Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2017
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
Before writing a single word of his new book Artemis, Andy Weir worked out the economics of a lunar colony. Without the economics, how could the story hew to the hard sci-fi style Weir cornered the market on with The Martian? And, more importantly, how else can Tyler find out much a Cantonese meal would run him on the moon?
In addition to these important questions of lunar economics, Andy and Tyler talk about the technophobic trend in science fiction, private space efforts, seasteading, cryptocurrencies, the value of a human life, the outdated Outer Space Treaty, stories based on rebellion vs. cooperation, Heinlein, Asimov, Weir’s favorite episode of Star Trek, and the formula for finding someone else when stranded on a lonely planet.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded November 15th, 2017
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:08.4 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. |
| 0:12.5 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:15.2 | And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit |
| 0:20.4 | ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:28.5 | Science fiction is so much about creating new worlds and making them believable and pulling |
| 0:32.8 | the reader in. |
| 0:34.0 | And Andy Weir is a master of that. |
| 0:36.0 | In his new book, Artemis, it's set on the moon. |
| 0:38.4 | And the basic setting is lunar tourism. |
| 0:41.2 | So what are the economics, Andy, of how we can make lunar tourism work? |
| 0:45.1 | Well, actually, I'm glad you asked, because I put a huge amount of effort into that before |
| 0:49.4 | I even started writing the book. |
| 0:51.0 | One thing for me that's always bugged me about stories that take place in an off-world |
| 0:54.6 | colony are the economics of it. |
| 0:57.0 | If a story is like, oh, the purpose of this lunar colony is mining, I'm like, well, |
| 1:00.4 | why don't you have robots doing the mining for you? |
| 1:02.4 | Like, why risk humans? |
| 1:04.4 | People mind if humans die, they're not that upset when robots die. |
| 1:07.6 | So I decided tourism is kind of the answer to why the economics behind it. |
| 1:12.8 | And the main conceit in Artemis is that the price to the Earth orbit has been driven |
| 1:16.5 | down by competition in the space industry to the point that middle-class people can afford |
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