The man who brought true scientific realism to sci-fi drama, despite being a writer and not a professional scientist. Indeed he is a great mind, on the same level as Isaac Asimov definitely.
In a secret experiment gone awry, a hundred lab rats that had been injected with an intelligence booster became geniuses. They revolted and escaped from their cages, and captured their principal investigator, and strapped him down and retro-injected all their minds into his body, using a method they invented on the spot-and that scientist was ...
I always felt his writing really took off to a new height when reading the Sax chapters. Nirgal seemed to be the intended pseudo-protagonist of the Green and Blue Mars, but to me it was always Sax.
I love Kim Stanley Robinson's books (currently re-reading Red Mars) and this interview is great but I do feel he's begun to downplay space exploration because he wants people to focus on solving Earth's environmental crisis. For instance, why wouldn't asteroids provide an expanded resource pool? Would the elements present on earth not be present there, even in small quantities? And reading Aurora suggests there's no joy in becoming interstellar because destinations are actively hostile or downright uninhabitable. Perhaps, perhaps not. Love the frequent references to the treaty though and highlightng the beneifts of cooperation rather than competition in a system with finite resources.
Thank you very much for the series, it was well ahead of the time in the 1990s. Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars were written at a time when there was launch capability for humans to visit LEO, but no superheavy freight launch capability to assemble and outfit the spaceship (I believe the Ares) for Mars (even if a large number of Space Shuttle tanks could be collected in orbit and used as module shells), in fact, no such launch capability was forthcoming, and there was no space station yet. There were endless vague plans and no action, building, or cutting aluminum ever forthcoming for decades, and everybody knew and expected nothing different (and that into indefinite future). Space activities were the realm of entertainment and escapist literature. Therefore the book series existed in a vacuum and had no relevance to reality, the same applied to articles on the design of Mars habitat modules found in publications of the Mars Society, and the prequel of the Mars series set in Antarctica would have been a better start to reading. Today there is a shortage of rare earth elements needed for mobile phones and other electronics, batteries, etc. while the Moon has KREEP deposits over large parts of the surface. A 100 tons to LEO class launcher is under construction (finally!) and another in early planning looking somewhat like an orbiter and booster combination (fully reusable) with the option to refuel for interplanetary flight (How would the fuel get to orbit without off- Earth sources??). Technology to use 3He as a source of energy is on the horizon. Therefore, it is fun and very much worthwhile to read Red Moon and the Mars series today. By the way, the character of Coyote was ingenious.
...use Phobos as an orbiting station for Mars, adding a few well placed gravitationally influencing mass would prevent it’s orbital decay. Phobos should be a staging area for manned Mars landings. Extract resources robotically from Mars and then ship resources to Phobos, rinse and repeat. Send people to Phobos and then to Mars by relay. Make Phobos base a hub and emergency backup for all missions on Mars. Use this method for most efficient use of resources and rapid growth. Minimal manned trips to Mars until proper infrastructure is built to be self-sustaining. Use moon base to stage flights to Phobos, low fuel consumption, return flight feasible for refilling on moon base. Mars 2060.
Thanks for this. I like the question about the fascination of Mars....named of course after the god of war. So perhaps a mythic fascination too. Mars is up there in the sky, but also down here on our planet...
12:40 "I don't think so and nobody thinks so" - that's exactly what I thought, tourism is cool... In the world with quantitative easing, what is the coolest thing money can buy?
2312: The idea with the black liner just seems to make no sense at all, why treat oneself to 80%+ sensory deprivation for weeks, months,..?. Otherwise, the book is one of the best I know. Perhaps asteroids need to be a solid Fe/Ni body to be able to be set spinning, i.e. there might not be enough large asteroids to convert into thousands of 50 km by 10 km diameter inner volume habitats. Other bodies would not be strong enough to resist the centrifugal effect and just fly apart (tensile strength), particularly with enough rpm to get one G at the inner surface. Certainly, there would be no way to store anything on the outer surface of the body after spinning has begun, the surface would have to be cleared of any loose material. In order for asteroid habitats () to travel rapidly between the planets, they need a massive propulsion system to accelerate and slow down, otherwise, they just follow elliptical orbits around the sun. Venus is close to not rotating at all. No idea, whether ejecting all CO2 in the atmosphere at extreme speed (plasma thruster) could increase the rotation to something like one revolution in four days, here is a lot of power available from solar radiation, and the procedure might take decades or centuries. It certainly should be possible to excavate some deep basins by crashing icy asteroids, however, a lot of the water ice would escape to space in the course of the impact. Thank you for this work.
But what would be the environmental impact, given that that was a rather prominent point of discussion in this interview, of terraforming a planet that through its own natural evolution became the way it is today, to make it more like earth?
I lived his books, but I have to disagree with much of what he says in this interview. Space reserved for scientists? Antarctica as the model? *bleep* No! He repeatedly claimed you can't make profit from space. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits any nation from claiming territory on any celestial body, but that doesn't prohibit profit. You can mine all the material you want. You cannot make a mining claim, so the asteroid or patch of the Moon is not yours, but any mineral you harvest is yours. Mine metal asteroids for precious metals and cobalt for lithium batteries for electric cars. Mine icy asteroids for rocket fuel. He also claimed the usual transit time to Mars is 9 months. That's not true either. If you want to consume the absolute least fuel, but as Dr Robert Zubrin stated in his mission plan "Mars Direct", if you use only 10% more fuel transit time is reduced to 6 months. Fuel consumption goes up exponentially so reducing any further would require a lot more fuel. Besides, a free return trajectory for safety only works with 6 month transit. Curiosity and Perseverance rovers took 8.5 months, but Spirit and Opportunity took 6 months each. His concern about "max'ing out ability to grow" is another issue Robert Zubrin wrote about. When nations have to compete for finite resources, that's when wars happen. But we don't need to compete, because space has so much resources we won't run out for many centuries. By then we'll be able to travel to stars, so resources grow again. He claimed all asteroids are only iron and nickel. That's wrong too. Only 4% are metal, the other are rock or lighter material. Metal asteroids are mostly iron and nickel, but wherever you have iron you also have gold and silver. Wherever there's nickel, there's platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, osmium). There's also cobalt, and a little of some other metals like chrome. We know what metal asteroids are made of, because it's the same as meteorites that fell to Earth. Meteorites have been analyzed, they do have all those metals. At least he's right about terraforming.
I don't think that he's considering sufficiently long term period, he only talks about profit for Earth. In a few centuries there could be whole civilizations in our own solar system alone. In a thousand years or two more people could be living outside of Earth than on Earth. Saying that there is no profit to be made and it should be about exploration only is a short-term 21st century thinking.
I could listen to Robinson speak for hours and hours! He's so clear-minded.
The man who brought true scientific realism to sci-fi drama, despite being a writer and not a professional scientist. Indeed he is a great mind, on the same level as Isaac Asimov definitely.
A brilliant author and fantastic thinker
The man, Sax Russell himself.
In a secret experiment gone awry, a hundred lab rats that had been injected with an intelligence booster became geniuses. They revolted and escaped from their cages, and captured their principal investigator, and strapped him down and retro-injected all their minds into his body, using a method they invented on the spot-and that scientist was ...
I always felt his writing really took off to a new height when reading the Sax chapters. Nirgal seemed to be the intended pseudo-protagonist of the Green and Blue Mars, but to me it was always Sax.
I love Kim Stanley Robinson's books (currently re-reading Red Mars) and this interview is great but I do feel he's begun to downplay space exploration because he wants people to focus on solving Earth's environmental crisis. For instance, why wouldn't asteroids provide an expanded resource pool? Would the elements present on earth not be present there, even in small quantities? And reading Aurora suggests there's no joy in becoming interstellar because destinations are actively hostile or downright uninhabitable. Perhaps, perhaps not. Love the frequent references to the treaty though and highlightng the beneifts of cooperation rather than competition in a system with finite resources.
Good points. I agree.
Thank you very much for the series, it was well ahead of the time in the 1990s. Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars were written at a time when there was launch capability for humans to visit LEO, but no superheavy freight launch capability to assemble and outfit the spaceship (I believe the Ares) for Mars (even if a large number of Space Shuttle tanks could be collected in orbit and used as module shells), in fact, no such launch capability was forthcoming, and there was no space station yet. There were endless vague plans and no action, building, or cutting aluminum ever forthcoming for decades, and everybody knew and expected nothing different (and that into indefinite future). Space activities were the realm of entertainment and escapist literature. Therefore the book series existed in a vacuum and had no relevance to reality, the same applied to articles on the design of Mars habitat modules found in publications of the Mars Society, and the prequel of the Mars series set in Antarctica would have been a better start to reading. Today there is a shortage of rare earth elements needed for mobile phones and other electronics, batteries, etc. while the Moon has KREEP deposits over large parts of the surface. A 100 tons to LEO class launcher is under construction (finally!) and another in early planning looking somewhat like an orbiter and booster combination (fully reusable) with the option to refuel for interplanetary flight (How would the fuel get to orbit without off- Earth sources??). Technology to use 3He as a source of energy is on the horizon. Therefore, it is fun and very much worthwhile to read Red Moon and the Mars series today. By the way, the character of Coyote was ingenious.
So, I ate it. HAHAHAHA.
...use Phobos as an orbiting station for Mars, adding a few well placed gravitationally influencing mass would prevent it’s orbital decay.
Phobos should be a staging area for manned Mars landings. Extract resources robotically from Mars and then ship resources to Phobos, rinse and repeat. Send people to Phobos and then to Mars by relay. Make Phobos base a hub and emergency backup for all missions on Mars. Use this method for most efficient use of resources and rapid growth. Minimal manned trips to Mars until proper infrastructure is built to be self-sustaining. Use moon base to stage flights to Phobos, low fuel consumption, return flight feasible for refilling on moon base. Mars 2060.
Thanks for this. I like the question about the fascination of Mars....named of course after the god of war. So perhaps a mythic fascination too. Mars is up there in the sky, but also down here on our planet...
12:40 "I don't think so and nobody thinks so" - that's exactly what I thought, tourism is cool... In the world with quantitative easing, what is the coolest thing money can buy?
A great Author.
hahaha rich person's bungee jumping
Need a book about an Earth-like spaceship. :D
2312: The idea with the black liner just seems to make no sense at all, why treat oneself to 80%+ sensory deprivation for weeks, months,..?. Otherwise, the book is one of the best I know. Perhaps asteroids need to be a solid Fe/Ni body to be able to be set spinning, i.e. there might not be enough large asteroids to convert into thousands of 50 km by 10 km diameter inner volume habitats. Other bodies would not be strong enough to resist the centrifugal effect and just fly apart (tensile strength), particularly with enough rpm to get one G at the inner surface. Certainly, there would be no way to store anything on the outer surface of the body after spinning has begun, the surface would have to be cleared of any loose material. In order for asteroid habitats () to travel rapidly between the planets, they need a massive propulsion system to accelerate and slow down, otherwise, they just follow elliptical orbits around the sun. Venus is close to not rotating at all. No idea, whether ejecting all CO2 in the atmosphere at extreme speed (plasma thruster) could increase the rotation to something like one revolution in four days, here is a lot of power available from solar radiation, and the procedure might take decades or centuries. It certainly should be possible to excavate some deep basins by crashing icy asteroids, however, a lot of the water ice would escape to space in the course of the impact. Thank you for this work.
Love this guy
Glorious
But what would be the environmental impact, given that that was a rather prominent point of discussion in this interview, of terraforming a planet that through its own natural evolution became the way it is today, to make it more like earth?
At 17:28 did he say “perchlorates” or another word?
Why aren't they sitting
I lived his books, but I have to disagree with much of what he says in this interview. Space reserved for scientists? Antarctica as the model? *bleep* No!
He repeatedly claimed you can't make profit from space. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits any nation from claiming territory on any celestial body, but that doesn't prohibit profit. You can mine all the material you want. You cannot make a mining claim, so the asteroid or patch of the Moon is not yours, but any mineral you harvest is yours. Mine metal asteroids for precious metals and cobalt for lithium batteries for electric cars. Mine icy asteroids for rocket fuel.
He also claimed the usual transit time to Mars is 9 months. That's not true either. If you want to consume the absolute least fuel, but as Dr Robert Zubrin stated in his mission plan "Mars Direct", if you use only 10% more fuel transit time is reduced to 6 months. Fuel consumption goes up exponentially so reducing any further would require a lot more fuel. Besides, a free return trajectory for safety only works with 6 month transit. Curiosity and Perseverance rovers took 8.5 months, but Spirit and Opportunity took 6 months each.
His concern about "max'ing out ability to grow" is another issue Robert Zubrin wrote about. When nations have to compete for finite resources, that's when wars happen. But we don't need to compete, because space has so much resources we won't run out for many centuries. By then we'll be able to travel to stars, so resources grow again.
He claimed all asteroids are only iron and nickel. That's wrong too. Only 4% are metal, the other are rock or lighter material. Metal asteroids are mostly iron and nickel, but wherever you have iron you also have gold and silver. Wherever there's nickel, there's platinum group metals (platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, osmium). There's also cobalt, and a little of some other metals like chrome. We know what metal asteroids are made of, because it's the same as meteorites that fell to Earth. Meteorites have been analyzed, they do have all those metals.
At least he's right about terraforming.
Hmmm...
Questions are so bad. =(
🥤
Earth is our only home - end of the story
Federico Negra p
H h.
Federico Negra for now
For now
Good god, the questions...
I think Elon Musk's Hyperloop project may be changing Mr Robinson's opinion of Mr Musk (i.e. HyperHype).
I don't think that he's considering sufficiently long term period, he only talks about profit for Earth. In a few centuries there could be whole civilizations in our own solar system alone. In a thousand years or two more people could be living outside of Earth than on Earth. Saying that there is no profit to be made and it should be about exploration only is a short-term 21st century thinking.