YouSaid · the spoken record

Andy Weir

lines on the record: 84
first: 2017-12-20
most recent: 2017-12-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“No, not at all. Not at all. I don't think that'll happen at all. I also don't think that cryptocurrency is a good idea. Why not? Because investing, if you are investing in a...”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think 3D printing is a major technology in many manufacturing in general. So it's not specific to space industry. It's like saying, oh, how do you think refining steel affects industry? It's like it affects everything. And so I think 3D printing is something that will have this omnipresent effect across all aspects of manufacturing, including the space industry.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But then I say like, all right, aliens from outer space go like, oh, this one malaria patient is on the verge of death. None of your doctors can save him. We'll save his life in exchange for destroying all the redwoods on your planet. Well, now you've just somewhere between those two things is the value of human life versus the value of redwoods.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They could ask for a lot more. So it would be okay for us to render the Redwood, the entire species, extinct, if we could save the millions of people a year that malaria kills”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, okay, but let's say all other attempts fail at malaria. We don't know what to do. But then here's aliens from outer space come and they say like, well, tell you what, we're going to give you the cure to malaria and we'll just eradicate the Anophilus mosquito. You'll never, and all malaria will be gone from your planet forever, but we want all your redwoods. We want every redwood tree on your planet. We want it to become extinct. We hate redwoods. It's a deal of our related. Right.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you'll never know. But you never really know. But that's when the devil's in the details in your fitness formula where you're like, okay, how many people, how many human lives will I save by dumping $1 million into cancer research? How many human lives does that save? It could be zero. It could be zero. But that could be that last million that makes the aha moment. Or if you amortize it over all the money that's ever been spent on cancer research and then versus all the lives that have ever been saved by cancer research, that you see it's all about the fitness formula. So it's one of those questions that is deceptively simplistic, but ultimately gets really, really complicated when you start drilling down into the details. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you one. Yes. Let's say we can cure cancer. We can do it today. Actually, tell with cancer. We can cure malaria. Let's say the number one killer of human beings in the world. And we all care.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess it would come down to if you were going to spend that money to save other lives instead, how many could you save? So it's like, well, you can spend $50 million to save this one person, or you can save these 80 people by giving them much needed surgeries or something like that.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, yeah, you could flag to Suriname or something like that. You could fly a flag of convenience. But one way or another, you are subject to the laws of the country that you're flying the flag of, just as Artemis is subject to the laws of Kenya.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Underground colonies You would have to change maritime law to be able to do that. Right now, under maritime law, you can sead, I mean, you can do it right now. You can go out into the international waters and build something. You have to flag to some country, though.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they always end up being political thrillers, and that's not what I'm going for. I'm showing the frontier town and the kind of cooperative aspects of human nature. For some reason, every book about colonizing space ultimately seems to lead to a revolution because that's exciting, right? It's Star Wars. You know, you've got a rebellion. Yeah, well, throw off the yoke and it has historical parallels and it's all awesome like that. But I don't necessarily think that's going to be the case, partially because as long as we keep following the rules of the outer space treaty, which I believe we will, there's no such thing as sovereign territory outside of Earth. So Artemis is functionally speaking an offshore platform.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And 5% of GDP and the American colonies preferred that those taxes went to the American colonial government. Yes, absolutely. But it wasn't.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possibly. I mean, ultimately, I believe that all major events in history are economic. And I mean, independence was really about who gets to collect taxes, right? So if the people who live in a city are content with the economic status that they have, they're not going to rebel. People don't people, despite what you see, I would challenge you to show me any situation where people revolted over purely ideology without any economic.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That some features of East India, they're much nicer than the East India company. Yeah, well, the Kenya Space Corporation in my book is just they have a very simple business model. They build Artemis and then rent out lots. They don't try to control its economy or its people or anything. They're literally just landlords and absentee landlords at that. You can't declare independence from a company because by definition the company owns all the assets. If you say, I'm independent from the company, what you're doing is resigning. Well, you can already do that. But it happens, right? Yeah. But if you're talking about some sort of revolution or something like that, well, I guess the first step is you'd have to be pretty sure that you're self-sufficient, independent. You have to be like earth independent, which in the case of Artemis, it's not.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, right. It'll be a lot easier. It would be a lot easier to genetically engineer a bacteria that could survive on Mars than to create a von Neumann device that could reproduce itself on Mars. I mean, why not take advantage of all this stuff of the first two billion years or so of evolution that worked all this out for you?”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the best self replicating machines are ourselves. I mean, we're really a lot better at it than any machines that we'll have by 2080. I mean, I understand what you're saying with a fundamental.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you grab any of that and look at it, it'll be absolutely riddled with microbial life. But on Mars, we've found literally nothing, so I find it extremely hard to believe because life is very good at getting everywhere. And if it's had like four and a half billion years like Earth has had to evolve and adapt, then why isn't it just everywhere on Mars?”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Number of planets, the flight. The basic conceit is that life was able to, through some natural processes or accident of fate, get from one planet to another, take root, and then also go there. I don't believe that that has happened. And I also don't believe we have any sort of responsibility to deliberately infect other planets with life. If it is of value to us to go to Mars, then we should go to Mars. And if it's a value to us to devise a crop that would grow in Mars' native environment, then sure, go ahead. But I don't think we have some strange manifest destiny moral imperative to infect the solar system. Also, I'll just tell you that, yes, I'm a science fiction writer, and yes, I'd love for us to discover life on Mars, but I really don't think there's any. Because on Earth, it's very difficult for you to find any part of Earth that isn't teeming with life. If you just grab a leader of air or ocean water or snow from Antarctica or sand from the Sahara Desert,”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, well, my understanding of the panspermia hypothesis is that there was a single genesis of life, but that may have infected multiple planets.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it has one by accident infecting one area. And so to give people what I try to say, to give people a notion of what I mean by this, if you're going to have surgery in New York City, you do not need every gas station in Bangladesh to be sterilized.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Would that life that you accidentally introduced to Mars, oh, sorry, right at the top of this flowchart, ask, do you think there's life on Mars? If the answer is no, there's no need for planetary protection. If the answer is yes, then move into these other steps. Now, so since we're assuming there's life on Mars, move ahead to would the Earth life somehow be more adept at surviving on Mars than naturally evolved Mars life to the point that it would displace it and ruin the Mars ecosphere seems very unlikely to me. So I would say no. But if your answer to that is yes, then ask yourself if the Soviets properly sterilized their probes. If you think the answer is yes, well, okay, I think the answer is no, in which case it's already infected. But let's say it did. Then the final thing I would say is this. Mars is a planet. It's big. You're not going to ruin the entire ecosystem.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am not a fan, and I've been, you know, I've mentioned this a few times in the past. My main concern is this. Okay, so just run through a little flowchart in your mind. Start off by saying, is there anything that's on Earth, any organism on Earth that can survive an eight-month journey through the vacuum of space and the radiation of space and all the other rigors of being just out in space that can survive the trip from Earth to Mars? Okay, maybe some tardigrades could. It's possible. Maybe some bacteria inside of something could. Okay. But if your answer to that is no, then there's no need for planetary protection. If your answer is yes, then the next question is, is there any life native to Earth that could find anything to eat on Mars, that there's anything, would it be able to survive and reproduce on Mars? I don't think it would. If the answer to that is no, then there's no need for planetary protection. If it's yes, then ask yourself this.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think private space and commercial space industries like that are the way forward. I think that's how we will reach a point where we end up with a booming space industry. And I think that's how the price to low Earth orbit will eventually be driven down far enough that middle class people can afford it. And once we reach that magic point, then there'll be a huge space boom. It'll become a multi-trillion dollar industry like the commercial airline industry.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Comes out through your breath a lot more than you expect actually comes out through your breath and then through urine and feces and sweat and everything else. Really what you're paying for when you want water in Artemis is water purification.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, waterways a kilogram per liter, right? So if you wanted to just straight up ship water to the moon, that would cost you a thousand slugs a liter. However, you wouldn't just ship water to the moon. You'd ship hydrogen in tanks and react it with the oxygen, which is in plentiful supply. It's a byproduct of smelting aluminum. So you would actually only have to bring up one-ninth of that mass in hydrogen. So in other words, for 1,000 slugs, you could get nine liters of water, but it actually gets a little more complicated than that, or actually a lot cheaper than that because water isn't consumed. You know, when you drink water, it doesn't disappear from the universe. Correct. As much water as you bring in.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, there's actually pretty much zero income when you think of it as a trade deficit point of view. They don't export the aluminum that they create. They use the aluminum to build more Artemis. If you think of Artemis as a single economic entity, the only money that enters the system is tourism, tourism money. But there is another avenue by which money enters the system, which is immigration. When people move to Artemis, they bring their life savings with them.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, countries on the earth today are very different than Artemis. Artemis has at least, well, you learn more about its economy later on in the book, but Artemis is a delicate economy because it's a single source income. So it's like a resort town.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would not do it, but I don't even like to fly. So I'm the wrong person to ask. I have a phobia of flying. I have to take meds just to be able to get on a plane. Me personally, no. However, I don't see any reason why space travel couldn't become as safe as commercial air travel. If you describe commercial air travel to someone from the 1800s, they would say, are you kidding? There's no way that could possibly be safe. You're going to go several hundred miles an hour and you're going to be $30,000 feet up in the air and you're telling me that's safe. It is. And so I don't see why space travel wouldn't follow suit with enough research.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Policy problem, right? Well, it's not so much policy on that. That's insufficient infrastructure problem. But no, like the outer space treaty and our adherence to it and other nations adherence to it, to these details of a treaty that's really, really out of date now causes a lot of problems. And so what in my fictional version, Kenya says, like, we're going to interpret the treaty a little differently so that, yeah, we're not going to let people militarize space and we're not going to let people claim territory outside of Earth. All the main bullet points of the treaty we're going to preserve, but we're not going to require a specific type of FM transmitter to be aboard every probe so that we can monitor them, all this stuff like the US does. So by doing that, they drew in this multi-billion dollar commercial space industry into Kenya and taxed them very little, but still tax them. So Kenya benefits, the space community benefits.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who would do it in Ghana? Well, that was another candidate I thought of because it's also on the equator. And then the other thing they had that they realized they could do is they could offer policy. So the Minister of Economics for Kenya came up with this plan to draw the space industry into Kenya. And she basically made sure that Kenya had the most unbelievably business friendly laws for the space industry special rules because one of the main things that gets in the way of private space exploration right now isn't technology anymore. It's policy. Sure.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Kenya, in my fictional setting, Kenya had two things to offer the global space industry. Number one, they're on the equator, launching from the equator takes less fuel and costs less money. That's why our launch complex is like in southern Florida, because we want to get as close to the equator as possible, because you're taking advantage of the Earth's rotation to get a free about 500 meters per second. For reference, you need 7,800 meters per second to maintain low Earth orbit. So you're getting about one part in 15 or one part in 16 for free just by launching from the equator. So that's a big economic benefit. That saves you a lot of fuel. Second off, Kenya is on the eastern coast of Africa, which means you always launch to the east to take advantage of Earth's rotation. And so that means that the launches go out over the water. So any failures would fall harmlessly into the ocean instead of landing on potentially populated areas. Like if you put your launch comp.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not cryptocurrency. It's actually, in a way, store credit. The Kenya Space Corporation, which you'll probably ask me about later, the Kenya Space Corporation ships things to and from Artemis and they own Artemis itself. And you can buy store credit. And so 1,000 slugs will get you one kilogram transported from Earth to the Moon. So if you want to transport some nice Cantonese food, the price will be like whatever the cost of the actual Cantonese food is plus its mass in grams in slugs.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it would depend on what a good Cantonese meal weighs. I worked out with my economic stuff. I worked out the price of transporting mass to the moon. And it works out to be in 2015. It works out to be about $160 to the kilogram. And so to that end, in Artemis, the kind of de facto monetary unit is called slugs, which means soft landed grams.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the main thing is tourism because Artemis is right next to the Apollo 11 landing site. So it's a site of historical significance that people like to go to. Also, just dicking around in one sixth gravity is fun. And I wasn't making a sex joke there. I mean, like bouncing around and having fun. Sure.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, actually, I'm glad you asked because I put a huge amount of effort into that before I even started writing the book. One thing for me that's always bugged me about stories that take place in an off-world colony are the economics of it. If a story is like, oh, the purpose of this lunar colony is mining. I'm like, well, why don't you have robots doing the mining for you? Like, why risk humans? People mine if humans die. They're not that upset when robots die. So I decided tourism is kind of the answer to what is the economics behind it. And the main conceit in Artemis is that the price to low Earth orbit has been driven down by competition in the space industry to the point that middle class people can afford to go into space. And I actually wrote a whole paper on that, which is on business insider right now, where I kind of justify that by drawing parallels with the airline industry.”
2017-12-20 · Conversations with Tyler · Andy Weir on the Economics of Sci-Fi and Space · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source