Let’s not send a few people to Mars as a grand survival experiment.
Introduction
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith start from a position of being space settlement enthusiasts. They thought they would write a light-hearted book encouraging everything that would be great on Mars, the Moon, or in a space station. Unfortunately for the Weinersmiths, they posed questions like “How will that actually work?” Aside from rockets, the answers mostly consisted of optimistic predictions with a New Manifest Destiny slant that would make Andrew Jackson hesitate.
Human Biology and Psychology
The Weinersmiths begin by examining human biology and psychology, moving through technology, law, and population viability, ending with a call to action. In each of these sections, the Weinersmiths ask questions like: Can we thrive in space? Can we reproduce in space? Can we create habitats in space? The tour through all the things we actually don’t know is astounding. No one has conceived of living in low gravity, no embryo has developed in low gravity, so we simply don’t know if that is a problem. Astronauts suffer from bone and muscle loss, and no one knows how that affects them long-term. More importantly, do we really want to find that out by sending a few people to Mars and hoping everything works out fine?
Building Settlements and Recycling
I was surprised to learn that no one really knows how to build a long-term viable settlement on either the Moon or Mars. Yes, there are a lot of passing ideas about lava tubes and regolith shielding. But the details are absent. It reminds me of the dark days in Europe when settlements were established on other people’s lands. The stories of settlers being unprepared were sad, funny, and repetitive. And now we find out we are planning for more at least.
Space Law
I was not aware of the extent of the law related to space. But it exists and has a lot to say about what you can and cannot do in space. The Weinersmiths found that most space settlement enthusiasts seem to believe that these laws won’t somehow apply to them, or that there is a loophole they can exploit. Worse yet, they seem to think that such exploitation would be consequence-free. Apparently, nuclear-armed nations will not react negatively to private citizens claiming large swathes of space.
Magical Thinking and Realism
The Weinersmiths treat all experts kindly. But frankly, when reading between the lines, there is a thick thread of liberalism running through the space settlement community. From these experts’ perspective, they need a really big telescope to see reality. For instance, it is assumed that space will end scarcity… however, any settlement in space will naturally have only one source of food and water, more importantly, oxygen, creating a scarcity (perhaps artificial). The idea seems to be that everyone will head to space for profit, except for life’s necessities, where we will all care and share. Magical thinking is more apparent when you realize it believes that the vastness of space will make humanity exceptionally altruistic while still being good capitalists. I have my doubts that this philosophy will be successful for anyone concerned.
Corporate City Experiments
In a more realistic view of how societies operate when there is only one source of life vitality, the Weinersmiths base their arguments on the positive and negative experiences of corporate cities. Not everything is bad: some corporate cities have worked very well and fairly, while others can be devoted to small dictatorships. There is no reason not to believe, the Weinersmiths argue, that we won’t see the same thing in space, with the added drawback of being unable to escape from corporate cities.
Resources
Over-Optimism and Resources
The very idea that other resources such as raw materials won’t be overly scarce is excessively optimistic. No one knows if you can make a profit from asteroid mining. The Moon has nothing of value. Do you really want to create a bunch of hungry, disgruntled miners who can also throw very large rocks at Earth?
Call to Action
The book “City on Mars” ends with a sort of call to action. The point is that we have a small space station, and we have the capability to build many experimental facilities on Earth where we can investigate some practical problems. Let’s get human habitats and engineering right before we send people to Mars. While technology is being worked on, laws should be clarified so that if we settle elsewhere, we do so in a way that won’t lead to a war between nuclear-armed nations.
Conclusion
I think the point that “City on Mars” is trying to make is that the only clear evidence of how space affects humans strongly leans against going. This balance could be changed by working on discovering answers to some of the questions raised in the book. However, it seems ethically dubious to throw a group of people into the metaphorical deep end for those answers. So, perhaps work should be done in advance?
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