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A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams
(arstechnica.com)
Cover author: Michał Kałużny http://astrofotografia.pl/
They're not like, that pessimistic about it, but they raise extremely pressing questions that need to be investigated and understood for things to be successful.
Exactly. In the podcast episode I linked, the authors explain how they're sci-fi nerds and fans of space exploration. They started out writing a book about how cool it would be, but started asking these questions and realized we don't have the answers yet. That's not pessimism, it's practicality