Forum from the Archives: Can We Really Live On Mars?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mars is inhospitable to human life with its cosmic radiation, atmosphere of carbon dioxide and nights as cold as 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. But as Space X founder Elon Musk pledges to colonize Mars, and as NASA renews its push for interplanetary travel, a husband and wife duo has explored whether people really can live in space. What would it require to have babies on another planet? To grow food? To prevent conflicts in space from sparking geopolitical chaos on Earth? We’ll talk about it all with Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, co-authors of “A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?” Guests: Kelly Weinersmith, scientist, author, and adjunct faculty member in the BioSciences Department, Rice University - she co-wrote the New York Times bestselling book "A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?" and co-hosts the podcast Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe
Zach Weinersmith, cartoonist of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, he also writes popular science books with his wife, Kelly, including "A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:45.5	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim.
1:06.0	Coming up on Forum, can we really live on Mars, a planet inhospitable to human life, with its cosmic radiation, atmosphere of carbon dioxide, and nights as cold as 200 degrees below zero?
1:17.6	Husband and wife duo Zach and Kelly Weener-Smith set out to explore what it would really take to grow food, have babies, and make sure conflicts in space don't spark geopolitical chaos on Earth.
1:29.0	They joined us for a reality check in August, and we listened back to it right after this news. Welcome to Forum.
1:50.5	The dream of space colonization appears to have captured not just a certain billionaire entrepreneur, but also NASA.
1:58.8	Its interim administrator, Sean Duffy, told Fox News last week
2:02.6	he's going to build a U.S. base on the moon. There was a time where people would say that if
2:08.9	you control the sea, you control the world. I think in the future, he who controls space controls the
2:14.0	world. On Monday, SpaceX fans had reason to celebrate. After a successful test of
2:19.6	Starship, the rocket Elon Musk says will one day be used to take lots of people to Mars.
2:25.5	I'm confident that the SpaceX team, which is incredibly talented, will achieve these goals,
2:31.1	and we will be landing ships on Mars in the future and building life on Mars.
2:36.6	But what would it really take to build life on Mars?
2:40.4	Luckily, Kelly and Zach Wienersmith have taken the time to think this through for us
	...

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