Sunday, November 12, 2023

Cold water for Mars

Over the weekend I finished up A City on Mars by the Breakfast-Cereal Weinersmith powercouple, biologist Kelly and cartoonist Zach. They pose this book as a corrective to Ayn Rand in space; E/acc would call it a "decel" manual. Please don't bristle at the authorial sequence, fellow chauvinistes; this seems mostly Kelly's work.

As to how fair this book is, it does hit up that the oversupply of tampons was chosen by one with XX chromosomes so was hardly a problem of NASA SEXISM (it was more a problem of NASA's culture of overcompensation). They also admit that Biosphere 2 wasn't nearly the failure most think it was.

As for honest omissions too much weight is placed upon supposed lack of shielding and gravity in space [UPDATE 11/26: now cf. Peter Hague]. I question that the Weinersmiths should have been so cavalier about asteroid or space-colony settlement. The two seem to have composed the bulk of this text before Jensen and without Janhunen. Rubble-pile settlement and mining - especially if settlers start with Near-Earth C-types, several of which come close to us - may well be more-viable than Lunar settlement.

I cannot comment upon the international law underpinning space work. Crichton / Gell / Mann aside, people gonna have beefs. I expect the authors are right to point out that treaty-law is A Thing.

Another semi-high point is where the authors deal with space-settlement ethics. They don't like the Latinism colonia; upon further thought, I may have to abandon that term as well, unless and until the Space Force grant a civic charter to some decommissioned asteroid-base. In the bibliography Robert Zimmerman appears for Leaving Earth but for not his definitive Apollo 8 book; also Conscious Choice would likely have helped.

I had more to say in this post's first edition, but I'm holding my fire for this initial list.

BACKDATE 11/13: busy weekend. UPDATE 11/24: I split off my ethical concerns.

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