Astronauts and the future of space exploration

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0:45Hello, I'm Luke Jones. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. In BBC OS Conversations, we bring people together to share their experiences. This time, we're heading out of this world to bring together astronauts. If you were born after November 2000, for your entire life there has always been someone living up in space. So the first crew of the International Space Station have reached their home. That first crew arrived at the International Space Station 25 years ago. And since then, almost 300 people from some 20 nations have visited the orbiting lab. Later, as the United States begins its return to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, we will discuss what the future holds for humans in space.

1:35But first, two astronauts who have lived on the ISS have been sharing their experiences with my colleague James Reynolds. British European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake launched to the space station 10 years ago, where he lived for six months. And NASA astronaut Nicole Stott has flown to space twice, spending a total of 104 days in orbit. It felt like I was coming to a second home when I got there almost immediately. And of course, you adapt, right? You are floating and you're adapting to this new environment. But there's something to getting used to moving in three dimensions and floating and flying and having that extraordinary view out the window.

2:15It's like nothing else. As Nicole said, I felt comfortable right from the beginning. It just feels so amazing to be in space and the view and the crew and the working environment. But there was a really special moment when we had a crew changeover. And we went from six people on board, which feels quite busy. It's not cramped or claustrophobic. There's plenty of room for six, but three crew members went down. And for two weeks, there were just three of us on board. Then I think it felt like home. It was so quiet. And it feels like, you know, you kind of own the place and you're now the crew who's taking over as the lead crew for the next three months.

2:52So for me, that was a very special moment. One of the things that's really nice about the space station is that we each have our own individual crew compartment. It's about the size of one of those red phone booths there in the UK and surprisingly, plenty of space. In a lot of ways, it feels like a very sterile place, you know, white walls, cables, that kind of thing. But when you would float by somebody's crew compartment, you can see kind of their personal touch on it. And when you moved from one section of the space station to another, like through the U.S. modules and the Japanese and European, they had kind of the same feel to them.

3:30And then you would float into the Russian modules. And they had on the walls this, it's almost like the pile side, the soft side of Velcro, you know, like carpet on the wall. And it gave you this, I don't know, this kind of cozy, your grandmother's house feel to it is what I always thought about when I went in there. It was like, wow, this is nice, soft and comfy in here. Yeah. And I remember the Russian segment that was around the galley table as well, where we would always have our Friday evening meals. And there was a poster of Yuri Gagarin, but there was also a poster of just a field with a lone green tree in it.

4:07beautiful summer's day and bright green grass and a lovely tree in full bloom. And everybody went up staring at this poster. That's what we really miss up there. You miss nature. You miss greenery. You miss being surrounded by what the earth has to offer. Ultimately, it's about the utility of it. And I think the people in the place are making it their own. No matter where you go, you put your own touch on it. And again, I don't know about you, Tim, but there is no better decoration, if you will, than the view out the window. And I think we're blessed with that presence of earth out the window so beautifully, so stunning.

4:46And like that picture on the wall that you mentioned, the lone tree in the summer and the green, I think it's interesting that the way we're appreciating nature is through the experience we've had with it before and the love we have of it through our lives here on earth and knowing that that's part of who we are. And I always remember floating in front of the window and looking out of it and being stunned every time, but feeling like I was experiencing it with the mute button on. You know, the only sounds of Earth that you had were the ones of yourselves and not of what might be going on down on the planet at the time.

5:20Yeah, that's a beautiful way of putting it, Nicole. You don't really need any other posters when you look out the window, either direction. In any house here on Earth, there's always someone wandering around the house looking for something they've lost. Did that ever happen to you guys in the space station? A lot. I think that's part of the adaptation there is because just like you, everything floats, right? And you want it to just float right there in front of you and stay in front of you. So staying organized is a lot more difficult up there. Velcro is your friend. It's all over us. And I mean that literally, our pants have Velcro strips on them, the walls, everything, your pen.

6:02So there's a real deliberateness that needs to go into keeping track of your stuff. Yeah, absolutely. You very quickly become an unpopular crew member if you don't just put things back where they came from. Everybody needs to know where everything is and where to find things. And so it's really important to stay tidy and organized. But of course you lose things things float off and normally you find them again on saturday morning when we clean the space station and they've been drawn towards the return air grid all the air is circulating down there so when we go to vacuum the air grids and clean out all the dust from there that's where we find that the lost pens and i see there are endless plays written about how stressful it is to be cooped up in close quarters with other human beings how then do you deal with that in space?

6:53And when does someone's eccentric something or other become slightly annoying? And then how do you deal with that? Oh, man, I think the training that we do and the time we spend together here on Earth is really important. And the way we do that training, it's common across all of the crews. So everybody is figuring out how to live with each other and share when they're not necessarily feeling their best. And you start to recognize a little bit of the subtlety in other people's behavior, just like we do with our own family and friends, I think. Tim, I don't know about you guys, but we made a real point of just deciding that we would confront each other.

7:34And I mean that in a positive way, when we saw something or heard something that didn't sound quite right. And honestly, it didn't happen that often. I really didn't feel like we were having to manage that kind of thing, because everyone was loving their time and opportunity to be in that place. So I don't know, you just find a way. Yeah, no, I completely agree, Nicole. I think there are other things that are stressful and difficult. And you're working extremely hard. We're up there to work hard. That's the point. That's our job. But, you know, and there's lots of cargo operations going, there might be upcoming spacewalks, there might be changes of schedule going on.

8:10But the actual part of living and working with other crew members in close proximity, That was never a source of stress. And like Nicole said, we, you know, we all agreed to talk about these things, to be very open and honest and upfront if something was bothering us. And genuinely, you know, we all got on absolutely well. And the only time that there's a potential for any conflict, I think, is when new crew come and old crew go and you have a changeover and a mix of personalities. And if you're arriving on the space station, you just have to integrate into the way that things are. But I've never heard of any crews having any problems with that.

8:47What do you do on your time off, if there was any time off? Well, there was time. I mean, you're living there. So you get into this routine of waking up in the morning and getting ready to go to work and having your meals. And there is time off. I don't know about you guys, Tim, but most of the time that's free is spent in front of a window, just floating in front of the window and experiencing Earth out there, sharing that with your crewmates, becoming a better photographer if you weren't one before because you want to capture that experience. it's stunning in so many ways and then we all have our special things we do we bring I think this human and the human spaceflight with us to space I had the chance to paint while I was there and it absolutely was one of the personal highlights of my time there.

9:36I agree with Nicole it's you know it's amazing just to go to that cupola window and take photographs and I was not a particularly good photographer at the beginning of the mission I like to think that I improved somewhat during the mission. But there's no better thing to do with your time off than just to go and look at that view of Earth and take photographs. But we do also have some musical instruments up there. You can obviously have books uploaded and read or even there's an entertainment drive if you want to watch some television or a movie. But most people, firstly, we don't have the time for that.

10:08We're filling our time with other activities, whether it's things like Art for Nicole or whether it's other outreach programs that people are doing. But in the evenings, maybe for about half an hour, that's the only time I would say when you don't want to look out the window. Because if you go and look out the window and it's daytime just before going to sleep, you're going to get this massive influx of ultraviolet light. And that's going to ruin your sleep pattern for the whole evening. So that's perhaps the only time you're going to crew quarter and you might just watch, you know, 20 minutes of a TV program or something before going to sleep.

10:40But you know, one of the really wonderful things up there too is that we have amazing communication with our families. I think something that was very special and people are surprised by is that we can phone home, if you will, and maintain that contact with our families. And I know a lot of people are spending time, they make little videos to send home to their family and friends and to do our best to share the experience in whatever way we can, like that photography. But just being able to talk to them is pretty special too. I began by asking you both what struck you, what was in your minds when you boarded the space station.

11:15So I'd now like to ask you if you can think about what might be going through your minds in the moment when, in about five years' time, the International Space Station comes to an end and comes back down to Earth. I don't know if I'm prepared for the sadness of it, really. I'm hopeful that in the meantime, we've put something in place that allows us to sustain this continued presence we've had in space. I think that's been really significant. I want to just reflect on whatever that date is, five years, seven years, whenever it might be, that there's a way for us. And so I'm thankful for this program that we really shine a light on the legacy of what the International Space Station has done and been for us.

11:59we put together in an international way, probably the best international cooperation I've seen or heard of ever, defined this higher mission of off the earth for the earth, where ultimately everything is about improving life on earth. And we came together and we did it. We established the rules of engagements and we worked together to make it happen. And I'm really, really hopeful that people will be able to understand, you know, this place we've had in space and it'll be carried forward, you know, in other ways. And I completely agree with Nicole's point that I think there'll be a real mixture of emotions.

12:36And it will be sad, very sad to see the ISS retire and de-orbit. But from a purely practical point of view, it can't stay up there forever. There are engineering tolerances, and it will be unsafe to operate it beyond its life expectancy. And I do think there will be at least one, if not two, maybe more commercial space stations that will still give us that foothold in space, a place to do research and development and science. But as Nicole said there, the ISS actually is so much more than just a scientific laboratory. It's a beacon of how we can cooperate, how we can collaborate when we focus on a common goal.

13:16And I would like to think that its legacy will live on. And I'd like to think there'll be another international space outpost somewhere at some time. Maybe that's an international lunar base that we can start to focus on. Obviously, we have the Artemis Accords and a really exciting exploration programme that we're embarking on right now. But that doesn't currently include Russia or China. Maybe in the future, some sort of international lunar base could be open to all nations. astronauts tim peak and nicole start talking about life on the international space station and actually as i record this program in mid-december there are currently 10 people up there in orbit above us seven on the international space station and three on the chinese space station i'm luke jones and this is the documentary from the bbc world service

14:11Is the US conceding the green energy race to China? When the Trump administration said it was pulling out of the Paris Agreement for a second time, it seemed like a wholesale withdrawal from the climate change question. All the while, China is becoming a global powerhouse of green technology. What could happen in the long run if the US continues to cede the floor to China on clean energy? Listen to The Global Story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

14:45Tim mentioned the Artemis Accords a moment ago. That's the international agreement between the US and its allies to return astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Four explorers answering the call to once more rocket away from Earth and chart a course around the moon. That's a NASA video for Artemis II. The 10-day mission is due to launch in the next few months on a giant new rocket, and it will carry four astronauts further than any human has gone before in a loop far beyond the moon. It's the latest stage of the US-led plan to eventually land humans on the moon for the first time since 1972.

15:28China also is working on a lunar landing. For our next conversation, we wanted to discuss Artemis, but also the bigger picture of space exploration. I was joined by astronaut Mike Massimino. He has flown to space twice on the Space Shuttle, helping to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. You might also know Mike from his role as an astronaut in the TV comedy The Big Bang Theory. We'll also hear from Kiri Wagstaff, a former NASA researcher and AI expert, and Les Johnson, who was a senior engineer at NASA and is now CEO of Infinite Frontiers Consulting, working on innovative space technologies. To start with, I want to know from all three of them why they thought space mattered.

16:10Wow, why does it matter? I think the survival of our species in the long term is going to depend on space and space technology. I really believe in exploring and sending people to the moon and going to look for life on Mars and things like that. But I think in the near term, We need to be using some of these emerging technologies to help solve energy and environment problems here on Earth. Things like developing power that we can beam down from orbit and provide abundant energy all over the world. All the space environmental monitoring we do from space to look at what we're doing in terms of climate and climate change and monitoring droughts and helping countries plan for rainfall disasters and recover from those using space data.

16:51I also think we need to be very forward-looking about enabling a future where we can start getting some of our resources from space. It'll enable us to stop basically destroying the planet to get the rare earth materials that we're mining and lots of other things. So I think space technology could actually be a part of the solution to the climate change problem and actually help elevate standards of living all over the world. So I think it's very important to our future. We as humans are irresistibly drawn to the unknown and the unanswered questions, which are fundamental to our existence. Where do we come from?

17:25Are we alone? And it's not just about us, but how did the other planets and stars come to be as they are? I agree. I think exploration is in our nature. We want to find out what else is out there. Are we alone? And so on. I think in some of the more practical things that Les mentioned for sure. And also my experience with benefits like international cooperation, inspiring young people to get an education, it certainly inspired me. And I think now what we're seeing is economic benefit. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time are putting their focus on developing opportunities in space. So it's not just governments anymore.

18:04It's now also very feasible and thriving economic sector of the world economy. So for all those reasons, we're going to continue to see a lot of growth. And once you go there and you start looking around and exploring, you may find answers to questions you never thought to ask. The real power of it is that we don't even know what's ahead of us. I think it's going to be extraordinary. In the near term, Mike, what excites you about what we, or rather you lot, are on the cusp of? Well, I'm really excited about the Artemis II mission. And four of my friends, the commanders, Reed Wiseman and his crew are going to be going to the moon.

18:43They're not going to land on the moon, but they're going to be further away from the planet than any humans have been before. They're going to be taking lots of data, checking out the Orion spacecraft. And that is the next step. It's kind of like what Apollo 8 was back in the 1960s. Now, this is an orbital flight. We haven't had people be on low Earth orbit in over 50 years. So to me, that's going to be a great day when that happens. And it's even going to be cooler when we go back and land people on the moon, which hopefully will be happening in the next couple of years. So I think being able to establish a settlement on the moon will allow us to explore and solve some of the problems that Les had mentioned earlier, but also give us, I think, a good head start on going to Mars eventually and beyond.

19:27Well, I'm equally excited about the Artemis program, but in a way that takes it beyond what we did in the 60s. This is intended not to be just to go and put footprints eventually and come back. The intention is to go in an international partnership, which is the Artemis Accords, that have been negotiated for the past several years with lots of countries to participate in this. And I think we're headed toward a permanent or quasi-permanent settlement on the moon as we learn to live off planet and move out into the solar system. And I think that's only going to help the case of driving the economy that he spoke of earlier.

19:59You know, the space economy is going to be almost a trillion-dollar economy in 2030. And so there's just a lot of opportunity for discovery and expansion going out there. And I think the moon is a huge part of that. Yeah, I think this is a huge potential for achieving those goals of space exploration and getting humans to where we'd like to be able to be. I think our robotic explorers can be our advanced scouts and can pave the way for reaching out further and further into the solar system and beyond. We've got our Mars rovers and orbiters currently operational. We have the Europa Clipper mission on its way to the Jupiter system, and they are able to get us the data and observations that we need to make plans for humans to go there.

20:40But that's where AI and what we call science autonomy can really be an enormous player because as those missions get further from the Earth, we are less and less able to give them direct commanding from Earth because of just the physics of light time delays. So we've got a delay of 20 minutes out to Mars. Jupiter is up to an hour. And Pluto is more than five hours of just delay from when you send a command and when it's received. So that ability to have some intelligence on board the spacecraft so that it can respond to what it's observing in these new unknown environments is absolutely vital.

21:18As Curie said, it's hard to send people to these places, but we can send the technology there and we can learn an awful lot. And I think it paves the way for human exploration. So I think it's vital. It paves the way for human exploration and also assists when you start thinking about sending people to some of these far-off places. When you have long distances and the propulsion we have to take spacecraft there today, we're limited in terms of how fast we can go. And we need to be developing the next generation of propulsion systems, those that use nuclear fuel. I think we need to be also investing in ways to better keep a crew alive and healthy.

21:54We don't know a lot about the long-term effects in deep space of what gravity is going to do. We know what's happened on the space station where you have only microgravity, but do we need to simulate one full Earth gravity, or is one-third Earth gravity enough to prevent a lot of that from happening? And we need more efficient life support systems. Right now, when we send spacecraft out with people, we're pretty good at recycling water, but not much of anything else. We only recycle about 50 % of the oxygen that the crew uses. and we need to have better tech for that. So I think we can definitely do near-Earth space exploration in a marriage of human and robots.

22:31Mars is probably reachable for short missions in the very near future, but if we're going to enable the ambitious things that we'd like to enable, we've got a lot of both human and technology challenges to solve. I'm deeply inspired by the idea of sending humans out into our solar system and even beyond, and personally I'd love to go myself. But I recognize we do have these challenges, even on the technological side to add to what Les already said, just landing the large systems and infrastructure and payloads on Mars that we would need for humans to survive there is not something we currently have solved, not to mention, of course, the medical, physical and mental health challenges of that long duration mission.

23:12I wonder what you all make of the changing way in which all of these big projects are funded and literally get off the ground. In the past, it was governments, wasn't it, nation states racing to get these things up in the skies. But now there's so much more private sector involvement. And yet maybe there's also less of a sense of a great cultural excitement around these things. It feels less new. It feels less exciting. Do you think we're in a better position, Mike, with all of this than in the past? Or is it somewhat holding things back? No, I think we're in a better shape than we were because we're not relying on taxpayers' dollars to do these things any longer.

23:48I think it's been a really nice relationship between the government agencies and these private companies. And I think that's the only way we're going to be able to be successful is to have a thriving economic sector in the space business. I'm more interested in the exploration, I guess, the science part of it, as opposed to looking for ways to make money. But that's the model that we're working with now. And it's been, I think, the only way that we're going to achieve what we want to do is by involving some of these private companies. But I really don't see private companies where there's no economic return building some of these great science missions and observatories.

24:25And I think there we've got to be careful that we don't have this attitude of, well, you know, the private companies will do all the space. We don't need to fund it publicly anymore because I think those missions are extremely important. and historically it has been science that led to engineering which led to solving problems which led to profit and i think it's the role of government in space to foster the science and the exploration part whereas the development and monetization should be handed off to industry so i think it's a combination and i'm optimistic les johnson kiri wagstaff and the astronaut Mike Massimino on the future of space exploration.