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I don't think anyone disagrees that the more palatable option would be to keep Earth in good shape in perpetuity. However: 1. Cosmic-size bad stuff could happe

I don't think anyone disagrees that the more palatable option would be to keep Earth in good shape in perpetuity. However: 1. Cosmic-size bad stuff could happen, at a scale where we are powerless. "Think of the dinosaurs", etc. 2. "Thanks" to the continuous progress of science and technology, we are putting more and more power into the hands of the everyman. Wherein the sanity and the moral trustworthiness of the aforementioned everyman is on a bell curve just like everything else - meaning most people are fine, but it's guaranteed there are a few spectacularly bad apples somewhere in that pile. Think of Jim Jones with nukes, or tabletop biotech. So, making Mars livable is important for the same reason why you have backups for your data - only even more so. You do have backups, don't you? We should absolutely do both - protect the Earth, and settle Mars.

Symmetry 10y ago
I can easily imagine huge disasters on Earth that kill 90+% of the population but even then Earth will still have a higher population and be more habitable than Mars. And I can imagine things that would wipe out humanity on Earth and Mars. But the range of disasters that would totally wipe out humanity on Earth while sparing Mars seems pretty narrow to me.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  If the Sun goes supernova, sure, we are all toast regardless of whether we are on Earth or Mars or even Pluto. But that's relatively unlikely. On the other hand, a large enough asteroid impact could kill 99%+ of the Earth's population and leave Mars intact. But even if it killed only 90%, think about what the remaining 10% would do. They would probably wage war on each other to grab whatever land and natural resources remain. Furthermore, civilization as a whole would severely regress technologically, as we would lose the vast majority of power plants, laboratories, factories, data centers, etc. We would find ourselves back in the Middle Ages. Compared to that, a super high-tech stable Mars colony that has a population of 1,000 would have it pretty good. Sure, they would be living most of their lives under the surface, but so what?
  - Symmetry 10y ago
    I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of Mars, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland. Really both groups would be hanging on with limited labor and capital (generators, greenhouses, domes) in the midst of plentiful natural resources and that's the sort of situation that leads to raiding more than what you'd normally think of as warfare. And I'm really not sure why you'd expect a Mars of 1,000 people would have more technology than an Earth with 100,000,000 left alive. A technological civilization like ours depends on a body of knowledge that's way too big to fit in one or 1000 people's heads. Maybe in the future we'll have advanced AI that lets us get around this but that'd render the whole discussion moot.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      >>I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of Mars, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would not, by definition, be "struggling for survival." >> A technological civilization like ours depends on a body of knowledge that's way too big to fit in one or 1000 people's heads. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would have plenty of computers that can store data. In fact, since the goal of such a colony would be to act as Earth's backup, we would most likely have most of the Earth's combined knowledge stored in a large datacenter underneath the Martian surface. On the other hand, the shockwave from an asteroid that wipes 90% of the population on Earth would also instantly fry most electronics and render most technology useless. Like I said, it would send civilization back a thousand years. Sure, we would still have the knowledge in people's brains, but it turns out knowledge can be forgotten, especially when not actively recalled by the brain. When all your scientists have to become farmers, it is not likely that humanity would be able to retain all the knowledge it has collected over the past millenia.
  - tylerjwilk00 10y ago
    It seems the Sun will become a Red Giant and not go supernova according to calculations. That means the Earth would be burned but the 4th planet, Mars, should remain unscorched. So, on a long enough timeline we must escape the Earth anyway. Let's get a head start!
adamsea 10y ago
Point number 2 seems extra applicable on Mars - where the systems sustaining life will be even more fragile. Unless you believe that Mars will be populated in perpetuity by a superior culture/class of people whose "everyman" would never, ever be a spectacularly bad apple (cue Heinlein/Moon is a Harsh Mistress/Belter/libertarian fantasy drooling). To be clear, I'm arguing that it's a fantasy.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  Sure. And files sitting on a disk, any disk, are forever under threat from random failure. But would you have only one copy of that file, or two copies on separate disks? And would you argue that it's pointless to have two copies, since simultaneous failures could still happen theoretically? If you do, I invite you to delete all your backups right now. Same with people and planets.
narrator 10y ago
This brings up an idea that I've been thinking about for a long time. If we are going to be able to travel between the stars, that means we are going to have access to a lot of energy. How are we going to deal with the destructive capability of that? Can we even get there without annihilating ourselves?

Symmetry 10y ago

I can easily imagine huge disasters on Earth that kill 90+% of the population but even then Earth will still have a higher population and be more habitable than Mars. And I can imagine things that would wipe out humanity on Earth and Mars. But the range of disasters that would totally wipe out humanity on Earth while sparing Mars seems pretty narrow to me.

enraged_camel 10y ago
If the Sun goes supernova, sure, we are all toast regardless of whether we are on Earth or Mars or even Pluto. But that's relatively unlikely. On the other hand, a large enough asteroid impact could kill 99%+ of the Earth's population and leave Mars intact. But even if it killed only 90%, think about what the remaining 10% would do. They would probably wage war on each other to grab whatever land and natural resources remain. Furthermore, civilization as a whole would severely regress technologically, as we would lose the vast majority of power plants, laboratories, factories, data centers, etc. We would find ourselves back in the Middle Ages. Compared to that, a super high-tech stable Mars colony that has a population of 1,000 would have it pretty good. Sure, they would be living most of their lives under the surface, but so what?
- Symmetry 10y ago
  I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of Mars, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland. Really both groups would be hanging on with limited labor and capital (generators, greenhouses, domes) in the midst of plentiful natural resources and that's the sort of situation that leads to raiding more than what you'd normally think of as warfare. And I'm really not sure why you'd expect a Mars of 1,000 people would have more technology than an Earth with 100,000,000 left alive. A technological civilization like ours depends on a body of knowledge that's way too big to fit in one or 1000 people's heads. Maybe in the future we'll have advanced AI that lets us get around this but that'd render the whole discussion moot.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>I'm not sure why you think that survivors on Earth, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland, would be more likely to fall into war than the inhabitants of Mars, struggling for survival in a barren wasteland. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would not, by definition, be "struggling for survival." >> A technological civilization like ours depends on a body of knowledge that's way too big to fit in one or 1000 people's heads. A fully self-sufficient Mars colony would have plenty of computers that can store data. In fact, since the goal of such a colony would be to act as Earth's backup, we would most likely have most of the Earth's combined knowledge stored in a large datacenter underneath the Martian surface. On the other hand, the shockwave from an asteroid that wipes 90% of the population on Earth would also instantly fry most electronics and render most technology useless. Like I said, it would send civilization back a thousand years. Sure, we would still have the knowledge in people's brains, but it turns out knowledge can be forgotten, especially when not actively recalled by the brain. When all your scientists have to become farmers, it is not likely that humanity would be able to retain all the knowledge it has collected over the past millenia.
- tylerjwilk00 10y ago
  It seems the Sun will become a Red Giant and not go supernova according to calculations. That means the Earth would be burned but the 4th planet, Mars, should remain unscorched. So, on a long enough timeline we must escape the Earth anyway. Let's get a head start!

adamsea 10y ago

Point number 2 seems extra applicable on Mars - where the systems sustaining life will be even more fragile. Unless you believe that Mars will be populated in perpetuity by a superior culture/class of people whose "everyman" would never, ever be a spectacularly bad apple (cue Heinlein/Moon is a Harsh Mistress/Belter/libertarian fantasy drooling). To be clear, I'm arguing that it's a fantasy.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
Sure. And files sitting on a disk, any disk, are forever under threat from random failure. But would you have only one copy of that file, or two copies on separate disks? And would you argue that it's pointless to have two copies, since simultaneous failures could still happen theoretically? If you do, I invite you to delete all your backups right now. Same with people and planets.

narrator 10y ago

This brings up an idea that I've been thinking about for a long time. If we are going to be able to travel between the stars, that means we are going to have access to a lot of energy. How are we going to deal with the destructive capability of that? Can we even get there without annihilating ourselves?