Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well more than half a century after Neil Armstrong landed
Speaker 2: on the Moon, another space race is definitely heating up.
Speaker 2: We talk about it all the time. This time it's
Speaker 2: about the promising new frontier for us Earthlings.
Speaker 1: That's you and me. Mars is it? I do know? Okay,
Speaker 1: so NASA's got a rover up there. Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: trying to get SpaceX's starship Rocket up to snuff with
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal of getting people to Mars. But Carol,
Speaker 1: the question remains, is it actually a good idea for
Speaker 1: us even to be thinking about going to Mars and
Speaker 1: colonizing space?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Earth Is, you know, having a rough
Speaker 2: time so we might need another place to live anyway.
Speaker 2: This is the question of our next guest, who set
Speaker 2: out to answer it in her new book. Kelly Wienersmith
Speaker 2: is the co author of City on Mars, Can we
Speaker 2: Settle Space? Should we settle Space? And have we really
Speaker 2: thought this through? She wrote this book with her husband, Zach,
Speaker 2: and she joins us on Zoom From Charlotte's Ville, Virginia.
Speaker 2: Kelly It's a subject we love to talk about. Elon
Speaker 2: Musk loves to talk about it so many people. I'm
Speaker 2: the daughter of a rocket scientist. I love talking about
Speaker 2: this stuff. Tell us about this book. What you set
Speaker 2: out to do with your husband, Zach.
Speaker 3: Well, So, after writing our first book together, we thought
Speaker 3: that space settlements might be a near term possibility, something
Speaker 3: that might happen in our lifetimes, and so we set
Speaker 3: out to write the guide for what the next couple
Speaker 3: decades are going to be like as we become a
Speaker 3: multiplanetary species. And after four years of research, we essentially
Speaker 3: determined that we are not ready to take this on yet.
Speaker 3: We don't know enough about a lot of different topics.
Speaker 3: I'm happy to get into them, and that actually depression
Speaker 3: to it. There could be a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: What do you okay, So talk to me about the idea,
Speaker 1: like the timeframes that you're thinking of of here, because
Speaker 1: I mean, should we actually be thinking about colonizing Mars
Speaker 1: within our life?
Speaker 2: And can we just say, for those of you watching
Speaker 2: on streaming and YouTube, we're kind of loving your background.
Speaker 2: Is that Mars in the background? I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 3: No, No, that's Earth. Those are the lights from Earth.
Speaker 3: So sorry, your question was, should we oh in our lifetimes?
Speaker 3: You know, I think that if it happens in our lifetimes, No,
Speaker 3: that's okay. If it happens in our lifetimes, I think
Speaker 3: that might be a problem. So, for example, we don't
Speaker 3: know nearly enough about how space impacts the human body.
Speaker 3: It turns out data from the International Space Station don't
Speaker 3: tell us what we need to know about humans living
Speaker 3: on Mars. So I think if we sent them there
Speaker 3: there could be a lot of ethical problems, especially if
Speaker 3: they started making families and you know, exposing children to
Speaker 3: these environments that we don't understand very well sounds like
Speaker 3: a problem. And as you mentioned, there might be a
Speaker 3: race with China starting.
Speaker 1: Okay, So hm, let's think about some of the challenges
Speaker 1: that we're not talking about, just like you know, logistical
Speaker 1: things like actually having families. We're talking about things that
Speaker 1: are pretty serious, like okay, once you get there, how
Speaker 1: do you get back?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking about poof food and closing the loose.
Speaker 1: Yeah you said it, Carol, That's what I really wanted
Speaker 1: to get too. Okay, so just go for it. Carol's fault.
Speaker 2: Sorry, so close.
Speaker 3: Loop ecosystems Basically, if you're going to be living on Mars,
Speaker 3: it's going to be it's really expensive to get resources
Speaker 3: to you from Earth, and for a long time, it's
Speaker 3: going to be really hard to extract resources from Mars.
Speaker 3: And Mars is a two year trip there and back.
Speaker 3: It's six months to get there, and then you're stuck
Speaker 3: there for a while until Earth sort of comes back
Speaker 3: around again, and then it's six months to get home.
Speaker 3: So you need to have a system that does not
Speaker 3: break for at least two years and ideally recycles things,
Speaker 3: and we just do not have that technology figured out yet.
Speaker 3: There was bios here too, which is sort of well
Speaker 3: known as being a bit of a catastrophe. And then
Speaker 3: they're like, right now, we've got facilities in China, for example,
Speaker 3: that try to run these experiments, and in a recent
Speaker 3: round they had to swap out two big guys for
Speaker 3: two smaller females because they weren't making enough oxygen. That's
Speaker 3: where we are right now. If that happened on Mars,
Speaker 3: that would be death instead of just swapping out crew members.
Speaker 1: Do you think we're actually like, is Elon Musk the
Speaker 1: guy who's going to do this? After doing all this
Speaker 1: research Is he the one who's going to be able
Speaker 1: to do this?
Speaker 3: I hope not, so I have to I am very
Speaker 3: impressed with what Elon Musk has done with SpaceX and
Speaker 3: what he's done with Tesla, and I am coming to
Speaker 3: you right now from a Starlink connection, and so I
Speaker 3: love his projects. I don't think that he's the best
Speaker 3: person to lead us into becoming a multiplanetary species, but
Speaker 3: I'm not that worried about it because I think his
Speaker 3: timelines are way off. He's I think he's famously said that,
Speaker 3: you know, once the rockets have been figured out, the
Speaker 3: rest is going to be easy. But I think the
Speaker 3: whole point of our book is that rockets are one
Speaker 3: hard part, but there's a lot of other hard parts,
Speaker 3: from figuring out, you know, the biology, to building the
Speaker 3: habitats that are still sustaining, to figure out the geopolitical
Speaker 3: hurdles that stand in our way. There's a lot more
Speaker 3: than just rockets. And so I don't think Mars is
Speaker 3: going to be leading our Musk is going to be
Speaker 3: leading us out there in our lifetimes.
Speaker 2: Hey, Kelly, you have fun with this in the book.
Speaker 2: You and your husband. I mean, you've got a PhD.
Speaker 2: In ecology. You are a faculty member in the biosciences
Speaker 2: department at Rice Universities, so you're a serious You've got
Speaker 2: a serious side, but you have fun with this. Why
Speaker 2: was it important to lay this out? Is it because
Speaker 2: people are focusing too much time, money, and effort on
Speaker 2: this one. Maybe it doesn't quite make sense yet or
Speaker 2: may never well.
Speaker 3: Well, so, I mean we started the book thinking that
Speaker 3: it maybe did make sense, But the more research we did,
Speaker 3: the more we discovered that there's a lot of a
Speaker 3: lot of topics that aren't getting, you know, for enough
Speaker 3: airtime and enough of people's attention. And the topics you know,
Speaker 3: maybe don't sound as exciting as rockets and rocket science,
Speaker 3: and they're just sort of like boring long term work
Speaker 3: that needs to be done to try to understand things
Speaker 3: like how partial gravity impacts bone development across you know,
Speaker 3: the course of a lifetime. And we decided that we
Speaker 3: wanted to be funny in this book because we wanted
Speaker 3: to get really deep into the details. So, for example,
Speaker 3: there's five chapters on international law as it pertains to space,
Speaker 3: And when we pitch that to our editor, she's like,
Speaker 3: I don't know that the general public is dying for
Speaker 3: five chapters on international law, so you better make it funny,
Speaker 3: and so we tried to do that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So when you're thinking about what life actually looks
Speaker 1: like on other planets, is it something that humans should
Speaker 1: actually pursue if the timeframe actually gives us enough time?
Speaker 1: Or should we focus on I don't know, making the
Speaker 1: most of the Earth that we've got.
Speaker 3: So I think that space is not going to be
Speaker 3: a near term solution for any of the problems that
Speaker 3: we have here on Earth. So you know, for example,
Speaker 3: folks like Bezos argue that we should move all of
Speaker 3: our heavy industry to space so that we're not polluting
Speaker 3: Earth anymore, and maybe we can you know, zone Earth
Speaker 3: as light residential. We'll move a bunch of people up
Speaker 3: to space too. I think the numbers just don't work
Speaker 3: out for stuff like that. So, you know, if you
Speaker 3: think about moving humans off the planet to take care
Speaker 3: of population growth issues, you have to move two hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty thousand people to space every day. I don't
Speaker 3: know where you're going to get those volunteers, and we
Speaker 3: don't even know how to house them. So I think
Speaker 3: any problem that we're likely doers. He's looking for volunteers,
Speaker 3: and I think he'll get a lot. I don't know
Speaker 3: if he's going to get that many, And again we
Speaker 3: don't have anywhere to put them because we don't know
Speaker 3: how to keep that many people alive in space. But
Speaker 3: if you're interested in a backup for humanity, I think
Speaker 3: a long term plan B could be good. So you know,
Speaker 3: if you start the settlement on Mars now, many generations
Speaker 3: from now, it might be self sustaining. And if you
Speaker 3: like humans, which I do, then it might be good
Speaker 3: to have a backup in case something happens on Earth.
Speaker 3: But it's not going to save us anytime.
Speaker 2: Soon, Kelly. One thing I would argue, though, is that
Speaker 2: many would say that the race to put a man
Speaker 2: on the Moon led to lots of innovation, Belcer, I
Speaker 2: know you're gonna set that no, but some really really
Speaker 2: important developments, right. It really kind of brought nations together,
Speaker 2: scientists together on a single mission, but it led to
Speaker 2: so much many offshoots off of that wouldn't Similarly, the
Speaker 2: pursuit of Mars maybe lead to that as well. And
Speaker 2: it's a good kind of thing to focus on and
Speaker 2: have a goal of, as difficult as it may be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's an interesting point. But so, you know,
Speaker 3: you talked about countries being brought together by the Apollo program,
Speaker 3: but the Apollo program was really fueled by a rift
Speaker 3: between the Soviet Union and the United States. JFK was
Speaker 3: sort of famously not even actually that interested in space,
Speaker 3: but it was a very clear thing that we could
Speaker 3: do to beat the Soviets. And you know, it's a
Speaker 3: military prestige thing. The rockets that you're sending those humans
Speaker 3: to space and could also be delivering you know, missiles,
Speaker 3: and so I think a lot of times going to
Speaker 3: space is not necessarily about bringing people together and the
Speaker 3: new technologies. Historically it has also been about trying to
Speaker 3: show up our enemies, and that might be what drives
Speaker 3: us to Mars or to the Moon. Again. You know,
Speaker 3: competition with China is heating up at the moment, and
Speaker 3: I think we should you know, yes, yes it might
Speaker 3: drive innovation and that's exciting, but we need to weigh
Speaker 3: that against you know, concerns with how this sort of
Speaker 3: this conflict might you know, spark problems down on Earth.
Speaker 3: But yes, you know, you might get some new technologies,
Speaker 3: but there's other things you could invest in to get
Speaker 3: these new technologies too.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, fair enough, Kelly, thank you so much. Really
Speaker 2: fun and interesting. Kelly Wiener Smith, co author of City
Speaker 2: on Mars? Can we settle space? Should we settle space?
Speaker 2: And have we really thought this through? As we said?
Speaker 2: She wrote this with her husband, Zach, and she was
Speaker 2: joining us from Charlottesville for Jamie.
Speaker 1: And today's the day the book comes out today.
Speaker 2: It's very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd be sure to check it out