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Kelly Weinersmith
Personal blog · acityonmars.comsciencewriting
Kelly Weinersmith writes A City on Mars, a personal blog at acityonmars.com about science and writing. Since 2023, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “No City on Mars”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
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23mentions?
17HN people?
2023–2026first – last linked?
Earth is not well. The promise of starting life anew somewhere far, far away—no climate change, no war, no Twitter—beckons, and settling the stars finally seems within our grasp. Or is it? Critically acclaimed, bestselling authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith set out to write the essential gu
Most-linked posts?
- No City on Mars12 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2024-01-11
- A City on Mars3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-04-17
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-07
What Hacker News says?
Given that the Artemis program is motivated by space settlement, I'm surprised nobody has referenced "A City On Mars" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith (of https://www.smbc-comics.com/ acclaim) yet. I went into the book with lots excitement for extraterrestrial colonies, and finished it being convinced to better wait. They argue that if you actually look into the details, especially into the "dry" political, legal and s…
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on “The Lunacy of Artemis”Submitted A City on Mars as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI read "A City on Mars" last year, and it opened my eyes to just hard space travel is. The government constraints on aerospace projects doesn't help. There's a reason SpaceX moves so much faster; they don't have to justify and explain things to taxpayers. Beyond that, the book makes a good case for how unrealistic a long-term colony on Mars is... at least in the short term (Short being the next 50 to 100 years). My…
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on “NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on SpaceX Crew-9”Submitted No City on Mars as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor more on this "we don't really have the data for anything" problem, a humorously approachable read is "A City On Mars" [0]. Also the "nobody knows how laws would work" and other interesting complications. [0] https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “Scientists discover a new hormone that can build strong bones in mice”Mars isn’t exactly habitable either. Not to mention the myriad of issues we face even getting there, let alone thriving. Read the book A City On Mars recently which had a lot of interesting concerns not widely discussed in the pro space colonization community : https://www.acityonmars.com/ . Highly recommended.
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on “Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement”He won’t put anyone living on Mars. And even if he did, they wouldn’t last that long. https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will... https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “A step toward fully 3D-printed active electronics”> Lunar ice could provide hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel, which could power trips to deep space. Stop. Right. There. Time to read A City on Mars: https://www.acityonmars.com/ This is quickly turning into a pipe dream. Someone is letting their imagination run away. There simply isn't enough water on the moon to make hydrogen / oxygen for deep space travel.
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on “The quest to build a telescope on the moon”I can highly recommend "A City on Mars"[^0], which I recently read. The authors go into fascinating detail about what it takes to build planetary settlements, and they not only focus on the engineering questions but make a point to talk about the legal aspects of space settlement as well. [^0]: https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “Why Scientists Are Calling for the Moon to Be Better Protected from Development”Try this: https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “Our Generation Ships Will Sink (2015)”Sometimes Science Fiction is confused with Fantasy, but as far as it means "fiction about things that are scientifically possible but don't exist" I'd say traveling to other planets is SF. Traveling to other worlds (ie. interstellar) is fantasy. And living on other planets (terraforming) or outer space is somewhere in the middle: technically not impossible but very undesirable without major future tech. Fans of spac…
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on “Aliens and the Enlightenment”If you want to get depressed about all the problems with trying to colonize Mars, I recommend A City on Mars: https://www.acityonmars.com/ It's by the cartoonist of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and his wife (the one with an actual science PhD). https://www.smbc-comics.com/
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on “All 12 moonwalkers had "lunar hay fever" from dust smelling like gunpowder”Although that's funny, the ethical considerations of heterosexual couples on a long space flight are rather important. No one knows what happens if you get pregnant in space. No one knows what happens to such a baby. (No one's admitted to having sex in space, although it's generally suspected to have happened.) (See https://www.acityonmars.com/ because the book discusses this in more detail.) Birth control isn't 100…
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on “A 378-day Mars simulation changed this Canadian scientist's outlook on life”Direct link to arxiv paper. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.10380 The Weinersmiths' survey "A City on Mars" is a more comprehensive treatment on the subject. https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “What could a future sovereign Mars economy look like?”The book's homepage: https://www.acityonmars.com It could even be true that colonising space is not a desirable goal in general, but one might wish specific people would attempt to settle Mars, although said wish would be less benevolent and more "don't let the gravity well hit you on the way out"...
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on “Review: Should Humans Settle Mars? This Book Is Skeptical”Kelly and Zach are authors of the book "City on Mars", a well researched and approachable exploration of problems that still need to be addressed before large numbers of humans are sent to the Cosmos. https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “The Mars crisis, explained by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith [video]”Take a look at "A City on Mars" https://www.acityonmars.com/ for a detailed analysis and a pretty entertaining book!
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on “An AI Company Just Fired Someone for Endorsing Human Extinction”SMBC has a new book coming out on this topic: http://www.acityonmars.com A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create nightmares, both for settlers and the people they leave behind. In the process, the Weinersmiths answer every question about space you’ve ever wondered about, and many you’ve never considered.
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on “The Race to Colonize Mars Perpetuates a Dangerous Religion”Offering "pie in the sky" is nothing new; the difference is that in the old days it was the manifestly untestable "pie in the sky when you die". see https://www.acityonmars.com
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on “What if we never live on Mars?”Relevant book: https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “Will Elondia Be Like Fordlandia”A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith https://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “Ask HN: Good books about SpaceX and New Space?”> Go to space. Maybe Mars. They’re not going to go to Mars. https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will... https://www.acityonmars.com > Would you WANT to be the next tech celeb? I don’t want to be any kind of celebrity. “I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: ‘try being rich first’. See if that doesn’t cover most of it. There’s not much downside to being rich, other than pay…
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on “Ask HN: Would you WANT to be the next tech celeb?”Slightly related: SMBC's guys have recently published a book on related topics, claiming it's got a lot of bibliographical research in it (disclaimer: haven't read it yet.) http://www.acityonmars.com/
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on “a thread”
