The living tech we need to support human life on other planets

What would it take to settle Mars? In a talk about the future of space exploration, Lynn Rothschild reviews the immense challenges to living elsewhere in the universe and proposes some bold, creative solutions to making a home off planet Earth -- like "growing" houses out of fungi or using bacteria to help generate electricity.

For thousands of years,
well, really probably millions of years,

our ancestors have looked up at the sky
and wondered what's up there,

and they've also started to wonder,

hmm, could we be alone in this planet?

Now, I'm fortunate that I get to get paid
to actually ask some of those questions,

and sort of bad news for you,

your tax dollars are paying me
to try to answer some of those questions.

But then, about 10 years ago,

I was told, I mean asked,

if I would start to look at the technology
to help get us off planet,

and so that's what I'm going
to talk to you about today.

So playing to the local crowd,

this is what it looks like
in your day-to-day life in Boston,

but as you start to go off planet,
things look very, very different.

So there we are,
hovering above the WGBH studios.

And here's a very famous picture
of the Earthrise from the Moon,

and you can see the Earth
starting to recede.

And then what I love is this picture

that was taken from the surface of Mars
looking back at the Earth.

Can anyone find the Earth?

I'm going to help you out a little.

(Laughter)

Yeah.

The point of showing this
is that when people start to go to Mars,

they're not going to be able
to keep calling in

and be micromanaged
the way people on a space station are.

They're going to have to be independent.

So even though they're up there,

there are going to be all sorts of things
that they're going to need,

just like people on Earth
need things like, oh, transportation,

life support, food, clothing and so on.

But unlike on Earth,
they are also going to need oxygen.

They're going to have to deal with about
a third of the gravity that we have here.

They're going to have to worry
about habitats, power, heat, light

and radiation protection,

something that we don't actually
worry about nearly as much on the Earth,

because we have this beautiful
atmosphere and magnetosphere.

The problem with that is
that we also have a lot of constraints.

So the biggest one for us is upmass,

and the number that I've used for years

is it costs about 10,000 dollars to launch
a can of Coke into low Earth orbit.

The problem is, there you are
with 10,000 dollars later,

and you're still in low Earth orbit.

You're not even at the Moon
or Mars or anything else.

So you're going to have to
try to figure out

how to keep the mass as low as possible
so you don't have to launch it.

But on top of that cost issue
with the mass,

you also have problems of storage

and flexibility and reliability.

You can't just get there and say,
"Oops, I forgot to bring,"

because Amazon.com
just does not deliver to Mars.

So you better be prepared.

So what is the solution for this?

And I'm going to propose to you
for the rest of this talk

that the solution actually is life,

and when you start to look
at life as a technology,

you realize, ah, that's it,

that's exactly what we needed.

This plant here, like every person here

and every one of your dogs and cats

and plants and so on,

all started as a single cell.

So imagine, you're starting
as a very low upmass object

and then growing into something
a good deal bigger.

Now, my hero Charles Darwin,

of course, reminds us that there's
no such thing as a designer in biology,

but what if we now have the technology

to design biology,

maybe even design,
oh, whole new life-forms

that can do things for us
that we couldn't have imagined otherwise?

So years ago, I was asked
to start to sell this program,

and while I was doing that,

I was put in front of a panel at NASA,

as you might sort of imagine,

a bunch of people in suits
and white shirts and pencil protectors,

and I did this sort of crazy, wild,

"This is all the next great thing,"

and I thought they would be blown over,

and instead the chairman of the committee
just looked at me straight in the eye,

and said, "So what's the big idea?"

So I was like, "OK, you want Star Trek?

We'll do Star Trek."

And so let me tell you
what the big idea is.

We've used organisms
to make biomaterials for years.

So here's a great picture
taken outside of Glasgow,

and you can see lots
of great biomaterials there.

There are trees that you could
use to build houses.

There are sheep where you
can get your wool from.

You could get leather from the sheep.

Just quickly glancing around the room,
I'll bet there's no one in this room

that doesn't have some kind of animal
or plant product on them,

some kind of biomaterial.

But you know what?

We're not going to take sheep
and trees and stuff to Mars.

That's nuts, because
of the upmass problem.

But we are going to take things like this.

This is Bacillus subtilis.

Those white dots that you see are spores.

This happens to be a bacterium
that can form incredibly resistant spores,

and when I say incredibly resistant,
they've proven themselves.

Bacillus subtilis spores have been flown
on what was called LDEF,

Long Duration Exposure Facility,
for almost six years

and some of them survived that in space.

Unbelievable, a lot better
than any of us can do.

So why not just take the capabilities,

like to make wood or to make wool
or spider silk or whatever,

and put them in Bacillus subtilis spores,

and take those with you off planet?

So what are you going to do
when you're off planet?

Here's an iconic picture of Buzz Aldrin
looking back at the Eagle

when he landed, oh, it was almost
50 years ago, on the surface of the Moon.

Now if you're going to go
to the Moon for three days

and you're the first person to set foot,

yeah, you can live in a tin can,

but you wouldn't want to do that
for, say, a year and a half.

So I did actually a calculation,
being in California.

I looked at what the average size
of a cell at Alcatraz is,

and I have news for you,

the volume in the Eagle there,
in the Lunar Module,

was about the size of a cell at Alcatraz

if it were only five feet high.

So incredibly cramped living quarters.

You just can't ask a human
to stay in there for long periods of time.

So why not take these biomaterials
and make something?

So here's an image
that a colleague of mine

who is an architect, Chris Maurer,
has done of what we've been proposing,

and we'll get to the point

of why I've been standing up here
holding something

that looks like a dried sandwich
this whole lecture.

So we've proposed that the solution
to the habitat problem on Mars

could just simply lie in a fungus.

So I'm now probably
going to turn off everyone

from ever eating a mushroom again.

So let's talk about fungi for a second.

So you're probably familiar
with this fruiting body of the fungus.

That's the mushroom.

But what we're interested in actually
is what's beneath the surface there,

the mycelium,

which are these root hair-like structures

that are really the main part
of the mushroom.

Well, it turns out you can take those --

there's a micrograph I did --

and you can put them in a mold

and give them a little food --

and it doesn't take much,
you can grow these things on sawdust --

so this piece here was grown on sawdust,

and that mycelium then
will fill that structure

to make something.

We've actually tried
growing mycelium on Mars Simulant.

So no one's actually
gone to the surface of Mars,

but this is a simulated surface of Mars,

and you can see those
hair-like mycelia out there.

It's really amazing stuff.

How strong can you make these things?

Well, you know, I could give you
numbers and tests and so on,

but I think that's probably
the best way to describe it.

There's one of my students
proving that you can do this.

To do this, then, you've got to figure out
how to put it in context.

How's this actually going to happen?

I mean, this is a great idea, Lynn,

but how are you going to get
from here to there?

So what we're saying is you grow up
the mycelium in the lab, for example

and then you fill up a little structure,
maybe a house-like structure that's tiny,

that is maybe a double-bagged sort of
plastic thing, like an inflatable --

I sort of think L.L.Bean when I see this.

And then you put it in a rocket ship
and you send it off to Mars.

Rocket lands,

you release the bag

and you add a little water,

and voila, you've got your habitat.

You know, how cool would that be?

And the beauty of that is you don't
have to take something prebuilt.

And so our estimates are that we could
save 90 percent of the mass

that NASA is currently proposing
by taking up a big steel structure

if we actually grow it on site.

So let me give you another big idea.

What about digital information?

What's really interesting is
you have a physical link to your parents

and they have a physical link
to their parents, and so on,

all the way back to the origin of life.

You have never broken that continuum.

But the fact is that we can do that today.

So we have students
every day in our labs --

students in Boston even do this --

that make up DNA sequences

and they hit the "send" button

and they send them
to their local DNA synthesis company.

Now once you break that physical link

where you're sending it across town,

it doesn't matter if you're sending it
across the Charles River

or if you're sending
that information to Mars.

You've broken that physical link.

So then, once you're on Mars,

or across the river or wherever,

you can take that digital information,

synthesize the physical DNA,

put it maybe in another organism

and voila, you've got
new capabilities there.

So again, you've broken
that physical link. That's huge.

What about chemistry?

Biology does chemistry for us on Earth,

and again has for literally
thousands of years.

I bet virtually everyone in this room
has eaten something today

that has been made
by biology doing chemistry.

Let me give you a big hint there.

What about another idea?

What about using DNA itself
to make a wire?

Because again, we're trying
to miniaturize everything.

DNA is really cheap.

Strawberries have
a gazillion amount of DNA.

You know, you could take
a strawberry with you, isolate the DNA,

and one of my students
has figured out a way

to take DNA and tweak it a little bit

so that you can incorporate
silver atoms in very specific places,

thus making an electrical wire.

How cool is that?

So while we're on the subject of metals,

we're going to need to use metals
for things like integrated circuits.

Probably we're going to want it
for some structures, and so on.

And things like integrated circuits
ultimately go bad.

We could talk a lot about that,
but I'm going to leave it at that,

that they do go bad,

and so where are you going
to get those metals?

Yeah, you could try to mine them
with heavy equipment,

but you get that upmass problem.

And I always tell people, the best way
to find the metals for a new cell phone

is in a dead cell phone.

So what if you take biology

as the technology to get these metals out?

And how do you do this?

Well, take a look
at the back of a vitamin bottle

and you'll get an idea
of all the sorts of metals

that we actually use in our bodies.

So we have a lot of proteins
as well as other organisms

that can actually
specifically bind metals.

So what if we now take those proteins

and maybe attach them
to this fungal mycelium

and make a filter so we can start
to pull those metals out

in a very specific way
without big mining equipment,

and, even better, we've actually
got a proof of concept

where we've then taken those metals
that we pulled out with proteins

and reprinted an integrated circuit
using a plasma printer.

Again, how cool?

Electricity: I was asked
by a head of one of the NASA centers

if you could ever take chemical energy
and turn that into electrical energy.

Well, the great news is it's not
just the electric eel that does it.

Everybody in this room
who is still alive and functioning

is doing that.

Part of the food that you've eaten today

has gone to operate
the nerve cells in your body.

But even other organisms,
nonsentient ones,

are creating electric energy,

even bacteria.

Some bacteria are very good
at making little wires.

So if we can harvest that ability

of turning chemical energy
into electrical energy,

again, how cool would that be?

So here are some
of the big ideas we talked about.

Let me try one more: life 2.0.

So for example, all of the sugars
in our body are right-handed.

Why shouldn't we make an organism
with left-handed sugars?

Why not make an organism that can do
things that no organism can do today?

So organisms normally have evolved
to live in very specific environments.

So here's this lion cub
literally up a tree,

and I took a picture of him a bit later,

and he was a lot happier
when he was down on the ground.

So organisms are designed
for specific environments.

But what if you can go back
to that idea of synthetic biology

and tweak 'em around?

So here is one of our favorite places
in Yellowstone National Park.

This is Octopus Springs.

If you tilt your head a little bit,

it sort of looks like a body
and tentacles coming out.

It's above the boiling
temperature of water.

Those organisms that you see
on the edge and the colors

actually match the temperatures
that are there,

very, very high-temperature thermophiles.

So why not take organisms
that can live at extremes,

whether it's high temperature
or low temperature

or low pH or high pH

or high salt or high levels of radiation,

and take some of those capabilities

and put it into other organisms.

And this is a project
that my students have called,

and I love this, the "hell cell."

And so we've done that.

We've taken organisms and sort of
tweaked them and pushed them to the edges.

And this is important
for getting us off planet

and also for understanding
what life is like in the universe.

So let me give you
just a couple of final thoughts.

First is this whole idea
that we have all these needs

for human settlement off planet

that are in some ways
exactly like we have on the Earth,

that we need the food
and we need the shelter and so on,

but we have very, very
different constraints

of this upmass problem and the reliability
and the flexibility and so on.

But because we have these constraints
that you don't have here,

where you might have to think about
the indigenous petrochemical industry,

or whatever,

you now have constraints
that have to unleash creativity.

And once you unleash this creativity
because you have the new constraints,

you're forcing game-changing
technological advances

that you wouldn't have gotten
any other way.

Finally, we have to think a little bit,

is it a good idea
to tinker around with life?

Well, the sort of easy answer to that is

that probably no one in the room
keeps a wolf cub at home,

but you might have a puppy or a dog;

you probably didn't eat teosinte
this summer, but you ate corn.

We have been doing
genetic modification with organisms

for literally 10,000 or more years.

This is a different approach,
but to say all of a sudden

humans should never touch an organism

is kinda silly

because we have that capability now

to do things that are far more
beneficial for the planet Earth

and for life beyond that.

And so then the question is, should we?

And of course I feel
that not only should we,

at least for getting off Earth,

but actually if we don't
use synthetic biology,

we will never solve this upmass problem.

So once you think of life as a technology,
you've got the solution.

And so, with that, I'd like to finish
the way I always finish,

and say "ad astra,"
which means, "to the stars."

Thank you very much, Boston.

(Applause)