Spacefarers by Christopher Wanjek review – getting practical about our future beyond Earth

Skyhooks, railguns and growing sweet potatoes on Mars … a nerdily engaging discussion of how humans might settle other planetsIn 2007, China demonstrated a new anti-satellite missile by blowing one of its own defunct weather satellites to smithereens: a cloud of shards that still orbits the Earth. The message was not lost on the US, and just before Christmas last year Donald Trump launched his “Space Force”. The heavens are being remilitarised in a new superpower space race; China is planning manned Moon missions, and Elon Musk wants to build a city on Mars. But what exactly is space good for, apart from being the ultimate sniper’s nest for violence directed back at Earth’s surfac e? In particular, why would anyone want to live there?Science writer Christopher Wanjek ’s book is a nerdily engaging (and often funny) attempt to answer that question, though he begins by challenging many of the reasons that people give for colonising space. It’s not a necessary defence against imminent extinction, he argues: pandemic disease or nuclear war might kill a lot of us, but a few would survive to carry on. Wanjek seems to underrate the danger of asteroid impact: a big enough space rock could sterilise the face of the whole planet. There is one threat, though, that everyone agrees could be curtains, which is a gamma-ray burst from an imploding star near enough to o urs. When that arrives without warning (as it is bound to do at some point) and destroys the atmosphere, it mig...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science and nature books Culture Astronomy Space Mars The moon Source Type: news