And second command on a fourmonth Simulated Mars Mission of the nasa funded high seas project. Her book is a vivid chronicle of that experience. She is a poet, essays, former laser physicist whose science journalism has appeared in major publications around the world. Just taught writing and numerous universities, and that i in ear for expressive writing are very much in evidence for her new book. Its a beautifully written book, and both a pleasure to read and a totally absorbing account of her many months of isolation in nasas simulation of a mars mission pitched 8000 feet up the hawaiian volcano. It wasnt planned this way of course, but published now in a time when the whole world is sheltering in place because of the coronavirus epidemic, pandemic, her book tells a great deal about the effects, physical, mental, social, even spiritual of forced isolation. Kate, welcome. I could so much for having me. Thank is so much for the beautiful introduction, too. Is a pleasure, its really great to meet you. Congratulations on your book. Tell us first about these analogs that nasa cooks up and develop to prepare astronauts for missions to mars or elsewhere. How did they come to be . How did they decide to do Something Like this . Sure. Well, going to space is kind of a complicated thing and you really want to practice as well as you possibly can here on earth before you sent astronauts out on space adventures. Even in the early days from mercury, gemini, apollo missions, nasa was looking for ways to train astronauts for how to do things in 0g. Just prepare them and thats what we get the neutral buoyancy lab if youve ever seen pictures of astronauts in space suits and a giant pool in houston. Thats a simulation that is training astronauts for how to say six things on the space station. But the idea of going to the man for a long time which some people talk about and then going to mars, thats not just about figure out how take six something on extra the space station. That includes all sorts of challenges and largely psychological. Our huge technological challenges with that but really if youre on a mission to mars you are to an half years away from earth, and that sort of isolation is something i mean, thats never occurred in human history. So far away for that long. These stimulations look at the ways that groups of people, after not like subjects, come together and other work as as a team and then the challenges they encounter as they are isolated from essentially earth. I would imagine that entails psychology of people and figuring out if they have the coping strategies you would need to be confined. Youre in a piece of metal in a can really flying around outer space. It makes me want to ask you, how were you chosen . What were the characteristics that you have, kate . You obviously have them. You survived the whole thing. What were the characteristics in you that they saw would work as being a guinea pig really in this experiment . To be clear, our mission was only four months long and they have done even a yearlong project. Thats a completely different beast. It was on the First Mission and i dont know exactly what it was. I do know theyre looking for astronaut like people. You had to qualify in terms of your educational experience, background, and i have a science background. And then some aspect of personality. Kim benson who is the lead of the mission says that nasa is looking for people with thickskinned, along fuse and an optimistic outlook. So there were 700 people who applied worldwide, based on resumes, the high seas project broke that down to 150 highly qualified candidates. From there, like roughly 30 candidates have interviewed over skype. Its actually a bit like what a lot of us are doing now. It was a video interview and then there were nine of us that were brought to ithaca, because this was a joint project with Cornell University and the university of hawaii to do a food study. That was like the main push of the high seas, the very first high seas project was to study after a food and the way they get bored eating the same foods over and over again. That was one of the major aspects of our mission. So they brought us to cornell and n a test kitchen they set us all up and saw how we worked together. Something about that made the difference. I dont know. But really all nine people who were brought in wouldve been great. At a certain point you people are really interested and unique in and you just kind of feel like its someone come you ask yourself the question, is this woman i would want to spend four months with . That a lot of what it was about. The same time he makes a clear new book its a little like makebelieve, right . You were all pretending to be on this mission. Are there moments where you say oh, and you goof off and you say this is really, were just kidding here. Or did you maintain that sort of fantasy the whole time that your. [inaudible question] four months is all long time to spend reality. Right. So we had a lot of things helping us with this isolation. Hoping as really we were not really on earth. One of those was the fact that our munication was delayed by 20 minutes each way. We couldnt have a call home. There was no certainly no social media which a blessing really. But its the same time that really made us feel disconnected. Things like that that worked to instill in us the isolation, not necessarily that we are on mars because we had a window you could look out and you could see the lights on the telescope on the other volcano and on a clear day you can actually see maui which was nice. That was a nice thing. There are other aspects of the isolation, too. We had to wear spacesuits when we left the dome. You were never really outside. You never get that feeling of outside. In terms of like believing youre on mars that was hard for me to do, but in terms of feeling isolated or cut off or just separate from earth, that was kind of always there. Tell us about that physical space, that geodesic dome, that very forbidding geodesic dome and try to make it like a home for yourself. Tell us a little bit about what it was like physically. Physically, there was actually a lot more space than you might presume. You walk in and theres this great blue carpet and workstation. You what a table. You had a kitchen that was, like a normal kitchen. We had a breadmaker and a microwave, a little tiny refrigerator. Really the kitchen is what made it feel quite a lot like him and the fact we had a dining table that we all ate at every day. But slept at night was the mezzanine level up above. Our bedrooms were essentially oversize closets, not very large. They were all stacked kind of like high pieces, like wages f a pipe. So the rooms, our personal space in our room was a very large but the common space was quite large and expensive because that dont feeling. It gave you can given very feel. Your food, did you sit together as a family might . Yes. You talk a lot about the. Absolutely. Food is so important in isolation. I think we are seeing that now, that so many people are hashtag breads in quarantine and just seeing so many Beautiful Creations that my friends are making and posting of instagram. Our main purpose of this study was to look at food and how much the main question was might it be better to include at least some shelfstable entreaties, some options you could create a novel neo, a novel dish once you land on mars and have access to gravity again . You could make a stirfry or bake a cake for someones birthday or Something Like that. Right now astronaut on the iss only really have food that comes in pouches that you just add water and heat two. Scientists have learned that over time they eat less, astronauts eat fewer calories and that can lead to some Health Problems down the road. On a two and half year mission that could be disastrous. That was one of the questions. Might it make sense to include some of the kinds of food . There is a packaging, freeze dried food and allowed to be more creative things. For us, we decided to eat evey neo together and that every crew did that, but one of the other aspects of mars mission is theres going to be haiku autonomy. Its not like Mission Control and asked us on the iss where the schedule is given, some dictator by houston and then sent to the astronauts every day. Its a very strict schedule. It would be more like an antarctic expedition say why that expedition crew is actually in charge of how things go. They are not checking back in with home all the time. Thats a function of the delay and just so for our crew we got together and decided a lot of her own rules like how we would split up chores come if we would eat all neos together, where we would work and try to make sure we were not inadvertently self isolating within the isolation because of that can lead to problems of crew cohesion and just social problems on the crew. Yeah, we decided to eat every neo together. I dont know if that was the best decision but thats what we ended up doing. One of the question from twitter, actually from florida, and ask, and i suppose its because all of you have to be fit to some degree and imagine you are exercising even inside that geodesic dome. And the question is, what sort of protein were you eating . With these planned neos were you are trying to get as much protein . Was at plantbased or meatbased . It was an omnivores menu for the most part. We ate we alternated days were eight preprepared neos liquid astronauts on the space station would eat and then days where we would cook up something from our shelf table source. Basically that meant we were dipping into like canned foods, like the kind you take on a camping trip. We had like chili and soup come all different kinds, some had meat and some didnt. Everyone on the crew ate meat, but we didnt have a super meat heavy diet, i dont recall, but it was always available. So freeze dried beef, freeze dried ham, chicken although sorts of things. We definitely ate those and had all the freezedried vegetables you could rehydrate. It was all there. Were you doing physical exercising while you were in there . Absolutely. One of the experiments we participate in was an experiment to look at exercise shirts, because you cant really do laundry in space. You wear your clothes intelligence become too much for you to bear and then you toss them. Nasa is pretty interest in the longevity of the clothes that they set up. So we were these workout shirts and then will he just couldnt stand it anymore we retired in. We were filling out surveys after your workout. We were required to work out for 45 45 minutes a day at least five days a week. So i am particular and a bunch of others decided to do a p90 x workout which was great because thats a fourmonth cycle and so yes, we worked out and we ate to like supplement all those calories that we took all those calories back in. And when i left, i was in amazing shape. Not only was it four months of working out but for months working out at altitude, so 800. I had never been so fit in my life it was actually really great. It was an unexpected side effect of the whole nation. But i but i know thats happeniw with a lot of people. They have the workouts theyre doing at home. Workout and heat, absolutely. One of the things that tickled me in the book was your mention of antimicrobial socks, my First Impression was, why antimicrobial socks . I didnt did understand if youy showering once a week, right, for eight minutes and thats all you got for a shower, why antimicrobial socks . How did that get decided on . Its related in some ways to the exercise shirts because some of the exercise shirts had some like nanotechnology, some coding that was supposed to be antimicrobial to keep distinct away but socks in particular, those things get stinky so you really dont want to have to bring a time of socks. The ones that we investigated used copper threads and copper in it, a natural antimicrobial substance. So that is because of close quarters . Yeah. You want to be considerate of your crewmates when it comes to that sort of thing. Right, right. How about privacy issues . How did that work out . You cant get away really. These people are in your lives there are five of the people in your life and you cant get rid of them. How about the privacy issue . We all got pretty close. We knew each other pretty well by the end of it. The thing is we were all aware of that, and pretty respectful. If someone was in the room with the door closed you dont necessarily, you kind of leave them alone. We spent so much time together so that when youre off by yourself the wasnt necessarily a need to continue to be social, but yeah, i dont know. We really just respected everyones space. You just have to. When things come up you actually need to talk about them. One of the examples of space and like shared space, there are only a few shelves in the shower and so i think early on one person had put a number of toiletries in the shower and took up more space than seemed reasonable for one person out of six. Then with another person who noticed that and said actually made it makes more sense that we just bring our things to the shower every time instead of like claiming the shelf space. That was fine. No ones feelings were hurt and the problem was solved. Its kind of like on the novel. Its just like to see how we can be respectful of each other honestly, for four months its manageable. Its really manageable. I can imagine. There are such challenges in isolation. I think were feeling them out a little bit but how small things can become annoying, how personal low human habits. You mention the sound of somebody chewing or somebody who was clearing their the throat e time. I have a daughter who clears her throat all the time and in the middle of the night if youre in the same room they can get annoying. How did that work . You really start to notice those things. Well, you notice them and then you either let go of them or you hold onto them. So those are two options and then you have third option i guess to talk about them and get in some sort of discussion to forget how to make a better which can be complicated. Maybe sometimes more complicated than letting things go. So yeah, we didnt have too many coincidences. As a writer i noticed the Little Things. I found myself getting a little annoyed at the having to work very hard to sort of like to let it go. There were a few instances where i still remember thinking of stories i tell my friends, how a crew that was sitting across from me at the table and she would just tap my shin gently with her little slipper and not realize she would do that. I would put my legs further and further under she always found my shin. That was something i decided to never talk about but evidently all these years later i still think about it. We have talked about it since and she just laughs or and shed i wish you wouldve told me. But in the end it actually wasnt that big of a deal but its fun to realize i am still thinking about it. I think when we, out of the situation were all in right now we will all remember those things, those Little Things that really made the isolation challenging, or just memorable, just like this is a feature of this isolation for all of us. You are a writer, you notice Little Things. Thats what writers do. You were the crew writer so you are taking these things down all the time. I imagine you were more detailed oriented in that respect than most. Yeah. I think yes, its a bit of an occupational hazard to be prone to noticing the Little Things. Yeah, where as of the people might more easily have been able to let things go. I would notice and record and then maybe think about it again, and a few more times. It was a bit of a challenge. You are also, apart from being a writer, you are a person of science. You followed site such whole c. You devoted yourself to science. As i mentioned earlier you were a laser physicist before you even started to do the writing. Within this whole challenge of isolation, the psychological and social impact of living in that small enclosed space with other people, you are also doing problemsolving, scientific experiment. Tell us a little bit about that. Absolutely. All of us who were on this mission had a scientific background, and those are really nice commonalities because we were working, we were conducting experiments and we were part of the experiment ourselves. We all understood the importance of the Data Collection and sort of just the burden of all the surveys would fill up. It was part of the science. I say burden, it wasnt super burdensome. It was just like the same day, same surveys and we had to do so many of them. The most interesting thing to me about this experience was, one of the most interesting things to me about this experience is it was a science experiment but a focused heavily on the domestic, like the internal sphere. Usually science is looking at these great big grand questions outside but this is look at six People Living together and it would be felt in the way we interacted. It was amazing combination of how you do science and leukocytes and be a part of science but then like this unexpected domestic sphere. So much of the conversation weve been talking about is what a lot of people are experiencing out in their own during this isolation, but we were forcing the isolation and then asking questions about it, probing it. That was very interesting. Actually a lot of it reminded me of my grad School Experience as a laser physicist, which was pretty isolating. I worked with, very close with two of the graduate students and we work in a basement laser lab and did not see a lot of daylight during a couple of years when were getting the lab up and going and asking some questions. Big differences are that when you are a physicist, you are able to control a lot of the experiment. You wont have that one variable youre looking at. And in our case because it was a social experiment, theres so many variables. They are difficult to control so that was something we are always aware of, knowing on the other end of Data Analysis would reveal some of the truths of what we are all experiencing. Right. We can identify with you because being at home in a pandemic, you were doing problemsolving yourself. How are you going to get this done . How are you going to get that done . Innovating so you can get things done. Absolutely. I mean, that brings up such a great point. You are living now a a life tht is so different than you were. In the first weeks when we moved into a large space, the mars space, it was a whole new world for us. We had to figure out what this poem was and how were going to live in it, how were going to communicate and get what we needed and how were going to be able to give to each other. It was destabilizing. It was unsettling and full of problemsolving, figuring it out. Where do you live now, kat . I mean new york city in washington heights. And how is live for you now . Are you having sort of flashbacks of your experience . Do you get out at all . I definitely have flashbacks. In the early weeks i went out and i grocery shopped and i got a lot of shelf stable food we had on the mission trip i wanted to make the neils the reminded me of mars and actually some of the snacks. It was such an interesting time. It was an overall very positive experience for me, and so there is something about the uncertainty of isolation now that was made a little bit less uncertain by getting the food i was familiar with in that situation. New york right now is pretty interesting. It feels like it is waking up again at the stage in the pandemic. You can hear an Ice Cream Truck outside my window perhaps, and so people are out and about and taking care of business here. You know, in the early days in like midtolate march it was near this neighborhood in particular felt like a ghost town. It felt a little haunted here things are little bit different now. There are more people around. I can imagine. Heres a question from facebook that relates the question i would ask you anyway, and the question says, what can you tell us about your sequestered life . Doesnt make you a better person . My question would have been, how did mars change you or how did this experience of sequestering and isolating and thinking, pretending, fantasizing that you in a very faraway place . With people for a very long time. How does that change your own psychological makeup . Did you come out of it changed in any way . Yeah. I came out of it, like a think about the first few days when we were outside, right . And i do feel every breeze on my skin, and im surprised by. It takes a couple of days for me not to notice the breeze on my skin. The sun on my face, thats something you dont think about all the time. I mean, i in particular and prone to sunburn and so i was very careful when it came out to use a ton of sunscreen and then i found my crewmates in hawaii and they were getting some color back. I wasnt. So finally i just said you know what . Im just going to stand here for five minutes, and i burned. I was so sensitive to the sun. But in addition to that, loud noises frightened me. I just hadnt had a lot of unexpected things happen. I was at a beer garden with the print and there was a dog that barks and the teaching that flew away and is a little bit terrifying. Of course i realize now, i realize what was happening. Just like that sort of stimulation had not occurred in many, many months. In that way when i first came out i was change but i think overall i started thinking about things a little bit differently. I really did appreciate nature more. I have always liked to hike and swim and camp, but i truly, i mean, like in a way i hadnt before. I saw the majesties of this planet, and just thinking about earth versus mars and where do you want to live. This this is a pretty sweet spo. I really, i really came to appreciate that, and i love spending time in nature these days. I mean still. And Little Things, too. I became aware of how little water you actually need to base or to wash dishes, you know . I became aware of my body and the way that it uses resources. In this mission you are always aware of calories in and calories out, and after not, essentially plug an astronaut some into the Mechanized System of the spaceflight. You have engineered through designing capsules and transfer vehicles and space stations and so what do you do with the person . You have to turn that into numbers. So in some ways i became aware of my inputs and outputs more than i had before. And realizing thats all of us and we are all on planet, you know, theres 8 billion of us on this planet. Kate, what do you hope at the end of the reading of this book anybody who picks this book out, what do you hope they take away from your story, essays . I asked a lot of questions in the book, and so i guess i do hope that a reader might come away asking their own question, or asking different kinds of questions and they might have otherwise about what it is to think about Space Exploration and what it is to live on earth. Well, you do learn a lot about science in this book and you learn a lot about the human animal, and you learn a lot about social relations, psychological stress and all of that but mainly it is as i said before, it is a beautiful read, kate. Congratulations for your book. Its called once upon a time i lived on mars published by saint martins. I wish you every success. That you so much, and thank you so much for this conversation. It was really nice. Thank you for joining me. It was a pleasure. Binge watch booktv this summer. Saturday evening at 8 p. M. Eastern settle in and watch several hours of your favorite authors. Saturday we are featuring commentator, author founder of National Review william f. Buckley, author of over 50 books including up from liberalism, flying high, and the reagan i knew. Watched saturday, july 18 as feature journalists author malcolm gladwell. Binge watch booktv all summer on cspan2. The package includes funding for disaster preparedness, security for sea ports, borders and airports, along with money for cyber security. This is live coverage on cspan2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]