Science & Tech

Mars: Living on Another Planet

Lesson time 16:07 min

Chris walks through the basic human needs required to live on another planet. Learn what it takes to grow food in space, protect ourselves from the elements, and readjust to gravity.

Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars

Topics include: Learn to Grow Food • Prepare for the Repercussions of Weightlessness • Make the Adjustment Easier • Protect Yourself From the Elements • Abide by the Martian • Communication Protocol

Chris Hadfield

Teaches Space Exploration

The former commander of the International Space Station teaches you the science of space exploration and what the future holds.

Preview

Growing crops onboard the Space Station would actually solve a couple problems if we could do it. It would give us a sustainable food source and we wouldn't just be digging into our pantry all the time. It would also convert carbon dioxide back into oxygen, just like plants do on Earth. But it's very difficult to count on it. It's complex. It's not a natural place for plants to grow. The complexity of trying to give them an environment where you can 100% count on them growing into the next cycle. What plant should we grow? Should it be like in the movies, potatoes? Or should it be some other plant? Should it be tomatoes? Maybe it should be string beans, something that is the right combination of all the things that we need to stay healthy as human beings. Maybe we're always going to have to have a compromise between some high energy or high protein packaged food, and some of the bulk food that we can grow on board. And it's the thing that we're testing onboard the Space Station. I'm sure when we set up a research station on the moon, where there's a little bit of gravity, about 1/6th Earth gravity, where we can then see how plants grow there and how they can grow in a higher radiation and slightly more hostile environment than on Earth. And through all of that, eventually figure out-- not just a spaceship that will take us to Mars, but a like a little traveling farm that will take us to Mars as well. There's not only going to be engineers and test pilots on that first crew to Mars. You're going to need a farmer onboard, some sort of botanist or horticulturalist just to keep you alive. When I came back from my spaceflights, I did not feel right. My first flight was only a little over a week. I was kind of wobbly, I was OK. It was sort of like I had a really bad cold, or I'd been drinking, or it was like I'd been spinning and now I'd stopped spinning. I was OK, but I obviously wasn't normal. After my second flight, which was a little over two weeks, I felt the same, only slightly worse. But my third flight when I was in space for five months, I felt terrible when I got back. My balance system wasn't still in the process of adapting to spaceflight. It had changed. Because I'd been in weightlessness for so long, my whole way of silently sensing which way was up and my inner ear working with my eyes and working with the weight of my body, trying to tell me where I was, it had changed. To stop me being an earthling and more to try and plasticly adapt me to being a space-ling. I was also nauseous because just everything was so disorienting. And my muscles hadn't been fighting gravity, so it felt weird to move. And my skeleton was a little more fragile because I hadn't been able to exercise it and put loads on it like I had on Earth. Even though I exercised two hours a day, there were still changes physiologically to my body. All of those took time to recover from, but I was back on Earth, and there were a whole team of doctors that...

About the Instructor

Impossible things happen. At age nine, Chris Hadfield knew he wanted to go to space. He eventually went there three times, becoming a commander of the International Space Station. In his MasterClass, Chris teaches you what it takes to explore space and what the future holds for humans in the final frontier. Learn about the science of space travel, life as an astronaut, and how flying in space will forever change the way you think about living on Earth.

Featured MasterClass Instructor

Chris Hadfield

The former commander of the International Space Station teaches you the science of space exploration and what the future holds.

Explore the Class