Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s “A City On Mars”

The Weinersmiths make the (convincing) case that ever aspect of space settlement is vastly beyond our current or reasonably foreseeable technical capability. What’s more, every argument in favor of pursuing space settlement is errant nonsense. And finally: all the energy we are putting into space settlement actually holds back real space science, which offers numerous benefits to our species and planet (and is just darned cool). Every place we might settle in space — giant rotating rings, the Moon, Mars — is vastly more hostile than Earth. Not just more hostile than Earth as it stands today — the most degraded, climate-wracked, nuke-blasted Earth you can imagine is a paradise of habitability compared to anything else. Mars is covered in poison and the sky disappears under planet-sized storms that go on and on. The Moon is covered in black-lung-causing, razor-sharp, electrostatically charged dust. Everything is radioactive. There’s virtually no water. There are temperature swings of hundreds of degrees every couple of hours or weeks. You’re completely out of range of resupply, emergency help, or, you know, air. <a href="https://doctorow.medium.com/kelly-and-zach-weinersmiths-a-city-on-mars-e8b468ad0398">Click Here</a>