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Space Medicine at Comicpalooza

Season 1Episode 93May 24, 2019

Science fiction meets science fact during a live panel discussion at Comicpalooza in Houston about current medical innovations in space with NASA medical scientists and Star Trek: The Next Generation star Gates McFadden. HWHAP Episode 93.

Space Medicine

Space Medicine

“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, the home of human spaceflight, stationed in Houston, Texas. We bring space right to you! On this podcast, you’ll learn from some of the brightest minds of America’s space agency as they discuss topics in engineering, science, technology and more. You’ll hear firsthand from astronauts what it’s like to launch atop a rocket, live in space and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. And you’ll listen in to the more human side of space as our guests tell stories of behind-the-scenes moments never heard before.

In Episode 93, science fiction meets science fact during a live panel discussion at Comicpalooza in Houston about current medical innovations in space with NASA medical scientists and Star Trek: The Next Generation star Gates McFadden. This podcast was recorded on May 11, 2019.

Houston, we have a podcast

Transcript

Dan Huot (Host): Houston we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center. This is Episode 93 Space Medicine. I’m Dan Huot and I’ll be your host today. If you’re new to the show, we bring in the experts here at NASA to talk about all the different parts of our space agency. Recently though I got a chance to get out of the studio and head up to Comicpalooza in Houston where we headed up a live recording of the podcast in front of a live audience of a couple hundred of our closest friends to discuss the science fiction and science fact of space medicine. Joining the esteemed panel was Gates McFadden, most famously known for her portrayal as Dr. Beverly Crusher, Chief Medical Officer aboard the USS Enterprise on the TV show Star Trek Next Generation. She shared her insight into how space medicine worked in the far off future of Star Trek and how she prepared for the role and assumed the character of a space doctor. And, joining her on the panel were some actual space doctors including Serena Auñón-Chancellor, a NASA astronaut and former flight surgeon who flew in space last year and also doctor’s Kris Lehnhardt and Richard Jennings. We go into detail on who they are at the very beginning of this panel. This is the first time we’ve recorded a podcast from outside of our home here at NASA. And, this is the biggest live audience we’ve had yet. So, with no further delay, let’s jump right ahead to another live recording of Houston We Have a Podcast, again, with Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Richard Jennings, Kris Lehnhardt and Gates McFadden, enjoy.

[ Music ]

Host: Well, we’ll jump right in. Thanks everybody for being here. This is our panel on space medicine, all things space awesomeness and also our first live recording outside the Johnson Space Center for Houston We Have a Podcast. So, thanks for being here today. All right, if you’re unfamiliar with us, we do podcasts on all things human space flight. We get to talk to some really incredible people, actors, scientists, astronaut, engineers, the people doing amazing things that inspire us and are really pushing, you know, humanity into the next generation. And so, today though, we’re going to be focusing on space medicine. What happens to humans when you go into space? How do we keep you healthy? How do we prevent you from getting sick? How do we really keep you going when you’re up there for extremely long periods of time? And, I’m going to go down the line real quick, introduce my esteemed panel, and then we will jump right in. I’m going to go to my notes because all of these people are insanely accomplished [laughter] and I want to make sure I don’t leave anything out. So, starting off, right to my left we are joined today by Gates McFadden, everybody’s going to recognize her.

[ Cheering ]

Gates McFadden: Thank you thank you.

Host: And, Gates obviously famous for her betrayal of Dr. Beverly Crusher, which I must say one of the coolest name in Sci Fi history [laughter], hands down. She was the Chief Medical Officer aboard the USS Enterprise D and E under the Command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the show Star Trek Next Generation. So, that show aired from 1987 to 1994. Gates though has directing choreography and puppeteering experience in film, films like Labyrinth and the Muppets Take Manhattan. And, was in a number of other pictures like the Hunt for Red October, personal favorite of mine, and When Nature Calls. And then, she’s taught at several universities including the University of Southern California, Harvard, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the University of Pittsburgh. So again, let’s hear it for Gates.

[ Applause ]

And then next to her, she’s kind of easy to pick out. She’s the astronaut amongst the group. This is Serena Auñón-Chancellor and she is a NASA astronaut and medical doctor. She’s been on the International Space Station. She recently completed a long duration stage. She was flying above all of us for about six months while she was up there in orbit. She was there from June to December 2018. So, recently acclimated back here on earth. She’s has a background though in internal medicine and she as a flight surgeon before she was an astronaut and conducted a whole bunch of experiments onboard the Space Station including once impacting diseases here on earth and doing some cancer research on the station. So, Serena, thanks for coming out today.

[ Applause ]

All right and then we have Kris Lehnhardt. And this is a mouthful. He is the Element Scientist for Exploration Medical Capability in NASA’s Human Research Program.

Gates McFadden: That’s like techno-babble.

Host: All right, and so, he also is at the Senior Faculty with Baylor College of Medicine and the Center for Space Medicine and Department of Emergency Medicine. He’s board certified I emergency medicine not just here in the USA but also in Canada and he works clinically in the Emergency Department Ben Taub Hospital here in Houston. Some of his main research interests are in medical care an extreme environments, so places like space, people in the military, and out in the wilderness. And then, he’s also a pilot because again, like I said, you guys can’t just have one job, can you? You have to do like 40 different things. Also a pilot, he’s a Reservist in the Royal Canadian Air Force and advanced open water scuba diver. So, let’s hear it for Kris here with us.

[ Applause ]

Comicpalooza Panel

And then, finally, down on the end, Richard Jennings whose a Clinical Professor in Space Medicine at UTMB and he’s a Flight Surgeon for Space Adventures and he’s a member of the Safety Advisory Panel to Space X, a couple of people might have heard of them, and a Medical Consultant to Virgin Galactic. And, he also served as a NASA flight surgeon, so something Serena’s also done. So, he was there from 1987 to 1995 and continued to provide care until 2013. While he was at NASA he was the chief of the Flight Medicine Clinic and Chief Medical Operations for the Space Shuttle Program and he served as the director for the UTMB NASA JC Aerospace Medicine Program as well. And, as a Lead Flight Surgeon for Space Adventures, he’s actually supported five missions on the Russian Soyuz Spacecraft over in Kazakhstan in Russia. That’s a pretty interesting place. And, if you can corner him afterwards, ask him a bunch of questions, I guarantee you he’s got some really cool stories about that. He was also a President of the Aerospace Medical Association and currently serves on the board of the Aerospace Medical Association Foundation. So, once again, let’s hear it for Richard and for our entire panel for being here today.

[ Applause ]

Okay. And, that was the, that was the abridged version of everybody’s biographies, just a really let it sink in. So, before we really get into the nitty gritty of space medicine and medical technology and stuff like that, I want to start off with something that’s, it’s really pertinent to a place like this, at Comipalooza, and that’s inspiration. A lot of people, one of the great things, if you work at NASA or you know somebody that does, they’re extremely passionate about what they do and the same is true for actors and artists, they’re extremely passionate and they’re always driven. So, I want to know, what kind of took each of you down that road? What was the guitar in the pawn shop window moment? And starting off with Gates, what really kind of drew you to be an actor, director, choreographer and, kind of, more importantly, what drew you to something like Start Trek?

Gates McFadden: Well, to be honest, I was pushed when I was young to be a performer. I always, personally, would play in the dirt pile making cities. I was like really into the relationship of people and space. Not necessarily the final frontier but just kind of the dirt pile frontier. But, as I got older and I was performing more and more and I was learning about theater and I majored in, at the university, I graduated from Brandeis University. And then, I met a man, I took a workshop at Harvard and he changed my life. So I would say he was the catalyst. He was someone who actually came to NASA. He was invited to NASA. And, he was unknown, pretty much, in the United States. But, he was very into analysis of movement. He had started in sports medicine and then he went into theater and he was friends with some of the most famous French artists of that period. But, he believed that artists had a responsibility to help change the world for the better. And, we actually studied things like architecture, we had to understand music and had to compose music. It was sort of like, really he synthesized a lot of ideas that I had had, because I liked more than one thing. I liked the whole process of creating something. And so, when I came back to the United States, I was much, all my friends had gone to New York to try to get an agent and make it. And, I was less thinking about my career but thinking about how could I effect change in the world or how could I be part of, participate in it? And so, I started doing, you know, literally started doing some street theater, doing different things. And then, I started getting teaching positions because I knew how to teach his techniques which were very much in demand. And so, I would say, that was the catalyst that got me thinking about the world. And, it was complete chance that Star Trek happened. I was not, really, I had done a lot of theater in New York City as an actor. I performed many, many, many plays and loved it because I loved transformation. So when Star Trek came up, I had actually already auditioned for a play I wanted to do with Linda Hunt and a director name Des McAnuff. So, believe it or not, this is real, I turned down Star Trek to go do this play for $400 a week. But you know what? I loved doing the play and I had no comprehension about the Star Trek Universe. I am so humbled now because I have learned more from the people I meet who have watched Star Trek. And yes, of course, I learned watching the show and I loved when my character would be involved in the Hippocratic oath working against the prime directive. I love that conflict. I thought that’s really what we need to look at things like that, you know, the ethics of things, all sorts of things. And so, I think, that’s for me, that’s really how I started to appreciate more and more how crucial Star Trek has been for so many people and for me. Because now, I feel such a bond in a community to people who really walk the walk, people like, I was telling them, Jim Wetherbee who commanded several Space Shuttle missions, became a friend. And, we emailed from the Space Station. I actually was like, you know, and I asked him. I said, why are you—you’re doing it, I’m just pretending. And he said, “Yes, but you’re the inspiration. And I like to think I have a lot of Jean-Luc Picard in me.” And, I went oh okay I get it, okay. So, I’m Dr. Crusher, I get it. And that kind of hope and inspiration, because our show was so positive. It wasn’t dystopian. It had a really, you know, we can work together as a community. I think that has been so important in my life right now to be a role model to young people both as a single parent, in the show, and also as a medical commander. And so, anyway, it’s a lot of talk, sorry I talked so long. But, that, for me, since I can’t really walk the walk like they do, I’m honored to be part of this panel.

[ Applause ]

Host: Serena.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah, absolutely also honored to be part of this panel. This is really fun for me because this is the first time I’ve ever been here. And, it was just neat walking around a little bit prior to coming up here. But, for me, I do remember probably at the age of eight or nine watching Shuttle missions launch over and over. And, for me, that is the memory that sticks in my mind as a catalyst. And my parents used to watch me do this. My father was an engineer, my mother was a novelist. And so, my father watched me, you know, staring for hours at the television watching anything I could about the Space Shuttle. And, he said, “Do you want to work for NASA?” And, I said, “I think so.” And he says “Well then, you need to be an engineer.” And so they just, it was sort of a matter of fact. There were no questions, not doubts. They just began to push me down that path. And then, I felt like very door that’s opened since then has really led me here. Now, for me, I did major in electrical engineering, and this is out on the East Coast. But then, midway through my engineering career, I had a lot of friends who were also in the premed program. And, they kept coming to me saying Serena, we think you should be premed also. We think you should be a doctor we think you’d be really good at it. And, I really pushed them away at first because I thought of all the work that was entailed with that and all the memorization. And I said that’s too much work I don’t want to do that. And they said no Serena we really think you should do it. So, I went home over the summer and talked with my parents and they said fantastic we’ll help you do that. And, I made that shift. And honestly, it was the best decision I have ever made because I am still a practicing physician. I absolutely love being a physician. It is my passion. And then, as I was training through medical school, I was still thinking how was I going to work for NASA? I didn’t know how this was going to work. So, I just went on the internet and started looking up things and found this really great rotation at Johnson Space Center about aerospace medicine. It was a clerkship that was offered and I was just a few months away. So, I applied and came down and learned all about the facets of aerospace medicine, space medicine, the effects on the human body. And then really, I met this man, Dr. Richard Jennings, that you’ll see down on the left. He has really been my great mentor throughout my entire career. But, he is the one that really introduced this field. And so, I applied to get into this special training program after medical school for both internal medicine and aerospace medicine. And, he was one of my program directors. So, Richard and I have know each other for a very long time and he’s really meant quite a great deal for me in this path. Once I finished training, I became a flight surgeon and began looking after astronauts and their families and spent most of my time in Russia. So, I got a little bit of a taste of what it was like and then applied for the Astronaut Corps in 2009 and was honored to get in. It was a long journey to my first flight, almost ten years, actually since coming in the corps and finally flying. And after landing almost four months ago after 197 days, people ask what it was like and it’s almost hard to describe unless you’re up there. Just the beauty of the earth, but really, more importantly, the science that we did. I was highly impressed at the caliber of science now that impacts everyone down here including every person in this room. So, it’s great to be back, number one, because I get to be here with my family, do events like this, and smell the earth again.

[ Applause ]

Host: All right, Kris.

Kris Lehnhardt: It’s going to sound a little corny, but, my path to being here started with Star Trek. I remember being a little kid, lying on the floor in front of the TV watching reruns of the original series with my mom. And, I was a little kid in Canada and, if my accent had not already given me away as a Canadian, I really loved the idea of doing something in the space sector. But, Canada’s a pretty small country and we have a space program, but it’s a pretty small space program. And, I thought I wanted to be a vet. I liked animals and I wanted to take care of animals. And, I met with a high school guidance counselor who said to me, “Don’t you really like space?” And I said “Yes.” And, he said, “Well, how are you going to do space stuff if you’re a vet?” Well, NASA has actually selected veterinarians previously to be in the Astronaut Corps. But, not for a long time. And so, I just switched species. [laughter] I became a medical doctor and I did that because there was a Canadian astronaut by the name of Dave Williams. He was an emergency physician. And, I thought, that sounds like a cool job. Maybe if I do that, I can be an astronaut. Well, I’m sitting beside an astronaut, so, that’s pretty good. But now, I get to help design medical systems for space exploration. And so, if you can’t be there then being part of the mission is the next best thing. And, it’s been a real honor to do this job and to be up here on this panel.

Gates McFadden: Incredible.

[ Applause ]

Richard Jennings: I’m not sure why, if you have two susceptible individuals and they both get exposed to an infectious agent why one gets it and one doesn’t get it. But, in 1955, I saw the movie Conquest of Space and then in 58 we had Explorer 1 images on our bulletin board in class. And, I got extremely interested in space and I followed every launch, every scrub getting up at 3 in the morning listening to Shorty Powers from Mercury Control talking about that. And then, later on, there was a TV series. And, there’s a real power, I think, with television and movies that effect people. And, I saw Men Into Space which starred William Lundigan. Chuck Berry from NASA was a consultant on that show actually. And then, eventually, I decided I wanted to be Bill Douglas or Chuck Berry. They became people that I wanted to be. I wanted to be taking care of the doctor—be a doctor taking care of the astronauts in the Space Program. And, in college, instead of writing on the Beowulf and it’s imagery or whatever, I got to write about the medical aspects of the Space Program and I’ve been doing it now for the last 50 something years.

Host: All right.

[ Applause ]

Host: All right, we’re going to jump right in. We are going to take questions at the end, in the last 15 minutes or so, so start thinking now. But, let’s jump into kind of what we’re doing in this day and age. So, Serena, you were a flight surgeon, you were an astronaut. What does the medical picture look like? How are we preparing people to go to space right now and how are we maintaining them while they’re up there and once they come back?

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah so, that’s actually pretty complicated. Most, there’s not, so, the preparation to go into space, most of that involves training of Space Station systems and, you know, we of course stay health and get as much exercise as we can. But, once you’re in space, you’re in space, you’re in microgravity and we can’t stop microgravity. It’s going to effect the body and does it in multiple ways. For me, the first few days, you just don’t feel that good. Your stomach doesn’t feel that good, your head feels a little big, you have this massive fluid shift that’s occurred. So, you feel really stuffy and full. And, of course, you’re floating everywhere. So, you’re desperately trying to grab onto hand rails with your hands because you haven’t learned to use your feet yet and you haven’t learned to really move like a monkey. And that’s, we got really good at that towards the end of the mission. And, of course, immediately the things that are occurring that you don’t feel, your bones, you muscles. You’re no longer loaded by gravity. And so, those start to, in essence, break down almost immediately. You don’t feel it. But, after six months, if you don’t do anything to counter it, you’ll know. And so, we actively try and keep our bodies as healthy as we can. For example, we lift weights every day onboard the Space Station. And, people say well how do you do that? Well, we have a special device that creates a load using vacuum tubes. And, we’re able to do squats or bench press and all kinds of exercises. We run on a treadmill where we’re wearing a special harness that loads us down. We don’t get our full body weight but we kind of gradually move up. So, we’ve gotten to be pretty good at countering a lot of these changes. Now again, that’s really for only about six months in low earth orbit. So, the game really does change as we move on towards Mars, have a service day and come back. And we’re still working on many, many ways trying to keep ourselves healthy all the way there and back. Because now, you’ve got other things that kick in like space radiation, extended stays away from family. You can’t see the earth anymore. There’s so many aspects to preparing the human for exploration missions. It’ll boggle your mind. But, that’s really what we all work on most of the time.

Gates McFadden: That’s amazing.

Host: And, we’ve gotten here after, you know, 50 years of exploring. Richard, kind of take us through the Genesis of all that. When we were starting to launch people into space, we didn’t know what the heck was going to happen when they started floating around. I mean there were wild theories about some stuff. What were those kind of early days like?

Richard Jennings: This July the 16th will be the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11. And, I’d like to get back to Apollo 11. But, what is really remarkable about the Apollo program and Apollo 11 is that a very young president—a very young president, after a 15 minute suborbital flight said that we should send a man to the moon and bring him back safely and do it in this decade. I don’t think he pronounced it decade. But, nevertheless. So, you can’t look at Apollo 11, I don’t think, without considering the flow that occurs through Mercury, Gemini, and then Apollo. And, a lot of people aren’t aware that there was a huge controversy with regard to Mercury. Mercury was where were going to send our first astronauts into space. Allen Shepherd was the first one, John Glenn was the first to orbit. But, there was a roaring controversy where a lot of the scientists I the country did not think we should do it that we would kill them. And, in fact, a Wiesner Report was filed on January, early January given to Kennedy that we shouldn’t do it, we should be doing animals, doing robotics and those sort of things. And, because of that, one we protected ourselves a little bit by taking astronauts who had to go through a five phase selection cycle they were extremely fit, extremely health, and shorter. They couldn’t be over, 5 foot 11 was the highest they could be and they were all in their 30s. And, sometimes we give up our youth and our health to get the money like to day the spots that people are doing now for $40 million. But, they were very healthy. And so, because of this report and other problems, at the end of January, the last day of January we launched Ham, a chimpanzee on a flight, which was, a lot of people don’t talk about it. But, it was sort of a semi-disaster. He ended up experiencing 15 G’s and he also almost, the capsule almost sunk before they could get it out of the water, took in 900 pounds of water. But, that gave people some confidence we could launch Allen Shepherd. And, we previously launched a squirrel monkey and a rhesus monkey Mable and Ms. Baker earlier. So, we had some pretty good confidence. The Russians had launched Belka and Strelka. But, they had a big meeting in March and they said okay let’s go do it. Unfortunately, what happened on April the 12th of 1961, we weren’t the first. Yuri Gagarin orbited one time then. So, finally, whenever Allen Shepherd flew, it was May the 5th, we had delayed long enough that he wasn’t the first into space. But, the whole idea of the Mercury Program was could humans survive and would they be an effective crew member inside the vehicle? And they were. They did very well. The flights were limited, the first two were suborbital, two five hour flights and then a sixth rev flight and then a 34 hour 22 rev flight, very limited. The only medical thing that came out of that, we only did pre and post flight physicals, not much during the mission, was that they had a little tendency, when they stood up to get light headed and have a fast heart rate.

Richard Jennings

After Mercury, Gemini came along and that’s the one that, both from a technical and a medical standpoint, led to Apollo 11. Two thousand man hours of time were accumulated in space. They had, because we were going to do lunar rendezvous for our landing on the moon, we had to learn how to rendezvous and dock. And, we also had to learn how to do EVA. And so, that was critical and it was done in Gemini. But, from a medical side, most of our lunar missions were going to be 12, the longness was going to be 12 days. So, they needed a little margin there. And so, they started making the flights longer. And, Gemini 4 was 4 days and to be cautious, they just doubled it. Gemini 5 was 8 days and then Gemini 7 was 14 days. And, during those missions they did this in counter measures and other things. But generally they were doing pre and post flights except for those kind of flights. It was a huge success. The program was a huge success. We did find that people do have a little bit of loss in blood volume, they lost some weight. EVA had a real high load, really, work load was much higher than anticipated. They had cardiovascular de-conditioning. And, the orthostasis, passing out when you stand up, got a little bit worse. But, overall, the feeling was, we could go to the moon. And, we didn’t have to do a whole lot of testing during the Apollo program. Some of the things we learned early in the Apollo program was the Russians had had motion sickness when they launched. In fact, their second flight, with Titov they had motion sickness and we got into that on Apollo 8 and Apollo 9 because we had a bigger vehicle and they were moving around. We also learned the value of the Health Stabilization program, quarantine before the flight because we had sickness on Apollo 8, sickness and a delay of the mission on Apollo 9. And, Apollo 13, you’re all familiar with the measles exposure. And so, after that, they came up with the Health Stabilization program. But, Apollo 11, when we got to Apollo 11, they felt pretty comfortable at that point. Apollo 10 had been a real similar mission. Just from a medical standpoint, they did not have a lot of things on board, for example, no dental equipment, none whatsoever and just a few medicines because they were so concerned about weight. To give you an example, when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon, they had six Band Aids I their kit. They did have 12. But, they took out six Band Aids because they were too heavy.

Gates McFadden: Oh my God.

Richard Jennings: And, they were really trying to make the kits, you know, lighter and lighter. And so, there’s some really big constraints on what you could take. And, each of the astronauts had to test those drugs so we wouldn’t have an untoward, you know, an untoward reaction to them. When we did the mission, this one went fine, probably less medicines used on Apollo 11 than any other flight. They did use some aspirin. It’s interesting, Mike Collins had had knee problems and pain in his knee on Gemini 10 and he had it again on Apollo 11, he never told anybody about that until he wrote his book later on because they usually don’t want to tell the doctors that something that might cause problems with a future flight or something. But, he did have that. When they decided to get into the lunar module and land on the moon, they did take medicine to make the GI system slowdown called lowmodel. They did that, they used two of those. And then, when they got ready to land, they used scopolamine dexatrimine. Because a spacecraft like a capsule, and we’re finding this out, you know, now with the capsule we’re using landing on water, they’re great in space but they’re really bad in boats. And, when you land in the water and the moving around, people really get sick. But, they did not use too many and they had a really great flight. One thing that people forget though is we were worried, after Apollo 11, about back contamination, in other words, them, not us bringing something to the moon but something on the moon that was deleterious to humans. So, when they came back before they got out of the capsule, they put on these biological oscillation garments that they wore then they went into a mobile quarantine facility, which is kind of like a air stream trailer. And, that trailer was brought to Houston and put in the lunar receiving lab which is also in isolation and all the spacecraft and the moon, the materials were put into that. And, they had to stay I that for 21 days from the time they launched from the surface. But, overall Apollo 11 was a great mission built on a lot of work from really hundreds of thousands of people. And, based on Mercury, Gemini, then Apollo.

Gates McFadden: Can I ask a question? A couple. I wanted to know if an astronaut has had some surgery that they have any piece of a metal screw or anything inside, are they, would they be prohibited from doing a mission? Or, the second part of that is what has been the most serious illness that has required some sort of intervention that has happened?

Richard Jennings: You’re talking about in space.

Gates McFadden: Yeah.

Richard Jennings: We had, the United States hasn’t really had much.

Gates McFadden: Okay.

Richard Jennings: We’ve been lucky. There’s a reason, it’s not lucky, truthfully, it is somewhat. Things can happen to people. But, for the most part, like, to give an example, let’s go back to the Apollo. They have a selection physical which is unbelievable. They have annual physicals. Then, for Apollo, they have physicals, fairly extensive, L minus 30 or F minus 30 they called it back then, 30 days before the mission, 15 days before the mission, 5 days before the mission, and they’re really looking at things. Like, we don’t carry dental equipment. But, they don’t allow any dental restorations for example.

Gates McFadden: They don’t okay.

Richard Jennings: And, three months before the flight, because new restorations are the ones most likely to cause problems. We have not had any. We, back to the Apollo program, on Apollo 15 one of the crew members had cardiac dysrhythmia.

Gates McFadden: Okay.

Richard Jennings: And, they thought it was due to potassium and it may have been. But, it turns out, this particular person had extensive coronary artery disease. This was before you could do calcium studies or—

Gates McFadden: Okay.

Richard Jennings: CT angiograms of coronary vessels. And he had extensive disease and, within two years of the flight he had a cardiac arrest due to a heart attack. The Russians have had some. They’ve had kidney stones, they’ve had some things happen. But, in general, we’ve been extremely lucky.

Gates McFadden: And what do they, like with the kidney stone, what happened, what did they do?

Richard Jennings: Well, you, for men you give them something to make their prostate smaller. You might hydrate them a little, use pain medication.

Gates McFadden: Pain medication.

Richard Jennings: Then you wait.

Gates McFadden: Yeah, yeah, but no one’s performed any real surgery.

Richard Jennings: Well, we do on animals some using a glove box. And, it’s been practiced in zero gravity and zero gravity airplanes. We’ve done laparoscopy, we’ve done cystoscopy, laparotomy, we’ve done all the things we can do but you did it in 22 second increments not in space.

Gates McFadden: Interesting.

Richard Jennings: Yeah.

Gates McFadden: Thank you.

Host: And so, Gates, kind of, we heard a little bit about what the very beginning of space medicine was like. In your world, that you played in.

Gates McFadden: Yeah Dr. Crusher was much more advanced.

[Laughter]

Host: She was much more advanced.

Gates McFadden: I had quite a few degrees and yeah, right.

Host: Building on the legacy of people like Richard Jennings. But, what are some of the really kind of fantastical technologies that stood out for you that you got to interact with?

Gates McFadden

Gates McFadden: Well, I loved when, you know, we were replacing spines. And, first of all, the triquarter is just such an amazing machine. And, people have developed the triquarter now, it’s not out there, but Xprize actually had from all over the word, teams develop a triquarter. I mean, how fantastic is that? Because to be able to diagnose quickly and to be able to take the readings of everyone’s you know what’s going on in their body, you would know if someone had the heart arythmic thing. And so, I think there were so many fantastic things that that we were able to do in theoretical, you know, on the spaceship. One of the things that I really found I think about this quite a lot actually, is we had, so we had Data, all right. And he was android, so he’s the machine creature. But now, I know that, even in medicine, we put parts of the brain in that can make someone who’s had an arm amputated, it can make it so that they can function with a, you know, a new arm that’s there, a bionic arm. And, I think about things like privacy and how do you, what happens when..? We haven’t really done anything, I don’t know, I haven’t done it but, in, with the brain where there’s some sort of technology where they’re trying to deal with something like depression without, and I’m not talking schedules, but literally, you know, you have your own private thoughts. A computer doesn’t have their own private thoughts. And pretty soon, you know, it’s like what happens when the blend, do we ever get to that point? And, what are the ethical questions about that? And, I’m fascinated by that. I don’t know if I’m totally speaking, you know, asking something stupid, but, I’m interested.

Host: Well, I mean, Kris I know you’re involved in some of those kind of futuristic technologies. Things like a triquarter might be around the corner in space. I mean, what are some of the things that you’ve seen that you’re working on that kind of get you really excited for the next couple decades?

Kris Lehnhardt: It’s very fascinating working in NASA and looking at the way that we care for people in space because you would think that we have the newest and greatest technology in space to take care of people. But, what we actually have are things that are very well tested, tried and true things. And, we haven’t really been pushing the boundaries of what space medicine or space technology could look like in the future. And, that’s because we’ve been working right now, for the last 20 years on the International Space Station. And, the goal, in terms of medical care for the Space Station is send up extremely healthy people, send up medicine and equipment you could use to manage things, day to day kind of things like aches and pains. But, if you have an emergency, a true emergency, then, there’s enough equipment up there to stabilize someone, and then, the plan is to get them home as quickly as you can. And, thankfully, we have not had to do that because, as has been said, we send really healthy people to space. Now, in the future, we’re not going to be able to evacuate people, if you are three months on the way to Mars and something bad happens, you are not coming home again. So, what we’re working on now, in the future are developing systems that try to allow us provide more capability in space. So, testing out ultrasound machines that are basically the size of my fist and plug into a phone and developing x-ray technology that’s extremely small and portable and can be used in space. Or even developing new computer technologies so we can transfer data around and move information better. Right now, we don’t store medical data on the Space Station, we send it all to the ground because it’s super easy to do that. But, when you have a communication delay, you’re going to Mars and it takes 20 minutes for information to move back and forth, sending every little piece of information back and forth is just not efficient. So, how do we manage that on the spacecraft? And then, hopefully, when someone does get sick on the way to Mars, you’re going to have a doctor with them who’s going to access all that information and all those new technologies and they’re going to be able to use those to take care of people in space. And so, that’s the ultimate goal.

Gates McFadden: Do you work with cryonics at all, I mean do you work with the idea of getting people like, theoretically, if you’re sick and you can’t really treat it but you can take their temperature down. Is that something that you all even talk about?

Kris Lehnhardt: So, there is actually a NASA project that is looking at advanced concepts. And, one of the concepts that they’re looking at is something like that, they call it TORPOR. And, basically it’s the idea of, can I slow down someone’s metabolism and essentially preserve them for longer because we’ve done that? And so, those are concepts that we still look at and we’re very interested in, in the future. But, we can’t even do that on the ground very well right now. So, NASA doesn’t like to fly things into space that we haven’t tested ad nauseum on the ground. And so, that one’s still many years away.

Gates McFadden: Thank you.

Host: And so, one of my favorite things about Star Trek and a lot of science fiction is actually the myriad of alien disease and things like that we end up running out to on the final frontier. Because, I mean, right now NASA, we’re mostly worried about people bringing stuff from Earth, with them, you know? That’s why we do the quarantine and stuff, things like that. Gates, what are some of the really memorable, you know, viruses or plagues that you guys had to combat that, you know, really stand out in your mind.

Gates McFadden: Well, of course there was the Naked Now, that makes you just kind of nicely drunk, I guess, that one was always very fun. But, its, and also what that actually brings up is, so if everyone has, is affected by this virus, how does the medical team, in spite of the effects of this virus, figure out, with the computer, what’s going on and how to solve it, and how to diagnose it, and then how to treat it? I mean, there were a lot of things like that. And, then, of course, there were invasive things that would take over your mind, and do all that. That’s why I think it’s fascinating, the psychological aspect of all of it, and how do you deal? I always have admired the astronauts, because, obviously, they’re going to be top notch people who are driven, who know how to do their program. And, it’s like the people who fly those fighter jets, you know exactly what you’re supposed to do so you’re not in terror. You’re like, I do this, then I do this, then I have to check this, and I work out now, and I do this. And that’s fantastic. But, just to be aware of, psychologically, all the things that you, that could be happening. When you said, when you can’t see Earth anymore, that was fascinating. Can you talk more about that? Because, to me, that’s the reason, I personally want to go into space, is so that I can actually look at Earth and get a new perspective. But once that’s not there, what’s that like? How do you deal with that?

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah, so I think, looking at, kind of psychological or behavioral issues that we’re going to have to deal with on a long exploration class mission, are huge. I think they’ve been on the bottom of everybody’s priority list, because they’re very touchy feely, and hard to discuss, and you don’t have distinct treatments for some of these things, but what do you do as Earth becomes smaller, and smaller, and smaller? What do you do when you want to talk to your family, and the time delay gets to the point where you’re left with only recorded messages that you send back and forth? You know, for us, in the station, we can see the Earth all the time. We fly over continents very quickly. I can call my husband on his cell phone, pretty much, at any time that I wanted. I had that communication. So, to me, that was very important. I still felt connected to Earth. I had the internet. You know, I could look at the news online. That was important. So, how do we deal with that as we move further and further away? And there are a lot of people looking at these things. But, perhaps we have to go back, kind of, to the old explorers. And I will say that, even during our mission, there was a Soyuz that was supposed to make it up there with two more of our crew mates, and that ship did not make it. It aborted. The crew was safe, because the launch abort system worked perfectly, and saved their lives. But all of the sudden, it was just 3 of us.

Gates McFadden: Right.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: And we though, oh dear, things have changed. Still plenty of work to do, but the entire dynamic changes up there. And, so, we had just watched a movie talking about Ernest Shackleton, and his time with his crew, and how they were stranded for certain parts. And, so, the commander, at the time, of, on board the space station was Alex Gerst, from Germany, and so we decided to do some of those things. We threw a Halloween party. It was just the 3 of us, but you know what, we had a small party, we had costumes, everything.

Gates McFadden: Well, it’s creative.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Absolutely.

Gates McFadden: And I think, see, I think that’s the part, and if I can?

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yes.

Gates McFadden: Like, again, it’s with Star Trek, because to be creative, you’re using parts of your brain, and you are imagining things. And just to engage the imagination, so that it’s not only scientific. I mean, obviously, you have to be imagining in order to be scientific. You wouldn’t even come up with the idea that you want to prove. But, I think, sometimes it’s getting away from it, totally, being out of your comfort zone, that you really can discover something about yourself. And discovering something about myself makes me much more engaged in the world. Like, oh, I didn’t realize I would be like that if I were doing this, or whatever. You learn about yourself. You’re interested in yourself, and less worried about being interesting. You’re interested, you know, in—

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah, and I think, one of the things we also did, just because the station is a very sterile environment, right? There are no smells of earth, there’s no wind, there’s no rain, you had the same people that you’re with. And, so, the one way we could make station more human on the inside was music. And I didn’t realize how important music, I mean, I listened to music down here, in my car, or wherever, but up there, we had music all the time. And depending on which module you were in, you could be listening to Queen or to Mozart, it just depended on who was working in that module at that time. But that, for me, made the Space Station so much more human, and it just felt like we belonged there, and this was ours.

Host: Well, so, so far we’ve only had to really worry about a limited number of people in space at any given time. Like, you only have 6 people, typically, 7 sometimes, on board the space station. In the future, we’re going to be in situations like Dr. Crusher was, where you have entire star ships worth of people, and entire colonies worth of people, especially as we have commercial companies starting to fly people into space. What do you guys see, kind of, over the horizon, and even, kind of, longer term in the world of space medicine?

Richard Jennings: Well, I’m really excited about commercial space flight, and the commercial crew program. I know how to count seats, and there’s a few more seats in those vehicles than just for the astronauts. And, so, we’ll be flying some other people. And there’ll eventually be free flyers in low Earth orbit, and colonization of Mars. Hopefully we’ll become a multiplanetary species. I’m excited about it. Up until now, all the people have been selected, pretty much, by agencies, bureaucracies, that sort of thing. And commercial space flight can be much more agile. Finally, it’ll have some nontraditional people flying up. We’ve had 8 that flew to the International Space Station through Space Adventures. And you have computer experts, you have artists, all different kinds of people, and that’s great. We need different people flying in space. One of the other things is that, back to going to the long duration flights, we’re going to have to learn how to take care of medical conditions that do develop, like Gates was talking about. We don’t have much experience in that. Well, where can we get it? Commercial space flight. Just like I said, you give up your youth and your health to be able to afford one of those flights, and it’s a little bit self-serving, for me, because I always have to get these guys approved to fly, but we ought to require that they have something wrong with them. Where else can we learn, unless we do that? And, so, I’m very excited. I’m excited that the numbers are going to increase, that we’ll have nontraditional crew members flying. I think the biggest issue will not be medical. It gets back to what you were just discussing, is the psychological aspect. And that’s why, I do think, a nice 6 month training program is a good deal. And if there are going to be problems, they’ll tend to come out. Most anybody can be on their best behavior for a couple of weeks, but if you put them in a stressful situations, teamwork, over 6 months, if there’s a problem, you’re going to find out about it. But I’m terribly excited about commercial space flight.

Gates McFadden: One of the, I went to Gene Roddenberry, my first year, I said, can I base a lot of my character on Dr. Oliver Sacks, who was this amazing neurologist. I had read all of his books up to, and he, you know, even now that he’s passed, he still has books that’ll come out. The most amazing things, because it’s all about neurology in the brain, and it’s such a burgeoning field, right now, as is radiology, which is enormous. But, it’s fascinating, just on earth, all the things the brain does. And when we go up in space, and all that we don’t know, and when it changes your entire perspective of the, of the universe, right? Your, my perspective would be completely changed. I’m not looking up like that, I’m looking around, and I’m either seeing nothing, or seeing the Earth small. That has to be profound. That certainly is something that would drive me, should I have the money, ever, to go up into space. I think that would be amazing.

NASA / James Blair

Host: Well, Gates, I’m happy to pool my money with yours, and we can go together.

Gates McFadden: Alright!

Host: We did get—we’re going to have to end a little early, so I want to start questions now, if you guys have questions. We have a mic, here, in the center, so if you want, go ahead and line up, and we can start taking some questions for our panel. And if you know who the question is to, just go ahead and ask them.

Audience Member: Well, the first question I have is, are there any plans on cross training? Because right now, I see it as there’s just one doctor on the station at a time. What happens if the doctor gets sick?

Host: Good question.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: So, actually, all of the astronauts that fly to the station are trained to, about, the level of a basic EMT. They get training in hospital settings, in ER’s, they learn how to suture, they learn how to put in Foley catheters, they are familiar with almost, pretty much every piece of equipment that we have up there. And, in fact, we do joint training’s as a crew for, what we call, bad events. We do have a defibrillator up there, as well. And, so, our folks are pretty well trained when they get up there. That being said, you’re right, we don’t have a doctor with every crew. I wish we did. That would be more flight opportunities for all of us docs out there. But, we rely on the training of the crew, and then the flight surgeons on the ground, who are looking out after us. Now, that’s a benefit we have, only being in low Earth orbit, in that we can talk to the docs real time, we can show them live video, they can help us walk through and talk us through anything that might happen. But, yeah, cross training is definitely something we do.

Audience Member: Okay. My daughter is 13 years old. Your show is her favorite show. And you’re the one who made her want to be an astronaut. So, my question is, for a 13 year old girl going to high school, and everything, from a small town, what advice would you have for her going forward on a career path line?

Gates McFadden: Is she talking to me?

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Both of us I think.

Gates McFadden: Me, both, or which one?

Audience Member: All of you.

Gates McFadden: No, you go ahead.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: What, so my big thing that I would say, because I think this tends to happen with young girls, especially when they’re in their early teens is they see something that they’re really interested in, but they’re afraid to ask about it. Or they see somebody that works and does a really cool job, and they think, that person doesn’t have time for me. They’re not going to have time to answer my questions. And, so, I really encourage kids to bother, meaning go up and talk to that person, find out what they do, ask if you can spend time with them. And, also, remind them it’s okay to change their mind. So, I started off, in my college career, as an engineer, and initially I was just going to continue on with engineering, until friends and outside forces pushed me towards medicine. And, so, I was a little afraid, thinking, wow, can I change my mind right in the middle of college? And it’s totally okay to do. It’s okay, because you’re going to find out what you’re passionate about, and that it’s all going to work out just fine. So, give her, though, for me, those two pieces of advice, I’d say, she’s going to find something that she’s passionate about, and whatever it is, just to stick with it.

Gates McFadden: I will say that I meet, every time I do a convention, I meet so many extraordinary, young women. I mean, really, the kids that come up to the table who are interested and know the show, they are sensational. I am a person who happens to believe that if these children grow up, and they become the people who are, you know, taking care of me in the old age, we’re going to be fine. Because they are interested in all sort of things, and I do feel that there’s too much pressure, I think, dealing with anxiety and having to do everything. That’s the one thing I noticed, more from being a teacher for 35 years on the university level. There’s way too much pressure on kids to know what they want to do so young. I mean, if you peak when you’re, you know, 7, what are you going to do for the rest of your life? So, I think that, I would advise not to push, expose children to a lot of different things, and see what they are drawn to. And then, if they’re drawn to it, then okay, then you can, sort of, guide a little bit more. But I feel having to make decisions of what they’re going to do, in their preschool years, is, it’s ridiculous. Because I have, some of the best people I’ve ever taught didn’t know what they were doing, and then they suddenly got passionate, and wow. It’s because they wanted it. You know? So, I think it’s both. It’s listening to advice, people say hey, you’re really good at this, listening to advice, and speaking up and asking questions. But I think it’s also, sometimes, for the parents to just, parents, just love them, you know, just love them. Yeah, great. Great.

Audience Member: All right. So, at the early start of NASA, there was talk about having a limited amount of weight you could have on the flight up. With having the Space Station and everything else, and well you mentioning how important music is, are people, are astronauts able to bring up, now, instruments, or some other personal items to be able to play in space, and just, kind of, let off steam?

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah. I mean, we’ve had several instruments. We have keyboards, we have two guitars, we have a saxophone up there, right now. We had a pan flute, and 3 recorders on my most, on my last, on my mission here. So it was amazing, one of our cosmonauts seemed to pull every musical instrument out of his crew quarters.

Gates McFadden: Fantastic.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: I didn’t think it was even possible that he had any more in there, but he did. [laughter] And we would gather, often on Friday and Saturday evenings. Because two of our guys could play guitar, and everybody liked to sing. And we tried to play the recorder, it was awful. [laughter] But it didn’t matter. It was something we could do together, as an international crew.

Richard Jennings: On thing I’d mention is that, we’re kind of at a changing point, though, with some of the large items on the International Space Station. Our counter measures that we have, the medical counter measures, work great. The resistive exercise device, the treadmills, the bicycle odometers, these sort of things, they work really well, but they’re just too big to go to Mars with. So, one of the things we’re having to look at, not only the counter measure things, but the enjoyment things that you’re talking about, they’re going to be much more limited for exploration class type missions. And, so, we’re, there’s a lot of work going on in that area right now, to get things a little smaller, and what do we really need to support exploration class missions?

Kris Lehnhardt: So, maybe, no guitar, but a ukulele, I guess?

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah.

[ Laughter ]

Gates McFadden: They need a holodeck, I think, but that’s a ways off. That’s how we used to blow off steam, right?

Audience Member: My question involves nutrition, and I know that nutrition is something that’s almost in the medical field. But, as important as music is, also good eating is important. So, I was wondering if these long missions to Mars, if the people would have any culinary excitement that they could take with them.

Kris Lehnhardt: We are studying that, right now, at NASA. And I can tell you, it’s—food is a real problem for Mars. So, how do you make nutritious food that doesn’t spoil, that lasts for more than 3 years. It’s really difficult. The other point you brought up, though, is interesting food. And, I’m sure we could make a very unpalatable bar that everyone could eat, every day, all the time.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: I’ve eaten them.

Kris Lehnhardt: Yes. And it’s, you don’t realize the power of food, I think, until you don’t have the variety. And, Serena, I think, can certainly talk about this. When fresh, fresh fruit arrives on a spacecraft, it’s pretty magical. We’re trying to grow vegetables in space, right now. And, so there’s lettuce that we’ve grown on board, and we’re working on other vegetables, as well. But, in the end, we’re going to have to do a significant amount of research to find out how we can make the food last, keep it interesting, so we keep the crew healthy. An uninterested crew is not a good crew, psychologically, and they’re going to, then, have trouble achieving their mission, and that’s our primary objective. So, in the end, nutrition is going to play a more and more important role in space flight, both psychologically and physically.

Audience Member: So, hi. My name’s Natalie, and my question was for the people that are medical doctors. So, what do you do when you didn’t want to study at all? Personally, right now, I’m still in my premed years. I haven’t taken the MCAT yet, and I’m taking organic chemistry soon. So.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Sorry.

Audience Member: Yeah. To be honest, I should be studying right now, instead of being here.

[ Laughter ]

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah, so you know, you’re going to have those times. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t fly through medical school loving every day, and thinking that every class was fantastic, and certainly not organic chemistry. And, so, but what was important to me were the creative things I’d do on the side. What hobbies do you have? I engaged in sports a lot, and martial arts a lot. So, you always have to have things that, kind of, engage the other side of your brain, to give yourself a break. We do the same thing on space station. We work very long hours during the week, and then most of the time we have weekends off to go do things to give ourselves a break. A lot of times, it’s photography, it’s looking out the window, it’s talking to our families and friends. Because when you start to feel that burn out, that stress, what that tells me is you need to take a step back. Because it’s not that you don’t like what you’re doing anymore, but you need to make sure and engage in other things that really let yourself decompress and let your batteries recharge.

Gates McFadden: I mean, I think there’s even, I’m not speaking, now, for any astronaut thing, but I have a son who’s a violinist, and he, I mean, when, at certain points it was like, you have 100 pages of music you have to learn. And, I mean, it’s 9 hours of practice. And he, for years, he almost over practiced. And as he’s gotten older, and better and better, he’s learned that it’s better to just take a step back, do something totally different, even if it’s a type 20 minutes, and then you go back to it, and you actually plan how, you get more organized. That he actually is now, spends more time just creating, this is what I have to do in order to get to that concert. And he always plans in the breaks, and when he’s, you know, and he actually condenses, now, his practice time, and he sounds better, which is really fabulous. I wish I had known that.

Host: All right. I think we have time for one or two more.

Audience Member: Hi. I’ve been reading some of the research that’s come out from the study of the Kelly Twins, and the mutations from the extended period in space. How are we going to deal with that on the extended time you’d have in space on a mission to Mars?

Gates McFadden: Yeah, it’s tough.

Kris Lehnhardt: Thanks for that hard question.

Gates McFadden: Yeah.

[ Laughter ]

Kris Lehnhardt

Kris Lehnhardt: It’s a, it is a real challenge, and I think that one of the things that the Twins Study showed us is that people do come back from space different than they went. And one of the things that we talk about a lot in space medicine is that there’s many, many things that happen to us in space that are, we think that they’re bad, but they’re actually just adaptive processes. And we’re getting used to a new environments, and humans are extremely adaptable in that respect. There are other things about the space environment, though, that have a significant negative impact on us, and radiation is one of those. The way that we’re going to deal with radiation, right now on the International Space Station, you’re still very close to the Earth, and the Earth actually provides you with protection from the radiation of deep space. And, so now, as we push out to the Moon, and on to Mars, we’re going to have to deal with that deep space radiation environment. And the way that we’re going to do that is through newer, and better technologies. We’re going to have to be able to shield spacecraft, as well as possible, to try and prevent the radiation from getting in. But, then, we also know that there’s radiation that will pass through any shielding that we have, and that’s, in that respect, we have to be able to, then, provide counter measures to the astronauts so that they don’t get sick. And those are going to be nutrition based, they may be medicines, as well, exercise may play a role in that. There’s many different ways that we might be able to prevent some of those changes. But, at the end of the day, everyone who goes to space comes back different. And we have to accept that, and there is a certain level of risk associated with that. And if the mission is important enough, then the risk is worth it.

Host: All right. We can do one more question.

Audience Member: I married up, didn’t I? Gates, I can’t think of a single character anywhere in the Star Trek universe with a higher sense of personal integrity than Doctor Beverly Crusher, so I thank you for that portrayal.

Gates McFadden: Thank you, very much.

[ Applause ]

Audience Member: Doctor Auñón-Chancellor, if you could snap your fingers, and live to see your greatest dream, your greatest space exploration dream, living, working in space, what would that be?

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: If I could snap my finger, right now, I’d say what I’d love to see would be colonies on Mars, fully functioning, producing our own food, small cities, towns being built, schools being built, and a huge, diverse group of people, with maybe some of the first children being born on Mars, as well. And it may not be as far off as you think, but certainly along with that, I can’t see us sticking with current means of rocket technology, and it taking us that long to get there. And those ideas are also being developed. Ion propulsion, how fast, can the trip be much shorter, can you go visit your aunt on Mars? Could that be possible? Absolutely. And push on past Mars. What other planetary services, or bodies, could we land on? So, if I were to think about that, right now, you know, protection of the human really is at the forefront of my mind. Can we keep the humans safe from radiation, and everything else that we’ve talked about here today? And, at first, all of these problems seem impossible, but every time we seem to overcome them. I mean, people ask me, wasn’t it fantastic looking out at the earth? How did your perspective change? And I’d say, sure the earth is beautiful, no question, but what really got me excited, where I really had to stop and say wow, was watching all these vehicles, cargo vehicles pull up, like it was every day business. They’d come out and say, hello station, we’re bringing cargo, perform certain maneuvers, and precisely come in and park, just like they’re parking in a parking lot. Now, there’s a lot more work that goes on behind the scenes for that, but it became so commonplace, and I could see these vehicles just out the window, and I thought, look how far we’ve come. So, to think that we’ll have colonies on Mars, that day’s probably coming a lot faster than you think.

Gates McFadden: And I just pray, though, that humanity can, maybe, start to learn from our mistakes, instead of repeat them.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor: Yeah.

[ Applause ]

Host: All right. Unfortunately, that’s all the time we’re going to get, today, so I just want to thank our panel one more time, Gates, Serena, Kris, and Richard, for joining us today.

[ Applause and Cheers ]

And thank all of you beautiful people for being here, as well. I hope you enjoy the rest of Comicpalooza, and go listen to us online, Houston, We Have a Podcast. Thanks.

[ Music ]

Host: And that does it for our live recording. Thanks so much for sticking around to the end. If you want to learn more about space medicine, and all of the insane things we’re doing with humans in space, and medical research, I suggest going over to NASA.gov/hrp. That’s our Human Research Program website, where you can read all about it. And if you want more of this podcast, or some of the other podcasts NASA’s putting out, head over to NASA.gov/podcast. And, as always, to keep up with all the amazing research onboard the station, and the humans living and working onboard, head over to NASA.gov/ISS, or follow us all around on social media, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And, as always, you can use the #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit any ideas and any questions that you might have, and we might cover it, here, on Houston, We Have a Podcast. This podcast was recorded on May 11, 2019. Special thanks to Alex Perryman, Norah Moran, Pat Ryan, Traci Charles, JJ Shaw, Dale Googer, Michael Interbartolo, Shaneequa Vereen, Kathy Reeves, Courtney Barringer, Jeannie Aquino, and Jack Moore, for helping to pull all of this together. Big team effort. And, of course, a special thanks to Serena Auñón-Chancellor, Kris Lehnhardt, Richard Jennings, and, of course, Gates McFadden for their time and expertise, to really bring this panel to life. We’ll be back next week.