Dear Hank & John - 279: Live Your Whimsy (w/Farah Alibay!)

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

How can Mars landings happen in realtime? How will humans keep track of days on Mars? How do I stop imagining mice in books? What's the coolest themed party you've ever attended? Will our radiation kill Martian life? What's it like being a systems engineer for the Perseverance Rover? Hank Green, John Green, and Dr. Farah Alibay have answers!If you're in need of dubious advice, email us at [e-mail] us for monthly livestreams and an exclusive weekly podcast at patreon.com/dearhankandjohn.Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/dearhankandjohn

Hello and welcome to Dear Hank John. Or is that prefer to think of it? Dear John and Hank, oh my god, perseverance is on Mars edition. It's a podcast for two brothers answer your questions about Mars and give you news about Mars and that's it. And we also maybe occasionally provide dubious advice about Mars and then at the very end, we squeeze in a bit of news about a third tier and we football team Hank. No, John, I have a joke. I have a joke.

Don't you step on my joke, John, why aren't there any cats on Mars? Why aren't there any cats on Mars? Because you've heard what curiosity does to cats? Yeah. I mean, that would have been a great joke in 2013. It's still there. Curiosity is still a great work.

I know it's still a good joke, but it would have been a great joke. Yeah, I would have been better. That's true. What an incredible accomplishment by the people behind the Perseverance mission, just astonishing. I have to, I know that I am not alone in this, but when I watch the live stream, especially of those

seven minutes of terror as they were described, I was so anxious and nervous and worried and hopeful. And I felt everything at the same time. And then when they exploded into joy, I mean, I might cry just remembering it. I just felt so hopeful and so encouraged. And so, and I felt alive to perseverance, like not the rover, but the feeling.

And it was just what a moment. And Hank, thank you for getting me into Mars so that I could enjoy that moment. Yeah, it was really good. It's funny, my major emotion I did cry, but Orrin always gets really upset when we cry, so I'm trying to work through with him. Yeah.

But the major emotion I have had then and have had since every time I think about perseverance, it's just like happiness and like it's not coming from anywhere bad, it's just a good happy that I like is really like unadulterated, pure happy. And I like, it's just, it's there, it's doing its work, the video, the videos, the videos, and the pictures are coming and will continue to come. And we're going to get those, you know, curiosity is still doing its thing. So we're going to still be getting great information from curiosity. It's like double the Mars that we had before.

It's so exciting and just even more than double though because the images are so high quality. It's like looking and it's faster. It's like having human eyes on Mars. Like yeah, I don't know how it's to describe it, except that like, I can't see my basement right now as clearly as I can see the surface of Mars. So also, John, wildly and amazingly enough, here on our stupid podcast,

Farah Alabe, who's a systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will be joining us to answer some of her questions later in the podcast during the news from Mars segment. Which is so cool. And it's gonna be so much fun to talk to her. How did we trick NASA into thinking that we have a hit podcast?

Our podcast is just very grateful. There aren't that many podcasts that have Mars news segments. So I will say that about us. That's true. I've actually been offered an opportunity to interview the new manager of AFC Wimbledon. Oh wow! Let's do it! Almost as good. Almost as good. I want to begin by asking this question from Asia Who Rights, dear John and Hank, but mostly Hank, I just watched the Perseverance

Rover Land on Mars live, which was awesome, but a question suddenly popped into my head. I don't know why I only thought of it this time around, but I was under the impression that it takes minutes to relay information to and from Mars. How are they controlling and monitoring the landing in, quote, real time? I'm still watching as images come in, and they're coming in pretty quickly. So maybe there've been advances in that regard, but when we watch the curiosity landing, it seemed like the whole thing was happening live. But was it persevering in curiosity, Asia?

Well, it's happening live and it isn't. So there's a period of time where they just sort of like the lander now has all the information, we're gonna stop talking to it, it's gonna figure it out, it's gonna land itself. The parachute will figure out when to deploy, the retro rockets will figure out when to fire, the rover will find its own good spot to get put down.

It will get put down there. We are not in control anymore. We are not talking anymore. By the time we notice our sort of at that moment, it's on the ground. It has happened already. We send the last message and then by the time we enter those seven minutes where we know all these things are going to happen in sequence, the lander has already landed. And we're getting the messages sent back

in real time. So like about each of those processes, but it's taking a while for them to get there. And with curiosity, we didn't, there was a long period of time where we weren't getting information. We have better signal, like satellites around Mars now that were able to relay that information to us.

So with curiosity, there was this period of time where we just didn't have any information, we were just waiting for that first signal, whereas with perseverance, you actually got the signal that the shoot had deployed, you got the signal that the shield had come off, you got the signal, like all those things were happening. And the scientists were relaying that information

to us as they were getting it, the engineers at JPL. But like in real life, all that stuff had happened, you know, minutes ago, because you can't like get rid of light delay. That's a, that's the sort of law of the universe. You're never going to be able to transmit anything faster than the speed of light. This is the same phenomenon, by the way way that happens when you watch a soccer game live on television. You are not, you are not actually watching it as it is happening inside the stadium.

You are watching it a few seconds later. Well, yeah, you use of delays that are inherent to sharing information across space. Yeah, so obviously it's a lot more complicated. Some of those are light delays. Some of them are like various switching delays and stuff, but yes, light is important. And as things happen farther away on Earth, you get to see them a little bit later. Can I tell you my favorite moment of the live stream? It was when they got the first picture and

they found out where the rover had chosen to land, because it was ultimately like the Rover's choice. And I heard one person in the background, mother, I'll take it. So that might be one of two that person, that person might have picked a different spot, but I'll take it. So that might be one of two things. Like one is you want it to be as close as possible without being too close to the really interesting part

of this ancient lake bed where they have landed. Right. So you have to drive over to the more interesting parts. You can't land there because it's like, it's too dangerous. But the other piece is that JPL scientists, I am almost positive, have a betting pool about where exactly the lander will land. And so that guy may have just lost 50 bucks. Unless it's not legal to have a betting pool,

in which case I'm sure they don't. I'm pretty sure it is. Well, I mean, I'll tell you what, you can't do that in professional soccer, that got an ANZ Wimbledon manager fired once. So I'm just not out here trying to get a new fire right right right right. I can see that My favorite guy was the yes guy who was just gone. Yes, yes, yes, and I was like dude. We can hear you My favorite person was the as expected person who anytime something even vaguely negative was stated right

The person would mutter as expected. That's, that is, that is a thing that happens. Everybody knows this is not bad. Right. Right. It would be like it's now making bank turns and people were like, what bank turn as expected? Oh, okay, okay. Okay.

All right. Oh, God. Yeah. It's so cool. And it's so wild. I tweeted this like, okay, okay. All right. Oh, God, yeah. It's so cool. And it's so wild. I tweeted this like, while it was happening, I was like, in the moment when curiosity had actually landed, I tweeted that this is a light delay and curiosity right now is on the ground.

And everybody was like, shut up! Do not do this. This is not helping. But it's true. It's very weird. It is weird. Yeah, the not, this is not healthy. Yeah, but it's true, it's very weird. It is weird. Yeah, the speed of light is very strange. And it's only gonna get stranger

as we get better at traveling longer distances, right? Yeah. There's always a weird element of like looking at the sun and knowing that you're looking into the past or looking at a star in the night's guy and knowing that you're looking like much deeper into the past. Yeah.

But when humans are gonna be in each other's pasts, that's gonna be weird. Yeah. But beautiful. Yeah. And there actually is a question about that from Abby who asked Steerhank a John. Quick Google search has shown me that one day on Mars

is 37 minutes longer than days on Earth and years are 322 days longer than years on Earth. When people are finally on the red planet by 2028, how will they mark time? Using Earth, I should have, oh, I really should have asked our NASA program engineer for some feedback on whether humans are gonna be on Mars by 2028, but go on here.

We've already done the interview, so we can't adjust. I'm sorry John It's that that interview is a little bit like the NASA light delay where you're gonna hear it in the in the future But we've recorded it in the past That's right. That's right when people are finally on the in the red planet How will they mark time using earth time seems very weird because the extra 37 minutes would slowly change the way the sun and dark times are happening, but adding 37 minutes will slowly change when they celebrate their birthdays and new years, etc. I could have done more research on my own, but I chose not to

Abby. We don't know. It could be either way. They could have a 24, probably my guess is that they will have a 24 hour and 37 minute day and they will keep their seconds the same length as our seconds and their hours and minutes. Well, thus always be the same length as ours and minutes. But they could just stretch it out so that 20, like just have every second be a little tiny bit longer and thus the day would just be 24 hours. But I think it's easier for the human mind

to just have those extra 37 minutes in the middle of the night and be like, it's Mars time, baby. Right, I just sleep a little longer on Mars, it's just the way that it is. Right. In terms of the year, I don't think that it will necessarily change

because there's nothing to a solar year that's inherently important to keeping time. Lots of people on Earth right now keep time according to lunar years, and that works out just fine. And it isn't like a problem for communicating schedules or meeting times or anything. So I think that may stay the same as well, but this is also hypothetical because one of the strange and wondrous things to consider when thinking about humans on Mars is that eventually

if, you know, there becomes a significant long-term human population on Mars, there will be such a thing as Martian culture that will be separate from Earth human human culture, and they will make their own rules and norms and who knows. Yeah, yeah, I can totally see it setting up sort of a 24 hour and 37 minute day, and then in the future, then being like, God, why did we do that? Just the same way we feel about daylight saving,

it's time we're like, oh my God, the people in the past made this really annoying choice. And so now we have, instead of just having our own seconds, which we could have had our own seconds, we have to deal with this extra 37 minutes every day. Now that I've said that, it's good to standardize seconds. That's how I think it's really annoying if Mars had different seconds. I think it's a very bad idea to increase the length of a second by like 14 nanoseconds, I think that that's like way worse than the metric standard divide, right?

Yeah. Be like, okay, so which weight, wait, you ran a hundred meters in which kind of seconds? Like much worse than Martian seconds. Much worse than that would just be like trying to have any interoperability between computer systems. Yeah, totally. They rely on seconds. That would be catastrophic. And also, there's no reason to,

because it's just 37 extra minutes. It's not that big of a deal. Man, if I could have 37 extra minutes in a day, I would take that deal immediately. Oh, me too. Oh, God. It is a little weird because you are going to die younger. Yeah.

Well, I mean, if you were a day who is sick, you're going to die younger on average, regardless of your own martial. But like, you're going to die younger just as a function of time. And if you were to have fewer days to live. But you know what, Hank? I think that if you offered me 24 hour and 40 minute days right now here on Earth, I would take that. Yeah, I would pay for that.

Oh, that's a great idea. Why haven't we turned time into a capitalist extractable resource? It's actually the premise of that movie starring Justin Timberlake. What was it called? Oh, God, it was so. I don't want to say good because that's not the premise of that movie starring Justin Timberlake. What was it called? Oh, God, it was so. I don't want to say good because that's not the right adjective. It was so watchable on an airplane. What was it called? Oh, what was it called? I think it might have been called in time. It's called in time. 36% on rotten tomatoes. I respectfully disagree. I found it to be

totally acceptable. I can't believe I haven it to be totally acceptable. I can't believe I haven't heard of this movie. Oh, okay, so in this movie and bear in mind, I saw it once on an airplane and I had a few drinks and also I was jet lagged. In this movie, time is money. So you can like trade and sell the remaining time in your life, in exchange for goods and services

and then you can add time by like working for a few hours or you can go gambling with your time and time has become the only currency. God, that is such a rich white guy idea for a movie. Mm-hmm. Yes, no, it has the sheen of a 20th century film made in the 21st century. You know what I mean? Like it, yeah, it feels like the script is like 45 years old. But I again, I found it utterly, utterly watchable. There's very little, there's very few science fiction movies that I do

not enjoy watching. There are many that I recognize are bad, but still love to watch. Yeah. Yeah, this is something I've discovered about myself in movies in the last couple of years. I'm perfectly happy just like watching what happens in the background. So like, I don't actually care that much. Who's talking? What's happening? And what they're saying or what the arc is, I just want to enjoy the set design speaking

of which Hank, we got an email from a listener named Mason who wrote in to say that their dad is the set designer on the show, the expanse. Oh my god. And that when we talked about the show, the expanse, Mason got really excited. And then Mason adds, personally, I'm more of a Star Trek person. Mason, don't say that. Just keep that in time. Don't tell your dad.

Don't tell your dad. Oh my God, I mean, the set decoration on the expanse is very good. I know, that's what I was thinking. I was like, that's one of the main things I enjoy about the expanse is what's happening in the back right now. It is very rewatchable for that reason. Like you are always missing good stuff on the expanse.

All right, my God, it's the best TV show on. All right. What my God, it's, it's the best TV show on television right now. I, oh, God, it's so good. So Mason, also not on television. Yeah, right. What is television? Mason, please thank your dad for us. Hank, I know that we are mostly answering questions about Mars and perseverance today. And I absolutely understand why and I fully endorse the strategy. But we do need to answer this one question from Carmen who writes Dear John and Hank,

I recently finished reading a darker shade of magic by V.E. Schwab and I enjoyed it and I wanna read the rest of the series. However, somewhere during the book, I started imagining the characters as anthropomorphic mice. Like 1973, Disney's Robin Hook style characters, but mice. Sure. I think I would enjoy the story more if I could imagine the character. He says humans, but alas, I can only see whimsical mice in my mind's eye.

How do I make this stop? What if I'm reading the Anthropocene Reviewed book coming out May 18th and available for pre-hunter now? Somebody knows how to get their questions answered. But I can only picture the Anthropocene as rodents. Do be as advice appreciated, not San Diego, but I'm right here, Carmen. Oh, I think you lean and do it. Oh, I mean, I can't speak for V.E. Schwab, but if somebody read the fault in our stars and throughout the entire novel, in their minds, I they were seeing my,

from American tale, I would be, I from American tale. I would be thrilled. I would be so pleased. I would yeah, I would just be in awe of the fact that a human imagination can do that. I actually have read a science fiction book before and I won't tell you what it is maybe because I can't remember for sure but also because I don't want to spoil it

where for the first half of the book you imagine the characters as humans, but then halfway through, you realize that they are not human-shaped. And maybe that's what's happening. And maybe V.E. Schwab is out there knowing that these characters are mice, but you're the only one who's figured it out. I love that. That's it. That's the answer. And also, I've read that book, and there's lots of good cloaks,

and I love the idea of the mouse in it in a cloak. And like those characters seem very, like they seem like they'd be really dope mice. I completely agree with you, Hank, that a mouse in a cloak really a mouse in any kind of complicated, slightly noir costume is awesome. Right. And they're not only like an actual mouse because I have no interest or affinity toward

actual mice. I'm talking about five animated mice. Yes. I'm talking about five, exactly. Yeah. No, that sounds great. I don't know how to, like, if you get like four books from now and it's still happening, even then, I think just like live your whimsy.

This is great. Yeah. I mean, wouldn't you be happy if people read an absolutely remarkable thing and we're like, this is an incredible analysis of internet mouse culture? I think, I think if we end up someday making a TV show or a movie out of it, I'm going to write it into the contract must be mice. And they're going to take their pen and they're going to strike through it. And then my agent is going to be like, what the hell, Hank? You just going to, I know your agent. She's also my agent. And I love the idea of you emailing her and saying, yeah, no, this

looks good. Everything looks good here. I love all of it. There's just one thing I'd like to add a mouse cause. No, that's not to be said. Not CLA, CLA, WS, CLA, USC. That's right. A mice cause.

I just, I think that the show is only going to work if it's a sort of American tale in the 21st century, kind of vibe. I mean, God, I gotta read a darker sheet of magic again. Let me tell you from experience how much movie studios love those causes, even if they aren't about animated mice, how much they love those causes. There's something in one of the contracts that I signed early on in my career,

speaking of Mars, that refers to the company's ownership of the rights in perpetuity for display in any place on earth or anywhere else. Yeah. Some lawyer was like, hey, hey, hey, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've listened to a podcast that thinks maybe we'll be on Mars by 2028. or anywhere else. Yeah. Some lawyer was like, hey, hey, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've listened to a podcast that thinks maybe we'll be on Mars by 2028. So we don't want to lose the Martian rights to this young adult novel written in 2005 or

else, we'll go bankrupt. So those words don't cost any money. Might as well write them down. Turns out they do cost a little bit of money, which is part of why they're written down. So Hank, as someone who has put a few of those causes into movie contracts over the years, one thing that's actually changed in the 15 years since my first novel came out is that,

like back then, the movie studios genuinely and deeply did not care what authors thought. And I mean that in a profound way, like individuals might care, you know, like, like the people who were making the looking for Alaska project, like they cared because they were nice people and because I had a good relationship with them. And so they cared. But like the institution of the studio did not care at all. But now they kind of can't afford not to care because they know that you have Twitter.

Yeah. They know that you have a direct line to your readership. And so there's a little part of me that thinks that if you really wanna have an absolute remarkable thing, show or movie that starts answering for Morphek Maise, like you might be able to push hard for that. All right, well, I don't recommend that. I don't, I want to pause and just consider the actual creative choice here in addition to

the gag. And like, I don't think that you should like take this bit all the way to like a theater near you. But if I did make a graphic novel adaptation, I could just have it be mice. 100% go down or has to be. Right. Ah, ah, excellent.

John, here's another not Mars questions from Cass who asks, Dear Hank and John, what's the coolest themed party you've ever been to? Who raise a glass, Cass? It's gotta be the pirate birthday party you had when I was like six. I do not remember that. I do. It was very cool. And all of your very cool nine-year-old friends were over.

And I was just completely- All three of them? Yeah, no, I think those two. I think those two of them. Yeah, it's Matt and Andy. But it was very cool. And I was so taken with the whole thing that I remember it to this day. Wow. Also, I have not been to a lot of themed parties

and would like to go to a Mars themed party, whenever possible. Yes, I agree that our first party on the other side of this should be both perseverance themed and Mars themed. I think you could do a kind of double theme. Twin theming is very dangerous with parties, of course. You've got to be very careful when you do that. You don't want to have an, you know, like an under the sea prom that's also

a 1970s prom. That's too much. I, when I was, when I turned either 26 or 27 years old, I apologized and I apologized to John Keats for not remembering the age of his death. My roommates threw me a birthday party called John Green has outlived John Keats, at which we had like a kind of John Keats themed birthday party. Everybody who came to this big birthday dinner had to bring a poem and like we all read, read our poems around the table. And it was really, really lovely. And I think the last person who read, read, owed on a Grecian urn, which ends beauty is truth and truth beauty. That is all you know and all you need to know. And I was just really nice. So if you're turning either 26 or 27, that's my recommendation.

John, here's another Mars question that comes from Sam who asks, dear Hank and John, from what I understand, perseverance has a nuclear battery. On the very slim chance that there is still life on Mars, isn't there the danger that the radiation will kill this life? Sam. Oh gosh, no. If there's so much radiation on Mars, so much, that if there is, if there is life on the surface It is very good at not being destroyed by radiation. So there's that bit of it

There's also the bit of it that this is the radiation inside is very heavily shielded to the point where like humans can work next to the Rover without any problems and did for a long time. So yeah, the thought of where life is though, so taking your question to another level, it is almost definitely not on the surface because it's just very like it's desiccated, the atmospheric pressure is very low. It's very cold. It's very cold. There's lots of radiation. So the where we think that there might be life is if there is still geological activity, like there's still warmth from the inside of the planet, that might have created pockets of liquid water under the surface, potentially very deep under the surface, and we're not really

sure, you know, that's also possible that it's just like definitely not a thing because anywhere there's warm water, it will find a way to evaporate. But there's also these pockets of cold water that we found that have another problem, which is that they have tons of these very nasty ionic compounds in them. So all kinds of weird, bad salts that would probably interfere with life. So there's, it is still pretty unlikely that there is life on Mars. It's not ruled out for sure. The thing that perseverance is really looking for is signs of past life, which is much more likely, and also potentially not that hard to find if you go to the right places where there was long standing water, which is where life would happen, and if that life has managed to leave behind any

sort of evidence of itself in the form of, you know, billions of years old fossils, we could actually see those things and do tests. Now, it can be hard to tell the difference between a fossil and just a regular rock when you're talking about microbial life. So, we have these on earth, these fossils of bacterial mats. So, back when earth had nothing but bacteria, like, they would die in these layers, and you can find these fossils of bacterial mats. And so we know

what that looks like on Earth. But you also do sort of chemical analysis to see if, if the stuff that the rocks are made of makes you think this is kind of how life would gather chemicals together. I've been reading Philip Dehrmer of Kurtz-uzat, his forthcoming book about the immune system, and it's really wonderful and beautiful and fascinating, and like a really in-depth, long Kurtz Kuzat video, it's just brilliant, but one of the things I've learned is that around or as much as half of all bacteria in the oceans die from viral infections,

every 48 hours. It's a weird balance. The extent of life on earth is it's mind blowing. Like how do you get your head around the idea that a drop of white river water has a hundred million viral particles inside of it. And so like life is so, so much more abundant than we understood even a few decades ago. And we know so much more about what it might look like.

We know so much more about like what the remnants of life might look like that I'm really hopeful that people will be able to figure something out, but it's amazing to think that we're going to, we have this rover that's going to look at the surface of Mars and try to make conclusions without human hands there to sift through fossils or whatever. It's just mind-blowing to me that we're able to do science almost as if we had robot arms, but they're millions of miles away. Yeah. And we continue to do it. And I mean, it just feels so good that it's that it worked. I mean, there's a lot of people who worked really hard

and are very happy that it worked, but I didn't work at all. And I'm like, it's not like, it isn't really about that. It's just like, oh God, I just know how hard it is. And how unlikely it is. And how important it is. It just feels really good, feel really good.

And it's all kinds of stuff that I don't feel good about right now, but I feel really good about that. I remember when Curiosity landed, like thinking, oh, we really needed that. Like as a species, we really needed that when. And I was just like, wow, I don't know. What were we bummed out about in 2013?

I don't know. Oh, something just like 33 years of incredible progress at battling child mortality and global absolute poverty. Is that what we were bummed out about? I remember in 2013 thinking that child mortality will just continue to decline because that's what it does. Well, this is the thing. Progress is never a straight line

and it is important to remember that, but it does have a direction to it overall. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I'll tell you Hank, that is not born out by history, in my opinion. Like, we've had some very long periods where things got much, much worse for humans. Yeah.

Which reminds me, actually, that today's podcast is brought to you by the 14th century, the 14th century calamitous. This podcast is also brought to you by the month March, which we have just entered into and is also named for Mars. So boom, take that. And today's podcast is brought to you by Perseverance, Perseverance, a value that landed on Mars. And also this podcast is brought to you by a darker shade of cheese, a darker shade of cheese by V.E. Schwab. It's your day. It's great. It's a great mouse book. Hank, before we get to the all important news from Mars and then to a far less or extent

AFC moment, I need to let you know about a few responses that we received, not just from Mason, whose dad works on the expanse, but also this email, which came in from Jan Willem who writes, dear John and Hank, I agree with your claim that one man cannot be two presidents. And yes, Hank, we are returning to the issue of whether or not Trevor Cleveland is one president or two presidents. But does this mean that John has been drinking one diet doctor pepper his whole life just divided into different cans?

And if not, what exactly is the difference between doctor pepper presidents and vaccines? You'll recall, Hank, that I said that if you get the two doses of the COVID vaccine, you're getting one vaccine twice. Yes. But did I just drink one diet, doctor pepper twice, twice if I had two separate diet, Dr. Pepper's? This is a good question, Jan Lohman, and a reminder that language does not exist.

Outside of us, it is only to serve our purposes. That's right. So I had two diet, Dr. Pepper's, and I hopefully soon will have one vaccine. I just like the idea that there is a giant doctor pepper out there somewhere and they're just like canning up individual pieces of it for you, just like carving off a real photo sections of it. It's kind of true. There's sort of like the conceptual diet doctor pepper because like if you had a diet doctor pepper

and wonder the taste of different, you'd be like, this isn't diet, Dr. Pepper. It wouldn't be. And in fact, like those, the mix of those 23 different flavors is what diet, diet, Dr. Pepper is, right? Like it, right. And so in that sense, I am only ever having one diet, Dr. Pepper, because if they changed the makeup of it even a little bit, it would be devastating for me. I don't want to exaggerate it, but that is the situation. We also got an incredible email

from somebody identified only as sweatsuit sales associate, which is not an easy phrase to pronounce, who writes, Dear John and Hank, I am a professional hoodie expert as I work for a retailer whose mission is to close everyone in matching gray sweatsuits. Wait, what?

You got to have a mission. That's what they say when you start a business school. They say, pick something and go for it. What is the problem that you're trying to sell? We're trying to solve the problem that not everyone is wearing matching gray sweatsuits. Yeah. So anyway, this person goes on to write about the little pocket

that's inside of the hoodie pocket that you can get if you buy a hoodie at dftba.com and also if you buy a matching gray sweatsuit at this nameless retailer. So this is called a pocket for essentials as it's called in the biz apparently. I know that you stated you would not keep any of your essentials in such a pocket, but imagine if you will that you are also wearing your sweatpants with your hoodie. Now you have four to five pockets in which to store your essentials, but those in the sweatpants bumping around all day are undoubtedly far less secure than the teensy inner pocket

nestled safely within your cozy kangapouch. Some sweatpants might also have a small safety pocket, but these are often situated inside the waistband or other less accessible locations. So a sweat suit wearing person's best option for key storage is therefore the inner pocket of the Hoodie's Kanga pouch. And I mean, that person has a level of expertise in this field that I will never approach.

And so it's for your keys. It's for your keys. It's like, you gotta have a safe key spot, which for clarity is my jeans. Well, no, winked because in the future, you wearing a gray sweatsuit, whether you like it or not. That's what we all wear on Mars. It's the Mars outfit. Everybody on Mars knows that it's way too much, it's way too much trouble to pick clothes out, which

reminds us it is time for the news from Mars as if this hasn't all been the news from Mars. So Farah Alabe is a systems engineer at NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She has worked on several Mars missions. She started working there in 2014, and has worked on the Insight Lander, and also the Marco Cube Sats.

And most recently, the Perseverance Rover, and I'm so excited to have this conversation and share it with all of you. How's Mars, Farah? It's cold, but it's beautiful. Oh God, I live in Montana, so I know all about that, except that I can totally breathe the atmosphere here, which is dope.

It's so exciting to have you here. Thank you so much for making the time and congratulations. I have to confess as I watched the live stream. I'm curious what your experience of those, you know, like last 10 or 15 minutes was. My experience was pure terror followed by a rush, an unexpected rush of sobbing. Yeah. Turning my shirt so happened to me. I feel like those last, especially the last seven minutes,

like, you know, when we, you separate from your crew stage and you're like, all right, we're doing this guys. I was, it was probably the longest and shortest seven minutes of my life. I'm not sure that I breathed. You were supposed to like stay in your, you know, in your seat and be all prim and proper. I couldn't, I was like running, like pacing around my desk in my little COVID square that I'm

allowed. I expressed itself more in joy for me. I mean, once we landed, I knew I had a job for the next couple of years. That's nice. You know, in addition to the fact that I've worked on this for so long. And, but yeah, I mean, for me, it was joy. And to be honest, that moment for me it was joy of it and and to be honest that moment for me was when I saw that first picture you know we've been on

all way to Mars for seven months and yeah you're in space but it's dark you don't you don't really kind of like imagine yourself with the rover there's nothing to see and then you see that first picture and I was like oh what like we're on Mars like this is not Earth, this is a different planet. Like, somewhere else, like, what happened? Well, we know what happened. Well, you say that you didn't imagine yourself with the rover and I think that's a really good way

to put it. It's like, we, you know, obviously I'm not on Mars. You're not on Mars. No one is on Mars, but perseverance is on Mars. And I really do kind of put myself in its shoes. I hadn't really thought of that. But like, those pictures that come in that are so high resolution now compared to what we were getting when I was a teenager when Pathfinder was happening are just like, it really

does feel so real that that other world is there and that we are kind of as humans there. Yeah, I mean, I always say that, you know, I'm the closest to get to Mars Explorer, I explore through the eyes and ears of the rover, and as you said, like the technology has gone so far forward now that, I mean, we have high resolution video that we're gonna get from Mars and we have high resolution video that we're going to get from Mars and and we have two microphones so we'll get video and sound matched together

which is you know as cool as you can get to experiencing Mars from Earth from the comfort of your own home right. Yeah I mean there's obviously a lot of people who work on the perseverance mission what are your parts of the mission. So I have a few different hats. So leading up to launch, I was part of the mobility team. So I did a lot of the testing for driving the Rover. My particular job is to make sure the Rover doesn't get lost on Mars, literally. So it seems like, you're like, oh yeah, of course

you can find yourself. But it's not obvious. There's no GPS, there's no maps. And the Rover has to know how to call home. So it has to know where Earth is and where to point to talk to it. So that has been my job on Earth. Don't ask me for directions, but I can promise you I'm not gonna lose the rover on Mars. So and what we do is we use on board instrumentation and then we actually use a sun and the time and you know if we can Know very very well where the sun is in the sky and what time it is,

we can figure out which way we're pointed and how to call home. But now that we've landed, I again, wear a couple different hats. So the past couple of days on Mars, I've been checking out my system, finding the rover, making sure it's in the right place. And now I'm actually going to be part of

the surface operation planning. So when we do operations on Mars we don't just, you know, it's not like a video game. I don't have a joystick at my desk. I wish I did, but I'm not just driving the rover. We have to plan everything ahead of time. And so we plan it during the Martian night and it's a whole team effort. There's, you know, about 50, 60 people on a given day doing this. Each person has their own piece of the puzzle. Someone does the driving, the moving the arm, the moving, XYZ instrument. My job is to put all those pieces together and make a coherent plan that makes it up to the rover. So that's one hat and then the other, which is my favorite hat that

I wear for this mission, is that I'm in charge of coordinating all of the operations for the helicopter that we brought on with us so. Oh wow! Yeah so we have a small helicopter called ingenuity that is tucked in below the rover and in you know just under a month we're gonna start driving towards a potential site to drop off that rover, deploy that rover on the surface of Mars which is not a simple feat because we have to sort of separate it from us and not crush it when we drive away from it and then coordinate the flights and you know, we're going to take videos of the flights and things like that. So I do all of that coordination to make that happen. So that's really exciting.

So that's a lot of different things. Yeah, that's a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't slept much the past few months, but I love what I do so much. It makes it easy. Yeah. And are you now on Martian time or opposite Martian time because you have to plan

during the night? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's, you know, as we're speaking, it's 11 a.m. Pacific time, and it's actually just about my wake up time. But, so yeah, we work during the Martian night right now, unfortunately, Earth time and Maris time are pretty much synced up. So that means I work during the Earth night

here in Pacific time. But, you know, for folks who are not familiar with, of course, who are not familiar with Martian time. What does that mean? Well, a Martian day is 24 hours and 40 minutes. So that means that I work during the Martian night every day, but it's not just a simple shift in my schedule. My schedule shifts by 40 minutes a day. And so far what I can tell you is it feels like big jet lag to every day. It's just a little bit every day. I'm not looking forward to having to wake up at 10 or 11 p.m. to go to work. But I mean I think it's all temporary because it'll shift again and then it'll be fine again. Yeah. Oh sure. Yeah. That's what everybody says.

Are we be working in the Martian night for this entire two year experience? No, no, no, no. I am, we are only doing that for the first 90 souls. The soul is a Martian day. So we really only do it for all of the initial checkouts, flying the helicopter, getting to our first science site and doing that first, exciting stuff that we wanna do. And then once things are stable

and we kinda know what we're doing, then we go into an every other day operations mode where we plan during the almost human times. I don't I don't think my family would be too happy with me if I was living on Mars time for two years. Yeah. For two years of that. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody nobody says, oh boy, night shift is is much better. If you move it 40 minutes a day, it slowly turns into day shift and then slowly turns back into night shift over and over again.

Yeah. I don't think that that's the best way to survive a graveyard shift. It's pretty brutal, but it must be so exciting. And also this, I mean, these last few days must have just been so exciting and surreal and different from, I mean, I would imagine pretty different from anything that came before. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's kind of, I think the adrenaline rush is like finally coming down.

I've worked, I don't know how many hours in the past four days and didn't even eat coffee, which is like not normal for me. But you know, it's like, when you you're shift and the data comes down from the rover and you see, I mean, we've been seeing all of this is getting released to the public this week. I know. imagery from the descent and landing, imagery from Mars and like, higher as imagery, it is incredible. And you know, the way to think about it is when I'm on shift, I'm one of the first humans to see that part of Mars, right? And that is such a privilege and such a rush.

I mean, we're all screaming and clapping all day and pretty much in all shifts right now. I'm sure it'll come down, but right now, like, oh, we did this, always saw this. Woo! Oh, I mean, I've keep seeing people on Twitter, basically, saying I just saw a picture or a video of a thing that we haven't released yet and it's very exciting.

But 10 minutes ago, like while we were preparing for this, the video of the landing was released. So I would normally be watching that right now, but I'm talking to you, which is even better. That is something that I appreciate so much about NASA and public space missions generally is the focus on really sharing information with the public and making everything publicly available in the public domain. It's just it's such an encouragement in a time where access to information gets so fractured and gets split up and tries to get monetized six ways to Sunday to be able to, you know, see images from the Hubble Space Telescope or from Perseverance and know that those images belong to all of us.

I mean, it's your taxpayer's money, right? But also it's part of NASA's charter to educate and provide information. I mean, I think that's the whole point of science as a whole, right? It's not for any single person, exploration and sciences, is to be shared with humanity because we benefit from science education. So it's certainly one of the reasons why I work for JPL in NASA is because of that open facing part of what we do, right? We explore for the sake of exploring.

We have no agenda other than understanding and that that's such a pure thing to get to do in your life is just like, we do this because we can and because we want to and we're gonna share it with you the best way we can. That's awesome. It is super awesome. Okay, can I ask you a little bit of how you got to where

you're at? What was your what's your path looks like look like? Meandery. Yeah. So I was I was born in Montreal. I'm actually French Canadian. I grew up kind of like an hour outside of Montreal. And then moved to England when I was a teenager. So that's why I learned English. So if you're wondering what this weird accent is, that's what it is. It's a Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British.

The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian British. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French Canadian. The French focused in sort of jet engines and so the era of aerospace. So when I finished my master's, I kind of always had this itch to work in space. That's what I wanted to do. I grew up wanting to be an astronaut.

And I got an offer to go do my PhD at MIT. So I kind of just left everything behind and moved to Boston and thought, well, try the space thing and see what happens. And during that time, actually I ended up at JPL in 2012 to Boston and thought, well try the space thing and see what happens. And during that time, actually I ended up on JPL in 2012 when they landed the Curiosity Rover and I was in intern here and I was just so amazed. I mean, that's the best advertisement you have for your interns of like, come work here. Thank you, Finland. It's huge rover on Mars and I got to be there when it happened.

I got to like, talk to the people that did it. I saw the first imagery come down and I was in love at that point. I was like, this is what I wanna do. This is the team I wanna be on. I mean, these people are changing history, right? Like they're writing the books on how we do this. No one's done this before. So I took my resume, knocked on every single door. I must have

annoyed so many people sat in their offices and was like, I want a job here. So eventually I, yeah, they did give me a job. So after my PhD, I came out here in 2014. And this is actually my third Moore's mission. I worked on the insight landing that happened two and a half years ago. There was a companion mission called Marco, which was a set of CubeSats, small spacecraft that were doing telecom relay for the landing, so I worked on that too. It strange my degree, you know, my PhD thesis is in planetary exploration and I always kind of focused on outer planets. I really think the outer moons are really cool and yet in the past seven years I've only worked

on Mars and I don't regret it at all. I mean it's a very good planet. And now maybe the second best one. It is the second best planet in the solar system for sure. There's not even a close. Not a close second. It's not like it's not it's not. Yeah. It's right. Like earth is by far the best because it's the only place we can live. Yeah. And Mars is really the only place other place we could potentially go without dying. So yeah. Yeah. Right. Pretty immediately. Yeah. And now there are interns who watched you a few days ago celebrating that. Yeah that landing and caught the bug in that moment or people listening to this who, you know, feel the excitement of that space exploration and you are that person who those people were for you, which is really lovely.

Yeah, that's kind of wonderful to think about. It's kind of coming full circle. And I show hope that people see this and get excited whether it is that they come work in this domain or just get excited about space and science as a whole. I think we need more of that right now. Like we need more people to just understand what the importance and the impact of science is and that these things are worth doing. Oh yeah.

Oh, thank you so much. And thank you for taking the time today. I don't want to keep you over your time, especially since you just woke up. Hopefully you can get a cup of coffee and get started on the Martian night. I'm actually going to go check out that press conference to see that lightning video.

I mean, I've seen it before. But now you're going to see the public version. It was very cool. I watched it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have, but I did watch it've seen it before. Right, but now you're gonna see, like, you're gonna see the public version. It was very cool. I watched it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have, but I did watch it. It's amazing. We have seen it and speculated on how they should do the montage of the video.

So I hope that they had a good job. They did. They did. The part where they cut from the little rocket thing boosting away, I was like, oh, it's over, but then they cut to the mission controller. Everyone was celebrating, and I was like, oh, no, over. But then they cut to the mission control everyone was celebrating. And I was like, oh, I'm going to cry when I watch it again now. Yeah. So they did a great job. I cried so hard. I cried really hard when curiosity landed

too, but I cried hard this time just because it was an incredible act of perseverance. You know, like it's not easy to get on. For the people who worked on the mission. perseverance. You know, for the people who worked on the mission and really for all of us, it represents evidence of hope for the future. Yeah, I mean, to tell you a little anecdote here before I leave, so that the name Perseverance got picked, you know, back in January, February of 2020. And I remember, you know, we were on that by the time, we were all together in one room at the time. You know, there's things we don't do anymore. And I remember they announced the name and all of us were like, eh, you know, it's hard to spell and like,

it is. It's kind of long to say, show whatever we'll call it, perseverance, we'll call it Percy, we'll move on. And then COVID hit in March and that name became so real for us and you know it became what our team is because we were like four months you know away from launch and overnight we were told you can't come to lab anymore and you got to figure out how do you do your job and still meet that planetary you know deadline by the way in four months and you know there's no relaxing, there's no like,

you know, we're in a global pandemic, take care of yourself. Like you got to get this done. And the team just came together, right? And we made it work somehow. And looking back, there's so many hurdles we had along the way, COVID being the biggest that we made through.

And, you know, we, we piloted and landed this thing mostly remotely right like on landing day when you saw those people in that room this is the first time they were in the same room together in over a year and somehow they still pulled it off so so that name became very very real for us so you know whoever when they picked that name I think I don't think they could have for seen what it would have meant. But I think it's real for us. It's real for the United States as a whole at this point.

And I would say probably the humanity as a whole, that's watching way. And so we couldn't have picked a better name, and I'm so proud to be behind that team too. Oh, thank you so much again. Yeah. Here's to Perseverance. Ooh, woo. Yay. So, John. Here's to perseverance. Oh, woo.

Hey. So John, he's time for you to follow up. What's the news from AMC Wimbledon? Well, this is the rare week where the news from AMC Wimbledon is not quite as important as the news from Mars. But there is news this week, AMC Wimbledton announced their permanent new first team coach who will replace manager, Glenn Hodges. And it's Mark Robinson who coached the kids. He's been with the club since 2004. He's been the Academy coach for a long time. In fact, a lot of the players

who are now in our first team were coached by him when they were 12 or 13 years old. It's a really lovely story. This is his first shot at professional football management. I really, really like him. I've known him for a long time. I just, I think so much of him as a person. I really, really hope that he's able to have a lot of success as the AFC Wimbledon manager. It's obviously a huge opportunity for him.

And everybody, I think at the club, it's safe to say, is reading for him. Wimbledon are currently in the first relegation spot, uh, 25 points after 27 games. So we definitely need a change of fortune and hopefully this will be it. All right, well, I'm happy for you, John. But mostly I'm happy for Mars and humanity. It's incredible. And Farah and all the people with Jeff Repulsion and Laboratory

and also to everybody else. And I hope that everybody can enjoy perseverance as much as I can. It's so exciting that the the image the image bank has opened up so we can just look at all of the pictures it's taking and it's just amazing how much data they can get from Mars. Really fast now. You know, that first picture coming in is always such a big deal. But you know, the good ones are always, you know,

you have to wait a little while and they're starting to come in in spades. Well, here's to perseverance. Here's to perseverance, John. We're off to record our Patreon Only podcast this weekend stuff where we talk about things that are making us happy. I think probably not what I'm going to be talking about. This podcast is edited by Joseph Tune of Editions produced by Rosie on a Halseyu Haas and shared in Gibson. Our communication coordinator is Julia Bloom, our editorial assistant, is Deboki Trucker-Vardy, the music you're hearing now,

and at the beginning of the podcast, it's by the great Gunnarola, and as they say in our hometown, don't forget to be awesome.