Life On Mars With Dr. Sheyna Gifford
Nerdette Recaps With Peter Sagal
WBEZ
4.6 • 924 Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Sheyna Gifford tells us about her year living on a volcano in Hawaii with just five other people as part of HI-SEAS IV, a NASA project to simulate life on Mars. Sheyna was the space doc on the mission, accompanied by a physicist, an architect, an engineer, a biologist and a commander.
Living in a 1200 square foot biodome and going outside only in their space suits, the crew studied the psychological effects and group dynamics that could be at play when astronauts make it to Mars. On Nerdette, Sheyna tells Tricia what the year was like and how she got through it. She also gives some excellent homework.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still |
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| 0:35.0 | From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette. |
| 0:36.0 | I'm Greta Johnson. |
| 0:37.1 | And I'm Trisha Bobita. This week, we're talking about a social and scientific experiment that has to do with outer space. |
| 0:43.0 | That's right. For one full year, six people, biologist, an architect, an engineer, a physician, a physicist, and a crew commander, lived in a 1,200 square foot biodome on a volcano in Hawaii to simulate |
| 0:58.1 | what it might be like to live on Mars for a year. Today, Tricia talks with one of those six |
| 1:02.8 | individuals, Dr. Shana Gifford. Shana was the space doctor for the mission, which was called |
| 1:07.1 | High Seas Four, and it was we should add the longest space simulation in NASA's history. |
| 1:12.7 | In addition to being the doctor on board, Dr. Shana Gifford also served as the cruise journalist, |
| 1:18.1 | and she wrote for the whole year that they were in the biodome on a blog, |
| 1:22.2 | Lifefrommars.Life, which I was an avid reader of because, as some of you who are regular listeners to the podcast, no, I'm really into space, and particularly Mars. |
| 1:31.6 | Like, I really would like to go to Mars. |
| 1:34.0 | So Shana got out of the Biodome in August of 2016, and since then she's been the scientist in residence at the St. Louis Science Center, where she continues to explore and promote her passion |
| 1:44.2 | for space, science, and healthy life on Earth. Those are all good things to be passionate about. |
| 1:52.3 | Shana, welcome to Nurdette. Thank you, Trisha. Lovely to be here. |
| 1:56.6 | Shana, in case our listeners don't know, can you explain what the high seas mission was and why exactly you were living in a 1,200 square foot biodome with just five other people for a whole year? |
| 2:07.6 | Patricia, I like the term biodrome. I think it will trigger for people memories of either a very cheesy movie or a very strange social experiment. |
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