Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s book overturns Elon Musk’s claim that we could live on the red planet within years while stressing the good reasons t

Winner of Royal Society Trivedi science book prize assesses whether humans really could colonise Mars

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2024-10-25 06:00:34

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith’s book overturns Elon Musk’s claim that we could live on the red planet within years while stressing the good reasons to pursue space settlement

A book debunking Elon Musk’s claims that humans could live on Mars in the near future has won the £25,000 Royal Society Trivedi science book prize.

A City on Mars by American couple Kelly and Zach Weinersmith was announced as the winning book at a ceremony at the Royal Society in London on Thursday evening.

The book is an “amusingly literal and impeccably scientific war-gaming of what would actually happen” if humans colonised the red planet, wrote Stuart Jeffries in his Guardian review. It assesses the feasibility of space settlement by untangling the scientific, political, legal and ethical questions the idea raises.

A City on Mars “blew me away with its incredibly ambitious cross-disciplinary perspective,” said John Hutchinson, professor of evolutionary biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College and chair of this year’s judging panel.