C (5:59)

Oh, wow. Hi, everybody. I'm Dr. Gabriel Caswell. I am the owner and operator of Spaceport Australia.

A (6:06)

That is underselling you significantly. All right, Dr. Gabby, you have an incredible, incredible story. Owner of Spaceport Australia is a really important part of it, too. I don't want to downplay that because that is also super important, but you also have an incredible series of life experiences and education, and I feel like I'd be missing a whole bunch of your story if I didn't get into that. Can you tell me a bit about your many different areas of expertise? Because you have quite a few.

C (6:35)

Well, I sort of do, but I Don't see it that way. I know it's sort of. Externally, people might sort of break them into boxes, but I just have a very broad education in my undergraduate degrees, which I think everybody should have, and I think that they should really concentrate on, you know, you add to knowledge and you should try everything. And even if you fail, failure is learning.

A (7:00)

Yes.

C (7:00)

So, you know, you're not going to be good at everything. And I think that it's really, really quite important to, you know, try everything and then, you know, not be afraid to fail. It's just part of the process of learning and I've always sort of adopted that. So I think that you need to be curious. And we're all curious as children. And then we educate them.

A (7:22)

Yeah, and we educate the curiosity out of them in many cases.

C (7:26)

And there is a place for sort of very much didactic learning because we need to learn language and we learns grammar and we need to do math and we learn to be able to communicate the languages that people communicate in. But then I think we socially constrain intellect and I unfortunately just don't have any association needs. So it just didn't apply to me. And I didn't actually learn to read until I was 12 and, you know, so I still had a bit to make up for when I hit 12. And that's because I have a form of dyslexia and not that it was picked up at this stage because I'm really old and back then it wasn't even described and it's actually only been in the literature, I think now medical literature, for about five years. So it is one which is quite specific. Could never learn to spell, never learn grammar, the capital letters, like, come on. What a waste of ink. So it's like, you know. However, the other side of the coin is that I am blessed with a absolute phenomenal memory. And I think that, you know, it's a sort of. I always say to people, for everything that you're missing, there's always something else in the brain that makes up for it. It's just you sometimes got to look for it. So I was a late starter, so to speak, but once I got the gist of it, we were away and, you know, I didn't actually do very well in. One of my friend's daughters was very upset with her final marks recently, and it's a very complicated marking system in Australia, and she didn't get into what she wanted to do and she was actually looking after one of my cats who had pneumonia and she just Wants to be a vet. And I said, you know what, that's okay. It's okay. We've got this 12 months at the vet that you're working. We're going to set up a training program. And, you know, I said, you know, all learning is not formalised. All learning is everything that you do every day.

A (9:14)

Yeah.

C (9:15)

And I said to her, you know, in today's scores, I would not have got into medicine. And that's important because the scores that we use to triage young people into medicine is actually about popularity, not attitude, really. And that's an important consideration because when we are sick, we want people to understand us, we want people to look after us and we want to be able to communicate with them. And yes, the technology in medicine is there, but I always say I'm a bit of a cheat learner. If it's in a box in a medical book, that's what you learn in the box. The bits in the box are good and you'll pass the exams. I shouldn't actually say that, but that's probably a truism. And to read the books, actually, it's a really important consideration. I find with electronic learning, people do not learn things as well. I'm just very methodical with my learning. So I get the book, I read the chapter, I go back, I underline what I need or I think is important, then I make my notes and then the only time I ever come back to it is before the exam.

A (10:24)

And you retain it that way.

C (10:27)

That is quite interesting. If you write what you read.

A (10:29)

Yes.

C (10:30)

The retention is like 90% huge above anything else you do.

A (10:35)

And so you have biomedical expertise.

C (10:39)

Yes.

A (10:40)

And you also have, I mean, you were mentioning to me earlier, like three master's degrees.

C (10:45)

Yeah. Would you like to. One is really, really super boring. It's just a medical master's whatever. Yeah. In primary care, skin cancer, because I operate and look after a population with very high skin cancer load. So our general practitioners, which you call physicians, are a little bit different in Australia, and particularly our rural and remote ones. And in fact, you know, if NASA, if you're listening, that's training you need for the moon. We can do, as I explain to everybody, we can do anything with a pocket knife and a coat hanger. And we're really good at it, you know, because you never know. And look, I kid you, I have to attend on planes because I fly a lot internationally, so many times. And, you know, we have used the coat hanger, so it's important to have a very flexible skill Base. But also, you know, this group of doctors that I belong to, you know, we operate, we give anesthetics, we do trauma, we do emergency, we deliver babies. And it's a whole school set within our class of doctors. So it's a special, it needs a specialization. Yeah, but it's the sort of skill set, you know, cradle to grave medicine and the flexibility to sort of move from one role to another. And most of my emergencies, sort of attending, quote, unquote, will basically only ever occur in a remote area on the side of the road. So, you know, and often, you know, I don't carry a full medical kit. You know, it's what I've got to hand.

A (12:09)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It occurs to me, as I was listening to you describing this, that because a lot of times when I ask people, I'm sorry, I'm going a bit of a tangent when I talk to people who have really fascinating backgrounds who are also involved in space in some way, sometimes I'm like, how did those dots get connected? Aside from sometimes it's an opportunity or just I love space or whatever. And I'm going, I can actually very easily see how what you just described really easily applies to space. Like, it just seems like an absolute no brainer.

C (12:37)

Absolutely. And I've always been operational, so I wasn't always a doctor. I was a professional marine diver before I did medicine.

A (12:45)

Another great skill set to have.

C (12:47)

Absolutely. I've done my time in microgravity. Let me tell you, baby, we're done the microgravity time. And you know, people always say to me, because I did a lot of environmental management with our teams from the Northwest Shelf, which is northwest of Western Australia, round to what we call the Chevron pipeline up into Indonesia. So that's that sort of pointy bit of Australia all the way around with a gas filter. Now the interesting thing there is, you know, yeah, it's got sharks. I mean, you're in their environment and people sort of say to me, oh, but all those sharks. And I went, yeah, I've just seen a crocodile or two. Yeah, yeah, measure moves. And, you know, but I did have 10 wonderful years of doing that and 10 wonderful years when my office was a boat, I was under the water. We also did a lot of all the analysis and the multivariant analysis and things, because that's what we were doing. And it, you know, again, it's in a rural and remote environment, in a dangerous environment, you know, and the tenure there is like, if you've got two, you've Got one, you've got one, you've got none. Unfortunately, I sort of seem to apply that to my shoe collection as well. And.

A (13:52)

And the other one I've heard.

C (13:54)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not quite sure it should be applied, but, you know, it works. And that's the thing is, you know, so every. Every time, you know, I'm even driving between my offices, so there's 400 kilometers between my offices. And, you know, even when I'm driving that 400km, I'm going to cut across the back country because I like the backcountry and, you know, I sort of make sure you always carry a sat phone. And because our telecommunications is very poor in the rural area. But it's also, you know, that. That preparation, you know, you always have a spare tire. You always think so.

A (14:27)

Of course, yeah.

C (14:28)

I think from a mindset, I am operational.

A (14:31)

Yeah.

C (14:31)

And I think that it's. It's a good skill for anybody to, you know, use wherever they are in the world because, you know, it's like you don't know when the electricity is going to go out. You don't know this, but it doesn't mean you have to carry the kitchen sink.

A (14:44)

Yeah.

C (14:45)

But you have to have useful equipment and you strip down, you know, because you've got to carry it. Strip down to what? You know, it's like a hiker, you know, they every gram matters sort of thing. And I think this is where that skill is completely transferable, you know, into space. And it's quite funny, when my youngest son was younger and we'd have people around for dinner, you know, doing the kid let thing and the parental sharing thing, and, you know, come up with this robot, and he's going, my robot's broken. I said, okay, let me get my pink tools, I might add, get out my pink tools. And I can remember one of the dads looking at me going, I would never have thought you would have your own screwdrivers. And I went, oh, I thought you were going to say pink screwdrivers, like, you know. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's it, you know, like, we come from a very resilient culture that is used to fixing things.

A (15:33)

Yeah, because you had to. Yes.

C (15:35)

And, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. And I think that's how we have to sort of see space.

A (15:41)

Yeah.

C (15:42)

The difference is that, you know, living rural, because I do a lot of media in medicine in my own country, you know, living rural's great. They can't turn up on your doorstep. It's big effort, which means I can get on with other stuff and so, you know, can do other work. And, you know, space is the final frontier, but there's, like, so much room there for everybody's imagination and problem solving. And I think that's the thing is we have to sort of remember, no matter how much high tech we do at the end of the day. And when I'm teaching my junior doctors and, you know, I teach them two basic skills. These are the skills you must master. The first is put a cannula in. Okay. So if you need to put fluids in, you can put the needle in. Okay. And that's a skill like when you're in a panic and you've got trauma going on. So we practice putting the cannulas in. So you can do it with your eyes closed.

A (16:38)

Oh, yes. Okay.

C (16:39)

Okay. So that's the first skill. And this is sort of things that are sort of very basic to me, but like, yeah, you put that cannula in, you get the fluids up, we're resuscitating them. You can't get the cannula in while we're in trouble because we've got blood loss. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is, which they always laugh, is pull the tongue out.

A (16:55)

Pull the tongue out.

C (16:56)

Yeah. Okay. Because people need to breathe.

A (16:59)

Right. Okay.

C (17:00)

And it's a basic skill. And I sort of, you know, you always teach things in layers. So when I'm teaching anatomy, you know, I teach it in layers and I teach it in diagrams, and I say, you know, look, we start with this level, we move to this level, and then we go to this level. Now we almost have to deep, devolve, de. Evolved in space, meaning robust tools.

A (17:21)

Yeah.

C (17:22)

Robust toys, as I call them.

A (17:23)

Yeah.

C (17:24)

And a robust, you know, facility that we can fix out there.

A (17:32)

Yeah.

C (17:32)

And this is the big one. We have to be able to fix it. So there's no point in giving me a quantum computer to take to Mars or the outer planets if you don't

A (17:40)

have a screwdriver with you.

C (17:42)

Exactly. Or I don't have a quantum physicist to fix it.

A (17:45)

Yeah.

C (17:45)

And this is where I think the practicality of the rural environment really comes into it.

A (17:49)

Yes.

C (17:50)

And I think, you know, this is where when we live in cities and we live in well manufactured and massaged environments, we do get. Actually, you know, I am. Look, if someone wants to paint my toenails, I am more than happy to have the service. Yeah. And I think this is the thing. But we need to really Think long and hard how we do things. And so we've developed the AI doctor which everyone gets so super excited about, the Hamilton Project, which is named after an absolutely cardinal flight surgeon, Professor Douglas Hamilton. Now Hammy is an engineer, a doctor, a professor of an internist as they call them, and his PhD just to make us all look really stupid in cardiology. But it's great because we need our doctors to be engineers and our engineers to have the finer understanding because we are dealing with biological systems. So from an engineering point of view, everybody understands systems engineering. When it gets to biology, the inputs are so enormous, you either innately have to understand cellular biology and molecular biology to understand the physiology. Once you have that basic understanding and that solid understanding, then you can actually take it to the next level and understand that in different environments. So that's sort of how I ended up in space.

A (19:21)

We'll be right back.

B (19:26)

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A (20:36)

And now a word from our sponsor, arcova. Formerly Morgan Franklin Cyber, arcova is a global cybersecurity and AI consulting firm built by practitioners who've been in the seat. They work directly with enterprise teams to solve complex security challenges, building secure by design programs that hold up as technology and threats evolve. From focused engagements to long term partnership. Arcova delivers outcomes that endure because no one should navigate complexity alone. Learn why leading Global Enterprises Trust arcova@www.arcova.com that's a R C O V A.com. Ok following this because I it's if you think of the human body as a system of system of system of systems. Yeah, I, I absolutely I can. So I briefly went to engineering school. I had many medical friends and I remember many of them. That crossover was often how they explained it as well. It absolutely tracks. I completely get what you mean.

C (21:47)

The difference is, is for a loud word, you know, biology is a. And. And she is. She is untamable.

A (21:55)

Yeah.

C (21:56)

But, you know, the thing is, it's completely integrated and people don't really have an appreciation of this because even as we've started moving in, modern medicine is based on ancient medicine, and ancient medicine actually goes back. We know it goes back to the denizens, who are 100,000, 120,000 years old now. And this is a really interesting thing because I give a lecture on the microbiome and I say to people, people need to get their heads around, you know, how the human body works. And I say to people, look, the easiest way I can explain it, you're an apartment block, okay? You're a bag of gush. And that gush, okay, has a microbiome. We have things that live on our skin and things that live in our gut, and the gut is external to the human body. Okay, okay.

A (22:50)

All right, I'm with you. I'm just going to stay with you.

C (22:52)

So think about it very carefully. We start with the mouth.

A (22:55)

Yes.

C (22:55)

We go through the oropharynx. We go down to the gut. We go down to the stomach. We go down to the bowel, and we go down to the anus. It's external to the human body, as is the female uterus.

A (23:04)

A big long pipe that just goes through.

C (23:06)

Exactly.

A (23:06)

Or a toroid, actually. Truly, just basically, you've got it. Yep, yep.

C (23:11)

And that pipe houses something like, well, depending on what paper you read, two to five thousand organisms.

A (23:18)

Yep.

C (23:19)

Okay. And those organisms talk to your mitochondria, which are in your cell, and your

A (23:24)

mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell, as the meme goes.

C (23:26)

Yes. And the mitochondria are an intercellular obligate symbiote. So what runs our body is actually our mitochondria and our microbiome.

A (23:39)

So do we have free will? Let's really get into this.

C (23:41)

Yeah, exactly. You hit it on the head. Do we have free will? But the thing is, is how is that interaction going to be in space? Now, the other fascinating thing with mitochondria. So there is a professor, I think he's. Glenn Jeffrey is his name, from King's College in London. And you've got to look this up on YouTube after you've listened to this, of course, but you've got to look him up. He's just fascinating. Does all this red light study. So he's got this. You go through the lectures and there's one that's just a corker. And he says, you know, the mitochondria wake up, and if you put the certain wavelength of red light on it, okay. And you just have to do it through your eyes, it's an app on the App Store, okay. The mitochondria, wherever you put the red light, the entire mitochondria in the body, quote, unquote, switch on. You get to midday, they'll go on holiday. So you have a certain period in the morning where you can wake up your mitochondria and charge them up. And once you charge them up, they're great for the day. Now, the interesting thing is they have just done some electric scanning microscopes. They talk to each other just to freak you out.

A (24:54)

I'm fascinated. I'm more fascinating than freaked out. That's.

C (24:57)

Look, honestly, it's just fantastic.

A (24:59)

Yeah.

C (24:59)

So if we get to space and this is where things get, you know, straight into space. So we've got the mitochondria, everybody understands it's like the battery of the cell, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, but cells are a biological system, and therefore everybody's familiar with acids and alkaline, and they have an operating zone, okay? And if that operating zone moves up or down, we get dysfunction, okay? So when we're in, say, the ISS or any enclosed environment, we get what we call carbon dioxide toxicity. And one of the things that happens in the cellular level, it becomes acidified. Now, once it becomes acidified, the mitochondria becomes dysfunctional, okay? So now we're linking our environment basically to the internal mechanisms of the cell. And, you know, carbon dioxide toxicity is actually quite an issue. And this is where we get into the point of, you know, environment is important. The materials we use to make things are important because it changes the biofilm of the bug. And biofilms are, you know, they're just fascinating thing, but I just call them the slime bags.

A (26:05)

That's kind of how I visualize them, to be honest.

C (26:07)

And that's what they are. But they're protective bags. So when we're looking at antibiotic theory, if we go back to medicine, you know, people say, how do you know what antibiotics you use? Or that? And I say, well, I sit down and I learn antibiotic theory. So the antibiotics will, you know, attach themselves to different parts of the cells or stop replication in certain ways. And so if we have a bacteria that's really hard to get rid of, like tb, that's actually sort of got a layer around it that most antibiotics can't get through. So we have to use a special antibiotic or five antibiotics at the moment to get into it, to kill it. So these are the sort of things that, I think, you know, that's where the biology comes into the engineering and where the engineering needs to complement the biology.

A (26:47)

Yep. Yeah. And it takes a very specialized set of knowledge and to be able to piece those pieces together.

C (26:53)

Broad background. Broad background, yeah. You gotta have a broad scientific breakdown. And I have a lot of engineering students that I mentor in Australia, and they always say, you know, what would you tell me to do everything right. I say a minimum of two units of developmental biology. Because you do not have to recreate. If you're into robotics, you don't have to recreate a mechanism for the robot to walk. Okay. Because what you do is you look at nature. It's already done it. And developmental biology will give you that.

A (27:29)

We were talking about the why a spaceport question, and you had gotten into some really fascinating history about the area around your spaceport and why it mattered to you. I wanted to hear that, if you don't mind.

C (27:39)

Well, it's actually really, really, like, it's so pertinent. So we have Artemis on the pad. And of course, you know, Apollo 11, they landed on the moon and what a lot of people may have forgotten because we're now a couple of generations away from that thing. So when Apollo went up, Australia was recruited to use its radio telescopes and things to be the link because of where we're positioned and, you know, as. As the moon moved around the planet and everything. So anyway, Apollo 11 got lost and they had to do the basic math, and they found it. And basically we have Timber Di Dudla, I think, is how we say the name. Then we have Honeysuckle Creek, and then we have Parkes, which is the really big telescope called the Dish. So Australians give everything a nickname. We just call it the Dish. And there's actually a movie, it's actually mandatory homework before Artemis. It's called the Dish.

A (28:36)

Watch it. Yes. Yep.

C (28:37)

And then where I live in a little town called Moree, which is a large agricultural center, we had the OTC station, the overseas telecommunication antennas, so we had them in Carnarvon. So Carnarvon, like, if you're going to drive from my place to Carnarvon 30 hours across the country, and then we had them in Moree. So what happened was the information came down. It came down to Parkes, Parkes zapped it to Moree, and we sent it to the world. So Your pictures of the first man walking on the moon came from my wee little town.

A (29:13)

That's a beautiful story. And I think that history needs to be known much more broadly since.

C (29:17)

Absolutely.

A (29:17)

Thank you for sharing about that. And I do need to see the dish.

C (29:20)

That is definitely. Everybody needs to see the dish. And I'll warn you, if you come out to Outback Australia, you will be. It's a line in the dish. You will still be fed half a sheep for lunch.

A (29:30)

I'll try it. I'll go for it. Why not? I'm Greek enough. I can handle that.

C (29:35)

And actually, I think it's on YouTube and you can download it quite easily. But look, it's everybody's homework. I keep putting on the linkin page. You know, you gotta watch the dish before Adelaide goes up.

A (29:42)

That sounds like a proper homework for me to be doing so. Well, Dr. Gabby, honestly, it's not often I get to talk to a polymath. So I really, really enjoyed speaking with you and just hearing all these amazing thoughts that you have. Thank you for spending some time with me. It's been really cool getting to know you and thank you for having me. I and your students are very, very lucky to have you. My goodness. To have all these different systems of knowledge that interact this way, that is really quite a treat.

C (30:06)

Well, they're our next generation, you know, like, I'm way too old. I will never go to space. I am truly way too old. And, you know, I sort of see the spaceport development. It was a vehicle for me to work in space, but it's an intergenerational project, you know, and I think that's the thing. Somebody, you know, younger and probably smarter than me and things like that, that, you know, I have limited tolerance for paperwork. You know, we'll steer it to the next level and then it places Australia in space. So when I place into the spaceport, Australia was not in space. We didn't even have a space agency.

A (30:41)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C (30:42)

So, you know, I sort of kept waiting, waiting, waiting. I said to my husband, if I don't do this now, like, you know,

A (30:48)

somebody needs to do it. That's right.

C (30:49)

Well, well, it's my retirement project because I'm clinically, you know, almost. I'm semi retired from medicine now since my retirement project. Girl's got to have some fun.

A (30:57)

You know, just a little small side thing there.

C (31:00)

It's what, you know, got to have a project. Everyone's got to have a project.

A (31:06)

Well, thank you for sitting down with me today, everyone.

C (31:09)

Thank you. Thank you for having me, of course.

A (31:10)

My pleasure. And yes, T Minus Crew. We are now releasing our show on a weekly cadence, as you have probably noticed by now, and we're still working hard behind the scenes here on what our new T Minus show is transforming into. So as we continue our work, we would love to hear from you about what would be useful and what would be interesting to you as we shift to a weekly format. So again, for your feedback, space2k.com is our email. We would love to hear what you think and thank you again to everyone who has written in so far. Please keep it coming and we greatly appreciate it. That's T minus Deep Space brought to you by N2K CyberWire. We'd love to know what you think of our podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and review in your podcast app or you can send us an email to. Again, space2k.com we are proud that N2K CyberWire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies, N2K helps space and cybersecurity professionals grow, learn and stay informed. As the nexus for discovery and connection, we bring you the people, the technology and the ideas shaping the future of secure innovation. Learn how@n2k.com N2K's lead producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our Executive producer is Jennifer Ibins. Peter Kielpe is our publisher and I am your host, Maria Varmazes. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.

C (33:15)

Foreign.

B (33:30)

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