By Alan Boyle
March 8, 2025
Let’s face it: Area is a hostile surroundings for people. Even on Mars, settlers might need a tough time dealing with potentially lethal levels of radiation, scarce resources and reduced gravity.
In “Mickey 17” — a brand new sci-fi film from Bong Joon Ho, the South Korean filmmaker who made his mark with “Parasite” — an expendable house traveler named Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is uncovered again and again to lethal dangers. And each time he’s killed, the lab’s 3D printer simply churns out one other copy of Mickey.
“He’s dying to save lots of mankind,” the movie’s poster proclaims.
Whereas it’s probably to create 3D-printed body parts for implantation, the concept of printing out a whole human physique and restoring its backed-up recollections is pure science fiction. Nonetheless, Christopher Mason, a Cornell College biomedical researcher who research space-related well being points, is intrigued by the film’s premise.
“In case you may 3D print a physique and completely reconstruct it, you may, in concept, study lots a couple of physique that’s put in a extra harmful scenario,” he says within the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast. “I believe the idea of the film is definitely fairly attention-grabbing.”
Mason explores the methods by which the human physique might be optimized for dwelling in house in a ebook titled “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds.” He argues that it’s as much as us people to make sure the long-term way forward for life within the universe by taking the instruments of evolution into our personal fingers.
Even when we’re in a position to keep away from blowing ourselves up, or succumbing to the consequences of local weather change, we have only about a billion years earlier than the solar reaches a stage of exercise that will make Earth unlivable.
“I need to take into consideration preserving life, which necessitates us going to different planets and ultimately different stars,” Mason says. “As a result of people are the one species with an consciousness of extinction, this provides us a novel responsibility towards life … what I name a deontogenic form of precept, the genetic responsibility towards all life.”
Christopher Mason research helpful genetic adjustments. (Credit score: Weill Cornell Drugs)
The excellent news is that we are able to regulate to most of the rigors of spaceflight, not less than quickly. Mason and different researchers noticed that once they monitored the well being of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly throughout his practically yearlong stint on the Worldwide Area Station in 2015-2016. They in contrast Kelly’s bodily and genetic profile with that of his twin brother, Mark Kelly, who was monitored down on Earth.
The NASA-sponsored Twins Study discovered that Scott Kelly skilled adjustments within the ways in which his genes and his immune system labored whereas he was in house — probably due to radiation publicity and different space-related stresses.
“Greater than 90% of those adjustments actually appeared to return again to regular inside a couple of months being again on Earth,” Mason mentioned. However a number of the adjustments had been longer-lasting.
“There’s this nagging query of this small proportion of genes and features that had been perturbed that we’re nonetheless finding out to this present day in different crews, with SpaceX and different business suppliers,” he mentioned.
The stresses of the house surroundings are prone to change into extra regarding as explorers and settlers transcend Earth orbit and our planet’s protective magnetic shield. Which will get us again to the issues that may kill Mickey 17 and different earthly life kinds.
Radiation is the highest concern. The research carried out thus far counsel that astronauts could possibly be uncovered to cancer-causing levels of radiation throughout a three-year mission to Mars and again. Thick shielding may cut back the chance, however Mason suggests utilizing genetics as nicely.
“For instance, tardigrades are these water bears that may survive even the vacuum of house and heavy doses of radiation,” he says. “We’ve made cells in my laboratory that may really take a tardigrade gene and use it in a human cell, and have this enhance of radiation resistance — an 80% lower within the [DNA] harm that we observe.”
If scientists may use CRISPR-style gene-editing instruments to insert the tardigrade gene into Mickey’s genome, which may head off one in every of his deaths. In his ebook, Mason lists different genetic methods that would improve the vision of house vacationers, boost their immune response, or make it simpler for them to “hibernate” throughout an extended journey.
“The best one, I believe, contains the power to make your whole personal amino acids and nutritional vitamins,” Mason says. “The gene to make vitamin C, for instance, remains to be embedded in all of our DNA. It’s simply been degraded, and it’s now not practical. However with a couple of small modifications, you can make your own vitamin C.”
As scientists study extra about health-related genes in people and different species, and enhance their gene-editing methods, Mason thinks the challenges of spaceflight will change into much less daunting — not just for skilled astronauts, however for the remainder of us as nicely.
“You might think about a case the place you may ethically and responsibly and safely modify somebody to get them into house,” Mason says. “That’s not that far-off.”
And if house vacationers run into surprising challenges on one other world — for instance, alien microbes on Mars — they wouldn’t should deal with it on their very own.
“I speak a bit within the ebook a couple of ‘point-to-point biology’ idea, the place bizarre issues may seem on Mars, however there’s not numerous assets there to do high-throughput screening, or high-dimensional characterization of the organisms,” Mason says.
In that case, the alien microbe’s genetic code could possibly be sequenced on web site, utilizing a next-generation model of kit that’s already been tested on the International Space Station. Then the DNA knowledge could possibly be transmitted again to lab researchers on Earth.
“They might synthesize it after which research it there with extra assets, and ship updates again to Mars,” Mason says. “You might think about this concept of a virtuous cycle of remark, interrogation, research, switch of knowledge, repeat in a spot with extra assets — after which ship again that data and assist the organisms adapt.”
That’s a world the place Mickey wouldn’t should die day by day.
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“The Subsequent 500 Years” isn’t Mason’s solely ebook. In collaboration with WorldQuant CEO Igor Tulchinsky, Mason has written a ebook delving into the speedy rise of synthetic intelligence and massive knowledge, titled “The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI and the Shifting Shadows of Risk.” Now he’s engaged on a ebook about efforts to revive extinct and uncommon species, drawing upon his expertise as an adviser to Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences. Try the Mason Lab’s website to study extra concerning the researcher and his crew at Weill Cornell Drugs.
My co-host for the Fiction Science podcast is Dominica Phetteplace, an award-winning writer who’s a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and lives in San Francisco. To study extra about Phetteplace, go to her web site, DominicaPhetteplace.com.
Try the original version of this report on Cosmic Log for bonus studying suggestions from Mason, and keep tuned for future episodes of the Fiction Science podcast by way of Apple, Spotify, Player.fm, Pocket Casts and Podchaser. Fiction Science is included in FeedSpot’s 100 Best Sci-Fi Podcasts. In case you like Fiction Science, please price the podcast and subscribe to get alerts for future episodes.
