Zach Weinersmith | A city on Mars

The Foresight Institute Podcast

Zach Weinersmith is the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. He writes popular science books with his wife Kelly, including the recent Hugo award-winning A City on Mars. His work has been featured by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Forbes, Science Friday, Foreign Policy, PBS, Boingboing, the Freakonomics Blog, the RadioLab blog, Entertainment Weekly, Mother Jones, CNN, Discovery Magazine, Nautilus and more.

Key Highlights

• The future of space governance is explored, focusing on rocketry, space settlements, international law, and challenges like closed-loop ecology and human reproduction.
• Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" is criticized for optimism, colonialist perspectives, and assumptions about sustainable environments on Mars.
• Physiological risks of space travel, including radiation, reduced gravity, and the lack of reproduction data, are highlighted.
• Lessons from Biosphere 2 and doubts about the economic and legal viability of Mars colonization are discussed.
• Debates cover the Moon Treaty, anti-space settlement arguments, and testing reproduction in partial gravity.

About Foresight Institute

Foresight Institute is a research organization and non-profit that supports the beneficial development of high-impact technologies. Since our founding in 1987 on a vision of guiding powerful technologies, we have continued to evolve into a many-armed organization that focuses on several fields of science and technology that are too ambitious for legacy institutions to support.

Allison Duettmann

The President and CEO of Foresight Institute, Allison Duettmann directs the Intelligent Cooperation, Molecular Machines, Biotech & Health Extension, Neurotech, and Space Programs.

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