Challenges of Achieving Economic Self-Sufficiency

39sec Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Achieving economic self-sufficiency, or autarky, has historically interested some communist countries like North Korea, but they still have interactions with the outside world. Estimates suggest that achieving self-sufficiency would require an extraordinary advancement in AI and robotics, with one estimate indicating a need for 100,000 people, making it a massive challenge that cannot be easily resolved as in a Heinlein novel.

There is an undeniable romance in the idea of traveling to, and even living in, outer space. In recent years, a pragmatic justification has become increasingly popular: the Earth is vulnerable to threats both natural and human-made, and it seems only prudent to spread life to other locations in case a disaster befalls our home planet. But how realistic is such a grand ambition? The wife-and-husband team of Kelly and Zack Weinersmith have tackled this question from a dizzying number of angles, from aeronautics and biology to law and psychology. The result is their new book, A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? It provides an exceptionally clear-eyed view of the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/11/13/256-kelly-and-zach-weinersmith-on-building-cities-on-the-moon-and-mars/

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Kelly Weinersmith received a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. She is currently an adjunct professor in the department of biosciences at Rice University. Zack Weinersmith received a B.S. in English from Pfizer College. He is the creator of the popular webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, as well as the author and co-author of several books, including Bea Wolf, a retelling of Beowulf as a children's story, with illustrations by Boulet. Kelly and Zach are also co-authors of Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.