S1E8 - Terraforming Mars (Martian Science)

#Science #BoardGames #SciComm #Terraforming #Mars #Exobiology #Astrobiology #Regolith  Introduction Today we talk about Terraforming Mars, with special guest Dr. Laura Fackrell of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We cover how Mars lost its atmosphere, whether you really can survive off just potatoes, what makes regolith different from soil, the ethics of terraforming, reality TV, and why you should probably read Elon Musk's End-User License Agreement. Many thanks to Dr. Fackrell, and we hope you have fun journeying with us to the red planet! Timestamps 00:35 - Introductions 01:40 - Martian potatoes 02:52 - Game background 10:06 - Martian atmosphere 16:42 - How to grow stuff on Mars 23:06 - Regolith versus Soil 27:44 - Terraforming priorities & ethics 39:08 - Final grades Find our socials at https://www.gamingwithscience.net  Links Terraforming Mars official website (Fryx Games) Mars One (Wikipedia) Stars on Mars (IMDB) Terraforming Mars in Science Fiction (Wikipedia)   This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.   Full Transcript Brian  0:06  Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games. Jason  0:12  Today we'll be talking about Terraforming Mars by FryxGames. Hey everyone. Jason here with a quick heads up about today's episode, we notice there's a few little audio hiccups and hangs throughout the episode, nothing huge, but it seems that the server we were using to record the audio was lagging a little bit in the process. We're sorry about that, and we're going to work to try to make sure it doesn't happen again. So with that, thank you, and on with the show.  Brian  0:35  Hey, I'm Brian.  Jason  0:36  This is Jason.  Laura  0:37  This is Laura,  Jason  0:38  and welcome back to gaming with science. We have another special guest star today. This is Dr Laura Fackrell from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Laura, can you give us a quick introduction to yourself? Please?  Laura  0:48  Sure! I am Dr Laura Fakhrill, I am a geologist by training. So a lot of what I do, I'm familiar with a lot of things about rock and geology and place, tectonics and all sorts of things, but what I apply that to is really niche area called geomicrobiology, which looks at the interactions with microbes and rocks and also plants. Is something else. I've applied it to you. So my current work, I focus a lot on, how do you take the materials that are available on the moon, or that would be available on the moon if humans were there, and trying to turn that into something that can support agriculture. Brian  1:20  That's super cool.  Jason  1:21  Yeah. And the reason why I asked Laura to be on this episode is because I knew her when she was a graduate student, when she was doing basically the same things, but for Martian soil, right, correct? Yes, or Martian regolith, I guess it's technically not soil. We can get into the difference of that a little bit later. So first off, the fun science fact, Brian, what fun science have you learned recently? Brian  1:40  Oh, well, I usually try to find something that I think is themed. So this was making the rounds a couple years ago, right around the release of The Martian. Maybe you saw this about, can you survive on a diet of nothing but potatoes? Did you see this making the rounds? I'm sure everybody did.  Jason  1:54  I didn't actually, no. Brian  1:56   Oh, you didn't? So the short answer is, sort of, you actually can't get vitamin B12 from potatoes. You need to, at least not in the current form. Of course, in the movie The Martian, he get plenty of vitamins to take that presumably would have provided B12. The meme was that you could survive on a diet of potatoes and butter, the butter providing the vitamin B12. Can you survive for a long time on that diet? Yes. Would you be hea