Space 2075: How Humanity Will Live, Work and Make Drugs off-planet | Live Recording at the Royal Society

0:00Are all batteries the same? That's like asking if all soccer players are the same. Take Messi, the most decorated player ever. Is there any other player who has achieved that? No, just him. Now take Duracell. Is there any other battery with Power Boost ingredients inside? No, just Duracell. Remember, goats only trust goats because they're built different. And Messi only trusts Duracell. Welcome to a special edition of New Scientist's podcast, The World, The Universe and Us, recorded live at the Royal Society in London. I'm Rowan Hooper. And I'm Abbey Beal. Now, earlier this year, the Royal Society published a report on space exploration over the next 50 years called Space 2075.

0:47And that's the starting point for our discussion this evening. We're here to explore space travel in the future. And to do that, we are delighted to welcome three very special guests. So let's introduce them. We have the first British astronaut, Helen Sharman. Helen was part of a Soyuz mission in 1991, and she spent seven days in space.

1:12And then next to Helen, we have Irena Di Giulio. She's a biomedical engineer at King's College London. And one of the projects that Irena is working on is helping to get the first disabled astronaut into space. And we're going to hear about that. So welcome Irena.

1:30And then Katie King, who's CEO of BioOrbit, and that's a pharmaceuticals company who plan to make drugs in space. So let's give them all another round of applause. Welcome all. So let's start by asking Helen Sharman, and probably there's only two people here who've heard our podcast before. I bet no one apart from Helen has been to space. I want to ask what it's like. But before that, let's have another show of hands. who would like to go into space if they had the chance hands up including people on the panel okay so it's roughly half i'd say a bit more than half the people in the room and hands up who definitely would not want to go to space

2:17abby and a few scattered people in the audience who don't want to go to space um interesting we'll get back to that i think um helen let's start with you describing the tell us a bit about the experience of space travel. I mean we know that it's been shown that just a few minutes in space already starts to cause changes in the body and how was it for you? How did it feel? The first feeling that you get actually when you start to feel weightless as soon as that final rocket stage shuts out you're feeling weightless even though you're still strapped into the seat but I was aware that my back wasn't always in contact with the seat behind me um so sometimes i was sort of more forcing forward on the on the straps and sometimes not um so the sweat down the my back could dry off a bit so you realize then how hot you've become sitting in that seat but no then then it very rapidly within the next few hours you start to feel this fluid shift that tends to move sort of the more fluid than normal tends to come towards the upper chest and head and that feels a little uncomfortable and it takes a few days for the body to adapt to that and the fluid sort of shifts around in different places in the body so you lose blood plasma volume that kind of thing yeah but yes some astronauts get headaches um we all feel stuffy and you get this sort of fat puffy features it's rather unattractively called um called chicken legs or bird legs puffy head so um and so yeah it's uh but it we alleviated a bit by thick elastic straps around the tops of our legs which tends to keep the body fluids in our legs a bit more but those themselves elastic straps are uncomfortable but no that's that makes it sound really bad and it's not really bad it is just the most glorious thing so feeling weightless that's the big thing and that's where the big challenges for the physical parts of the human body are you get that amazing camaraderie with the crew and then looking out of the views as well the views of earth and the stars of course so I think being in space you get this complete mixture of feelings and experiences and yes of course like any job there are the um the very intense focused moments and the slightly stressful moments but there are also times of complete serenity and I just remember it as being a very natural feeling and while we miss our family and friends and we miss the weather on earth you know the rain on your face and the wind in your hair somehow there's a sense of belonging in space.

4:43Wow, so you adapted very quickly to it feeling like an environment that you could exist in quite happily. It feels like home because the simulator we've been in for hundreds of hours before. So it's a spacecraft that we're in for the transporting to the space station and then the space station itself, we've been in the simulator of that as well. So it's in terms of it feeling like a home and we know where the light switches are and what does what, you know. But also because you're with people that you trust and you're in communication to mission control and all the teams there that you also trust because you've done your training with them.

5:20I think, yes, it is just a very relaxed place. All you're doing actually in space is the job that you've been trained to do. The tough times happen in the training. Right. Well, we might get on to the training later. And Katie, so you want to make medicine in space. would you like to go there to make the drugs or would you rather send someone else for you I would love to go I think if I could design it that it would only recognize my eyes to turn it on then that would be great I'm joking I mean I would I would love the opportunity to go but humans we contaminate things so if we're making drugs in space it needs to be very sterile so automation is where it's going what so eventually you think your products we'll get onto what your ideas are in a bit but we won't need humans in space for what it'll be cheaper and safer and easier better to just have it automated definitely later down the line there's a lot of like technical challenges to get to that point so i think initially we will need humans when we're at a certain scale just to replenish reagents and collect the output the output medicines to send them back down to earth but in time i see that becoming all automated and robotic we will get onto the sort of pros and cons of robots in space versus humans in space a bit later.

6:36Irena, tell us about your work supporting astronauts with disabilities. So what we are doing is we started a few years ago and we got a boost since the European Space Agency has recruited a new astronaut corps and in 2022 they recruited the first astronaut with of physical impairment. Our research is alongside this project. This project is now called FLY. They recruited the astronauts. We are doing the science behind it. My scientific hypothesis is that people with physical impairments may be better than able-bodied astronauts in space. People say the space environment is debilitating for the body, which is true, and what we are doing is as a big research team we are going to study the whole physiology of this first astronaut with physical impairments and try to understand the adaptability to space.

7:45The idea, the mission is not confirmed yet, but the idea that we're working towards a 2027 date for a mission. It could be a long-term mission, could be a short-term mission, certainly on the ISS, the International Space Station. And yes, stay tuned because this is why I always say is hopefully this first astronaut is gonna be the first of many. We're working in that direction, we're not just focusing on his particular impairment, he has a lower limb reputation, we are working more broadly and we are looking at different impairments and how they may adapt to space flight. So can I ask a question?

8:29Because, you know, I talked about this sort of these bird legs, but that's because, as I understand it, each leg contributes about a litre of fluid that goes towards the upper chest because it's no longer pulled down by gravity. So if you were then without a leg or part of your leg, that I can see being quite beneficial. But if you were without something else that would be less beneficial does that make sense? So one of my scientific hypotheses you're totally right is lower limb amputation mainly bilateral will be probably the test bench for this type of hypothesis this particular astronaut has a unilateral amputation and we're going to test the difference between the two lower limbs the two legs the prosthetic one or the amputated one and the remaining one.

9:16And it's not just the fluids, it's also in space we have bone wasting, we have muscle wasting, tend to occur in the lower limb, so in the legs. Not having them, an advantage maybe? I don't know, it's an hypothesis, we're going to test it. And lots of other adaptations that may be either the same so that the testing about this is no real differences in performance or maybe even slightly better but it'd be huge wouldn't it because i think there's still a sort of test pilot idea of astro amongst astronauts that i guess we we might think of apollo and um even gemini and and and how you you have to be a almost always a test pilot to get into those programs and that's probably is it I mean there's still a leftover feeling that that's what an astronaut is but then you know we do break the mold and we have changed it but then to have someone with disabilities would change it again and that's why it's exciting yeah and also in terms of you know society how can that change the perception of disability in society on earth So there is also that aspect, but it's not just, you know, people think tokenism.

10:35No, there is a scientific hypothesis. There is a whole team at European Space Agency and beyond actually pushing in that direction to make space flight accessible. And you're right. Traditionally, we are going in the direction of super fit astronauts. But what we know about adaptations of the body to space is very biased, very biased on very super fit astronauts and not disrespect male majority so far so we need there is so much more that we can do and so much more that we can learn from this and this is the opportunity I noticed and I know when Rowan asked about and if you if we wanted to go to space you seemed a bit hesitant is would you not like to go my answer is depends because of what this The space environment does to the human body long missions are very taxing.

11:31But my mission is to try to make a space accessible. So if you want to go, my job is to try to help you go. So that's how I see it. Short mission, yeah, maybe the feeling of weightlessness. Yeah, maybe that will be fun. But, you know, I'm seasick and all of that. Maybe not for me. Maybe not. But that's the other thing. Women are more motion sickness and may experience more sickness in space. We don't know why. And not enough research has been done on that. Yeah, I mean, so we've got three really different perspectives there on space travel. One thing I'm really interested in is why people want to go into space on an individual level, but also as a society.

12:18So, Helen, what was it that made you want to go? I was really quite selfishly thinking not actually about going into space when I applied for the job of being a British astronaut, but I was thinking about the training. So, you know, I like variety. I think we all like a bit of variety in life. And what other job can you do some, you know, learn about space technology and experiments that you can do in space, train amongst other astronauts, cosmonauts, learn to speak a new language. So all my training was going to be done in the Russian language. Do physical training as part of your job, right?

12:54Not have to do it when you're so tired in the evening after a full day of work. It's part of the job to do all that. and also for me it was you know my training was all starting towards the end of the cold war so that that fascination of what was the Soviet Union and life there and living in Star City near Moscow in that very exciting time of that transition as communism was just just coming towards its end there in the Soviet Union just just all of that attracted me and of course once I was there I started really thinking about the space flight and the more I thought about what we can do in space that we just can't do on earth I mean not just for me doing somersaults and things but really you know the science brain in me was thinking all of these fantastic things that we can do the more I thought about that the more I really wanted to go.

13:46Katie your company BioOrbit so it's not so much about exploration as doing things in microgravity and the opportunities that brings so tell us about that yes of course so space is an incredible place and it's a very different environment to here on earth and microgravity being one of the the key pieces and that affects different fundamental phenomena so sedimentation is something that happens on earth that doesn't happen in space and convection currents as well something that's induced by gravity now when that when we're dealing with materials and drugs and chemicals you can form different structures in space where you don't have sedimentation and don't have convection currents versus here on earth so the particular use case is in with crystallization so crystallization is a far superior process in space versus on earth and this is shown across so many different material types so semiconductors as one so you can get much more perfect semiconductors in space and there's actually a company called spaceforge out in wales who are building the facilities to make semiconductors in space and bring them back down.

14:57But at BioWorbit, what we're doing is we're crystallizing drugs in space, specifically antibodies. And so through crystallizing antibodies, you can form really concentrated drug solutions, which basically mean that you can take a drug that typically you would have to have injected in the vein and turn it into a really concentrated injectable shot that you can take at home. So we want to turn cancer treatments from something that you have to go to hospital for into something that you can stay at home and inject yourself with. And you can't get that quality of crystal needed on earth. You can get it in space.

15:37So we are building the hardware to mass produce these crystals so that they can be used back here on earth. I was going to say you want the mass produced otherwise it's going to be really expensive isn't it exactly getting it from space yep and the unit economics now work because of the spacex really decreasing that uh cost of launch of mass into orbit so it wasn't feasible even a few years ago helen well we've um i grew some protein crystals in space and of course it's been done for a long time but when when astronauts do them they're done on this very small scale and we're doing we're growing them to get the crystal to bring back to earth to help us to understand the structure of that protein which ultimately then creates the drug but you're taking it this whole stage further actually manufacturing a drug at scale enough to return to earth and I think that's where this whole idea of of what we've invested in space for so long it's really now starting to to reap the benefits we've benefited to a certain extent in back on earth because we do have some drugs under trial because of protein crystals going in space but what you're doing is just i think absolutely phenomenal so yeah when when are you hoping for the first um go ahead but when you're hoping for the first first actual drug to you can make in space will you have to do a clinical trial of that because of because of the weighting manufactured so we'll be taking drugs that have already been through the approval process and then turning them into a crystal so it's an accelerated approval process so rather than the traditional seven ten years it be more like three years to go through certain toxicity studies so it will be much sooner i think still within the sort of seven year timeline earliest because we have to become regulated there's lots of challenges ahead but it is because of the work that's been done by astronauts that even enabled this is the findings of those science experiments that then it's like hang on is there another use case for these crystals it's like actually using the crystal as the drug not just for understanding the structure itself.

17:37So in this scale, exactly as you say, Helen, but yeah, I'd say about seven to 10 years, we should see it like actually being injected commercially. Clinical trials will be a little sooner than that. But next year you want to actually do tests in space. Is that right? Correct. So we've got our first launch in June next year with our proof of concept manufacturing line. So this is all built with scale up in mind. So testing the fundamental features that then will enable the multi-ton production later down the line but we have to go a step at a time. And it's what is it like a little module that goes on a SpaceX rocket?

18:14It's exactly that so we've actually called it Baby Boxy because it's the smallest in the family so it's our little baby it's about the size of a shoe box and it's a continuous production line which hasn't been done in space before so starting small sending Baby Boxy into space June next year and then we'll be making crystals in space and then seeing how that has worked in our reactor and then scale up after that. All right we talked a little bit about the effects of space travel on the body what about on the mind we hear about the overview effect that astronauts often talk about and I was really struck by William Shatner when he came back and said I think he was the oldest person in space when he was 91 I think when he came back and And instead of being...

18:58And when he went, he didn't go for very long. No, no, it was really... He was barely just scraped down again. But what was interesting was even he thought, look, I've played Captain Kirk for 30 years. I'm all about boldly going into space. But he just felt grief when he looked back on Earth and realised it really hit him. And he thought, well, what have we been doing looking out? we should be looking in and saving our planet. But what was the effect on you mentally? I mean, when I went into space in 91, I was already aware that the Earth is pretty fragile. And of course, yes, you see with your own eyes that how much it's obviously interconnected.

19:43So of course, what we do on one side of the world must affect the others. You can see the swirls of the clouds going from one hemisphere to another almost, and then swirls of plankton in the sea. how the rivers bring the silt from the mountains and out into the sea. So it's obviously all interconnected. And I think that then gives you that understanding that we do have an impact, whatever we do. But I think different people are aware of different aspects of it. I came back very much aware of the idea of human relationships. You know, when we look back on the Earth, as a crew we would all together sometimes just open the biggest window i say open because we had a hatch on the outside but we'd open that biggest window and just all five of us gather around it and look out and what we would talk about was not you know the beauty of the mountains although they are beautiful right and not the gorgeous blue seas but when we flew over parts of the earth where we know people we knew people were living then we would talk about those individual people so it's our families our friends our colleagues it's that human relationship that is the emotional tie to earth and it made me realize actually how when i got back from space what i had not thought about and i hadn't once thought of the material stuff that i either owned or i aspired to own none of it was important i had all the things around me that i needed to survive in space to live reasonably comfortably the thing I was missing was that variety of human relationships that we get on earth made me realize how much we do together and it was because of all that that it was able you know I couldn't have gone into space on my own of course so it makes us and enables us to do all the stuff we can but it's the individuals working together that do it um I've just remembered we did a piece in New Scientist on what's your favorite element it was I think it was the anniversary of the periodic table or something and we we asked loads of famous people what's your favorite element but I asked Helen and she said oxygen and it just makes sense you know because that's all you need it that's all you need when you're when you're in that tin up there it's only because you told me I couldn't have any rarest because they'd already been chosen spoil the story um body stuff yeah so studies have shown the impact on the body I mean Helen you beautifully described what it's like just spending a few days in space but studies looking at people spending months in space and the impacts are really extreme.

22:24As Irina mentioned astronauts lose bone density and muscle and because of the microgravity and the higher levels of radiation in space seem to cause cell and DNA damage. Can you talk a little bit about the range of impacts that there are on the body? So there are a lot there are many. Can I also add a quick thing about, you know, NASA found five hazards to human space flight. Confinement and distance from Earth are some of them, so they play with their psychology. The others are more related to the physiology. Gravity, so changes in gravity. It's not just microgravity when you're in space. It's also high gravity during launch and re-entry.

23:09Those could be quite damaging. radiation and we're not really worked out how to protect astronauts from radiation. So there are quite a lot of things that happen in space. If we look at gravity, which is what I'm interested in mainly, right now gravity is affecting your bodies. It's a friend because essentially you are fighting against gravity and that makes your muscle and your bones stronger. If that load is gone, so you don't have that force on you, your muscles, your bones become weaker. And that's why usually International Space Station mission nowadays is about six months. It may change because of the launch and re-entry rockets, but usually six months.

24:00So it takes about a few months for astronauts to have their rehabilitation and recovery after. And some of them don't even return to pre-launch levels. Astronaut trains, because you love training, Helen. Astronauts, to avoid muscle-involved wasting, astronaut trains for about two hours every day on the International Space Station. They also do cardiovascular training. Because of what Helen said, gravity makes fluid shifts from the lower limb to the head. So that affects performance. It's also affecting, for some reason we don't know well, vision. So essentially gravity may affect the eye itself, so it makes it be bigger and that affects vision in space so people tend to lose some of their vision and that is when everything goes okay it's not problematic if not if there is a problem so there are loads of adaptations something the reason why i said sea sickness is because quite quickly, for example, inner ear, which is the way we stand or we move around.

25:24Because it works with gravity, the crystals in the inner ear, when there is no gravity, when it's altered, you start having sickness, motion sickness. So some people get nauseous, maybe not you, but some people get nauseous, launch and re-entry especially, when there are those transitions in gravity. Human body is not made for space but we are trying to adapt it and to explore further so there are loads of changes not to mention as you said DNA damage, skin damage, aging, these are more related to radiation and there was the twin study which is a study that was done by NASA a few years ago I don't Funnily enough, they were lucky enough to have two twins.

26:15Identical twins, right? Identical twins. And one was sent to space and one was kept on Earth for a year. And they tried to compare the effect of space on identical astronauts. The results are a bit, something else happened to their lives. So the results are a bit unclear, but you can see definite aging as an effect of space flight in the astronaut that was able to go to space. You've got to be very careful. It was a sample size of like one person in space. And he had such a stressful time after he returned to Earth that he aged more after he returned to Earth than he did in space. There's a whole load, really, there's a whole load of...

26:56We've got to be very careful about comparing. I totally agree. That's why I said a lot happened in their both lives. And therefore, the whole study was, for example, cash short because of these events. and what was published is limited and probably affected by other factors. Absolutely. I do like, it's not a science story, but about Scott Kelly. So when he came back after a year on the ISS, I remember in his autobiography it says when he finally got back home, still in his flight suit, he walked all the way through his house into the pool and just jumped in his pool, still in the flight suit just to get into water after a year, not be able to even wash your face properly, you know.

27:41Just to immerse yourself. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why you're not going to space showering. You can have wet wipes, right? It's quite important. For a year, though. A year. When you all smell the same, Rowan, it's, you know. Yeah. Mind you, you lose your sense of smell, perhaps, do you? Well, you don't smell, you don't, or your brain doesn't recognise the smell because you've got it all around you all the time so it's yeah obviously no open window to get a bit of fresh air so um so yeah so you just your brain doesn't recognize it tastes different doesn't it because they spend a lot of time really trying to pimp up the food food doesn't taste as strong and we think it's to do with this fluid shift that even though it seems to settle mostly as Irena says with our eyes it doesn't really settle our eyes can often remain slightly different in shape but also we think there's an extra fluid that remains at the back of our throats for instance so normally when you swallow you get some of the aroma molecules will go up the back of your throat into your nose you actually smell even when you swallow so we think that maybe that's one of the reasons why astronauts sense of taste seems to diminish while they're in space but to be quite honest space food is actually so repetitive and fairly dull that that's another reason they just they just want variety and a lot of the changes even in what they um observed in scott kelly seemed to reverse quite quickly after he got back as well did you find the physical effects changed um quickly once you got back well eight days in space i think you're right seven days and 23 hours in time but yeah it it's not enough really to have much to have noticeably weakened bones weakened muscles and for me the biggest thing was just feeling weight you know you mentioned how you just let the idea of being immersed in water or perhaps it was actually also the idea of floating so i just remember feeling so heavy for a while it only lasted a few minutes really um probably about half an hour um but when i lifted up my little finger it felt heavy i was noticing the weight of it but then of course every time i did lift my little finger there were signals going to my brain to to teach it already that there was weight i remember standing up i was a little bit wobbly balance system getting used to it everything again but then when i wanted to walk i lifted up my leg right as you do when you want to walk and my leg felt heavy and so my natural reaction was oh i'm lifting up something heavy i must lean over to one side to counterbalance and so i was walking in this very very sort of left-sided way um but it only took about 20 or so paces to like to teach my brain again that i can get balance like one leg just lift it straight up and down and walk in a straight line so again again it's this adaptability and just yeah but then a few days in space we don't really really notice a big difference.

30:26A few years ago I was lucky enough to collect some data on astronauts that have been in space for the typical six months of the ISS nowadays and the message is use it or lose it and use it in advance so the idea is the astronaut that was fitter before launch was actually recovering a lot better after their mission and the astronaut that actually trained a bit more during the mission was better, so had a better recovery. So essentially you get out whatever you put in, in this sort of thing. But the countermeasures that the scientists and the space agencies have developed are very much targeted to missions on the International Space Station.

31:16if we now think about going to the moon and mars we need to rethink what we are doing in space and can i ask actually i know the countermeasures for muscle and bone it's pretty good protocols like two hours a day which is a lot of exercise but it works what about balance because isn't there that takes a little bit longer to come back is that correct so muscle bones are actually the ones that take the longest in terms of recovery. Some people really struggle with that. Balance, so for example the inner ear, the vestibular system tend to come back within a few days. It's just recalibrating the inner ear, the vestibular system, just needs a bit more gravity, just needs the right signal and then it calibrates correctly.

32:03But yes, it's quite debilitating because you get nausea, you get nauseous and people think, oh my God, I'm going to die here. But not everybody, it's about half, isn't it? Excellent. And that's one of my research questions, why some and some others don't? And you can't predict it. Well, you can, I think, to a certain extent. So the Russians will say that the prediction is to do with motion sickness on Earth. Not totally, but this spinning chair that we've seen, you know, so a bit like, I can spin this chair. So if I can spin this chair round, and as I'm spinning round, I won't because I'll knock the microphone off, but as you're spinning round, imagine you're also moving your head from your knees and then back up straight.

32:42And then you'll be asked to spin your, as it's spinning round, to move your head left to right. So you're just confusing that vestibular system completely. Now, if you tend to feel nauseous doing that, then the Russians will say you're likely, but it's not completely going to feel nauseous in space. Now, I was always absolutely fine on this and I can just do it. It's nothing clever. It's just the way I am. And I think it's perhaps to do with the balance. If your ears are very, very similar to each other, then you get similar on either side. And if you somehow, it's easier for your brain to look after.

33:20One of my research questions is to actually test people who have vestibular loss and try to understand if they are better off. because they don't have that input. So when you move around, that sort of thing, there are three main inputs. The inner ear, yes, for sure. Eyes, so vision, but also what's called somatosensation. So muscle, joints, sensors in the skin, all of that. So if I test people without a vestibular input in space. So deaf people? No, it's vestibular deficit. They could hear, some can't so it's the balance they've already exactly so it's essentially relying on the other two inputs without the third one so it doesn't get confused in space are they better off I don't know but nobody is going to give me the money to do that when I close my eyes in space and in fact when I first opened my eyes in the morning before I opened my eyes I'm still just half asleep I felt as though I was upside down and that was because I was my body the only the only information was the fluid pressure and so back on earth I would have been upside down if my brain had felt so full of fluid but I was getting none of the up the normal up and down so yes so we do rely on so many different inputs and again that adaptability exactly this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

34:59Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. We mentioned radiation a little bit. It made me think, Katie, is that a factor in drug manufacture? Does that, you know, mess up the medicines? Less so for us because we're not dealing with anything that's alive. We're not dealing with cells. Still proteins though, isn't it? They're okay with the radiation. The temperature is more of a problem for us because if you get above a certain temperature, they start to denature and we don't want that.

35:36So it's very, very strict temperature control. But really it's a material science problem that we have to engineer in terms of how can we order and crystallise this material that just so happens to be a protein to make these crystals. But radiation is less of a problem. Okay. And can you simulate microgravity at all or do you just have to get up there? You can in part. So you can have drop towers where you can drop your experiment and you get a few seconds or the vomit comets, the parabolic flights, which I'd love to. Did you do one? Oh, I did a few. They're great. Did you vomit comet?

36:16That's good. And yes, you can do those, which gives you about 20 seconds of microgravity, but that's not long enough to grow these crystals. So you can test some fluid control to see, okay, how does the hardware function? But in terms of actual product manufacture, it's not long enough for the right quality of microgravity. So there's only one option for us. And what about the spillover benefits of the stuff you're doing? Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so I think the main one, value proposition, is in terms of taking cancer treatments and enabling them for an at-home treatment. That's a big one to decrease the burden on the healthcare system.

36:55You don't need as many nurses to do the infusions. They can then be free to treat other patients. But it's also to do with crystals being really thermally stable. So you don't need the cold storage and cold supply chains. I don't know if you remember during COVID, but there were big issues with the transportation of these vaccines at the cryo temperatures. If in crystalline form, you don't need those really low temperatures. So it makes it much easier, cheaper to transport and also to lots of countries where it's very difficult to transport to, these drugs are much more stable. So you've got lots of different benefits that can come just from that material form of the drug.

37:41Wow. So, I mean, space exploration has, when you sort of read about the bakeries that we've had from the development of materials and things for space exploration, NASA sort of lists all sorts of things from memory foam and scratch resistant lenses to CAT scans and artificial limbs. I was reading about a thing called artificial muscles where they have used electrical impulses to create movement on robotic arms and things like that. but even more generally a lot of the technology that's used for artificial limbs and prosthetics can be traced back to materials like durable plastics and things that were developed in space but Irina I think you might know a little bit more about this in terms of you've been working with John McFall and so you mentioned earlier the ESA flying mission the project and could you tell Tell us a little bit about him and what the project is.

38:37So yes, John is the astronaut that's been selected for this fly mission. The fly mission is the first mission with an astronaut with a physical impairment. John is an ex-paraathlete, he's British, so the only astronaut with a physical impairment is going to be British by the way. He lost part of his lower right lower limb in a motorbike accident in his teens. He has an amputation just above the right knee. So for that project, for example, the European Space Agency is developing in collaboration with other manufacturers, three prosthesis for different tasks in space. and hopefully I'm not involved with the prosthesis design but hopefully that design can be translated into for example activities on earth for people to access different activities from swimming to skydiving to all that sort of thing.