Whether we can and should settle space | Zach Weinersmith

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez speaks to Zach Weinersmith — the cartoonist behind _Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal_ — about the latest book he wrote with his wife Kelly: _A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?_

In this episode:
• Why space travel is suddenly getting a lot cheaper and re-igniting enthusiasm around space settlement.
• What Zach thinks are the best and worst arguments for settling space.
• Zach’s journey from optimistic about space settlement to a self-proclaimed “space bastard” (pessimist).
• How little we know about how microgravity and radiation affects even adults, much less the children potentially born in a space settlement.
• A rundown of where we could settle in the solar system, and the major drawbacks of even the most promising candidates.
• Why digging bunkers or underwater cities on Earth would beat fleeing to Mars in a catastrophe.
• How new space settlements could look a lot like old company towns — and whether or not that’s a bad thing.
• The current state of space law and how it might set us up for international conflict.
• How space cannibalism legal loopholes might work on the International Space Station.

In this episode:
• Space optimism and space bastards [00:03:04]
• Bad arguments for why we should settle space [00:14:01]
• Superficially plausible arguments for why we should settle space [00:28:54]
• Is settling space even biologically feasible? [00:32:43]
• Sex, pregnancy, and child development in space [00:41:41]
• Where’s the best space place to settle? [00:55:02]
• Creating self-sustaining habitats [01:15:32]
• What about AI advances? [01:26:23]
• A roadmap for settling space [01:33:45]
• Space law [01:37:22]
• Space signalling and propaganda [01:51:28]
• Space war [02:00:40]
• Mining asteroids [02:06:29]
• Company towns and communes in space [02:10:55]
• Sending digital minds into space [02:26:37]
• The most promising space governance models [02:29:07]
• The tragedy of the commons [02:35:02]
• The tampon bandolier and other bodily functions in space [02:40:14]
• Is space cannibalism legal? [02:47:09]
• The pregnadrome and other bizarre proposals [02:50:02]
• Space sexism [02:58:38]
• What excites Zach about the future [03:02:57]

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_The 80,000 Hours Podcast_ features unusually in-depth conversations about the world’s most pressing problems and what you can do to solve them.

Learn more and find the full transcript on the 80,000 Hours website: https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/zach-weinersmith-space-settlement/

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