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We're not going to terraform Mars, but we're doing a good job of venusforming Earth.
(fediscience.org)
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Showerthoughts
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Elon’s argument for why we need to spread to other planets holds true even if everything on Earth were going perfectly.
It’s not about getting everyone off Earth - it’s about creating a backup for humanity on other planets. This ensures that the only known flame of consciousness in the universe isn’t extinguished by a nuclear war, pandemic, supervolcano, or asteroid impact. It's about not having all your eggs in one basket.
This is not risk free. When you give people access to space and still have terrorism and wars, things can end badly quickly.
There's also a valid argument around where to best focus those resources now. We are nowhere near ready for space colonization on any scale, let alone sustainable ones.
A City on Mars by the Wienersmiths dives into some of these challenges if you are interested.
We will most likely always have terrorism and wars. That's not an argument against letting wealthy individuals fund a private space race.
Yes it is! Right now no one can hurtle an asteroid at earth to end it instantly. When space mining takes off that's a very real threat.
I'm not sure space mining is what causes asteroids. Dinosaurs didn't have a space program to my knowledge.
Space mining can absolutely cause asteroids strikes. It only hasn't done it yet because we haven't done any asteroid mining yet. A big part of asteroid mining operations will likely be asteroid herding, bringing all the asteroids you want to the same place where they can be processed. But moving asteroids around is a potentially dangerous activity.
That said, space is really really really big... It's really hard for two things to hit each other on accident. If you're collecting asteroids at a high earth orbit, the chance of them accidentally hitting earth instead is extremely low. You have to miss your target by over 100,000 miles. Which would be... a monumental failure.