116. Cell Yeah for Space!: Pioneer Labs' Erika DeBenedictis on Engineering Life for Mars

[00:00:00] Erika: now Mars wise, maybe I'll highlight three ways you die on Mars and the easiest way to fix these with either of those two routes

[00:00:12] Karl: hey, um, what's going on?

[00:00:14] Erum: just flying high, Carl, go Eagles. The Super Bowl just happened and our Philadelphia Eagles have won the Super Bowl and it's exciting that that happened.

[00:00:24] Karl: that's your Philadelphia Eagles. And for those of you who don't know, Irum is from, Philly and she often wears a Philly Eagles shirt, when we do these zoom calls. so congratulations to the city of brotherly love and congratulations to the Eagles and congratulations to you Irum, but you weren't in Philly for the game.

[00:00:42] Karl: Where were you?

[00:00:43] Erum: Oh yeah.I was not in Philly.

[00:00:44] Erum: I was in North Carolina. I'm on the beaches with some friends that, you know, we have mutual friends who are biologists and scientists. And crypto people. And it was very, very interesting. I learned a lot about crypto, more terminology, which I think I can wrap with you more. I know you've learned crypto.

[00:01:01] Erum: you've been keeping track over the years. So I learned about what it means to rug.

[00:01:06] Karl: Oh, yeah.

[00:01:08] Erum: where, someone creates a coin and people are buying into it and they just take all the money out. They pull the rug out of all of the people that put money into the crypto.

[00:01:16] Erum: And, happens oftentimes with mean coins, , where you get the rug pulled out, so a lot of rugging of strategy. and then, did a lot of talking, and really deep thinking about, Micro biomes and how microbes interact with each other and communicate through chemical signaling.

[00:01:33] Erum: So that was very deep as well. And then we went. Deep too, because we went clam digging, we dug and grabbed some clams and not clams and money, but clams, the animal and the organism. , and that was also a lot of fun. So nature tech, we had some deep conversations about AI and it was a great time. ,

[00:01:53] Karl: what do you guys do with the clams? Did you do a clam bake or did you make soup or

[00:01:57] Erum: yeah, we did a clam bake. we just baked them in the oven. and put a little bit of, different accoutrements, whether it was coconut, aminos, a little bit of microgreens our friend had this really fancy mustard, but a little bit 'cause we wanted just to taste a pure clams and they were pretty big clams.

[00:02:12] Erum: they met this nonprofit called the earth species project, and they're dedicated to using nonhuman communications.

[00:02:21] Erum: So essentially. Speaking with animals.

[00:02:23] Karl: Wow, that's

[00:02:24] Erum: Yeah. Have you heard about this?

[00:02:26] Karl: no, I haven't heard about this at all. But, in one of our early episodes, I think we talked about, the Apple show extrapolations, which is about climate

[00:02:34] Karl: change. And there's a couple episodes in there where they're talking to whales. But it's super sad.

[00:02:39] Karl: I couldn't watch more than three episodes because it's just too

[00:02:42] Erum: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That happened to me with that civil war movie. yeah, I could not watch it. But anyway, going back to speaking to animals, that is a project that this earth species project has done was to speak to whales. And it was really interesting to hear a story about how they were trying to decode whale communications.

[00:02:58] Erum: And they understood that this whale had a name. And when they learned how to recreate the sound or language of whale, they said the name of the whale to the whale and the whale got mad, it got pissed off and started attacking because what they later then understood is that And that's why they're called whales.

[00:03:17] Erum: Say their name, but other whales don't say the name of the whale. So when you say the name of a whale, it's like you assume their identity. It's like identity theft. It's like, what the hell? it's like me saying I'm Carl. And you're like, no, I'm Carl. What the F. You're something else. And so, this is what's going on.

[00:03:36] Erum: This is an actual project, an actual experience that has happened. This is not a show or a movie. This is real life people. This is why science and exploration is so fascinating because it's real. Other stories are fun. fi is great. But when science fiction becomes science fact, that's when things get super interesting.

[00:03:54] Erum: And that's what we talk about here in the pod.

[00:03:56] Karl: Yeah. So what this reminds me of, and you had turned me on a couple of weeks ago to these telepathy tapes, which was one of the most listened to, podcasts on Spotify. And that's pretty wild too. Do you want to talk about that for a minute? I don't think we've talked about

[00:04:10] Erum: Yeah. it's so fascinating. I mean, the whole telepathy tapes, I recommend people listening to it. they interview people and the beginning of the, series People that are artistic, that are nonverbal, they call them spellers because they're using different tools to spell and communicate.

[00:04:25] Erum: it turns out that they can read the minds of people that they love or they can tap into. And, it gets very interesting when they talk about the different abilities, whether it's, predicting the future or, they're saying, no, I can see into the future. I'm not predicting it.

[00:04:41] Erum: I see what happens. but the last episode was also about. Speaking with animals and they had woman, I mean, call her clairvoyant or just someone who can actually speak to animals who would be hired by people who had pets or, horses that they were using for different horse competitions and they had some kind of conflict with their pet, whether the pet was feeling sad or wasn't performing and this woman comes in.

[00:05:06] Erum: And says, this is what your pet saying, and she would be telling person that hired her details about the relationship that this person would not know, like the clairvoyant would not know these details. there's some things going on when it comes to communicating with animals and, hopefully soon microbes, what's this communication level that we've been blind to, or at least modern society, maybe.

[00:05:27] Erum: people in the ancient world were like, yeah, of course we talked to animals. I mean, so sad that you guys have tuned out, but how do we tune back in Carl? what's going on?

[00:05:37] Karl: Yeah, what fascinated me is these nonverbal autistic people who, suddenly are able to communicate. through technology,

[00:05:46] Karl: they are able to communicate with each other, often telepathically. And then the thing that blew me away that I had to hear because you told me about it, I didn't believe it until I listened to it was many of them, have a gathering place where they will communicate as a group with each other.

[00:06:01] Karl: and then the tapes start talking about telepathy with animals. And so it gets pretty wild, pretty fast, but to me, it just shows that our knowledge, of the world is beyond what we can see. I think we know that anyway, especially if you follow particle physics or anything like that, and there's a lot to uncover, which is again, something we talk a lot about on this podcast So I'm really excited about today's episode, but I figured one of the ways that we could make the introduction is by talking about extremophiles. Extremophiles are bacteria that live under extreme conditions. They might live at the bottom of the ocean, maybe next to a heat vent. They might live at the bottom of a hot spring.

[00:06:42] Karl: we've had, Neely from Cultivarium on the podcast before, and I just read a story about these scientists who were studying the hot springs of Chile, and they found this species of bacteria that's able to make a biofilm. And this bacteria can survive over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. So the biofilm.

[00:07:00] Karl: Is a coating that allows them to live, at this high heat, high acidity and elevated concentrations. So the question is, well, why does it matter? Well, number one, those kind of biofilms have all sorts of properties. It could be used for antivirals, anti tumors that can use for immuno regulation.

[00:07:17] Karl: They might have antioxidant properties. They're still trying to figure that out. But being able to grow bacteria to really high temperature means that you won't grow other bacteria. Because bacteria are very temperature sensitive in general. then finally, I mentioned it before, we've barely scratched the surface of what we know about the microorganisms and the microbiomes that surround us.

[00:07:38] Karl: I think that that is the perfect introduction to ErikaBenedictus of Pioneer Labs who we were introduced by Nick Edwards of potato ai who was just on the pot a couple weeks ago. Erika works in biology space, extre of files,

[00:07:53] Karl: Oh yeah. I mean, it's really interesting. had actually, heard Erika speak a couple of times at SinBioBeta and space biotech track at the conference, we're going to talk about this after you hear this episode, but she's just a very fascinating person. she is really clear on what it would be like to engineer microbes for Mars and, wealth of knowledge.

[00:08:15] Erum: she's part of this. Crew of scientists who think about the parameters of space, how life can survive and evolve and support human life, while also thinking about, how that could apply to earth, and beyond. So let's let Erika take it away.

[00:08:30] Karl: Yeah. Let's go.

[00:08:35] Erum: Erika DeBenedictis. We're so excited to have you on the grow everything podcast. We love speaking about space. We love speaking about biotech and here you are. Thank you so much for coming on.

[00:08:46] Erika: Yeah, thanks for inviting me. This will be fun.

[00:08:49] Erum: Yeah. So we've read a lot of your work. We've seen a lot of your work and you've outlined a future where synthetic biology is essential for space exploration. Could you walk us and our audience through what a day might look like? In a Mars habitat where bioengineered systems are fully integrated.

[00:09:07] Erika: Yeah, totally. So I think in contrast to a lot of what we normally think the sci fi version of space travel. I imagine life on Mars looking more like living in a garden and less like living in a space station. So think less, steel tanks, more plants, And, it all starts with the dirt. in order to live on Mars, we have to make use of the raw materials and resources that are there.

[00:09:35] Erika: and the first one we have to tackle is literally the dirt on Mars, which today would kill humans and also kill Most other things, several different ways, which I'm sure we'll talk about a lot, but what life would look like is you would be living in, structures that are made out of bioplastic and you can produce the bioplastic just by putting atmosphere, Mars, dirt.

[00:09:56] Erika: And Mars ice into a bucket, essentially, using microorganisms to create bioplastic that pop out the other end sort of like, bricks, lots of frontier human civilizations end up building structures out of what's around think log cabins or Adobe buildings, this is the Mars equivalent.

[00:10:14] Erika: sci fi Mars equivalent is you end up living in living in houses that are built by bacteria out of dirt. the next cool thing that happens is there's a homesteading opportunity. So, if you're able to get photosynthetic organisms to grow on the ground, if you drop a dome.

[00:10:32] Erika: On top of them, over a period of a couple of years, those plants will breathe atmosphere into that dome enough for you to breathe without a pressure suit or a mask or anything. so, a lot of what it looks like to live on Mars in the future is going to be the symbiotic relationship between humans and their, plants, that, Enable habitats you can live in and breathe in, pretty normally.

[00:10:56] Karl: That's so fascinating. I before we get into your background, then what does that look like if we're thinking, the president just made this announcement. We're going to put the AmErikan flag on Mars. we could send some kind of Rover and do that right now. But if you're thinking about building habitats and, eventually they're going to house.

[00:11:12] Karl: Plants. What's the sequence of things that need to be sent to Mars to enable that?

[00:11:17] Erika: Yeah, I mean, maybe big picture, right? So we haven't had a lot of interesting human missions to space since before I was born, right? Our space exploration, at least, AmErikan space exploration is stalled right now, at least on human front, we were trying to go to the moon.

[00:11:36] Erika: Maybe now we're not going to the moon. No one's quite sure what's happening, but bottom line is that, basically we faced this problem, which is that, right now our human exploration has this. Camping trip style where you pack everything, you bring everything with you, both for the outward journey, the, mission and the return journey and that camping trip style.

[00:11:59] Erika: exploration stops working the farther away from earth you go, Because you have to pack so much stuff that it's just infeasible to get it there because it's heavy. And then on top of that, you face this issue. You have to transport items to Mars that are for the return trip and to get them to Mars, you have to use fuel, And you have to transport the fuel to Mars to Use it at Mars to get it back to Earth. So you end up with this compounding logistics issue that today prevents us from doing anything other than basically incredibly expensive camping trips, to other places. And to break out of that, we just fundamentally need to stop camping.

[00:12:35] Erika: today, It's as if the Europeans were exploring the AmErikas and when they got to North AmErika, they just never got off the boat and they never had the opportunity to pick up fresh supplies or do anything. They just had to turn right back around. the thing that has to happen is we have to have enough infrastructure on Mars.

[00:12:54] Erika: For there to be a supply refresh when you get there, so we need to ahead of time, put down a bunch of, raw materials and also robotic systems that can start, actually transforming the resources on Mars into valuable things. I was emphasizing previously, The ability to make building materials at scale as much as you need. You can make it on Mars from atoms on Mars. Also, atmosphere, but the list goes on. You can also make purified water. You can make food, therapeutics. and you can make rocket fuel also, all with biology. so all of those things need to happen ahead of time.

[00:13:31] Erum: Wow. Yeah. So you're talking about growing everything, which is perfect.

[00:13:35] Erika: timely, right?

[00:13:37] Karl: Yeah.

[00:13:38] Erum: Yeah, this is so great. I have so many questions about the infrastructure part and some of your thinking behind that. But before we get into that, I think it'd be helpful to tell us a little bit more about your journey to leading this innovative work in space synthetic biology.

[00:13:53] Erika: first science discipline I worked in was actually astronomy. you might not guess it from my current biological engineering work. But I was very lucky. caught the science bug by going to astronomy camp as high school student. And, in undergrad also did a bunch of work on bunch of topics in computational physics.

[00:14:11] Erika: Many of them again, including the solar system. I got to work at NASA JPL actually doing mission design, which is The fun part, you get to be like, wow, we have this launch window. what could we do? That's fun with 50 metric tons. And how would we plan the orbits? that part?

[00:14:27] Erika: yeah, it was a super attractive type of science to do as a young person, cause you can actually do really cool stuff with objectively, very simple math and physics.

[00:14:37] Erika: Newtonian physics gets you very far when you're studying the solar system. and got into biology because a friend. Suggested that I should try computational biology. So I did an internship during undergrad at this place called D E Shaw research, where instead of using computers to simulate the solar system, I was trying to use computers to simulate proteins.

[00:15:00] Erika: the idea is designing drugs on a computer. was shocked at how hard it was. especially the time. And this was more than a decade ago now. We were literally so bad at simulating biology from first principles, we could not properly simulate what happens to a protein when you just let it float around in water, as a result, I think at that time I became an experimentalist, although it took several years for me to learn the skills to really do that sort of work. I went on to get pretty hardcore into experimental biology. did a PhD on, trying to address this like certainty and robustness problem in biology.

[00:15:38] Erika: So my PhD was on using robotics to make, evolving living organisms. succeed in evolution more systematically or reliably, happens in nature, which is completely random. now I've come full circle. I now know a bunch of stuff about what biotech is capable of.

[00:15:56] Erika: And now I see The shocking lack of those technologies being used in a space mission context. And so I want to, close the loop and, actually put those technologies to work, in places where, man, with 50 metric tons to Mars, you could now do so much more if you, include biotech. , because expands how much mass you effectively have on your mission by growing everything.

[00:16:19] Karl: that is amazing. just thinking about what 50 metric tons of biology could look like, seeds, Petri dishes, different robots to, work the biology. You're absolutely right. And I do remember Craig Venter talking about this, space DNA printer, that you can control, from a distance and, that definitely is not 50 metric tons, that's probably, less than a ton, you

[00:16:42] Karl: know,

[00:16:42] Erika: Um,

[00:16:44] Karl: in your writing and you're speaking, you talk about dual use breakthroughs that are going to benefit both space missions and the bioeconomy here on this planet, what does that mean?

[00:16:53] Karl: what are some examples of that?

[00:16:56] Erika: yeah. two come to mind. The first one is the why is impossible meat so expensive problem, so, in everyday life and also more broadly, there are a number of things that we use biomanufacturing for on the ground today. Things like impossible meat.

[00:17:13] Erika: This is cultured meat, trying to replace cows. In principle, it's greener. In practice, it's really expensive, that problem is common everywhere else. there's tons of therapeutics people want to make with biomanufacturing, also very expensive. And indeed we are prevented from growing more of everything because, the food you need to feed.

[00:17:33] Erika: Your biology to make your product, the food itself is expensive. so if you want to convert, 10, 000 liter tank of sugar, water into something else, that final product has to be more valuable than sugar water. so we have this basic economics problem of needing to use biology to make only super, super high value things.

[00:17:53] Erika: this is solved if you're able to use things like waste streams themselves as food, which we know biology loves. stuff is always going to be growing on your apple core. three days after you put it on your desk and forgot about it. this is exactly what biology is for.

[00:18:10] Erika: and yet, the industry hasn't yet, figured out systematically how to really ace, like taking an arbitrary waste stream and matching it with some sort of organism that is a match made in heaven to upcycle that way, stream into something better. And a lot of the problem is that waste streams.

[00:18:29] Erika: Are variable, So unlike fancy sugar water that you perfectly QC with all of the chemistry worked out and the pH perfect and all of that, waste stream is going to vary day to day when you use it. And you need to engineer your biology from day one to be robust to uncertainty and what the environment is that it's going to be facing, just like natural organisms are really good at, but lab organisms, they're spoiled little poodles. And they do not do well when faced with something that's not exactly what they were optimized for. so we need to engineer weeds, not poodles, And that's useful on Mars and on earth. So on Mars, you face A really similar challenge, which is that you want to use raw materials from your environment, that's a low cost.

[00:19:17] Erika: feedstock or you want to use waste materials from your human settlement again a waste stream and Those raw materials will vary depending on where you are on the planet and also we have some existential questions about what mars dirt contains because it's far away and we've only sampled a couple times.

[00:19:35] Erika: so we need to do engineering that is super robust to surprises that we might find on Mars. and that ability to engineer organisms to, tolerate range of conditions, not just the one, that's the thing that would lower the cost of biomanufacturing on earth too, and mean that we can use it in way more places.

[00:19:54] Erum: Yeah, I love that. the ways to value something that we've spoken to other guests about when we had Kate Rubins on here, she talked about molecular recycling, thinking of it on that level. How do you, think about it that way? Because it's a man made thing.

[00:20:08] Erum: there is no waste, if you take humans out of it. so I love that way of thinking. so you're talking about, still trying to understand is going on in Mars in terms of the soil, The atmosphere on the top of our conversation, we're saying, right now, if we go there, humans will die.

[00:20:24] Erum: I need plant life would die. So can you explain to us why the Martian atmosphere is not friendly to life? And how would perhaps humans need to be engineered to survive life on the Martian surface?

[00:20:37] Erika: one of the more recent Star Treks has a very good little section on this topic. the idea in the Star Trek universe is you have this big federation that outlaws genetic engineering. 'cause once upon a time they had a really bad war that happened because of it.

[00:20:52] Erika: so in one of the more recent Star Treks, where I love how modern sci-fi is a little more tuned into biology, which is super cool. it has a character who comes from a species that prefers to genetically engineer themselves to live other places rather than alter the environment in that other place.

[00:21:09] Erika: you haven't seen it, you should look it up. It's great commentary on how both of those activities are things humans have a lot of. Questions about the morality of and how to do them appropriately. We are both, uncertain that we know how to alter climates, in ways that are net positive, especially giving our history of maybe not doing so very well.

[00:21:32] Erika: we are similarly, hesitant to do things like, CRISPR based human germline editing, which would be the sort of technology you might use to alter humans. now Mars wise, maybe I'll highlight three ways you die on Mars and the easiest way to fix these with either of those two routes.

[00:21:50] Erika: problem number one. Mars has a lot of surface radiation because it doesn't enjoy this super thick atmosphere with a lovely ozone layer, and as a result, just radiation goes straight down to the ground. That's a tough one. I think we're not sure what the best way to fix that is. certainly if you want your humans to be inside, of structure, that's easy to fix.

[00:22:14] Erika: You just make sure the structure absorbs If you want humans to get to go outdoors, without a sun hat, maybe you do have to engineer the humans themselves to be much more radiation tolerant. so that's, one of the things people talk a lot about, adapting ourselves so that we're more space hardy.

[00:22:31] Erika: the next two are, oxygen, or lack thereof. Yeah, small problem. Mars has a really thin atmosphere and it has very little oxygen. It is nowhere near enough for you to breathe outside. I would say this is not, first time this has ever happened. Earth didn't used to have oxygen either. four billion years ago, Earth was also a place that you wouldn't be able to go outside and walk around.

[00:22:57] Erika: And in both cases, The obvious way to fix it is to introduce photosynthetic organisms, which on Earth, the arrival of photosynthesis totally changed the chemistry of our atmosphere at planet scale. The plants breathe oxygen into the atmosphere. that is also the suggestion for how to alter that on Mars.

[00:23:17] Erika: I talked before about the dome idea. Similar idea, smaller scale, You just put plants inside of container and you let them breathe. and then you as a human can go in there enjoy the oxygen. then the third way you die is, Mars dirt has this toxin in it called perchlorate.

[00:23:33] Erika: chemically, it's pretty similar to bleach, which, Is not good for you,

[00:23:38] Erum: But if you drink it, you can probably cure COVID, right?

[00:23:42] Erum: Yeah, Cure's COVID,

[00:23:43] Erum: just kidding. Right. So bleach. You probably have it in your house because we normally use it to clean stuff and kill microbes. And there's perchlorate in the dirt on Mars.

[00:23:53] Erika: It's very bad for Humans. It also will kill most microorganisms. And that's a problem because if you can't have microorganisms in the dirt, then you need the dirt to be alive in order for you to grow plants. And so it's this whole problem, Not just for the humans, but for everyone. fortunately on earth, we've actually found some microbes that can eat perchlorate, essentially, which is pretty cool.

[00:24:17] Erika: They're perchlorate reducing microbes, so you may also be able to remediate the soil at scale with microbes again. that's an example, three problems, perchlorate, oxygen, and radiation. And then I think the easiest technical approach to the first two is biology, the easiest technical approach to the last one is edit the humans themselves.

[00:24:38] Karl: Yeah, I mean, proclarity is used for explosives and batteries. It's super bleach, you

[00:24:43] Karl: know,

[00:24:43] Erika: Yeah.

[00:24:45] Karl: fun stuff, fun times. okay. So you and your team, know, at Pioneer Labs, you're developing microbes that can function in extreme space environments.

[00:24:54] Karl: you and I in our pre-interview conversation talked about making these, chassis that could have multiple uses. What does that mean, and you just laid out three really big challenges for humans. What do those challenges mean for microbes and, and what you guys are engineering

[00:26:05] Erika: Mars is the combination of five different ways we normally use to kill microbes. we talked about the perchlorate. That's one. That's a toxin. Most microbes don't like it. the dirt is also very salty. the atmosphere is very thin. That's actually way less of a problem for microbes than for us, but still sometimes a problem again with the radiation.

[00:26:30] Erika: And then finally, when we haven't talked about, very, very large temperature swings from day to night, most things don't like it if they are freeze thawed,

[00:26:38] Karl: all the time?

[00:26:39] Erika: all the time?

[00:26:40] Erika: every day, a lot, really large ranges too. so I've started this, research lab called Pioneer Labs, and what we're trying to do is we are trying to figure out to approach this truly monumental task of figuring out how to create life that is going to thrive on Mars.

[00:26:59] Erika: And not be killed by any of those five stressors. the first step toward doing that is we are creating a microbe that tolerates a subset of those stressors. that is independently useful specifically the idea is that we are going to create some microorganisms that you can use for biomanufacturing indoors of things like bioplastic building materials and crucially.

[00:27:27] Erika: These microbes will actually use the nutrients in Mars dirt as part of their growth. So they need to both tolerate the toxins that come along with Mars dirt, so perchlorate and high salt, and tolerate them so well they can actually use the nutrients. so Mars dirt actually has fair amount of nitrogen in it.

[00:27:47] Erika: which is kind of ironic on earth soil that has a lot of nitrogen is fertilized, Mars dirt is pre fertilized but also has toxins in it, right? and we need to have organisms that love that, right? That's their bread and butter. they grow great they're perchlorate reducing No problem with high salt.

[00:28:03] Erika: They can use the nitrogen and phosphorus and thrive in that soil. And that's the first step toward creating soil microbes whose job it is literally to make the soil alive and support plant growth. But also those microbes can independently be useful. the idea is You would pour Mars dirt, Mars water, ice, and just like atmosphere, Mars CO2 atmosphere into a tank and you would grow these microbes and they would contain bioplastic within them that you could purify out and make our habitat.

[00:28:35] Erika: Bioplastic bricks, and if we succeed in making an organism that can grow entirely on atoms from Mars, suddenly we have unlocked the ability to produce an infinite amount of its products on Mars without, Single kilogram coming from earth, All you have to do is, drop off your bioreactor, like the raw equipment.

[00:28:56] Erika: And then you can cycle through and convert as much of these raw resources as you need into materials that you can use to build out habitats,

[00:29:04] Karl: Okay. So one quick question on that. we're talking about, what 50 kilo ton payload, , was that the number?

[00:29:10] Karl: metric tons. Okay. So what percentage of those 50 metric tons have we used by sending this bioreactor and these microbes and this robot that's going to gather Mars ice and feed the bioreactor and these bacteria

[00:29:23] Erika: Very small. So what's cool about this is the equipment setup that we're targeting. Has three boxes, they would all fit on your desk. The first box converts Mars atmosphere into, a fixed carbon feedstock, think sugar. it would probably be formate or acetate, which are other sorts of fixed carbon, but think sugar, basically.

[00:29:46] Erika: The second box, you put your carbon, your water, your microbe, and your dirt in, and it makes biomass. And the third box is a purification device that takes your biomass and separates out the bioplastic from it. so it literally would fit on your desk. Now, you're right. I haven't talked about a robot to scoop the dirt into the bioreactor

[00:30:05] Karl: or the water?

[00:30:06] Erika: or, yeah, to mine the water.

[00:30:08] Erika: There are companies that actually have, a lunar ice mining device. some of these things also already exist, but It is truly a minuscule amount of mass as a fraction of how much useful mass it can generate on site. that's the definition of what NASA calls in situ resource utilization.

[00:30:27] Erika: So using the resources that are on site rather than bringing stuff with you. And the value of that technology is how high you can pump that ratio. And I guess the argument I'm making is it's. If you can really make something that grows all on Mars atoms, in theory, you can use it as much as you want, an objective level, it would also be very small.

[00:30:49] Karl: Okay, one more just stupid question but why wouldn't you just make bricks on Mars? Why do we need all this biology? Why can't I just go to Mars, grab water? And I don't know, there's got to be something that will make our bricks without me having to bring all this biology with me.

[00:31:03] Erika: That's true. are simpler alternatives to The brick issue, the possible benefit of bioplastic is you can make more sophisticated things out of it too. So you can 3d print bioplastic, which is harder with Adobe brick. I don't think you can 3d print Adobe, although you could try

[00:31:20] Erika: not my area,

[00:31:21] Karl: and we're also talking about Mars regolith if that's what the surface is called, We don't know if it lends itself to making 3d printed brick.

[00:31:30] Erika: it's true. And you also have to make sure the bricks aren't toxic to the humans because they're going to still have the perchlorate in them. And. as you say, I mean, there are other technologies you could use for just building materials themselves. I think the thing I'm excited about is this is really nice solution to the building materials problem it sets us up for the next step, which is like, okay, we've made our first proof of concept microbes that won't die.

[00:31:57] Erika: In the dirt. Now, can we make more of them so we could actually have greenhouses that you grow macro scale plants in? so I'm trying to find and this is always the challenge of tackling these large scale science problems. You have to find a first application that is itself good idea and also sets you up perfectly to really go for gold and get to a truly green Mars that is just friendly to life period.

[00:32:21] Erum: yeah. And, I would love to of expand on that because, talking about that first application, you brought up bioplastics, you a research institute. How are you working with other companies? You talked about this company that's doing lunar water ice mining. , I know that you're in the ecosystem.

[00:32:36] Erum: how are you collaborating with other companies?

[00:32:38] Erika: Yeah, so one thing I'm actually really excited about, which is quite a departure from my experience in academic research science, is that because we are a research nonprofit that is not academic, we get to, share our results however and whenever we want, The career progression of me and my team is not tied to getting tenure or citations, and as a result, we have the opportunity to be way more open and collaborative than wise to be in academia where you need to maintain your academic moat, make sure that you publish well. think for Pioneer, having a successful flight test is More valuable goal than publishing a paper, to get there, we do open science publishing. So we actually post, technical updates every few months publicly on our sub stack, which has been really cool because you just Post science out into the world and then we get cold emails from companies that we hadn't heard of or companies We had heard of or other researchers scientists are really excited about this.

[00:33:47] Erika: And so we've gotten a lot of contact with people it has been really cool to have this immediate way to get insight into the things we're trying, how they're similar or different from what other people have tried, sometimes forewarning us of problems that we would have bumped into, and sidestepping them.

[00:34:06] Erika: So that's been really fun. we have funding from the Astera Institute, which is, Jed McCaleb's, philanthropy. Jed is also building a private space station, which is pretty cool. I want one of those. so, he founded VAST. VAST has a first, Haven 1 is launching early 2026, and we're trying to figure out if we can launch a payload on it and actually do a flight test of a bioreactor in, microgravity, and basically test in a centrifuge how gravity impacts microbial growth from Earth levels to Mars levels to zero.

[00:34:41] Erika: it's been really delightful to get to be in the research nonprofit setting, and it's just made reaching out to other people much easier.

[00:34:47] Erum: That's great.

[00:34:48] Karl: I highly recommend that anybody who's listening check out your sub stack because it's hours of fun if you want to learn about Mars dirt and what you guys are doing, I really, enjoyed you pointing me to that

[00:35:00] Karl: So let's go back to Mars dirt for a minute. when we spoke, you said that you guys have done more comprehensive biological analysis of Mars dirt than anyone else. And you did it, I think in an unusual way because we actually don't have any Mars dirt on Earth. And we're not going to actually get any Samples until the 2030s.

[00:35:19] Karl: So how do you make progress now? And speculate about Martian dirt, and feel accurate about your analysis about it.

[00:35:26] Erika: Yeah. So Mars sample return has been delayed slash canceled yet again, Oh, a real bummer. It's incredibly expensive, so I get it, but It does seem like we are going to be operating than I would prefer rover data for the foreseeable future.

[00:35:46] Erika: Pioneer spent a lot of the fall scrutinizing rover data. we wanted to do was we wanted to answer the question, if you take a bucket and you put water in it, And few spoonfuls of Mars dirt and shake it around and then you filter it. What is left in the water, we wanted to know this because that, soluble fraction of Mars dirt is going to be what the chemical nutrients are that any microbe growing in it will experience.

[00:36:12] Erika: addition, there's ton of other Mars dirt simulants that don't focus so much on the chemistry. Maybe they more focus on the particulate size. Of the dirt. So this is more stuff you'd use for like testing your rover tires people do even grow plants in them, but again, it's more like, does this dirt simulant allow the root structure to take shape?

[00:36:33] Erika: not so much does it actually feed the plant. so we wanted to make a simulate that is specifically focused on the chemical composition of Mars dirt. there was one, lander, the Phoenix wet chem instrument that did exactly this. It scooped up a little Mars dirt, it put some water on it, and then it did a few measurements.

[00:36:51] Erika: those measurements, , had I gotten the opportunity to suggest, which things they should measure, I would have asked for a whole bunch more that are focused on, especially nitrogen and phosphorus containing species, which matter for life. I think instead, the intention of the experiment was a little different.

[00:37:10] Erika: It was little bit more of a geology focus. And so what we were left to do was literally get down to well, they measured three replicates of this thing and one of them measured zero. And the other two were these numbers. So what do we think is really there? the reality is that really any time we're engineering a microbe to use a non traditional feedstock, in this case, Mars dirt, there's going to be inherent uncertainty about what's in it. if it's a waste stream, maybe it varies. on its own. In the Mars case, maybe we're just unsure about what's in there.

[00:37:41] Erika: So we can put error bars on there, based on how we understand the instrument and the measurement, but there's a range, so our task is to figure out how to engineer a microbe that will perform gracefully and just love it in the dirt, whether it's at the high end or the low end of the estimate, this gets back to this robustness issue. a part of why I'm excited about this research is because I think biotech and space science have a lot they could learn from one another. the thing biotech is bad at is certainty. so we would do really well as a discipline to figure out how to engineer for graceful performance within a range.

[00:38:18] Erika: Which is exactly the task and, if we can do that, then suddenly biotech really matures into something that could be mission critical and you could really trust on a space mission or elsewhere. it changes the engineering approach a lot.

[00:38:30] Erum: yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head for me because that's one of the reasons why I really enjoyed talking about both because you have these parameters to work within and you have limited resources. You have to get very creative. you're just working against completely different and gravity and everything.

[00:38:45] Erum: So it's really interesting. mentioned you know, There was a cancellation in getting more samples. What was that mission and why was it canceled? Is that a NASA mission? Because, you we're hearing a lot about commercial space endeavors. and those are ramping up sounds like quickly, but can you give us a little insight on what's going on with current missions, mission planning, I know there's uncertainty there and what's going on, on the government side versus on the commercial side.

[00:39:11] Erika: well, Mars sample return is a NASA effort that. Has a long history. People have wanted sample return for a long time, and we want it because, it is much easier to just bring a sample back to Earth and run it on a hundred different instruments to get different measurements than it is to take a hundred different instruments to Mars.

[00:39:32] Erika: we really want it people have really, really wanted sample return for a very long time and once it happens, whole new stuff is going to be possible. one example, we actually have some, moon dirt from the moon missions had a bunch left over, which is insane to me.

[00:39:48] Erika: They just had a bunch of leftover moon dirt. so someone actually just recently did a test of, growing plants in moon dirt. Versus Moondirt Simulants, and so we get to actually probe, like, how good are we at simulating this material. So, mean, all sorts of stuff is possible once it happens.

[00:40:04] Erika: the mission architecture, has gotten more complicated several times, which has ballooned the price. And it is no longer scheduled. think it had been scheduled for early 2030 return or something like that. And it's just, not going to happen in that timeframe.

[00:40:17] Erika: Now, as you say, there's a bunch of really cool stuff happening in the private space industry and also other countries. the U S is not the only country with space program. So there's a bunch of cool stuff happening. None of these organizations are really at the point where they could do, Mars return missions.

[00:40:38] Erika: so SpaceX could probably do a Mars lander, maybe even on its own. SpaceX doing a Mars lander with a human crew would require collaboration with NASA and no one is really at the point of thinking about sample return. I think it's just a testament to the distance. I mean, Mars is just really far away.

[00:40:55] Erika: And again, with the camping trip analogy, we can do really expensive camping trips. If you want to drop a lot of money, you can. Get to other places in the solar system, but getting back is really, really hard, and drives the price up. And I think fundamentally, there's bunch of technology that needs to be developed before any of those things are easy, or we can envision more permanent presence in other places.

[00:41:16] Karl: Yeah, I want to just say that, It's not three days getting to the moon. It's more like three years. I thought it was three months it's much further than that. so you mentioned that these guys are building a private, space station That you hope you can get some work done on, and you guys described your work as a Mars shot science as opposed to moonshot, but why not focus on the moon first?

[00:41:39] Karl: I mean, this idea of growing stuff on the moon and the moon is, three days away versus three years, and probably requires a lot of the same. I mean, tell me wrong because I'm, happy to be wrong all the time, but why not focus on the moon versus Mars?

[00:41:53] Erika: alas the moon has no nitrogen.

[00:41:57] Karl: Oh,

[00:41:58] Erika: Yeah, it's a little bit of a deal breaker. So yeah, When we first started we have a gigantic spreadsheet and the title of the spreadsheet is something like atomic and Energetic limits on planetary scale biomass or something like that. And basically we just counted the atoms.

[00:42:12] Erika: We were like, okay on earth living things are composed of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, a bunch of water, and then long tail that has maybe five actually essential, weird metal ions and, some pixie dust at the end, but mostly carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, water. if we literally just look at how many moles of these atoms there are on different.

[00:42:34] Erika: Planets or planetary bodies like the moon in our solar system. We can get an upper bound on how much biomass you could possibly have in that place. Mars looks shockingly similar to Earth. all of the atoms are in the wrong chemical format and temperature, but the atoms themselves are there.

[00:42:54] Erika: Mars has tons of carbon and water and nitrogen and phosphorus, which is awesome because that means, in principle, if you figure out how to do it, you could have a really thriving biosphere on the whole Mars as a planet, the moon has enough nitrogen on it. The whole thing, that if you took all of it and turned it into biomass, you would get one tree.

[00:43:14] Erika: That's it.

[00:43:15] Erika: It's actually shocking. shocking. because nitrogen it's volatile. And so over a very long time, it basically, goes out into space. So moon has lost nitrogen, over time. I mean, it's not a total deal breaker. If you want to bring nitrogen with you, you can basically use fertilizer, Fertilizer is nitrogen to biomass. So. some size. So that's on the table. But bottom line is the moon doesn't have the potential to be a thriving, life friendly place in the same way that Mars does. And that's what makes it less attractive.

[00:43:48] Erika: there aren't nutrients in moon dirt

[00:43:49] Erika: in the same way that Mars actually has nutrients.

[00:43:52] Karl: yeah. And just, as a reminder to our listeners, when Eric is talking about a mole, she's talking about the amount of pure substance, that is available anywhere. it's a, a way of scientifically measuring things. I had to look it up to remember,

[00:44:05] Erika: Yeah, sorry, you count the atoms, the little atoms of something,

[00:44:09] Erika: exactly.

[00:44:10] Erum: Yeah, that's, so interesting because there is a moon mission coming up the Artemis mission. when we talk to Kate Rubins, the mission for Artemis is to create a moon base. whether that's still happening, don't know. it just sounds like there's been a lot of changes.

[00:44:23] Erum: Although, the current administration, Trump's administration, he was up there saying we're going to Mars, what he says, and when it actually happens, I know that's a difference, but, it seems like he has a lot of supporters. I was also looking up Carl, as you were talking about, it takes three years to get to Mars.

[00:44:37] Erum: I was like, I thought I heard somewhere it was faster and does range. again, quick Google search, not a chat to BT search, but some people estimate up to, even 90 days, depending on what kind of technology you have. I mean, not even advanced technology in today's technology. that's, an engineering exercise.

[00:44:54] Erum: how fast you move? so I guess that's one part of it. But what about other planetary bodies? especially in the perspective pie in your labs. know you've done a lot of research on Mars and that's a lot, but have you looked at other planetary bodies?

[00:45:08] Erum: We talked about the moon, we have the planets of Jupiter, Saturn, which are much more farther away, but just curious if you could share some of your thinking on other planetary bodies and what biology can bring to them.

[00:45:19] Erika: Yeah, ice moons are fascinating. ice moons are the places in our solar system that are absolutely most likely to harbor life. Period. I mean, endogenously, like real life that they have there. Not that we bring, they are far away. there's a bunch of interest in doing search for life missions to, Jupiter's moons.

[00:45:39] Erika: I mean, ice moons, there's a whole bunch, not just a Jupiter. they're far away. It's tough, to give you a sense. So ice moons are so cool. they are a ball. They have a little rocky core, but then basically the whole thing is just a ball of water. think of a gigantic droplet of water, just floating in space that gets this ice crust on it.

[00:46:00] Erika: And Often they are tidally heated. So this is bonkers. Imagine a little ice ball and you're a planet that has a lot of other moons and those other moons constantly are shifting where the gravity comes from and it causes you to flex In a bunch of different dimensions and thus heat yourself through friction from the inside out and that's why they're ice moons.

[00:46:21] Erika: They have a gigantic ocean, the size of a moon, deep, that is heated, from the inside out. Ice moons are really cool. there are places in our solar system that have oceans of liquid methane, literally oceans of bacteria food. They are an unusual temperature, so it's a little hard to figure out if things could grow there, but we should check, I think the ice moons are really cool. I think they have a lot of potential to be places in, the distant future. Humanity as, a space faring species. Might one day use as another stop on the road to somewhere or permanent place to live. to me, those places are both too far away for us to seriously consider from a practical engineering standpoint and also very worthy of more search for life study, before we think about visiting them and, potentially contaminating them.

[00:47:11] Erika: and that's, what's interesting about Mars. Which again, with the math, it looks so much like Earth, at least at the atomic level, it has all the right things there. We know it used to support liquid water, it no longer does, and we have several billion dollars worth of data suggesting that it is today sterile.

[00:47:31] Erika: And yet, people still want to check, if there's still life on Mars, but I think Mars has lot more data supporting the idea that it is currently sterile than some of these other, exciting targets. then maybe briefly, Venus, of course, also comes up, Venus is pretty bonkers, it's a planet where it had a runaway greenhouse effect, so it's, like what could happen to Earth if, temperatures continue to rise, and eventually it gets to the point where you boil the oceans, and then the water vapor in the atmosphere further increases the temperature and then it's just over.

[00:48:02] Erika: So that's what happened to Venus. essentially. the surface of Venus is hot enough to melt metal. but there are places in the cloud layers that are pretty temperate, you know, 72 degrees, full of sulfuric acid. So that's not great, but 72 degrees, so we thought a lot also about whether that could be a place again, that you could institute, you create.

[00:48:24] Erika: Um, it doesn't seem to be promising because Venus lacks water, so it's actually super, super dry, and it's 100 times drier than the driest place that an organism we know of can grow, and that's a little too many zeros for me to think it would work. So that's Venus. Moon doesn't have nitrogen, Venus doesn't have water.

[00:48:47] Erum: it's, just so fascinating. we had, Chris Mason on and, He wrote this book, the next 500 years, and in there, he thinks about very vast timescales. So your mind starts thinking about, okay, well, almost seems like there's a hopscotch effect.

[00:49:03] Erum: maybe, billions of years ago. Mercury was where Earth was, and it's just getting closer to the Sun. that's also what Chris Mason is saying, that in 500 million years, the Earth will be engulfed by the Sun. So, perhaps this is our endeavor to go to Mars, to continue the human species, if we can, and make Mars Earth like.

[00:49:25] Erum: but it's fun to think about. I mean, I love thinking about this stuff. It's, just, so fascinating.

[00:49:30] Erum: but I was talking to someone who was at an event of very, let's say, people of high net worth that might have access to certain information that us, commoners might not have access to. Maybe you do, Erika, because you're in the know.

[00:49:43] Erum: that within two years We might have alien contact. saying that. In a conference like forum. what can you tell us, Erika? What do you know? Tell us the truth.

[00:49:55] Erika: I think it'd be great for me if there's aliens. And the reason I say that is because, A lot of the reason or at least a lot of the narrative for why humanity has gone to space to date is to search for life and the fact that we haven't found it, people want to be very careful, of course, with places that we think life might exist.

[00:50:17] Erika: So Mars, as a good example, it's a place where we can be quite certain there is no intelligent life on Mars. there aren't aliens there. but because We don't know of any, hashtag real aliens, intelligent civilizations you could talk to that are in the higher echelons of our hopes and dreams for, the types of other beings we might encounter.

[00:50:38] Erika: because we don't see those, we are becoming, increasingly protective of potential more simple forms of life, like microbial life, which is, of course, much harder to, determine whether or not there is a single microbe alive on an entire planet, one might say infeasible, it's tough to prove something doesn't exist when that's something, doesn't make, radio signals and stuff that you could detect, So think we're in this. interesting moment where both our ethics and also our intention and hopes for going to space are in a little bit of flux because we have been in this era of the narrative has been the search for life for 50 years. it may be the moment to acknowledge that's either a thing we've already found with aliens.

[00:51:22] Erika: So that sounds great. Or. A thing we have determined we haven't found quite nearby and to continue the search we have to switch to a new Overarching vision for why we go to space perhaps to live there, which is the obvious next narrative on the table so yeah if we suddenly find aliens that would be great because then we get to end this last, 50 years with a bang if not, it's an experiment that had a negative to inconclusive, ending.

[00:51:50] Erika: and no one likes that narratively as much,

[00:51:52] Karl: Yeah. Erika, I feel like we could talk to you another two hours. unfortunately we do have to, end the podcast. I feel like we could have covered so much more, but was there any, parting thoughts that you want to give to our listeners?

[00:52:05] Erika: Yeah. I maybe on this topic of why do we go to space? one of the reasons I'm excited about space is that I think on the ground. We have so many excuses for why we can't possibly have a human civilization be the way we would like it to be ideally. we have so many entrenched, non green technologies.

[00:52:27] Erika: We have so much infrastructure accumulated that prevent us from adopting, new ways to, live and manufacture things. we often just give up, If impossible meat is too expensive, we just won't eat it. and part of why I'm excited about, space exploration is, in a place so desolate with no infrastructure, it's both, that there are no excuses and it is a wonderful opportunity to create, a way to live.

[00:52:53] Erika: That's exactly what we want, with nothing standing in the way and competing with it. I think we. Set our sights too low, we think a lot about, how do we reduce our carbon footprint or how do we be less bad, have there be fewer negative externalities to our environment, but living on Mars could actually be the first human civilization that's net positive for the surrounding environment where our presence could, have positive impacts on the environment and remediate the soil enable it to become something that maybe it was a very long time ago before climate change on Mars, stopped it from being a garden, and I think that's a cool opportunity. I like the engineering challenges involved. and that's why I'm excited about it. I hope other people are too.

[00:53:38] Erum: we certainly are. Thank you so much, Erika. It's been a pleasure. We'll have to bring you back on as you continue your search, your research, your activities. I know you're really tuned into the ecosystem. So as you learn, as you talk, it'll be great to hear how things are going. So thank you so much for coming on the grab everything podcast.

[00:53:57] Karl: Thanks, Erika.

[00:53:59] Erika: Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. This was fun.

[00:54:05] Erum: wow. That was amazing. I could talk to her for hours and hours. What did you think of this episode? I mean, hello, this was great, right? No,

[00:54:17] Karl: I kept interrupting her and I kept interrupting you and I apologize to both of you because I gotten really good at not doing that. But with Eric, it was just so fascinating and I wanted to really get into it. I mean, come on, chassis bacteria for Mars.

[00:54:31] Karl: we talked a little bit about Craig Venter and his bacterial printer and sending that to the moon or to Mars, where it makes more sense. I just feel like I learned so much from Erika and was so grateful to have that conversation with her. you're more of the space person, Niram, but I feel like I dominated that conversation again.

[00:54:48] Karl: I'm sorry.

[00:54:49] Erum: it's okay. I mean, that's completely fine. I'm glad you were able to get excited about it. you and I have a hive mind, so you were asking the same questions that I had, so completely cool. I'm a little jealous that she gets to think about space biotech.

[00:55:01] Erum: every single day, I'm sure she thinks about other things too, but this is her bread and butter. it's not quite our bread and butter. It's more like a little sprinkling of salt here and there.

[00:55:12] Erum: you know,

[00:55:13] Erum: it's sad. I know, I know. But it is that rabbit hole that we like to go down. and then just.

[00:55:18] Erum: Being able to talk to her. And of course we talked to Chris Mason and astronaut Dr. Kate Rubins, it's always great to get their perspectives because they really make it more real. Sometimes I feel like When I think about space biotech or when we talk about it with people that are not in the industry, it just sounds like science fiction.

[00:55:33] Erum: It sounds like a thought experiment. But when Erika talked about it, it made it very real. Like, yeah, this is going to happen. Of course, this is happening. it's happening, we're planning. we're working on experiments in the lab to make sure that, when we go beyond just the camping trip.

[00:55:48] Erum: Protocol and we can do an establishment and we're going there to live. Here's what we need to do ahead of time or when we're there. I'm like, okay, so we're going on Google, we're looking up flights. it's real, looking at flights to Mars.

[00:56:04] Erum: I just loved her perspective of that. her background's incredible she's building on thinking. She worked at D. E. Shaw. We know that company. she's affiliated with the Francis Crick Institute. We didn't get a chance to talk to her much about that, but they have a biodesign laboratory.

[00:56:19] Erum: So I'm sure, she takes learnings and experiences from that and brings it to pioneer labs. what a wealth of information, we had to keep an eye on time because we could have kept that conversation going.

[00:56:29] Karl: For sure. Yeah. she's developing these chassis for being able to grow these microbes on Mars. And I'm just wondering, as a nod to our friend Andrew Hassel, when, some mining company is going to open up one of their minds and say, Oh, you guys can test this stuff, beneath the surface and, create a habitat, 1000 or 2000 feet below the ground in a place where, the environment is also going to be very rough, but serves as a testing ground. Andrew talked about something like that in the Genesis machine, and we mentioned that a couple of times on the podcast, but, that could happen, probably in the next three to five years, that kind of testing, which is long time before we start sending microbes to

[00:57:07] Erum: Yeah, and you know what? Maybe there microbes in the deep surface, deep underground of Mars. a lot of microbial biomass is actually underground on Earth. so maybe, they had to go down there because the atmosphere And it's radiation. So all the microbes on the surface died or maybe there are, radioactive microbes that we're not getting them Mars soil samples in the, mission that was slated to do that, but is there going to be a new mission? Can we get some soil samples dig, Don't just take a little bit of regolith or mars sand from the top. really dig deep, get a core that goes 10 feet deep, bring it up and then take that soil sample.

[00:57:46] Erum: I'm making it sound easy, but this is how we need to talk about it. Because, it's too challenging, people are like, Oh, yeah. But if it's like, just go to Mars. get the core, go all the way down 10 feet deep and just get it and then come back. Or maybe don't come back. Maybe we create a robot that can go there and do it all there and report back and we just go do, do, do, beep, boop, boop.

[00:58:07] Erum: my, computer sounds,

[00:58:10] Karl: sounds. I mean, what's cool also about Erika and Pioneer Labs is that, it does operate as a nonprofit the amount of science that they publish, we can say it's open source is pretty amazing. So anytime they do, a study they've got their engineering road map up.

[00:58:28] Karl: So you can see they're thinking about how they're going to build these microbial chassis for Mars. how they have really studied the Martian soil and then really what their paradigm is for doing synthetic biology in space. we'll put the link in the show notes, Erika and her team are amazing.

[00:58:44] Karl: just reading the stuff that they've done, is very eyeopening. I think it's worth giving a look at

[00:58:49] Erum: yep. And if you're working on any. Biology or biotech projects, soon as you start positioning it for space, going to unlock some funding. there is funding. I mean, I know right now, in this time in our world, there's a little bit of, uncertainty about where funding's coming from, but once it dissipates, it's going to be made available.

[00:59:09] Erum: I mean, people that are extremely wealthy, a current administration they are very excited about space. so there could be a lot more funding around it. think about your pitch spin for space and maybe they'll unlock something. You know what? It will definitely unlock some creative thinking.

[00:59:27] Erum: If you have any questions, please reach out to us. I mean, we love talking about not only space biotech, but of course, how we can grow everything to sustain our lives. what a great episode. I'm excited for some future episodes that are coming up. we're going to talk to some people that are friends that we love that are spearheading and growing biotech ecosystems and, some executives of companies that have been working with traditional chemistry, but now.

[00:59:52] Erum: Looking at biology to really change the game.

[00:59:56] Karl: well,thank you so much for listening. We do have a hotline. If you want to drop us any questions, the link is in the show notes. If you want to be a pro become a, Patreon and support our community. We love hearing from you. We love the people who support us.

[01:00:10] Karl: Until next time, thank you so much.

[01:00:12] Erum: That's the pod.