Space to Live: The Search for an Alternative Home for Humanity

Earth’s susceptibility to asteroid strikes, climate crisis, and nuclear winter means there is an “absolute need” for humanity to colonize some other part of the universe, according to this undercooked treatise. Hill (Adventures of an Eclipse Chaser), a retired research scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, argues that housing people in vessels like the International Space Station would require producing massive quantities of food, oxygen, and energy in space. Settling Mars would be similarly impractical, Hill contends, noting that the low gravity would cause muscle to atrophy. In light of such difficulties, Hill asserts that humanity’s best bet is to upload people’s consciousnesses to artificially intelligent robots equipped to survive the physical hazards of settling distant celestial bodies. (He ignores the more obvious conclusion that humans might instead double down on protecting Earth.) While Hill does a decent job of highlighting the difficulties of establishing extraterrestrial outposts, his frequent citations of Wikipedia raise questions about the rigor of his research and superficial chapters on the history of spaceflight and the search for alien life feel like filler. Readers would be better off with Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s A City on Mars. (July)