Today, we are lucky enough to hear from a highly accomplished explorer who has some incredible experiences to share with us. Dr. Sian Proctor was the mission pilot for the Inspiration4, which is the all-civilian orbital mission to space and she’s the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft. She also lived in a Mars analog environment to simulate what it might be like to live on the red planet.
Today, we are lucky enough to hear from a highly accomplished explorer who has some incredible experiences to share with us. Dr. Sian Proctor was the mission pilot for the Inspiration4, which is the all-civilian orbital mission to space and she’s the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft. She also lived in a Mars analog environment to simulate what it might be like to live on the red planet.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-explorers-club-an-interview-with-sian-proctor
SIAN: I think one of the questions that I often get is what was the best part about going to space or was there something that I wasn't expecting? And the best part was seeing the earth from space. But what I wasn't expecting was Earth light. And what I mean by that is when we got up into the cupola, you know, our our capsule got filled with earth light and it's just like moonlight. So think about when you go outside on a night where there's a full moon and think about how that feels. And how you can walk in the moonlight and you can feel the moonlight on your face.
NATE: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go to space? Obviously, most of us have no idea. We can watch movies like Gravity or the Martian but that’s only a glimpse of what it MIGHT be like to leave Earth behind. Personally, I wonder about the little moments; the things that you can’t know until you experience them yourself.
SIAN: Well, earth light is a thousand times more beautiful, more brilliant, more spectacular than moonlight. And I wasn't expecting to feel the, you know, the reflected sunlight off of our planet, back onto me, and to just be overwhelmed by being bathed in earth light. The earth has a high reflectivity, and as a geoscientist, I know that. But to go up and to experience it like it clicked into my head, I was like, Whoa, this is amazing. And so I think that that's something that everybody should experience, a little earth light.
NATE: Today, we are lucky enough to hear from a highly accomplished explorer who has some incredible experiences to share with us. Dr. Sian Proctor was the mission pilot for the Inspiration4 which is the all-civilian orbital mission to space, AND she’s the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft. She also lived in a Mars analog environment to simulate what it might be like to live on the red planet.
CALLI: That is wild! So incredible to have her here. We’ve had astronauts on the show in the past but haven’t talked to anyone that has been to space AND has insider knowledge of what day-to-day life might be like on Mars.
NATE: Exactly! It’s such a unique experience that only a few people have been able to go through. So, let’s get right into it, shall we?
CALLI: Let’s do it.
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NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back! We are continuing our Explorer’s Club series today with our very special guest, Dr. Sian Proctor, who is a geoscientist in addition to being named one of the Explorer’s Club’s 50 People Changing the World.
NATE: Dr. Proctor’s amazing work aims to utilize research in space travel in order to help benefit our lives on Earth.
SIAN: What a lot of people fail to make the connection is that when we solve for space, we solve for Earth. And the reason why is because space is all about efficiency. You need to be efficient in food, water, energy, shelter, waste management. All of those things are the things that we have issues with here on Earth. So as we push to the moon, Mars and beyond, and we become efficient in all of those areas, well, all that technology and that information can be applied here on Earth and scaled up to make us more efficient and more sustainable over time. So solving for space solves for earth.
CALLI: That’s fascinating, I’ve never thought about it that way. I’m wondering what the experience was like in the Mars analog environment. Or, maybe I should back up. What even is an analog environment is a better question.
SIAN: An analog environment is something that is similar to something else. So I have been an analog astronaut and I live in Moon and Mars simulations, and these moon and Mars simulations tend to be in areas that are similar to maybe the moon or Mars. And so I did a four month Mars simulation on the big island of Hawaii in a habitat called High Seas, and that is an analog for Mars because it is a bustle of basaltic rock that is relatively young. So there's not no vegetation and very barren. And so when you step outside in your spacesuit, of course, because you're in a mars simulation, you feel like you're stepping out onto Mars. It's simulating what it'd be like to be able to traverse that type of terrain. But you're building these habitats really to look at things like crew cohesion or, you know, the food strategies for long duration spaceflight. You know, you bring a group of strangers together. You put them in a habitat in an extreme, isolated environment, and you have them live and work and play together for, you know, anywhere from two weeks to a year or two and see how they do.
NATE: I can only imagine how isolating that must have been.
SIAN: I survived. So that's step number one. And I still like my crew members. No, but in seriousness, do you know you're. You're there as a not only a researcher, but a research subject. So you're there where other researchers can come in and study you and have you do tasks over however long you're there. But then you can come in as a researcher yourself and perform your own kind of studies. One of the biggest things that we have to account for is boredom because of repetition. And so when you're going away for, you know, my mission was four months, but if you're going for three years, how do you have the astronauts not get bored? And what I mean by that, if you're doing the exact same thing every day, you know, there is a chance that you get to know it because the novelty wears off. And a lot of people who are explorers are novelty driven. And so maybe on the way out, you're all excited, you know, on that nine month journey to Mars. And you have that to look forward to. But then on the way back, you know, it's a it's a long journey. And if you doing the same thing every single day, I'm just kind of waiting for you to get closer to Mars or get closer to home. That can weigh on the brain, I think, a little bit. So when I was in the high seas habitat for four months, I tried to make sure that I had there was still novelty. There was still something that I could get excited at at one month in and at two months in and three months in until you get to that point where you're just excited that it's almost over. Break up the long, break up the monotony. That's what it's all about. One of the things I did was I challenged myself with learning different poetic forms. And so every couple of weeks, I would have to do a new poem and figure out what that poetic form was, whether it was a haiku or even like a rap or something. And you're just like, okay, I got to create a rap song for this, this week's, you know, challenge. And then and that just kind of gives you something new to think about.
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NATE: What’s really fascinating is that every aspect of the mission was thought through, including what the process of eating on Mars would be like.
SIAN: A lot of that technology, we're going to try and bring as much of the stuff that we that is familiar to Earth in the beginning, because there's so much psychology wrapped around food and mood. And so you don't want to send people off to this distance, look distant location, and then you feed them something that they're not used to because that just adds another whole level of stress. And so when you think about what people are going to want in that stressful environment, they're going to want comfort food, food that they're used to. But you also have to weigh that with the fact that sending anything into space and for a long distance is challenging. So how do you how do you balance those two things? And so that's one of the reasons why looking at food now and getting the future, Mars not ready to eat things that are your art you are able to send there. Because if they get used to it and they like it and then they start to crave it, then when you're feeding them actually on Mars, it's not an added stress. Instead, it's a comfort.
CALLI: If I were in space, I would definitely want all my comfort foods around me.
NATE: Me too. And Dr. Proctor is someone who understands that firsthand because she’s actually been to space.
SIAN: When people ask me what I eat in space, I'm like, we had pizza. We had cold pizza. I mean, is there anything better than that?
CALLI: Poetry and pizza. Sounds like my kinda gal.
NATE: She’s incredibly cool and her approach to her work is definitely something to be admired.
Sian: You know, I've always been an explorer at heart. And so for me, it's about exploration and isn't necessarily discovering something new for humanity. It's about discovering something new for yourself, pushing your understanding of not only our Earth, but, you know, our universe and beyond. And and so when I have opportunity to go and do something new, even in an area I've never explored before, I want to take on that challenge so that I'm discovering all kinds of new things for myself.
NATE: Dr. Proctor was a professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona for 21 years, so she’s spent a lot of time instructing and giving advice to future explorers.
SIAN: Well, I think what drives all of us, what connects us is, is the pursuit of, again, to some extent, novelty or new things, understanding. We're driven by these questions. And curious curiosity is exactly what I was going to say at this curiosity to understand or experience something that you haven't experienced before. And that's why, you know, when I talk to young kids and tell them, like, that exploration isn't about discovering something new for humanity, you could do that along the way for sure. But it's really about discovering something new for yourself, because that way you don't get discouraged or you don't have the pressure of having to like, be, you know, the most extreme, most, you know, out there person that you can go out and discover stuff for yourself, you know, every day and and just live the life of an explorer that way.
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CALLI: And with that, we’d like to send a huge thank you to Dr. Proctor for joining us this week. She’s such an incredible presence in the scientific community so we are super grateful we got to hear even just a little bit of her experiences.
NATE: We will be back next week with some new episodes of Curiosity and another great conversation with a member of the Explorer’s Club!
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CALLI: So where do you think your obsession with exploration comes from?
VICTOR: I think part of it is genetic. At least that's what some doctors have theorized, is that some people have more of a proclivity to be very curious. And when you combine that with the maybe a little bit of a more risk, uh, perverse attitude that you end up with people that do what I do. And while it may appear risky, one thing I prided myself on, whether it be in mountaineering or deep sea exploration or anything, really, is that one can do very risky activities, but do them in a safe manner or as safe as you can make it in much the same way that a stuntman will do something like that that looks very, very dangerous on film. But they've planned it out days or weeks in advance, tried to work out every variable so they can do it safely. We do the same thing with our expeditions. And so I think it's possible for human beings to push the boundaries of what? We are able to do in extreme environments, but do them in a safe way.
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CALLI: Until next time, stay curious!