There's no rational need to survive as a species. An individual protecting its life is a different matter, but what's the point in struggling so hard to survive as a species? What is it that we hope to achieve in the end?

Most matter in the universe is dead. So even if we assume that we can't come up with anything interesting and worthy achieving right now we can still transform dead matter into thinking matter that might eventually come up with something.

At worst you would be wasting dead matter on a useless endeavor while ideally you discover more interesting things down the road. Seems like a decent tradeoff.

A species includes its individuals. If the species dies, all of the individuals are also dead.

We identify as a group - a tribe. In recent millenia, it's worked out well for individuals to identify with even larger groups. Today, it's rational to identify globally, for the benefits of trade, collaborative technological development and peace. There may well be some evolutionary pressure towards this. (Yes, there's reward for defection, but collaboration works even better).

Granted, "global" isn't the same as "species" - but in practice, and forever there is communication between members, they are identical (have the same referent).

It's pretty circular to give group-level reasons for why individuals should "identify globally."

We're biological life forms, it's literally our prime directive. Besides that though is there a rational reason to do anything? Ultimately the universe doesn't care so why bother?

If the species dies, all of my potential descendants die. I have genes that have evolved to prevent such an occurrence.

Genes don't evolve according to a purpose, they simply happened to last until the current point in time.

People have genes for all sorts of things, from over-eating to cheating on their spouse.

And?

Rational decision-making involves second guessing or even countering your genetic programming.

The "my genes made me do it" argument is no less flawed in a discussion about terraforming than one about what to order at McDonald's.

> humanity is one meteorite strike away from extinction

According to NASA [0] that's a once in a million year sort of event which, given how behaviourally modern [1] humans have only existed for about 50000 years, is nothing more than a strawman for terraforming.

[0] https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/back2.html

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity

You do realize that just because its called a one in a million event doesn't actually mean it has to happen every million years, and it doesn't have to wait a million years, right? A one in a million event could happen after 50,000 years, it just means on average it's expected to happen every million years.

So? How does that add any urgency to our current situation on earth?

I bought a condo on a 100-year flood plain back in the day.

Had 2 100-year floods, the first 2 springs I owned it.

A million year asteroid could hit almost literally at any moment.

Yeah, not really. With the current state of various spaceguard projects working on mapping NEOs (near-Earth objects), the estimated "heads up time" for an extinction level asteroid impact is on the order of decades. The smaller the object, the less notice we get, but the risk also decreases dramatically.

Earth stays far, far more hospitable than Mars even after absolutely colossal asteroid impacts.

It may be easier to set up meteorite protection than to terraform. NASA's already on the job http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/13/world/nasa-planetary-defen...

That's a good point and something the article doesn't mention: creating a stable colony off planet effectively cuts in half our risk of extinction due to impacts, supervolcanoes / god knows what horrors.

What if the other colony evolves into something other than humans, the two groups becoming distinct species? Will it have been a waste?

It does a lot better than cutting it in half.

Oh right. The chance of two simultaneous catastrophic events is ... the chance of one multiplied by itself, not by two!

Can you not

How is the "Universe a harsh place" exactly?

It provides us everything.

It's harsh in the sense that not only is there a tiny amount of it that can be safely occupied by humans, but also that the sliver we do have can be easily wiped out by random events, and will be inevitably destroyed in a few million years.

Maybe it takes all that perceived harshness to produce something special?

Your earlier comment got me thinking a little more. It's hard to disagree with your logic: since we are there and able to talk about it, that makes the Universe already rather compassionate. In fact, there is no other place to compare its possible harshness to.

However, it's a bit like a parent abusing their child. The kid owes everything it has to their progenitor, but it's questionable whether their existence is worth something to begin with. Even without a frame of reference, I believe you can make the judgment that something is in fact harsh. The very fact that we can conceive of asking this question makes it a possibility. In an easier world we might not even consider it at all.