Episode 1: This Is the Way Up

This is episode one of The Habitat. To hear all the episodes, head over to Spotify and listen for free. This is the way up. I want you to describe what we're driving through right now for somebody who can't see it. Black, jagged rocks and there's just piles and piles and piles of them, extending as far as you can see. (Sighs) Hundreds of years ago, astronomers looked through their telescopes and saw a planet that reminded them of home. It had days that lasted about 24 hours. It had something that looked like ice caps at the poles and something that looked like clouds rolling across the sky. The planet was Mars. And ever since, humans have been trying to get there. I'm sorry we're going, transferring over to the dirt road now. In 1958, NASA was founded. Before they even had a logo, they started planning their first Mars mission. And soon enough, they dropped a tiny robot in the Martian dirt. The pictures it sent back, panoramas of cracked jagged rocks. Look, almost exactly like the landscape I'm driving through right now. This is absolutely the weirdest landscape I've ever seen. This is one of the few places on Earth that you can get pretty close to actually physically being on Mars without being on Mars. And a few years ago, NASA announced a plan to send humans to Mars. The air on Mars is poison. At night, the temperature drops to 100 degrees below zero. And when humans finally arrive on Mars, they could end up staying there for more than a year before the planets get close enough for them to come home again. So, if they're going to survive that year on Mars, the crew will need a place to live. Oh, is it coming over the horizon? Yes, that's it. That's quiet. I'm standing on the side of a giant volcano in a remote part of Hawaii. It's cold. It's actually really cold. And all I can see is rock. And the only thing I can see other than rock is this dome. This dome is the habitat. It's a life-sized model of the thing astronauts could live in on Mars when we finally get there. It's white. It's about the size of a two-car garage. And it is the sight of a really crazy experiment. See, the first people on Mars will be further from home than any person has ever been before. They'll be on a totally desolate planet with only each other for company. And they'll be crammed together in a glorified pup tent. That mixture of isolation and confinement of being stuck so far from Earth and so close to each other, what does that do to a person? That's what this dome and this experiment are designed to find out. The experiment is called high seas. It stands for Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation. And it was set up to help NASA test equipment for Mars. But the equipment being tested here isn't the rockets or the spacesuits. It's not even the habitat I'm standing in front of. High seas was designed to test a far more critical piece of equipment. Humans. The humans are a part of this whole system. And if the humans fail, this system is just as broken as if the rockets do. Yeah, and humans do fail a lot. Humans fail, yeah. This is Kim Binstead. She's a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. And she's in charge of this whole experiment. And let's not kid ourselves. If our astronauts are not functioning extremely well as individuals and extremely well as a team, that is going to put the mission at risk. So Kim and her team have chosen six volunteers, six human guinea pigs, to live in this habitat as if it's actually on Mars. And the rules are, the atmosphere outside is poison. If they step outside without a space suit on, they'll die. They're going to live like that in this little dome cut off from their friends and families for one whole year. It's like the premise of a space age reality show. The true story of six strangers picked to live in a dome to find out what happens when people go to Mars. Oh my gosh, it's so warm. These are the human guinea pigs. Why was I expecting cold water? They're doing cannonballs into the warm salty water off the coast of Hawaii, enjoying one of their last days on Earth. It's nice. It's so warm. This is Carmel. Carmel is 26 years old and she looks like she just stepped off a weedies box. Long shiny ponytail, big smile, rosy cheeks. She's one of those people who's just good at every sport, running most of all. Running feels like, like forgetting all the things that are going on in your life and just being in the moment and just existing with what you have exactly right front of you, which is the road or the trail or yeah. When the mission starts, Carmel will be the commander. Her crew includes Che, a doctor, Anjé, an engineer, and two European scientists, Cristiana, from Germany and Cyprian. He's French. Are you going? Yeah, of course. It's the last one I can jump into the water before a year. Wow, shit, backflip. And finally, there's Tristan, an architect who dreams of building things in space and who right away takes the role of crew comedian. Or did you hear about the skeleton that didn't go to the prom? Yeah, he had nobody to go with. He's always ready with a joke. Why wouldn't the ghost go skydiving? Or two or three? You didn't have the guts. That was really. Imagine listening to jokes like that for a year. I first heard about this experiment a few weeks before it was supposed to begin and right away I was obsessed. I called the researchers and asked for permission to meet the crew. I drained my bank account buying a ticket to Hawaii. I'm a science journalist, so this is kind of my thing, but it's more than that. The idea of signing up to spend a whole year with five strangers day after day, hour after hour, minute after freaking minute, that's just mind-boggling to me. Like, I won't go to a party on a boat because if it gets awkward, there's no escape route. I dated my partner for six years before I agreed to move in with him, and that's someone I love. Just the thought of doing what these six people have signed up to do makes me want to run home, curl up in a blanket, shove my nose in a book, and not talk to anyone for a week. But when I ask these guys what they'll miss, the idea of being alone in a blanket with a book doesn't really come up. We're going to miss flying. Anjay, the engineer, loves flying these little two-seater planes. Before he came here to start the mission, one of the last things he did was fly himself to a favorite restaurant of his for a final meal. I'm going in and get. Carmell, the commander, grew up in Montana surrounded by wide open spaces. The day she filled out her high seas application was in the middle of landing season when all the new lambs are born. She'd been up late delivering them, cradling their warm little sheep bodies in her arms. I want to miss being outdoors with the breeze blowing on your face and doing anything you can do outdoors without a spacesuit on. Next. I think I'm just going to miss chaos. And here's Che, the crew doctor. The chaos of unexpected weather of meeting new and random people of getting lost. You know, real true chaos of what happens when you have billions of people running around you. The unexpectedness. I'm going to miss surprises, I think, more than anything else. Chaos, unexpectedness, flying tiny little planes, feeling the wind in your hair. It's not a huge surprise that this crew gives those answers. These guys were selected to be as much like real NASA astronauts as possible. And historically, NASA astronauts have been these athletic, adventurous people. Of course, the question is our athletic adventurous people, the right people to shut in a tiny little dome for a year. What will they do with all that athletic adventurous energy? Will they turn on each other, like Lord of the Flies style? But when I mention that concern to the crew, they wave it off, with the kind of can-do confidence you'd expect from a typical NASA recruit. You guys all seem totally confident that like you'll get along and everything will be chill. Yeah, I mean, I don't have any problems with anybody and I'm sure that you know, rough moments aside, we'll all get along fantastically. That's Tristan. I'm sure I'll have like five best buds for life by the time we're out of here. But before they can even get in there, things start to go wrong. That's after the break. Wait, sorry, I'm gonna jump in the deck. It's really nice because this. Are you out, Lynn? Are you gonna jump in? I'm Lynn, by the way. You're listening to the Habitat from Gimlet Media. All right, I'll jump in. [Music] It's 9.30, you guys want to head out? 9.30, rock and roll. That was good. It's early on a Wednesday morning and the crew has less than 48 hours to go before they get locked into the Habitat. They've been together for a few days now, learning all the skills they'll need to pretend to be on Mars. And today they're learning one more. How to map a new planet. We follow one of the high seas researchers, Brian Scherro, into a lava field not far from the Habitat. People are in shorts and t-shirts. It's one of the last times the crew will be able to walk outside without space suits on. It's one of the last times they'll feel the air on their skin. Brian points out something near our feet. So this is the Kautu Desert Trail and sometimes it's called the Footprints Trail because there are some footprints that are preserved in the ash along the way. The footprints in this area have been here a long time. Brian says some of them are from an army that marched across the island hundreds of years ago. They were mid-step when the volcano erupted. And that eruption happened caught them off guard. This is where they were caught. So in the army was wiped out by that eruption, basically caught in the ash. We all stopped for a minute to look at the footprints. The last remnant of people totally unprepared for what they were getting themselves into. So, uh, all right, so what's the plan? The plan is for the crew to try something called ground truasing, which is what you do when you have a map of a place, but you don't know if the map is right because no one has ever put their actual feet on the actual ground. So you have to walk around and check. Stuff like this will be super important when humans finally get to Mars. So since it's something real astronauts will have to do, it's also something these fake astronauts will have to do. Carmel testing out her role as Commander lays out a plan. So guys, I think it's at least two miles to the top of Monteneggi. And then so we could go up there and check it out and see what we see and then I know I kind of like to make a game plan from there, because it might take us a really long time just to get to the top of that. Okay, so you want to go to the top? Yeah, and then we can see what we can see from there. And with that, we're ready to go, but we don't go. So what are you working on? Just figuring out where we're starting from. We're over here. We're not actually over here. How do you know that? Because we're at a bearing one foot right away. The crew stalls out. They can't seem to agree on where we are now. Never mind where we should go next. I'm just thinking about getting to anywhere that's on the map first because we're off the map. And so that point there is at least on the map. Sure. And then they can't agree on how far away the mountain is or how long it will take to get there. For a while, they can't even agree on whether the map is in feet or meters. No, this is meters, my friend. Is it? Are these in meters? It's helpful maps and meters. They can't agree on anything. How about we go towards, okay, from here, we go towards kind of around Monica. Monica. Then Carmel makes a suggestion. If the crew splits up, they can cover more ground. But Shay, the doctor thinks that plan is dangerous. Do we have a phone signal out here? If not, no one's going out of my side. I'm not comfortable with people walking off and not being able to get in touch. And Anj, the engineer thinks it's inefficient. So the one thing I will point out about that plan is if we do break people from there up the mountain, then this team's frozen. We're essentially gaining no ground by doing that. Why are we frozen if we're there? Because you want to keep people in shouting distance. They go back and forth. We can also have two teams that don't have to be able to communicate with each other as long as and back. Team doctors seems to disagree with that. What am I disagreeing with? And fourth, it is perfectly safe to just split up in this, especially for in groups. People can't call for help. There's nothing safe about splitting up. At a certain point, I realize that three members of the crew have drifted away and are looking pointedly out at the landscape or awkwardly down at their shoes. The other three, the commander, the doctor, and the engineer, have been getting closer and closer to each other. The copter. At this point, Carmel, the commander is literally backed into a corner. Her butt is pressed against a historical marker. And she can't get away from Shay, who is clearly waiting for her to say something, "Commandery." You're the commander. I think if we have something to throw out, it's fine. I mean, I have to make every single decision. So we can make a decision as a group as to what we do. So let's go do something. And then we can reconnoiter and make a new plan. The group splatters out across the landscape, walking away from each other as fast as possible. They don't want to talk to each other or even look at each other. Now, within maybe 10 minutes, they drift back together. And Tristan starts cracking jokes again, trying to get everyone laughing. I got a joke for about pizza for you. And pretty soon, it seems like all is forgotten. But me, I couldn't stop thinking about that argument. I talked to Kim about it later in her car. You remember Kim. She's in charge of this whole thing. I mean, it was very, very minor, but there was a little disagreement at the beginning of the hike about which route they should take. And it's sort of surprisingly heated to my ear. And then one goes off one direction and the other goes off the other direction. And so they have like five minutes to cool off from each other. Tell me who? Well, do you want me to tell you who? It was Shay and Carmell. Interesting. Okay. I just thought like, what are they going to do when they're locked in together? Yes, indeed. What are they going to do? It's all data. Let's do this. The next morning is bright and clear. For the crew, it's their last morning on Earth. Today is their launch day. In a few minutes, they'll walk into the habitat, the door will close behind them and the experiment will start. They're going to be in there for the next year of their lives. It's impossible for me not to think, what have these people gotten themselves into? What will they feel when the door closes and they finally, finally really understand that they're trapped? Why did they sign up for this? Being here is sort of an honor. This is Anjay. Wanted to be an astronaut my whole life and I hope to be a real astronaut one day and getting to at least simulate one for years, you know, a step in that direction. Anjay has been dreaming about going to outer space since he was a little kid. Millions of kids dream the same dream. They dream about being the first person on a brand new planet. They dream about the moment their spaceship lands and they step out and feel how light their bodies are in this new gravity. Maybe they dream about writing their names 20 feet high and untouched soil or peeing in a place where no one has ever peed or watching the sun rise over this alien landscape. But right now, there are only 44 active astronauts at NASA. That's 44 people who even get to experience spaceflight. What are the rest of those starry-eyed kids supposed to do when they grow up? For this crew, the answer seems to be you do the next best thing. You get as god damn close to that dream as you can. And when I look at them, lined up outside the habitat, and they're matching red polo shirts with the high seas logo embroidered on the pocket. I can see they're not worried or scared. They're not wondering how they'll cope or what they've gotten themselves into. Their faces are glowing with excitement and anticipation. This is their launch day. So I try to see it all through their eyes. I try to picture what it'll be like on the real launch day. The day we head to Mars for real. The countdown. The night before it feels good, two minutes, twenty five seconds. Photographers snapping pictures. The kids waving. The knowledge that if everything goes just right, if all the research and preparation pays off, if all the boosters fire and the capsule separate and all the seals hold, you, out of all the humans who ever lived, will be the first one to take that step in Martian gravity, to write your name in Martian soil, to watch the sun rise over Martian landscape. Zero. [Music] Hello Mars. I'm Lauren. See you in a year. Good luck. See you next year. Everybody, you're Christmas? Yeah. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Good luck. Happy Valentine's Day. Happy Saint Patrick's Day. Fourth of July. Oh, the goodies. I'm virtually everyone. Bye, guys. Bye. Whatever happens on this trip, we're along for the ride. Because before the door closed behind them, I handed the crew an audio recorder. And in the next episode of The Habitat, we'll hear the first transmissions from a strange planet. [Music] [Music] The Habitat is a production of Gimlet Media. It's produced by Peter Breznan, Megan Tan, and me. I'm Lynn Levy. Our editors are Alex Bloomberg, Jorge Just, Caitlin Kenny, and Blight Terrell. Music Sound Design and Mixing by Haley Shaw, Music Supervision by Matthew Bowle, Additional Music by Bobby Lorde and Elliot Cole. [Music] Our credits music in this episode is performed by Ellen O. And written by David Bowie. Our fact checker is Michelle Harris. Special thanks to Caitlin Roberts, Alexander Overton, and to Neil Shibalhut, for driving me up that volcano. And a very special thanks to the high seas crew. Anne J. Kristiana, Siprian Carmel, Shay, and Tristan. [Music] If you like the show, spread the word on Twitter and Facebook, using #TheHabitat. [Music] Thanks for listening to the first episode of The Habitat. You can hear the rest of the episodes for free, only on Spotify.