What On Earth Can We Do? - What Happens Next? podcast exploring space

Susan Carland (SC): Hi, I'm Dr Susan Carland and welcome to What happens next? In this episode, we've gathered all the best tips from our experts about how we can all support and maybe even benefit from the opportunities space exploration offers.

Astronomer Michael Brown is an Associate Professor of the School of Physics and Astronomy in the Monash Faculty of Science. Let's get some of his best tips.

Michael Brown (MB): I'm Associate Professor Michael Brown. I'm an astronomer at Monash University, and I study how Galaxies grow and evolve over cosmic time.

SC: Associate Professor Michael Brown, what would be your best practical tips or advice for people who want to learn more about space and want some sort of accessible information, but also for people who want to support the world's continued endeavor of space exploration. What would you recommend for those people?

MB: There's a couple of different paths to go down, and I think it depends on what would motivate you and excite you and  what would connect you with the topic. So, you know, for some people, it might be about reading magazines about space. It might be, you know, reading Sky and Telescope magazine or reading about space exploration on space.com. It might be about supporting science and writing to your member of Parliament or to relevant senators about supporting science. For others to get excited, I think it might be a bout a more practical

connection to astronomy and space. So perhaps, for a couple of hundred dollars - well, perhaps even less second hand -  getting a telescope and looking at the moon for the first time and seeing the craters and the Mountains. And you can see that with a small telescope - a lot of people don’t realise that - or looking at Saturn and seeing the rings. I've got a second hand telescope in my living room that I bought for my kids, and that was less than 100 bucks. And with that you can see the rings of saturn, and it's sort of very much like the publicity photos, right? Maybe not as sharp, maybe not as beautiful, but it's there, and you can see it with your own eyes. And maybe that's the way to connect with space and space exploration and astronomy too. Have that be there in your own eyes. So there's just many ways that may connect and I think that depends on how you experience the world and what motivates you and excites you and makes you want to get engaged with science and also just the beauty of astronomy.

SC: Associate Professor Michael Brown, thank you so much for your time.

MB: That's been a pleasure.

SC: Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway runs the most successful Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ever run in Australia. It teaches people how to prepare for life on Mars. But rather than focus on Mars survival, Jasmina wants the course to help others be more creative in solving problems on Earth.

Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway (JLG): My name is Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway and I'm an astrophysicist at the School of Physical Astronomy at Monash University. My background is in high energy astrophysics and my passion is in space exploration and interplay between science, society and art. 

SC: Jasmina, you are something of a space expert. What would you say are your best practical tips for or advice for people who maybe want to know more about space? But, you know, they're just your average Joe there. Sadly, never gonna be the illustrious astrophysicist that you are, but they're really interested in space exploration and learning more. Where would you suggest that they start?

JLG: So there are many, many Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at the moment and most of them are geared for people who don't know anything about  space. So I would say take take as many of those as you can,

SC: But can anyone do them?

JLG. Anybody. So there are MOOCs  that everybody could do, you know, there's always a free version which doesn't give you a certificate. And then there's a version where you can pay a little bit if you want a certificate. And this is where people who collect the micro credentials -  they just pay to complete all the quizzes and tasks, and they get those. So that's the power of MOOCs. They really do help you to learn. But I think they did revolutionise education because people can, now, if they want to, see what sociology is about, what engineering is about and what anthropology is about, they can just go out and take a look, and they're becoming shorter and shorter. You can have, you know, literally a two week MOOC, which is literally just basic information. What's this all about? So I think they have revolutionised education. Not in a way they were meant, or they were predicted in terms of shutting down universities in all the learning being online, but in terms of creating more informed learners. You can do MOOCs here and there, and then decide. Imagine the high school students taking MOOCs here and there and then decide when, actually, when they come to university, they know exactly what they want to study rather than coming not really understanding. We still have some students come to us and say, I don't really know what the difference is between physics and chemistry, for example, because science is not quite integrative. So my suggestion is take many MOOCs. You can go to the public events. We now have science galleries. We have one here in Melbourne. They started in Dublin. They have been in Venice, everywhere, where people try to merge art and science and try to present both and see again to show that art and science are the same thing - they're just trying to interpret the world around us. But they are doing it in different ways.

So there are many ways for people to engage, and we don't need everyone to be a scientist. You just need people to appreciate science and support it when it needs support the same way. We need appreciation for art and people to be able to support it and say, Yes, it's important to have art, please fund it more. Otherwise, there will be wild, wild West out there in space.

SC: Jasmina,  thank you so much again.

JLG: Thank you very much.

SC: Adam Gilmour is Australia's very own rocket man. His company, Gilmour Space Technologies, specialises in the development of small, low-cost rockets purpose built for today's small satellites. He's also a Monash alumni from the Faculty of Business and Economics, and he joins us from his base on the sunny Gold Coast in Queensland.

Adam Gilmour (AG): I'm Adam Gilmour. I'm the CEO of Gilmore Space Technologies. It's a company that's building rockets to take small satellites into space on our first launch should be in 2022.

SC: What tips or advice would you give to people who want to support space exploration or just learn more about it? Where should they go? What should they read? Who should they listen to?

AG: Sure. I learned a heck of a lot from a NASA service called NTRSOn. It's basically a library of, I think, 100,000 research reports about anything and everything to do with space technology and space exploration. 

SC: That’s a lot of writing!

AG: Yeah, it is, you can get a lot of information. There's a lot of information on the Web. I think it's important to do that, because when you read all this stuff, that's when you start getting ideas about ‘Hey, this paper is talking about a problem. I'm gonna think about that and see if I can solve it’ or, you know, ‘this paper is talking about a project that people are working on, that they haven't figured it all out’. So I would love people that come and apply to work for us to have done a lot of research on space already and come quite aware of what's out there, what are the problems, what are the issues. And there's a lot. There's a lot of problems to solve.

SC: That would be your advice to anyone who is interested in getting into stem? Maybe there's some high school students listening, or even some people that maybe wanna have a career pivot. What advice would you give them?

AG: Start reading early.  I mean, I was a banker. I did a banking and finance degree from Monash. Right. And now, you know, I run a rocket company, I’m the chief technology officer, so read. Read as much as you can - 

SC: I have to interrupt you on this because I don't understand. Did you, you did banking and finance, did you then go on, do an engineering or an IT or astrophysics degree? How did you pivot like that? 

AG: Well, I know my greatest education in science is I did maths physics and chemistry in high school and then just kept researching. I think you can learn a lot. One of things I did as an example is when I got really serious, I went to some universities that did aero astro degrees. They're all in the states. MIT, actually, I don't know if they still do, but at the time they published, their course books. So I basically bought every single course book in the MIT Aero Astro degree and read it. I think I understand at least half of it. And I read it a long time ago. I reckon if I read it again now I would probably understand all of it.

SC: Okay. I mean, that is impressive. So I apologise, Adam, I did cut you off. I was asking you for your advice for people who want to get into STEM. What was your advice for those people? 

AG: My advice is to read and learn as much as you can on the internet. And there's clubs you can join. A lot of universities have rocket clubs now. They're really good to join. There's associations like there's a space association, you can join. There's another association called the Australian Youth Airspace Association or something like that. That's a great one to join because they do a lot of cool projects. They collaborate with a lot of space agencies. You know, I've been to space conferences all over the world and seen Australian students of these AYAA things,  that's a good way to go as well.

SC: Adam, is there anything you can think of that space exploration could give us now or in the immediate future?

AG: Yeah, I think the biggest one is very relevant to our conversations that we're having at the moment with Covid - everybody is, you know, at home or, you know, socially distancing. They're getting on the zoom chats and there's consistent interruption to that. That's because the internet speed and capacity is very poor in our country and in other countries. So what's happening in space? There are two companies right now that are in the process of launching and have started launching small satellites to go into low earth orbit that will bring down broadband Internet from space. There's going to be over 10,000 of these satellites orbiting in the next few years and they're gonna give broadband speeds of between two and three times faster than the NBN, now totally uninterrupted access from space. So, you know, if we are hopefully not in some kind of a Covid situation in two years time and we're working from home, the communications are going to be so much clearer from these assets that are in space. 

SC: I think we would all welcome that. Adam Gilmour, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for your time today. 

AG: My pleasure, Susan

SC: Danica Karaicic leads the Space Habitat Studio as part of the Monash Bachelor of Architecture in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture. She and architecture students Betul and Dima tell us what it's like to design for entirely alien habitats.

Danica Karaicic (DK): I'm Danica Karaicic, I'm a PhD researcher and a tutor in architecture and interior architecture, with an interest in critical spatial practise, art experimentation research, student workshops and performance architecture.

Dima Shymboor (DS): Hi, my name is Dima Shymboor, I'm a second year student at Monash architecture. Other academic interests include psychology and sociology, and I want to find a way to apply them to architecture.

Betul Kayici (BK): Hello, my name is Betul Kayici . I am in my second year of bachelor of architecture and I'm really interested in space architecture.

SC: To wrap it up, I want to ask all of you if you have any tips or advice for people who might want to apply some of these principles in their own lives or may be interested in themselves thinking about what architecture in space might look like. Where would you recommend they start?

DS: Start from Earth. Because you are an earthly creature, you are an animal on earth. So it's to not only respect it, but also always being aware of where you come from. 

SC: Nice. 

BK: They can educate themselves on things like astrophysics and even starting from really fun concepts like, you know, like a black holes or neutron stars. And then sort of understand why gravity works the way it does. Why something that is produced in some planets and not others and I think that information gives you some sort of confidence to tackle these problems when building in space. So I think just educating yourself in that area in a fun way, it would be a great way to start. 

DK: I guess I go back to what architecture is, no matter where it is, what the context is so architecture, Earth architecture, space architectures, there are similar

challenges. And one of them is to marry all the different fields that the architect has to take into consideration from, you know, like the knowledge you get about architecture independently thinking, just architecture, and then art. And then include crafts and civil engineering, sociology, history, psychology. I mean, there are many and the list goes on. The more we develop and the more we learn the list of things architects need grows. And what I constantly repeat when I work with students where creative, critical, constructive and conceptual thinking become key.  I think those are the skills and way of thinking all of us can and should develop. And then in the context,  if we think about space architecture. I always see that challenge off really displacing, but I'm talking about now, because we really don't, the average person has no idea what it feels to step outside of the physical limitations, you know, like where the planet ends. So we have no idea. And there is this challenge to try to displace ourselves from the world we know, and to somehow imagine this through information we get through learning through books or websites about - like NASA has a great website - that we learn about space and, you know, we can only imagine these things. And I guess that this reminds us if we become playful, which is really important, to start playing. Like, kids have this amazing approach to learning, to experimentation, they're taking things and testing and seeing what can happen. And I guess that thinking about space architecture from the perspective of being on planet Earth, we can play. We should be playful. And through that playfulness and, you know, testing our bodies we’re just reminded of how fragile and limited we are, you know, like physically, like our bodies. And our minds are currently limited. So if nothing else, thinking about space architecture is a great exercise. And I'm not talking about thinking, you know, in your head, but also through your body, trying to imagine, trying to do the movement, you think would and, you know, so you can potentially feel a tiny bit of what you would felt on the moon or Mars, or like anywhere else but on Earth. So it is a great way to be more respectful to the world around us and in the end, to try to imagine a different world. 

SC: Well, yeah, I suppose we could imagine it like a Dima suggested. And I could just try swinging around the trees like a gorilla and, you know, you see, see if I could get some inspiration like that.

DK: Yeah, well, you can try. Look, that's easy to try. If you can, if you have a backyard with a tree or two. 

SC: Just with some vines. Should be easy to find.

DK: That's what I'm saying, we should go back to, we should learn more from our bodies about the world, the way we experience the world. It's not just what we see. And there is this great value that bodies in movement offer us.

SC: Danica, Dima and Betul, this has been incredibly interesting and quite exciting. Thank you so much for your time today. All of you. That's it for this episode and for this topic. As always, more information on what we talked about today can be found in the show notes. In the next episode, we'll take a look at the future of healthcare and what it might look like in a post Covid  world. I'll see you then on What Happens Next.