Headline, November 09 2023/ ''' MARS -STUDENTS- MAIL '''

''' MARS 

-STUDENTS-

 MAIL '''

'' IS IT TIME TO PULL UP STAKES AND HEAD FOR MARS ? '' ' A City on Mars  is hilarious.' 

! FACE IT - STUDENTS. EARTH IS FINISHED. ! IT'S INHUMANE, unjust, cruel, barbarous, overheated, overcrowded, overregulated. It's the ultimate fixer-upper, a dump we inherited from our parents that we'd be cruel to pass on to our children.

IT'S TIME to pull up stakes. It's time for Mars. OR maybe not.

Lighting out for the solar system is an appealing fantasy, but '' A City on Mars,'' an exceptional new piece of popular science by the ''Soonish'' author Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, suggests we shouldn't be so quick to give up on Earth.

Forceful, engaging and funny, it is an essential reality check for anyone, who has ever looked for home in the night sky.

'' A City on Mars '' groups the argument in favor of immediate colonization into two categories. The first is the high-minded idea that mankind must spread to other planets ''before civilization crumbles,'' as Elon Musk told Walter Isaacson. The second is the ''hot tub argument'' : Going to space is worth it because it's cool.

The authors dismantle the first theory with tact. Self-described ''science geeks,'' the Weinersmiths embarked on this book expecting to write '' a sociological road map'' to building off-world colonies in the near future.

But as they dived into their research, they found that the loudest advocates for space settlement are so dazzled by the beauty of their rockets that they wave away ''the stuff regular lives are made of,'' like food and birth, democracy and law.

The main problem, the Weinersmiths write, is that '' Space is terrible. All of it. Terrible,'' adding :

'' The Moon isn't just a sort of gray Sahara without air. Its surface is made of jagged, electrically charged microscopic glass and stone, which clings to pressure suits and landing vehicles. 

Nor is Mars just an off-world Death Valley - the soil is laden with toxic chemicals, and its thin carbonic atmosphere whips up worldwide dust storms that blot out the sun for weeks at a time. And those are the good places to land.

The terribleness of space might be worth overlooking, they concede, if civilization really were about to crumble.

But it isn't. Life on Earth is hard. It always has been. But mankind has no problems that would be solved by relocating to a place without food, water or air.

As the Weinersmiths write, '' An Earth with climate change and nuclear war and, like, zombies and werewolves is still a way better place than Mars.''

And what about the hot tub? The Weinersmiths argue that the current state of space law means an unregulated scramble for the vanishingly few resources of the moon and Mars would make war on Earth more likely.

The greater our off-world presence, the easier it would be for a terrorist or disgruntled billionaire to hurl an asteroid at Earth and wipe out the species we are theoretically trying to save.

'' The more capacity we have to do things in space,'' they write, '' the more capacity we have for self-annihilation.

'' A City on Mars : Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through.? By Kelly and Zach Weinersmiths.''

But most of the book is devoted to fascinating, practical questions of colonization. There are histories of rocketry, space law of celestial advertising.

Throughout, the Weinersmiths advocate for colonization approach that they call ''wait and go big.'' Fund hundreds of biospherelike experiments on Earth to learn about human survival in a closed habitat.

Do systematic studies of animal reproduction in orbit, so we can find out if it's even safe for people to get pregnant away from Earth.

Modernize space law and establish a regulatory agency to ensure that the cosmos is treasured like Antarctica, not savaged like the Amazon. Once the framework is in place, move hundreds of thousands of settlers all at once - enough to establish a real civilization. Enough to thrive.

In the meantime, appreciate what we have. '' Earth isn't perfect,'' the Weinersmiths write, '' but as planets go it's a pretty good one.''

This book will make you happy to live on this planet - a good thing, because you're not leaving anytime soon.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Great Books, continues. The World Students Society thanks review author, novelist W.M. Akers.

With respectful dedication to the Global Founder Framers of !WOW!, and then Mankind, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. 

See You all prepare for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society - the exclusive ownership of every student : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

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