Another way that I like to describe this is that almost nothing could make the earth less hospitable than the moon or mars already are. Asteroid strike? Mars’ thin atmosphere is even more vulnerable. Climate change? The moon swings between -170C and 119 C each month. Nuclear war? Try living under constant cosmic radiation in a pressurized habitat that could be completely destroyed by a few small conventional explosives instead of a nuclear bomb.
If we had the ability to make a self sustaining colony on mars we’d be able to restore earth’s biosphere or make self sustaining arcologies or bunkers.
Idk why people are downvoting you. The moon has literally nothing we could use to create a self-sustaining colony. Idk if I necessarily agree with your timelines (the future is, um, a bit unpredictable…). But in any forseeable timeline, a moon base watching earth get hit by an asteroid would be watching their own death on slow motion, as everything they need to survive is on earth.
500 years was just a number I threw out there as “clearly beyond any forseeable time”. It could be 200 years, 1000 years, maybe never. Point is just that it’s completely wrong to think that we just need to land on the moon or on Mars and then we’re an “interplanetary species” and if Earth goes, we have a backup plan.
A moon base could not be truly self sustaining for a long, long time, if ever. Probably never, definitely not within say 500 years.
So if Earth goes, the moon base is definitely gone too. There is no saving humanity without saving Earth.
I agree.
Another way that I like to describe this is that almost nothing could make the earth less hospitable than the moon or mars already are. Asteroid strike? Mars’ thin atmosphere is even more vulnerable. Climate change? The moon swings between -170C and 119 C each month. Nuclear war? Try living under constant cosmic radiation in a pressurized habitat that could be completely destroyed by a few small conventional explosives instead of a nuclear bomb.
If we had the ability to make a self sustaining colony on mars we’d be able to restore earth’s biosphere or make self sustaining arcologies or bunkers.
Idk why people are downvoting you. The moon has literally nothing we could use to create a self-sustaining colony. Idk if I necessarily agree with your timelines (the future is, um, a bit unpredictable…). But in any forseeable timeline, a moon base watching earth get hit by an asteroid would be watching their own death on slow motion, as everything they need to survive is on earth.
500 years was just a number I threw out there as “clearly beyond any forseeable time”. It could be 200 years, 1000 years, maybe never. Point is just that it’s completely wrong to think that we just need to land on the moon or on Mars and then we’re an “interplanetary species” and if Earth goes, we have a backup plan.