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> will live through the next well beyond humans.

Why so pessimistic? We're clearly better at survival than tardigrades which can't build space stations or sequence their own DNA...

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We have potential they don't have, but they have innate survival traits that we will almost certainly never have. We also haven't had any opportunity to exercise this potential, really. So there is no "clearly" about this. They have survived conditions and epochs that, in the past, would have laid waste to the human species. We'll have to wait until the next extinction level event to determine who is better equipped.

A fancy space station isn't going to do much good if a giant asteroid hits Earth and creates another extinction event (which will happen, it's just a matter of when).

Spotting and deflecting asteroids away from earth is challenging, but feasible with present technology and there are groups working on it. (A feat tardigrades could never hope to accomplish, but they get to freeload off our achievement in this case.)

Dude, lay off the tardigrades. Let's at least deflect one or two asteroids before we start accusing other creatures of freeloading.

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