 Oh, hi there. Welcome to TomorrowOrbit.12.13. My name is Jade Kim, this here is Jared Head, and today we have the exquisite honor of sitting down with Brittany Zimmerman of the Paragon Space Development Corporation. It's an innovative, world-class aerospace company that specializes in life support and thermal control in extreme environments. Hello, Brittany. Can you explain anything that I just said about Paragon? Yes, I can do that for you. So what our company does is life support systems. So that is keeping people alive, not like a doctor, but in equipment, essentially, onboard spacecrafts, habitats for planetary surface operations, spacesuits, and we do it in extreme environments. So our primary area is in space applications, but we also do terrestrial applications as well. Very neat. So can you explain a little bit more about the aspect of life support? So like you said, not like a doctor, but in that basically just having people survive. So can you explain a little bit about what goes into that? Yeah, for sure. There are a lot of portions that go into keeping people alive in space. So one of the things that we specialize in is water reclamation because water is obviously an important substance to have during any mission for life. We do air revitalization. We do radiation protection. We do thermal control systems. So basically, if you think about a mission going out into space that would only utilize robotics, that is not something we probably specialize in. As soon as you add human exploration into any of your missions, that's kind of where we come in. So it's temperature control, nutrients, water, air, making sure that pressure control is correct. We do humidity condensate, so making sure that the correct amount of moisture is in the air and not condensing on any of your instrumentation. We do all radiators, for example, as well. So we have a lot of stuff going on. Very cool. So then, with what you guys have developed thus far, what kind of applications can be made in terms of... I guess what I'm asking is how extreme of an environment can these systems acclimate to? Some pretty extreme. Obviously, space is not made for human life to exist easily. So we can operate in vacuum. We do a lot of stuff trustingly as well. So we do a dive suit, so high pressure applications, as well as vacuum applications. We do some stuff for the mining industry in the past. We've done that. So I can't think of many environments in which we wouldn't be able to operate maybe high acidity environments. I don't think we've jumped into that. Other than that, I think we've done it all. Very cool. And Brittany, I'm sure you guys work in things like vacuum and high and low temperatures and other things like that. And Wicked is asking in our chat room, does your work include MMOD shields, which is micrometeoroid shields? It keeps yourself free of extra holes. Seems like a fairly important part of keeping someone alive in space, which is a pretty good point that they bring up. Yeah, certainly. So MMOD is something that we take into consideration, but we don't necessarily make shields for it. So the structural component of a spacecraft is usually designed by another company. But what we are responsible for is being able to continue life support if some sort of breach of the barrier were to occur. So we have leak rates associated with different MMODs that were, if they were to break through the shell of a spacecraft, how much oxygen, nitrogen, what kind of pressures would we need to be able to pump into the environment to keep astronauts alive for a required period of time with certain requirements from whichever spacecraft we're working on at the time to ensure that the crew would have an appropriate amount of time to fix that problem and still be maintained. Got it. And kind of going off of that, a question I had as well as Travis Neal from the chat asked, didn't Paragon do the life support assessment for Mars 1 or did they refute it? No, Paragon, that was before my time with Paragon, but Paragon, I believe they did Inspiration Mars and I'd have to ask Barry if we did Mars 1 or not, but I think that we definitely looked into it, what the conclusions were on that, I'm not exactly sure. Yeah, so interesting stuff about that, them. So just to kind of, you know, talk a little bit about how Paragon themselves work. Distractor 1701 is asking sort of like, what's the mode of operation for Paragon? Are you a manufacturing hardware? Do you consult subcontracting on design work or do you do a mix of both of those? So we do a lot of stuff. I think it makes for a healthy business model, of course. So we do a lot of, we do some manufacturing in house. So we do have our own manufacturing department, but it's mostly utilized for a few programs. We do a little bit of outsourcing for manufacturing work, but a lot of the engineers utilize our manufacturing departments in order to fabricate prototypes and things like that because we do a lot of research and development. So we do a lot of SBIR contracts and we do do subcontracting and we use our manufacturing department a lot in order to, you know, proof of concept or feasibility studies on some of our lower phase SBIRs or STTRs. We do a lot of government contracts, but we also do private contracts. So we're kind of all over the board and I think that's really nice because as things add and flow in the industry, as we all know they do, we kind of always have something that we're looking at working on. So I think it also gives a lot of the engineers a wide spectrum of things that they can become experts on or things that they are familiar with and are working on. So if you're kind of bored of something one day, you can work on something else the other day. So I mean, we have contracts right now, we get to work on the dream chaser. We are actually designing the radiators for the dream chaser space vehicle. We're doing the humidity control subsystem for the CST 100. Yep, there she is. And so we have larger contracts like that on top of our, you know, we have our NASA contracts and SBIRs associated. Very nice. So it sounds like you folks are plenty busy, but I have a question for you personally. So what ultimately inspired you to even get into this industry and specifically in life support systems? Life support systems. So I think I've always been infatuated with space since I was a little girl. So I always knew that I wanted to be an engineer and I went and got my mechanical engineering degree. And I started my career in aerospace, actually. So I actually worked on aircrafts before I moved into the space industry. But I had an astronomy professor in my undergraduates program. His name was A. James Mahman. And he's, I think, really one of the people who pushed me into my, I already knew that I love space, but making me think about space as a career option instead of as just something that I enjoyed as a hobby. And while I was working at Rockwell, I heard about the University of North Dakota space program. I was Googling and I was like, what is the best space programs in the world? And it's a program up at the University of North Dakota. And they, it was a help actually Buzz Aldrin helped found it. And they have such an amazing curriculum there. I applied to see if I could do it kind of as an online option while I was working full time as an aerospace engineer. And when I went up for orientation after I had been an online student for a while, I got to see some of the laboratories that they worked in and the things that I could have been a part of if I went there full time and I couldn't say no. So I got the choice essentially of different programs or projects that I wanted to work on. And I just fell in love with life support, specifically bio regenerative physical, chemical, hybrid life support systems. So that's utilizing living organisms, higher plants, algae, bacteria and things of that nature in order to provide life support in extreme environments. So I got to help develop the greenhouse module for the inflatable lunar Martian habitat. It's a NASA funded program at the University of North Dakota. The same habitat that I actually got to do my first analog mission in. So I guess that was kind of my introduction into analog missions as well. And there's something that just makes you want to get up in the morning and go to work. And when I was an aerospace engineer and I worked on aircrafts, it was interesting. Don't get me wrong. But I mean, I would have mornings where I'd hit the alarm button four or five times before I'd get up. Now it's not like that anymore. Now I dream about my job. I think about it in the shower. I think about it all the time. It's a new sense of fulfillment that I am really excited to have in my life. And that is so fascinating because it really does say something when, you know, you can literally spring out of bed. And as you said, feel fulfilled. What aspect of it makes you feel fulfilled? I mean, is it the fact that you're developing things that are going to further humanity's reach in space, which is a huge thing unto itself? But can you kind of dive more into that? Like what what that passion is? Yeah, for sure. I think one of the issues that I've had in a lot of my previous roles internally was that I just I would get I get bored doing the same thing over and over again. So in this specific role, you're not only working on programs that get to keep astronauts alive in space, you're adding to our scientific discovery as a race, you know, as a human race. You get to continually learn and education is just fundamentally part of me. Like I love learning new things. I love bettering my understanding of the things around me and how everything around us is and why and how we can, you know, develop more knowledge about these things. Because I think the more that I learn, the more I realize I don't know anything is about the problem with education and with every answer you get, you get 30 more questions. And then on top of that, to I have such a great crew of people that I work with. So that is also just a major bonus. We have a pretty small group, we're less than 50 people in our company. But the talent that is there is outstanding and the passion for space is absolutely ingrained in every single person that I work with. So it doesn't feel like a chore even when we're like working long hours, because you can just, you can feel the excitement, I think, between me and a lot of the other people that are in our company. And being able to do that. And then on top of that, working so many different programs at the same time and having your hand. And like, we're not providing small bits to the programs. Like, I really feel like everything that people have to contribute is a large contribution and just having that satisfaction. And that, you know, that pride that goes with knowing that you did something, I remember my very first program was assigned to me. I like looked at myself after taking my job. And I was like, Oh, my God, I don't know if I can do that. I'm going to be fired immediately. This is difficult. And I remember I picked up a bunch of my textbooks, I started learning one of my co workers, Thomas Kenyatta. He really helped me out and kind of pushed me in the direction because it was, it was a highly thermal and fluids problem. And I hadn't, I hadn't done thermal in a very long time since I had been in college. So I had to write this mathematical model and something else I had not ever really done. And the guidance and the, the sense of pride I had when I finished that, and it was a fully functioning model to sit back and be like, Holy mackerel, like, I just made this and this can predict things that are going to happen in space. This is going to influence the way that we design our machinery here so that it functions correctly, both on our test floor down here. And then once it's launched, I mean, that's a feeling that I don't know if I could get, you know, socially or elsewhere. So it's, it's special. And a lot of people in our chat room are, are absolutely enthused of your infectious and enthusiast, enthusiast of your enthusiasm with that. And a lot of them are, I mean, multiple people have asked like, what are your favorite projects that you've worked on in like the entirety of your career so far? Oh, okay. So the program that's nearest and dearest to my heart is a program called Ira. So that's an, a water processor and essentially. So it, it uses a hybrid approach, which I was telling you earlier is kind of my thing. So essentially what happens is on a Martian surface, it doesn't have to be Mars, I suppose it can be any celestial body. I mean, heck, it could be Earth too, it could be anywhere. But let's, let's use Mars as an analog here. So in a habitat, all of the water that is used from the crew would be, is collected. So that's urine, that's, you know, wastewater, that's runoff, that's condensation collection, that's water runoff from your greenhouse, it's a hand washing water, it's a shower or laundry water. And all of this is collected and pumped into something. It's a bioreactor that's been developed by Texas Tech University run by a man named Andrew Jackson and he's our technical partner on this program. And essentially they use microbes to, to treat this, this your, this gray water essentially, and it studies the pH. So at that point in time, we pump that now pH study effluent into a system, which is where I kind of take over me and we have a team of about two or three people. And we have designed essentially a way to reclaim that water. So we use a distillation process and a few other things I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about in order to regenerate that water into being potable. So we're essentially taking that water that would be discarded and making it drinkable again so that we can close the loop on board. I guess hopefully I want it to work on board microgravity conditions, but right now it's designed for gravity environments. So celestial body. Dare I ask, do you know what the efficiency of that system is? Is that something you can, or is that sort of the quiet things you can't talk about? Yeah, well the efficiency, we're actually in phase two right now. So for anybody who doesn't know how the phases of development work, there's a phase one essentially, and that's more mathematical development, it's proof of concept sort of stuff, more paper studies, maybe small development testing. And then there's a down selection at that point as you move into phase two. And at phase two is kind of fun because you start to get, you get to make your prototypes. So you get to make these full functioning systems. They don't necessarily have to be flight hardware because you're doing ground-based testing on it. And you're doing characterization of your system essentially and you're learning about what your designs are capable of actually producing. So it's moving from that theoretical into that practical or actual testing phase. And we, it's a two-year portion that we're in there. And then from there, there's a final down selection out of phase two. And then phase three is typically the system that goes into like experimental space testing. So we are nearing the last probably quarter of our phase two effort. So we've gotten actually a full functioning system up and running. And we were doing stand-alone testing here for a while. And the fun thing about that is there's specific funding that is available to phase two. So you're not allowed to spend more than a certain amount of money. So the way that you would actually design it in space is slightly different because you're going to take into consideration things like efficiency, especially thermal and electrical efficiency. You're going to take that into account much more in final fabrication in our design. So we kind of take a garage approach for some of those things that aren't necessary for full functionality. So it's hard to say right now exactly what the efficiency of the system would be, but it's pretty impressive the way that it is even though it's not in flight condition yet. And you know, in life support, you obviously have to deal with things like scrubbing carbon dioxide or in this case, like you're working on reclaiming water. What are some things that in learning and developing life support systems or just anything in what you've developed that really surprised you? Like you were completely not expecting this to become an issue. And that is something that's kind of blew you away that you had to consider that. I think that one of the coolest things in my education was A, learning about how space truly affects the human body. And also just the, I think maybe the thing that I find most interesting is hypoxia, actually, if we're going to be honest, and that would be the body's reaction to having a lack of oxygen. And they've done a ton of testing on this and it's super interesting. I mean, it's something that even after I've finished my education on and I've learned about it's something I still like to do some research on on my own because I just find it so incredibly curious. So hypoxia is something that a lot of high altitude pilots also face. But essentially the pressure inside of your cabin typically stays the same. So you don't feel a difference in physical pressure, but the partial pressure of oxygen, meaning the amount of oxygen in that same volume is less. So you could have maybe more nitrogen or more something else. But it's not something that your body is actually utilizing, right? Because nitrogen is kind of a dead gas to us. So as that partial pressure of oxygen decreases, and you're breathing in and consuming less oxygen, your body starts to do some pretty amazing and crazy things. So there are a couple of, there are a couple of chambers throughout the United States in which some of the military pilots are trained for high altitude considerations. And a lot of astronauts are also trained to recognize their own signs of hypoxia because they're very different for each person. But essentially they've had a lot of demonstrations in which you'll have an astronaut or a pilot sitting there and they'll have their mask off. And you can't really recognize yourself when you're beginning to become hypoxic. And one of the major side effects of hypoxia is actually euphoria. So it's something that most people, once they begin experiencing hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen to your brain and your brain sort of starts functioning. In fact, I was lucky enough to be able to do some of the hypoxia training myself when I was up at the University of North Dakota. And a lot of very interesting things happen. You become, you're very sure of yourself throughout the entire process of oxygen depletion essentially. So people will say things to you like, what's four plus four? And you're like, well, it's eight, you know? But as time goes on, they're still asking you these easy questions and you're still sure of yourself, but you're actually incorrect. So it's like, what's four plus three? And you're like, eight. You're like, what's four plus three? And you're like, it's eight. And you know it, you know for certain that you are correct and that the answer is eight. And they'll have you write your name on these lines as time goes on. And you can look at the papers afterwards as it just becomes essentially nothing. They have you put these blocks that are just shapes into matching shapes, you know, like the kids toys, or you have to put the star and the star and the triangle and the triangle and such of that becomes increasingly difficult. And maybe the most impressive thing I think is you start losing your ability to see color, but you don't recognize that you're not seeing color. So they actually have you look at a sheet when they return oxygen to your body and all of a sudden the entire world becomes bright. And you have never realized that it had gone dark in the first place. And it's kind of a scary thing because they've done a lot of this testing with pilots and they'll yell at pilots and they'll say, your entire crew is going to die if you don't put your mask back on right now. And such a tiny percentage, almost zero percent of the pilots actually return the mask to their own face. They have to have somebody in their all times to put it on because the euphoria is so great that they choose not to. Wow. Yeah, I was about to say, you know, going up mountains frequently, which you have a lot of experience with. Yeah, people at altitude become belligerent. Do you? No. Because you can, you actually can, at least when you're going up mountains, it's not as drastic as you can in an altitude chamber with that. So you can kind of, you can kind of teach yourself to remove some of that from yourself. But yeah, things like that really do happen. You get euphoric and you sort of get like, I know when I get above 10,000 feet, I kind of get this tunnel vision kind of thing going. Yeah. And then also really too, altitude sickness, or altitude affects everybody differently. Some people will become, some people will be incredibly fit, but completely crippled by altitude sickness. And then there'll be people who are like, not fit at all. This is like their first time going up at altitude and they're like, please and past everybody super fast. Some people get headaches. Some people start doing other body processes. I will not throw on everybody. But yeah, it's just, I gotta agree, hypoxia is amazing if for all the wrong reasons. Yeah, I was gonna say. So essentially, at first I was going to compare hypoxia to having one too many drinks, because that whole just overly confident four plus three is eight thing, like we've all been there. But then when you started getting into the more like, the more abstract, like you can't see colors and all of this, it's like, okay, this is beyond just a few drinks. This is like brain chemistry messing around stuff. Yeah, well actually drinking alcohol starts a process that's very similar to hypoxia. I'm gonna actually call it hypoxia because your oxygen content that's delivered to your brain is also diminished. So next time you're walking down the street and somebody tries to ask you what's wrong, you can tell them you're hypoxic. Yeah, you're not gonna know what's up. They're gonna be like, do you need me? Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm gonna hypoxic. Yeah, exactly. So is that contagious? Yeah, if you want to double whammy, drink alcohol at altitude. Wow. Which I don't recommend. I don't think that's a great idea. Nobody is recommending that. Nobody is recommending that. Don't do it. It's terrible. So I guess, and I've seen a couple of questions in the chat that are related to this, but a question I have is, so you have these suits and these systems that are to accommodate for and kind of diminish the crazy environment of space, but how do you go about testing these suits? I mean, I know that human testing can only go so far, but then how do you test them so that you know for a fact they're ready to go into space with a human inside of them? For sure. So actually, I don't know if you guys know this, but in 2014, Paragon broke a world record by sending Alan Eustatius to about 100, just shy of 136,000 feet, where he successfully completed the highest space dive on record. So essentially a gondola balloon inflates as it goes up into the atmosphere and took Alan with him. And then he releases himself from that and fell back to earth essentially in a super high altitude space jump. So Paragon was the company who got to design his suit. And actually, we designed basically every component of that other than I think the balloon itself. And we actually got a system in house, it's called the EHF, and it's a chamber, it's a vacuum chamber essentially that is human rated. So you can put, we've tested several spacesuits actually also inside of this, and we can control everything between the makeup of gases in there, we can pull a vacuum, we can incorporate condensation or humidity. So we get to change the environment however we want to, and we can put any kind of sensors that we want into the system. And we just make sure that it's at a place that is safe to maintain life before we ever try anything with a human. Yeah, awesome. So I gotta say jumping from 136,000 feet sounds awesome. I'm down. Of course you are. Let's do it. I'd sign up. Okay, yeah. All right. So this perfectly goes into my next question, which was actually asked by Graham from YouTube. They asked, would you consider going to space if the opportunity arises? And I think this is a very unique question for you specifically, since you have firsthand experience working with the system that is ultimately going to keep you alive. Would you go up there? I would actually. And this answer I think has changed for me throughout time. And if what I go to space, certainly, would I take a trip that had a one-way ticket to Mars, for example, to never come back? I don't think so. As much as I love space, I also love the comforts of, I don't know, I like trees and birds and going for hikes and breathing in as much oxygen as I want to. So eventually I would like a return ticket. But if the opportunity came up where I was offered a trip to Mars or anywhere else in the solar system, and I had a paragon life support systems on board, I would be very confident in taking that trip. And yeah, I'm excited. So if there's anybody out there that wants to fund my trip to Mars, let me know. Get me up. I'm on board. And that's like the ultimate endorsement. I have so much trust in these suits that I would use them and go up in space in them. So nice. All right, Brittany, I believe you. So I just want to kind of get a question from Rebel in our IRC chat room. Because you talked about Paragon making the pressure suit for Alan to do his super high skydive. And Rebel is asking, how long does it take to create a suit from development to usage? And will this increase in speed and lower costs much with the commercial and tourist future? Plus, you know, a lot of sizes and use cases because obviously, you know, a couple of weeks ago, still kind of trailing with that space suit issues on the space station. So kind of how long does it take and what's that looking like? I think that this space, I mean, the StratX program went pretty fast. It only took a couple of years. But I think to develop a line of spacesuits that was applicable for, you know, to accommodate all different types of astronauts, which of course anybody would want to do, it would take a great deal of time longer than that. I know that they've been working on, I think the NDX series of spacesuits up at the University of North Dakota under Pablo de Leon for quite a few years. And that's a testament to he is such a hard worker and intelligent such a good team around him also. But it takes a lot of time to make sure these things are right. And in my opinion, it's something that you need to take the time to do because, you know, a public opinion plays into how much funding we get in our industry quite a bit. And they don't take well to you making a mistake once or twice. It's one of those industries where you succeed or, you know, the first time around or you're out. When you're when you have people's lives in your hands, it's not really something that you get to rush. It's not something that you get to take corners on. And of course, you want to develop things as quickly as you can. But you also have to make sure that you're you're stopping and taking the time to check every single thing that needs to be checked. And you have somebody that you trust looking over your shoulder. And you're going through the correct phases of develop development with the correct people to make sure that these things are done in an appropriate manner because because it matters. And so time wise, I think it would depend. And I don't know if you guys know this, but the development of spaces, it's not like you get to design one spacesuit that is applicable for all applications. A lunar spacesuit is extremely different than a Martian spacesuit, which is extremely different from an intervehicle spacesuit, which is extremely different from a microgravity EVA suit. And a lot of that has to do with, yes, the environments and the pressurization of those environments. But also something I think a lot of people don't know is that the regolith on these different celestial bodies are incredibly different. So here we're used to our sand being very rounded because we have all of these natural processes, and we have this pressure that's on us. And we have the we have our natural modes of essentially a rubbing down created by the pressures both under sea and the pressures that are put upon us by by our just, you know, just the atmosphere essentially. So these processes are lessened once you're on Mars. And then even further lessened when you're in somewhere like the lunar surface. So the lunar surface actually has regolith that is not rounded down at all. They're very sharp. If you look at it under a microscope, and we've gotten a lot of regolith back from some of our earlier missions, you can see that it's essentially little daggers. So we had some issues in the first line of development of our spacesuits that actually went up to the moon because we were getting micro abrasions and tears in our spacesuits from conditions that we weren't quite ready for. So it's not like you can make just a one suit fits all or a one suit goes on any mission sort of deal. So you kind of have to end up with, you know, a lot of things are specifically developed suits for the conditions that you're you're trying to, you know, use them in. Well, yeah. And it's quite a multitude of those two. And to kind of go with that, Karth Naran from our YouTube chat is asking, how effective is it to create a spacesuit from carbon fiber from multi planetary environments? I guess kind of what are like, what are the materials that you have to use in order to make a space suit? Oh, man, I'm not really that familiar with it. Most of my programs are in the life support systems for spacecraft applications and for habitation. But I don't know if I've ever seen a space suit made from carbon fiber. I would think that, you know, we have a lot of issues, essentially, you're always pressurizing and depressurizing spacesuits. I think that carbon fibers, especially maybe a bit, you know, they're not very flexible. I think that will cause a lot of issues in the fabrication of a space suit. So durability, I think, is one of the things that we care a lot about. Like you do have a lot of things that will rub up in high lifetime cycles, essentially, that'll be used for a space suit. So you're looking for durability. You're also looking for like breathability, right? We have lots of different layers. It's not like one material makes up a space suit. It's not like our clothes where we just weave one thing together. There are different layers of a space suit that perform different functions for the environments that we're planning to work on. And so I think that question would be better suited to specific layers of a space suit, rather than just the material of a space suit. A space suit is made of lots of materials. I would hope so. I would hope it's not just like something that you can slap together and go to space. And it's like, I can't imagine how immensely complex it is and for good reason. And there's a really great question from Destructor 1701 from YouTube. And this is kind of a look into the future. And they ask, does Paragon have a strategy in mind for serving the potential space boom over the next decade? I'm thinking end user space suits, plug and play, life support for HABS, et cetera. Yeah, definitely. So I think that we actually have a system that we've already designed that is super cool down in kind of like our museum. And essentially, we have already developed a kind of plug and play life support system, essentially. It houses a TCCA, a trace contaminant control assembly, which is responsible for taking out any particles that are in the environment. If there were to ever be a fire, it's a fire particle mitigation system. It works to pull humidity out of the cabin air. It does carbon dioxide scrubbing, so sort of like your air revitalization. It has all of these components that are necessary, essentially, to maintain the cabin environment. And we originally designed it to be usable for seven crew. And it's not a very big unit. So they have these little dials, too, where you can essentially dial in and out the function of each of these individual components of the life support system to hone in on how many crew members you have. So if you only have four, you can kind of move the dial before, right? I mean, there's not a dial that says four, but that's essentially the idea. And we have this entire unit that is capable of adapting to different crew sizes instead of continually redesigning the life support system every time that the mission plan changes. And you have a different number of crew that is planned to go on these, especially for long-term, long-duration space flights. And I think that we're actually a little bit ahead of our industry. I think that one day this is going to be something that is insanely useful. And we're just kind of waiting for the rest of the industry to catch up. Wow. So you're talking about like a modular life support system for a hab? Yes, I am. That is so cool. And actually, to kind of go into that a little bit, Blackbox Camera Calm on YouTube is asking, what is the longest duration that a spacecraft life support system is able to operate for without resupply? And I kind of want to throw a little bit on there too. Because if you go to Mars and you do a mission that returns, that's at best case, shortest duration three years. So that means your life support system has to work effectively for three years continuously, minimum. What are the challenges of developing a system like that? What are the huge problems? What are those hurdles? Oh my gosh, there are many. But I guess I'll start on my kind of bioregenerative spiel here, because that's very near and dear to my heart. But currently we have three different approaches for maintaining essentially life support for these missions. One of those is complete resupply. Like you mentioned, we're constantly sending goods out. And then we have a bioregenerative approach. And that is the approach that I care about that is like nearest and dearest to my heart. And that is essentially using, like I said before, living organisms to provide a portion of your life support. Because I mean, we have microbes or bacteria or higher plants, this thing right here, am I pointing there? They're my plant. Naturally, it's a natural CO2 scrubber. It takes CO2 out of the environment and it pumps oxygen in. That's exactly what half of our physical chemical systems do, which is the third approach by the way is physical chemical. It's essentially using filters, chemicals, mechanical processes to provide life support. And it's a very interesting thing because bioregenerative approaches also have the ability to provide us nutrients. They clean water. We can pour dirty water essentially in the base of plants and we can transpire clean water out of the leaves of the plants and then condense that later and collect it. This plant is doing three or four of the jobs that I've been working for a very long time trying to design in a mechanical sense. So there's an interesting dichotomy I would say that exists because a lot of engineers don't really appreciate the science behind biology because the stability of it is concerning. It's hard to predict and engineers like to be able to predict everything that's going to happen. And then you have these systems that are plausibly autonomous. Once you get them started, they could last for a long time, hundreds of years. I would suspect if you had the right approaches to it, down side of that being the nutrient cycle, which we're still looking into, but it is long periods of time. And the difference here is way back when we were starting essentially this space race, we had these ideas. NASA was doing research on algae and higher plants in order to pursue a bioregenitive approach to life support. But when you're just going to the moon and back or when you're just going to Leo, that's not necessary. You can get there so quickly and back that it almost makes sense to perform resupply as your approach. But as you're moving further and further out into our solar system for extended times, when you're moving into long duration spaceflight, you can't have rendezvous missions that are expected to hurry up and get there and resupply these things. So now you get to a place where you're really in need of autonomous systems and bioregenitive is really peaking its head. And the engineers are correct in seeing that we do have some issues in stability. I mean, we don't exactly understand what could happen in radiation conditions that change the makeup of certain microbes that are in the soils or are internally to plants and how that might change things. What if we have one certain thing that wipes out a bunch of our plants? We have ways of companion planting and doing things that ensure that that is much less likely. I think that the real approach for future duration is a hybrid approach. So it's pairing bioregenitive approaches with physical chemical approaches. So it's kind of a buddy system. And we have progressed down the physical chemical road because of, you know, NASA's push during the space race essentially, we knew so much more about chemical systems by the time we were kind of in that race to the moon that it both made sense logistically and, you know, and in a sense of research and what we had still to learn. So how long can we support people if we take bioregenitive physical chemical approaches? A long time. Way longer than three years. That's good to know. So as we wind down before we say goodbye, I really want to address the elephant in the room, which takes form as a hole in the wall. And a lot of folks in our chat, including Jared and I are really concerned because I don't know if you know this, but right behind you, there is a hole in the wall that basically is exposing you to the vacuum of space. And we're really worried because you seem to be fine. Don't look now. Oh, just kidding. And so can you just please explain, explain that because we're all quite worried that you just have the vacuum of space like right there and you're still lovely and healthy, but you know, it's, it's, it's a paradigm, you know, I don't know what's going on. I'm really into space decor. And I'm also really into Doctor Who. So this kind of reminded me of kind of like the crack in the universe. Yes, the timelords are trying to bust through my wall. So I just like to surround my things, self and things that make me happy. And this is one of them. Nice. Well, it's spectacular. And it really does serve as kind of like the perfect backdrop for this entire interview. So I think anywhere in my house would Oh, nice. Well, Brittany, thank you so much for talking with us today. We're really excited to see the evolution of life support systems because that is basically what is going to enable humankind to progress further and further into space. So thank you for the work that you do. And thank you for inspiring so many others, whether you know it or not. So if our viewers would like to learn more, where can we send them? You can check out, I think Paragon has a Twitter account at Paragon SDC. We'd love to answer any of your questions. Also, you can find me either on Facebook or on Instagram. And I would love to talk space. I can talk space all day long. If you have any questions, Brittany Zimmerman on both of them on Instagram, I'm at astronaut.brittany.c Wonderful. Well, thanks again. Thank you for joining us. And we hope you have a wonderful weekend. But before we say goodbye, we would like to give a very thoughtful acknowledgement to our citizens of tomorrow. These folks, all of them, they all essentially help make this show happen and give us meaning and purpose. As you can see, there are several names up there as we go on through the different echelons. All of these folks contribute a certain amount of money per month. And if you would like to become one, you can head on over to patreon.com slash tmro. Look at that beautiful, beautiful wall of text. Actually, my name's on there now. I am now a supporter of my own dreams. And also, you don't have to financially support us as well. You can head over to community.tmro.tv and actually help us out in whatever ways that you can. Can you code? Can you do really cool graphic designs? Can you subscribe to us? Can you like us? Can you ring the bell? Can you put it on your Facebook or whatever you got? So just share it around and show us, show us to everybody that you please. And if you can't make it rain monetarily, make it rain emotionally. Share us with your friends and family. Get the word out about space. Just be you. And on that note, thank you so much for joining us. This was Tomorrow Space Orbit 12.13. And we will see you folks next week. Good.