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?

Fair enough -- I tend to figure at the point where we're talking about people knowingly taking actions that they are pretty sure will result in the extinction of local humanity, the additional motive to grab those guys over there within easy reach is not hard to tack on.

Well, it does look likely (not guaranteed - just 50% likely) that the primary target for the strike would be The Enemy (China-USA-Russia-EU-India-whoever). From what is publically known, the prepared plans from 20th century referred to first-strike/revenge dynamics...

Risking extinction on the Earth could be done just to slightly improve your chances not to be enslaved in the fallout or at least not to let The Enemy get away less destroyed than you. It means that you spend all that you can on your selected targets.

Africa would (except South Africa, maybe) w... (read more)

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Musk, Mars and x-risk

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Musk, Mars and x-risk

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