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Super long term, the stakes are the continued survival and existence of the human race, once increasing solar luminosity renders this planet uninhabitable, in a

Super long term, the stakes are the continued survival and existence of the human race, once increasing solar luminosity renders this planet uninhabitable, in a billion or two years. Short term, heck, I'd take the risk just to experience microgravity for a good while. Tourism and pleasure itself is utility. As for this NASA project: the unspoken subtext for doing this is that the US doesn't want China to in effect own the moon uncontested.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
The first animals in the fossil record aren’t even a billion years old. Intelligent life is probably merely be a temporary phenotype seen on earth anyhow, like countless others that developed, came to dominance, and then disappeared over millions of years. Planning for something a billion years down the road, using current resourses to boot, is a little bit mad. And if the situation is dominance on the moon over China, a remote operated lunar base is far better than anything human staffed. A battle could happen and all the highly trained operators on earth are fine when their crafts meet their end. For a space based human army, however, when you lose your craft you lose highly trained operators as well as that massive investment you made placing them and maintaining their presence in space. A remote army therefore always wins, since it has a massive thermodynamic advantage of deploying cheap and light cargo into space versus people and the support they need.
- twojacobtwo 3y ago
  Not the parent poster, but they could have added uncharted Oort cloud object collisions, extra-solar system objects, quasar/interstellar jets, nuclear war, runaway climate change, mega volcano/caldera eruptions, bio-engineered runaway viruses, and probably a few other potentially life ending events for humanity that would bring that 'billion' number down by several orders of magnitude for likelihood of our extinction.

kjkjadksj 3y ago

The first animals in the fossil record aren’t even a billion years old. Intelligent life is probably merely be a temporary phenotype seen on earth anyhow, like countless others that developed, came to dominance, and then disappeared over millions of years. Planning for something a billion years down the road, using current resourses to boot, is a little bit mad. And if the situation is dominance on the moon over China, a remote operated lunar base is far better than anything human staffed. A battle could happen and all the highly trained operators on earth are fine when their crafts meet their end. For a space based human army, however, when you lose your craft you lose highly trained operators as well as that massive investment you made placing them and maintaining their presence in space. A remote army therefore always wins, since it has a massive thermodynamic advantage of deploying cheap and light cargo into space versus people and the support they need.

twojacobtwo 3y ago
Not the parent poster, but they could have added uncharted Oort cloud object collisions, extra-solar system objects, quasar/interstellar jets, nuclear war, runaway climate change, mega volcano/caldera eruptions, bio-engineered runaway viruses, and probably a few other potentially life ending events for humanity that would bring that 'billion' number down by several orders of magnitude for likelihood of our extinction.