Mindscape 256 | Kelly & Zach Weinersmith on Building Cities on the Moon and Mars

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
There is an undeniable romance in the idea of traveling to, and even living in, outer space. In recent years, a pragmatic justification has become increasingly popular: the Earth is vulnerable to threats both natural and human-made, and it seems only prudent to spread life to other locations in case a disaster befalls our home planet. But how realistic is such a grand ambition? The wife-and-husband team of Kelly and Zack Weinersmith have tackled this question from a dizzying number of angles, from aeronautics and biology to law and psychology. The result is their new book, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? It provides an exceptionally clear-eyed view of the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Kelly Weinersmith received a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. She is currently an adjunct professor in the department of biosciences at Rice University. Zack Weinersmith received a B.S. in English from Pfizer College. He is the creator of the popular webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, as well as the author and co-author of several books, including Bea Wolf, a retelling of Beowulf as a children's story, with illustrations by Boulet. Kelly and Zach are also co-authors of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.
Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
Sean Carroll channel: / seancarroll
#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[@Amethyst_Friend]

What a TRIUMPH! This was the most fun episode of Mindscape ever and yet absolutely packed with intriguing ideas.

[@bryandraughn9830]

Caves. Caves on the moon, caves on Mars. Caves are neat.

[@spaceinyourface]

That was fun. I listened to this at the dog food factory with my ear pod's in. Brilliant 👏

[@stephenknox2346]

No book has conflated difficult with can't more than this one.

[@FranLitterio]

Sean wins the Internet with this episode!

[@StayPrimal]

In the past week I did a marathon of your ''biggest ideas in the universe''. WAS LOT OF FUN!

[@IntrepidSpliff]

So exciting! One day I hope there is some panel that Sean, Randall, and these two can be a part of together.

[@Zurround]

One MAJOR problem with people living for a prolonged time on moon and Mars is GRAVITY DEPRIVATION which is even worse on the moon but with the tradeoff of it being easier to get back to Earth. Zero G ruins the health of astronauts and would probably be fatal in less than 2 years since the world's record is 14 months and his health was god awful when he came back to Earth. Moon and Mars have better than zero G so the gradual damage to the body would not be AS bad as in space but over time the lack of 1G of gravity would gradually ruin people's health. The human body needs close to 1G of gravity to be healthy.

[@Jgill99911]

i loved this talk definitly one of my fav podcasts ever fascinating topic 🙏👍

[@HarryNicNicholas]

13:00 not quite into this yet but, asteroid mining - okay we find an asteroid rich in X and we want X, we go get it, but the problem then is, extinction events, we either bring it back to earth in tiny bits or do something with it in space, which might be combined with space stations - if we set up mining stations around earth and the moon and mars, that might be a way to do two things at once.

[@eprohoda]

thank you~ superb ,take it easy.

[@GGoAwayy]

SMBC has been a great comic for years... one of the very few I read

[@GoatOfTheWoods]

Loving the thumbnail!

[@istvansipos9940]

space is "like... you know..." interesting topic. AND good video for a drinking game.

[@poiuy0987z]

Checkout "Where the Winds Sleep" by Neil P. Ruzic

[@pankajnegi9795]

Loving it

[@kx4532]

Alone don't count and a non-zero chance it was Shatner.

[@RodrigoOshiro]

building a hotel for the rich, maybe... but it needs to start with something.

[@kierenvanderhaar6329]

Yea I'm 1st☺

[@HarryNicNicholas]

nah, neil was first.

[@scrubjay93]

Colonization is an exciting idea that attracts public interest but seems like pure fantasy in terms of scientific and engineering practicalities. As was mentioned in the podcast, no amount of damage to Earth will make colonizing the moon or Mars better or easier than just employing the same techniques on this planet (e.g., underground cities). I wish we could terraform Mars or another planet for the sole purpose of providing a home for all the nonhuman species on Earth who are being crowded out of existence by the invasive and destructive H. sapiens.

[@virkotto8651]

[@mahneh7121]

I like this people

[@aroemaliuged4776]

Why so excitable😂 Like talking too a teenager after 3 red bulls

[@HarryNicNicholas]

i can get behind the excitement, i love space travel, it's my eardrums are wondering why kelly is shouting, does she think she's talking in moon atmosphere.

[@HarryNicNicholas]

can we have at least _one_ spaceship called "serenity"?

[@life42theuniverse]

I think rocket fuels will be the real bottleneck. You need to not speak in dollars. Cost is energy.

[@aaronmcelrea8172]

Watch the movie “Moon” you won’t be disappointed

[@raginald7mars408]

… as a German Biologist… we destroy the Bio Sphere here ends nuclear Dreams and Delusions

[@LuciFeric137]

I love you Dr. Carroll, but this is akin to planning a move to Barsoom. Utter nonsense.

[@GGoAwayy]

I think humanity will battle inhospitable environments as long as there's profit to be made.

[@Lucas43434]

1903 - first manned airplane 1957 - satellites 1961 - humans in space 1969 - humans walk on the moon 1971 - space stations There's never been a point in the past 23 years when there wasn't a human living in space. If we don't destroy our civilization with nuclear war, it's only a matter of time.

[@zorro5651]

So, we get the tragedy of the commons on the moon and Mars. Figures. Better is to have a homesteading rule, where if you mix your labor with the land, you own it. You can't then just declare you own it all, you have to develop it. Not well known is that the Pilgrims nearly were wiped out not by bad winters, but that nobody wanted to do work if they had to share everything they produced with those that didn't do any work. When they ended that, they prospered.

[@Amethyst_Friend]

This is not the Frontier again.

[@SigmaOxygen]

Who is paying for these flights just to give the game away to some grunts 😂???

[@HarryNicNicholas]

was this a shouting competition?

[@Amethyst_Friend]

No, a humour and enthusiasm one

[@houndofzoltan]

Wow. I was expecting that to be fun, but the guy was too annoying, I had to stop listening.

[@Tuatara1975]

Interesting...though could really do without the snide, but overtly political, comments about Musk/X.

[@rinket7779]

Too comedic and "fun" for me. Found it irritating. Podcasts with > 1 guests always turn into this. -1

[@pseudocalm]

Normally I agree but here I liked it.

[@nabormendonca5742]

You must fun at parties. 😏

[@rinket7779]

@nabormendonca5742 just not my style for an informative podcast. I like all the other ones.

[@aleksandero7982]

Irritating is proper description for this episode.