Is There Any Life on Mars?

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I would love to hear his thoughts on NASA's Office of Planetary Protection. I am not a fan and I've mentioned this a few times in the past. My main concern is this: Is there anything that's on Earth that can survive an eight month journey through the vacuum of space? If your answer is no, then there's no need for planetary protection. So surely on the moon, that's likely to be the case. What do you think of Elon Musk and other private space efforts? I think private space and commercial space industries like that are the way forward.

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trend in science fiction, private space efforts, seasteading, cryptocurrencies, the value of a human life, the outdated Outer Space Treaty, stories based on rebellion vs. cooperation, Heinlein, Asimov, Weir’s favorite episode of Star Trek, and the formula for finding someone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.

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Recorded November 15th, 2017 Other ways to connect

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