Blue Dot: Can the human body survive the long trip to Mars?

Yeah, it was interesting reading your book and where we are now with our understanding of the human body and how it responds to spaceflight.

And then going back to those pioneering flights, and I've been fortunate to get to know a lot of the people involved in those, and some of them are dear friends, and they're all getting up there now.

But I can remember back then, especially the first flights back in the 60s, The doctors were the enemy to the astronauts.

They did not like them, except for their nurse.

They loved Dee O'Hara, who's been on our program.

They loved her.

But for them, as test pilots, a doctor means one thing.

A guy will find something wrong with you, so you won't be able to fly.

Yes.

So you are right.

There is maybe an uneasy alliance that in some ways still persists between astronauts and, let's say, people on the medical side.

I think it has improved a lot over the years.

Oh, yes, certainly.

More and more astronauts have scientific backgrounds.

Many of them have been physicians and still are physicians as they became astronauts.

But it brings up an interesting point that not a lot of people are aware of.

I am on the research side, so I'm not a physician.

I'm a biomedical engineer by training.

And so the work that I did with NASA and the research that I continue to do is on the biomedical research side.

There are people on what's called the med ops side, the medical operations.

Those are the doctors.

That includes psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians of all kinds, flight surgeons.

Those are the astronauts, physicians.

And medical data is not research data and research data is not medical data.

So there's a divide there.