Why is there a subset of people who are obsessed with moving to Mars and how likely is this dream to come true? I suspect that they have a variety of reasons including adventure, loving technology, wanting a new start on a new frontier, and a long standing love of science fiction. If you have a thorough grounding in genre fiction, you can envision space stations, planetary colonies, asteroid mining facilities, and spaceships making regular flights just like airlines. The problem with these visions is the beginning: how do you get these things started?
How long have we (humanity, that is) had space stations? It's been decades and these facilities are nowhere near being self sufficient. They are close enough to Earth for regular resupply, as they must be. Going outside is a major endeavour, fraught with danger from debris and radiation, not to mention the cold vacuum out there. Heck, they still are constantly having to fix the station toilet (see An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth or Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. It turns out gravity really is your friend if you want well functioning plumbing).
The authors of this book state that they are concerned that space settlement seems to be becoming a purview of tech billionaires, who have unusual ideas about human behaviour that may skew the process. Indeed, if you pay any attention to these matters, you know that Musk has his eye on Mars while Bezos is a proponent of giant space stations. There seems to be a lot of hand waving about how the actual details will be worked out. Making a rocket to take people off Earth is easier than creating a balanced environment to welcome these travellers. Space agencies and rich guys all have a very entitled white guy mentality—they seem to take for granted that the environment will simply accommodate them, just as Earth does or that the new place will easily be adapted to human necessities. Since biosphere experiments here on Earth have been somewhat harrowing, this doesn't bode well for our space pioneers. Devaluing the natural world and its processes doesn't negate its importance. They also just seem to assume that pregnancy and fetal development will just happen naturally in low to no gravity situations, taking women for granted too. Shouldn't this be researched a bit?
I was very engaged in the first 200ish pages, as the technical details of survival are examined. Then the legal chapters followed, inspiring a great deal of yawning and very heavy eyelids on my part. Yes, it's important. Yes, it has implications for space development. However it's like reading your cell phone contract--only interesting to certain folks and a horrible slog for the rest of us. Of more interest to me was the discussion of company towns and the economic relationships between administrators and workers in the very isolated environs of space. Planners of space settlements seem to forget that humans aren't very good at utopia. We bring human nature with us wherever we go, even to Mars and beyond. (Read Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries and see if her corporate entities sound familiar. See also C.J. Cherryh's Company Wars series.) After all vanity, ambition, and stubbornness are known in every human society. You can rest assured that they will accompany us to space.
If this book interests you, I would recommend also reading Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires to get a good feel for how billionaires view the world. If you want to read fiction about tech billionaires trying to escape the rest of humanity, try The Future. Science fiction about the planet Mars is everywhere. Most notable is the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, which envisions humans moving to the Red Planet, doing some serious terraforming, and developing their own society and politics. I found that series technology and politics heavy, but I finished it eventually. More fun (and realistic) to my way of thinking is Andy Weir's The Martian (which I now have a burning desire to reread).
No comments:
Post a Comment