Musk, Mars and x-risk

Kawoomba

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.

Relevant Sagan quote:

(...) we've put all our eggs in one basket. If we were on many worlds and were to mess up down here, there's a way for the human species to continue. I don't for a moment propose that the Earth is a disposable planet, and we have to put enormous efforts into making sure we don't muss up down here. But there is a chance.

This should also at least somewhat reduce the x-risk stemming from uFAI (a subset of uFAI's may not concern themselves with space travel), and may significantly reduce the x-risk posed by many other x-risk categories (bioengineered threats, catastrophic climate change, global nuclear catastrophe, grey goo scenarios, etcetera).

For total x-risk reduction, prima facie it's unclear to me how supporting an endeavor such as Musk's stacks up against the SI's effectiveness, measured by total x-risk reduction per donated currency unit.

What's your take?

Article on space.com

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.

Relevant Sagan quote:

(...) we've put all our eggs in one basket. If we were on many worlds and were to mess up down here, there's a way for the human species to continue. I don't for a moment propose that the Earth is a disposable planet, and we have to put enormous efforts into making sure we don't muss up down here. But there is a chance.

What's your take?

What does it mean for nothing to happen at all?

Sorry, I edited immediately and added a disclaimer on what I meant by that, but it seems that the final edit of my post hasn't submitted. In the disclaimer I explained that I mean nothing to happen with the resources (which still wasn't a good explanation of what I meant) and tried to add a different explanation because of my bad wording that I pretty much mean that 'If you'd rather have event over ~event than..'

Sorry, where did hate come in?

If you are against everything you must (as in it is logical that) you must hate the situation. Anyway, the hate was not the point, the point was that no use of resources is optimal.

If you are against everything you must (as in it is logical that) you must hate the situation

This doesn't follow at all unless one is using a non-standard notion of hate. For example, given the choice I'd rather watch Casablanca than Field of Dreams, but they are both excellent movies. I wouldn't "hate" watching Field of Dreams.

the point was that no use of resources is optimal.

This makes me even more confused. How do I know that no use is optimal? Moreover, even if there isn't any optimal use, how does that not make some uses substantially more optimal than others?

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Musk, Mars and x-risk

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Musk, Mars and x-risk

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