Mars colonisation wont save us from extinction
There are a bunch of great articles on WaitButWhy.com about SpaceX and Elon Musk explaining why they are trying to set up a permanent human colony on Mars. The TLDR is: additional human colonies on other planets will "back up" our "humanity hard-drive" to safeguard us (as a species) from extinction * . For the record I'm a huge Elon fan and am 100% in favour of the goal of expanding humans to other planets/habitats, however I wanted to point out that doing so will not in and of itself prevent the extinction of humanity. To understand why we need to think about the likely existential threats to our survival. Natural Disasters/Rapid Climate Change This might seem like two things but they are both the same, one is caused by humans and the other by natural forces. This is the one thing that extra-terrestrial colonies will be protected from, and making the colonies in the first place will help us learn how to help survive on the earth. The likelihood of...