#283 – Chris Mason: Space Travel, Colonization, and Long-Term Survival in Space

Lex Fridman Podcast

Chris Mason is a professor of genomics, physiology, and biophysics at Cornell, doing research on the long-term effects of space on the human body. He is the author of The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Chris’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/mason_lab
Chris’s Website: http://masonlab.net/
Chris’s Company: https://onegevity.com/
The Next 500 Years (book): https://amzn.to/3k9ab4S
Reasons and Persons (book): https://amzn.to/3Lrm6a5

PODCAST INFO:
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Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
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YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips

SUPPORT & CONNECT:
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– Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman

OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(0:00) – Introduction
(7:43) – Human extinction awareness
(16:29) – Heat death of the universe
(22:05) – Alone in the universe
(25:41) – Aliens
(33:50) – Entropy goggles
(48:04) – Genetics
(56:14) – Scott Kelly
(1:02:12) – Adapting to space
(1:12:13) – Sex in space
(1:14:46) – Colonizing planets
(1:21:25) – Culture on Mars
(1:25:51) – Commercial space flights
(1:33:09) – Podcast in space
(1:40:43) – Axiom Space
(1:42:59) – Designing space experiments
(1:49:49) – Robots in space
(1:52:30) – Space exploration
(1:56:28) – War in space
(2:00:05) – Launch toward the Second Sun
(2:06:14) – Chlorohumans
(2:11:50) – Extreme microbiome project
(2:18:17) – Space travel breakthroughs
(2:30:15) – Clones
(2:36:08) – AI age prediction
(2:41:38) – Advice for young people
(2:47:56) – Dark times
(2:52:19) – Mortality
(2:56:37) – Visiting ISS and deep space
(2:57:46) – Meaning of life