Elon Musk argues that putting a million people on Mars ensures humanity's future

Re:Elon Musk argues that putting a million people on Mars en... by Symmetry on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @12:18PM (#8389055)

I'm actually using a very inclusive sense of 'us' here, meaning any sort of life. I'd prefer intelligent life that I can emphasize with, but I'll take what I can get.

Humanity isn't that special and I'm sure intelligent life would arise again without us, but now that Earth has developed fungi that can digest cellulose Earth is never going to have this much fossil fuel sitting around again. Maybe that doesn't matter and humanity or some other species will colonize space anyways... but maybe it does.

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Re:Elon Musk argues that putting a million people on Mars en... by lutusp on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @01:09PM (#8389417)

> I'm actually using a very inclusive sense of 'us' here, meaning any sort of life.

Okay, fair enough, that's reasonable -- so once we detect any sort of extraterrestrial life, then we can forget about leaving the planet. After all, there's life everywhere, so our leaving Earth loses its significance.

I think we'll colonize Mars for the adventure, or to satisfy our curiosity, not as a first step in colonizing the universe. The latter might be what we'll say, but it won't be the real reason.

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