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Comment by jstoiko | Hacker News Reader

> Musk thinks it's vital for mankind to create a self-sustaining city on Mars to protect against human extinction

Wouldn't it be more economical to try to save our planet first?

Earth, this hunk of material orbiting the sun, doesn't need saving. It's also unlikely that anything would scratch it's life bearing capacity too. Life has weathered big mass extinction events. It looks quite resilient. So I assume by saving earth you mean saving earth's ability to sustain human society. It's a great goal! So how we do that? What's the plan with asteroids for example?

It wouldn't surprise me if by doing all the necessary research and engineering to make a stable mars settlement possible we would make leaps toward a sustainable life here on earth too. After all you won't live there by wasting your resources.

Our planet don't need saving. It survived for billion of years just fine.

What you want to know is to protect our planet from becoming a death-trap for the human race.

The question is, what kind of scenarios you envisioned would threaten the condition of our environment, thus humanity?

Why can't we concurrently work towards solutions to multiple existential threats at once? It seems like if we only focus on the threats we're aware of, one will likely hit us and wipe the species out.

Yes because we can only do one at once.

Even if we went full green/sustainable that doesn't stop a nuclear war, big hunk of rock hitting us from space or Yellowstone going boomboom at some point.

I've always found that human extinction argument rather dubious. The main mechanisms of extinction in those cases are atmospheric dust and fallout. If we can maintain a closed ecosystem on Mars, we can do it underground, for a fraction of the cost, much less danger, and with a crew that rotates.

Dinosaurs died out because they didn't have nuclear power plants or indoor greenhouses.

A major impact would still be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions... but putting a bunch of technocrats on mars isn't going to change that either.

We probably have a few 1000 people in submarines at any given time. I wonder if there are any crazy plans for them to repopulate the world in a surface disaster? Hopefully they have some women.

Edit: upon further thought it would be prident to store frozen embryos on board with the associated equipment to use them to ensure genetic diversity.

Probably, but that assumes that Musk's goal is saving the human race. More likely, he wants to go to Mars and is using this as an excuse / inspiration to others.

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