We have about 7 or 8 billion people right now.

If we simply apply a multiplier to get our society of a trillion in the solar system,

sure, we get 1,000 Mozart's or 1,000 Einsteins.

We also get millions of people dying of starvation, like every hour. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Fred Sharman.

Fred is the author of Space Forces, a critical history of life in outer space. He also teaches

architecture and urban design at Morgan State University's School of Architecture and Planning,

and he is the co-founder of the Working Group on Adaptive Systems.

In this week's episode, Fred and I talk about his book, and in particular, how, you know,

visions of space habitation and colonization from the past inspire the ideas that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos,

and people like that espoused today. And in particular, how understanding those histories

can give us more insight into where these ideas come from, the politics that are embedded

within them, and how they evolved to the point that they are today,

and, you know, in particular, why we should be concerned that these are the ideas that are kind of

seizing the public imagination about what the human relationship to outer space should look like.

In particular, we focus on how the visions of Werner von Braun and Gerard O'Neill inspire the ideas of Elon Musk and

Jeff Bezos. They have two very different ideas of what that should look like and they also kind of

come from different backgrounds. They're very different things kind of inspiring their ideas and their

orientation toward how humans should kind of

undertake this colonization and this habitation of the space beyond planet Earth. We also dip

into science fiction, these narratives around colonization, and also kind of what that tells us

about ideas about world building, world making, and how understanding these histories should also

force us to kind of reflect on the systems and ideas that govern how we are making and remaking

...