Star Trek makes living in space look great: it depicts a utopian future without hunger or climate devastation and with technology that can zoom you across the galaxy and produce holographic playgrounds for relaxing in your free time. (Never mind that pesky war with the Klingons.) But the reality of space settlements would likely involve deprivation, harsh conditions and difficult interactions among a small, isolated group of people. Behavioral ecologist Kelly Weinersmith and her cartoonist husband Zach Weinersmith set out to research the future of space settlements and found, to their dismay, that the prospect looked miserable.
Space is inhospitable: its radiation and lack of gravity wreak havoc on the body; the legal situation is murky at best; and there’s the looming disaster of trying to reproduce beyond Earth. The Weinersmiths discuss these risks and more in their new book, A City on Mars (Penguin Random House, 2023). Their laugh-out-loud-funny descriptions highlight a sobering truth: humanity isn’t ready to spread among the solar system anytime soon.
The Weinersmiths spoke to Scientific American about space war risks, giving birth beyond Earth and the legality of space cannibalism.
To read more, click here.