A City On Mars (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith)

A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Penguin
Nonfiction, Humor/Science
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Few things epitomize the Space Age dream like visions of cities on distant worlds, a future where humanity expands through the final frontier of the solar system. The challenges appear daunting, but so did the challenge of a manned moonflight, and we ticked that box decades ago. Surely, in this age of supercomputers and AI and swarms of satellites, with tech billionaires throwing money and resources at bringing down the cost of space travel, we'll see the first permanent human presence on another world in a matter of decades, at most... right?
Maybe not quite.
While it's true we've come a long way from the days of Sputnik, there are numerous problems to be solved - from thorny legal matters of who owns space and its resources to the practical matters of survival, let alone reproduction, in environs inherently hostile to life - before anyone rolls out the welcome mat on their Martian home. In this book, these obstacles are explored, with speculations on what a space-bound future might actually entail.

REVIEW: From The Jetsons to Star Trek, from space fantasy like Star Wars to grittier takes like 2001 and The Expanse, sci-fi and popular culture are steeped in visions of orbital habitats, space stations, and otherworldly colonies, a seemingly-inevitable next step for the wandering ape that emerged from Africa to spread to essentially every habitable corner of the Earth, adapting to wildly different conditions along the way. Successes like the 1960's moonshot and the International Space Station help keep the dream alive, further fueled by boasts from billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and their races to build a better rocket, with exploitation of off-world resources and/or Martian colonies as the stated end goal. But the actual logistics of building and maintaining a human presence on another world, let alone a self-sustaining one, are immense. With humor and some interesting asides, the Weinersmiths break down the challenges confronting any would-be space colonizing civilization, a fair bit of which involves research that hasn't even been adequately done, such as how reproduction in a low-gravity environment would work and what the long-term effects of space radiation would be on an average population (our sample size, and sample specimens, of humans spending significant amount of time off-planet being statistically minuscule and based on trained specialists who had gone through rigorous pre-mission screening). Experiments to create entirely self-sustaining biomes are also not nearly robust enough to tell us what we'd need for a truly independent colony over the long term. Even finding a place to colonize is fraught with problems, from the limited prime real estate on the Moon (only a tiny fraction of locales are ideal) to the toxic "soil" of Mars to the technological challenges of that old staple of sci-fi, the spinning habitat that generates its own gravity. And that's not even getting into the psychological challenges, legal dilemmas, or potential security risks of sending people out into space who could potentially fling rocks down at our planet and re-enact the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact.
Does that mean that space colonization, even in orbital stations, is entirely impossible and will never happen? No, it does not, but the authors make some very valid points as they argue that we're going to have to do some very hard work, some very hard science, and some very deep thinking before we're ready to step offworld.
The whole makes for a fascinating, interesting, and occasionally amusing exploration of a fascinating concept. I'll still enjoy my sci-fi and space operas, of course, but I'm not so blinded by shiny fictional objects as to not understand that the reality, if it ever happens (exceptionally unlikely in my lifetime, or the lifetime of anyone reading this review), will be something far different, if equally as awe-inspiring and fascinating (again, in theory and concept, if unlikely to be fact anytime soon). I couldn't find any down sides or nitpicks, so I awarded this book top marks.

You Might Also Enjoy:
Beyond: Our Future in Space (Chris Impey) - My Review
Vacation Guide to the Solar System (Olivia Koski and Jana Grcevich) - My Review
Soonish (Kelly and Zach Weinersmith) - My Review