MEMBER PROFILE: MASON ROBBINS
Out of this world
If you’re looking for whisky with a sense of adventure, the Society is definitely for you. And if you’re ready to reach for the stars, then member Dr Mason Robbins is your man, as Richard Goslan found out
PHOTOS: PETER SANDGROUND
Dr Mason Robbins isn’t quite a fully fledged astronaut…yet. But he’s working on it. The Society member from the United States has already put in countless hours in ‘analogue’ astronaut training, which simulates a real astronaut mission, but without leaving planet Earth. Next step is the final frontier, and maybe a chance for Society whisky to make it into outer space.
Mason has passed all of his physical and psychological tests required of all flight-ready NASA astronauts, and has now applied as a NASA astronaut candidate. His application is under the selection review committee, but there’s a long way to go before analogue becomes reality.
“If I’m invited to the following stages in the next few months, I’ll travel to Houston, Texas, for more physical testing, medical checks, and exams. If I pass these, then I’ll wait to see if I’m in the final selection for ‘Astronaut Candidate’. This is a two-year training course that, once completed, you join the astronaut pool waiting to be assigned to a mission. Once assigned to a mission, you have between two to five years of training for the particular mission, and then you fly.”
Along with his business partner – and soon to be wife – Dr Natasha Nicholson, Mason is a founding director of Star Helix, an international space research and technology company based in Edinburgh. Its mission is to redefine how we keep people alive in space. Drawing from biotech, medtech, materials science, textiles, robotics and engineering, they create longer-term solutions for human spaceflight and habitation. As well as their own R&D, they work with terrestrially focused companies to adapt their technology for space.
When I catch up for a dram and a chat with Mason and Natasha at our Queen Street Members’ Room, he’s not long returned from three weeks of isolation in a bunker somewhere in Poland. His ‘analogue’ mission was to test technology and research protocols in an environment that mimics space travel, but without leaving Earth.
“The habitat in analogue training has been especially designed to replicate what a mission to another planetary body might look like,” says Natasha. “If you need to leave that habitat, you have to do so in protective gear, with mission control’s permission. If you break protocol, you are essentially dead. So, it’s exactly like being an astronaut but on Earth.”
ABOVE: Not a sight you see every day – SMWS member Mason Robbins outside The Vaults in Leith
One of the areas Star Helix is working on in during such analogue training is in improving the design of spacesuits, which still use technology that in many ways is unchanged in the past 70 years and the early days of the Apollo programme.
“It’s been this whole concept of ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,’” says Mason. “It might include new fabrics and new bearings but at the core of it, there’s nothing innovative about it. So we’re trying to push that boundary of building new ways, such as how the gloves could connect and how you can then make it like a minimum viable product – I like to say, ‘the best part is no part’. And how can we innovate and make space suits lighter, make them more agile? Then how can we take that technology to improve people’s lives back here? Could a body suit with something like resistance bands help with muscle deterioration, or could suits be developed to provide support if you needed help lifting something heavy?”
Scotland might seem a surprising place to set up a company focussed on space-related research, but for Mason and Natasha it’s the ideal location.
“Scotland is such an innovative forward-thinking country and it always punches above its weight,” says Mason. “It’s the largest producer of small satellites outside the United States and will have the ability to launch them here in the next year or two from SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland. Edinburgh is world class at processing space data – the entire lifecycle for the space industry exists in one small country, which is matched only by the US, China and Russia.”
Life in Scotland has its other perks, as Mason soon discovered when he was studying at the University of Edinburgh.
“I’ve always been fascinated with flavour so I joined the University of Edinburgh whisky club, the Water Of Life Society, in 2011,” he says.
“I was vice president for two years and then whisky buyer for four years. A bunch of us were talking about this Society with all these weird bottles on the wall with numbers on them that all look the same, we should go check it out. We pooled our money together and I was the one who got a membership. That led to a great relationship with The Scotch Malt Whisky Society where we could try weird, crazy, new and innovative stuff.”
Combining two of his passions is now leading Mason to imagine what he could learn about whisky and distilling in outer space.
“If and when, touch wood, I get my chance, I definitely want to partner with a distillery or maybe even take some Society whisky into space,” he says. “Or it might be looking at something like how yeast strains change if they are developed in space.”
One thing is for sure – wherever Mason and Natasha’s adventures and research take them, on this planet or beyond, their connection with Scotland and their passion for whisky is fundamental.
“It’s a cultural identity, which I associate with being at home up in the Highlands, sitting by the fireside,” says Natasha. “It’s feeling like you’re somewhere you belong, part of this long history of people sitting by fires drinking whisky.”
“Scotland is such a cool little gem within the greater space ecosystem, and we always elect to wear the Scottish flag on our space suits when we do these missions,” adds Mason. “I’m travelling all over the world but a visit to The Vaults always grounds me into what I always loved about this place and that sense of community where you can sit down and have a dram with someone or say ‘hey, you wanna try something?’”
You never know what you might get in your glass – or who you might encounter to share it with.
ABOVE: Mason with his business partner – and soon to be wife – Dr Natasha Nicholson at The Vaults