I'm not, for some reason every book about colonizing space ultimately seems to lead to a revolution because that's exciting, right? It's Star Wars. You've got a rebellion. But I don't necessarily think that's going to be the case partially because as long as we keep following the rules of the outer space treaty, which I believe we will,. So Artemis is functionally speaking an offshore platform. On Earth, do you think we should experiment more with sea studying, set up sea colonies, underground colonies? Absolutely. Have them be politically autonomous if they want? You would have to change maritime law to be able to do that. Right now under maritime law, you can see,
Before writing a single word of his new book Artemis, Andy Weir worked out the economics of a lunar colony. Without the economics, how could the story hew to the hard sci-fi style Weir cornered the market on with The Martian? And, more importantly, how else can Tyler find out much a Cantonese meal would run him on the moon?
In addition to these important questions of lunar economics, Andy and Tyler talk about the technophobic trend in science fiction, private space efforts, seasteading, cryptocurrencies, the value of a human life, the outdated Outer Space Treaty, stories based on rebellion vs. cooperation, Heinlein, Asimov, Weir’s favorite episode of Star Trek, and the formula for finding someone else when stranded on a lonely planet.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded November 15th, 2017 Other ways to connect