammed 16 celebrities into
the Australian desert in asimulated Martian colony and had
them perform survivor-like taskslike erecting comm tower,
getting water, destroying alienfungus. And it was all hosted by

(34:36):
William Shatner. Of course, I'venot seen it. I never heard of it
until I started doing researchfor this. But it's like that
sounds. It sounds like it couldeither be awesome or a train
wreck or possibly both at thesame time. And the few reviews I
read indicated that, yes, it wasactually a bit of both of those,
depending on your taste.

Brian (34:56):
I don't know if we'll have a chance to drop this back
into earlier. The conversation.But when we were talking about
this idea of preserving thecurrent Martian environment and
looking for life, the game dealswith both of those to some
degree. There is a project tomake sort of a Martian preserve,
where you sort of try to keep apart of Mars as it was before,
although to do that, you have todo it below certain temperature

(35:19):
pressure thresholds, or you losethe opportunity to do it. And
searching for life is a routine.It's just something you can do,
right? Jason, you did that whenyou played, right?

Jason (35:28):
Yeah, there were certain cards I could do where I could
search for life, and if I gotlucky on the draw, then I would
get some sort of bonus points atthe end of the game, presumably
finding some evidence of pastlife. I don't think the game has
any intention of there beingpresent life on Mars that we are
essentially

Brian (35:45):
wiping out?

Jason (35:46):
Yes. Basically, I think it's all like, oh, it's fossil
stuff there.

Brian (35:50):
Yeah. I think obviously, as microbiologists losing the
opportunity to study a secondexample of life, it would be
beyond tragic.

Laura (36:00):
Yes. So this is a really big part of the ethical end of
the scientific challenge. Of it,you have astrobiology, which is
like the study ofextraterrestrial life or the
potential for it, and you havespace biology, which is how
Earth life responds to the spaceenvironment. And so as we do
space biology, are we destroyingour ability to do astrobiology?
And as soon as you bring peopleto Mars, you bring bacteria to
Mars. So yeah.

Brian (36:20):
I mean, we, we may have already, right? They try not to.

Laura (36:23):
Potentially in small amounts, but it's pretty harsh
condition, so it's unlikely thatit's like, spread far and wide
or anything like that. But yeah,they have very, very strict bio
Yeah, super clean. And thenwhatever manages to survive
burden requirements for anyspacecraft that goes to Mars. So
you have to get it extremelyclean and you and to send it.
That's, that's the planetaryprotection. Is what that's called.

(36:43):
inside a NASA clean roomprobably is not adapted to
survive that well in outer spaceand then on Mars itself. So
like, again, probability ofinfection being low, but humans
are walking bags of microbes.Like, literally, there's some
arguments that part of the roleof your intestine is basically
to be a microbial incubatorbecause of the partnerships we
have there. And so, yeah, wecould never go to Mars without

(37:04):
bringing a whole bunch ofcontamination with us. And I
mean, most of it would just dieon Mars. But to quote the great
Ian Malcolm, Life finds a way

Brian (37:13):
that documentary Jurassic Park, yes.

Laura (37:15):
So that's like a really big part of, like, sending

Brian (37:17):
Particularly if it ends up having DNA with the same
humans to Mars. A lot ofscientists who study
astrobiology are like, how aboutwe wait a little longer? Because
code?

Laura (37:20):
Yes, although there's a lot of chemistry on Mars, that
they really want to dig intobeing able to understand if
there was ever a life on Mars,and is it that life distinct
enough that we coulddifferentiate? Because part of
maybe they just have a slightlydifferent variation on DNA, I
the problem is, as soon as youput a person there and you
don't know. There's a lot tothink about how that could work,
contaminated it, can you everdeclare that life came from
and about life as we know it,and life as we don't know it.
Mars? Or are they always goingto go back to like, oh, but that
could have been from a person,

Brian (37:51):
Unfortunately, I think we're starting to run a little
short on time, so we shouldprobably look into sort of
wrapping things up.

Jason (37:56):
Is there any last stuff you want to get out science
wise?

Brian (37:59):
When we find a good game, we'll have you back on to talk

Laura (37:59):
There's a lot that we could talk about with
astrobiology, but I won't diveinto that. That's a wholewhole
another podcast I feel like. SoI think I can leave it at that.
about that. Okay,

Jason (38:09):
okay, before I wrap up, there's one cool science fact.
So Mars has lots of cool sciencefacts. There's one I wanted to
give, which is Mars has therecord for the largest volcano
in the solar system, OlympusMons. And I wanted to put in
context, how big Olympus Monsis, so I looked up the stats. So
this is a single volcano that isthe size of Italy, and two and a
half times taller than MountEverest. That is one volcano we

(38:33):
are talking about, and that'swhy it holds the record. And
that's just awesome.

Laura (38:36):
They've recently discovered some volcanoes in the
deep ocean that approach thatsize really, yes, the reason
that I get that big on Mars isbecause it doesn't have plate
tectonics. The plate isn'tmoving until it all builds in
one spot. And so on Earth, thathas to happen. It's hard to get
that to happen on earth, butthere is one volcano they have
found under the deep sea thatapproaches the size of Olympus
Mons But, yeah, it's crazy.Mars has the biggest volcano and

(38:58):
the biggest Canyon and thebiggest of everything, and yet
it's like so it's at the quarterof the size of Earth,

Brian (39:02):
and the this slope of Olympus mods is so gentle that I
heard, if you walked on it, youwouldn't realize

Jason (39:08):
All right, so let's, let's start pulling this to a
close. So the way we wrap thisup, Laura, is that we're
professors. We're used tograding things, so we give
grades. Brian, I'm going tothrow to you first about the
gameplay. So this is your game.You're the one that actually
owns the copy we played. What doyou think of the gameplay on
this? Where do you rate it?

Brian (39:25):
Okay, so for gameplay, I this is such a fun game to play.
This is and actually, this isone of my wife's favorite games.
Let me think I usually rategameplay based on how likely I
am to throw in the car or pullit off the shelf. And basically,
there are plenty of games thatwe have that never come off the
shelf. They just sit there. Theylook pretty and that's pretty
much the end of theirinvolvement in my gaming hobby

(39:45):
life, Terraforming Mars. In thatregard, I'm going to give it an
A minus. I think it's a littlecomplex, and it takes a little
bit of time to refresh yourself,but I could easily see a gaming
group, or even my own group,where it's like, this is just,
oh, let's play gaming Mars, andit's just part of your. Normal
rotation.

Jason (40:01):
I put it in that same area of A, A minus. It's just my
experience that it it does takea while. So our favorite games
take about an hour, hour and abit to play. And this is
definitely more the two hours,two hours plus game. And that's
just personal taste. I thinkthere's a lot of depth to it.
And there's like six or eightexpansions of these, although my
postdoc in the lab says thatonly one or two of them are
actually worth playing. So takethat for whatever it's worth. I

(40:23):
have not touched any of theexpansions. I don't know myself.
Part of me feels bad sayingthat. I'd give it like a minus a
range. But number seven on BoardGame Geek I mean, it's like,
this is one of those placeswhere I think maybe I'm wrong
about this.

Brian (40:37):
I think that the Board Game Geek community is just a
different level of player. Doyou know what I mean? Like,
yeah, those are committedpeople.

Jason (40:45):
Okay, time to grade the science. So I'm gonna give the
science an A, and I'm gonna giveit specifically, because this
game is not meant to be ascience education game, and yet,
they did really good researchinto it. Like, if this was meant
to teach you about Mars and Marsscience facts and stuff, I'd
probably put a little lower,because it's not because it's
not like as obvious, but theydid their research in terms of,

(41:06):
like, how much atmosphericoxygen do humans actually need,
what sort of temperature will beworthwhile? There are little
science facts scatteredthroughout the rule book about
Mars and just random factoids.When you place tiles on the
board, you get resources. Youget trees more near the equator,
because that's where plantswould do better. You get
minerals near the mountains,because that's where those are

(41:27):
more likely to be. There's allthese little touches that don't
have to be there. And yet showthat even if this is not meant
to be science education, it isstrongly grounded in actual
Martian science. And so I'mgoing to give that an A.
I would frame Terraforming Marsas a scientific game. I think
the science is in the center ofit. And I give my science rating
based on how much science you'regoing to learn, intentional or

(41:48):
unintentional. And again, Ithink this is an A based on
that. I think that you don'tcome away from Terraforming Mars
not knowing more about what thatprocess can look like and what
it would entail. Laura, did youwant to give a science grade? I
know you didn't get a chance toplay the game.

Laura (42:03):
So it seems like it focuses mostly on the
atmospheric side of theterraforming, although there is
a certain soil part of it. Soit's hard for me to grade it
because I'm not an atmosphericscientist.

Jason (42:13):
Fair enough. That's we're going to wrap it up. I'm going
to give a big shout out, andthanks to Laura for being on
here. Laura, if people want tolook you up, like, how do they
best find you?

Laura (42:21):
I would think the easiest way is probably on LinkedIn. My
last name is not very common, soif you just look up Laura
Fackrell, you'll probably findme, especially if you put
anything with Mars or geologywith that.

Jason (42:30):
And then you said, so you're currently at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. And thenyou told me that you're moving
to some place in Texas, to acommercial company?

Laura (42:38):
Yes, I'm finishing up a postdoc right now, so I'll
finish that up, and then I'llrelocate to Houston, and I'm
going to be working in the spaceindustry, still down in Texas,
in Houston.

Brian (42:46):
that's so cool.

Jason (42:47):
Well, thank you so much, Laura. Thank you everyone for
listening, and that's what we'regoing to call it. Have a good
week and happy gaming.

Brian (42:53):
Have fun playing dice with the universe. See ya.

Jason (42:57):
This has been the gaming with Science Podcast copyright
2024 listeners are free to reusethis recording for any non
commercial purpose, as long ascredit is given to gaming with
science. This podcast isproduced with support from the
University of Georgia. Allopinions are those of the hosts,
and do not imply endorsement bythe sponsors. If you wish to
purchase any of the games wetalked about, we encourage you
to do so through your friendlylocal game store. Thank you, and

(43:19):
have fun Playing dice with TheUniverse.

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S1E8 - Terraforming Mars (Martian Science)

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