A City On Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
I have been enjoying stories about space colonies since I could read. But I have long considered a Mars Colony to be a suicide mission. Not that it is likely to happen any time soon, regardless of the hype.**
The Weinersmiths are here to tell you that my own skepticism is well founded and, if anything, space settlement is even less likely than I thought, at least in the near term. Shockingly enough, "awesomeness" isn't enough to make space settlement possible.
The Weinersmiths walk through the challenges, from physics (Radiation. Microgravity. No air!), through biology (No food! Mars isn't the kind of place to raise a kid.), through economics (No actual business case. Everything is insanely far away.).
I was particularly surprised by the poor prospects for rotating space wheel style space stations. I've been reading about them since, well, since I could read. They have been a staple of fiction and planning for ever. Yet, they will be insanely difficult and expensive to construct, and will have almost no advantage over, say, a moon base that would be much cheaper. Sigh.
I was not surprised at the discussion of "how big", i.e., what size population is needed for a colony settlement to be sustainable. A lot of the hype involves establishing what are considered minimum viable populations, large enough to survive independently if necessarily. (I studied Anthropology long ago, and we studied this question.)
The Weinersmiths parse this concept to consider the dimensions of this challenge. A sufficiently large gene pool is part of the issue, but so is a broad enough labor pool, (e.g., enough people to have doctors, technicians, and other specialists) and, of course resiliency in case of catastrophe.
Setting aside the question of whether humans can reproduce at all when off Earth (which no one knows), and how to house and feed large numbers of people in a lifeless toxic vacuum, it likely will take a population of many thousands, possible a million people or more to be viable (much depends on the technology available, e.g., how good robots are).
And, by the way, true technical and economic independence from Earth can only be a distant dream. Any space settlement will be dependent on imports from Earth for a long, long time. (You might grow your own potatoes, but you are not going to build a silicon chip factory any time soon.)
A large slice of the book is about Space Law, which isn't as cool as it sounds. The main thing to learn is that current space law is messy, but it is real law that cannot be ignored, even if you are a billionaire with a million fan boys. The Weinersmiths offer some of their own suggestions for improvements to the laws, but acknowledge that nothing is likely to happen until there is a crisis.
There is even worse news. The Weinersmiths argue that space settlements are not just suicide missions for the settlers, they may endanger all of us. Enthusiasts often argue that moving into space will promote world peace. These hopes are based on pretty thin reasoning. If people continue to be people, a new moon, Mars, and / or asteroid race could create dangerous friction between multiple nuclear powers, possibly leading to war on Earth.
And, by the way, any asteroid mining technology that involves lobbing big chunks of rock toward Earth is effectively a potential planet-destroying weapon. Ruh-row!
Even if there is no major conflict, it is questionable whether space settlements will be an effective "Plan B", a backup in case of catastrophe on Earth, because it could be centuries before they are actually independently sustainable without shipments from Earth.
So, let's review.
Creating space settlements is way, way harder than generally portrayed. Many of the basic questions, such as "how to not die" and "how to have kids" remain unanswered., indeed, uninvestigated at all. There are no plausible economic scenarios. And rushing to set up settlements will not make Earth safer, and might make it a lot less safe.
What should we do?
The Weinersmiths advocate a wait-and-go-big strategy. Yes, explore and experiment in space and on planets. No, don't try to set up permanent settlements, and be slow and careful about things like mining claims. Then, later on, when we actually know how to live in space and on Mars, we can rapidly establish large settlements, at biologically and technologically sustainable scales.
This strategy is bad news for nerds in the next few decades to create dreaming of whole new societies, which serve as backup copies of humanity. The good news is that there is plenty of work to do, including lots of awesome playing around serious research in space. And a lot of that research might help save the one place we have already settled, Earth.
** Family trivia: My late dad told me a story of him standing up in a meeting at NASA circa 1970, calling BS on some high muckety muck who was talking about doing a Mars mission in 1980. At the time, no one had been in space for more that a few weeks, let alone the 5+ years in what would be basically 3 men a double Apollo capsule NASA. Dad's point: we better do some research first. A lot of research, actually.
- Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith, A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, And Have We really Thought This Through?, New York, Penguin Press, 2023.
Sunday Book Reviews
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