Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve …
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential guide to a glorious future of space settlements, but after years of research, they aren’t so sure it’s a good idea. Space technologies and space business are progressing fast, but we lack the knowledge needed to have space kids, build space farms, and create space nations in a way that doesn’t spark conflict back home. In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered:
Can you make babies in space? Should corporations govern space settlements? What about space war? Are we headed for a housing crisis on the Moon’s Peaks of Eternal Light—and what happens if you’re left in the Craters of Eternal Darkness? Why do astronauts love taco sauce? Speaking of meals, what’s the legal status of space cannibalism?
With deep expertise, a winning sense of humor, and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself—whether and how to become multiplanetary.
In principle, it would be neat to have a backup planet in case something happens to this one. But in practice, everywhere apart from Terra is the absolute worst. Luna & Mars suck less than like… Venus, but that's not a great bar.
Terraforming begins at home. If you want to terraform Mars, how about… fixing this planet where billions of people still live, and will for the foreseeable future? We don't need to forget space, but there's so much more work to do to settle Mars, and most of it doesn't look at all like settling Mars.
Quick read with some humor sprinkled in here and there. Good structure makes it easy to skip sections that one finds boring. Overall it gives a good perspective on the various challenges of space settlements.
If you've looked askance at Elon Musk's claim/plan to settle Mars this century, this book will validate your priors in a most entertaining way. The first 3 parts cover the physical & mental aspects of space settlement. As someone who works on satellites, none of this is surprising to me. At least a couple times a week, someone in the office will exclaim "space is hard!" as we try to solve a problem. Additionally, the book spends 2 parts of the legal and geopolitical environment of settling space. The authors' position is that space settlement nerds don't really spend enough time thinking through the ramifications. In particular, while there are better frameworks for space settlement than what we have, there's not a clean path to get there and space settlement nerds aren't really moving society in a real way to get there. There's an extended discussion of an attempt to …
If you've looked askance at Elon Musk's claim/plan to settle Mars this century, this book will validate your priors in a most entertaining way. The first 3 parts cover the physical & mental aspects of space settlement. As someone who works on satellites, none of this is surprising to me. At least a couple times a week, someone in the office will exclaim "space is hard!" as we try to solve a problem. Additionally, the book spends 2 parts of the legal and geopolitical environment of settling space. The authors' position is that space settlement nerds don't really spend enough time thinking through the ramifications. In particular, while there are better frameworks for space settlement than what we have, there's not a clean path to get there and space settlement nerds aren't really moving society in a real way to get there. There's an extended discussion of an attempt to establish a new state in space by dint of a small cubesat launched by a space society. (As a side note, I'm quite surprised that the book doesn't go into the attempts to create micro-states such as Sealand. Those would be a lot easier to attain statehood with that space environments, and yet none of those has even come close to succeeding.)
What really makes the book though is that the authors are both funny and pay attention to the weird facts of space. Steve Bannon once ran Biosphere 2! The humor won't be a surprise to regular readers of Zach Weinersmith's web strip, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Excellent Overview of the Difficulties of Space Settlement
5 stars
This was fun to read, but still very educational. There is a lot of hype around space settlement and the Weinersmiths thoroughly show all the little details that are very important, but do get glossed over in the discussion because people are overeager in dreaming of a space frontier.
My takeaway from the book: Let's conserve Earth first, take our time to develop a lot more understanding about space settlement and the advanced technology we might need, and then when we have sorted out everything here on this planet, then we might start thinking about colonizing this void out there that is trying to kill us. Makes sense to me.
A City on Mars is an enjoyable and easy to read non-fiction book about the (non)feasibility of space habitation. It's got a comedic-but-serious tone, which is not unexpected as half of the authors are responsible for the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic strip. Lots of digressions and breadth, but all enjoyable and accessible.
Despite space being really cool, I am personally went into this (and left!) with extreme skepticism about the feasibility of humans living in space any time soon. (It just feels like billionaire escapism from real problems that they are disproportionately responsible for causing!) There's probably some confirmation bias in my enjoyment here, as a warning. This book also treats several billionaires with much more respect than they deserve, although it's not fawning over them either.
We're pretty good at shooting things into space at this point (even if it's expensive) but largely past that I think I …
A City on Mars is an enjoyable and easy to read non-fiction book about the (non)feasibility of space habitation. It's got a comedic-but-serious tone, which is not unexpected as half of the authors are responsible for the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic strip. Lots of digressions and breadth, but all enjoyable and accessible.
Despite space being really cool, I am personally went into this (and left!) with extreme skepticism about the feasibility of humans living in space any time soon. (It just feels like billionaire escapism from real problems that they are disproportionately responsible for causing!) There's probably some confirmation bias in my enjoyment here, as a warning. This book also treats several billionaires with much more respect than they deserve, although it's not fawning over them either.
We're pretty good at shooting things into space at this point (even if it's expensive) but largely past that I think I was amazed at just how little we know. We haven't had people in space for very long periods of time at all. We don't really know how radiation in space affects people long term. We have no idea if/how birth could work in low/no gravity. We have extremely little understanding of creating successful closed ecosystems. We certainly aren't doing a good job keeping our own planet going well.
One unexpected neat part was how much it went into space law (with a lot of deep sea and Antarctica analogies). It's not a topic that I feel like a lot of similar books have talked about, but it's incredibly depressing how exploitation-heavy all countries seem to be leaning at the moment. (Space socialism when?)
But we have not moved beyond conflict. Our ability to harm ourselves vastly outweighs our ability to protect ourselves. Settling the solar system will likely increase the danger, and we will not be leaving for distant suns anytime soon.
Even with my space skepticism, I had previous thought of space exploration as value neutral (or at least competing for resources that could have been used for better things), but this book convincing me that putting more people in space (and competition over space resources) would probably be actively dangerous for earth itself, especially given the lack of agreements (and peace) we currently have on earth.
Recuerdo de pequeño tener libros de ciencia para niños profusamente ilustrados con visiones tremendamente optimistas de un futuro que nunca fue, lleno de hábitats espaciales y colonias en diferentes lugares del sistema solar. Esos libros aunque a mí me llegaron en los 80 seguramente estuviesen concebidos en los 70, una década en la que todavía llegaban misiones a la Luna y en la que vistos los avances exponenciales que se consiguieron en tan pocos años el cielo ya no era el límite. A nuestra generación se le prometió un programa espacial apasionante y al final, además del trauma colectivo al ver explotar el Challenger en el 86, nos tuvimos que conformar con ser testigos de logros como el amartizaje de Curiosity o el fly-by a Plutón que, aunque excepcionales, palidecen cuando los comparas con lo que me habían prometido aquellos viejos libros. En estos últimos tiempos de turbocapitalismo las grandes …
Recuerdo de pequeño tener libros de ciencia para niños profusamente ilustrados con visiones tremendamente optimistas de un futuro que nunca fue, lleno de hábitats espaciales y colonias en diferentes lugares del sistema solar. Esos libros aunque a mí me llegaron en los 80 seguramente estuviesen concebidos en los 70, una década en la que todavía llegaban misiones a la Luna y en la que vistos los avances exponenciales que se consiguieron en tan pocos años el cielo ya no era el límite. A nuestra generación se le prometió un programa espacial apasionante y al final, además del trauma colectivo al ver explotar el Challenger en el 86, nos tuvimos que conformar con ser testigos de logros como el amartizaje de Curiosity o el fly-by a Plutón que, aunque excepcionales, palidecen cuando los comparas con lo que me habían prometido aquellos viejos libros. En estos últimos tiempos de turbocapitalismo las grandes promesas de exploración espacial ya no vienen de libros de ciencia para niños sino de billonarios divorciados que lidian con su crisis de la mediana edad con el muy freudiano hobby de construir cohetes gigantescos. Y aquí entra este libro. Un jarro de agua fría contra ese tecnooptimismo que nos están vendiendo, analizando todos los problemas que la tozuda realidad pondrá a las promesas de tener colonias en Marte más pronto que tarde. Un libro ameno y ligero pero documentadísimo en el que desgranan no sólo los problemas más obvios (el espacio es un lugar hostil que quiere matarte, una especie de Australia pero sin wombats para hacerlo más llevadero) sino también otros a los que en principio no les prestarías tanta atención como los legales y sociológicos. Una lectura divertidísima que no puedo dejar de recomendar a todos los que tengáis interés en la exploración espacial.
