Main Engine Cut Off - T+119: Dr. John Charles

Episode Date: April 18, 2019

Dr. John Charles spent nearly 33 years at NASA—most recently as Chief Scientist of the Human Research Program—working on human spaceflight through Shuttle, Mir, ISS, and beyond. He lead missions such as STS-95 (John Glenn’s Shuttle flight), STS-107, and the Twins Study with Scott and Mark Kelly. He retired from NASA in February 2018 and is now the Scientist in Resident at Space Center Houston. We talk about his career, the human spaceflight issues he worked and solved in his time at NASA, and the things that need to be solved for the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 39 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Rui, Julian, Lars, Heather, and six anonymous—and 238 other supporters on Patreon. AstroCryptoTriviology, John’s Blog About John John Charles (@csm014) | Twitter Human Research Program | NASA Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon Music by Max Justus

Welcome to the Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo, and we've got a very special guest with us today, Dr. John Charles, a man with a resume so long that it's probably taller than me, so I won't even attempt to describe it myself. How are you doing, John? I'm very well. Thank you very much, Anthony. Let's start off with your background, because it's pretty extensive. Could you give us a rundown of your history? You can take it as far back as you want to take it, but the notable events in your life? Yeah, thank you. I love to talk about myself, and I will at great length.

I was born just before the dawn of the space age, and I really am a child of the space age. When I was growing up in a small town in central Texas, the Mercury missions were just happening, and I was always sad that they seemed to launch after I'd gone to school, and they seemed to splash down before I got home. So I never got a chance to watch them on TV except in the evening news. But I remember being particularly impressed by John Glenn's mission in 1962, and I have recollections of pretending to be John Glenn by going out on the playground, and it was not a—this is central Texas, so there's an awful lot of dirt and dust in the playground and not much grass. But I would lay on the little bridge, a small cement bridge across a ditch across the playground because it had handlebars. It had handrails, and I could lay on my back and put my legs up in the air like John Glenn sitting in the capsule.

And so I would lay there and pretend I was John Glenn launching into space. And I think I remember a teacher or two coming over and asking if I'd fallen down and hurt myself. And I said, no. Are you stuck, John? I'm playing John Glenn. They said, oh. And they walked away shaking their head and probably thought, this kid will never amount to anything. But I decided at about that age, and that was about the age of seven, by 10, I was well and truly dedicated to a life in space exploration. Of course I wanted to be an astronaut

but I was always taller than the height limit of the astronauts. I'm now 6'7 and the height limit at the tallest was 6'4 and that really was, that would have been a squeeze. Especially in a Mercury capsule, I don't think you would have fit. Especially in a Mercury, I would have had to have an extension, a little bubble dome on me.

But the that was a driving motivation for my education, my activities. So everything I did, I was always trying to position myself to be involved in the space program. And of course, when I came to high school, I took all the advanced science, AP science courses. And then I got to college. I started out as a physics major because I figured that's, you know, the purest of sciences and that would be the best preparation. But it turned out I don't have a natural affinity for math. So physics was not a good fit. And I was also very impressed with

the Apollo missions. And so I was interested in geophysics. And I thought there's also a possibility of employment in the oil industry. But that didn't really stick. And then I finally realized that when I had been younger, I'd been wanting to design model rockets and launch small animal payloads like crickets or mice or something. I'd never actually done it. So I was more of a dreamer than a doer. But I said, you know what, since I seem to have a natural interest in launching small animals in the space, maybe I ought to go into biology. And I got an undergraduate degree at Ohio State in biophysics and my PhD in physiology and biophysics at the University of Kentucky. My graduate work dealt with the frequency response characteristics of the cardiovascular

control system that used a large animal centrifuge, mimicking some of the terrain following flight of Air Force fighter jets at that time. So I learned enough mathematics to deal with the frequency analysis. I learned physiology, of course, because I was a physiology student. I learned how to work with technology and with large groups of technical people that were not necessarily biologists. So I intentionally chose that program, and I'm glad I did because it prepared me to work in a technocratic research institution like NASA. And then I went to the Aerospace Medical Association meetings regularly as part of a group from Kentucky. And at one of those meetings, I met Carolyn Leach Huntoon, who was a senior

life sciences manager. And she told me that the best way to come on board would be through a postdoctoral fellowship. So I applied to the National Research Council, got an NRC postdoc at Johnson Space Center from 1983 to 1985. And when my postdoc was over, I was looking at what, how else can I stay connected. I was talking to one of the contractors about finding a job, and Dr. Huntoon came to my rescue and essentially created or at least identified a civil service job for me. So that was a real blessing. Academically, it's like getting tenure as soon as you finish your fellowship. So I was very happy to get a civil service job. And oh, Dr. Huntoon, a great

debt of gratitude for taking a chance on me. And she mentored me pretty much throughout our joint time at NASA. Started out in the cardiovascular lab doing cardiovascular research. That was early in the shuttle era. I showed up between STS-7 and STS-8 in the single-digit era of space shuttle flights. And the lab I was working in, the cardiovascular lab, was developing countermeasures for the cardiovascular issues of space flight. So I affiliated myself with them very enthusiastically. And then one of the senior leaders passed away, and I inherited his investigation, which was lower body negative pressure, which was a technique developed on Skylab to stress the cardiovascular system, in which he had proposed as a countermeasure to recondition the cardiovascular system.

And that became my entree into doing serious in-flight research, not by myself. Clearly, I was on the ground, but the astronauts would do my experiment. One of the most complicated experiments that ever flew on the shuttle, if I may say so modestly. most complicated experiments that ever flew on the shuttle, if I may say so modestly. And so that gave me a great deal of insight into spaceflight, biomedical research, and spaceflight operations. After about a decade in that role, I was kicked upstairs to science management, and I oversaw some of the investigations of the American astronauts on the Russian space station Mir. I was the lead

coordinating scientist for the John Glenn shuttle mission, so I had a chance to work with my childhood hero directly. That must have been awesome. Oh, that was my peak of my career at that point. That was just about the coolest thing I could imagine. And to have John Glenn call me by name and actually telephone me a time or two, And he was looking for somebody else's phone number, but at least, you know, he knew me. That was real wish fulfillment. And also meeting Annie Glenn, his wife, who is absolutely still the most delightful person you can imagine. Just a wonderful couple and a very, very nice person, Annie is. And then I was the lead scientist in the same role for STS-107, the last mission of Columbia.

So we had a very successful science mission, which, of course, as you know, ended very tragically. But we still got a reasonable amount of results, scientific results out of that mission to justify at least some part of the crew's loss. And then after that, I was part of the Johnson Space Center Mars Mission Planning Organization, so I got a chance to see how the Mars mission would be developing and understand some of the constraints that were then valuable when it came time to stand up the Human Research Program. NASA's Human Research Program, which was established in about 2005 by Mike Griffin. And the HRP had and has the charter specifically of preparing for astronaut flights to Mars. And I like to say that we learn things about biology, physiology in spaceflight. And if we happen to cure a disease along the way, well, we're sorry, that was not the intention. We're all about preparing astronauts. But, astronauts, but sometimes these things happen and we just can't avoid it. So far,

we haven't cured any diseases, but we are getting a good handle, I think, on what happens to astronauts in spaceflight. And through my time in HRP, I became the chief scientist of the human research program, which really was the pinnacle of my career. That was my dream job. And I'm here to tell you it is possible to reach your dream job and still have a life afterwards. I'm only 64 so I'm looking forward to one or two more decades of useful work telling the story. And during my time as the chief scientist of the Human Research Program I was asked to lead the planning for Scott Kelly's one-year ISS mission so I stepped aside. We had another chief scientist come in but when that wrapped

up he had rotated out and I took the chief scientist job back over again. So I stepped aside. We had another chief scientist come in, but when that wrapped up, he had rotated out and I took the chief scientist job back over again. So I got two shots at it. I like to think they gave me a second chance to do it right. So that was very gratifying, very fulfilling. able to find a position with our visitor center just across the road here at Johnson Space Center, and it's called Space Center Houston. I'm the scientist in residence, and I'm charged specifically with helping to put rigor in and keep the scientific content in the displays, exhibits, and activities for our guests and our students and our educators. And I have a few other consulting gigs that keep me connected. But I've really had a chance to live my dream and then to talk about it with, you know, folks like you and everybody else. That's awesome. Yeah, that seems like such a natural role to move into after that, to be able to be there at Space Center Houston, people coming through, looking for information on what you're doing down there. That's a pretty great spot for you. And I give my personal tour because I am, in addition to being a scientist, I'm also a lifelong space nerd.

And I followed space history when it wasn't history, when it was current events. And so I know about Mercury and Gemini and Apollo, and I know what came before and I know what came after. And so I can give people my unofficial, highly biased personal tour of the exhibits in Space Center Houston. So that's always a lot of fun just to tell folks the stuff that they had never even thought were questions. I can answer questions they didn't realize they had never even thought were questions. I can answer questions they didn't realize they had just as part of how spaceflight all happened. I love, number one, unofficial biased reports are some of my favorite things in the world. So this is going to be great.

I think you're at such an interesting time. The way that your career laid out through the history of what NASA was working on and then where we're at now, I feel like you have a great perspective on biomedical issues that we dealt with the last 20 years and the things that are going to face us in the next 20. So I would love to get your little running list of what do you think the biggest issues that you solved in the last 20 years of human spaceflight were, and what do you think those biggest issues in the next 20 years will be? Well, looking forward, the Human Research Program has identified the reddest of the risks. Many of the risks started out red, but they became yellow and green with additional insight. But going forward, I think the psychological, psychosocial aspects of a small crew confined in a very small spaceship on an extremely long two and a half year Mars mission and an extremely constrained mission with the idea that the Earth is not something that can simply be hidden by your thumb as it was from the moon, but it is smaller than a pinprick, you know, from the distance of Mars. I suspect we're going to have the possibility of psychological and

psychosocial issues in that setting. Although I am also confident that NASA and the other partners will select people who are supremely capable of dealing with those issues and are so motivated by the missions that they will not, they will not have a lot of problems. Everybody's going to have bad days. And I always tell people that NASA's current work and what we call the human factors and behavior performance element is not to prevent those problems because they're inevitable, but to give the astronauts the tools they need to work through those problems and resume normal activities on the Mars missions. That is the work that's being done right now in isolation studies that NASA is funding. So when people come in for things like HIRA or for the missions over in the Russian facility

in Moscow, they don't expect a quiet 60 days or a quiet six months or four months or whatever it is in those isolation facilities because they are purposely stressed. They're given short sleep. They're given temperature extremes. They're given too much work to do in a short amount of time. They're given random communication failures and just all sorts of everything to make them stressed as a way to test the training they received on resuming normal activities, getting back to a normal level of stress. So that's a big issue. The other biggest issue is going to be the radiation environment of spaceflight. And these are not secrets. We could have said this 50 years ago, 60 years ago, von Braun wrote the same stuff. But there's still issues. I think the radiation

problems are being re-evaluated in the context of what the leading risk really is. And up until now, it's been the risk of the lifetime risk of cancer after radiation exposure in spaceflight. But bear in mind that the lifetime exposure or the lifetime risk of cancer in astronauts puts them in a different domain. They will go to Mars in the 2030s, so we're talking 15 years from now. And then our lifetime risk assumes that NASA is going to be responsible for any cancer they develop for the rest of their lives, which means it may well be 40 or so years after 2030s, which means we might be talking about cancer in the 2070s. And given our progress over the last several decades in treating and understanding cancer,

and I hope, I hope, I hope a cure for cancer through medical research on the ground, it's entirely possible that an astronaut may get cancer from the radiation exposure in space flight and will be able to be cured and treated by current clinical practices in the 2040s, 50s, 60s. Which tells people like me that maybe cancer is not the bugaboo that we should be focusing on because, number one, NASA's research budget will never cure cancer or prevent cancer. It's too small and it's divided over too many areas. cure cancer or prevent cancer. It's too small and it's divided over too many areas. And number two, it's not the highest risk that the people will be facing on Mars missions. Another risk that has not received as much attention is the risk of soft tissue damage, atherosclerosis, because of

radiation exposure. And that is now getting to be a very current hot topic in spaceflight research. Some soft tissue damage still takes a long time to develop. It's still going to be a post-flight kind of a problem. Another example of that is cataracts. Astronauts exposed and people exposed to high radiation levels can develop cataracts in the lenses of their eyes. And what happens now, it's almost, it's not a non-issue, but it's getting to be less significant. People have lens replacements and see better than they did with the lenses God gave them. So I'm kind of wishing I had cataracts so I could get new lenses and see better.

I want the upgrade. Yeah, that's great. Yes, I'd like the upgrade. But the problems that we probably really need to be focusing on, and this is not my idea. I've had these discussions with my colleagues at NASA. really need to be focusing on, and this is not my idea, I've had these discussions with my colleagues at NASA, the problem we ought to be focusing on is the effect of radiation acutely in spaceflight, especially its effects on cognition. Wouldn't you hate for that galactic cosmic ray that's been traveling from a supernova in a distant galaxy for billions of years to hit

the one part of your brain that tells you how to fly your Mars spaceship? That would be bad timing. that tells you how to fly your Mars spaceship. You know, that would be bad timing. So it's important for, I think, NASA to focus its research on the acute effects, you know, the cognition and other kinds of effects, and as well as solar flares, which can have whole body effects, but they're more intermittent. So those kinds of things are the long poles.

Another long pole is going to be medical care. How do you take care of astronauts on long duration flights when there's no dock in the box? And perhaps the dock is one of the crew members. And, you know, God forbid that guy gets – that person, that man or woman is the one that gets sick. Then what do you do? Luckily, NASA is very good at selecting people as astronauts who are multitaskers, who are very good at many things. I like to say it's not – you're not going to pick the best neurosurgeon or the best jet pilot or the best geologist or the best whatever. You're going to pick the best neurosurgeon, jet pilot, geologist, concert pianist, gourmet chef to be an astronaut. And NASA picks

those people right now. So I'm confident they will continue to pick those people. So really, they will all have the appropriate training. They'll have the minimum amount of capability on board to take care of the likeliest disease processes. So those are important things. Other things they're going to have to worry about, of course, are living in an isolated facility, isolated and confined facility, for long periods of time, recycling everything. You know, they do, I think, 95% water recycling on the station. It's got to be close to 100% on a Mars vehicle. And I love to tell the old joke that the astronauts tell about water recycling on the space station, which is making tomorrow's coffee out of yesterday's coffee. You know, it's just, you don't have a lot of excess resources and no capability for resupply

on a Mars mission until you get to Mars and stuff that's been pre-positioned for you has been sitting there for two plus years, plus the time it took to get there. So, you know, the cookies are going to be stale by the time you get to them. But it's, you know, you're not going to Mars for the cuisine. You're going to Mars to work. And the point I do always make to people is that Mars missions will be extremely expensive, the most expensive and the most challenging and the most dangerous undertakings humans have ever taken. And for them to, for it to be not just a one and done,

not just toes in the dust and then go home and think of something else to do, for it to be a continuing series of missions, each mission will have to be spectacularly successful in terms of Nobel prizes per month. You know, almost, it's, it's almost going to have to be that kind of success for Congress and for all the partners to say, that was a good idea, let's do it again, and let's do it again, and let's do it again. So that means the astronauts will have to arrive on Mars in the best condition of their lives, because we will be working them harder than anybody's ever worked

for either 30 days if it's a touch-and-go, or for 500 days if it's an 18 month mission and to to do that kind of work continuously means they can't be limping when they get to mars they have to be strapping and robust and ready to go and hard charge so they can be limping when they get back to earth and nasa only does round trip missions nasa's not a one-way ticket to mars at at least not intentionally. So that's sort of the future. That's the future of spaceflight. The current status... I'm doing things backward than what you asked me. No, it's good. I think it's good context, though, to put that all in perspective with

the things that we still have yet to solve. But now let's talk about where we've been. The nice thing is that the current effort we're doing on the space station, I think, has shown that we have a good handle on the medical aspects of spaceflight. We know about the cardiovascular system, about the sensory motor system, about the bones, about the muscles, nutrition. We're still learning about psychology, and radiation is still an ongoing problem. But I think we can check some things off our list and say, okay, we know how to keep cardiovascular systems healthy. It takes a lot of exercise, nutrition, hydration, all those things. But, duh, that's what it takes on the earth as well. Similarly, we know what to expect with the sensory motor system.

We know what to expect with other systems. And that's one of the values of the Scott Kelly year-long mission and now the Christina Koch extended mission is the fact that we get a chance to test ourselves. We have six-month mission databases and we're testing them on 11 and 12-month missions to see if we're as smart as we think we are. Did we really understand what happens in space? Did we really reach a plateau at four months or five months or six months? Does that plateau maintain for the duration of those missions? And then if so, okay, well, then what's to say

it won't continue for the remainder of the flight duration, and as long as we keep doing the right things to stay healthy, we'll stay healthy. That's the value of the current program, and I think we've been successful. I'm very pleased. I actually am very pleased how successful we've been. I hope NASA agrees with me. Seems like they do, or at least Congress does at this point. At this point, I think so, yeah. So with that as background, you know, when I first arrived, I was a cardiovascular physiologist, and our concern was orthostatic intolerance, fainting when you stand up, or fainting during G-loads. This was an issue in the shuttle era, because for the first time in any space vehicle, astronauts would come back into the Earth's atmosphere and feel Gs sitting upright like we do in airliners and not laying flat on their back,

but their legs up in the air like they did on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Vostok, Foscott, Soyuz, the Chinese vehicle, everybody else comes in recumbent, and the American astronauts on the shuttle were coming in sitting upright. So NASA was concerned about pilots losing consciousness during the terminal approach to the runway, which would be a bad thing to happen. There was some of this concern back on Project Gemini, because although the astronauts did reenter the atmosphere on their backs, when they were under the parachute, the capsule flopped, you know, sideways, so they could land sort of bottom side down. And there was concern in the 60s that

they might faint sitting upright in the capsule as they settled under their parachute. The same kind of thing came back during the shuttle era. So I was a cardiovascular physiologist interested in orthostatic intolerance. How do you prepare astronauts for that? Well, you use G-suits and fluid loading to replace some of the fluids they lost through natural process. And the fluid loading is salt tablets and water, very low tech. And then that's where the lower body negative pressure investigation that I inherited came in because that was a way to try and preload the body with fluids to allow it to be good for orthostatic tolerance, you know, one or more days after the exposure. So you could treat them the day before landing and then they'd be good to go on the landing day. So those were the issues.

And it turned out that the orthostatic problem was really interesting to study, but really hard to cure from first principles, that is, by mechanistic understanding. But it turned out that by the time that I was ready to move out of science and into management, we already had several treatments, several countermeasures for cardiovascular, for the static intolerance. What is the recumbent seating? So if you're on a really long flight, land with your back down instead of your fanny down. And that's how astronauts came back on the space shuttle after long duration flights on the station. the space shuttle after a long duration flights on the station. NASA provided them with little litters they would lay out on the floor and they'd be laying down instead of sitting up in the airline chairs. Give them fluid loading and they do that. We have lower body negative pressure, but that was more cumbersome than NASA wanted to embark on. So they didn't really follow up on

that. The Russians do use it though. Part of their post end of mission treatment, NASA does not. And so far, I haven't seen any big differences between the two sets of crew members. Also, it's possible to do cooling, cool the environment or put a liquid cooling garment on the astronaut themselves, which has the effect of closing down the blood vessels in the skin and the periphery and shifting the blood back to the center of the circulation, which is where the heart and the lungs and the brain are, which is a good idea. So we have four or five, depending on how you count them, countermeasures for this problem. So as a recovering cardiovascular physiologist, I led the charge to stop doing cardiovascular research because we were never going to solve the problem at the mechanistic level. Again,

we don't have the resources for that, but we had workarounds. We had five or six solutions to the problem. So we could let the scientific community outside of NASA focus on which genomes and, you know, which chromosomes code for which aspects. And that's, that's wonderful. I hope, I hope they do that and tell me about it, but that's. But that was not going to be our job. Similarly, the space motion sickness problem almost solved itself because a healthy astronaut may feel uncomfortable and motion sick for several hours or several days in spaceflight. And you can give them medications which make them feel better but sort of delay their adaptation. Or you can just let them go cold turkey, which is really kind of inhumane because, you know, the problem with motion sickness is not that you're afraid you're going to die, but you're afraid you're not going

to die if you feel bad enough. But there are medications that they give them to help them through the roughest patches, you know, to cut down on vomiting and things like that. So, but after a few days, you're adapted and you stay adapted pretty much for the remainder of your time in flight. So that one is like the cardiovascular response is largely self-limiting. We also have on the space station developed and demonstrated a resistive exercise device, which seems to protect the muscles and more importantly, to protect the bones. We may never see the full extent of bone loss in spaceflight because we now have a treatment that seems to protect the bones

if you exercise for tens of minutes each day on a resistive exercise device as well as aerobic exercise. So those things that were problems when I started out seem to be under control with our current knowledge and our current technology. And if the longer flights confirm that we really are as smart as we think we are, really have solved these problems, then we're positioned to start doing the more challenging missions like going to Mars. But in my day, orthostatic intolerance, motion sickness, those were the big problems on shorter

duration shuttle flights. It's interesting, and it's almost ironic if that's the right word, that as the missions get longer, we care less about the problems that were so significant to us on shorter missions, just because they're not that big a deal on the longer mission. It makes a lot of sense, though, because the early days, you're just figuring out, can we do this at all? Are we capable of even going into this new environment? And then you start knocking down a few of those issues, and you say, well, what else can we do up here? And that naturally extends to longer missions and more harsh environments. And, you know, so is progress, I guess, at that point.

Yeah. You said a couple of things that I wanted to touch on. Number one, I thought it was very interesting that you started with the social and mental aspects of missions, because I think when we often have conversations about what are the biggest issues to solve, we start with radiation, we start with bone loss or nutrition. So that was, you know, and then you touch on social aspects, but people kind of go, yeah, yeah, we'll figure that out. We'll send them with an iPhone or something. But that's really amazing that that was the first thing in your head.

The other was the cancer thing, because we always talk about radiation and we talk about long-term radiation, but we talk about it outside of the context of human progress here on Earth, and we discount how much progress we've made in the last 30, 40 years and how much we will make, because it's unknowable at a certain extent, but you do have to factor that into a certain point.

So do you see that as, you know, the way that you had your take on it was, well, you know, it's not a problem today, it'll be a problem in 40 years and we'll be better in 40 years. Is that a convincing argument to people within NASA or even outside of NASA, in the government elsewhere? Is that something that you think has a viable path to, you know, being given the green light for a mission to Mars? It depends on whether the green light is going to be given anyway. It could be used as a post hoc justification. I will bet, I've not had this discussion with astronauts, but I will bet you a dollar that if I was to use that argument with astronauts, I'd say,

great, we're good to go. Yeah, I bet with a dollar they would say, great, we're ready to go before you even gave them that justification. That's why I say that, yes, because when I emphasized about arriving on Mars in the best condition of their lives, that's because I have had that very argument publicly with an astronaut who said, don't give us luxury,

don't give us a convenient, comfortable habitat. I'll go to Mars with an air tank and a ham sandwich. convenient comfortable of habitat i'll go to mars you know with an air tank and a ham sandwich that's all i need to go to mars and i stood up after him and said that will be nice for you for your final few breaths of life to fall face first in the dust on mars and say i made it i'm successful but that's not the way to have a sustainable program so i know that they really they're very smart people they want to have long sustainable program. So I know that they really, they're very smart people. They want to have long, happy lives, but they are also very driven to do the mission and things that interfere with the mission, they really try to work around or dismiss. So I think that will be well-received. And, but on the other hand, this will be a great test case because cancer is

possibly the biggest scare, you know, the biggest bugaboo that we have in our lives. We're all terrified of, at my age now, I'm scared of Alzheimer's as well. But cancer is always sort of a go-to, worst possible thing that can happen to you. So it may well be that we'll find out how motivated astronauts really are if we say, you know what, we're not going to worry about your cancer risk. We'll take care of it, you know, in 40 years at the VA or something like that. And we'll see what they say. And radiation has always been the big concern because it is so mysterious and so devastating. Look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And look at Three Mile Island

and look at the Russian reactor that blew up. And look at Fukushima and oh my God, the people's skin sloughs off. Unfortunately, nobody comes back like Fantastic Four with superpowers, but it's always a bad thing that happens to you. And for us to say, you know what, radiation is a really big deal, but it's not the terrifying boogeyman that we've been making it. Let's reconsider this. That's going to take some thinking. And I will tell you that these are not my ideas. I'm taking these ideas from my boss at the Human Research Program who came in with new ideas to say we can't make progress doing the

same old thing. We've got to do new things. So right now, the Human Research Program is looking to de-emphasize the lifetime risk of cancer because its budget isn't going up. In fact, in spite of all the good news, HRP's budget's actually steady or even going down. Go figure that the important parts of a human spaceflight are humans, and we're putting less money into those. But he's also putting more emphasis on the cognitive aspects of spaceflight. What happens acutely when you have a radiation event and it affects you cognitively or performance-wise while you're in the mission? Because the National Cancer Institute is not studying that. That's only NASA's purview, whereas lifetime cancer risks is being studied by lots and lots of other funding sources that have bigger budgets than we do. So that's, you know,

it's, I think what I guess, Anthony, one of my goals in my retirement now that I can speak freely and not have to worry about getting NASA's permission, is to tell people that NASA's, you know, they're pretty smart. You know, like Doonesbury used to say about President Nixon, you know, the president's a lot smarter than you think. You know, NASA's smarter than you may give them credit for, and they're really thinking these things through, and it's time for different ways of thinking about things, not to minimize old problems, but to put them in context.

And maybe I can help do that now from my perch on the outside, give people a little bit of fodder to think about without making it NASA's thing. Yeah, with all the political baggage that comes with that. Well, on that note, let me ask one of those questions. Artificial gravity, what's the deal? Should we be pursuing it? Is it right that we are not pursuing it currently? I mean, I know there's some centrifuges on the ISS today that are there, but there's not a big investment in let's spin up an entire habitat and see what that mitigates, whether it's the eye issues or some different cardiovascular stuff. Maybe we can exercise a little bit less and do a little more science. Where are we at on that? And what's NASA's take from the inside, from the outside? Where do you sit on that? Back in the 60s, I've read some old memos from astronauts

that were asked that opinion so they could form an astronaut office position. And in the 60s, the consensus was, why were we going into space where we're weightless and then bringing gravity with us? The one thing that we're trying to escape, why do we bring it along with us? And that's sort of the sort of the ongoing position as far as i can tell not speaking for the astronauts but when i talk to them i sort of hear that astronauts like weightlessness number one it's unique you don't get anywhere else on the earth and two it really opens up the volume you can use the ceiling and the walls and the corners as workspace versus being stuck on the floor so So they really like to have that option.

Now, yes, it has some deleterious effects and yes, it brings some overhead, significant overhead to protect bones and muscles. We're talking about two hours plus of exercise, six days a week. And a big, you know, a lot of exercise equipment, a very heavy weightlifting machine, a zero gravity weightlifting machine, picture that, an exercise bike, a rowing weightlifting machine, a zero-gravity weightlifting machine, picture that, an exercise bike, a rowing machine, all these kinds of things. So to do a good job of protecting the body takes a lot of effort and a lot of crew time. Also, astronauts are exercise junkies, so they really don't look at it as lost time, they look at it as me time when they're exercising. So that's a good thing psychologically.

Yeah, and certainly when you're talking about you want them to arrive six months later in the best shape of their life, it's pretty advantageous to have them working out mostly the whole time on the way there. Working out and well-nourished and well-hydrated and well-supported psychologically. So those are the kinds of issues that we're going to have to deal with. I've lost my train. Tell me again what the bottom line was. I'm mostly wondering, you know, I've heard that there's not a lot of internal support at NASA, at least politically. Sorry, for artificial gravity. Yes, that is correct. And that is despite the fact that my boss, when I retired, Bill Pulaski, a Ph.D., came to NASA as somebody interested in gravitational physiology.

And he actually instituted, he actually stood up an internal review of all the best and brightest inside, actually inside of NASA and outside of NASA, to talk about artificial gravity, which recommended artificial gravity. We recommended it as a go-forward plan with fully understanding, fully understanding the consequences, the economic consequences. If you have artificial gravity on your spaceship, you have to have plumbing and fixtures and furniture to support you under gravity. You also have to have the corresponding set of hardware that functions in weightlessness because what if the artificial gravity quits? Then you'd hate for your plumbing to back up. That would be unfortunate, yeah. It would be very unfortunate.

So you're not necessarily doubling the cost of your spaceship, but you're increasing it substantially. You're also complicating the mission because you have to spin up and spin down. And then what level of spinning is the right level of artificial gravity? Nobody knows. We don't have any data except 1G and a little bit of data at 0G. So for people to say, well, one-third of a G is one-third as good as 1G, or one-third of a G is all the gravity you need because it's good enough and it protects you.

Nope. Anytime anybody, including me, opines about the right level of artificial gravity, we're guessing, blowing smoke, fantasizing, because there is practically no data. What about the time on the moon? We had astronauts that lived on the moon at one-sixth of a G. Yes, they lived on the moon at one-sixth of a G for three days at the most. Three days at the most, and they weren't doing biomedical studies. They were doing geology. So there's a little bit of insight there, but we don't know whether there was not a demonstrative protective effect of fractional gravity when they got back to the Earth. They were still deconditioned just like the guys that didn't get lunar gravity. deconditioned just like the guys that didn't get lunar gravity.

Yeah, and certainly they spent the three-day cruise out to the moon and three days on the moon and three days back. So even based on the entire mission timescale, it wasn't a majority of the time. Exactly. And they were working hard, so maybe any beneficial effect was heavy exercise and not the gravity. Well, how about hind-limb rat suspensions? How about head up bed rest studies? Those are, the way I tell people, those are terrible, awful, no good, very bad models for weightlessness or artificial gravity, but they're the only models we have. So we try to use them and understand them and try to parse out the effects of stress. When you

suspend a rat by its tail, you can't tell me it's not stressed. So, you know, how much of what you're seeing is stress, how much of it is really the fractional gravity loading, how much, you know, all those kind of things. So we have, the way we answer these questions is by having a centrifuge on an orbiting facility, like say, I don't know, the International Space Station. Note that the first module that was de-scoped to save money in the International Space Station was the centrifuge accommodation module, which was going to have the centrifuge in it that we could answer these questions. So the powers that be said, you know what, to save the cost of one shuttle launch,

we're going to cancel this module and never answer those questions, which essentially told us in the life sciences that we're never going to have the data. So all we know is 1G and 0G. So I can, if you ask me for an artificial gravity prescription today, I say 1G, no RPMs, because I want a planetary surface. That's what I know. If you start rotating somebody, well, there's a whole different set of environmental parameters. And then the engineers say, well, that's impossible. I say, yes, well, there's a whole different set of environmental parameters. And then the engineers say, well, that's impossible. I say, yes, I know that's impossible, but you guys canceled our module to answer this question for you. So I'm going to tell you the only thing I know.

But it now turns out that our managers at headquarters are saying, you know what? We're pretty good at keeping people healthy and long duration weightlessness. So what's the big deal with AG? Why do we suddenly think we need AG? The Human Research Program has had a program for the last six-ish years or so studying fractional gravity, studying artificial gravity. We are right now using, time-sharing, the Japanese centrifuge aboard the space station to do fractional gravity studies to really see on mice, is there a benefit? Is there a difference between one third of a G, one sixth of a G, zero G, one G, all those kinds of things. So that AG research is ongoing, but our manager at headquarters has said,

I'm not going to wait for you. We're going to go ahead and proceed in weightless conditions to Mars because it turns out you life sciences guys have shown us ways to stay healthy for those missions. And I'm willing to accept the additional risk of being puny for a few days when you get to Mars and all those kind of exercise loads. So you were too efficient within the constraints you were given. Yeah, darn it all. Now, I would dearly love to see a fractional gravity research facility, but it's not a showstopper. You know, it's something that's going to enlighten us and tell us what the role of gravity is. And if gravity is so important, why is not the rest of the scientific community fascinated by it like we are? I mean, we couldn't get NIH and NSF interested in our zero-g studies because because they say, what possible relevance is that? I don't know, what possible relevance is it to understand the role of the most ubiquitous force in the universe

on biology? I can't imagine any value to that. Couldn't have shaped us in any way, you know, through the course of history. So I would really like to see a lot more broad spread support, widespread broad-based support on fractional gravity and the role of gravity, because I think it's going to give us tremendous insights, but it's not required for a Mars mission. Okay, so in the context of what is our shifting exploration roadmap over these last couple of years, we're looking back towards the moon now, there's this whole moon by 2024 thing. So maybe in the context of artificial gravity or fractional gravity, the lunar surface might be our best bet to get there fastest and do the longest duration, while also knocking off a ton of other human spaceflight and human exploration concerns. So how do you see the current roadmap exploration-wise from where you sit?

Are you excited by the lunar return, if you will? Do you think that's a viable way to go? Do you want to see us go right to Mars? Where are you at on all that? I have always been a believer in the Moon was there for a purpose, and there are lessons to be learned on the Moon. You have summarized it perfectly. The gravitational physiology is but one of the benefits from time on the Moon, and I mean serious extended periods of time on the moon, which will require a biomedical lab on the moon. We have to be able to make the same kind of measurements we make on the space station to get any value from that environment. And yes, I have always said before the current administration, I was one of the folks that kept saying, we're not supposed to say moon right now on NASA, but I believe moon is

important because you learn how to live on a different planet. No, it's not Earth, and no, it's not Mars. It's got a different kind of dust, but it's got a different kind of dust than Earth does. It's got a different day-night cycle than Mars, yes, but it's got a different day-night cycle than the Earth. It's got a different atmospheric composition than Mars, but it's also different from the Earth. And actually, Earth and Mars are closer than, I'm sorry, moon and Mars are closer environmentally than Earth and Mars are. So how can you not learn things on the Moon that are valuable for going to Mars? And certainly radiation in that same way, being outside Van Allen belts and outside of our own magnetic field in that way. You're in deep space. Now,

it seems to me, my biased opinion here is that the people that say Mars first, Mars or bust, are really interested in the next thing. It's almost like, forgive me because some very smart people say this, but it's almost like they're adolescents. They're looking for the adrenaline rush. You know, we went to the moon and God, that was fun. Let's do something else. We can't go back to the moon because we've already done that. So let's go to Mars. That's the next thing. So let's do a really challenging thing. It's going to be good for society, good for technology. It's going to be good for American enthusiasm. But I make the point that if we had gone to Mars in the 70s, we would not have been very happy with the outcome. You know, we had a naive perspective on radiation. We had a naive perspective on spacecraft materials that minimize radiation.

We probably would have gotten to Mars. We probably would have been successful. But we may not have inspired Congress to keep us going to Mars. It might have been another one-and-done kind of thing, like Apollo sort of turned out to be. And then what would we say? Where would we want to go for the next thing? Yeah, where next? Back to Mars?

No, we've already been to Mars. Buzz Aldrin would be saying, don't go back to Mars. We've already been to Mars. Yeah, we'd be totally screwed don't go back to Mars. We've already been to Mars. Yeah, we'd be totally screwed if that was the case. Yeah, that's right. Venus? I don't know. That's not likely. So I think there is value to, much value to going to the moon first. And if there is the delay of sending people to Mars, that doesn't bother me because I don't think there's a deadline to go to Mars. When the space shuttle was flying, people were saying inside NASA as well as outside of NASA, look, see, we're just burning holes in the sky. We're just going around in circles doing these space shuttle missions that accomplish absolutely nothing while we're not exploring the moon and going to Mars. And when the space station was built, those same people said, oh my God, it's

even worse now because we're building a house in space and we have to go up there. It's not like we can terminate at any time. We're committed for decades. And, yes, we are committed for decades. And then they say, and then, oh, my God, you're going to send us to the moon instead of Mars, which is where we're supposed to be. How can you do this to us? I will never see people on Mars. And that, I think, boils down to what the final answer is.

They really want to see it in their lifetime. Instead of having a sustainable program, I think some of the motivation to get to Mars right away is because been there, done that, got the t-shirt, let's just get to the final, you know, the final act. So that doesn't, that logic doesn't impress me. And I think, I think we ought to be a multi-venue society. I think we ought to have space stations and moon bases and trips to Mars and asteroids. And it wouldn't take that much of an increase to NASA's budget, international space budgets, the commercial space partnerships. It wouldn't be all that expensive. There are ways to reallocate the funding that would not leave us appreciably less safe defense-wise and much more ambitious in space. But then again, I'm not a politician or an economist. That's true. But I do think the way that you've laid out

the last couple of decades of NASA and the way that progress was made for human spaceflight, you always see this like, okay, here's our top three concerns. We do something in space that solves those and we get onto, oh, well, now we've opened up this whole new avenue of questions. And then we solve those and we get onto the next ones. And I see based on the list that you gave us, all of that could be done at the moon with what I think is a lot more politically achievable milestones and financial resources and political will and timelines. It seems much more achievable milestones and financial resources and political will and timelines, it seems much more achievable in our environment while also solving so many of these big questions. It seems too good to not, you know, to pass up from where I'm sitting. And I do want to see

people on Mars before my lifetime. I have the benefit of slightly more time here. But, you know, so I'm not as much as in a rush as Zubrin or someone like that but it just seems like we have too many questions that can be solved at the moon that based on our political environment seem very solvable today and also you know from a spiritual

or even a religious perspective and I'm not I'm not proselytizing I'm not evangelicalizing but you know divine providence gave us a moon to practice on. And if we skipped it, isn't that like a thumb in the eye? You know, are we saying, no, no, we're good. We don't need your help. Thanks very much.

So if you are inclined spiritually in that sense, aren't we obligated to take advantage of the moon? It's not even, it doesn't even have to be spiritual. When the moon's out and it looks great, sometimes I look at it and I go, man, that's so close. It's right there. What are we doing? And it's not like we know everything there is to know about the moon. I mean, we had six missions that spent a total of, I figured at one time,

12 or so total days on it. We looked at the dullest parts of the moon, the least interesting parts, and with current modeling of planetary formation processes, it's entirely possible the moon has been collecting debris from around the solar system, including from primordial Earth. Somebody once suggested we might find dinosaur DNA in the rocks on the moon. And I'm thinking, that would solve all of our problems. I mean, what better

reason to go to the moon than to find dinosaur DNA that we can then clone and make Jurassic Park real? Moon dinosaurs. That's the number one reason for this space program. You heard it here first. What a great marketing ploy. If only somebody would take it and run with it. Well, Dr. John Charles, I don't want to hold you up too much. I know you got a place to be pretty soon. I don't know if that's the Space Center or not, but do you have any other last-minute thoughts here for our current future in space? use the allure of space exploration as a way of stimulating interest in science, technology, engineering, math, arts amongst the younger generations. That is, the people like you and those that are younger than you even will make the dreams of people like me come true in space. You know, your efforts, your tax dollars, your motivation, your enthusiasm will move us forward into space. And I'm extremely happy to see the kind of enthusiasm that there is every day in Space Center Houston.

We get a million plus visitors a year in Space Center Houston. Many of them youngsters, many of them coming in to understand what space flight's all about. Many of them, you know, the parents and the grandparents that I get a chance to explain what it is they saw back in their youth and let them know what was really going on. But this is, I think we are coming into a new golden age with the commercial opportunities in spaceflight, the possibility of democratizing, small d democratizing, of spaceflight access. I only wish it would get cheap enough that I could afford an orbital flight because I think I owe it to myself to go into orbit having studied it for decades, but that's never afford an orbital flight because I think I owe it to myself to go into orbit having studied it for decades but that's never going to happen but I think it will become more economical I would my dream is to see space flights so economically

accessible that professors can take their grad students and their undergrad students on field trips into low earth orbit and actually study weightlessness in situ instead of having to suspend rats by their tails or put people in bed rest or things like that, then we will see what really happens to the human body in spaceflight. I actually, I have never supported the idea of settling Mars. That's not NASA's mission, settling the moon or settling Mars. That's not NASA's mission. It's never been my idea of a good idea.

But recently, I realized that only after we raise a couple of generations of people on those planets, do we really have a chance to understand the effect of gravity on the human body or a couple of generations of people in weightlessness. Imagine if your norm is zero G instead of one G, you know, now on the ground, we have to sort of figure out, well, is this effect of gravity or is it effective? You know, if you go to the moon and compare it to one G on the ground, is it an effect of figure out, well, is this effect of gravity or is it effect of, you know, if you go to the moon and compare it to 1G on the ground, is it an effect of different, you know, different gravity or is it an effect of the posture? Is it an effect of the transit time? But if we had you with your baseline being zero gravity, I could put you on the moon or on Mars or on the earth and study the actual effects of gravity, which is what I got into this business

to study in the first place. So having said all of those kind of random thoughts, I'm going to bring them together by saying I think we are now on the cusp of perhaps a new golden age of understanding the effect of gravity on physiology and biology because of new advances in space exploration. And it will not be a rapid onset. That will be not an immediate golden age, but it will be prolonged and, I think, very thorough. So I'm very happy about all of that. Maybe that's just my post-retirement bliss. I don't know. But there's a lot to be said for the future, our future, in science and in space exploration. That's an incredibly inspiring message and something that I'm sure everyone

hears at Space Center Houston every day. But what I think you're actually saying is we need to go to the moon, find dinosaur DNA, and grow dinosaurs on Mars, the moon, weightlessness, and Earth just to experiment, see the differences. That's what I'm hearing from you. So I fully support this mission to grow moon dinosaurs everywhere in the solar system. Moon dinosaurs, Mars T-Rexes. I mean, there's any number of possibilities here.

We could have Jurassic Park on the moon and on Mars. And probably the best tourism thing in the world, or in the universe, really, at that point. I think everybody would flock to it at that point. I would definitely go myself if I could. Thank you very much, Dr. John Charles. You are amazing, and I love talking to you. I hope that we will keep in touch. Very good, Anthony. Stay in touch. Let me know anytime I can help. Thank you very much, Dr. John Charles. You are amazing and I love talking to you and hope that we will keep in touch.

Very good, Anthony. Stay in touch. Let me know anytime I can help. Thank you. And if you're at Space Center Houston, make sure you seek him out and find him. He'll be somewhere in the vicinity. Yes, sir. Thank you. Thanks again to Dr. John Charles for coming on the show. That was an incredible, incredible conversation. And I loved hearing from him and hearing his take on everything. So thank you so much, John, again. Before we get out of here for the day, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who makes this show possible. There are 277 of you supporting the show over at patreon.com slash Miko. And this episode was produced by 39 executive producers. this episode was produced by 39 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mintz, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Frank, Rui, Julian, Lars, Heather, and six anonymous executive producers. Thank you all

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