EXCERPTS: . . . Clearly, the anti-space cause needs stronger advocacy. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s book A City on Mars seems at first like a promising candidate.
But the Weinersmiths’ central thesis is inherently contradictory. Human settlement of space is pointless and impossible, they argue, but we also need laws to stop it, lest humanity destroy itself fighting over the unprecedented bonanza that space has to offer.
In the more enjoyable first half of the book, the authors ridicule a number of silly and/or morally repugnant arguments that have been advanced in favor of space exploration. These include the ideas that by settling space we will be able to move all heavy industry off Earth—thereby ending pollution—and that by going into space, we will create a way for some of humanity to survive after we destroy the Earth and kill off the rest.
The Weinersmiths also effectively debunk the idea that space travel will transform human consciousness by making us aware that the borders between nations on Earth are merely convenient fictions...
[...] The problem is that the Weinersmiths simply ignore or dismiss all the more important arguments in support of human space settlement. (We will get to those later.)
After dismissing a number of absurd arguments, the authors change tack, claiming that space travel will prove impossible in any case.
In support of this, the Weinersmiths cite the high levels of radiation, extreme temperatures, and zero-gravity conditions of interplanetary space, as well as the abrasive dust and other hazards found on the surfaces of many planets. [...] But the Earth is also a planet in space, and it requires human ingenuity to survive here, too.
If we believe their assertions, the human settlement of Earth should also be impossible. Following the Weinersmiths, we could make the following case:
The planet Earth appears to be an attractive prospect for colonization. However, the star around which it orbits is given to putting out massive, unpredictable bursts of radiation, known as solar flares, that are likely to inflict severe radiation sickness, causing you to cough your lungs out well before you land.
Even if you survive both this and the virulent pathogens that infest every liter of Earth’s air and water, the planet’s extreme seasonal weather fluctuations preclude plant growth for large stretches of each year. As a result, the Earth’s dominant macrofauna have evolved the capacity to subsist on meat—a category of matter that includes you. In addition to being highly intelligent, many of these carnivores have extremely sharp teeth, exquisitely refined senses of hearing and smell, an instinctive knowledge of how to hunt in packs, and the ability to ran far faster than you can.
These facts have led some to recommend landing instead on Earth’s ample oceans—but these waters abound in fast-swimming creatures, many of whom are also hungry meat eaters.
The flow chart for deciding on a mission to Earth can thus be represented by the diagram below. [Go to Earth? No.]
[...] Nevertheless, the Weinersmiths argue that we need a much stronger law to protect us from the outbreak of war in space....
[...] This brings me to the most serious problem with this book. We do face a serious threat of war right now—but not from Martian invaders or because of disputes over mining rights on the Moon. We face the threat of war because the world today is, as Abraham Lincoln said of the United States in 1858, “a house divided, which cannot exist forever half slave and half free. It must become all one or all the other.”
If the free nations became spacefaring, that would offer us a significant advantage in this struggle. The opening-up of a challenging new domain of human activity has always benefited the most innovative nations.
[...] This is the true value of space. It is not a question of obtaining raw materials. We will probably not get oil from Mars. We will get inventions that will benefit humanity greatly. For just as the joyously innovative frontier society that was early America showered the world with inventions from the steamboat and the telegraph to the lightbulb, centrally-generated electric power, recorded sound, motion pictures, airplanes, and much more, so explorers and settlers on Mars will be forced to innovate dramatically in many vital areas, including biotech (to deal with the critical shortage of arable land), robotics and artificial intelligence (to overcome the severe labor shortage), and advanced forms of nuclear power (to provide for the needs of an energy-intensive society completely lacking fossil fuels.)
But these benefits, as great as they are, pale in comparison to the greatest blessing we will receive from Mars, which is the knowledge that there is no need to kill each other in provincial fights over territory on Earth when we can create new worlds for everyone.
To prevent war, the Weinersmiths would lock humanity in a cage... (MORE - missing details)