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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation," from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today… how a former astronaut helps translate real space science into made-for-TV science fiction.
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Basu, Narrating: Here's a thought experiment: What if, in 1969, the United States had lost the space race… what if we had to settle for second place because the Soviets got to the moon first?
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Deke Slayton (played by Chris Bauer): Look around! You want to cry about Apollo 15? Let me tell you something. There may not be an Apollo 12, much less 15.
Edward Baldwin (played by Joel Kinnaman): What the hell are you talking about?
Slayton: The country's in shock, Eddie. Like Pearl Harbor shock. American people thought we had this thing in the bag, then the Russians come along and snatch it away at the last minute.
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Basu, Narrating: What would that do to the American space program, our pride, our psyche?
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Edward Baldwin (played by Joel Kinnaman): They really might cancel everything after 11?
Slayton: That's usually what happens when the race is over. Winner collects their prize, loser goes home.
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Basu, Narrating: This is the central question behind the Apple TV+ series, "For All Mankind," that's now entering its fourth season. It gets into all these thought-provoking ripple-effects of the Soviets getting there first, and the impact that would have on American society, politics, international diplomacy, and scientific discovery. And it blends some of those big what-ifs with more real-seeming references to the space race of today, themes like the commercialization of space travel and the mission to get humans to Mars. Now, there's lots of moments in the show that'll make you go, "Wait, can that really happen in space?" Well, rest assured, the show's writers have an advisor on staff, someone who's been up there himself.
Garrett Reisman: I want the viewer to watch the show and say, okay, yes, we have not been to Mars, so this is not real, but it could happen.
Basu, Narrating: Garrett Reisman is a former NASA astronaut who went on to become director of space operations at SpaceX. Now he's a technical advisor on "For All Mankind." I wanted to talk to Garrett about his real experiences in space and how he helped translate those into science fiction for the show.
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Reisman: Space was always very special for me and I was fascinated by it. And I used to take all the books out of my elementary school library and I'd devour them. And in like fifth grade I could explain to you how a turning bank indicator works and stuff like that. But I never thought I would ever go, or I would actually even become an astronaut. And that's because all the people I'm watching in these old Apollo flights, like I had this film of Apollo 11 that I used to watch over and over and I loved it. But all those guys were all test pilots.
Basu: Yeah, sure.
Reisman: And here's the thing, I'm growing up here in New Jersey, okay? I got a mom who's scared of flying.
[BASU LAUGHS]
And, and I don't mean like, like flying, like in an X15, I mean like flying on like United. So there's no way she was gonna let me grow up and become a test pilot. It just wasn't gonna happen. Right. And it was only much later, when I was at Penn, as an undergrad, that I got a hold of some of the bios of the people that NASA had just selected for shuttle flights. And they weren't all test pilots. You know, there were some scientists and engineers and physicians. And suddenly I said, "Oh, you know, maybe this is in the realm of possibility." That changed everything.
Basu: And what did it mean, what did you have to do to get selected?
Reisman: You have to fill out an application.
Basu: Yeah.
[REISMAN LAUGHS]
Just, you filled out a form and…
Reisman: You know, the funny thing is, it's a standard form for government employment. It's like the same thing you fill out if you want to be like a letter carrier at the post office.
Basu: Yeah. There's something very funny about that.
Reisman: Yeah. It just didn't like, I think it was box number nine, instead of writing, like, postal worker, you write astronaut. That's how it starts.
[LAUGHING]
Basu: Tell me a little bit about your, your bio. What are your space creds?
Reisman: My space creds? Well, I've got 107 cumulative days in space. I had two missions, up to the space station. The first was a long duration mission back in 2008, and I spent 95 days on the space station, which was a total bummer, by the way.
Basu: Why?
Reisman: If you stay for a hundred days, they give you a patch.
Basu: Oh, no, really? They pulled you down just before the patch?
Reisman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Basu: They don't give them away easy, huh?
Reisman: I tried. Mark Kelly was a commander of Discovery who came up to get me and, uh, I said, "Mark, man, can't we just go around a couple more times?" He was like, "No." So, uh, I never got my patch, but that's okay. And then I got another flight on Atlantis, so I got the fly on Endeavor, Discovery and Atlantis. With only two missions. It was a pretty neat trick.
Basu: Wow, wow.
Reisman: Because I got dropped off by Endeavor, picked up by Discovery, and then up and down on Atlantis on my last flight.
Basu: Right. And on that first mission in 2008, I mean, you went out on a spacewalk.
Reisman: Yeah.
Basu: What is it like to go out on a spacewalk?
Reisman: Well, I describe that as kind of the mix of the familiar and the outlandish. Because you train very heavily for the tasks that you're doing. So, the suit feels just like it does in training when you're in a vacuum chamber, it feels the same way. You go out to the worksite and all the bolts are where they said they would be and, and the electrical connectors have the correct labels and colors and everything's like comfortable and normal. And then you look up and you see the whole east coast of the United States go flying by and that's like totally surreal. So yeah, you kind of go back and forth between this, like, okay, I gotta do this job and I know exactly what I'm doing here, but now I'm confronted with this environment that's completely unreal.
Basu: I mean, it's funny the way you describe it, something that's so concrete that you're like, yes, I'm familiar with this. I've seen this before. And then just this unbelievable vastness that you also have to reckon with. I would imagine it's incredibly distracting. It's probably also very beautiful. I don't know. Tell me how it feels…
…to be looking out at that.
Reisman: It's both.
Oh. It'd be great to just hang out and just watch, but the thing is we have, we have a job to do. And there's a lot of people counting on us. In fact, if you're going to do a spacewalk, that's going to be the crux of your mission. And there's actually a lot of pressure riding on you because as you're getting ready to go out the door, you know that whatever happens in that, you know, seven and a half hours or so, you're going to carry that with you for the rest of your life. And when you're old and sitting in your rocking chair, you're going to think back upon that moment with either a great sense of satisfaction or terrible sense of regret. Right? I'm not a professional athlete as you can tell by looking at me, but, um, but I've talked to some that are, and they said that, yeah, you know what, it's kind of like when you take the field for a championship, whether that be a World Series, a World Cup or a Superbowl, whatever it might be, because you don't know if you're going to have another chance to do this. You know, you don't know if your team's going to get back to the championship and this is only going to take a few hours. And as you step onto that field, it's going to define you, right?
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. Um. Are you up for a speed round? Can I throw a speed round at you?
Reisman: Yeah, let's do it.
Basu: Quick prompts and quick answers. Ready?
Reisman: Yeah. You got it.
Basu: Okay. Three words to describe takeoff and entering space.
Reisman: Launch, I would say energetic, loud and long G exposure.
Basu: Your favorite memory of being in space?
Reisman: An orbital sunrise I watched while holding onto the space station behind me so there's nothing in front of me and just watching the sun come over the horizon of the Earth.
Basu: Wow. Best space food?
Reisman: Uh, the Japanese sent up sent up some yakitori and JAXA, the Japanese space agency. And it was delicious. And some miso soup and it was much better than our food.
Basu: Oh, nice. Worst space food?
Reisman: Yeah. That would be peach ambrosia, which, yeah. Maybe if we had to seal a hole in the hull, it would come in handy, but that stuff tasted terrible.
Basu: Personal item that you were most glad to have up there.
Reisman: Joe Torrey's World Series ring from, uh, I think it was his 2000 World Series ring, he gave it to me and I, I had that up there with me.
Basu: Wow. Unexpected answer. Top realization you had.
Reisman: The fragility of the planet. When you, when you look at how thin the atmosphere is, it's, it's striking.
Basu: Are there any lessons that you learned in space that serve you here on Earth?
Reisman: When I take a packet of sugar, to put it in my coffee, and I tear the top of the packet, I don't tear it all the way off. Because if you do that in space, now you have two pieces of trash, and you can't put anything down in space, it just floats around. So now, both your hands are occupied, and you can't pick up the coffee or do anything else, right? So now I got into the habit of tearing it almost all the way off, but leaving it attached, so now I only have one piece of trash.
Basu: That's a space quirk. You've kept the space quirk.
Reisman: Yeah. I kept it. That's how I've changed.
[LAUGHING]
Basu: Are aliens real, yes or no?
Reisman: I don't know, but I'm, I'm, I'm okay saying, I don't know.
Basu: I thought I could catch you in a speed round like this.
Reisman: No, good try.
Basu: Three words to describe re-entry to Earth.
Reisman: Ah, so that would be the smooth calm. I mean, it's actually really benign. In the movies, it's always so dramatic, but actually in reality it's, it's quite smooth.
Basu: Oh, interesting. Would you go back again?
Reisman: Yeah, sure.
Basu: Yeah?
Reisman: Mm-hmm.
Basu: Would you go to Mars?
Reisman: Sure. Well, they don't have pizza up there yet. So maybe I'll give it a little time, but yeah, eventually it'd be awesome.
Basu: Give him time. And lastly, finish the sentence, the future of space travel is…
Reisman: Booming. I don't mean that in a, in a catastrophic way. Uh, it's a very exciting time. The future is incredibly bright and what's going to happen even just the next 10 years is going to be astonishing.
Basu: Yeah. Well, I think a big part of where the future of space travel is going ties into where your career took you after NASA, which I understand you went to go work at SpaceX as director of space operations.
Reisman: That's right.
Basu: What differences struck you between working for a government agency like NASA and a huge private company like SpaceX?
Reisman: Oh, it was night and day in a lot of aspects. Probably the single biggest one was decision speed. So we would make a decision in like a matter of a couple hours that we would struggle with for like a year at NASA.
Basu: At NASA, yeah.
Reisman: And the reason we were able to do that was SpaceX was much more agile and a lot of it is because it's vertically integrated so we can make a lot of changes quickly and it wouldn't be very expensive. The problem with having a quick decision speed is you can make a wrong decision and that's why NASA doesn't do it because the pain of recovering from a bad decision with regard to cost and when you have a massive organization with all these suppliers and, and subcontractors, it's really hard to pivot. But SpaceX, we had that luxury of being able to pivot. And so we can make a decision, find out if it was the wrong decision and change direction and converge rapidly on the right decision.
Basu: Hmm. How do you see NASA and a company like SpaceX being able to work together? Or do you see them mostly as parties that have to be at odds?
Reisman: Well, they're partners. So this is a public private partnership that led to NASA astronauts flying back to the space station on American rockets launching from our launch pads. So we went nine painful years without that capability, but it worked out remarkably well, even though the corporate culture of the two places couldn't be more different.
Basu: Yeah.
Reisman: And so holding it together, keeping that train on the tracks was, was a big challenge.
Basu: What were some of the biggest challenges in that culture clash you're describing?
Reisman: Well, there were a lot of things that SpaceX did differently. The decision speed was one thing, and, and NASA wasn't really comfortable with that. But also, constantly pushing to innovate. And by the way, NASA used to be just like SpaceX. And a lot of old timers, like Apollo guys, that would walk around SpaceX would comment on the fact that SpaceX reminded them more of NASA during Apollo than NASA today reminds them of NASA during Apollo. Because they were also moving very fast and breaking stuff. You know, they had this high level of risk tolerance during development. They were willing to try new technologies. But when I was there near the end where we were kind of afraid to innovate, and the reason that happened is a very natural human reaction to tragedy. Because we had the Apollo 1 accident, we had Challenger, and then we had Columbia. And after each one of those accidents, we got more and more risk adverse. And I was there for Columbia. Those guys were my friends. I knew all the people on that crew that we lost, and I knew their children, right? And I spent a lot of time with their families afterwards. And when you go through something like that, it affects you profoundly and you never want anybody else to ever have to go through that. So it's a natural human reaction when you start getting to the point where you try to eliminate all risk, but the problem with that is that, if you go from trying to manage risk to trying to eliminate all risk, it's very hard to do anything and it puts you in this box where you're afraid to try anything new and you only are comfortable doing things that you've always done before. But the problem is that progress kind of comes to a halt.
Basu: Yeah. Yeah.
Reisman: And, and so at SpaceX, we had the opposite philosophy. It was like, if we've been doing something this way for like five years, there's gotta be a better way, let's re-look at it, and re-address, and let's look at how people in other industries are doing it that maybe they're doing it better than we are.
Basu: Well, do you think that SpaceX can have a sort of energizing effect for NASA and that maybe similarly NASA can have a bit of a moderating effect on somewhere, a place like SpaceX?
Reisman: It's very prescient. That is exactly what happened, and I think the whole process of working together, even though it was quite painful, especially in the beginning, really was massively beneficial for both organizations because exactly what you just said is true. That innovation kind of did push NASA out of its comfort zone and kind of give them their mojo back a little bit. You see today with their Artemis program, they're doing more and reaching further. At the same time, SpaceX benefited a lot from the NASA experience and, and as far as making processes safer and more repeatable, what SpaceX does very well is, is be very willing to fail and take risks when the consequences of failure are low. So in the beginning, if you're trying to figure out how to land a rocket on a ship, right, and if the first six blow up, that's okay. Nobody's going to get hurt. And as long as you're converging on the right solution, you'll get there. However, when somebody is sitting on that rocket, then the time for taking those risks is over. And hopefully you took those risks early so that you don't have to take the risks later, right? But making that transition from development, when you're designing and developing something new, and testing, where you're taking large risks and trying new things, to then operating, where you're not taking those risks, that's a hard thing to just flip a switch and change your mindset, but that's where NASA really came in handy because they're very good at that.
Basu: Do you see a future where SpaceX starts to shy away from risks in the way that NASA has? Like, will SpaceX become sort of like NASA in a couple of decades?
Reisman: Yeah. I remember we had members of our safety review panel came in and they talked about like Boeing had a perfect day where they had just the right balance between innovation and process. And eventually the tendency with all these organizations, once they get really big is for that balance to shift. And they were saying that that will happen at SpaceX, but, I don't see it happening in the near future, just because Elon and then the entire leadership, which is completely bought into this process, is so adamant on keeping it that way and maintaining that core DNA of the kind of Silicon Valley ethos of like move fast, break stuff, that whole thing. So as long as, as that leadership team is in place, I don't think it's changing.
Basu: Hmm. And just to bring it back to the show "For All Mankind," we do see a very SpaceX-like company at some point enter the scene, especially when we're talking about the race to get to Mars. And we see that company struggle a lot with a very overconfident, fast moving leader.
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Karen Baldwin (played by Shantel VanSanten): Look, Dev, I know that getting there first is important. But getting there in one piece is more important.
Dev Ayesa (played by Edi Gathegi): First is what matters Karen. It's the only thing that matters. First is what changes things. We dump the propellant reserves if we have to. Phoenix can just make more fuel once they get to Mars.
Helios Employee: Now, even if we had enough propellant to overtake Sojourner, we wouldn't have enough to slow down to enter Mars' orbit. We're pushing a hotel out there. It's too much mass, not enough-
[CRASHING SOUNDS, FOOTSTEPS]
[END FOR ALL MANKIND ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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Basu: Now, I'm curious to know how much you are influencing some of these plot lines. Like how much are you saying, "Hey, this idea or this dynamic is a big deal in real life and I think you need to write it into the show."
Reisman: Well certainly in the writers room, I certainly told lots of Elon's stories and lots of SpaceX stories and all these stories I tell, eventually kind of get into the writer's heads and they kind of get run through a filter and they eventually end up on the page in some form or another. Uh, but I was really happy that, yes, even though I did tell all those Elon stories, I was really happy that Dev, the character.
Basu: In the show, the one who's in charge of this private company. Yeah.
Reisman: Yeah, the, the CEO of Helios. His character, I'm very happy to say, is definitely not an Elon clone, okay? Or a Jeff Bezos clone for that matter. There are elements that were taken from those guys that are there. But at the same time, they were very careful that they wanted this to be a character who is not a caricature, like this is a character that stands on his own. And so, there are things in there that Dev does that Elon would never do. And I was really happy to see those things.
Basu: Hmm. Like what?
Reisman: At one point, he kind of crowd sources amongst the rank and file of his company a major decision in the show. I'm like, Oh, that's great. Cause Elon would never do that.
Basu: Wouldn't happen, yeah.
Reisman: So I'm like, okay, great. Uh, and other, other things. There are other elements in there where they were very careful that Dev was not going to be so transparent or so one dimensional.
Basu: Yeah. I wonder if you ever feel like you are having to rein the creatives in. Do you ever have to shoot down ideas? I mean, are you the person who's there to be like, "Ah, fact check, that wouldn't happen. Nope, actually, that's not even possible."
Reisman: The thing is, I wanna get to yes, right, because I wanna help the story, and I wanna, usually they come up with something, and my goal is to preserve the story, even if we have to change some aspects of it to make it more believable, but keep the story intact, okay? So I'll give you an example, uh, at the end of season two, we have Tracy and Gordo on the moon, and they have to go outside and flip some switches in order to save the world, or the moon anyway.
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Molly Cobb (played by Sonya Walger): He will have about 15 seconds total to reach these cable connectors here, swap them out.
Margo Madison (played by Wrenn Schmidt): Then reboot the computer with this switch here and get back to the airlock before he loses consciousness.
Cobb: Best we have people, so we gotta work with it.
[END FOR ALL MANKIND ARCHIVAL CLIP]
Reisman: And originally, as written, they wanted them to just, like, open the door and run outside just like in shorts and a t-shirt.
Basu: Real quick, because they didn't have their spacesuits to, like, yeah, yeah.
Reisman: Yeah, no spacesuits. So, we're just gonna dash across the moon and, uh. And I was like, "Ooh, yeah, uh, that's not gonna work."
Basu: Yeah, about that. You would just completely burn to a crisp.
Reisman: But I got the, the, the image. I know, I know they wanted to have this kind of Romeo and Juliet ending with this grand heroic deed that would redeem all their sins and everything. So I understood what they were going for and I said, well, if they run outside just in shorts and a t-shirt, they're not going to make it. Okay. But what could they do? They don't have spacesuits. And then I explained to him the concept of a mechanical counter pressure suit which we actually wore in the space shuttle back, like right after Challenger. Most spacesuits that you see are, you're just inside this big balloon. And that pressure inside the balloon is what keeps you alive. And gives you an atmosphere to breathe. But it works equally as well if you can squeeze your body mechanically. Like with tight material, all over, at the same amount of pressure, say three or four pounds per square inch. That also will stop you from getting ebullism, which means that all the liquids in your tissues turn to gas, which obviously is undesirable. Um-
Basu: Doesn't sound great.
Reisman: Yeah, it can protect you from the vacuum if you can squeeze everywhere. And it's hard to do because, because we're not spheres or most of us aren't spheres or cylinders. So, uh, you know, you got to get all the nooks and crannies and that's hard. It can be painful because anywhere where you're not squeezing is going to start swelling up and be very painful. So that's why that, that kind of fell out of favor, but it works. So that's where the duct tape came in. I said, "Hey, did they have duct tape maybe?" They're like, well, they could. And I said, "Well, if they wrapped themselves up really tight with duct tape, they can kind of fashion a mechanical counter-pressure suit. And if they had an oxygen mask, like a firefighting mask and wrapped that around their head to keep, because you've got to also cover the face." I said that might give them, you know, 30 seconds or whatever you need.
Basu: Wow.
Well, I gotta say, I was watching that scene and, and definitely thinking, like, is this possible? Like, how, how could this, how could this happen? You're saying, I mean, scientifically, you're saying it's, it's possible.
Reisman: Yeah you wouldn't want to go out for like a seven and a half hour. I mean, you also…
Basu: Don't go out for a spacewalk.
Reisman: …have to hold your breath, you know, for that period of time, you have to exhale your breath actually. So anyway, it would be hard, but maybe, I would try it if that was the only choice I had. I would give it a shot.
Basu: Yeah. That's what happened to these characters. So yeah.
Reisman: Yeah. It might work.
Basu: Well, that takes us really nicely to this section of, of questioning that I have for you, which I was calling the 'real-o-meter', which is how, you know, we see these things on the show, how realistic are they? So that answers that one for me, but let's talk about a couple of different scenarios that come up on the show: creating a habitable base on the moon. How realistic?
Reisman: What's amazing is, it's been several years now since season one and science fact is starting to fall right in line with some of the things we did in the show. When you look at the Artemis missions and the areas that they're targeting to put the next landing, I should say, of humans on the moon, they're picking areas very close to Shackleton Crater where we put Jamestown in the show. It's weird how it's coming around. But yeah, so that that that could be real.
Basu: Mining on the moon?
Reisman: Mining on the moon. Well, the thing you want to get on the moon is water, ice, as we depicted also in the show. And we keep getting more data, like actually the recent Indian lander that landed there at the south pole, got some encouraging data. So yeah, so getting that water out is incredibly valuable because not only can you drink it, but you can also take the oxygen out and breathe it. And you can take the hydrogen out and do useful things with that, too, as a fuel. So, yes, mining water on the moon, is- we'll see that in the future.
Basu: Getting stuck in space. So, on the show, we see it happen to a group of astronauts for 150 days. But recently in real life, a new record was set for the longest time in space for an American, right?
371 days.
Reisman: Yeah, Frank.
That's right.
Basu: More than double what we saw on the show. Any experience with this yourself? Or just anyone that you know? I want to know what it's like getting told we can't bring you home as planned.
Reisman: Yeah.
Basu: And how often does that happen?
Reisman: Pretty rarely, um, but things change and you have to be mentally prepared for that. That's one of the things that, that psychologists worry about the most is when you're unexpectedly told that your mission is going to be extended. And just like you saw us play that out fictionally on Jamestown, and then you saw it also in Season 3 at the end, when that happens, it can be very depressing. And you have to worry about the mental health a little bit. But it doesn't happen that frequently. It never happened to me. When I was up there our lifeboat, which was a Soyuz capsule, was a little suspect. And so we were afraid that if we had to come home, that we couldn't, because we couldn't necessarily rely on it to safely get us back down to the atmosphere. So that was a little disconcerting, but it didn't end up extending my stay, because the shuttle showed up on time, and I went home with that.
Basu: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I was curious to ask you about the idea of warring in space. So there's a pretty scary story arc where there ends up being just a full on, guns drawn, kind of fight on the moon. How realistic does that feel to you?
Reisman: So, I mean, the show is not, uh, I think depicts it fairly reasonably. It is possible to fire a gun, a firearm, in space because you don't need oxygen. The cartridge of a bullet has both the propellant and the oxidizer, which is the same as a rocket engine because you have to bring your own oxygen. But that's all contained in the cartridge of the bullet. So it will fire if you fire it in the vacuum. In fact, the Russians actually put a gun on the outside of a space station and practiced firing it for like military tests. And it worked.
Basu: And what happens if you shoot a gun into space?
Reisman: Well, it is the same thing as shooting a gun on Earth. The bullet will fly out and it'll keep going. You know, that's the thing.
Basu: What about hotels in space? So there's that episode, another episode that gave me a lot of anxiety where you see a depiction of a hotel in space. How real does that feel in the world we're in today?
Reisman: It feels very real, because I'm actually working for a company right now, Vast, that is working on a spinning space station that would be not all that dissimilar from the Polaris space station that we saw in the show.
Basu: But for civilians or for?
Reisman: Well, yeah, for private citizens or maybe for representatives of other governments, other countries, or even, you know, if, if NASA wants to use it as a resource. One of the things about an artificial gravity space station that would be great, or for that matter, living for a long time on the moon, is unfortunately one area where we have no data, where we're kind of clueless, is what happens to the human body between zero g and one g. So we have billions of data points at 1G, we're all living in Earth's gravity.
Basu: Here on Earth. Yeah.
Reisman: Yeah, and then we have a decent number of data points at OG, of humans living on the space station, and we've done lots of medical studies. But what happens at 0.5? Is it half of what happens at 1? Or is it 90 percent of what happens at one? You know, we don't know if that relationship is linear, uh, exponential. We have no clue. And, and so we got nothing between zero and one. And yet we're talking about living on Mars, or living on, on the moon, where we're gonna be at either one sixth or one third gravity. And so what will happen to us? You know, the only way to know is either just go to Mars, but as you saw in the show-
Basu: And find out once we're there, which doesn't sound great. Yeah.
Reisman: Yeah, that, that sounds a little scary. Uh…
Basu: Or to somehow simulate it. Yeah.
Reisman: Or to simulate it. And if we can spin a space station and simulate it, we can test at all different levels of gravity going from the outside in. Then we can get some really good data and then we'll know.
Basu: That's so fascinating. Tell me more about what you see as the case for making it to Mars.
Reisman: Well, Mars is definitely the prize, or the better destination than the moon, because it has a lot more resources. Next to Earth, it's the most hospitable place in the solar system for us to live. Temperatures are, it's still very cold, but you know, it's, it's kind of reasonable, right? And you can have like high temperatures in parts of Mars that are warmer than like Minneapolis, uh, on certain days of the year, right? So it kind of can be reasonable. There are some atmosphere and it has carbon dioxide. So you can use that to make methane. So you can make fuel by pulling that carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. It has water, ice, so we can get the water just like we can on the moon. And it has other materials that we can use. Plus, it's more fun to look at than the moon. It's less bleak, you know, it's got some nice red colors and it's got mountains and a canyon that's like the size of the Grand Canyon. But as far as why. There's a couple of ways of looking at it. First of all, there's the scientific reasons to go. Other than learning about the planet itself, we keep getting tantalizingly close to finding evidence of life on Mars. You know, we found evidence that there was once liquid water on the surface. We know that there's reservoirs of water underground, which we also, uh, depict in season three. So that means that there could be life. And the amazing thing, we keep finding on this planet that life exists in the most inhospitable places, that we never expect to find life, and so it kind of leads you to believe that life is much more tenacious than we give it, originally give it credit for, and if we find it on Mars, that's truly Martian life, and not something that came along with us with our trash, we have to be careful about that, we have to be, we have to be sure. But if we do find that, then we're two for two. And considering the billions and billions of planets that are out there, that in the Goldilocks zone, that could, uh, have liquid water and the building blocks of life. If we're two for two, what's that tell you about the billions? You know, uh, it, it, it makes you think that maybe life is everywhere out there.
Basu: Mmmm.
Reisman: And that would be fascinating scientifically and even theologically. And then there's the survival of the species motivation, right. So there's the old adage of, you know, why did the dinosaurs go extinct? It's because they didn't have a space program. So-
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Basu: That's a good one. That's a good astronaut joke.
Reisman: Yeah, thanks.
Basu: You know, you said earlier that one of your big revelations while in space was the fragility of Earth.
Reisman: Mm-hmm.
Basu: And I guess that could go both ways, right? Wow, Earth is so fragile. We need to explore other options out there that might be viable for human life. Or, wow, the Earth is so fragile, we need to solve more problems on this planet and prioritize doing that maybe even before starting to explore other places.
Reisman: Oh yeah.
Basu: Which way do you take it? Which way do you see it?
Reisman: No, no, there's no, I want to be very clear about this as, as wonderful as it was to leave Earth, it's immediately obvious that there's no place anywhere near as good as Earth for human beings. We, we evolved on this planet and we are perfectly suited for this environment. Anywhere else we go is not gonna be as good. I mean, look. It's easier to live in Antarctica than live on Mars for a lot of reasons, okay? And you don't see, like, a lot of housing developments going up in Antarctica these days, right? So, you know, living in some of these other places in the solar system might be scientifically interesting and necessary if you take the very big picture view of survival of the species. But the Earth is so precious and such, it, it's our home. And I think that, uh, you can't ever view Earth as disposable and we're just going to go on to- because it's not going to be as good wherever we go. We have to take care of this place and we're capable of taking care of it. We just have to make hard decisions.
Basu: Yeah. I'm gonna ask you about your hopes in a second, but let's start with your fears about the future of where space exploration is headed. What are some of your concerns?
Reisman: Wow. As far as fears go, I guess my fears are that, that we miss out on this window. We have the technology now, we have the resources to consider exploring Mars and, and, and actually living on Mars and, and, and having a base on the moon. But that might not last, you know, if things get worse, whether that be because of geopolitical conflicts or because of climate change, and we no longer have those resources, then we might never get there. And so I guess my fear is that it won't happen.
Basu: And what about your hopes?
Reisman: My hope is that it does happen. That we, that we have that Star Trek future where we all get along and put our differences behind us and unite behind the fact that what's obvious from space, which is that the things we have in common are so much more important than the things that divide us, whether that be anything that's tribal, like race, religion, nationality, gender. Those things are not as important as the fact that we all share one home and we're all in this together. and that we're all fundamentally human beings, right? And some people talk about the overview effect. When you go up to space and you look down and you have this sudden realization that that is the case. When you see the planet in the void of space, right? I never felt that overview effect, to be honest with you. Because I don't think you should have to go to space to understand that. I think it should be self-evident that we are all human beings and we all deserve fundamental rights. And that you shouldn't have to strap yourself onto a rocket and blast off into space to come to that obvious conclusion.
Basu: Well, Garrett, we've got season four of "For All Mankind" out now. Tell us what can we look forward to? I mean, again, like you said this earlier, now that the show has really leapt past where we are in reality in our space program, there's a lot of imagination at work here. What can we look forward to in this season that you can tell us about?
Reisman: Yes, in season four, we can advance technology in our show and we can advance, in a hopeful way, societal change, you know. We can play with those things. But at the end of the day, our characters are still human beings and they still have human frailties and one of the biggest human frailties as we see today, quite evident, is this tribalism, like I've been kind of mentioning this us versus them. We had this, the Cold War, and we had um, the Soviet Union versus America, and we had that competition. And we explored that a lot in season three. Uh, in season four, the Cold War is over.
Basu: Yeah, yeah.
Reisman: Yeah. And so that's behind us, but that doesn't mean that tribalism is behind us. Cause we take that with us, unfortunately, it's part of our human nature. So we explore in season four, like now you can talk about tribes like between the Earth and Mars. Or between the different groups of people on Mars. And when you have that divisiveness, and when you have that lack of unity, I think the show in season four, without spoiling it, serves as kind of a cautionary tale. All science fiction, I think, works best as allegory. And I love how Ron Moore is such a master at doing that, the way he did it with "Battlestar Galactica" and really explored 9/11 and its aftermath using an allegory, in such an effective way. And I think in season four, you're going to see a little bit of that subtly, but you'll see a little bit of that in season four.
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Basu: Wow, well I'm really looking forward to it. Garrett, thank you so much for being here and telling us how the show gets made. It's just so fascinating.
Reisman: Yeah. My pleasure. It was fun.
Basu, Narrating: Garrett Reisman is a former NASA astronaut and technical adviser on "For All Mankind." Season four is now out on Apple TV+. If you like what you've been hearing, follow Apple News "In Conversation" in the Podcasts app so you never miss an episode.
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