Episode 655 ·
TECH TITANS: NASA Insights: Journey to Mars and Beyond with Tom Marshburn, a NASA astronaut
Today we have an episode of our newest podcast, Tech Titans. It features summary episodes of our best leadership advice from Modern CTO. Tom Marshburn, a NASA astronaut, joins us in this episode to share his greatest leadership advice on the psychological challenges we would face if we set off for Mars, and advice to the next generation of Astronauts.
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Produced by ProSeries Media.
About Tom Marshburn:
Dr. Thomas H. Marshburn was selected by NASA in 2004. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Davidson College, North Carolina; a Masters in Engineering Physics from the University of Virginia; a Doctorate of Medicine from Wake Forest University; and a Masters in Medical Science from the University of Texas Medical Branch. The North Carolina native is a veteran of three spaceflights, STS-127, Expedition 34/35, and Expedition 66/67 as part of Crew-3. Prior to becoming an astronaut, Dr. Marshburn served as a Flight Surgeon, assigned to Space Shuttle Medical Operations and to the joint U.S./Russian Space Program and eventually became the Medical Operations Lead for the International Space Station. He served as pilot of the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station, which launched on November 10, 2021. Marshburn served as a flight engineer on Expedition 66 and commander of Expedition 67 during that mission. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts safely splashed down Friday, May 6, 2022, aboard the Dragon Endurance spacecraft completing the agency’s third long-duration commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. The international crew of four spent 177 days in orbit.
About NASA:
For more than 60 years, NASA has been breaking barriers to achieve the seemingly impossible—from walking on the Moon to pushing the boundaries of human spaceflight farther than ever before. We work in space and around the world in laboratories and wind tunnels, on airfields and in control rooms to explore some of life’s fundamental mysteries: What’s out there in space? How do we get there? And what can we learn that will make life better here on Earth?
We are passionate professionals united by a common purpose: to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. Today, we continue NASA’s legacy of excellence and innovation through an unprecedented array of missions. We are developing the most advanced rockets and spacecraft ever designed, studying the Earth for answers to critical challenges facing our planet, improving the air transportation experience, and so much more.
Transcript
(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're bringing you an episode of Tech Titans. Tom Marshburn, a NASA astronaut, joins us in this episode to share his greatest leadership advice on the psychological challenges we would face if we set off from Mars. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Tech Titans.
(Joel Beasley at 00:00:21) As people, what type of considerations do we have for our physical bodies to make it on a trip to Mars?
(Tom Marshburn at 00:00:27) Well, one of the wonders of what we've done so far in space flight, especially on the space station, is find out we can do that. We need to provide the exercise capability. That's absolutely paramount. And so the biggest challenge is, some would say radiation is going to be a big problem. I got the equivalent of about three chest X-rays per day while I was up there.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:00:47) So we're constantly monitored. We have a radiation badge. We are radiation workers. We get more in emission than terrestrial, you know, nuclear reactor workers get in an entire career. So they're watching us very closely to see what happens with that to our bodies.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:01:00) And so far, nothing's really stuck out as being a problem for us. I get people thinking about cancer and that sort of thing. And as far as we know, that hasn't happened. But once you get out of the Earth's geomagnetosphere, you're going to be getting a lot more radiation. How much? Still to be determined. What the effect on the body is, still to be determined. But that's something to be thinking about. For me, I think the, I would suggest that the psychological aspects of being with three, I don't know, three, six, maybe 10 people going to Mars, being cut off from the rest of the Earth absolutely, because you can't even talk to them real time. The light signal traveling back and forth is going to take too long for us to have a conversation, for anybody like we are right now to have a conversation. So it's really ultimate isolation. And once you get far enough from the Earth, it's a blue dot.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:01:50) You don't have the joy of looking at your home planet anymore. And for a long time, for months, you would just have a blue dot and a red dot, and you're traveling in between them. So all of those psychological benefits of being in low Earth orbit, we're not going to have. So I think that could end up being the biggest challenge. But as far as bone and muscle goes and as far as we can tell for other medical problems, we've solved a lot of those or at least have a solution if we haven't solved them.
(Joel Beasley at 00:02:14) The ISS, it's going to be retired in like 10 years. And what's going to replace it?
(Tom Marshburn at 00:02:21) Well, the goal is NASA's goal is to hand it over to commercial entities. That's been the goal for a while, to make use of low Earth orbit in a commercial sense so NASA can move into more of the exploration moon and Mars part of spaceflight. So that would be the goal, and we're taking steps in that direction. We had the first private astronaut mission come up, and they were up for about, I think, 16 days it was while we were on orbit. And it was really fascinating having four more astronauts on board with us.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:02:58) We had a good time together, worked really hard, learned a lot. But now there's an explosion of other companies. Some will utilize the space station. Some will probably choose not to. They're going to build their own space station.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:03:09) But I think that is the ultimate goal. It would be hard to deorbit that thing, but the infrastructure is still strong. There are some things that have to be upgraded like the solar panels and, you know, semiconductors on those will wear out over time to get micrometeoroid hits on the solar array. So that's being upgraded. But overall, when I'm living up there, it's a beautiful space station.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:03:32) It's incredible capability for science and Earth observations, astronomy. So I really hope that it's successful and it doesn't go away even in 2030, which is what NASA's plan is for continuing to work and be involved.
(Joel Beasley at 00:03:47) And then many countries contributed to that, right?
(Tom Marshburn at 00:03:50) Oh, yeah. Yeah. Lots of international partners. The continual presence in space of humans from US and Russia has been since the year 2000. We've had Canadian and Japanese, and then we're talking about our European partners, which is, you know, multiple European nations.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:04:08) I was up there with a German astronaut. A French one had just come home just prior to my roommate, Matthias Maurer, arriving from Germany. So we get all kinds of, yeah, all countries up there.
(Joel Beasley at 00:04:19) And who's deciding these experiments that you run? Like, who decides which experiments to run? I looked at the list on the press release site of all the different things you were doing. They varied greatly. There wasn't a common theme, at least, that I could pick up. Like, who decides what you do up there?
(Tom Marshburn at 00:04:36) Well, NASA and the partner agencies look at all commerce. There's a filter there. First of all, there's obviously, might be obvious that there's limitations in power. You can't draw too much power than the station can provide. There's weight, volume considerations.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:04:55) There's safety considerations. Don't want a lot of broken glass floating around, that sort of thing, and for astronauts or people from the ground to be able to run it. So all of that's looked at by boards that evaluate the experiments that are coming in. And then it's just, after that happens, I think the bandwidth is, or the capability or the bottleneck of getting that experiment up into space is the launch capability and the astronaut time to perform it. So I'm not aware of any other hierarchy that's used in order to get things done.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:05:30) There might be some really special interest things like the twin study. You know, Scott and Mark Kelly, a few other things. There are certainly the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which is out there. That was a dedicated shuttle flight to bring that up and attach it to the outside of the space station. So there's a lot of big science things that are going on up there.
(Joel Beasley at 00:05:50) As we wrap up, what would you say to kids or the next generation of people that are interested in becoming an astronaut?
(Tom Marshburn at 00:05:59) Oh, if you want to become an astronaut, start being one today. I don't care how old you were. You know, when I was in elementary school or high school, I was just like you. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, but I love this idea of being an astronaut. And so I read the bios, the biographies of astronauts, and I tried to copy them.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:06:19) And you can start doing that right now because the training really does start wherever you are right now. Do the best you can in school. If you have problems with it, no problem. Just keep on learning from that and get better and better. NASA cares that you have learned how to learn.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:06:33) And so keep on working on it. Take care of your body because you got to be healthy to fly in space, at least as a NASA astronaut. So those are, and stay curious. Put yourself in situations where your decisions matter. As we were talking about before, you've got to kind of stress yourself a little bit and kind of get out of your comfort zone a little bit every now and then to get better.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:07:02) And so if you can do all those things, you can start doing all those things, you know, starting elementary and high school. Even then, you are training to be an astronaut. You're doing exactly what you need to be. So, and be persistent. Nobody got to this job by taking the easy road or by, you know, just saying, I think I'll be an astronaut. I'll put in an application. Suddenly, they become one. Everybody's very persistent and works hard to get here. But it's an enormous amount of fun. It's worth it.
(Tom Marshburn at 00:07:29) Just the road to get here is worth it. It's not just about getting to fly in space. It's getting to work with people, and the whole path to get here was wonderful. So highly recommend it.