Wanted: Unicorns. Mission: Mars.
All In The Mind
ABC listen
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
NASA wants to send humans to Mars in the next decade or so. But can our minds handle it?
We talk to a NASA psychologist and retired astronaut about the psychological challenges people already face on long-duration space missions — and find out what it will take to get to Mars.
If you liked this episode, you might like one of our past episodes about the isolation we all experienced during the pandemic. It's called The brain in isolation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more. |
| 0:09.6 | It was a magical place to live and work, and it takes really just like the touch of a finger |
| 0:15.8 | to fly across the space station, and you really don't walk anywhere. |
| 0:20.6 | And it's just so clear that every single thing that you're doing is actually moving us forward |
| 0:29.4 | towards exploring the universe, living on the moon, and in preparation for perhaps Mars. |
| 0:37.4 | Fewer than 700 people have ever been to space. and in preparation for perhaps Mars. |
| 0:41.6 | Fewer than 700 people have ever been to space. |
| 0:46.9 | Only 276 people have ever visited the International Space Station. |
| 0:50.6 | And only 44 of those have been women. |
| 0:53.8 | That basically makes Katie Coleman a unicorn. My name is Katie Coleman and I am a former NASA astronaut. |
| 0:59.0 | So how old were you when you first thought, I want to be an astronaut one day? |
| 1:03.0 | Probably about 20. |
| 1:05.0 | Oh, wow. |
| 1:06.0 | I know. |
| 1:07.0 | Late. |
| 1:08.0 | You were maybe expected a little younger, right? |
| 1:10.0 | Katie saying, I'm going to go to space. Well, and I was born in 1960, and I saw the first |
| 1:17.2 | astronauts being chosen and people flying. And I really thought all of it was very cool. But there |
| 1:23.4 | was nothing in that picture that made me think, maybe this could be me. And I think it really helps to see somebody who kind of feels like you, especially when it's |
| 1:31.8 | something amazing where you just think, oh, only very special people amazing, get to do this, |
| 1:36.6 | and then you find out that they're actually pretty normal. |
| 1:39.3 | Okay, normal is a very relative term here, because astronauts are special. |
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