Spacefarers: How Humans Will Settle the Moon, Mars, and Beyond

[yg1968]

Spacefarers: How Humans Will Settle the Moon, Mars, and Beyond

Introduction: Pre-Launch
1. Living on Earth
2. Checkup before Countdown
3. Living in Orbit
4. Living on the Moon
5. Living on Asteroids
6. Living on Mars
7. Living in the Inner and Outer Solar System and Beyond
Epilogue: Welcome Home
Notes
Additional Reading and Listening
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Index

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674984486&content=toc

[yg1968]

Here is a good review of the book:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/04/spacefarers-by-christopher-wanjek-review

I am more than half way through it. It's a written by an author that writes popular science articles, so it's easy to read. It's also interesting and does not try to convince the reader that settlement would be easy. Although, the book does mention Starship a couple of times, this isn't a book about Starship as it is more broad than that; it discusses what would be required to settle certain bodies in the solar system. He seems to think that settlement of the Moon wouldn't be realistic (mostly because of the lower g environment) but that Mars would be a better candidate.

[Oersted]

Seems the book is three years old, that may be why it only has very little on Starship.

[laszlo]

Or the author recognizes the possibility, however unlikely, that SS may not succeed and is unwilling to make it a cornerstone of the book until it does.

[yg1968]

Or the author recognizes the possibility, however unlikely, that SS may not succeed and is unwilling to make it a cornerstone of the book until it does.

He seems favorable to SpaceX, Musk, reuse and Starship but it's not really the focus of his book. I just wanted people to know, so that nobody is expecting a book on Starship because it isn't that. Talking about Starship would have made his book outdated already, so I am kind of glad that it isn't the focus of his book.

[Vahe231991]

The possibility raised by the author in Chapters 5 and 7 that mankind could one day live on asteroids and in areas of the cosmos outside the terrestrial planets may turn out to be technologically and biologically impractical because if humans were to contemplate interstellar or intergalactic travel, the cost of developing the technology to colonize other solar systems or galaxies would be extremely astronomical.