>>> Yeah but colonizing Mars is just straight up cool. >> Is it? Why? > Well, if we get a self-sufficient mars colony up, nuking ourselves will become surviva

>>> Yeah but colonizing Mars is just straight up cool. >> Is it? Why? > Well, if we get a self-sufficient mars colony up, nuking ourselves will become survivable. Along with releasing an eco-system ravaging engineered biological organism. Or nanotechnology. Or AI. Or getting a bad luck roll with an asteroid. Or climate change blowing past a tipping point. Or something that I have no concept of anymore than an individual circa-1900 would understand the concerns of today. Why? Because we owe it to the !$%^ing universe to safeguard our (as near as we can tell) incredibly rare existence. You know what happened to all those species that said "This planet is good enough?" Something bad happened. 1,000 years; 10,000 years; 100,000 years; at some point. And... poof... have fun starting another 3.5 billion year slog back to us. Disclaimer: I don't think "us" is necessarily the pinnacle of evolution, but I tend to feel we're special enough to save another 3.5 billion years of history on recreating.