Finished reading A City on Mars by @weinersmith.bsky.social and @zachweinersmith.bsky.social. Great book! Very informative and entertaining. Well researched with a lot of important points often missed in discussions about space settlements.
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Interestingly, the only point I had always thought as a showstopper for self sustaining space settlements, the failing birth rates, is not mentioned (or I missed it!)
You mean the falling fertility rates on Earth? We actually very briefly mention it in the rotating space station section, I believe, in the context of there not obviously being a need for a way to house a trillion people in space.
My comment was that, unless women are forced to get pregnant a certain amount of times while in space, the birth rates will be low and we would need to constantly send people so the settlement doesn't just die. Or we need to develop artificial wombs. Neither sounds like a good idea to me.
Yeah, true. I've actually read a lot about this and one thing worth noting is that the longterm drop in fertility is not fully understood. It's possible there's some way to get it above 2.1 (without involving human rights abuses), but yeah, policy has totally failed so far.
I imagine that you had a lot of material and didn't want to end up with a 2000-page book, so there's always a need to prioritize. My comment was more about how many things I didn't consider before reading this book. Truly enlightening!
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It's a great book!