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

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.

(Laughs)

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, who new lifeforms

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 can 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 ??

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.

?? 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 spidersilk or whatever,

and put them in ?? 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.