NASA Meets Big Brother - BBC Click

[Music] this week it's the race back to space we'll hit the road build a house and Shh lock up some astronauts [Music] [Music] jump on in thank you so you're not using the steering wheel at all you're using a which way we go I'm at NASA in Houston where Lucy and Junkin is taking me for a spin using both a steering wheel and a joystick you can point this vehicle in one direction and drive it in another and if that seems really confusing well it is but this is drive-by-wire technology which means the on-board computer works out which way you want to go and then calculates what to do with the wheels all right so this is just one of many experiments into how we might live work and drive on the Moon or Mars although this vehicle may also pave the way for smarter cars in Smarter Cities back down here on earth where I have to say parking may be one of the coolest things you get to do but before we start driving around celestial bodies we need to get there first in the days of the moon landings only two competing countries were locked in battle driving space exploration Ford now in the race back to space the power is shifting earlier this year china's chang a for probe was the first spacecraft to land on the far side of the moon and europe india and japan are all pushing forward with their own space programs back in the US NASA plans to get back to the moon by 2024 but now it has competition from private individuals an idea that would have been laughable 50 years ago rival billionaires Elon Musk founder of SpaceX and Jeff Bezos who owns Blue Origin are racing to populate the Moon and Mars but what kind of person would actually be on these spacecraft the first people to go to Mars will be risk-taking adventurers accepting that they may have one-way tickets will have a small chance of return and they would be probably financed or sponsored by one of these private companies at NASA we discovered a little-known Department where these risk-taking adventurers live right now there are four astronauts inside a spacecraft on a mission to Phobos one of Mars's two moons [Music] yes in this tiny habitat volunteers are locked away for 45 days on a simulated mission with cameras and scientists monitoring their every move this is NASA's human exploration research analog Hero for short was really funny inside the module the crew is poked and prodded in different psychological experiments from sleep deprivation to diminished privacy all to fine-tune a critical component that could make or break any future mission to Mars the humans inside the spacecraft the primary purpose of Hera is to learn about the effects of isolation and confinement on people so a lot of the studies that we do are behavioral or psychological in nature looking at the type of isolation from people so you're really only talking to or in contact with the other crew members that are in the vehicle with you or Mission Control that's supporting you yeah astronauts on future missions to Mars have more to worry about than the toxic soil the deadly atmosphere and high levels of radiation they also have to worry about each other and it's not to say which of these would be more likely to result in someone's death and it's consistent low level stress over time little things start to grate on you because their stress kind of heightens how you react to the things around you so the sound of somebody chewing the cereal next to you might be fine at first and then 45 days later you really really don't like that sound even for an astronaut the psychological demands of a journey to Mars will be extraordinary the spacecraft will only be the size of a small flat and the round-trip will take almost three years add in four different personalities cooped up together and you may run into some problems and with a range of characters needed you never know who you could end up with this is mcc Mission Control Center right there look the smoke and fire button so I guess if things get old um I'll just make it a bit more spicy in that virtual windows this is what the crew see when they look in now for the virtual windows onboard the habitat and workload are designed to mimic a real mission as closely as possible and NASA's scientists throw in lots of elements to try and ensure that the volunteers forget that they're actually part of an experiment if MCC talks to the crew they ask a question it takes five minutes to get to the crew and then if they answer it takes five minutes to give back so a ten minute round-trip for a question and answer so the whole idea of creating a mission scenario you're going to Phobos knew you're you know you're gonna do an e ba you're gonna pilot a small spacecraft to the surface you know all that keeps them really excited and engaged in the simulation the goal here is not just to study the effects of isolation and confinement but also to work out how to put together the perfect team for extreme space travel it's all about the mix and that's one of the things that we're looking at is what is that right mix or given the particular mix of people you know you have let's say one strong personality and three less strong personalities what would we expect that to play out like so what kind of roles do you need to have a successful team for a space mission and they were looking not just that the functional roles you know a commander a medic an engineer but they were also looking at the social roles and found that those were just as if not more important for those long-duration missions having somebody that's providing humor or entertainment for the crew that's way more important it won't just be down to humans to decide what the right social mix would be masses of data is being generated from these experiments making successful social interactions quantifiable one of the research studies that's actually going on is looking at a way to get a little bit of ahead of the personality problem by developing an algorithm where you can take the background information on individuals personality test that sort of information plug it into the system and based on the characteristics of all the people that you're putting in that team figure out how they're gonna work together or whether it's the right mix of people unlike these potential Martian voyages we may think that three years in isolation is a bit bonkers however from Jeff Bezos to Buzz Aldrin many a dreamin of trips to and even living on the Red Planet but lord martin rees britain's astronomer royal doesn't actually think that most of us are suited to space nowhere in the solar system anyone here is as comfortable as the top of Everest or the South Pole and so that's why I think the idea of mass emigration is a bit crazy we have to bear in mind that space is not a place for human beings except for adventurers the kind of people who do go to the South Pole and top of Everest what do they hear a crew think about the experiments well we caught up with them unsurprisingly out in the fresh air shortly after they left the habitats strong personality that was slightly different than than the group that that might have negatively affected the outcome if you put four extroverts in there together they're gonna drive each other crazy eventually maybe four introverts aren't going to be able to come together as a team as much because they're more inwardly focused you want a good blend of people who are adaptable to not only a situation but to each other's personalities you have a mission to Mars it's so huge in all senses that you're excusing money management I mean the aim of the analog is tell to you know to be one step closer to put humans on Mars but I can barely can imagine being in such a situation your motivation is so huge that I think that it would be like even you can overcome anything [Music] hello and welcome to the week in tech it was the week that Facebook came under attack in the US Senate over its plans for cryptocurrency Libre the US air force have warned people not to go near Nevada military base area 51 after more than a million people RSVP to a storm area51 event created on Facebook and computer pioneer and celebrated code breaker Alan Turing was revealed as the new face on the British 50 pound note elsewhere Elon Musk announced more detail of the work being carried out by his neuro technology company Ural Inc the company plans to insert threads into paralyzed people's brains and said that the technology has already enabled a monkey to operate a computer new emojis featuring disabled people with a range of impairments have been announced for Apple and Android smiley face thumbs up the new emojis which include wheelchair and guide dog users among others was shown off of world emoji day if your sat-nav got you more lost than usual this week I have been the satellites fault not your devices Galileo Europe's GPS network of satellites has had a bit of a Fandango and has been offline for almost a week with no word as yet on when it might be switched off and finally MIT have developed a new way to make drones seem even more sinister whereas existing drones are either fixed-wing like airplanes or propeller driven like helicopters researchers have created a new type of hybrid craft with the benefits of both which means they can both hover and glide and take off vertically those jets and hover cars and closer by the day this is how the Apollo astronauts got about on the moon seems pretty racing even by today's standards but the next time we go to the Moon and Mars our vehicles will look a bit more like this with six wheels all of which can turn independently this is the latest NASA prototype of the vehicle that could be crawling over the lunar surface very soon so we're designing the next vehicle and the next vehicle goes up in 2023 it's pretty aggressive we love it it's like Apollo to make the drive as safe as possible the active suspension keeps equal pressure on each wheel at all times and that means you can cover some pretty extreme terrain are we about to go down that we can if you'd like I would like it's not worth it it's not worth it enjoyment this vehicle is already being used to test the practicalities of future moon missions for astronauts take two vehicles out for two weeks at a time living and working on board to work out the amount of food they'll need and the kind of living conditions they can expect by the way by the way we're at a slight incline right now [Laughter] so what I can do is I can actually put my head in this little bubble here and I can investigate the rock which is a great design feature all right I'm examining lunar rocks it's like a glass-bottom boat progress across the terrain will be slow and steady because this will be a really harsh environment and moondust is is really rough yes sure those are things that we definitely know from apollo think of taking a glass and just slamming it down and then crushing it with your feet and those shorts it's kind of how it is on the moon since there's no erosion or when to tumble those those little pieces and that's one of the reasons we're pushing to have soup ports with the space suits on the outside of the vehicle so on the back of at the end of these beds back here there's a door to the vehicle so you open the door to the vehicle and you're now staring at the back of your suit and you climb into the back so now your suit and your cabin are pressurized you seal it up and then you close the cabin door so you can go climb in a spacesuit while I stay in here and we don't have to depressurize the cabin er and that means all of the moon dust that collects on the spacesuit never gets into the into our atmosphere the whole suit stays on the outside of the vehicle that's genius mind you moondust may have its uses as a building material and that's something that Lara looing Tain's been investigating at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands this structure is the 3d printed using a combination of elements that could be found on earth that replicate the qualities of moon dust and that means that things can be tried here before actually being attempted on the surface of the Moon and the hope is that one day creating something like this inhabitable by humans could be possible this moon regolith or simulant is hoped to be able to create an inhabitable structure that temperate and can block radiation well you have actually that the powder in a layer and then you spray is a nozzle the binder material the binder material here was an inorganic salt in water and then it was comes to chemical reaction like concrete if you like and you build more or less a solid structure layer by layer this substance isn't quite perfect though so at some point testing on the real precious moon dust needs to happen the 3d printing on the moon could go beyond putting a roof over astronauts hats they can bring polymers metals ceramic materials and you could print food you can print stem cells you can for medical applications there's almost no limit of what you could not print and even more important what you can do is you can recycle so you could actually then have a very sustainable creation by reusing stuff we have use for the purposes before so robotic version of this 3d printer could make use not only of substances found on the lunar surface but also raw materials transported there in as low of volume as possible expiration in the past has always been about taking everything you can with you wherever you go now this is possible but it's very expensive it's very difficult to do so what we're looking at now is in the longer term you want to make exploration sustainable and permanent oxygen for example is something that we need on the moon for propulsion for rocket fuel and for breathing we can get that out of ice at them in the poles and from lunar rocks which are made about 40% oxygen we're also left with metals and those metals can be used to make equipment make materials the moon is also the only place we can go it's only three days away to start to understand what it means to live and work away from the earth so if we want to learn how to use resources locally in a responsible and clever way to prepare us for going on to Mars and elsewhere the moon is where we have to do it of course this won't happen tomorrow but technological advancement is starting to push forward the possibilities of learning more about the moon followed by Mars at beyond that was Lara at ISA back at NASA I've been meeting one of these semi autonomous robots which may be sent to help build and then maintain our living quarters in preparation for our arrival this is Valkyrie the robot is currently there I want to do that's where you want it to go there yeah and then you just ask the robot plant a path to get there and using its information about its environment it plans its footsteps uniquely figures out where to step safely to get across this debris field controlling robots at a distance means that the operator needs the robot to handle the fine detail of its environment after being told where to go and what to do Valkyrie analyzes the terrain and works out for itself where to step and where to put its hands also there are a variety of applications here on earth for putting a robot and in place that really needs a human hands the human shape there goes getting in the pickup truck on the moon david Mastan chief technology officer the reason I started this company was so that I could go walk on the moon I got enough new solenoids and rewired those we did yeah Mastan is delivering payloads to the surface of the middle well by a big rocket launch will then have our vehicle navigate the rest of the way to the moon put it on the surface and then that soft landing then has your payload right there on the surface [Music] I started this company for a number of reasons the major reason was the idea that I think we could do better than we had been doing in aerospace looking at stuff that I done been the automotive industry bringing the methodologies that we started developing in the Silicon Valley we have a bunch of spare cryogenic valves thanks for sitting over there we just grabbed Mastan right now is about 15 people full-time majority of them engineers that are both designing and installing and turning wrenches and flying and the majority the team is based here in Mohave we're one of the few companies that was awarded a master contract by NASA for delivery of payloads to the surface of the Moon this is all inclusive its lab to surface the biggest thing for competition with SpaceX Blue Origin other billionaires is to find other niches in the marketplace you know stay away from the big huge launch vehicles stay away from human landing vehicles for the time being and so we can get into a much better situation where we could possibly stand toe to toe with a billionaire who doesn't care how many billions he throws at the project the answer of why go now is that we have reached the inflection point where the ecosystem is able to offer us access to the moon at a price point that is reasonable to unlock the potential that exists on the moon when are we looking to land on the moon as early as 2022 [Music] and I'm afraid that's it for our mini exploration of space at least folk have a few more days to go yep I have to say but I hope you've enjoyed the journey has been faster this he doesn't and if you have any comments that get in touch more on social media on YouTube Facebook Instagram and Twitter BBC click thanks for watching that was easy [Music] [Music]

Channel: BBC Click

Views: 71,931

Rating: 4.8421445 out of 5

Keywords: bbc, bbc click, click, bbc news, nasa, moon, nasa johnson, moon rover, moon buggy, mars, space, exploration, drone, payload, spacex, india, usa, neil armstrong, hera, big brother, 3d printing, esa, european space agency, valkyrie, robot, rocket, launch

Id: swlTLSXZqKQ

Length: 24min 30sec (1470 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MsAndDems]

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