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Phoning Home – Communication Challenges from Another World | Andrzej Stewart | TEDxYouth@Austin


[Applause]
the time we live in is often referred to
as the Information Age thanks to
advances in computers miniaturization
computer networking the internet we’re
connected in the world to the world
around us in ways that we didn’t even
think we’re possible just a couple of
decades ago so many of us carry around a
device in our pockets this allows us to
contact people across the globe from
wherever we want to be and thanks to the
internet with the touch of a screen we
have access to almost the entirety of
human knowledge but imagine for a second
if this were taken away imagine what it
would be like if you were isolated from
the rest of humanity or to put it
another way imagine what it would be
like to truly live on another world my
name is Anne Jase Stewart now is the
chief engineering officer of high seas
mission for what is high seas you might
ask high seas is short for the Hawaii
space exploration analog and simulation
it’s a facility on the northern face of
the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii there
NASA uses this to study the
psychological effects of deep space
missions on astronauts they simulate
Mars missions people are isolated from
for months up to a year at a time NASA
wants to understand the stresses the
things that challenge astronauts that go
to Mars things like being disconnected
from home being on their own with just a
few other crew members being isolated to
a small space as you can see high-seas
is very isolated and it’s indeed
something called an isolated and
confined environment it’s of course not
the only one on earth the International
Space Station submarines at sea
Antarctic research stations are all
isolated and confined environments and
these all share some characteristics
they’re all remote far from the rest
humanity they’re very unwelcoming
environments they’re not very safe
environment sometimes they’re usually
difficult to access and once you’re
there they’re difficult to leave the
people inside can’t leave to go outside
very often if at all and whatever they
do they usually have to wear protective
gear to keep them safely in environment
and finally and most importantly
probably for NASA’s purposes these are
usually manned by crews that are
selected for their skills to fulfill
certain roles rather than because they
knew each other before the mission
whenever astronauts go to Mars they’re
going to be in a variety of isolated
confined environments as well they’re
going to be inside spaceships to get
them to and from Mars and inside of
habitats on the Martian surface those
Martian astronauts will face those same
challenges but they’ll face one
additional challenge as well the
challenge of communication in the speed
of light you see whenever Martian
astronauts go to Mars the only way
they’re going to be able to talk with
the people back on earth is through
radio signals or perhaps some of the
laser communications that NASA’s
currently studying these communications
move through space at the speed of light
now we think of the speed of light as
being very fast 300,000 kilometers per
second if light were to travel around
the circumference of Earth but be able
to do so in just over a tenth of a
second for our purposes light is almost
instantaneous but whenever you’re
talking about space perhaps The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy put it
the best space is big really big you
just won’t believe how vastly hugely
mind-boggling sorry mind-bogglingly big
it is so let me help you try and grasp
just how big spaces obviously we’re
talking about Earth and Mars here so
let’s talk about the distance between
Earth and Mars as it flashed up there
the distance between Earth and Mars can
vary depending on where they are between
their orbits anywhere from 55 million
kilometers to 401
kilometers at the speed of light signals
travel that distance anywhere from three
minutes to over 22 minutes imagine what
a phone call would be like you pick up
your phone from Mars and you talk to
your buddy back on earth how you doing
man how’s it going
you wait twenty two minutes and your
friend gets the call oh I’m doing great
how are you
and then you wait twenty two minutes
again that doesn’t sound very convenient
that’s definitely not the kind of phone
call I’d want to have so it turns out
whenever astronauts go to Mars they’re
not going to be able to use telephones
they’re going to be limited to things
like emails or recorded messages sent
over that 22 minute time delay there’s
another problem as well I showed you
that big dish before that’s a huge piece
of equipment it takes a lot of power to
get a signal from Earth to Mars and back
we’ve been able to sort of get broadband
data rates from the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter but whenever we send signals to
Mars the best we do right now is about
2,000 bits per second now for the people
who don’t speak and bits and bytes
that’s not a lot of information you
definitely won’t be streaming YouTube to
Mars at those sort of speeds so
astronauts may have some sites that are
sent to them occasionally things like
Wikipedia things they can use for
reference there’s going to be no social
media on Mars and definitely no YouTube
the high seas habitat is designed to
model these effects NASA of course again
wants to study psychological effects
what is it like for the astronauts to be
there communication is a big deal there
so NASA imposes certain constraints on
those crew members for example we were
only allowed to use email or recorded
video or audio messages to communicate
with the outside world to mission
controllers and to our friends and
family back on earth we had limited
internet so we were allowed to access
things like Wikipedia things that again
would be beamed in sort of a static
sense to the astronauts on the surface
but we didn’t have access to any sort of
website that allow us to communicate
with humanity in the real world so again
no social media and no you together
either so this sounds very difficult
sounds very challenging and we
understand now and I hope you all you’ve
to understand the physical reasons why
these constraints are in place but what
is it like to actually experience that I
had a chance to live at this habitat for
12 months an entire year to tell NASA
study this and to experience it myself
so perhaps I can give a little bit of
insight there are many challenges again
but it turns out there are some benefits
to being in this sort of environment as
well let’s start with those challenges
first there are lots of challenges to
start conversations are slow you might
have already gotten that sense whenever
I gave you that example of a phone call
whenever we talked people in real life
whenever we have a conversation you
stand in front of someone and you speak
and those people hear what you’re saying
they react they respond back and back
and forth as you have a conversation
the idea is evolve once you put a delay
in there that makes that evolution very
difficult if you have to wait 20 minutes
between each reply it makes it so that
conversations that would take just a few
minutes here on earth take hours days or
sometimes even weeks it’s complete
something that makes it even slower is
typing emails it’s very easy to stand in
front of people and talk it’s just very
natural but whenever you’re typing an
email that takes time it takes more time
to proofread so it’s very slow and very
difficult there’s a loss of information
involved as well now I’m not talking
about the sort of loss of information
that happens when stuff breaks although
for what it’s worth the astronauts will
have to face those problems as well
whenever say a satellite dish breaks
down but what I’m talking about
is a loss of meaning you see whenever we
talk to each other we don’t just use
words the way we enunciate our words our
body language our facial expressions all
of those convey meaning and that’s
meaning that’s lost whenever you’re
limited to just emails even whenever we
have the ability to record audio or
video messages there’s still a little
bit of meaning loss because there’s a
big difference in just talking to a very
cold unfeeling camera and talking to the
person who’s really behind that camera
separated in time and space often
there’s a feeling of frustration or
helplessness again whenever you’re in
that environment where you’re separated
in time and space you type your emails
you send them and then you hope there’s
somebody on the other end listening
unfortunately that’s not always the case
back on earth whenever you have a real
conversation there’s an immediate
feedback you see the person you get the
sense that they understand you and
whenever they don’t you can work right
there to help correct and help with
meaning and understanding that’s taken
away whenever you’re separated often I
would wonder what’s happening back on
earth is anybody out there is anybody
back home listening
sometimes it was unintentional sometimes
it was just that the people we were
talking with didn’t understand the
situation we were in for an example of
this one of our crew members had a
problem with their cell phone now wait a
second Jay just said there were no
phones on Mars that’s true we’d all
cancelled our cell phone service the
problem is one of our crew members was
being charged for their cell phone
service again this company of course
thought that our crew member had a cell
phone and could just solve the problem
using their phone and had no way to
solve this over email now eventually the
problem was solved but it required that
crew member talking with the Mission
Control team over email the Mission
Control team contacted the company and
letting them know hey
persons on Mars they really can’t use
their phone right now the problem was
solved would have been much easier if
that person could have just picked up
the phone and solved it themselves
there’s also sort of a restriction on
the information that you get while
you’re on Mars you hear about the big
things that happen on planet earth for
example the Paris attacks were a major
impact on our crew especially our French
crewmember Cyprian who has friends and
family in Paris so these big things are
things that are felt literally a world
away but sort of the small everyday
things sort of what your friends are
doing at the weekend or you know what’s
happening at your local theater what’s
showing there this weekend those aren’t
things you get to hear about it really
doesn’t have space in the communications
so you lose a lot of these things it’s
some something I thought of a lot was I
wonder what’s going on back on earth
right now what’s popular what sort of
music are people listening to what’s on
TV
turns out it was Harambee and penn
pineapple apple pen but and for all of
you laughing right now though imagine if
you didn’t know what those were that you
were the only person on the planet who
hadn’t heard of those things you might
have experienced this before if you’ve
ever been on a vacation say to like
Disneyland and you’ve been gone for a
couple of weeks and you’ve been focusing
on all the fun you’re having you’ve kind
of lost track of what’s going on back
home then you go back and all this stuff
has happened you have to catch up now
multiply that by a year and that’s what
it felt like for us it’s almost like
stepping into a time machine
whenever astronauts go to Mars it won’t
just be a journey through space it will
also be a journey through time and
whenever those astronauts come back the
world they return to will be a very
different place from the world they left
so this doesn’t sound like a lot of fun
really it sounds like there’s all these
challenges it’s a very difficult thing
and certainly it is it turns out there
are some benefits to this as well
for instance not having the Internet I’m
sure everyone’s had that moment where
they’ve been doing doing their work and
they don’t want to do work anymore so
Facebook calls or there’s just a couple
of videos of cute cats you want to watch
often we find ourselves there as well
where people like the rest of y’all but
we would stop our work we would go to
the Internet and realize we didn’t have
it we didn’t have those Facebook feeds
to take our time we couldn’t watch those
pictures of the cute cats and well if
that’s all you’ve got well I guess it’s
time to get to work then we were more
productive there than we have ever been
in our entire lives we were able to get
so much done just because the
distraction had been taken away another
benefit is the ability to control the
information that you’re taking in so as
I said before a lot of the restriction
of information is unintentional but you
sort of get a chance to choose what you
want to listen to as well and for an
example of this I’m actually going to
talk about a different mission I did
this was the human exploration research
analog at Johnson Space Center in
Houston Texas this was a two-week
mission I did a few months before I went
to high seas now just like the real
astronauts on the International Space
Station the the Hera crew members
receive newspapers electronically every
day they do this so the crew members of
both Hera and the ISS can feel connected
to the real world and I read the
newspaper on mission day one on mission
day two I opened that newspaper turned
to the front page and I saw depressing
things I saw war I saw crime I saw
murder
I saw conflicts around the world I
closed the newspaper and didn’t read
another one for the rest of the mission
turns out I that I found out during our
debriefings
the rest of my crew members had done the
same thing on the same day for the same
reasons being in an environment like
that where you’re focused on science
where your whole environment is about
pushing humanity forwards things like
war things like crime just don’t exist
anymore none of us were preparing to
wage armed conflict against our fellow
crew members none of us were going to
rob or steal from our fellow crew
members we were focused on science on
high seas we actually had a standing
order with our mission support team to
send us daily science news because
that’s what drove us that’s what
inspired us and that’s what we were
there to do it’s almost like a monk
going to a monastery it gives those
people a chance to focus on what’s
important to them so I’ve talked about
all this what’s it like to be separated
from the rest of humanity and sure this
sounds great for people going to Mars or
people at least simulating it but is
there something here for the folks on
earth that we can learn as well I think
so to start as I’ve tried to emphasize
there’s power and face-to-face
communication being able to stand with
somebody to look at them in the eye and
speak with them there’s power in that
our devices sort of repeatedly pull us
away from that world we have jobs
nowadays where people are required to be
on email 24/7 we have Facebook and
Twitter feeds that demand our attention
at all times a day and there’s a benefit
to unplugging putting those devices away
and interacting with the people around
us being present in our interactions
with other people and with the world
there’s another benefit from unplugging
as well and that’s the ability to focus
because of all the technology it’s
almost as if we have a constant stream
of information coming towards us and a
lot of that information is bad news
again the war the politics the crime it
makes the world seem like a very scary
place honestly but by unplugging it
gives us the ability to choose what it
is we want to focus on we get to choose
rather than letting that information
stream decide for us if you guys do
unplug
I hope you come to the same conclusions
that I have from my mission that there
you know even though the world is scary
there’s lots of scary things going on
there’s a lot of confusion out there but
there’s also great things going on as
well I really appreciate the chance to
go to high seas and for a year focus on
science and there are people throughout
the world doing the same thing every day
there are things we know today that we
didn’t know yesterday and I can tell you
that there are people working right now
so that there will be more for all of
you to discover tomorrow in addition to
that I hope you’ll find that the world
is an amazing place it’s lush it’s
vibrant it’s full of life it’s like no
other world we’ve ever found out in the
universe believe me we’ve got a lot of
smart people looking for me
I hope ultimately what you’ll find is
that our world is full of hope and
inspiration for those willing to look
for it
[Applause]
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