Human Research Program

There's all of those things.

We kind of are getting a handle on many of them, especially thanks to a lot of research that's been going on on the International Space Station for decades, and that's what the Human Research Program does.

But still, we are regularly taken by surprise in space.

First ever medical evacuation from the space station earlier this year.

And this was in the 60s, early 60s.

We will see if the longer the moon base is on the moon and up and running, maybe we can increase the level of monitoring.

NASA puts out, especially the human research program periodically will put out an RFI, request for information from the community.

Like, hey, we're going to do this.

My next guest, Dr.

Mark Shelhamer, is former chief scientist of NASA's Human Research Program.

He joined us to discuss the health risks, unknowns, and challenges of deep

space exploration.

And you alluded before to my time at NASA.

Right.

For three years, I was the chief scientist for the Human Research Program.

It goes back about 10 years ago now.

Astronauts will face years of physical and psychological stress, dangerous radiation, isolation, and a planet where rescue is just not an option.

My guest this morning is Mark Shelhamer, former chief scientist of NASA's human research program, and the principal investigator of the Johns Hopkins Human Spaceflight Lab.

Mark is joining today to explore a fundamental question: Are we ready for Mars? Which happens to be the title of his new book, published by Johns Hopkins Press.

Mark Shelhamer, welcome to Cool Science Radio.

So a few days later they brought him back.

If you're just joining me on Cool Science Radio, I'm having a conversation with Mark Shelhamer.

He's a former chief scientist of NASA's human research program and the principal investigator of the Johns Hopkins Human Spaceflight Lab.

He's talking about his new book, Are We Ready for Mars? And this is about eventual human space flight to Mars.

And Mark is the principal investigator of the Johns Hopkins Human Space Flight Lab.

He's also a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the former chief scientist of the NASA's Human Research Program.

He's written a book called Are We Ready for Mars? which takes a look at the medical, the psychological, the engineering realities to going to Mars and It explores what it would actually be like, and it asks the question, should we even be sending a person, or are we better off sending a machine? Mark Schellhammer, welcome to the Lisa Wexler Show today.

Hello.

Um, but when we, when we talked that time, [clears throat] I had just taken a leave of absence from my faculty position at Johns Hopkins, the School of Medicine, where I do space flight research, among other things.

Uh, I had taken a leave of absence, and for three years I was the chief scientist of the NASA Human Research Program.

And as the incoming new chief scientist, somebody, I don't, I don't know who, who put us up to it, but I guess somebody recommended to you that, uh, maybe I should be on the program and, uh, talk with a fresh pair of eyes, a fresh outlook about how NASA, HRP, Human Research Program, specifically addresses the problems of humans in space, human health and performance in long-duration space flight.

And even though I have been doing space flight research, mostly in my own particular area of sensory, motor, and vestibular function, space motion sickness, balance, spatial disorientation, I've been doing that on and off, mostly on, s- uh, for more than 40 years as it's, starting as a graduate student in the 1980s.

My time at NASA really gave me a much broader perspective because as chief scientist for human research, my portfolio expen- expanded to bone, muscle, cardiovascular, immune system functions, the effects of space radiation, cognitive effects, the entire domain.

What are the issues that need to be mitigated? How do we mitigate them? Oh, you want to think conceptually in some big picture manner about what, what is the conceptual underpinning of how, uh, humans respond to a stress, such an unusual environment? Yeah, you know, that's not really an NASA problem.

They have specific known issues to mitigate that are, make no mistake, hard enough to mitigate.

So it's not their mandate in the human research program.

So mainly, we have a true scope to solve the problems through our Humans in Space challenge.

And then luckily, I got in touch with NASA HRP, the Human Research Program.

They actually study very similar type of problem that we're trying to solve.

When you think about NASA, we automatically think that they're gonna have all different type of solutions, right? We saw their current work in terms of the human exploration and how human body risk in terms of lower orbit or lunar and Mars are different kind of condition.

But our guest truly has an appreciation of how difficult a trip to Mars would be.

Mark Schulheimer is a former chief scientist for the Human Research Program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, and he's the current director of the Johns Hopkins Human Space Flight Laboratory.

In his new book, Are We Ready for Mars?, Shellhammer lays out just how tough spaceflight really is, how hard it is on the human body, and how much we have yet to understand.

And he joins us now.

So I went to that laboratory, got my degree there in 1990, came to Johns Hopkins as a postdoc, didn't do any spaceflight work for a while to kind of fill in some of the fundamental neurobiology, and then got into it more and more over time.

As I think you alluded to, I took a leave of absence about 10 years ago.

And for three years, I was the chief scientist for the NASA Human Research Program in Houston, where I got to oversee the entire research portfolio.

that NASA has for human health and performance and long-duration spaceflight.