Space Colonization Debate

why? he has a point. humanity is going to be around for a very long time and I don't think we will accept being limited to earth forever

We are so, so far away from being able to leave earth and terraform/colonize other planets. A better argument is that we might find new technology or make new observations that help raise the standard of living on earth through designing to the requirements of space survival and exploration. But it's hard to translate potential ROI into spending when there are much more pressing problems here on earth.

At this point in time the humanity has nothing to offer to any other intelligence (if there is any) out there, nor it doesn't have a need itself to go outside of its own planet, and the big mess that it made out of it. It's akin of letting a toddler walk out of the door and roam into a busy street merely for a satisfaction of its curiousity. What is more likely to happen is that the valuable resources that we still have will be gone (it won't take long, as consumption is growing a

I don't believe parent was suggesting that current problems be the sole focus of our attention to the exclusion of all else. However there is a valid point to be made with respect to people's ability (or lack thereof) to line up behind even the most moderate of global proposals. For example, in the grand scheme of things we (human race) can't even accept a slight change to our lifestyle and moderate economic imposition in order to avoid significant climate change that will have f

That's a big 'if'. And IMO pointless to explore seriously until we can sustain ourselves on our native planet.

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecosystem and cut energy use to manageable levels. If we re-distribute our

Like flying to the moon, colonising Mars isn't a 'bad' idea. It won't harm anyone, most of humanity will keep on doing what it's doing. It doesn't take away important resources from environmentalism or other pressing causes, that's a zero sum fallacy. Musk's point is to push forward relentlessly to a future which incrementally improves humanity's chance of survival. Even if we stop messing up earth, an asteroid or a north korean engineered super flu c

We are rapidly approaching the day where humans can colonize other worlds. maybe that is how we got here.

You can't migrate every person on the planet to another one. And we still haven't found any planets remotely as habitable as our own, nor solved the problems related to long-term space travel or terraforming. And above all else, why the hell would you be content with throwing away Earth, the most livable planet we know of? The idea of saving the human race by just going somewhere else is laughable.

There's no question that the survival of humanity depends on our ability to colonize space. I just worry that destroying our planet on the assumption that future generations will be able to escape to other worlds is going to make it so much harder for that progress to happen that we might not make it that far.That people who have to fight each other just for clean water and food will focus on building guns and bombs instead of spaceships and won't have the time or resources to searc