Moving to the Red Planet
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2017
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we dream of sending humans to Mars, the psychological problems of a mission loom large. As part of Radio 4's Mars season. Claudia Hammond investigates the mind-set behind the desire of those of us who want to colonise the red planet. What does it take to survive the confines of a 9 month journey and the enclosed pod-like environments that mission leaders envisage will be the housing needed to occupy this inhospitable planet?
Claudia meets the wannabe Martian explorers who've been sampling similar long term simulations here on earth and the psychologists who've overseen the design, selection and planning for future communities in space.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | There's something about space that's intoxicating. |
| 0:44.3 | When you look up at the night sky, the stars |
| 0:47.2 | twinkling and the moon glowing against the backdrop |
| 0:50.7 | of complete darkness. It's mesmerizing. But I'm not sure I'd want to |
| 0:58.6 | live there. Don't get me wrong, I love sci-fi films which transport you to the unknown. |
| 1:06.0 | It's just that I'm quite happy watching them from the comfort of this planet. |
| 1:11.0 | But for some, heading to space is not a hypothetical consideration. |
| 1:16.0 | It's getting closer and closer to becoming a plan. |
| 1:20.0 | If we don't keep asking new questions and pushing the unknown frontiers, we'll stagnate as a species. |
| 1:26.0 | That's Ryan McDonald, an astrophysicist. |
| 1:29.0 | I want to be the hands, eyes and ears of the entire scientific community on Mars. |
| 1:36.0 | Yes, Mars. |
... |
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