Rising Stars - What Happens Next? podcast exploring space

SC Carland: On this episode, we'll find out what space can teach us about life on earth and how to make a better future for all of us. You might be surprised at some of the ways space exploration is already shaping our daily lives and will continue to do so in the future. Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway runs the most successful massive open online course ever run in Australia. It teaches people 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): Hi, my name is JLG and I'm astrophysicist at the School of Physics and 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, and I know when we talk about space, sometimes one of the criticisms can be well, who cares about space? What's the benefit? It's all very interesting and exciting, but what's the benefit for us here and now? And is there even any benefit for the future? We all hear the stories about velcro and those kinds of things, but is there anything beyond that?

JLG: So this is the question that we as astronomers have to talk about a lot, address a lot, and humans are curious. As soon as I say I'm an astronomer at a dinner party or anywhere else, I have 3,000 questions to answer, what's inside black holes? Is universe going to explode? What's going to happen? And then I say to them, "Well, how much would you pay to know that?" Right?

SC: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

JLG: This knowledge does not come from anywhere. So that's the basic answer of if we want to gain knowledge, we have to invest in gaining that knowledge. But what other people don't understand often is that astronomy is technologically driven. 400 years ago when telescope was just invented, we saw very blurry things, and since then telescope became much more sophisticated. And this is where technology driven knowledge comes from. We can see within several seconds of universe exploding, isn't that amazing? Isn't that what human potential is all about?

JLG: So what people don't quite understand is how that technology then gets transferred into everything else. So Hubble Space Telescope, which is one of the most known telescopes in the world, astronomers are the ones who required particular CCD built, and now everybody has CCDs in their mobile phones and they take all these awesome pictures. But at the time, there was no such CCDs that are needed for very crisp pictures. Our engineers built it, astronomers needed it, and then that CCD got to be used for advanced imaging or breast cancer, for example. So we like to use that example as something that was not intended to be used for humanly needs, but ended up being used. And we call that spin-offs.

JLG: We just heard recently Decadal review for astronomy science in Australia, and again, it's shown huge benefit to the society. Of course, we know that algorithm that used to design to chase black holes is now used to make WIFI, and we can't live without WIFI now. We constantly push the boundaries of how to get this difficult information in space. We don't have labs like other scientists. We just have observations.

SC: Do you think we need to think about space differently.

JLG: Yes. I think so much of our daily life depends on satellites and we're not even aware.

If satellites were to shut down, we would feel that very painfully. So the future of the economy is in space. Space connects us. In terms of changing ourselves as a human race, if we don't leave the cradle, we'll never change our primitive ways. We are so bound nby history and by mistakes we made, and we keep remaking them. But every astronaut, they weren't in an international space station, or even just an orbit came back changed. See, they come and they see earth as fragile. They see that thin atmosphere that supports all these amazing life on earth. So to change our perspective, we have to change the view. So does going to international space station, going to space hotels, going to Mars for visit, going to moon for visit, going to change our view, I believe of what we are as human race. So to me, that's what space represents, a potential for us to really evolve to the next stage of hopefully better humanity.

SC: What's something... what's a recent innovation or discovery in or about space that's got you really excited.

JLG: So the reusable rockets is something that is very, very exciting at the moment. It's becoming much cheaper, it's becoming much more environmental, which is again, something we want. So I think that's something that 's very exciting and it's inspiring for young people all around the world.

SC: You talk a lot about the ethics of space exploration, what do you mean by ethical space exploration? Who are we being ethical to or what are we being ethical to, and why does it matter anyway?

JLG: So that's a great question. So there's two ways of answering that. One is being ethical to the places where we go. So moon or Mars, or asteroids. We have one treaty and we have space treaty that says that space is for everyone. Nobody can own the space. We didn't quite [inaudible 00:06:45] how would you go back then exploiting some of the resources, and that's something that UN is working at the moment, for example. And I think just being ethical about people who we send to explore the space. Often we refer to colonising space, and colonising is such a bad word because we have-

SC: Yes.

JLG: .... a history of... repeated history of what colonised means, not just for the land and destroyed native life, but also who were the ones who were sent to colonise, right? They've been treated very badly as well. Another issue is that the space should be a joint resource and should be beneficial to everyone. And this is what...so the UN has the office of outer space affairs UNOOSA and they're working on these agreements that you are lifting... not only the most developed countries who already have developed space industries will benefit from this, but you're lifting others behind. And then the other thing about ethics is if we go to the moon, are we allowed to make it all ugly by drilling for resources? Or if we go to Mars, what rights do we have to then just become vermin on the surface of this pristine, lovely planet.

We have a lot of philosophers and sociologists and the anthropologists, thinking of that base and trying to find the way... trying to find a blueprint, how we can do this exploration or how we can even maybe establish settlements... human settlements, but to be in a way which still respects this new environment, something that will represent better structure of human society, sustainable from the get go, because you will have to be, you will have to reuse everything. You won't be able to waste anything there. So it will be sustainable from the get go, but can we then establish not a military regime, but a truly international society, which can then maybe inspire earthlings to aim for the same type of social structure.

SC: Speaking about inspiring earthlings, you run an incredibly popular MOOC, which is a massive online open course anyone can do... it's like a university course that anyone can do. You run a really popular one. Tell us about that course, and what was your intention behind starting it?

JLG: So it all started with me and my colleague, Professor Tina Overton chatting how we loved the Martian, which is book by Andy Weir, and we mentioned that we both like the fact that finally science was presented as fun problem solving, not boring maths, not dreadful lectures that everybody fall asleep at, but truly showed what science is. And then we at the same time said, "and I want to make units based on that." And then we looked at each other and said let's do it together, and that's how MOOC came. And the reason we wanted to make it mainly for high school students is that we have problem in Australia with high school students enrolling less and less in science.

JLG: So we came with the idea to use basically what would be the basic resources that you will need if you had even short or long exploration of Mars, and so things that we take for granted their occurrence, like having water, having food that's from shops. So we want to show how science could solve this problem. We want to show potential technologies that are in the testing phase right now. Although we aim just for high school students and maybe teachers, our first MOOC, Futurelearn told us that it had uniform distribution of ages from 13 to 75. So everybody was interested and then hearing from learners why they joined the course. We had, basically, obviously we had teachers and students. We had parents and grandparents who wanted to see what would be jobs that the children would have one day. We also had a lot of professionals from law or economics who wanted to move to the space industry and then wanted any microcredential they can find that’s relevant.

So we really had a wonderful diversity of learners and we designed MOOC to be what we call challenge-based learning. So each week they have a challenge, build your air supply, build your water supply. So again, slightly a different way of learning science, which everybody just sees as equations and dry information. And although, yes, we did have equations. You have to calculate how much air you need. You can't do without math and calculations, but the challenge was there to always think and readjust and readjust as you learn why you need that. And what we saw the best is how much learners really put themselves into the mindset and call each other by Martian names, and really made themselves feel like they're on the surface of Mars and sharing the experience from earth. There was a diver who for example, explained that partial pressure. When we talk about low and high pressure and things like that. So that was really wonderful to see that you actually build a community of learners who share knowledge, not just passively take information that we present

SC: And tell the truth, did anyone... any of the groups come up with solutions that you thought, actually, that's really good. I'm going to take that. I'm going to steal that idea and say it was mine.

JLG: We have run the MOOC four times now, and every time there'll be different... depending on the cohort, there'll be different discussions and different ideas. But what came through every time is that about 50 per cent of learners were sceptical. Why should we go to Mars? They were interested, but they were sceptical at the same time. Why should we go to Mars when there's so much to solve on earth? And all of them came at the MOOC not realising that space exploration does benefit for life on earth, and they do come out with that idea that because you have to be so sustainable when you go there, you will come back and teach earthlings. So this is the only thing that I'm stealing from the MOOC, and that's the sentence that one of the learners said - “It will be the other way around - the Martians will be the awesome ones who will come and teach us how to live better on earth, because they will have to be awesome to survive and therefore, they will be the ones who come back and teach us how to live in a better way, whether it's with environment, whether it's in terms of social structure. So this is a great... it's not something that we pushed too hard. We did have readings and discussions about that, but it's great to see that they have come up to that conclusion on their own, and they find the narrative of so many scifi movies in which earth is the one who is currently exploiting Mars and so on.

SC: Yes and it’s the earthlings who are saving the day. So they start the course with PV = nRT, but they come back as Socrates by the sound of it?

JLG: Exactly. Beautifully said.

SC: That's the one thing I remember from year 12 chemistry is PV = nRT. Jasmina it has been an absolute delight. So thank you so much for your time.

JLG: Thank you very much, and I'm a big fan of your podcast and I'm a big fan of sociology. So maybe you and I should make sociology of space exploration course to show-

SC: Yes.

JLG: ... that without sociology you can’t have proper space exploration.

SC: We will create the next big MOOC. It will be a big thing, and then finally, when I go to a dinner party, I'll get the respect that I deserve. 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 Gilmour Space Technologies. It's a company that's building rockets to take small satellites into space, and our first launch should be in 2022.

SC: Adam Gilmour, thank you so much for joining us today.

Adam Gilmour: My pleasure. Very good to be here, Susan.

SC: I want to start by asking you a predictive question. What do you think the world would look like one year from now, 10 years from now, if we didn't change the way we think about space exploration?

Adam Gilmour: Yeah, I think one year is too short for me to really give you... I don't think much will change in a year, but I think in 10 years, if we keep going on the push to space exploration, there will be bases on the moon. There'll be, I think a permanent habitation of the moon in 10 years is highly probable. And the initial forays into exploration of the surface of Mars by people is also going to be around 10 years away. And I think one of the things I like is people have been living on the space station permanently since the year 2000, so there's a whole lot of adults that are walking around the planet that have gone and lived in an environment where there's always been somebody permanently living in space. And I think that'd be fantastic if it was on the moon.I think it's a heck of a lot more inspirational on the moon because- everybody sees the moon. You can almost see the moon every day, right? And to look up at the moon and imagine that there's people living and working on the moon, I think would be a massive inspiration for humanity, and very Apollo-like in terms of getting people inspired into STEM and stuff like that, and I think it's inevitable that humanity does live and work in space in the future. And the next 10 years will be a really good stepping stone for that. And there's a lot of spinoff technologies. Everybody loves to talk about spinoff technologies, but they’re real spinoff technologies. One of the hardest things about living in space is resources. You can't just go to Coles or Woollies and pick up the groceries, you can't go and turn on a tap and get unlimited water. So you have to conserve everything really, really carefully, and there's technology around that. There's technology about recycling water effectively, there's technology around recycling oxygen effectively, and there's emerging technology about how to grow plants in a closed looped cycle, which is going to be necessary for long duration space exploration. All of these things can come back to earth and vastly change the way humans use resources on earth. So the technology is already there. The problem with it is it's extremely expensive. So if people figure out how to do that on the cheap, then we won't have a lot of problems with water, we won't have a lot of problems with food. We'll be able to bring a lot of that closer to where urban communities are, and that's probably one of the biggest things space exploration technology will give humanity for the future... for the long future.

SC: Adam, tell us about Gilmour Technologies and the work you do, but specifically tell us what motivated you to start that in the first place.

Adam Gilmour: Okay, so I've always loved space. I always thought it was an unreachable thing, that it was the realm of governments and billions and billions of dollars. And then in 2004, there was a competition called the X Prize that the competition was you had to have a space plane that took three people to space and repeated in three months. And the competition was won in 2004. So a company did that successfully. Investment into that project was $25 million. And I thought, wow, if people can go to space for $25 million now that's a game changer. So that's when I started getting really interested in space. I was a banker at the time, I was working at Citibank in financial markets, dealing with billions of dollars a day in flows going around. So $25 million was not a lot of money. Then the financial crisis came and that distracted me, being in a bank, but probably towards 2015, I started getting very serious about it, doing business plans. I looked at a lot of different space technologies and the thing that really stood out was access to space was still very, very difficult. It's great to have an idea of a satellite component or a space component or a rover that can go on the moon, but getting it up to space can... back then, anyway, it was costing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars. So that's-

SC: Right. So that's why, the $25 million was just so impressive to you, because before that it was hundreds of millions.

Adam Gilmour: Hundreds of millions, billions. Yeah. And so I thought, right, if I want to develop space technology in general, I need a way of getting access to space easily, and the best way to get access to space easily is to build your own rocket. So I'm like, um, okay ...

SC: I'm just going to to have to do it myself.

Adam Gilmour: Yeah, i’ll just do it myself, yeah. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about rocket technology, talking to people, saving money to invest. And then I hired my first rocket engineer in 2014 and now we've got 55 people in the company and probably 40 of them are rocket engineers, and so we're building a launch vehicle that will initially take small satellites into space, but our ultimate goal is to take people to space. So we're going to do bigger and bigger vehicles till we get to a size that can take people to space.

SC: How long realistically do you think it'll be until you can get people up there?

Adam Gilmour: I think 10 years, it's going to take a while. It really depends on how much money we can get. If I had unlimited cash, I'd probably say seven.

SC: Have you already booked your seat in that first rocket?

Adam Gilmour: No, I probably won't fly on the first one. I mean, we've got people... a lot of air force guys are willing to be test pilots on the first model, so I’ll probably go second, it depends how much we test it.

SC: So what do you think the changes in technology have meant for space exploration? What's been something you've seen recently that has really excited you in space technology.

Adam Gilmour: I think it's the... there's a trend of miniaturisation and that's basically the same tech that's given your phone a lot of power is in small satellites as well. So really what I've seen is in the last five to eight years, satellites that were once the size of a bus can now be the size of a bar fridge and satellites that were the size of a big fridge can now be the size of a shoe box. So I think the shoe box satellites, there's been a few missions with shoe box satellites to the moon and Mars, not enough, but to me that's super exciting because you literally... our rocket probably by 2023 or 2024 will have capability of taking small pallets to the moon and Mars, and we're probably going to sell it for $10 million. So you can make it three year or even six years. So that's one shoe box or two shoe boxes together with enough capability to have sensors on it, send it to the moon or Mars, put it into orbit, and the whole mission could be less than $20 million. It's orders of magnitude cheaper than what current missions are. There's missions going to Mars now that I think the cheapest one's probably a couple of $100 million and the most expensive one's about $2 billion. So if you can do deep space exploration for $20-30 million, that's a game changer.

SC: What have been the biggest challenges you faced other than needing more cash?

Adam Gilmour: Just hiring talent. Australia doesn't have a space industry. There's not previous rocket companies that I can grab talent from. So we've had to basically get people from overseas that have worked on rockets and other companies to come and join us. We've hired a lot of graduates as well. We've hired some Monash graduates actually last year, and so we're training a lot of Australian graduates on how to make rockets, but we needed the foreign expertise. That was the trickiest bit, to convince people to come and join a wacky Australian rocket company. It's a lot easier now.

SC: What do you think about the future of space exploration from Australia, do you feel that there's enough public and political will to make it something that is more organic here?

Adam Gilmour: No, not yet. I think the government is still quite risk averse on space technology. I think they're trying to make baby steps. I think they'd love to be able to do bigger and better space missions, and they're just nervous to commit a lot of money or political will to the deal. But the government announced $150 million for the moon, Mars missions, and if they spend that correctly, they will get a piece of space hardware either on or opening the moon. And I hope we'll be involved in that. And that will be a really good first step to do space exploration on the cheap. What I'd love to see Australia do is become the world leaders in space exploration on the cheap. Do it a magnitude cheaper than all the rest of the countries. That would really be a good standard for us to achieve.

SC: Is it difficult to sell the value of doing space exploration on the cheap? Because I imagine there'd be some people who think this is the last place we want to be doing things on the cheap. Everything must be the most expensive because that would mean the best or the safest or the most reliable.

Adam Gilmour: Well, there's definitely... if you want reliability, it costs. Because that means you've tested a lot. But I don't think there's political will to spend a lot of money on space exploration in Australia. That's where I think if we can master doing it for really cheap and do cheap missions that don't blow the budget and save a lot of taxpayer money, I think that'll be a really good outcome for Australia. The government really wants to improve STEM and get more and more people into STEM. They really think there's going to be a shortfall of STEM talents in the future, and I think space exploration is a great way to get people to like STEM. If people realise in high school that there's a potential that they can join a company or a research institution that's sending pilots to the moon or Mars or beyond- I think that that should get a lot of kids inspired.

SC: Adam Gilmore, this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much for your time today.

Adam Gilmour:

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

Dima: Hi, my name is Dima Shymbor, 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: Hello, my name is Betul Kayici . I am in second year of bachelor of architecture and I'm really interested in space, et cetera.

SC: Okay. Danica, Dima, and Betul thank you so much for joining us today. Danica, I'm going to start with you because you lead the Space Habitat Studio as part of the Monash bachelor of architecture. I don't think many people would be aware that there are already people and people in Australia who are actually thinking about what architecture in space should and could look like. Tell us a bit about your work.

Danica Karaicic: What I found interesting about the topic of space architecture is actually the relationship between body and built environment. So I approach it from that perspective, along with my love for science fiction, especially science fiction movies and TV shows. And to be honest, the road that led me to propose this studio was a bit funny because I found a website that had detailed architectural plans of the ships from Star Trek franchise. My drive was to try to make it interesting for students, but it's really interesting... it raises interesting questions of human behaviour and relationship with architecture when it's in not earth environment.

SC: Yeah. Dima, you did a unit on this space architecture, first of all, why did you decide to take this course?

Dima: I think Danica undersold herself just then, because she didn't say that it's really fun. The actual studio, so in the start of the semester we're given a choice of what studios we want to go to, and this studio just happened to be my first priority Because there's a lot of things that you can do [inaudible 00:29:45] that could be interesting or exciting. It's usually never both, but this one just balanced it out for me. And it was just this opportunity to just go out and be wacky and also inventive and also useful.

SC: Yeah, Betul, you did the course as well as a student. What were you expecting to happen in the course?

Betul: So I was expecting to find out just the environmental conditions in Mars and the moon, and how that actually changes the context for yielding in space. And that's exactly what we did. We actually went into depth with finding how the gravity affects our movement when we're still and how we use space, and yeah, I expected to learn all about that. It was amazing to actually be able to learn it.

SC: What was the most interesting thing you both learned, Dima and Betul, in the course?

Betul: I realised that architecture basically is something that revolves around humans, but is controlled by nature. So I think that we always try and fit it to the human needs, but we have to consider what the nature is able to give us where we build. And I think that that connection in between them, I never saw that before the nature and humanity.

Dima: What space architecture taught me is that earth problems have to stay on earth. You shouldn't bring them with you to space. And so, yeah, if that's how you solve earth problems by motivating yourself for a better future, then sure.

SC: Danica, what were some of the rules or restrictions you did put on students? Did they have to factor in different astrophysics of their designs? Did they have to do different designs if it were the moon, then if it was safe for Mars, how much shaping did you provide them?

Danica Karaicic: So we had to imagine certain scenarios that the task was to design emergency shelter for astronauts on Mars. This project, this task required students to actually think about not only environmental conditions, but also about what is it that can help them to astronauts when they are roaming around Mars, collecting samples for research. And to sum up all the situations, to simplify them into a few simple situations like injury... malfunction or damage of the suit. And then this was pretty simple because we didn't care about aesthetics. It was really... we didn't care about how the astronauts will move within the shelter, because it really was about the most optimal space that is for emergency. So you just sit or lay down and wait. So that was way different than the second task that was situated on the moon where we imagine a small colony, which was also growing food. So we looked into sustainable food practises on earth, trying to re-imagine them and replace under the moon surface. And then of course there was this aspect that required each student to think about individual living unit for the client that was inspired by Star Trek. Here we come again, it wasn't really, I think most students found it really funny, really naive, especially facts. But yeah, this was more complex because it asks students to think about the client, to think about how they, as small community would communicate, and what possible relationships they can create around the communal gardens. So it's not just a communal garden. It's also something else.... something for social interaction.

SC: Dima and Betul, is there anything that you have developed or seen others develop in this course that you think actually we could use that here on earth as well.

Dima: I mean, it's the other way around from I invented this, we can use this on earth. It was more like, I reinvented this, now I see why this works on earth. Because some things you just take for granted or never even think about them. But once you look through that prism, if you can look on earth from Mars it's a lot more clear why certain structures are just the way they are and why that has been. So yeah, that justifies a lot of those weird architectural compromises on earth because things just have to be a certain way sometimes.

Betul: Being on the moon, not having atmosphere or food to... I'm sorry, the sun to grow the food, we realised what we took for granted on earth, and now when we're building on the moon, we have to be way more considerate of the radiation, the atmosphere, and everything else. So I think that careful process when designing where we sit down and we say, okay, we have to make this sustainable. We have to make this long lasting. We have to make it reproducing. So those ideas and that critical thinking, if we take that back to earth and everyone actually practises it as they build, I think we'll all have a better environment to live in, but I know it's not that easy to apply, but I think just that critical thinking can be applied here.

SC: Danica, Dima, and Betul this has been incredibly interesting, and quite exciting. Thank you so much for your time today, all of you. Sounds like the opportunities and potential of space exploration will continue to grow. In our next episode, we'll round up all the best practical tips from our experts so you can take advantage too. As always, more information about what we talked about today can be found in the show notes. I'll see you next time on what happens next.