By Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin Press, 2023
ISBN: 9781984881724
Pages: 441
Price: $32.00, Hardcover
There are many arguments in favour of human space exploration and settlement that are advanced by people such as Robert Zubrin, Elon Musk, and the members of groups such as the National Space Society: we need to establish our species on the Moon, Mars and elsewhere in space if we are to guarantee humanity’s survival. Many discussions on the need for space exploration imply that humans can escape a whole host of Earthly problems by starting afresh elsewhere in the solar system.
In reaction to this advocacy, some scholars are bluntly questioning the ethics of attempting to make humans a multi-planet species.
One of the best-selling and most prominent books on the topic of space exploration in the past year has taken a different approach by questioning the feasibility of settling other worlds or establishing space colonies in orbit, and whether there is any chance of delivering on the promises of space advocates, at least in the near future.
The book,
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? is written by the husband-and-wife team of biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith.
The authors, who previously wrote the best-selling 2019 book
Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, say that they started work on what became A City on Mars believing that “space settlement was coming soon,” but reached the conclusion that “the timeline is substantially much longer and the project much more difficult” than they expected. The Weinersmiths argue that space settlement is “a project of centuries, not decades” that must await progress in science, technology, and also international law.
This book starts off by assessing many of the arguments advanced by space advocates, such as that going to space will help us by providing new homes in the sky, and protect the environment by moving industry off world, that space resources will enrich us and reduce conflict, and that exploration is a natural urge that will unify humans. The authors find that real data to back up these beliefs are lacking.
Then the authors turn to the physical challenges of relocating to space, including the physiological problems facing humans who will live in space, the challenges involved in going to other bodies in space and living there, or in setting up space settlements in orbit. These challenges are much bigger than they appear at first glance, and it will take a long time to overcome them.
Perhaps most controversially, the Weinersmiths discuss the legalities involved in the exploration and exploitation of space. Many space advocates are libertarians, and this book speaks about the need for legal regimes to cover questions of ownership and how to deal with the many social problems and conflicts that will be an inevitable part of humanity’s luggage on the route to the stars. The authors argue that simply starting anew beyond the atmosphere will not erase the need for environmental regulations, labour law, or criminal justice, amongst other things.
A City on Mars discusses the history of space exploration up to the present, including the efforts by space advocates to bypass regulatory regimes for space such as the Moon Treaty of 1979. A saving grace of this book is that these discussions are served up with a generous helping of humor, breezy writing, and yes, cartoons.
Even those libertarian space advocates whose arguments are taken up in this book are well advised to read it, if only to put their beliefs to the test. We have already seen that people like Elon Musk who have advanced the technologies of space travel in impressive fashion have fallen short when it comes to keeping up with their ambitious schedules.
Space is hard, as John F. Kennedy has warned us.
A City on Mars warns that space is much harder than most of us realize. It does not say that those difficulties are reasons not to go, but simply that we must be realistic about what we can achieve in space and how soon we can make our move there. The popularity and profile of this books means that space advocates cannot ignore these arguments, because they are now part of the public discourse.
