Off-Nominal - 26 - Hungover on Reentry

Episode Date: January 14, 2020

Jake and Anthony are joined by Chris Carberry of Explore Mars to discuss his new book Alcohol in Space, and pitch themselves as the perfect test subjects.DrinksOlsen PinotageInterstellar Fog - Captain Lawrence Brewing Company - UntappdMake Hay While the Sun Shines - Bridge Brewing Company - UntappdTopicsAlcohol in Space – McFarlandAlcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future: Chris Carberry, Foreword by Andy Weir — Amazon#GoingPro - What's Next? - WeMartians PodcastPicksFor All Mankind on Apple TV+The Expanse, Season 4 | Prime VideoThe Creators of The Expanse | The Planetary SocietyThe Deep SeaThe David McCullough Collection Follow ChrisChris Carberry (@Carberry2033) | TwitterExploreMars (@ExploreMars) | TwitterExplore MarsFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS is go for main engine, start. Go at... I wish I had that intro from last time. What are they going to do? Can we see a nominal Miko? Welcome to space. Q you, Jake. Hello, Anthony.

How are you? This is the second time through the intro because I didn't hit the button the first time. Yeah, a bit of a false start. And everyone will just have to imagine the most amazing intro that you've ever heard on an off-nominal show. You know, like, when you have, when Blue Origin Longer Show, this new shepherd and they're like counting down and it gets to like 10 seconds and then there's like a short hold and you're like oh my god what's wrong and then seven seconds later it just

starts up again and everything's fine this is exactly what just happened with that phenomenal but good news is I noticed immediately and I didn't notice a half hour from now yes okay anyway go ahead I was gonna say it last time please try again I'll say it again when you started a podcast Anthony about space and beer with me did you ever imagine that there would be a guest so well curated for this show. Not at all. And we both, I was mentioning this five seconds ago. We both got emails separately from Chris about his book and both immediately said to the other, this is the next off-nominal episode, right? And it was immediately like, yeah, this is the thing that needs to be on off-nominal. So Chris, welcome to the show. We are kindred spirits of various

space and beer media. Welcome. Well, thank you. Great to be on. I'm glad I could help serve as that perfect guest for your show. You've achieved perfection now. The funny part is early on in, I think it was like probably one of our first few episodes, Jake, where we got contacted by a brewery, was it Ninkazi Brewing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got contacted by this brewery out in, I think they're in Oregon. They are. Sounds right. Okay, you're aware of this. So we actually, on one of our first couple episodes, we drank the beer that they sent the yeast to space on a subord rocket and then brewed it and they sent us a couple of bottles. Ground control.

That's the one. Yeah, that was probably like, I don't know, episode three or four of the show. So I don't know where our sponsorships have gone since then. Nowhere. So I was thinking about that. I was reading the book, which we'll get into. And I was like, oh yeah, remember that time that we drank beer that went to space? So that was, these are just high points in our off nominal career so far.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Chris, what are you drinking today? I am drinking an appropriate, I'm drinking wine, actually. It's an appropriate wine. It's Olson Pinoj, and there's a great space backstory to this. Greg Olson, one of the private astronauts, paid his way up to ISS a number of years back, owns a South African vineyard and manufactures this wonderful pinotage.

So as far as I know, Greg is the only person who's been in space who produces at least a mainstream wine. That's a pretty select view, right? Like, I don't know when the next person that would do that would be. That's kind of like in Canada, if you ever go to the Niagara region, there's a whole bunch of wineries there. And they're just like regular wineries. And then every once in a while, as you're driving down the highway,

you spot a sign that says it's the Wayne Gretzky winery. and you're like, hmm, there's got to be a very select amount of like superstar hockey players who have made wine before and that's that's the same vibe I'm getting from that one. Well, there are a lot fewer people have been in space. Yes, true. Cool, okay. Anthony, what do you got? I, last time we did this, I was lamenting the fact that I could never find space beer in my local shop. And then I went in today and there was a, there was one from Captain Lawrence Brewing Company,

which I think I've had one of their beers on the show before, but this one's called. interstellar fog. Nice. And it's got this like, sort of got this look of Luke Skywalker flying down the channel and the Death Star. Stay on Target. Yeah, it's kind of got that vibe to it. So I'm into it.

I'm really digging it. It's tasty too. It's got like Simco and all sorts of other stuff. Great. It's got stuff in it. Yeah, it was my first sip. So give me a break. I didn't complete the tasting yet.

All right, all right. And it's a, it's tall boy, so it's closer to Jake's size. Closer to Jake size. But it is early. This is an off-nominal matinee edition. So this is like noon time out on the West Coast. So I'm curious to see what you're about to unveil here. Oh, that didn't bother me at all.

Didn't bother me at all. I got a Jake size one here. So it's not, it's not spaced themed, unfortunately. But this is from Bridge Brewing, which is here in Vancouver on the North Shore. This is called Make Hay while the Sun shines. And it's a super hazy IPA. I cannot see through the blog. bottle, it's pretty intense.

That's that bridge one. Didn't you have one of those before? I've had bridge before on the show, yeah. Yeah, okay. That's cool. It's a farmhouse IPA, and I wanted something nice and thick. So here we go. I've never had this one before, but yeah. So where are we starting with this?

Jake, I don't know if you've got a chance to read the book. I'm about halfway through it. I'm approximately to modern era in your beer and space section of the book, Chris. So got a lot of backstory, including a long article section on my local doctor, Benjamin Rush, right here in Philadelphia, who's got, like, you've got a picture of one of his, like, things that we're saying, don't drink hard liquor, just drink beer and wine, he won't be an alcoholic, which I was... Hardin spirits.

Yeah, just enjoying that. He's also into bloodletting and stuff, so he didn't really have a lot. I mean, he was, you know, he had some good ideas with, like, the whole declaration thing and all that. But generally, when it came to scientific pursuits, we're like, all right, listen, listen, Benjamin, we got to get her drink on however we like. Well, Benjamin Rush, end of the little background for people listening. It goes through. It talks about the history of alcohol and society, civilization, then science fiction, and into the real stuff, like history of drinking in space, as well as companies and organizations manufacturing alcohol right now with the space, you know, with the goal of manufacturing in space.

Benjamin Rush actually liked beer and wine. He was all for that. That was therapeutic. It was just distilled spirits he was opposed to. And so if you see in the book, there's a thermometer basically has for how bad alcohol is. And basically wine and beer perfectly fine. But when you get into the hard spirits, that's when things go downhill. And I believe when you, you know, like down at the very bottom, the worst phase, if you are, if you like, if you like having.

a morning dram. You're likely to become homicidal, suicidal, and end up in the gallows. Well, we know our futures ahead of us then at that point. I was enjoying the table setting of civilization and alcohol, because it does seem, when you start thinking about it at that level of alcohol in space, you start realizing how many of the things that it takes to produce. alcohol are like the critical path for setting up civilization in space, right? And you talk a lot about how resource intensive it is to create alcohol and how Andy Weary even mentions it would

not have been a useful way to spend potatoes in the Martian to produce vodka. But then when you really think about everything that we need to create alcohol, it's everything that we need to survive on other planets. And that was a cool way to think about it, you know, because when you say it, people go, ah, it's frivolous. Like when you're going so far, way, you might not need that kind of stuff. But then you realize all of the components are exactly what we're working towards day-to-day in space. Yeah, absolutely. It's first off, it's been, it's been a hand-in-hand with the advancement of civilization from the very beginning. So the thought to say, oh, we're going to suddenly stop consuming alcohol when we go into space is crazy, you know.

And so we let's assume that it's going to happen, particularly as the private sector is getting more and more ambitious in space, you know, people are going to, you know, want to consume a drink of alcohol and eventually manufacture it. But as you said, throughout history, it has played an integral role in the development of society as a whole. Many people think, many scientists or scholars believe that the desire to produce alcohol may have advanced early agriculture more than our need for food. So in many ways, you can, we can thank alcohol production for civilization. And so, but, Like a good example for space and yet people will think well it's kind of frivolous do we really need to be thinking about that

And well I think yes because since it is inevitable it's fair game but when you have companies like for instance a good example right now is Budweiser The American beer maker has sent up four experiments up to the International Space Station for barley to see if they can actually manufacture their product eventually in space They've declared they wanted to be the first beer manufacturer on Mars. Well, it's interesting. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, it's really exciting to hear that. It remains to be seen whether they will be,

but they are investing directly in a capability, a technology that's required for sustainable human habitation and space, agriculture. So I think that's a great thing. When you have non-traditional companies investing in space technology that have implications well beyond their product. And so we need more of that, not just an alcohol, but other companies that are looking at problems in a different way. How can we benefit our product?

But it might also look at one of these big issues, big problems in a different way. And I'm really excited when these sorts of things happen. It's probably a pretty good sign of health for a space economy when you have such kind of a diversity of companies. he's interested in using space infrastructure, right? Like that's kind of what stands out to me when I hear about Budweiser's like, yeah, I have something to do on the ISS and you're like, whoa, maybe ISS totally is useful.

That's like a really good sign to me, in my opinion. Well, this is the problem. I mean, then sometimes ISS, the International Space Station folks there don't publicize as well as they should some of the interesting things going on up there. And I don't mean just alcohol, you know, experiments. But there are a lot of interesting innovation experiments. But on the alcohol side, Budweiser is not the only one. I think at my count there are at least three alcohol-related experiments up on ISS right now.

Currently, in addition to Budweiser, a couple months ago, 12 bottles of Bordeaux wine were sent up as part of an aging experiment. And Suntory, the Japanese whiskey maker, sent up an aging experiment. One, back in 2015, one experiment. experiment still up there, another one came down. They've been very closed, lipped about the results of the experiment that came down, but they've been certainly invested in this. But they're not even the first aging experiment. Ardbeg, the Scottish whiskey maker, sent up the first whiskey aging experiment to ISS back in 2011. So there's been a lot of activity, and it seems to be building in, there's a lot of building interest about sending payloads to space, but also doing experiments and doing research

down here on the planet to advance this goal. The one thing that I was thinking about with the, like, how resource intensive it is to produce alcohol, it's similar to a lot of what, you know, the trajectory of spaceflight has been that you are working on limited resources for everything. So you tend to push technology to use resources more efficiently to make, you know, life support systems that can recycle more, that can use these processes to get more out of less. And this is a natural extension of that. So it fits so in line with what we've done all along that it's almost nonsensical to say, ah, that won't happen in space, because that's kind of how everything happens in space. And that's, you know, whenever

people say, like, why are we spending money up there, when we have all these problems down here, that kind of ingenuity is one thing that you can harp on, where it's, you know, you're doing more with less in space. So think about how much better we could use resources on Earth if we use some of the innovations that we create in space back here on the planet. And I love that kind of thinking. Well, yeah, and it's really essential. I don't want to get too far away from the alcohol theme, but it is all completely relevant ties in, as I mentioned in the book, particularly in the agricultural area. You know, as we learn how to, we had arid areas, if we can, if we can create plentiful crops on Mars in this completely hostile.

arid area yeah within atmospheres that we create but nonetheless it's not going to be an easy thing then that that technology that capability can be brought back to work and can be used to feed feed hungry feed people here on earth and this goes you know there are a lot of capabilities many of the capabilities technologies required for Mars have remarkable have a remarkable potential here on earth for markets for people creating products to make an awful lot of money but also the to improve the life of people on earth, whether it be agriculture, synthetic biology,

life support systems. And it just goes on and on and on. And so I think once again, we do a poor job sometimes at showing the direct relationship between space technology and in our current society, how we live, the products we use, and basically the benefits we get from it every day. And how dramatic these probably will be once we start accelerating. again, go back to the moon and on to Mars, I think it's going to be remarkable. And, well, of course, we'll want to drink when we get there. Yeah, I can't imagine, like, you know, I've heard you talk a little bit about this in some other podcasts, and, you know, there's always a story of Buzz Aldrin doing the communion on the moon,

and he drank a little bit. And, like, to me, that sounds like a completely natural thing, because after a harrowing descent to the lunar surface in a machine that has never done this, before and was built by the lowest bidder. I can't imagine anything more needed than a drink after you touch that thing down in the sea of tranquility. So I hope that there is more of this in the future for sure. Well, and the fact of the matter is even though consumption of alcohol has prohibited in space, that's officially prohibited.

And as you read in the book, it has happened quite a bit. As far as I know, I haven't heard of any stories of anybody getting inebriated. but there's been a long... It's because they can't remember them. Yeah, that's true. Plausible deniability. You know, but, you know, cosmonauts and astronauts, even on ISS, regularly will consume small amounts of, usually cognac.

People always say, I bet there's a lot of vodka in space. No, it's cognac. That's been the official drink in space for some time now. And they'll often drink, you know, drink it. It's part of this. to build up camaraderie, to build up the relations between international crews, when there's a new crew, get together and just have a little shot of cognac. After the I, not ISS, after the mere fire back in the 90s,

basically Russian mission control recommended that the cosmonauts have a little bit of their special medicine, I think the phrase was, it might be wrong there, meaning the cognac, you know, to calm them down a little bit. So I think within that context, it is actually somewhat beneficial. I think, yeah, they had to be very careful. I don't actually argue with the current prohibition just to make sure it's kind of controlled. We do not want inebriated astronauts, particularly in the current environment, at least anybody who's irresponsible for driving the spaceship. Yeah.

Like we don't want our airline pilots being inebriated either. But this is once again for something like this when you're on a long-term mission you're off you know even like in my book John Grunzfeld You know five-time shuttle astronaut If I's former head of the science directorate at NASA I actually thought when I was talking to him you'd be completely against it yet but he mentioned yeah when we're on the way to Mars You're way that long. This could be very beneficial just to keep you know You know You know

to calm you down to be able to kind of wind down after a hard day's work. It's just something we should assume is going to happen. And particularly when we send people up as tourists and, you know, there are private sector people who have no responsibility for flying the spaceship. Yeah, they're going to walk. Yeah, you're telling me the Bigelow space hotels are not going to be lit. Come on. Oh, they will be. And there are companies that are keeping that in mind right now. I don't know if you've gotten to the part that, you know, you already know about grass. control where they've been made wine based on yeast that was sent up into suborbid on a sounding rocket

but there are other companies that are looking at have been trying to develop beverages that can be consumed in microgravity particularly carbonated beverages because carbonated beverages have a problem as you know on in 1G on the surface of Earth the gas rises up and disperses in the atmosphere in space it doesn't it all goes to the center and starts expanding. So when astronauts have consumed carbonated beverages in space, they've reported stomach cramps and wet burps. So they don't alcohol manufacturers don't want that.

Those are bad enough in one G that zero cheat can definitely not make that any better. Yeah. So you have, for instance, there's a champagne maker, a Maison Mum, who has been developing a bottle, a glass, and their share, selecting the right. champagne that could be consumed in microgravity so you could pour it out more authentically have it go into a little

glass so you can sip it in a like you would champagne on the ground they say they want to enhance the conviviality of consuming bubbly in space and you know the special bottle to be able to dispense it into the glass so that's one company if they've tested it on the

European version of the vomit comet and here in Australia a collaboration between an aerospace company, Sabre Astronautics, and a brewery, Four Pines Brewing Company, created Vostock beer, named after the first human spaceflight. And they were trying to find the right balance between carbonation and taste. That's another problem in space because astronauts report that their taste buds are affected, like they have a head cold. So they want to find a beer that's strong enough to overcome the reduction in taste.

There's a great farmhouse IPA I can recommend for that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they created Vostock and they tested it twice, maybe three times now, on a zero-g flight here in the United States. So this is other companies looking at these problems as well, as well as companies looking at can you create glasses? Is a company creating a scotch glass and a cocktail glass? so that you can actually sip it more authentically. So it's not just using the squeeze bottle in space

and drinking a little orb of alcohol from, you know, out of midair. Yeah, but that's pretty cool, though. Yeah, it would be pretty cool. There's a certain amount of this that's like you're adjusting to the quirks of zero gravity, and there's a certain part of it that's like, what kind of Instagram would my friends be really jealous of? And sipping cognac bubbles out of free-floating air is of the latter sort. Yeah, but it would get old after a while.

while. And so eventually, after a few months of that, you're going to want to sit down with your cocktail glass, your scotch glass, and, you know, sip it in that manner. It'll feel more natural, it'll make you feel more at home. One of the things that I, we had even someone in the Discord asked about this, radishes in Discord, asked about the algae wine that you mentioned early on in the book as a thing that might be more applicable to the environments that we're going to be out in space. number one, what the hell is algae wine? Number two, do you think that we're going to have some really fantastic tasting new drink that was created in space for the space environment that people back on Earth might be like,

oh, man, I want me some of that space algae wine? I think it's more likely we're going to have a really crappy tasting, you alcohol, but people will still want to get that and we'll spend millions of dollars for that first bottle of really crappy, whatever it is, Martian, you know, Martian, witching. Mishy, Martian vodka, Martian moonshine. Maybe that should be lunar moonshine. I don't know. But yeah, I think the thing with algae or something else, right here on Earth,

we only use a very small number of potential feedstocks for our alcohol production. We know what works. We know what we like. But it's a very small number of crops that we use for alcohol production. However, we can use huge number. pretty much any biomass as long as you can get you know gate access to the sugars and turn it into alcohol you can so it might be that we realize that it's an entirely different set of you know biomass of crops or other you know other biomass that we end up using

on the mark on the Mars or the moon or in microgravity it may be each one might have a different different crop that's better suited you we don't know how different are going to affect this. You know, on the moon, you have one-six gravity, on Mars, one-third gravity, and obviously in orbit, you have microgravity, essentially, zero gravity. And so, you know, we don't know, really have a fully understanding how that's going to impact the overall production of alcohol, you know, fermentation, distillation, on, we know have some clue on aging, but even that's not complete. Suntory hasn't told us. And Ardbegg's experiment did show a very big difference between the taste of the space sample and the ground sample, and not for the better. But it wasn't necessarily. They don't know if that was really because of the aging and microgravity or the harsh treatment that the experiment went through. It stayed up longer than it was supposed to, and it wasn't handled very well. As you know, it was shaking a lot in, you know, launch, and it shakes a lot in landing.

and it went through a lot of other extremes. And so they are pondering last I heard, they're pondering another experiment to try to compensate for some of these extremes. So they might be able to get a more accurate feel for this. I make people going to wonder, like, well, this is, it feels like kind of the early stages of like figuring out what alcohol does in space.

And, you know, the very first kind of, the obvious things that you try at first is just like, let's do what we did on Earth in space and see what happens. And then eventually you'll find, okay, the process A doesn't work, but process B does and you kind of iterate. But I wonder if we'll get to a point where all of a sudden there'll be something that you can do in space that you can't do on Earth

and there'll be like an alcohol of some kind that can only be made in space. And it's like a special thing. And then all of a sudden we're addicted to this stuff. And then that should help. That would be interesting. Now the question is if that special thing can only be done, in space, will it also survive of going to 1G also? Or is it, can you only experience it by going into space?

Yeah. Or even there's more practical stuff too. Like, you know, if you look at what Roman wine bottles looked like, they were that, that weird short fat bottle that had like a little basket around them because of the way that they packaged them up to send out with their soldiers and stuff like that. And then modern era, we have the skinny tall bottle. And that's because we can pack it more efficiently when we're sending it. long distances for transport and things like that. So there might be, you know, a round bottle or something like that

or some of these adapted bottles from the mirror era. Maybe square bottles. Or square bottles. Yeah, like those weird watermelons they have in Japan that they like mold for their own little tiny fridges. There's so many ways that that could just shape the way that it's packaged that you would look at and say, oh, that's one of those space wines because look at it's in that square bottle.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah. And then you have them up on the top shelf of your bar and you're like, yeah, that's that space bottle. up there. That's from... Well, with a square bottle, it's not going to roll off. That's true.

Yeah, Velcro bottle? Yeah, Velcro, yeah. Oh, man, that's crazy. I would love to talk a little bit about the societal differences that you touch on in the book between the way that Americans and NASA see alcohol, the way that Russians see alcohol, French were certainly very opinionated about what they should have on board. And a lot of this seems like our vestigial Puritanism. that gets infused into our culture here in the U.S.

that we don't want to talk about alcohol. But beer didn't drink. They had beer. But we just so, I don't know, a lot of this conversation sounds a lot, to me, like the whole sex and space conversation, where it's a thing that NASA doesn't want to talk about, it's never going to be officially sanctioned,

but if you look at, if you're interested in humans flourishing in space, we need it. And it's one of those things that's like taboo now, and certainly is when we have three, people on board the ISS, but what happens when we get, you know, 20, 30 people in space for long duration? Well, that's true. I mean, I'm glad you brought that up, the taboo element. And it's, it is. There are two taboos that I see. They're probably more, but the two biggest ones are this one, alcohol in space, but sex and space is the other one. However, this is the easier of the two.

It is far easier to understand the consumption of alcohol, how humans metabolize alcohol in space since we know we've already consumed alcohol in space we just haven't done any official studies of how it affects our bodies but with sex and space that's that's another inevitability but it's also much more challenging because you know it's not necessarily an ethical thing to experiment with sex absolutely yes huge ethical conversations yeah so how how are you going to do that except when you actually have an accident in the future and then you know it's going to open up some really big questions and i don't know how to deal with that one that one, you know, I can think of a number of options, but still, that one's a challenging one.

But with alcohol in space, you know, it's something that we know is inevitable. And so let's hopefully with the onset of commercial spaceflight, we'll at least be able to study it and see officially how human bodies metabolize alcohol in space. We know anecdotally, of course, it probably metabolize it fairly well. nobody appears to have had any unfortunate issues with it. But on the other hand, they've only consumed small amounts. So we don't know. But it's one of these things that that's the problem with this nervousness about it, that, you know, we're actually not doing some, you know,

looking at some interesting questions here. But you're right. But as for the cultural differences, yeah, this was one of my favorite parts of the book. And a lot of it, you know, thanks to Jeffrey Manber from now. Anoraksu gave a lot of details because he was working in Moscow shortly after, right after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Russian space program and the United States program started working together for the first time and working on Mir. And it was interesting just the battles there were the different perspective of alcohol and space between the Russians, the Americans, and the French. You know. Always comes down to those three at some point in history.

Yeah. And frankly, you can see this just in how they operate, like look at the militaries. The French have bars on their naval ships. They have a very strict outline how to manage it. It's done very responsibly. But they will have that with a very strict way of managing, you know, how much sailors can actually consume each day. the British still allow it. It's a little more limited with the British now, but even until the British actually still had a part of their stipend, the annual monthly stipend, was paid off

in rum until the early 70s. So it's been a big part of the Royal Navy for, you know, for most of its history. But the United States, you know, in the United States Navy, it's not 100% prohibited. They're actually, apparently, I can't remember the amount of time, but if you have a deployment over a certain... Like you said 45 days in the book. Something like that. It can have one beer on a one-time basis, I think. Yeah, it's very strange.

Woo-hoo. So it is interesting, and this was, apparently there were some heated discussions, and, you know, eventually the U.S. won out in, you know, this at least official prohibition in space. And so, but once again, be interesting how this plays out over time.

because I know there certainly has been pushed back over time and certainly with various companies, yeah, countries wanting to, well, show their own cultures in space. And like with the French, wine is an integral part of their culture. There's certain podcasts that have an integral part of their culture that is beer. And whenever they're looking for a study for larger amounts of alcohol in space, I could probably find at least three names that would be willing to take. part in this study, just to see what it's like.

Yeah, I'd be happy to go to space and get wasted for science. Wasted for science. I've been hung over on a flight before, and I cannot imagine being hung over on reentry. That's got to be particularly awful, especially if you're in like a Soyuz or something really uncomfortable. That's got to be the worst day of your life. Yeah. Yeah, that's not great for sure.

Probably worse for your crew members. That's true. They're like, you're not sitting in the middle seat. You're sitting in that window seat over there. It's a fine. You got space covers on your head, so it's not a big deal. There was one anecdote that I loved because I felt so much, like, camaraderie with this. And I can't remember the U.S. astronauts that were at play here, but there was a shuttle mission to Mir.

And I think this might have been the first time that anyone drank on the space shuttle, whether we know that they did or not. But there was a group that went over to Space Lab, and they told the commander, I think it was Hoot up there, the best-named Asthma. the best named astronaut, Hout. And they were going to tell him that they were going to go drinking on Space Lab, and he said he'd rather not know about this. So they just went off and did their own thing back in the back of the party bus, I guess. But I feel like that's one that somebody had to be up there on mirror going, no one's ever had a drink on the space shuttle before.

We've got to go do this. Probably the case. It feels like a dare. Like, oh, we could be the first drink on the space shuttle. Let's go do it. I just loved that like that snippet of just total, just like a such a little, you know, pocket of humanity on this very scientific mission. And that one didn't take any deep research. That one, I believe that story was actually in an official NASA oral history that was done by who.

I can't even remember whose oral history that was. But it was there. But, you know, it's once again, one of these things that NASA does not like highlighting, but it is in the official record. Yeah. And the other one that was weird to me, and I kind of forgot this story of Apollo 8 when they put brandy into their meals for the mission. And Frank Borman got real heated about this. And I'm very, I'm concerned as to why he was so angry about this. And it sounded like the other two were also confused as to why he got so mad.

But have you been able to suss out what ticked him off about that to the point that he got so emotional about it? I think he probably, and I don't know for sure, but I think probably since he was, command you know this was one of these important missions you know we're getting really close to getting achieving the goal of sending humans to the surface of the moon and you know all of a sudden you have alcohol and if something went wrong you know he probably probably feeling that he would be blamed if something went wrong and they had consumed any alcohol at all i can see this happening because there was so the stakes were so high with this even though it was a joke none of all three of the astronauts were not going to consume

They didn't assume they were ever going to open these in space, but I can see it happening. But yeah, they seem to think it was overreacting a little bit. Somebody just radishes in the Discord brought up the fact that this was also the time period when Borman had terrible diarrhea that was floating around the capsule. So there might have been more at play. It also sounds like Borman too, though, right? Because Borman was very much a like a consummate professional. Like he wanted to get the job done, but he wasn't super interested in actually being in space.

you know, like he wasn't like a, like a passionate astronaut. He was like a like a professional, highly skilled astronaut. And that's kind of. Right, right. Right. So that's true. We're projecting a little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. But of course, you know, of course six months later, six months later, six months later or a little more than six months later. Of course, you know, as you mentioned earlier, Buzz did actually consume alcohol, you know, on the surface of the moon. And so it didn't take much, it didn't take too much longer for, to actually happen. The first mission?

Yeah, your first mission. But as far as I know, that's the only time that anybody has consumed an alcoholic beverage on another planetary body. I assume once they were going to bring a rover onto the moon, they were like, well, we definitely can't have alcohol and a car on the moon at the same time. Who's going to pull them over? No DUIs on the moon. What is the jail time for lunar DUI? Do you just, you stay up there for a while? They pick you up in the next mission?

It's technically not illegal on the moon, right? I guess, yeah, yeah, there's no lawns up there, right? Especially if you drink in the white claw. The white claw. Oh, geez. It's interesting, though. One of the other sections, the book, you know, I mentioned, they go into science fiction,

and it's kind of funny that in Jules Verne's, my brain is, what's his moon book? My brain is not from Earth to the Moon. Yeah, yeah. you know, speculates about wine on the moon and whether you can create, you grow grapes and manufacture wine on the moon. First time, I believe anybody's ever speculated about that or making alcohol another planetary body. And a century later, on the first mission to the moon, you know, you have Buzz drinking wine.

Now, it wasn't, Buzz was drinking it as part of a religious ceremony. It really wasn't at least, at least as we know, as far as we know, as far as we know, part, you know, because he needed a drink at the time. But I think it really was part of this religious ceremony, which he pre-planned with his church in Texas. And they brought the goblet, which the Webster Presbyterian Church provided. And that church still has that. They have, it's now in, they do an annual service, a lunar service, where they bring out the lunar goblet that buzz drank out of and do a service based on that. That's awesome. That's like, that's the best humble brag in the world.

Like, oh, today is our service with the lunar chalice. Okay, you've won. I've also was thinking about, this is jumping ahead in the show a little bit, but I was recently watching season four of the expanse. And there was, since season, probably season one, there's been much less of the drinking in space because season one had a lot of the bar on series, was it, that they were always drinking at, the Miller, the cop. And I felt like they always had such a good vibe.

I mean, generally, the expanse, to me, looks like what space exploration would look like if it took out all the robots. And I always appreciated their kind of bar vibe. And it looked a lot to me like you mentioned in the book as well, the bar down at the South Pole. It was like, Club 90 South or something like that. A lot of South, yeah. I feel like that was very inspired, or the expanse's bars were very inspired by that kind of gritty look to it. You know, this dive bar at the South Pole, very remote destination. nation. And there's certain times watching the expanse when I just go, that's what it would look

like. And they certainly do the thing. You mentioned with Apollo 11, when Buzz pours the wine, it's, you know, one-sixth G. So it's got this very strange physical dynamic to it that we've never experienced before. And they do that in the expanse as well with the Coriolis effect, being on series when they pour drinks. They get that just, you know, weird to us experience of of drinking and other destinations. And that's something that when I think about space exploration, there's these tiny elements that just are so foreign to us that make it so unique. And it's really cool.

And there must be like a, I'm thinking, like, drinking has so many idiosyncrasies, like cultural, like traditions and stuff. You know, like I think about pouring a beer. It's like, well, how much head should you have? It has to be just this amount. And this is how you pour a glass. And when you cheers, you have to touch the top of the glass, not the bottom of a glass. And never put your drink down until you've cheered.

There's all these weird, like, cultural things. I wonder how that will translate to space. And after like a long time. Yeah, or like Guinness? Like, how long do you have to let Guinness sit when it's in 16G? It's like an hour and a half at that point. Well, yeah, and there's so much showmanship to drinking, you know, in bars at times. And think of all the different options of these different gravities.

And, yeah, you're right with how long the Guinness will need to sit. Although it'd be a whole different problem, microgravity, because, you know, they'd do anything, yeah. Yeah, it would have this. big ball of gas in the center. It would be really interesting to see how you would consume. You have a little Guinness centrifuge or something that you spin up, you know. It's maybe like one of those like New Year's Eve things that you spin around and it makes

noise, but it just you hook a Guinness thing in and spin it until it's ready. And that may be it, you know, so you're right. So it could be interesting how this all develops. But what do you, what do you do with your stomach, though? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you start spinning Jake when he gets a little too drunk, put the gas out. Somebody mentioned the same with wine, though. Like, you got to keep the corks wet, right?

So you have to have wine in some sort of centrifuge to keep wine against the cork. Well, not mean, most, but most even good wine producers are using synthetic corks or even just using screw-on sauce now. And it's, you know, it really doesn't make a difference. Yeah, but that's not as fun for champagne. You want to be able to shake champagne and then propel yourself around the spacecraft when you open it. Well, that would be another interesting one. what happens there? Now that the champagne bottle that Maison Moom is producing, you know, you don't pop off the top. I was. You know, that would be fun. You could have races. If you have a big

open space and a couple of champagne bottles, you could have, it's a new sport. Yeah, totally. Champagne racing. I mean, I've seen gravity. She does that with the fire extinguisher on gravity. Gets all the way to the Chinese space station, which makes no sense, but that's a whole other podcast. You're saying that that movie wasn't authentic. I hate that movie. It's one of my least favorite movies in the world. I'm not a big fan of that one. It's so pretty, though.

I don't want to get into it. Yeah, I imagine, and like there's got to be a whole, I certainly wouldn't want to be the one that, like, popped a champagne bottle on the ISS and, like, covered all of the electronics and sticky champagne, you know? You need, like, a trap for it at the end of your, like, you pop the cork. But you would be the guy that, that opened champagne in the ISS and gumbed up the works for a week.

For years on end, people would be talking about you. Exactly. You go down as a legend. You know. So, Chris, do you have like a favorite story of drinking alcohol in space, like from all the ones that you were able to research? Is there like one that like really like stuck to your heart? Favorite one of the actual consumpt people that have actually consumed alcohol?

Sure. Just any, anything, any of the stories that you found in the research of your book? You know, it's hard. say you know I can't generally as I'm going to get back to the people who have consumed alcohol but I you know some of the things I like the most about you know you know the stories about this was just all the innovation all the people the all the innovative thinking and as you it was mentioned earlier you know how this is all directly related to us getting humans into space and to the moon or Mars what it'll take should be able to create sustainable human presence and this is what my

favorite part of the book and researching it and talking to all these really fascinating people getting all these this input and while it's not a specific story you know that you're looking for for that this was my favorite part of the book because how everything connected and the more I looked at it the more relevant it became to my day job as CEO of explore Mars and how it just completely connected to all of this and I was able to yeah I didn't expect so much overlap and I was able to utilize a lot of the people I interviewed for the book at my last conference, the Humans to Mars Summit last year, and I'll probably do the same thing this year in Washington, D.C., as well.

That just so many, so much interesting innovation going on and looking at problems in a different way that, you know, the regular space community wouldn't necessarily look at the problem this way. And I think that's great when that happens. But as for, you know, I enjoyed a lot of the stories. And but, you know, like for instance, the one you already mentioned on the space shuttle. But also when John Grunsfeld was mentioning, you know, when crews would come together and have, you know, come together and, you know, when there's a new crew, whatever, and just get around the circle. And they would just get to know each other. And I think this is, this is a key area, which I think.

is very important it's not particularly in the early days but of our the space station or mere but even now it's not always easy to have these this international crew get along and so i think when they can have these bonding experiences you know usually utilizing a very small amount of alcohol i think that's a good thing i think it's helped diplomatic relations i think it's just overall has been a very positive thing, you know, once again, as long as it's done in moderation, which it has been from as far as far as I can tell. Yeah, and I wonder how much the crew size has to do with the feelings towards these kind of ceremonies, right? Because like you're saying, you don't want somebody who's tasked with

commanding a ship to be drunk, but once you get to a point, you know, we're about to have a lot more crew members on board the ISS. If crew size increases significantly and there's some amount of off-duty time where, you know, each person is not just stuffed schedule-wise all week keeping the ISS running, maybe things get a little more lax and back towards some of that, that more lax feeling towards making sure that the crew's getting along. Obviously, when there's more people on board, there's more opportunity for major strife between crew members. There's a lot more interpersonal relations at play. So that's a story to me that, that I think we'll see in the next couple of years, is increased crew sizes to the point where there are longer durations,

bigger crews, and we might start seeing a shift in that kind of relation side of things. Well, yeah, it's not sustainable the way they do it now, whereas literally they're pretty much on duty all the time. I was going to say, you kind of need that off-duty time for that to really be a thing, right? Yeah, and like going back to airline pilots. They're not on Ooty all the time. It's very, everybody agrees they shouldn't drink here in the United States within eight hours, some other countries, other locations, it's more. An astronauts, I believe it's 12 hours.

But same sort of thing. You know, you still need to be careful. Make sure that they don't drink within a certain amount of hours between when between off duty and on duty. But yeah, I think it's, you know, as we start expanding, we start really expanding our presence in space. This normal life starts to occur. What's going on in space and what's happened from the very beginning has not been normal life. and so our goal should be to create some level of normalcy. It might be a new type of normalcy,

but it doesn't mean that you're on duty 24 hours a day. Absolutely. Yeah. We'll need some big ships for that, I guess. Yes. Well, Elon seems to be developing one. Will there be a... I know he had a pizza restaurant designed into it.

Will there be a 10-forward on Starship? I guess that's the real question that we're getting to here, right? Elon, if you're listening, please send in like send in an answer yeah yes in fact Elon we'll we'll do a whole interview about 10 for it if you want just let us know yeah the first off nominal in space is going to be that's a thing that should happen at some point in our lifetime maybe it could be during the study you know we're available we're available Chris you're probably available that would yeah that would be really cool I'll sign up for that one totally should we uh before we get to picks

Jake, I don't know if we ever gave out instructions for people to go, where should they buy the book? Where's the best place for you for them to buy the book? Well, they can go to Amazon. It's, you know, they can get it pretty quickly on Amazon. They can go to the publisher's site, which is McFarland Publishers. And most, you know, Barnes & Noble, I think most of the online vendors have it right now. So it's pretty easy to get. It should arrive pretty quickly. Alcohol in space, past, present, and future is what you're looking for. I've been doing a Kindle edition, walking around the city, just listening to it a little bit.

I did that. You ever use that thing where you can have your phone read your text? What? Just saying. There's the whole thing. It's built in. It turns anything into audio so I can just walk around. Every once in a while, you just throw your thumb, flip, and it reads the next page for you.

It's great. Wow. It's awesome. That's pretty cool. Living in the future right there. Okay, so picks? Picks. Yeah, I got some picks. You got one?

I have a couple. I feel like I've recently been doing, uh, watching all of the space shows picks, but I'm going to finish it out because now I've, I've finished a couple seasons here. Uh, check in on For All Mankind. I don't know if you've, you two have been watching this show. Uh, finished it. Similar thoughts as the last time I talked about this. It was a very cool show. It feels a little unfocused to me. Like there's, there's not a general start to finish plot line, I would say, other than, what would the world be like, which is cool, but there's just like all these different little plots.

They're all interesting, but I felt like it didn't get, it was a wide show, not a deep show, if that makes any sense. So I was kind of like, okay, let's see. Excited because that's coming back for season two, so I'm in on that show. The Expanse caught up on season four of that. Season four is okay.

I haven't watched the finale, so like I... The finale? Finale. I feel like I've made fun of you for this before. You guys, okay. It always turns me off. The last episode, the ultimate episode of season four, I've not watched yet. Yeah, no, no spoilers in this.

People are worried about spoiler alerts. Chris, are you watching any of these shows? Are you in on these shows? I've watched The Expans. I finished off season four, and I believe there was a drinking scene in that one. Definitely was. But, I mean, I know it's supposed to be for newer things, but I think I agree with you on the earlier version, you know,

just that whole end this season, It got a little more fantastical as it went along. Yeah, it didn't feel like it moved. I don't feel like the expanse, the show, is significantly different at the end of season four as it was at the end of season three. But particularly at the beginning, I think it got that feel for space pretty well.

Kind of had a similar feel, and I like the newer Battlestar Galactica, kind of a more raw feel, that edgy feel, more realistic to what you think people are going to actually act like. in space. As much as I like Star Trek Next Generation, everything like that, it's, well, I don't

it's not necessarily how people are going to be acting in space and how humanity is going to be, well, how society will have developed. Maybe it will have. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but I think versions like the expanse are

probably more realistic. Yeah. And I recently listened to an episode of Planetary Radio with two writers of the expanse. I think this is a fairly old episode, but they were talking a lot about the influences for writing the expanse and things like that.

And one of the things they mentioned was, their one caveat was, what if there were no robotics? And for some reason, I had not noticed, like, they built the world out so well that I didn't even at all think about the fact that there were no robots in the expanse, but there's no robots.

Like the one mystical technology they have is that medical chair where they put their arm in and it fixes all of their issues. But there's no robotic things. Yeah, I'd never given that any thought, but you're right, that is cool. But that was like the one thing they allowed themselves to say, here's our world, it's no robots.

It's crazy. What space show can you name where there's no robots? That's true. I think Babylon 5. Okay. I don't, but you have to go back a little while for that one. That was another edgy one with lots of drinking as well. but I don't recall any robots in that one.

It's just cool to think about it. Because that's the whole shtick with sci-fi, right? You get to pick one thing that is your suspended reality of the show. And I guess they pick two in like the Epstein Drive and the no robots thing. But I just enjoy. I think that's what makes it feel so relevant to our time. We have robots, but like we don't really have robots to the way that most space shows show.

And it just feels so gritty and real. I love it. So anyway, that's my expanse. thing. Perfect. Watch them. Season four, but watch it.

So my pick is a pretty simple one. And it's only like quasi space related. So there's this like cool little interactive web experience that I found called the deep sea. And it's not really, it's not really space related at all. But basically it's like this little thing where you can. scroll down and see kind of what what there is at different levels of the ocean. And so you kind of like scroll and scroll and scroll and you get like, here's the animal that lives at this level.

Here's the animal that lives at this level. And it's like all about this like what, how weird it gets as you explore deeper into the into the world. Is this neal. That's the one. Neal. Fun. What a domain.

I'm trying to like post it here. My computer is having some struggles right now. But yeah. So you just scroll and scrolls. Like here are whales. Here are our fish. Here are all this weird stuff. And you go all the way to the bottom when you can see all the different, they put like all

the things where like here's the submarine that is explored the lowest. Here's where this trench ends. Here's where this trench ends. It's super cool. So yeah, I kind of love the, just love the presentation of it, which is pretty neat because I'm a communicator. And yeah, you can learn a little bit about deep. Are you going to build a Titan version of this for us?

Yeah, kind of. Yeah. something like that for sure. So, yeah, that's my pick. I'm digging this thing. Everyone's like browsing it right now. Ooh, scroll, scroll, scroll. Yeah, just, oh, look at this thing.

Chris, what do you got? Well, I have to admit, I'd forgotten about the picks until you started mentioning it. We had the lead up. So I was going to pick the expands just based on pretty much the same things you said. You know, so, you know, I've been rocking my brain. What else? What else have I been watching? And, you know, interestingly, most of what I've been doing is researching the next book, but...

Were there any books? Here, I'll give you a good question that I'm just for my own personal reading list. Were there any books that you were reading in the run-up to writing your own that you felt had a good setup for writing about space? Because it is kind of a hard topic to make it relatable to people, to make it relatable to not the super nerds that know everything about space, but make it approachable for people that aren't typically reading stuff. Is there anyone particular that you read that you were like, this is a book to go get? Well, it's not necessarily a specific book, but a style. I wanted to do it because as you see in the book that I also incorporate a lot of research and trying to balance the research.

And this kind of comes back to my background. I originally, before I was working in the space sector, I did historical research, and I helped a lot of authors writing biographies and history books. And so I liked authors. like save it like David McCullough who could manage now not comparing my writing style to Dave McCullough but he's in a vastly different category or you know but our better category but I like authors who are able to manage a lot of information you know on complicated topics and make it approachable and

conversational and that's what I was trying to do kind of collect a lot of very well research information and write a conversational book based on a lot of actually fairly detailed research and hopefully I was able to achieve that and and so there wasn't any specific book but just a style and a method that I've seen with my favorite favorite author historical authors who are able to write in a way that's not overly scholarly I think we've read books that you know have a lot of great information but it's hard to read they're so thick and they're written in a they're written for scholars and not for the general public and i don't i think they only have limited use you know they have they do have a use they're great but if you want

to reach more people really get the message out you need to write it in a manner that people can read and understand and and and you feel the story you get brought into the story so kind of like in a novelistic approach you know easy it kind of easy to read but also telling a story that anybody can understand. Yeah, and I think with even my wife who is tangentially interested in space, I would read her some of the anecdotes from the missions. And just those little snippets of what it was like to have those moments of normalcy when you're up in a space shuttle, in a space station,

and all these weird environments are, they really make you feel like you're there because they're just so human. And that's the favorite part of your book to me personally. It's just like, what would it be like if I was up there, you know, for a couple of weeks at a time? and that's the stuff that I love. So I'm anxious to finish the rest of it. I'm only about halfway through, but I'm a slow reader.

So I'm doing the best I can. You mentioned a little earlier the other things that you do day-to-day in space. So if anyone hasn't heard of that stuff, can you let us know what you're working on day-to-day in space? Yeah, I run. I'm the CEO of a nonprofit called Explore Mars. We're one of the most influential non-profits, specifically regarding Mars. And some of the things we do, we run the largest annual conference focused on sending humans to Mars, appropriately enough, the Humans to Mars Summit.

Our next one with the 2020 Humans to Mars Summit will take place at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C. on May 12th through 14th. And this is always a great event. We always have senior NASA officials. We've had the NASA administrator from the very beginning of the conference each year in It's changed, of course. Now we have Administrator Bridenstein. And he hasn't confirmed yet this year, but hopefully he will be speaking. It's tough to schedule.

What? He's tough to schedule sometimes. He is, but he does. He does come to a lot of things. And he's been very good, you know, coming to our event. Actually, we were the first public event he came to after he was confirmed at administrator. I remember that. Yeah, yeah.

It was the big to do. Oh, J.B's here. We call him J.B. He's welcome to the J.B. fan club. So we were happy about that. But we always have, you know, wide range. And this is where kind of related to the book, we like, well, we always have the top people in mission architecture and science.

We also like to expand it so that you have different technologies. We've innovated innovation companies, you know, looking at how you can use blockchain and space exploration, agriculture. Last year, we had a feeding Mars panel similar, and that was inspired by the book research, where we had people talking about synthetic biology. agriculture, you know, a company talking about cell-grown meat and 3D printing. We also have other, you know, try to find as many different interesting technologies that we can and in industries that can be brought into the community.

Some of them know they have something that's valuable for space exploration. Some of them have never given it any thought and realized, oh, you're right. This could be used for that because they're looking at it in a completely different way. And so one of the roles we see is to bring these communities together, to force them in the room and have them start discussions because many of them have never, you know, communicated with each other. And this isn't just with vastly different industries. We've often played this role even within NASA itself. I mean, I remember our first few conferences. We've had people coming, like our first ISS and Mars conference basically trying to see if ISS, how can we utilize ISFEST.

to get to Mars. We had people who had literally worked in the same building, NASA headquarters, two floors apart for 20 years, who had never communicated. And they had very, very much related disciplines. They had similar jobs, but they'd never spoken to each other. So it took our conference to get them to talk to each other. So that's one of the things we like to do, bring these communities together. And we run these very important workshops, a lot of STEM education work. We're about to launch a bunch more. We just brought last year a new president, Janet Ivy, who does television show Janet's Planet, as one of very, very well-known STEM evangelist. And we're about to launch some really interesting new tech, a very interesting new technical project in

partnership with a major technology company. Can't go into details on that. So we're very active, and we have a big year coming up, particularly since it's the year of Mars. For, it's a international missions going to Mars this year. And so it never happened before so much activity. NASA is sending their 2020 rover. Europeans partnering with Russia is sending the XO Mars mission. The UAE is sending their hope mission, their first mission. And China will be sending a mission to Mars as well. So a convoy going to Mars, robotics, but very important missions this year. Jake was so excited for those missions that he quit his job. And is not a technically a full-time podcaster.

Do you want to do a little going pro update, Jake? Well, our campaign ended, so thank you to everyone who supported it. It's been really overwhelming. We really, like, the last day was crazy and hectic, and we were doing a Twitter countdown to our milestone at 200 patrons, so it was super cool. Yeah, I'm overwhelmed. So now I've got to do all the hard work, though.

So we'll see. Yeah, that was the fun part for the Mars beat. preaching about it and then, you know, getting supporters. But yeah, it's been really good. Well, I'm pumped for partaking in the Mars beat, but not being day-to-day on the Mars beat. I am excited to sit back and enjoy 2020 personally while you two are very busy. Have fun with that. Cool.

Well, Chris, thank you so much for coming on. It's been awesome to talk with you. And I'm excited for more alcohol in space, for more Mars stuff. Hopefully we get to meet in person someday. and we didn't connect in IAC if you were at IAC. There was about 300,000 other people there. You should come to Humans to Mars Summit. It's not a far drive for me, so it's not out of the question.

That's an easy one if you're in Philly. Yeah, it's pretty close. I do hope to come up and do a book talk in Philly sometimes. Oh, let me know. That would be fantastic. Or if you have ideas, I was going to reach out to some of the astronomy on tap people. Oh, that's a good one. Yep, I can send you some lists because I've got a couple of friends in the city that do that kind of stuff.

That would be awesome. Well, thank you for having me on. It was a lot of fun. Awesome. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Bye, Jake. Jake, you're supposed to say bye.

Bye. Bye. One, two, three, four, five, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.