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Imagine a future 100, maybe 200 years from now.

In-space manufacturing has come a long way, and we can now build colossal structures

using resources collected from the

moon and the asteroids.

First interstellar ship has been built and is getting loaded up with supplies for a long trip

to Alpha Centauri.

It's now time to pick the crew who will be the ambassadors for humanity should we meet

intelligent life in the neighboring solar system? How many people will we send?

How should we pick them?

What dangers will they face en route and what will their lives be like during this journey?

In our last episode, we talked about the rockets that could carry us to distant stars.

Today, we're going to talk about the squishier side of things,

focusing on some of the human stuff you'd have to deal with on an interstellar journey.

Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

Thank you. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and the longest flight I've ever taken was 14 hours.

Hi, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith. I study parasites in space. And I think the longest flight I've taken was 12. I've been down to Brazil. I haven't really kept track of how long my flights were. Where were you going?

I went to an absolutely ridiculous slash amazing boondoggle conference in Fiji on the island of Mirea, where the University of California has a research station. And we were there to talk about dark matter, of course. So I brought my daughter, and we did a lot of snorkeling and hiking,

and we rode horseback of the mountains and tried to keep the horses from eating pineapple plants,

and it was an amazing time. But wow, the flight was long. What made it a boondoggle?

Why do you need to go to a tropical island to talk about dark matter?

You don't.

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