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?

If we consider malicious actions (like a big war), such colonies on Earth are just too convenient for military installations to be left untouched.

Mars colony is too far away to be able to deal a sneak attack; so wiping it is not as urgent, and after 3 hours there are no rockets anywhere on Earth for next 5 years.

Also, I am not sure that the cheapest way to "filter CO2 and CO, boost O2" is more expensive than "filter all possible chemical weapons and kill all designer bacteria".

Whether a war that realy destroys every human (maybe not immediately, but over the range of a century) is likely is another question.

Of course, intact Mars colony would also have to keep quite a lot of physics, engineering and biology knowledge even if some of it were lost on Earth.

If we can transport 80,000 humans to Mars and keep them alive there long-term, we have the tech necessary to wipe out those Martian colonies as surely as comparable ones on Earth.

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Musk, Mars and x-risk

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Musk, Mars and x-risk

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