Welcome to Entanglements. In this episode, hosts Brooke Borel and Anna Rothschild ask: Should we settle space? And more specifically: What should we risk to become multiplanetary? What is the most ethical way to achieve that goal? Of course, some people don’t think we should even venture into space. But the fact is, plenty of high-profile projects are already aiming for the stars and experts have wildly different opinions on when, how, and where it all should happen.
As always, to dig in, our hosts invited two experts with differing opinions to share their points of view in an effort to find some common ground. The point isn’t to both-sides an issue or to try to force agreement. Instead, they aim to explore the nuance and subtleties that are often overlooked in heated online forums or in debate-style media.
Their guests this week are Tiffany Vora, a biologist and space advocate who has done three analog Mars simulations, and Kelly Weinersmith, a biologist and the co-author of the book “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought this Through?”
Below is the full transcript of the podcast, lightly edited for clarity. New episodes drop on Wednesdays. You can also subscribe to Entanglements on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Anna Rothschild: Brooke.
Brooke Borel: Yes.
Anna Rothschild: Would you ever move to Mars?
Brooke Borel: I feel like it’s a little early in the morning to be asking me such questions. Would I ever? Not right now.
Anna Rothschild: Before you’ve had your coffee?
Brooke Borel: Not right now, before I have had my coffee. But also not right now because there’s nowhere to live on Mars.
Anna Rothschild: Yeah. What would Mars have to look like before you decided: ‘You know what? This is the place for me.’
Brooke Borel: I mean, I would need — there would have to be a sustainable, even thriving community there. I’d have to be alive in like 200 years or something and go when it’s pretty established.
Anna Rothschild: Gotcha. That seems very, very reasonable to me. I have a bit of a phobia of outer space.
Brooke Borel: That’s reasonable.
Anna Rothschild: I have dreams often that I’ve somehow found myself with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get shot up into space.
Brooke Borel: What a dream.
Anna Rothschild: And I feel some need to do it because of FOMO or because I don’t want people to think I’m a wimp, but…
Brooke Borel: But you don’t want to go.
Anna Rothschild: But I really don’t want to go. But my issue is not with Mars per se, it’s with space.
Brooke Borel: Space. Like the vast expanse?
Anna Rothschild: Like the vastness, that really scares me. That really, really scares me.
Brooke Borel: I get that. Why are we talking about Mars?
Anna Rothschild: So this is the question of the day: Should we settle space? Or really more to the point: What should we risk to become multiplanetary? What is the most ethical way to do that?
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Anna Rothschild: You are listening to Entanglements, the show where we explore scientific controversies and find common ground. I’m science journalist Anna Rothschild.
Brooke Borel: And I’m Brooke Borel, articles editor at Undark.
Anna Rothschild: So, Brooke, the reason we are talking about this, in large part, is because there are many people who really want to make us a multiplanetary species. One notable one is Elon Musk. Here he is talking about the spacecraft Starship from his company SpaceX.
Elon Musk: Each launch is about learning more and more about what’s needed to make life multiplanetary, and to improve Starship to the point where it can be taking, ultimately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, to Mars. Ideally, we can take anyone who wants to go to Mars, we can take to Mars.
Brooke Borel: That seems ambitious.
Anna Rothschild: That is a very good word for it. So, Musk wants to set up a self-sustaining settlement on Mars that could survive a catastrophe on Earth. So basically the death of Earth. And his goal is to make that happen in around 20 years.
Brooke Borel: That is very soon.
Anna Rothschild: Yes. Especially considering that no one has ever even set foot on Mars yet.
Brooke Borel: Right.
Anna Rothschild: But Musk isn’t the only one pursuing space settlement. Notably: Jeff Bezos, Newt Gingrich, and Buzz Aldrin.
Brooke Borel: What a trio.
Anna Rothschild: I know. They all want to see humans settling space. And by settle, just to define it, I mean: Should we set up permanent, sustainable settlements in space where people live full time, have jobs, and raise families? We’re not just talking about sending astronauts or scientists there, we’re talking about sending civilians.
Brooke Borel: Got it.
Anna Rothschild: And today we will stick with Mars as our location for space settlement since it’s the place most commonly talked about.
Brooke Borel: OK. Well, I’m excited to hear from your guests.
Anna Rothschild: Yes, this was a really fun one. I have two biologists on today. Now, neither is totally against space settlement — they don’t believe it’s a worthless pursuit, for example, or that it conflicts with humanity’s goals on Earth. But they’ve both thought a lot about what it would take to sustain human life on Mars and how much we should risk to make that happen.
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Anna Rothschild: If you got a ticket to Mars on the first flight, would you go?
Tiffany Vora: Yes. Next question.
Anna Rothschild: This is Tiffany Vora. She has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, and works in Silicon Valley helping people understand where biotech might be going in the future. But Tiffany loves space. She grew up watching shuttle launches as a kid in Florida, and she’s done three simulated Mars missions. Today, she remains part of the space community.
Tiffany Vora: I’ve been honored to serve in a variety of space organizations around the world, including Explore Mars, where I’m currently the VP of Innovation Partnerships. And I also work with groups like Humanity in Deep Space, where we ask questions like — let’s assume the rockets work — who do we want to be as people when we leave Earth?
Anna Rothschild: So let’s start with the question of the day, which is: Should we settle space?
Tiffany Vora: I think we should settle space. I think there’s so much potential for us to develop as humans, for us to deliver more benefits back here on Earth, to come up with all kinds of technological solutions that we badly need, not just for space, but for Earth as well.
Anna Rothschild: Do you see that as some sort of human imperative?
Tiffany Vora: That’s an interesting word, imperative. I would hate to see us let it go. Do I think there’s a long-term future for humanity where we only stay on Earth? Sure. Maybe that’s baseline, maybe that’s possible. But I think that getting off Earth and exploring more of our solar system, and eventually more than that, will help us evolve as a species — biologically but also mentally and emotionally and developmentally — in really exciting ways. I think humans can be better than we are today, and I think a great way to do that is to get off this wonderful planet of ours and get out there and see what else we can do.
Brooke Borel: That’s really a beautiful idea. I hadn’t thought of it that way before. And she seems really optimistic about our future in space.
Anna Rothschild: She really is, and I think part of her optimism comes from the three Mars simulations she did.
Brooke Borel: Right, tell me a little more about those.
Anna Rothschild: Yeah. So they’re technically called analog Mars simulations. The ones Tiffany did are run by a space advocacy group called The Mars Society, and they’re held in remote locations in Utah and Arctic Canada.
Brooke Borel: OK.
Anna Rothschild: And basically since the early 2000s, small crews of people go and typically spend a few weeks doing science and improving the habitat, in an attempt to mimic the type of work we’d be doing on missions to Mars. And the thing that I think is particularly cool is that each simulation builds on the last, so each crew adds to the structures and technology at the site, kind of like they would if we ever build an actual Mars settlement.
Brooke Borel: OK, I mean, this is not for me. I can’t really imagine spending my free time doing this. But you know, I can see how someone who’s really into space — really into the idea of settling Mars — would be really into this idea.
Anna Rothschild: Yes, and Tiffany definitely falls into that camp.
Tiffany Vora: I can tell you that they were both some of the hardest times of my life and also some of the most rewarding and the experiences that made the biggest impact on who I am as a person and who I want to be. You come home at the end of the day and you are physically exhausted, you’re all beat up, you’ve eaten some lousy food that you’re not happy with, and you go to bed and you cannot wait to get up the next morning and do it again.
Anna Rothschild: And Tiffany thinks that creating an actual settlement on Mars could be infinitely more rewarding.
Tiffany Vora: The actual act of doing science in space requires technological development. It requires solving really hard problems, and we’ve seen many really great instances of where innovating for space has made life on Earth better.
Anna Rothschild: Tiffany says that doing science in space could teach us things about Earth’s climate. And without the constraints of Earth’s gravity and atmosphere, it might give us insights into Earth biology as well.
Tiffany Vora: The idea is that if you can take Earth biology and take it off someplace else, you get to open up some new possibilities for understanding how proteins fold, or how cells can sense where up is, or how they can sense light or things like that. And so space is also this really interesting laboratory for us to understand ourselves better.
Anna Rothschild: What are the biggest challenges to space settlement?
Tiffany Vora: I think the biggest challenges to space settlement right now have to do with public will. I think another limiting factor here is going to be international collaboration. I would hate to see one country or one company try to do this alone. The best of humans comes out when we work together on things. I do not think technology is a limiting reagent here. I think humans are the limiting factor. So I think what we really need is a belief that innovating for space makes life on Earth better. And when we can get enough people on board with that, then the sky’s the limit.
Brooke Borel: I mean, I love the idea of that. But I’m not really sure if that’s possible. I don’t know if that would happen.
Anna Rothschild: I hear you.
Brooke Borel: And another thing I’m not sure about is: Do we really need an actual settlement to get some of the benefits that Tiffany is talking about?
Anna Rothschild: Yeah. So one thing to consider is that it’s not like you can just pop over to Mars on any given day. It will take between six and 10 months to get there. And you can only go during certain launch windows when Earth and Mars are close together, and those only happen every two-plus years.
Brooke Borel: OK. Yeah, that’s not a flight you want to miss.
Anna Rothschild: Yeah, exactly.
Brooke Borel: OK. So it’s not like you can just send scientists or tourists over there and then have them pop back a month later to be with their family, their friends, their communities. So really, in order to do the work that they would need to do and to be happy and healthy humans, they need community and we need to send families and civilians, eventually.
Anna Rothschild: Eventually, that’s what you need.
Brooke Borel: Yeah.
Anna Rothschild: I mean, I think early on there’s going to be some people who will just go on that early flight and Tiffany would be one of those people.
Brooke Borel: OK.
Anna Rothschild: But my next guest definitely would not.
Kelly Weinersmith: Space really sucks and Mars sucks the least.
Anna Rothschild: This is Kelly Weinersmith. She’s a biologist too — she actually studies parasites — and she’s also an author and podcaster. In 2023, she and her husband Zach published a book about space settlement called “A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?” When Kelly and Zach pitched the book, they were pretty optimistic about our prospects off Earth. But now they’re not convinced we should be moving to Mars anytime soon.
Kelly Weinersmith: I tend to think that a lot of the arguments for why we should settle space are not very good. The one argument that I buy is that it would be good to have a backup for humanity. But I don’t feel like we can rush into this because a backup for humanity is a task that will take generations, because a backup implies that you can have babies in space and that your backup — so for example, a settlement on Mars — could survive the death of the Earth. And it’s going to be a long time before Martians will be able to survive without Earth-based resupply ships. So I don’t think we need to rush into it. Do you have a favorite hypothesis for why we should settle space that I can be a real wet blanket about?
Anna Rothschild: I mean, frankly, I think the biggest reason to do it is just because it’s cool.
Kelly Weinersmith: Totally. And so Zach and I, when we started doing this research project, that was our motivating factor, to be honest. Like it was awesome, and no one has a right to tell us no. We kind of compared it to my husband and I in a hot tub, which is to say: Not the most beautiful thing you can imagine, but nobody has a right to tell us no because it doesn’t hurt anyone.
But so then the question is: Is space actually like Weinersmiths in a hot tub? And we ended up deciding that it’s not because it could actually hurt people.
Anna Rothschild: In Kelly’s book, she gets into lots of reasons why space settlement could hurt people. For example, folks back on Earth could be harmed if a space race sparks international conflict. And then there are the potential risks and obstacles facing the Martian settlers.
Kelly Weinersmith: One of the biggest possible obstacles is that a self-sustaining settlement requires people to be able to give birth on Mars without dying and those babies to be able to develop normally in space.
Anna Rothschild: It’s kind of shocking to me how little we know about reproduction in space. We’ve had space stations in orbit for decades, and yet no mammal — not even a mouse or rat — has ever given birth in space.
Kelly Weinersmith: We know that on the International Space Station, you’re in free fall around the Earth, so you’re experiencing something like zero gravity. And we know that hip bones degrade at about 1 percent per month. So about 1 percent of your density and your hip bone is lost per month in space, and Mars has 40 percent of Earth’s gravity. So, you know, are our hips going to be able to survive childbirth? Are we all going to have broken hips when labor kicks in?
Anna Rothschild: And that’s not the only question when it comes to having babies in space. For example, muscles weaken in low gravity.
Kelly Weinersmith: So we’ve sent rats to space while they were pregnant and then we brought them back to Earth to go through labor and they had to do twice as many of a certain kind of contraction during labor, and we think that’s because their muscles just weren’t strong enough.
Additionally, the surface of Mars has this dust called regolith, and it’s bad to breathe in for everyone, pregnant or not, or baby or not. It’s like tiny little microscopic knives. And if you breathe it in, there’s some worry that it will scar your lungs. But it also has this chemical in it called perchlorates and perchlorates mess with the hormones produced by our thyroids. That hormone is important for nervous system development for fetuses.
You also have radiation to worry about. Here on Earth, we’re protected by our thick atmosphere and a strong planet wide magnetosphere, but Mars doesn’t have that kind of protection. In general, we just really don’t know how our bodies are going to respond and how babies are going to develop in this environment. It’s just — it’s not what we were adapted to.
Brooke Borel: That is a tremendous number of unknowns.
Anna Rothschild: Oh, for sure. And that’s just the babies. There are still a lot of questions about how to keep adults alive on Mars, too.
Brooke Borel: Right, of course.
Anna Rothschild: Kelly has concerns about that, too. She has lots of concerns about space settlement, like what it will take to build a sustainable habitat and the geopolitical ramifications of settling space.
Brooke Borel: I do get why she’s starting here, since having babies in space seems pretty foundational to actually settling another planet, rather than setting up a science base.
Anna Rothschild: Exactly.
Anna Rothschild: What are some of the rationales that you’ve heard from pro-space settlement advocates for why your concerns are overblown?
Kelly Weinersmith: Usually the complaint comes in the form of “you are a wimp,” which is fine. But I’ll go to space settlement conferences and it has always been men who have come up to me and said: “Look, women on Earth give birth under harsh conditions all the time. Why can’t we send them to Mars and see how it goes?”
And they are correct: Women on Earth do give birth under harsh conditions all the time. But if you are giving birth in an area that doesn’t have adequate medical care, you are much more likely to die or become disabled in some way that will stick with you for the rest of your life. So I don’t think that because we let that slide in some places on Earth, we should carry that tradition with us out to space.
A lot of folks in the space settlement community will say: “You know, this is so important and you are holding us back with these sort of more like squishy biology concerns. These are things we can figure out when we get there. And the people whose bodies are fit for space will survive and over time we’ll end up with people who are well adapted to the Martian environment. We end up with people with a lot of disabilities here on Earth, this planet that we’re adapted for.”
If you start having babies in an environment where so many things are not like they would be on Earth, you might expect even more disabilities, but you will every once in a while come across a paper where folks will say things like, “We might have to have a liberal abortion policy or change our threshold for what counts as valuable life.” And if you are thinking about this as a backup for humanity, why would you want to back up the version of humanity that has a different threshold for valuable human life? Let’s back up the version of humanity that brings with us the progress we’ve made on human rights. We still have a long way to go even there, but let’s make sure that we’re supporting everybody who goes out to the settlement.
Anna Rothschild: So, Brooke, even though Kelly takes these issues really seriously, she acknowledged, as you heard, that not everyone in the space settlement community does. But that’s why I thought the match-up of Tiffany and Kelly would be good, because they’re both biologists and they’re both women, and these “squishy biology concerns” as Kelly calls them, are actually things they both care about deeply.
Brooke Borel: Right, although they have pretty different levels of optimism about space settlement.
Anna Rothschild: Yeah, totally. And when I brought Tiffany and Kelly together, we talked about a lot of different issues with space settlement, but we started with the space babies question.
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Kelly Weinersmith: One of the things that makes me nervous about this literature is that in a couple different places, I’ve seen folks say: “Look, we’re going to have to let natural selection run its course when we send people out there.” Which of course means that you’re going to get a lot of people dying. And I don’t see that that has to happen. I feel like a lot of the problems we’re going to encounter could be fixed by technology. What do you think about what’s going to happen when people get up there?
Tiffany Vora: Kelly, it’s really interesting that you bring up that natural selection question because what I hear people worried about is artificial selection and using biotech in order to do things like engineer in either mutations that we know already occur on Earth that we think would make people better suited to living off Earth, or trying to come up with entirely new genetic forms. So on my end, the pushback I get is, “Wait a minute, should we be playing God this way?” And it has to do with the engineering, not with the selection. So I find that interesting, that you’re hearing the selection piece.
Kelly Weinersmith: Well, I’m worried about both. I’m a worrier. And I’m worried in general about genetic engineering. I don’t want to jump into that for humans too quickly. It sounds complicated.
Anna Rothschild: For Tiffany’s part, she looks to technology to help us solve some of the potential problems with having babies in space. Take the radiation issue:.
Tiffany Vora: So several of the habitat and settlement plans that I’m seeing have folks living underground instead of trying to get some sort of really big, really heavy shielding, pile the regolith on top or take your water supply and wrap your water supply around the thing you’re living in.
Is that going to be good enough? I don’t know the answer to that yet, because we haven’t actually done the experiments. So I don’t think you’ll hear me argue, “Let’s send a million people right up there, right out of the bat and see what happens.” That’s not a Tiffany plan at all. But I think what I would love to see is real rigorous and — I don’t even want to say boring — but just step-by-step, doing the experiments, getting the data, and then saying: “Based on these data, here’s what we should be worried about next.”
I get worried when we speculate based on a paucity of data. I am a data girl. You want to show me the data and tell me there’s a problem? I’m listening. But until we have the data, I’m never quite sure what we’re arguing about besides our own fear and our own worries.
Kelly Weinersmith: Amen. I think we’re done. No, I’m kidding. But that was great.
Tiffany Vora: Kelly, I’m curious as to whether you have an opinion about where the money should come from to do those things. Right?
Kelly Weinersmith: Yeah, that’s a great question. So I don’t really have a great answer to be honest. So I know that there are a bunch of companies that are trying to get answers to these questions by finding a profitable route. Through all of the research questions that need to be answered. So for example, SpaceBorne United is trying to do in vitro fertilization in space and are hoping that they can come up with some technologies that will help in vitro fertilization down here on Earth, based on what they learn is happening in space.
But I don’t know that that will get us all the way to all of the questions that need to be answered. And for that kind of stuff, I think we probably need either billionaires to step in, or the government to start investing in some of these problems. And the problems that have the clearest benefits for us back here on Earth might be the easiest ones to have the government fund. But what do you think?
Tiffany Vora: I think I might be a bit more of a booster for a private space economy perhaps than you are. The tricky part, of course, is figuring out what the business proposition is in the short term while you’re waiting for a 30- or 50-year payoff on an investment. I still think it’s possible, and I really do believe very strongly in the private sector being something that is going to be a strong driving force. It’s my preferred driving force for this. Based on geopolitics today, I am very nervous about relying on governments or national space agencies. The billionaires, door number three — that’s another issue, which we can talk about.
But if I’m going to argue against myself, the danger then becomes: Who makes decisions? Who decides how much risk? Who decides how the money plays out? Who decides what is ethical or what is moral? And I would like to believe that the government or governments have an imperative to reflect the values of their societies. And I’m a lot less confident about that when it comes to companies and when it comes to individual funders or philanthropists. I think we need all of these folks, but personally I would love to see the economy driving this.
Anna Rothschild: Let’s talk a little bit about your sort of anticipated timelines for when this could all happen. Tiffany, do you want to go first?
Tiffany Vora: I am a 2033 girl. I love that launch window, and that’s where I want to see either — well, preferably humans, but also material being sent to get this basic infrastructure started before we start sending crews out there. I don’t see a value in waiting today. Now that doesn’t take us to a settlement in 2033. I still think we’re probably talking — if you want to have babies be the benchmark — I still think we’re 30 to 50 years out. From the first baby being born on purpose, that’s assuming nobody messes up or nobody does a stunt to see if it happens.
Just because I think what we’ll want to see are these long-term experiments, making sure that the human genome can passage through multiple generations in a way that is going to be safe and not just come up with some terrible mutational burden that we’ll be putting on our future humans. Kelly, what does your timeline look like?
Kelly Weinersmith: 2033 for boots on the ground seems a little soon to me. I would like to see us go back to the moon. I’d like to see us have humans stay on the moon for two years. So two years is, I think, at least six months longer than the prior longest continuous stay in space. And if adult bodies do fine on the moon, then we can start sending them to Mars. Because they’re going to be stuck out there for probably about two years.
Tiffany Vora: I am not willing to gamble Mars’s future on commitment to the moon. There’s just too much at play there, and I am just too distrustful of these geopolitics today and the commitment today. So I think I would love to see both. I would love to see us shoot for Mars while we’re doing the good things on the moon and learning as much as we can from that particular position.
Anna Rothschild: I want to go back to some of the reasons for settling space. Tiffany, one of your visions for settling Mars is that we can actually make humanity better. We can solve some of the problems that we have here on Earth. Can you elaborate on that a little bit for Kelly?
Tiffany Vora: My opinion, Kelly, is that what has gotten humanity to today is not what’s going to get us through the future years. We humans have been so lucky on Earth. Earth is such an amazing planet, but for various reasons, I think that we need a sea change in how we show up in the universe as humans, how we interact with each other, and how we interact with whatever planet we happen to be on.
And so I love Mars as the ultimate challenge for that. And I think settling is a different challenge because it’s a challenge that requires a legacy. It’s a challenge that requires a long-term mindset. Humans historically have not been very good at long-term mindsets, so I think when I think about why we should settle Mars, I mean, I think John F. Kennedy had it right: Not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.
Kelly Weinersmith: So the usual critique I give after hearing something like that is: Why not just create cities underwater or on Antarctica, other environments where they’re hard? I feel like there are plenty of challenges that humanity could tackle here, that we don’t have to go to Mars to do them. Going to Mars is another cool challenge that I do think is exciting to tackle. I’m a little skeptical about Mars being a fresh start.
Tiffany Vora: As long as there are people on it, there’s no fresh start, right? We bring ourselves with us: Anywhere you go, there you are. But if you talk to people who live and work on Antarctica, there’s a reason most of them go back: Because you have the opportunity to do something different while you’re there and the context is so foreign and so alien, it’s a way of reassessing yourself. I know for me, having been on three analog Mars simulations, which is like the absolute lightest version of that possible, doing all three of those changed my entire life. I would love to see a scenario in which thousands or millions of people have the capacity to have that kind of life altering experience.
Kelly Weinersmith: I think a fundamental difference maybe is that I think Tiffany has the heart of an explorer and I have the heart of a couch potato. And I think that that shows in our approaches. And so to me, the Earth has more than enough challenging environments. I will never visit them all. But Tiffany has been in a lot of challenging environments and done a lot of awesome things. So I think that might be an axis along which we vary.
Tiffany Vora: The people with the explorer hearts are going to be the first ones to go, who are willing to take the risks, willing to eat the crappy food, willing to be cold all the time. Humans aren’t going to want to live like that for their whole lives. It’s miserable. Right? But I’ll sign up for phase one personally, because you’re right, Kelly. That’s what my heart is.
Anna Rothschild: So on this note, over 200,000 people applied for Mars One, which, just for those who are listening who don’t know, was a very flawed project that promised to send a small number of settlers on a one-way trip to Mars in the 2020s. I guess my question is generally: If there are people who want to take that risk, even if we don’t have everything in place, should we as a society let them? What is our ethical responsibility?
Tiffany Vora: I think part of it depends on who’s paying the bills.
Anna Rothschild: Do you agree with that, Kelly?
Kelly Weinersmith: I do. Yeah. Well, I do, but also with a few caveats. I’m worried if we send people too soon, people are going to die. And that’s going to make it harder for us to get the funds and the interest to try to do this again in the future. I feel like a catastrophe could hold this entire project back. I think that the government has some responsibility to make sure that nothing completely irresponsible is going to happen. But if Elon Musk wants to send people to Mars after we’ve gotten some of this information and a little earlier than the U.S. government might prefer, I would probably be OK with that.
I think there’s one additional layer though: Going to space, and humans in space in particular, has always been tied to geopolitics and prestige. And so, for example, Elon Musk has said in a town hall in Philadelphia that he doesn’t feel like we should have to follow international laws because he didn’t vote anyone into the United Nations. There are additional risks for the rest of us back here at home if Musk sends a hundred people and they decide they’re not going to follow international law, and that makes China and the rest of the international community mad. And now we’re dealing with sanctions. I guess it’s like an extra layer of complication that has implications for more people than just the ones who are going, which might get the government involved more.
But it is really exciting to think about: How do you govern a space settlement? What is the punishment and the legal system going to be like? And lots of exciting questions that we need to tackle right now. It would be a fun time to be a space lawyer.
Anna Rothschild: Totally. What do you think of the idea of Mars as a backup planet for humanity? Kelly, you talked a little bit about this in your one-on-one interview, so do you want to go first?
Kelly Weinersmith: Sure. I think that one of the best arguments for settling space is that it would create a backup for humanity. And so if something catastrophic happened to Earth, we got hit by a giant asteroid, for example, having humans that are self-sustaining somewhere else in our solar system might be a nice insurance policy for our species.
Tiffany Vora: You know, I am actually a no on this one. I think that our Earth is so beautiful and so precious and so marvelous that I could see a danger in which people would say: “Oh, well, if we’ve got a backup plan, then we don’t have to worry about Earth.” I’m not sure I believe I have to choose, but I don’t know how I feel about Mars as a backup plan for humanity. And what you’re also asking me, I think is a very deep philosophical question: Whether I think there’s some sort of innate value in humanness, whether I think that human DNA must go on? I’m not sure I believe that. Maybe if we have a couple of glasses of wine and then come back to this, I might have a different opinion.
Anna Rothschild: What would a Mars settlement need to look like before you decided to move there permanently?
Kelly Weinersmith: Nothing could make me move to Mars. Part of that is that today I went on a walk through my hayfields with my three goats and my two dogs — I do get off the couch — and I just really like walking around Earth. Earth is so beautiful and I wouldn’t want to leave while there’s so much biodiversity left to uncover. But I understand why somebody would want to wake up and see the sunrise on an alien planet. I am so glad that there are people who are not like me, who are pushing the envelope and are going out there and exploring. And then the other answer is that I have an autistic son who’s nonverbal and it’s hard for me to imagine that Mars is going to have the kind of support that he needs for the foreseeable future. And so I will be staying in the environment I think is best for him.
Anna Rothschild: That makes sense.
Tiffany Vora: Kelly, we should talk about accessibility stuff that folks are doing on Earth that they’re trying to translate to space. There’s actually some really, really interesting research being done in this area, which I think is fascinating.
Kelly Weinersmith: Cool.
Tiffany Vora: OK, so your question, Anna, was what do I need in order to live there permanently, right? I would need human’s three greatest inventions, which are chocolate, cheese, and birth control. You give me those three things and I’m in, I can make it happen. You know, I’ve lived in various places around the world. You figure it out. And for me, as long as there is something motivating me that is meaningful to me, that I’m in this place — and preferably that I’m with the people that I love, but I’ve been 10,000 miles away for years from the people that I love as well — I think my bar is pretty simple. I don’t need a lot of the things that I have today that make my life fun and easy. Especially not if I can substitute them with something truly meaningful, like developing myself or developing humanity on another planet.
Kelly Weinersmith: I’m glad there are people like Tiffany on this planet.
Anna Rothschild: Me too. I think I fall more into the Kelly camp, I have to admit. But I really appreciate your point of view, Tiffany.
Tiffany Vora: I mean, you’re pro-chocolate, pro-cheese, pro-birth control, right?
Anna Rothschild: Oh yeah. I’m pro- all those things. Absolutely.
Kelly Weinersmith: The three Cs, right? Chocolate, cheese, and contraception,
Anna Rothschild: Yes. There you go.
Kelly Weinersmith: In particular.
Tiffany Vora: I love it. We’ve got a name for our band. This is perfect.
Kelly Weinersmith: I’m in.
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Anna Rothschild: So Brooke, did anything you hear today change your mind?
Brooke Borel: About me going?
Anna Rothschild: Yeah.
Brooke Borel: No. If anything, I even more so would not be in those first waves of people.
Anna Rothschild: What do you think about Elon Musk’s timeline?
Brooke Borel: Absolutely not. I think it’s ridiculous. I don’t see how that’s possible. I think that it’s too soon and we really need to know far more about the potential risks for people — including, and especially, people who are giving birth there.
Anna Rothschild: Yeah.
Brooke Borel: Can we not have some data on some mice giving birth in space before we try this with humans?
Anna Rothschild: I think that, for the most part, no one is saying that we wouldn’t be doing that. I think the question is: Just how much should we be trying to achieve the goal of space settlement before we figure out some of these?
Brooke Borel: They can happen at the same time, to a degree.
Anna Rothschild: Yes. One question I have for you is what you think about that philosophical question Tiffany posed at the end: Whether there’s some sort of innate value in humanness and human DNA that must be preserved if Earth reaches its demise?
Brooke Borel: I mean, this is a self-centered human talking. But I think that there’s something worth preserving there. I would be really sad for humans to not exist at all anymore once Earth is no longer here. I think that there is some value in at least trying to find a way to expand beyond where we are now, because I think there is something special about our species.
Anna Rothschild: Yeah, I don’t know how much I agree. I mean, I agree that there is something very special about our species.
Brooke Borel: Tell me more.
Anna Rothschild: But I think that the value of our species comes from our community and culture and the way we cooperate with each other. And so I want to see us survive given the demise of Earth, but only if we can thrive.
Brooke Borel: Yeah. You don’t want us to just be clinging on. What kind of life is that?
Anna Rothschild: Exactly. I want us to have community and love and all of the things that we value down here. I don’t think it’s worth preserving human biology just for the sake of preserving it without those things.
Brooke Borel: I agree. So we would need to figure out a way to allow for all that.
Anna Rothschild: I mean, and that is the point of space settlement, long-term space settlement. But yeah, I want to make sure it’s really good before we ever have to worry about Earth dying.
Brooke Borel: Yeah. I mean, wow. What dark thoughts. I’m so curious what our listeners think about all this. Would you be on that first ship to Mars? Are you more of a couch potato or an explorer? Let us know.
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Anna Rothschild: Yeah, send us an email to [email protected].
Brooke Borel: And that’s it for this episode of Entanglements, brought to you by Undark Magazine, which is published by the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT. Our amazing producer and editor is Samia Bouzid. The show is fact-checked by Undark deputy editor Jane Reza. Our production editor is Amanda Grennell, and Adriana Lacy is our audience engagement editor. Special thanks to our editor in chief, Tom Zeller Jr. I’m Brooke Borel.
Anna Rothschild: And I’m Anna Rothschild. Thanks for listening. See you next time.