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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

Musk wants to "save humanity".

He believes that the biggest risk to humanity is that we're currently all on one planet. This means global warming, nuclear war, pandemics, zombies, etc, could basically wipe out humanity.

If he can get humans living on Mars, that means that destroying life on a planet no longer destroys humanity, and that is a very significant levelling up to human survival. Getting people to Mars, to learn how to settle permanently there is a first step. Getting re-usable rockets is a first step even before that. Most things related to SpaceX that Musk does are essentially steps on the path to making this happen.

He may or may not be on the right track, and even if it's a good idea he might be doing it the wrong way, but everything is consistently focused around making this happen. For this, further developing the mid-west, terraforming Arizona, or colonising the bottom of the sea are all insufficient to achieve the goal.

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Yeah, I know he thinks that, but he's pretty clearly wrong. Global warming could wipe out civilization but it won't wipe out humanity even in an absolute worst-case scenario. The worst pandemic in recorded history, the black plague, only killed a third of the human population. Even if a pandemic wiped out 99% of us that still leaves tens of millions of people to repopulate the planet. I think we can safely rule out zombies.

Nuclear war might wipe us out, but that is looking less likely than in the past. And if it does happen I think it's arguable that the universe might be better off without us.

Are you suggesting that our extinction lies beyond the realm of possibility? It may not be imminent -- which is debatable -- but it's our fate. Extinction seems like an unreal problem for us. We're not tuned into the right time scales for this sort of problem. We mostly struggle through the day. But it's a sign of maturity for our species to be thinking far into the future and contemplating our ultimate survival, not just on this planet but in our solar system, even if at the moment it seems like an arrogant and idle pursuit.

> Are you suggesting that our extinction lies beyond the realm of possibility?

Of course not. In fact, our eventual extinction is inevitable. But it seems to me exceedingly unlikely to happen any time soon.

How many events like the one that killed the dinosaurs (mass extinction events) have there been in the history of earth? Five!

GRB or Asteroid are also ELE that the GP did not mention.

How useful is a mars colony/parallel civ against an incoming GRB though? My vague understanding is that they're potentially quite 'tightly collimated' in astronomical terms, but that would still potentially cover a good volume of the solar system if one came our way.

That is, if we assume a GRB intersects Earth, what is the probability that it won't also hit Mars?

Very Big Asteroids are definitely one event it would serve us well for though.

Oooh I would love to learn more about the grb stats

Wikipedia is usually a good place to start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst#Energetics_and...

It is much easier and cheaper to detect and deflect big asteroids than to colonize Mars. See e.g. https://b612foundation.org/

As you have admitted in your post, that there is a none zero chance of humans becoming extinct. Don't you think it would be worth it to have some non-zero portion of the population and global budget working on ensuring our survival? Also, there are many commercial benefits that can be realized, not just idealistic ones. Mars has alot of deturium which could prove useful in fusion, it's lower delta V makes it a prime logistical hub for mining the astroid belt, etc etc. Read a plan for mars, and i think it will change your perspective.

> Don't you think it would be worth it to have some non-zero portion of the population and global budget working on ensuring our survival?

Yes, of course. I even think it's worth while putting some of that effort into looking into colonizing Mars (though I think there is a lot more low-lying fruit that is being neglected in terms of improving our overall odds of survival). All I'm saying is that we're nowhere near ready to talk about actually doing it yet.

I still think we should be moving cities off of prime arable land and moving to deserts.

> a lot more low-lying fruit that is being neglected in terms of improving our overall odds of survival.

Can you elaborate? You talking politically?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. The most immediate threat to the survival of civilization is climate change, and we are doing less than we could to stop it at the moment in no small measure because of politics. There's also a significant threat from medium-sized asteroids that could be addressed fairly cheaply (a few billion dollars) and isn't. Nuclear war is an entirely political threat. World-wide famine is a possibility, but that is much more likely to kill us by leading to a nuclear war than it is to kill us directly.

Beyond that, I just don't see any credible existential threats.

Your scenarios aren't remotely close to "absolute worst-case". A large enough asteroid can sterilize the planet with fire/lava.

Yes, that's true, but asteroids of that size are easily detected. We know where all of them are, and none of them are on a collision course with earth. If we ever find that size asteroid on a collision course, we will have decades, probably centuries, of warning, and it will be fairly straightforward to deflect it. The real danger comes from medium-sized asteroids that we don't see until it's too late to do anything about it. Those can destroy civilization in a worst-case scenario, but will not cause homo sapiens to go extinct.

if you can't survive in the middle of the desert, you're not going to survive on Mars. Even if climate change radically alters the planet, it'll still be more inhabitable than Mars

A good point, too often forgotten - even the most fantastic predictions by the biggest alarmists don't have the Earth becoming nearly as hostile to life as Mars is now.

Not nearly as hostile as constant fatal radiation, covered in radio active dust with temperatures disallowing our vital liquids to maintain their state of matter. Not to mention the severe lack of naturally occurring basic elements required for life as we know it i.e. from Earth i.e. like us.

No, Earth won't be _as_ hostile as Mars.

Other disasters are possible that could conceivably make Earth's deserts less habitable than Mars's.

Biological warfare, a large asteroid strike, etc.

We do survive in the middle of the desert though right? We've proved that, whether its tribes in the Sahara or Las Vegas "terraforming" desert, we know we can do that. I don't think that's an unsolved step on the way anymore.

Yes, but going to Mars is like setting up a colony in the Sahara next to a pile of radioactive waste. Terraforming las vegas is way easier because they have water, Mars doesn't.

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