Transcript: Interview with Shannon Bohle

Mars Pirate Radio

http://dougturnbull.podbean.com/

HOW TO ORDER BOOKS

http://www.amazon.com/Doug-Turnbull/e/B008X4X49E

Links to audio recordings of the interview:

Episode 14: http://dougturnbull.podbean.com/2013/07/06/episode-xiv/

Episode 15: http://dougturnbull.podbean.com/2013/07/13/episode-xv/

Author’s Website: http://www.dougturnbull.com

EPISODE 15

Interviewer: Doug Turnbull

Interviewee: Shannon Bohle

Interview Date: June 28, 2013

Air Date: July 13, 2013

WRITTEN INTRODUCTION

Tonight we will present some updates in space science current events, Part 6 of Ribbon To The Sky and the second half of our interview with space and medical science archivist, Shannon Bohle.

Links to some of the sites referred to in Shannon Bohle’s interview:

http://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/index.php/jvwr/article/view/1600,

http://www.slideshare.net/01archivist/library-and-archives-at-nasa-colab-in-second-life,

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-301402,

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35047286@N02/4106780143/in/pool-womeninspace,

http://www.space.com/21825-nasa-team-darpa-robotics-challenge.html,

http://www.space.com/21824-jpl-s-humanoid-robot-prepares-for-darpa-challenge-video.html.

Current events updates are courtesy of Space.com. This interview was conducted on June 17th. Music was composed by Bernard Herrmann for Fahrenheit 451, copyright 1966 by Universal Pictures and by Jerry Goldsmith for The Blue Max, copyright 1966 by Twentieth Century Fox.

Links to my websites:

http://www.dougturnbull.com

http://www.amazon.com/Doug-Turnbull/e/B008X4X49E/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1373748518&sr=1-1

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DougTurnbull

http://www.youtube.com/user/dturnbull2

AUDIO TRANCRIPT

[Musical introduction]

[Doug Turnbull’s Introduction]

Doug Turnbull here at Mars Pirate Radio, the nexus of science, science fiction, and the future. This evening we have the second half of our interview with Archivist, Shannon Bohle, who, among her many achievements, founded the 3D virtual library, the Neil A. Armstrong Library and Archives. In addition, I will provide an update of current events in space science, as well as read the sixth installment of my newest novella, Ribbon to the Sky.

SPACE NEWS

1) “Outside the International Space Station, Expedition 36 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy of NASA and Luca Parmatano of the European Space agency conducted a spacewalk July 9 to replace a failed communications receiver, relocate grapple bars for future spacewalks, and string cables for the future arrival of a Russian laboratory module. The spacewalk was the first of two in as many weeks for Cassidy and Parmatano, who became the first Italian astronaut to walk in space and the 170th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance. Cassidy now has conducted five spacewalks in his career. They will venture outside the Quest airlock again on July 16 for another series of tasks associated with the upgrade of station hardware” (Source: ESA). [Video: “’Grab Bag’ of Tasks Performed During ISS Spacewalk. Video Credit: NASA television].

[Image: Astronauts Chris Cassidy and Luca Parmitano ISS036-E-017423 (8 July 2013). Image Credit: NASA].

2) Researchers plan to launch a tiny spacecraft to Earth orbit and beyond in the next 18 months, in a key test of new propulsion system technology that could help cut the cost of planetary exploration by a factor of 1,000. The scientists and engineers are developing a new plasma propulsion system designed for ultrasmall CubeSats. If all goes well, they say, it may be possible to launch a life-detection mission to Jupiter’s ocean harboring moon Europa or other intriguing words for as little as $1 million in the not-too-distant future. ‘We want to enable new missions that right now cost about $1 billion, or maybe $500 million — to go, for example, explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn,’ said project leader Ben Longmier, a plasma physicist and assistant professor at the University of Michigan. CubeSats are cheap and tiny spacecraft that weigh just 11 pounds (5 kilograms) or so. At present, they’re generally restricted to Earth orbit, where they circle passively until their orbits decay and they die a fiery death in the planet’s atmosphere. But the new propulsion system — which the team calls the CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster, or CAT — could change all that, turning such bantam spacecraft into interplanetary probes, Longmier and his colleagues say. CAT is a plasma engine, generating thrust by accelerating superheated ionized gas out of a discharge chamber. The CAT thruster is powered by solar panels, and permanent magnets will guide the plasma out the back of the spacecraft. CAT is similar in concept to the ion engine that powers NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which orbited the protoplanet Vesta for more than a year and is now on its way to study Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Over long periods of time, such thrusters can accelerate spacecraft to higher speeds than typical chemical rockets can achieve. But with CAT, everything must work on the micro scale. The thruster and power systems will weigh less than 1 pound (0.5 kg), while the supply of propellant — likely either iodine or water, though many different substances could be used — will be capped at about 5.5 pounds (2.5 kg), researchers said. Most of the CAT components have been built and tested individually, and the team is making good progress toward incorporating them into a unified whole, researchers said. ‘The hurdles that exist right now are getting our newly designed thruster up and running. We think we’re about three weeks from that,’ Longmier told SPACE.com. ‘We’re really sort of ramping up and hitting full tilt right now.’” The team has initiated a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a space test within the next 18 months (Source: Space.com)

INTERVIEW

Doug Turnbull:  [Speaker Introduction]:

Tonight, we will present the second half of our interview with is Shannon Bohle, a professional librarian, archivist, computer scientist, journalist, and writer. Her background includes library and archive experience, primarily in scientific and medically driven research libraries, including the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library, NASA and the University of Cambridge.

Miss Bohle was a winner of an artificial intelligence competition advertised by The White House that was sponsored by the Department of Defense. Her research has been presented before various military and government audiences, including those at National Defense University and the United States Congress. A video she filmed in the 3D virtual library she founded and directed, the Neil A. Armstrong Library and Archives, was shown by the Nobel Prize Foundation at the Nobel Museum in Sweden.

When we left off last time, Shannon was describing projects she has worked on that were Mars related. Now, what work have you done that is related to Mars and Mars exploration?

Shannon Bohle:  Well, while employed at the Armstrong Museum in Wapakoneta, Ohio, I created an educational outreach program called “Seniors and Space” which had an informational poster on the different types of plants grown in space and a hands-on element building “space terrariums.” The activity was teaching senior citizens about the functions of plants and why plants can be beneficial to astronauts [who are] living in space. So, the seniors had the opportunity to taste packaged astronaut food, and at the same time see the difference from real food. Real food would be much more tasty, I would think, than the packaged astronaut food. They were also [shown] an example of Mars stimulant soil that was given out by NASA to educators, and construct a terrarium with a Mars backdrop, and filled up with the types of plant species flown in space. Included in the terrarium was a cutting of an Optimara “space violet” which, as a seed, orbited the Earth in space for six years. So it truly was a “space” terrarium. The cost of the program that I did included the ability for the large terrarium to remain in the nursing home for the seniors’ enjoyment, and the activity gained local press coverage.

The second project I did that was indirectly related to that had to do with creating a Space Medicine exhibit that featured a variety of tests conducted on animals and people during the Mercury and Apollo eras. (This was the one in Second Life). It also had a 3D model of the backbone of the tumor suppressor p53, that I created, which was [a protein] studied in microgravity. Cancer, of course being one of the concerns from long-term radiation exposure in space or on Mars, it was relevant, I think, to the exhibit on Space Medicine.

The third Mars-related project I did was “Curiosity AI” which won an award from the Department of Defense. It consisted of creating a 3D simulation of Mars with Curiosity rover, Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix lander, and the Odyssey satellite. [Related video]. Curiosity Scientist is a humanoid AI that can command the other robots as well [For details, see the commands page].

Doug Turnbull:  That’s interesting stuff. Of course, one of the big concerns definitely in Space Medicine is going to be radiation exposure, and how we can deal with that, and how much of a danger it poses for settlers. If someone is going to be living on Mars where there is no significant magnetic field to protect them from cosmic rays and solar radiation, those are going to be major concerns.

Shannon Bohle:  Well, of course, you have different opinions on the radiation exposure [issue]. If you talk to some people, they consider that to be unacceptable. Whereas, if you talk to some [other] people, like Dr. Zubrin at the Mars Society, he will tell you—(and I believe his expertise is in radiation [he has a PhD in Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering (1992) from  the University of Washington] and [working at] NASA previously, and I attended a talk at the Mars Society in Dayton that he had given on that subject in particular)— [or] if you follow what he’s been saying, it’s not much different in terms of what people would be getting, say, on the space station. So it really depends. But even astronauts on the space station are going to be exposed to higher levels of radiation than we are on Earth, so even they have, you know, concerns about cancer. If you read some of the space medicine articles, you are going to come across the fact that they have a much higher possibility of getting cancer. [“there had been at least 21 nonfatal cancer cases among the astronaut group …Non-melanoma skin cancers accounted for 17 of the 21 astronaut cases” (Source Review of NASA's Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health (2004)by the National Academies Press) They are readily investigating that in terms of space medicine research.

Doug Turnbull:  I did an interview awhile back with Rand Simberg, who is kind of a space technologist. He indicated that he believed, as do I, that private property rights are essential if we are to develop a space faring culture. What are your views on this concept?

Shannon Bohle:  Well, I believe that we have already started seeing a growth of the commercial spaceflight industry and with it, we will also see entrepreneurs pushing the limits to meet consumer demand as long as those result is profitable. If private industry and private individuals are taking a risk, they should be able to reap a reward. We’re a culture with a history of expansion in both population and geographic land use. However, there are existing legal obstacles to ownership that would be a precedent preventing private ownership. So, I am referring to an international agreement preventing ownership of the moon. The 1979 there was an Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (also referred to as the “Moon Treaty.” But, is a bit misleading because it would most probably also apply to Mars). In that agreement, it’s stated that lunar resources are the “common heritage of mankind” and it prohibits countries from owning the moon. Private ownership would be a very complex issue and is something that would need to be settled through legislative initiatives, revisionary space law, and international agreements. A case could be made that without some individual ownership, however, space exploration will stagnate. In the days of the Wild West, for example, through the Homestead Act of 1862, settlers were rewarded with 160 acres of land for arriving and settling in a dangerous territory. Whether the reward for settling Mars would be mineral rights or land ownership, or a host of other host of possible benefits from private ownership, the ethics surrounding it are pretty unclear at this point.

Doug Turnbull:  Yes, I understand what you’re saying, and I tend to agree that right now it’s more complicated. That treaty certainly throws a monkey wrench into things. Because, in my opinion, without the ability to profit from your investment, that is going to be a deterrent to investment. Selling shares of Mars is going to be a major way of raising capital to settle on it. That’s my view, anyway.

Shannon Bohle:  Well, you just have to be careful because there have been organizations out there talking about this and some organizations are out there selling the right to when they don’t actually have the legal ability to do so. [“The International Astronomical Union is the only scientific body authorized to name astronomical bodies.” (Source: ) So, you need to be a little bit careful when dealing with organizations that, at this point in time, are promising you something like that.

Doug Turnbull:  Well certainly. No question. The legalisms here have to be clarified, because right now it’s unclear. There is an ongoing argument that, for example, that that treaty prohibits nations from claiming Mars or the Moon, but it doesn’t necessarily prevent private ownership of those. And that is the kind of thing the courts are going to have to decide some way or another and I’m not sure how that will all shake out. If there is going to be some development off the Earth, there is going to have to be some sort of profit motive, and we can’t ignore that. People are not just going to do this for the sake of mankind.

Doug Turnbull:  Well, let me move on to my next question. In several of my books and stories, I postulate constructing the habitats, power generators, water wells, and so forth, for the Mars settlement prior to the first person setting foot on Mars. What do you think of this concept?

Shannon Bohle:  Well, I would have to agree with you, and I think this should be done through remote setup using robotics. But, having studied some of the robotics capabilities at this point in time, like looking at examples, say at Stanford University, which has a really excellent robotics program, the robots just simply aren’t at this level yet where you can just sent them off to another planet and they can start assembling and putting together all of these things. So, the technology in the robotics field, just isn’t up to doing that right now. It’s really going to take a person to do it based on where we are right now with robotics. Essentially, there has been some argument that sending the robots to Mars is more problematic, in the sense that if you simply sent a person there—-this has been the argument of some people—if you simply sent a person there, they could do a much better job with the geology [and] examination of the rocks on Mars, rather than all of these rovers. You know, to some point you have to agree with them, but on the other hand, you know, maybe not.  Maybe they can’t perform all of the spectroscopy examinations of the Mars rocks. But, the potential is that a human doing something is going to be much easier and short[er], than trying to get a robot to do a human’s job. It’s just more complicated and not necessarily as trustworthy. And, it’s not something that has been the status quo. So, just like with AI, NASA really has seemed to want to go along the lines of following the status quo–go with what they know will work, considering there is so much money and their reputation riding on the performance of these Mars rovers. When the Mars rover went this last time (with Curiosity), they anticipated that if the program had failed, they were very fearful that they wouldn’t be getting any more opportunities. [“Last year, the Obama Administration released a proposed budget that drastically cut the Planetary Science Division at NASA, the program responsible for all robotic interplanetary exploration. It cut funding by $309 million (21%!), which gutted the Mars program” (Source: planetary.org)] So, there is a lot riding on the performance of robots, and right now, to be able to set up habitats and power generators and wells–I just don’t think that the robotics industry is at the point where we can have the robots doing all of these things successfully yet on Mars. Maybe I’m wrong [laughs], but I just don’t see it happening in the immediate future.

Doug Turnbull:  Yes, I’ve heard that from other people that, like you, are knowledgeable on the subject and they share your view that we’re not quite there yet. I mean, we couldn’t do it today if we wanted to do it.

Shannon Bohle:  Exactly.

Doug Turnbull:  But I just wonder if there’s a serious effort being made to develop that type of technology.

Shannon Bohle:  Well absolutely. I mean, I think we see the interest in NASA in having a humanoid robot. They have a robot right now [a Robonaut] and they are getting ready to launch another little one from Japan—a humanoid type robot [Kirobo]—to the ISS. And also, in the field of robotics there is a huge effort to try to advance the field, and there have been some remarkable breakthroughs, particularly in humanoid robotics. Some of the Japanese [androids] are just amazing. They look like people, they talk [laughs], they can have facial expressions and movements. They are really making a lot of progress in terms of having a humanoid robot. Also, DARPA has worked on some projects with robots in extreme situations. They have some contests that are going on right now that deal with those types of issues. So there is definitely a push for robotics. Even awhile back, DARPA had a project where they wanted to have self-driving cars. The big money that DARPA offered [to] the winner stimulated so many people to come forward and compete in this contest. Sebastian Thrun, who was one of the people who participated in the project, and ended up winning—and now that knowledge, that technology, is being developed at Google with their self-driving cars. So you can see a definite progression from some of these research and development motivated projects, through funding agencies like DARPA, for example, pushing the technology from research and development into a position where they are more closely aligned with the ability to be commercially developed products. So I think there has been huge progress in the use of robots within even the last 10 years. Again, I don’t want to say that it is not going to be possible, but it is not possible in the immediate future. Maybe in 15 years, maybe 20 years, but I don’t think we can do it now.

Doug Turnbull:  That seems to be kind of the consensus as well from other people that I’ve spoken to. In one of my stories, the company that ended up constructing my Mars colony—my futuristic Mars colony—had previously been using robots to service deep water oil rigs, you know where the problems are kind of similar in the sense that you are dealing [with] a hostile environment and you are doing everything remotely. So that technology was easily translatable into constructing things on the Moon and on Mars. One of the things that I postulate in my books is that our project to settle on Mars is carried out by a private international company or foundation rather than by a government. In fact, in one book, I depict a government run colony as a failure that requires rescue and absorption by the Mars Corporation settlement. What are your views on a project with economic rather than political objectives?

Shannon Bohle:  Well, my thoughts on this fall under the general postulate that if something is commercially viable and sustainable through private enterprise, then the government need not play a main role other than through reasonable regulation by imposing restrictions that are counter to the profitability of an endeavor but are needed for other reasons like health and safety. With that said, there is a great deal of support going from NASA to bolster the burgeoning new commercial spaceflight industry, in addition to venture capital. The research and development for some of the projects I see as being potentially too risky, and will probably require some federal funds and oversight at the minimum. The problem with government involvement is that it is subject to the whims of administrations, as we have seen–most recently severe corrections for NASA have depended upon what politicians and their various interest groups have wanted to do, and not necessarily what scientists think about the future of spaceflight and where the future of space exploration should be going.

Doug Turnbull:  Yes, I’m inclined to agree with you, really, that NASA does get used as a political football. You know, it depends on which Congressional district their installation happens to be in, whether they get funded or not.

Shannon Bohle:  And NASA can’t do that very easily because they are tied into contracts with the major contracting companies. If they break their contracts, they are forced to pay out millions for work not done. So, to me it just seems tremendously wasteful to do a huge course correction where a project like Constellation was being shuffled around, and there were, in fact, large sums of money having to be paid to cancel those contracts. So you want to try to avoid that if at all possible [laughs]. [Constellation cancelled contract payouts cost $2.5 billion (source: phys.org). This is the exact same amount the entire Curiosity rover project cost.]

Doug Turnbull:  Yes, dumping Constellation cost an awful lot of money and we still don’t have a rocket. I’m really annoyed by the whole thing. The new heavy lift vehicle that is going to be built someday bears a striking resemblance to Constellation. Come on folks. I can’t understand it myself. [I suspect] there’s a lot of inside baseball there that we’re not aware of, I’m sure.

Let me change up a little bit here because I want to get back to one of the projects you’re working on. Just on a personal note, in 1976, I married a mechanical engineer, who in 1971 graduated from RPI, a prestigious engineering school, where she a couple of other young women were the only females on the campus. Despite her superior qualifications, she found herself faced with tremendous resistance breaking into the male-dominated field. In department meetings, the guys still expected her to make the coffee. Does her experience parallel the stories you are assembling about women in space flight?

Shannon Bohle:  Well obviously that is never a good thing to happen, but actually, she had it better than her predecessors. The Mercury 13 were a group of women who were selected along with the Mercury 7, which was made up of men, and everyone has heard of the Mercury 7 of course—with John Glenn, and the others—but almost no one has heard of the Mercury 13 women. Mostly because that project was an unofficial project. A variety of medical and biological excuses, including menstruation, were used to argue why women should not go into space even though they were qualified and underwent the same physical tests as the men. By the time Valentina Tereshkova went into space in 1963—and by the way this is the 50th Anniversary of that this year– NASA knew that these biological reasons were completely unfounded. During the years 1976-1977, NASA investigated the prior claim that “menstrual variation” was a physiological barrier to spaceflight. Their conclusions were published as a technical report called Responses of Women to Orthostatic and Exercise Stresses. The “findings determined from the present analysis,” they stated, “suggest that women will exhibit responses to microgravity little if any different from those of men…[and] Further, [they] hypothesized [that] differential response of women to orthostatic stressors dependent upon the phase of their menstrual cycle was not substantiated” [Source: NASA Technical Paper 3043; [Washington, DC] : National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Management, Scientific and Technical Information Division, 1990]. Nevertheless, the U.S. waited until 1983, 20 years after the Russians, before sending the first woman, Sally Ride into space. In reality, preventing women going into space was a public relations issue. Essentially NASA believed, it’s my opinion, that it would look bad in the public’s eye if women exploded in space. Bad public relations could have killed the space program and they simply did not want to take that risk. Apparently, they felt the public could accept the reality of men dying for a just cause the same way the public accepted the fact that men died in wars. There is another great full-text book on this by the way, and I just wanted to give it a quick plug, and it’s displayed I the virtual library that I put together. It’s called Women in Flight Research at NASA Dryden Flight Center and it’s a great history of women in the space program. [See Also: The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight].

Doug Turnbull:  You know I remember that because I lived through the entire space program. I remember when Sputnik was launched in 1957. That gives you an idea of how old I am. I remember there being a great deal of talk at first about having women in the astronaut program and then all of a sudden it just disappeared off the radar completely. I can’t remember the lady’s name, there was one in particular, who was fairly well-known, but somehow she just kind of got dropped. I find that, now that you’ve mentioned it, I remember it very clearly.

How is your project coming, your library and so forth, about women in space?

Shannon Bohle:  Well, since this is the 50th Anniversary of women in space, with the anniversary of Valentina Tereshkova’s flight into space, I decided to start Flickr group, and I created that group and then went through and invited many individuals who are on Flickr to submit their photos. Right now, the group [“50th Anniversary of Women in Space”] has over 250 images that have been contributed by various individuals and organizations. These include female astronauts, astronomers, space agency or industry employees–and all of these women have made amazing contributions to STEM fields. So I would like to take a moment and just encourage your listeners to contribute a photo, like the ones I mentioned, or just one of amateur women around the world enjoying space and astronomy.

Doug Turnbull:  Okay that’s on www.flickr.com/groups/womeninspace.

Shannon Bohle:  Correct.

Doug Turnbull:  How can our listeners access your writings and possibly contact you?

Shannon Bohle:  My blog is called “Scientific and Medical Libraries” and it is on the SciLogs website, and is published in affiliation with Nature.com and Scientific American (the German version of Scientific American). It can be found on the Internet at scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries.

Okay that’s scilogs.com/scientific_and_medical_libraries.

Shannon Bohle:  Right.

And your email address, if you want to give it?

If someone wants to contact me with questions, either about the virtual library, or my Mars project Curiosity AI, or my blog, or if they have any comments about your show, they can contact me through email. That is sb838[at]cantab[dot]net.

Doug Turnbull:  Okay, sb838[at]cantab[dot]net. Thank you so much Shannon, for taking the time to share your thoughts with us tonight.

Shannon Bohle: Thank you too, Doug. It has been a pleasure to be here to speak with you and your listeners.

[Musical Clip]

—————————————————————-

READING FROM RIBBON TO THE SKY