Dr. Ryan Sprenger and colleagues have developed the Studying Torpor in Animals for Space-health in Humans (STASH) experiment to advance hibernation technology for space exploration.
Guest | Dr. Ryan Sprenger, Senior Research Scientist, Fauna Bio [@faunabio]
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-sprenger-ph-d-66720a2a9/
On Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/ryan.sprenger.77
Host | Matthew S Williams
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/matthew-s-williams
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Episode Notes
Dr. Ryan Sprenger and colleagues have developed the Studying Torpor in Animals for Space-health in Humans (STASH) experiment to advance hibernation technology for space exploration. Their concept was selected for Phase I development by NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which could lead to an experiment aboard the ISS.
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Resources
Studying Torpor in Animals for Space-health in Humans (NASA): https://www.nasa.gov/general/studying-torpor-in-animals-for-space-health-in-humans/
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For more podcast Stories from Space with Matthew S Williams, visit: https://itspmagazine.com/stories-from-space-podcast
The STASH Experiment and Hibernation Technology for Space | A Conversation with Dr. Ryan Sprenger | Stories From Space Podcast With Matthew S Williams
Matt: [00:00:00] The authors acknowledge that this podcast was recorded on
the traditional unceded lands of the Lekwungen peoples. Hello, and welcome
back to Stories from Space. I'm your host, Matt Williams. And joining me today
is Ryan Springer, the Senior Research Physiologist at Fonda Bio. A berkeley
california based medical research firm is a former postdoctoral research fellow
at the university of wisconsin and madison And a specialist in cardiovascular
and pulmonary physiology Dr. Sprenger welcome to the show.
Sprenger: Oh, thank you so much for having me excited to be here.
Matt: Thank you And now today what we are really going to get into is your
concept A revolutionary concept, which is known as the Studying Torpor in
Animals for Space Health in Humans Experiment, or STASH. And this was
recently selected by NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program for Phase
1 development.
So, before we get into all [00:01:00] that, which promises to be very cool, can
you tell us a little bit about how you got to this place now? What, uh, what was
the road like that brought you here?
Sprenger: Yeah, uh, you know, certainly, uh, maybe serendipitous or fortuitous
road, uh, certainly for me, but I started so early on in my research career. I
started in comparative physiology, cardiovascular pulmonary work, and
primarily the animals that I was working in were hibernating species. Um, that
was my, my general interest to begin with. And so throughout my undergrad
and master's research, I worked in sort of what we would call the Mecca of,
yeah, hibernation research in the United States, and that's where the 13 night
ground squirrel, a very commonly used, uh, hibernating model, uh, was often,
uh, experimented on in Wisconsin in the States. And so I was surrounded by a
lot of hibernation physiologists and biologists, and I grew an interest in that.
And early on in my, my hibernation research career, I became very interested in
any mitigative effects that [00:02:00] hibernation might serve for space flight
and space exploration. It was something that. I think like many of us do I'd look
up into the stars and and think, how can I make an impact so that that interest
grew through my early research career and really started to peak and flourish
when I went to UBC for my doctoral research, I was in William Wilson's lab
and a former postdoc in his lab.You might know this name. Jessica mirror. I met her on occasion and really a
truly inspiring person who was making an impact in the space field. And so it
just grew my interest in how hibernation might, might help spaceflight. And so
as my career progressed, I met a lot of people and talked with a lot of other
hibernation physiologists and biologists about these types of questions and grew
a network.
And then when I, uh, arrived at Fauna Bio, myself and Mark Betker, another
person listed on the grant, uh, as a co PI. We got together and started to come up
with ideas on how we might [00:03:00] actually be able to study hibernation in
space, which hasn't occurred yet. It's the capability is just not there. And so our
first step was, well, then let's make the capability.
How do we do this? How do we get to the point where we can study hibernation
in space? And that's where STASH was born.
Matt: Now, looking at the concept, it's really quite interesting. But what really
surprised me was, Now, you guys developed this because, in fact, there's been
very, actually, I think it'd be more accurate to say there's been no research so far
in terms of hibernation in space.
Is that correct?
Sprenger: Yeah, yeah, that's how I would describe it as well. And a few
keywords on that is in space. There's certainly predictive experiments that we
can run on the ground to start to understand, you know, maybe do these, these
animals have protections against things that you might run into space.
But, but precisely so there's been no examination and hibernation in space
specifically.
Matt: And in fact, I was actually surprised to, to hear that, uh, [00:04:00] at
least initially, because I know NASA has been looking into this for many years,
ever since they announced their journey to Mars plans. This was an idea that
was on the books and they, they'd done work with space works.
I can recall reporting on that many years ago. Yeah. And the idea being, of
course, this may very well be necessary for deep space missions, long duration
transits. So can you tell us for my listeners, why is this technology considered?
So very, very important for missions to Mars and of course, beyond.
Sprenger: Yeah, yeah.I think really what it helps out with or what it's critical for is trying to find ways
to protect human health in space. As I'm sure your listeners know, and as you
know, that space is a very harsh environment. And so I think NASA has a
RIDGE acronym that they use for the different hazards of space. And, you
know, if I'm remembering the RIDGE acronym [00:05:00] correctly, it's
Radiation, Isolation, Distance from Earth, Gravity Fields.
That's a really big one, obviously. And then Hostile Environments, I think, is
their last. And Hibernation itself might provide answers to almost every, every
part of that acronym. I mean, there seems to be precedents for radiation
protection or radio protection in these, uh, hibernating species. And, and that's
actually something that's being well examined on the ground right now.
Again, as more of a prediction rather than an actual examination, because we
can't mimic cosmic radiation precisely as a matter of fact, we're actually looking
into that ourselves, but myself and Mark Becker with in collaboration with
Mike while at Colorado State, uh, we're using simulated cosmic radiation to try
to understand if these animals have.
Protections against low chronic doses, like you would see in space, but that's all
to say that there is precedence for these animals having radio protection. And
that goes back to 19. gosh, I think 58 is when they started maybe even earlier
51. I think it was Smith and 51 and [00:06:00] Kuskin and 59. Sachia and 68.
These are all scientists, hibernation biologists that have looked at this specific
question. Do they have protections against radiation? And it appears they do. I
actually, there's another collaborator. I have Matteo Suri in Italy. He's, he's done
a more recent examination of synthetic torpor. So this is a torpor that's been
induced in an animal that doesn't normally go to torpor.
And even then they show some signs of radio protection. And so Hibernation
certainly might provide protections against radiation, the radiation damage that
you get that you get in space. Isolation, if you're able to reduce activity in
humans, you can sort of get rid of that feeling of isolation. So they're in a, for
example, if you see in the movies, maybe a pod or something like that, where
they're in a suspended state and not really.
Perceiving isolation, and that, that I think applies to the distance from earth as
well. And then gravity fields. This is another hot topic of research, particularly
with hibernation, because these species appear to show protections against
[00:07:00] disease atrophy, and that's both bone and muscle. And so theseanimals, for example, they're completely immobile for up to nine months in
some species, with some exceptions during the hibernation period.
They're not using their muscles and they're not using their bones and they're not
loading their bones. I should say. And if, if, for example, you do that in a
human, you lose muscle. Like, crazy, it goes away quite quickly. It's disuse
attributes is a problem and it's certainly a problem. In space, and I know that
astronauts spend a lot of time exercising to help mitigate this.
But it seems that hibernation might provide. Tools or pathways that we can tap
into to, to help mitigate these, these issues that you have in space. And so it, it
really seems like hibernation might be a great catchall for a lot of the problems
that humans have in space. Now, in my mind, the other option is to get to where
you're going faster.
You can also reduce time and space that way, but I, I think there's a limit set
that as well.
Matt: In fact, yes, in terms of what urination is good for there. Yeah. It does put
me in mind. There are several [00:08:00] classical examples from science
fiction. And one that comes to mind right now, when you mentioned isolation
was aliens where at the very end, little Newt is saying to Ripley, so we're going
to sleep all the way home.
And then of course they, they go down and for their repose and the music is all
nice and gentle and calm. And, and in fact, yes, this is, this is part of it. It's that.
One of the greatest challenges with long duration spaceflight, how do we keep a
crew provided for? The supplies, how do we deal with all the waste they're
going to generate?
Not just human waste, but all packaging and so forth. And ultimately, how do
we keep them from going crazy and turning on each other? Cause yeah, and, uh,
an Orion spacecraft or any other kind of transfer habitat that's on the books right
now, they're pretty cramped when, when all was said and done, yeah.
Yeah. So yes, yeah. That, that of course is the main thing. I was interested to
learn that, in [00:09:00] fact, it could mitigate radiation exposure. Now, can you
describe for us the STASH experiment? What exactly does it look like? Because
I remember reporting on it and I thought, Oh, that's, that's quite neat. But yeah,
give us a little rundown on how it works.Sprenger: Yeah, yeah. So the stash experiment as a whole is, you know, we,
we designed it in 3 phases more or less to, to, to mirror the NIAC progression.
Um, the 1st phase being generally speaking, proof of concept and conceptual
design of the unit, which, which we are quite far along on already. And then this
building a prototype and testing and making sure that it actually works and
measures the physiology we want to measure.
And the 2nd phase being testing the units. Or more or less making a flight
where the unit and then testing the unit on the ISS to make sure that it again is
measuring the things that we wanted to measure. And the 3rd phase is, is again,
the most scientifically interesting face, and that's actually putting a hibernating
animal in space.
And for the 1st time, understanding [00:10:00] questions, like, does a hibernator
go into hibernation in space? Does it still show muscle atrophy and disuse
atrophy protections? Does it show protections against radiation? And so that's
the phases of the experiment. And so what we, what we've had to do initially
with the proof of concept and design is basically make a unit that allows us to
hybrid in an animal in space.
And. As you might be able to guess, what you have to do to hibernate an animal
in general is you have to make it cold and you have to take its food away. That's
the two main things. Now, there are species that want to hibernate so bad that
you could keep it warm and keep its food by it, and it'll still go into hibernation,
and that might be a useful tool in this endeavor.
But, but that's precisely it is firstly making a unit that's capable of getting an
animal into hibernation in space and being able to measure physiology and
phenotypes that you might see in space to answer the questions like. Is the
animal hibernating and etc. And so that's, that's what stash is really designed to
do it as it progresses.
Matt: Now, in terms of the layout of it, or the, [00:11:00] uh, the mockup, there
was a nice handy illustration there provided in your proposal. And so. You've
got two animal chambers, so two rodents would be inside these and you've got a
infrared cameras watching them, a thermal shield to make sure the chambers are
nice and cooled.
And then a bunch, a whole bunch of sensors that are recording their vitals.
Yeah. So, so to clarify, while they're in the chamber there, you, you're gradually
lowering the temperature on them to induce a state of torpor and then seeing
how they do. Yeah,Sprenger: yeah, the, the, the engineering of this project is actually actually
been quite a, quite a bit of fun.
I've dabbled myself in the past, uh, in designing these types of equipment, not
necessarily meant for space, but meant to measure physiology. And so being
able to entangle this, these physiological measurements with something that
would work in space has been a lot of fun. So, and you're precisely right.
Two animals we've [00:12:00] designed for, and this is if we were to send, for
example, a 13 legged ground squirrel, that's about the space that we have in the
unit. We are space limited in the sense that we're partnering with Bioserve
Space Technologies and specifically Tobias Netterweiser at Boulder. And
together we're integrating the unit that we've designed into the SABL unit, the
Space Automated Biological Laboratory unit, which is already on the ISS.
Several of those units are on the ISS. And so that provides us the opportunity to
More or less refrigerate the animals. That's that's how you cool these animals in
on the ground, for example, and so we've got a refrigerating unit that can very
precisely change environmental temperature and. So being able to fit two
animal enclosures into this SABLE unit within the STASH unit allows us the
opportunity to measure, like you're saying, a lot of different things.
We can get things like total ventilation using pressure sensors. We can get
things like metabolic rates, oxygen consumption, and CO2 production with CO2
and O2 sensors. We've got infrared cameras that monitor the animal's activity.
We can also implant [00:13:00] the, uh, animals with telemeters that allow us to
measure things like heart rate, blood pressure and activity as well.
And so we, we can grab as much physiology as we can possibly fit. As far as
sensors onto this unit, which I think is important to the study because, you
know, like we were saying, we only can send 2 animals at a time if we're
sending 1 unit. So we've got to grab as much as we can from from each of these
animals.
And so, yeah, and thermal shield to make sure the animals are maintained at the
temperature that we're happy with, because these electronics produce heat. I
think in that diagram, we've also factored in that acquisition boxes so that we
can digitalize the voltage signals from the sensors. So it allows us to real time
monitor these animals and know exactly when they're in hibernation and for
how long.Matt: And of course, I want to emphasize this. This is all done slowly,
gradually, carefully so that the animals are safe. And yeah. Oh,
Sprenger: absolutely. By all the ethics committees, which we interact with
quite frequently, these animals are kept. They're very precious animals to us. So
we, we keep them as safe as we possibly [00:14:00] can.
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt: Yeah. Must emphasize that there, because of course. Definitely. The
mention of animal testing in space. But of course, yeah, and with the data from
this. I mean, eventually the idea is to do human trials, I would imagine.
Sprenger: Yeah, we would like to. I mean, you know, and it's hard to say
exactly where the data go, and we hope that it goes positively, but, you know, as
science is, we don't necessarily know exactly yet, but that is the hope one day.
We hope that we can ascertain some information from this that will help us.
either produce some sort of targeted memetic that allows us to induce
hibernation in humans, or to at least find the medics that help with the radio
protection or something like that. So yeah, the end goal is, is really not just
purely academic, but it also is as the title, our title and stash suggests, we really
hope to help humans with this.
We hope to to mitigate some of these effects. And this is something that's not
been, that's not been mitigated yet with planned long duration flights on the
upcoming schedule. You know, there's [00:15:00] certainly is a danger for the
astronauts. As they progress in that, that long duration flight. So we're hoping
that we can help with that.
We hope we can help humans. Certainly a tough thing to have to, to do and talk
about with regard to, to having animals help us with this, but sometimes a
necessary thing. Certainly. Yeah.
Matt: And of course the caveats and addendums. Cruelty free and been
approved. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Now, in terms of this research, there are likely to
be applications for here on earth too, as I would imagine, because, and this is, I
wish I'd mentioned this sooner, but this is in fact a growing field in
biotechnology, isn't it?Studying, as you guys said in your proposal, the phenotype of hibernating
animals. For human health applications. And so in terms of applications here on
earth, what, what kind of things can we see coming
Sprenger: from this? Yeah. Yeah. You're precisely right about this and I'm glad
you did bring it up, but I think it's a really interesting and very important facet
to this type of [00:16:00] research is again, we're looking at these, these
questions in a very extreme environment.
What it does is it provides a novel way to look at some of these questions that
we still run into here on earth. And. You know, the radiation type is different,
but it still might provide some answers to how these animals are protecting
themselves from radiation, which also could be used potentially to protect
humans against radiation on Earth as well.
But I think a really important one for this, and something that certainly
FaunaBio is interested in as a company, and we are as well, is, you know, with a
new novel environment, which you're studying things like disuse atrophy, bone
atrophy, and these, Circumstances in which muscle metabolism has changed or
must be altered to protect these tissues.
These are hot topics on Earth. Muscle metabolism in the field of obesity, for
example, is very important to understand. With trying to drop mass but not
dropping muscle mass, for example. But preserving muscle mass and bone mass
in situations where you have tissue satrophy in humans, it [00:17:00] is very
important to study.
And again, providing a novel environment in which you can test these
questions. I think is going to be really key to helping again, not only humans in
space, but humans on the ground. And the way we designed this unit was not to
be specifically just for hibernation. We're hoping to provide a unit that is usable
by a lot of different researchers with different questions.
We don't necessarily have to cool the unit. You can keep the unit basically any
temperature between four degrees Celsius since 37. And so you can ask
physiological questions in space as well. That's not necessarily hibernation
directed. You can get these answers from this unit as well. So I think it's.
Well, we hope it to be a far reaching way of examining important questions and
that's not even talking about cardiovascular and pulmonary risks and, you know,
the SANS risks, for example, the space associated neuro ocular syndrome, you
know, these are, these are other areas that there's not a tremendousunderstanding about, but we might gain more of an understanding with these
types of experiments on the space station.
So, you know, what, what we can pull for that. As far as health on [00:18:00]
earth is again a novel way of looking at it.
Matt: So, in fact, if I were to just come right out and ask it, could we be looking
at for real cryogenic suspension in the not too distant future for aging humans
who want to cheat death, but also for people who are hoping for.
Medical cures for currently untreatable and uncurable diseases. I mean, that is a
bit of a sense I get. That was a huge craze towards the end of the 20th century,
so I would say a lot of people are sort of cynical about that idea now, but Is that
in fact a possibility
Sprenger: here? You know, I, I've been asked that question a lot, actually, and
it's a question I've thought about a lot, and I think a lot of the hibernation
researchers have thought about a lot too.
And that, that really is the golden egg. That's the golden apple is, you know,
getting humans to hibernate or go into some sort of suspended state, which
could have far reaching effects, like you said, for longevity or, um, you know,
even acute traumatic injury. [00:19:00] There's a lot of things that hibernation
might be able to provide for humans.
And. You know, that, that's actually a question that FaunaBio is asking
specifically, not, not even necessarily related to stash, but that's a question
FaunaBio is asking specifically is how do we tap into these extreme animals or
animals doing these extreme things to help cure incurable diseases or come up
with new targets or new pathways to, to help with issues that we have on earth.
But to me, you know, obviously my greatest interest is that specifically, can we
get a human to hibernate? Can we go into a suspended state? And, you know,
this, this is, you're right, this is a question that's been asked. For a long time, I
think DARPA used to hold symposia in the early 2000s asking that question
specifically of the hibernation field.
Are we there yet? Or how close are we? And it's hard to put a number on how
close we are, but you know, certainly in the last 20 years from the onset of the
21st century, we have come a long ways. I mean, we, we now have very reliable
methods of getting animals to go into animals that don't normally hibernate,getting them [00:20:00] to go into a synthetic torpor state that mimics the
hibernation state quite well.
And Oftentimes it's providing protections that we see in the hibernation or
hibernating species. So we're moving forward, but are we at the point where we
can get a human specifically to hibernate? I certainly wouldn't say that's like a
next 5 years thing, but maybe 10, maybe 15. I think we're moving in a really
good direction.
And really, at the end of the day, we're really hoping that STASH will help with
that. We're hoping that we can help move that question forward into a usable
Matt: thing. Yes. Well, I certainly hope so, because The applications for space
exploration alone are very exciting. And this is one of two sort of, how would I
describe this, sort of two avenues of research it seems when it comes to deep
space missions.
It's like, can we get there faster? And if not, what can we do to just cut down on
the amount of time the crews actually have to be in a wakeful [00:21:00] state,
eating, breathing, defecating, so forth, carrying out all these human functions
that of course take up space and consume resources and produce waste. Yes. If I
were to ask you and I, I hate that I always do this, but I always love to ask
people, researchers, it's like putting aside all the cautious optimism or, you
know, we don't, we don't want to speak too soon on the developments that
we're, we're helping here, but in terms of like, what do you like to visualize
here?
Like, if you're thinking about your work and the potential applications in the
future there. What exactly does this look like to you? What do you think that we
could be achieving by the time, say, 2040s, 2050s, that missions are going deep
space?
Sprenger: Yeah, well, I think, in my mind, again, throwing aside the cautious
[00:22:00] optimism, I would love to see Some sort of suspended state in which
humans are able to go into hibernation state.
I like that facet of the 2 options of going into deep space travel because I, and
really, I, I think the best case scenario is it's both you travel faster and you put
humans down into a suspended state. What that helps with. With regard to
putting humans into a suspended state, for example, is weight. Like you say,
humans have to consume things and that that's weight that has to go up into
space.We defecate, we do all these things that are a product of our metabolism. And
what hibernation might provide is with the suspended state comes a reduced
metabolism. And so we consume less things, we defecate less and we consume
less oxygen. So there's not as much of a worry on that side. And that's all true
from hibernators.
They, they don't defecate during hibernation season. They don't urinate, they
don't consume any food, and they don't consume water either. And so, in an
ideal world, in the maybe not so distant future, I would love to see that
specifically. As far as space flight's concerned, I would [00:23:00] love to see it.
Or at least help with getting to the point where we can.
Move humans into a hibernation like state, and we're learning that it doesn't
necessarily have to be the exact same as a hibernating ground squirrel. For
example, that's going down to a body temperature of 2 degrees Celsius, you
know, bears hibernate as well. And their, their body temperature is not going
nearly that low.
And so there seems to be this continuum in which you can fall and the benefits
They accumulate quite quickly, even if you're early or high up in this
hibernation state. And I think added on to this, personally, I would love to see
hibernation continue to provide avenues for human health on Earth. I think
there's opportunity there.
You know, hibernators are well protected against ischemia reperfusion.
Hibernators are well protected against diabetes. They're well protected against
cardiovascular issues. So, you know, these are things that I think we can tap into
again with these new avenues. Or new ways of asking these questions, including
the stash unit, so that we can help humans here, but we can also get humans to
go [00:24:00] further.
That that's my ideal
Matt: progression. Excellent. And well, I hope generation ships might be a
potential application of someday because of course, in terms of the, the long,
longterm, and again, this is something that. Not just NASA, of course, but
futurists of every kind and research institutes. How do we go interstellar, right?
Beyond deep space and going to other planets and being interplanetary. How do
we go interstellar? And again, it's, it's one of two options there. If you're, if
you're talking about people, it's either go really fast. Or, again, hibernate, buildships that can accommodate lots of people and hopefully that they will have that
option for going down for, uh, reefer sleep as, uh, heard it called.
So, yeah, interstellar travel, this, this too, could be [00:25:00] a dream at this
point, but definitely, uh, do you ever think that when you're conducting your
research, it's like we're actually getting closer to realization of this?
Sprenger: Yeah, yeah, certainly, you know, I think, I think we've all got that
starry eyed, you know, bushy tail looking to the stars and, and see how far we
can go. And, you know, so when you're doing research like this, that's
something that you'd at least like to contribute to. And, and that's where I put
myself in a lot of this is, you know, I, it might be that I, but I'm not involved in
the teams that do this or am alive during a time that this happens.
But. I'd like to think that we're at least helping progress that forward and
providing the basic knowledge that we're going to need to maybe one day do
that. Yeah, absolutely.
Matt: Yeah, and of course, this is a question that comes up a lot. I found in
science communication, and I'm wondering if people like yourself on the
research end, if you're ever subjected to this, whatever it seems, the subject of
[00:26:00] humans getting out into space, the migration to space, greater um,
Exploration or even, or especially human settlement on other planets and such,
there, there's pushback from people who would say, oh, this is distracting from
our problems here, shouldn't we deal with our problems here first?
Is that something you've encountered there in your, in your work?
Sprenger: Yeah, certainly. You know, what I, what I should say is this type of
question is certainly have been with regard to the hibernation and interplanetary
travel and, and, and helping, you know, one helping the other. It's certainly
something that, that has come up and, and you know, when you look at space
agencies as a whole, there certainly is interest, but it's not as much interest as
other things.
And I think that's sort of reflecting that, that general feeling of, you know, why
not just. Make a better home or clean up our home rather than trying to go to
different planets. And I think for me, I don't think 1 distracts from the other. I
think they could potentially inform on each other, you know, helping clean up
the earth here might help us [00:27:00] prep a planet for interplanetary
settlement.And so, you know, in my mind, I, I think there's benefit to come from both. And
so, but in a limited resource environment, maybe that's not the case. I'm biased.
Of course, I think interplanetary travel and settlement is, I think, important for
the progression of the human species. But again, we're talking pretty far out.
I don't think we're there
Matt: yet. Well, that is the correct answer. Yes. As far as, as far as I've learned
that, that yes, this is definitely the case. It's that we can do both. And in fact, we
may need to do both. One may be very much dependent upon the other.
However, that's, that's a subject for, uh, probably a whole nother episode.
Sprenger: A debate for a long time.
Matt: Oh yes. In any case, thank you for coming on, and best of luck with your
research. And so, final question there. Now that you have been selected by the
NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts, or [00:28:00] NIAC program. The
next step will be to build a prototype for testing aboard the ISS. Yeah, yeah,
Sprenger: that's what we see, uh, our progression happening.
Um, like I said, we're, I've been thinking about this concept quite a bit and
we've been working on this for some time trying to figure out what are the best
ways to do these things with regard to this unit. So, Yeah. In phase one, the goal
by the end of phase one is to have a working prototype that can show proof of
concept in the context of being able to get an animal to go into hibernation in it,
for it to measure the physiology that we intend to measure, and for it to integrate
with the sable unit flawlessly, essentially.
That's the goal for phase one. And, you know, obviously after that, like I think
most other NIAC awardees this year and in other years, you know, the goal is
to, to put ourselves in the best position possible to go for phase two and that,
you know, in phase two, we see ourselves. Building essentially a flight worthy
unit, a unit that's ready to go up.
So that, that's where our progression is, is at right now, certainly. [00:29:00]
And, you know, I've, I've had a lot of fun with the program so far, the people
that I've interacted with there. They're, they're really great people, and I'm really
excited for the progression of even just phase 1, for example, with the
orientation meetings and everything, because I get the opportunity to meet a lot
of really intelligent people thinking about a lot of really cool questions, and, youknow, there is a little bit of intimidation in there, because if you look at the list
of awardees this year, there's not really any looking at it.
Any sort of biological questions except for us. So I'll be stepping a little bit out
of my comfort zone with regards to physiology and asking the types of
questions that might be useful or interesting to the people, the other people on
the list, but yeah, very excited for the progression of phase one and aiming for
phase two.
Matt: Well, excellent. And as I said, I wish you the best of luck because this is
one of many technologies, especially the selectees for this year that are. So very
cool and that I really would like to see [00:30:00] as a an insider here is
someone who Was part of this program in the selectees the Objectives or the
priorities really that have been assembled or that that sort of become clear from
all the people who were selected for development.
Yes, they are. How do we facilitate interplanetary exploration with crude
vehicles? How do we facilitate interstellar exploration so far? Just robotic
vehicles and. What other, what other priorities would you say really showed up
this year?
Sprenger: Oh, gosh, that's a good question. Um, you know, I, I think you're
right on a lot of the exploratory side.
You know, I think there's, there's quite a bit of interest in improving imaging,
deep space imaging. I think that's, uh, if I'm remembering correctly, that's quite,
that shows up quite a bit on the list. Um, I think there's even one, one that I'm
really [00:31:00] interested in, in talking with the, the lead PI on is it was
entitled detoxifying Mars.
It's, um, talking about getting rid of, uh, percolates. Um, so, you know, that,
that's a, that's a terraforming type question, you know, so I think there's good.
There's a good coverage. Um, but, but I. I think you hit the nail on the head. I
think a lot of the interest is in improving exploration. That's not manned, um,
and improving imaging.
So being able to capture these images and study, uh, different parts of the
universe. With, with more clarity. So that's a big interest. And, and like I said,
we're the only ones on that list that are interested in a biological question and a
hibernation question to boot. And, you know, I think that sort of mirrors
NASA's sort of overall goal.I mean, there is still some interest in hibernation type questions, biological type
questions, but it's not nearly as high as, as these other questions. You know, so
there are people working on it, on these types of questions, again, on the
ground. So there [00:32:00] remains interest, I think, in hibernation. It's an
encouraging interest.
But, but that's how it is, how I would describe the list, uh, this year, certainly,
you know. Excellent.
Matt: Yeah. Well, thank you very much. And I hope very much that we get a
chance to talk in the future, that there are new developments that include an
experiment that goes to the ISS, and hopefully some progress towards The
inevitable or desirable human trials and, and tests that would be very interesting
to see.
And of course, yes, Mars right at this point, NASA is saying that. A truly crude
mission, one that goes to Mars and has surface operations for several months or
more and then returns home with all this wonderful science and, uh, Martian
samples and so forth. That's not likely to happen until 2040, if that.[00:33:00]
And I feel, yeah, there's a bit of a crisis here. We need to Whoop ourselves up
and try to get, try to get there sooner. So, yeah, I'd love to see it. Yep. Yeah.
And if in fact hibernation is necessary, if we can't, or not even advanced
propulsion alone. Right. But it does seem like, uh, maybe this would be a better,
not a either or, but an and sort of thing, you know?
Sprenger: I, yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think, I think these two would, would
service themselves quite nicely. You can go faster with less weight.
Matt: Absolutely. Oh, yeah. Win, win, win. Yeah. Yes. Well, thank you so
much. Well, thank you. And, uh, and one more time. I only keep repeating this
because I can't emphasize it enough. Best of luck and wishing you all
Sprenger: success.
Thank you so much. It's been, it's been a joy to talk with you. I've had
Matt: a lot of fun. And to my listeners, I want to recommend you check
[00:34:00] out the STASH proposal, which again is short for Studying Torpor in
Animals for Space, Health and Humans. You can read about it all on NASA's
website, just simple word search and it will take you there.Be sure to check out some of the other selectees for this year's NIAC program,
and tune in in the coming weeks as we will once again be talking about some
exciting missions that are currently in progress. Or will be happening in the next
few years, as well as concepts like the Hubble Tension and Spermia and the
Waterworld Hypothesis.
In the meantime, thank you for listening. I'm Matt Williams and this has been
Stories from Space.