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The idea of finding another Earth is not so much about moving everyone from Earth to somewhere else, but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation

The idea of finding another Earth is not so much about moving everyone from Earth to somewhere else, but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation in additional places. If an asteroid is going to wipe out Earth, we can't evacuate 8 billion people, or even 8 million people. but if we had a few generations of colonists in domes on Mars, or floating in the clouds on Venus, or somewhere else, the species itself would hopefully survive. We only have one Earth, and its the best home we could hope for. But we're crazy to keep all of our existential eggs in a single basket and hope it all works out. > If we can make Mars habitable, we can make Earth habitable for far less cost. That said, I absolutely love this sentence. Although I would say, the technology we ultimately have to develop to survive on Mars or the moon will certainly help us keep Earth habitable.

TomSwirly 4y ago
> rather about "backing up" our species First we need to stabilize the Earth, dealing with the threat coming in decades, before we deal with threats that come millions of years apart.
- ben_w 4y ago
  They say that necessity is the mother of invention. I think the best way to learn how to stabilise the Earth is for some of us to have to cope with stabilising something much worse, something unforgiving on a timescale where there are personal consequences to getting it wrong. Not like here, where the consequences are separated by decades or continents, or where a big pile of money can make up for any personal pain.
alienalp 4y ago
In reality this is just a fantasy. It is not possible for a healthy human to really care about survival of human race in case of something catastrophic happening and wiping out humanity.
- roryisok 4y ago
  Why? Healthy people care about having descendants they'll never meet.
  - alienalp 4y ago
    Survival of human race is very different then caring about descendants. Yet as you are live witnessing right now some people barely care about that and most people do not even think about it. If earth to be wiped out by a meteor and there was a ship with limited space to colonize another planet people would fight for that space even if it would mean decreasing success chance of mission.
    - MrOwnPut 4y ago
      People have other reasons of going. You don't colonize during the asteroid event, you colonize long before. You won't have people fighting to go to save themselves, you'll have them wanting to go for various reasons, legacy, reputation, isolation, etc. That being said, I don't agree with your premise that you can't be a healthy person and care about the human race. You haven't added enough to support that claim.
      - alienalp 4y ago
        It was an example to point out that people may behave vicious to increase survival chance of their children or themself even if conflicts with survival chance of human race in total.
- kbelder 4y ago
  Because you don't, and you can't imagine you're not an exemplar of health?
  - alienalp 4y ago
    Because i am very objective person and this is just hard fact. It may be healthy to think that way but just not the reality.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
> But we're crazy to keep all of our existential eggs in a single basket and hope it all works out. While the cost to colonize elsewhere is "mine the earth to a wasteland" it does make sense to preserve the basket we have. At least until we can afford to buy another basket without ruining the original.
- roryisok 4y ago
  > While the cost to colonize elsewhere is "mine the earth to a wasteland" I'm not sure where this idea is coming from. I think the idea of most modern colonisation plans is to use materials at the location to build habitats etc, by 3d printing using martian soil or lunar regolith, not ship millions of tons of natural resources into space.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    That's just magic woo though. You can't just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors or furnaces to smelt metal. Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion. You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it.
    - L_226 4y ago
      Luckily space is already clean, the trick will be converting current production processes to work in microgravity - process heat offtake without convection etc. LEO or higher orbit based manufacturing will probably occur before 2050, once that is solved then deploying infrastructure onto the Martian surface will become relatively trivial.
      - giantrobot 4y ago
        That's just a string of nonsense. There's not a single aspect of deploying infrastructure anywhere in space is trivial.
    - 4y ago
georgeg23 4y ago
That's the essence of Elon's philosophy. It's NOT about Mars. It's about preventing existential risk. That's why his technical focus is actually heavy lift to low Earth Orbit for a Brilliant Pebbles program, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities
je42 4y ago
The idea is not to replace earth but to have a second earth inhabitting both concurrently. Hence, keeping earth inhabitable is important, since you don't want to give up your fallback easily.
jdmichal 4y ago
> ... but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation in additional places. It would certainly cease to by "our civilization" within a very short time frame. It could eventually cease to be our species also. Without at least faster-than-light communication, there is no keeping humanity in sync between star systems.
palata 4y ago
I genuinely don't get the "save the human species" argument. We are living a mass extinction which is caused by the human species. So one species (humans) is essentially destroying most of the variety of life. If you care about preserving humans, why don't you care about preserving life? Of all the miracles of evolution, ending up with a few humans surviving on Mars is not a success in my book.
- aeternum 4y ago
  Humans would clearly bring other life with them to Mars just as we have to almost every part of the earth. In contrast to this worldview that humans are the agents of mass-extinction, it's much more likely that humans are the only ticket to survival for every species on earth. No other species has been able to escape Earth's massive gravity well, nor has come anywhere close to harnessing the energy required to do so.
  - palata 4y ago
    > just as we have to almost every part of the earth. Do you have an idea of the ratio between the species human has been moving around vs the number of species in existence? > In contrast to this worldview that humans are the agents of mass-extinction Wait wait wait. This is a fact. We are living a mass extinction now, it is acted. We, human, have removed 2/3 of trees, 2/3 of mammals, and 2/3 of insects from Earth. Mostly because of the loss of habitat (not Climate Change, this still has to come as a bonus, and definitely won't help). It is not hypothetical, it is not a worldview. It is a fact. Of all the species that lived on Earth at the same time as humans, the number of species that got decimated because of humans is so much higher than the number that humans may bring to space (should we ever succeed, which is far from certain) that it feels absolutely wrong to consider that "humans are the only ticket to survival for every species on earth". Pretty much every species on Earth would be better off without humans. And again: preserving life on Earth is much easier than bringing it to space (and we are failing at it right now). The asteroid scenario is completely ridiculous: again it's far easier to prevent the asteroid from colliding with Earth than to send a few species to survive in space.
saurik 4y ago
Why do we care about our species having a "backup" if it isn't us? "It sounds hard and I am bored" is a reason I can at least understand, but arguing we would be "crazy to keep all of our existential eggs in a single basket" implies some objective inherent value to humanity existing in the abstract that we all must be willing to sacrifice for, and that requires a lot more explication.
- aeternum 4y ago
  It's not just humanity, it is all of life. It is possible that complex multicellular life does not exist anywhere else in the universe. Almost everyone agrees that life, not just human life is important and meaningful. Another way to look at it is consider the opposite bet. Suppose that you could improve every Earth organism's life by 10%, but at the cost of requiring all life to stay on a single volcanic island in Hawaii. Would you ever take that bet?
poulpy123 4y ago
> If an asteroid is going to wipe out Earth, we can't evacuate 8 billion people, or even 8 million people. but if we had a few generations of colonists in domes on Mars, or floating in the clouds on Venus, or somewhere else, the species itself would hopefully survive. The problem with this reasoning is that even in the case of a dinosaur-busting asteroid impact earth will be still much more liveable than mars. the proof being that earth got a dinosaur-busting asteroid impact few millions years ago and that life continued there but didn't appear on mars
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation in additional places If that's the goal, we should find a safe place to store the backup, or it's just hoping for the best in the worst situation possible.

TomSwirly 4y ago

> rather about "backing up" our species First we need to stabilize the Earth, dealing with the threat coming in decades, before we deal with threats that come millions of years apart.

ben_w 4y ago
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. I think the best way to learn how to stabilise the Earth is for some of us to have to cope with stabilising something much worse, something unforgiving on a timescale where there are personal consequences to getting it wrong. Not like here, where the consequences are separated by decades or continents, or where a big pile of money can make up for any personal pain.

alienalp 4y ago

In reality this is just a fantasy. It is not possible for a healthy human to really care about survival of human race in case of something catastrophic happening and wiping out humanity.

roryisok 4y ago
Why? Healthy people care about having descendants they'll never meet.
- alienalp 4y ago
  Survival of human race is very different then caring about descendants. Yet as you are live witnessing right now some people barely care about that and most people do not even think about it. If earth to be wiped out by a meteor and there was a ship with limited space to colonize another planet people would fight for that space even if it would mean decreasing success chance of mission.
  - MrOwnPut 4y ago
    People have other reasons of going. You don't colonize during the asteroid event, you colonize long before. You won't have people fighting to go to save themselves, you'll have them wanting to go for various reasons, legacy, reputation, isolation, etc. That being said, I don't agree with your premise that you can't be a healthy person and care about the human race. You haven't added enough to support that claim.
    - alienalp 4y ago
      It was an example to point out that people may behave vicious to increase survival chance of their children or themself even if conflicts with survival chance of human race in total.
kbelder 4y ago
Because you don't, and you can't imagine you're not an exemplar of health?
- alienalp 4y ago
  Because i am very objective person and this is just hard fact. It may be healthy to think that way but just not the reality.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

> But we're crazy to keep all of our existential eggs in a single basket and hope it all works out. While the cost to colonize elsewhere is "mine the earth to a wasteland" it does make sense to preserve the basket we have. At least until we can afford to buy another basket without ruining the original.

roryisok 4y ago
> While the cost to colonize elsewhere is "mine the earth to a wasteland" I'm not sure where this idea is coming from. I think the idea of most modern colonisation plans is to use materials at the location to build habitats etc, by 3d printing using martian soil or lunar regolith, not ship millions of tons of natural resources into space.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  That's just magic woo though. You can't just "3D print" a clean room to build semiconductors or furnaces to smelt metal. Pretty much all heavy industry on Earth that makes all our high technology runs on petroleum products in some fashion. You can't just "3D print" lubrication and good luck building heavy industrial pieces without it.
  - L_226 4y ago
    Luckily space is already clean, the trick will be converting current production processes to work in microgravity - process heat offtake without convection etc. LEO or higher orbit based manufacturing will probably occur before 2050, once that is solved then deploying infrastructure onto the Martian surface will become relatively trivial.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      That's just a string of nonsense. There's not a single aspect of deploying infrastructure anywhere in space is trivial.
  - 4y ago

georgeg23 4y ago

That's the essence of Elon's philosophy. It's NOT about Mars. It's about preventing existential risk. That's why his technical focus is actually heavy lift to low Earth Orbit for a Brilliant Pebbles program, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities

je42 4y ago

The idea is not to replace earth but to have a second earth inhabitting both concurrently. Hence, keeping earth inhabitable is important, since you don't want to give up your fallback easily.

jdmichal 4y ago

> ... but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation in additional places. It would certainly cease to by "our civilization" within a very short time frame. It could eventually cease to be our species also. Without at least faster-than-light communication, there is no keeping humanity in sync between star systems.

palata 4y ago

I genuinely don't get the "save the human species" argument. We are living a mass extinction which is caused by the human species. So one species (humans) is essentially destroying most of the variety of life. If you care about preserving humans, why don't you care about preserving life? Of all the miracles of evolution, ending up with a few humans surviving on Mars is not a success in my book.

aeternum 4y ago
Humans would clearly bring other life with them to Mars just as we have to almost every part of the earth. In contrast to this worldview that humans are the agents of mass-extinction, it's much more likely that humans are the only ticket to survival for every species on earth. No other species has been able to escape Earth's massive gravity well, nor has come anywhere close to harnessing the energy required to do so.
- palata 4y ago
  > just as we have to almost every part of the earth. Do you have an idea of the ratio between the species human has been moving around vs the number of species in existence? > In contrast to this worldview that humans are the agents of mass-extinction Wait wait wait. This is a fact. We are living a mass extinction now, it is acted. We, human, have removed 2/3 of trees, 2/3 of mammals, and 2/3 of insects from Earth. Mostly because of the loss of habitat (not Climate Change, this still has to come as a bonus, and definitely won't help). It is not hypothetical, it is not a worldview. It is a fact. Of all the species that lived on Earth at the same time as humans, the number of species that got decimated because of humans is so much higher than the number that humans may bring to space (should we ever succeed, which is far from certain) that it feels absolutely wrong to consider that "humans are the only ticket to survival for every species on earth". Pretty much every species on Earth would be better off without humans. And again: preserving life on Earth is much easier than bringing it to space (and we are failing at it right now). The asteroid scenario is completely ridiculous: again it's far easier to prevent the asteroid from colliding with Earth than to send a few species to survive in space.

saurik 4y ago

Why do we care about our species having a "backup" if it isn't us? "It sounds hard and I am bored" is a reason I can at least understand, but arguing we would be "crazy to keep all of our existential eggs in a single basket" implies some objective inherent value to humanity existing in the abstract that we all must be willing to sacrifice for, and that requires a lot more explication.

aeternum 4y ago
It's not just humanity, it is all of life. It is possible that complex multicellular life does not exist anywhere else in the universe. Almost everyone agrees that life, not just human life is important and meaningful. Another way to look at it is consider the opposite bet. Suppose that you could improve every Earth organism's life by 10%, but at the cost of requiring all life to stay on a single volcanic island in Hawaii. Would you ever take that bet?

poulpy123 4y ago

> If an asteroid is going to wipe out Earth, we can't evacuate 8 billion people, or even 8 million people. but if we had a few generations of colonists in domes on Mars, or floating in the clouds on Venus, or somewhere else, the species itself would hopefully survive. The problem with this reasoning is that even in the case of a dinosaur-busting asteroid impact earth will be still much more liveable than mars. the proof being that earth got a dinosaur-busting asteroid impact few millions years ago and that life continued there but didn't appear on mars

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> but rather about "backing up" our species and civilisation in additional places If that's the goal, we should find a safe place to store the backup, or it's just hoping for the best in the worst situation possible.