It's not about the problem going away or not. Saving a life also increases cost, especially if the life you are saving is non productive (ie require food) Fact

It's not about the problem going away or not. Saving a life also increases cost, especially if the life you are saving is non productive (ie require food) Fact is, there will always be people dying on earth. It's sad. But why bother? Sending the human race to another planet, then maybe another galaxy, are long term projects, and it makes sense to care about that however. If it only required the sacrifice of 5,000 children, that would be a very cheap price to pay. It will certainly cost (as in opportunity costs - how the money could be used in different ways) many more lives. Yet you know what? It's a great deal. If we lose our only current planet, all of humanity goes down, including any possible future "children" one may imagine. How many people do you expect will have existed in 10,000 years from now (humanity is much older than that!), given our current population? (let's say no grow)? Round that to 5 billion per 100 year with an greatly overestimated lifespan of 100 years to ease our calculations. We have a lowball estimate of (10,000/100)*5b = 5 000 billion It would be quite a bargain to sacrifice a total of 5 billion to ensure a living of the 5 000 billion future humans that will exist... hell, even a 100 billion!! So yes, children are dying, it's sad, and your use of "saying that to the mothers" is a call to use sentimentalisms to obscure the facts. Yet the facts remain : having more than one habitable planet is a necessity to protect the continuous possibility of a thriving human race, in case of major disasters (at mass-extinction level).