Space Colonization Solves Extinction

Every delay kills trillions of humans

Bostrom 3 – Department of Philosophy, Yale University, Director of the Future of Humanity
Institute at Oxford University, 2002 (Nick, “Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of
Delayed Technological Development,” Preprint, Utilitas Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 308-314,
http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html)

As I write these words, suns are illuminating and heating empty rooms, unused energy is being flushed down black holes, and
our great common endowment of negentropy is being irreversibly degraded into entropy on a
cosmic scale. These are resources that an advanced civilization could have used to create value-structures, such as
sentient beings living worthwhile lives. The rate of this loss boggles the mind. One recent paper speculates, using loose theoretical considerations based on the rate of

increase of entropy, that the loss of potential human lives in our own galactic supercluster is at
least ~10^46 per century of delayed colonization.[1] This estimate assumes that all the lost entropy could have
been used for productive purposes, although no currently known technological mechanisms are even remotely capable of doing that. Since the estimate is meant to be a lower bound, this
radically unconservative assumption is undesirable. We can, however, get a lower bound more straightforwardly by simply counting the number or

stars in our galactic supercluster and multiplying this number with the amount of computing
power that the resources of each star could be used to generate using technologies for whose
feasibility a strong case has already been made. We can then divide this total with the estimated
amount of computing power needed to simulate one human life. As a rough approximation, let us say the Virgo Supercluster contains 10^13
stars. One estimate of the computing power extractable from a star and with an associated planet-sized computational structure, using advanced molecular nanotechnology[2], is 10^42 operations per second.[3] A typical estimate of the
human brain’s processing power is roughly 10^17 operations per second or less.[4] Not much more seems to be needed to simulate the relevant parts of the environment in sufficient detail to enable the simulated minds to have

the potential for approximately 10^38 human lives

experiences indistinguishable from typical current human experiences.[5] Given these estimates, it follows that

is lost every century that colonization of our local supercluster is delayed; or equivalently, about
10^31 potential human lives per second. While this estimate is conservative in that it assumes only computational mechanisms whose implementation has been at least outlined
in the literature, it is useful to have an even more conservative estimate that does not assume a non-biological instantiation of the potential persons. Suppose that about 10^10 biological humans could be sustained around an average star.
Then the Virgo Supercluster could contain 10^23 biological humans. This corresponds to a loss of potential equal to about 10^14 potential human lives per second of delayed colonization. What matters for present purposes is not the exact

Even with the most conservative estimate, assuming a biological

numbers but the fact that they are huge.

implementation of all persons, the potential for one hundred trillion potential human beings is
lost for every second of postponement of colonization of our supercluster. [6]

Failure to colonize guarantees extinction

Munevar '19 [Gonzalo; 4/19/19; Professor at Lawrence Technical University; "Deflecting
Existential Risk with Space Colonization," https://filling--space.com/2019/04/19/deflecting--
existential--risk--with--space--colonization/]

Why do you argue that “failure to move into the cosmos would condemn us to oblivion”?

By having a significant presence in the solar system in the next few thousands of years and
beyond, we will be in a better position to deflect asteroids and comets that might bring the end
of humanity, and much other Earth life, in a horrible collision. And if perchance one such
catastrophe proves inevitable (e.g. a rogue planet passing through the solar system), humanity
would still survive by having colonized Mars and other bodies, as well as by having built artificial
space colonies of the type advocated by Gerard O’Neill.
Once the sun begins to turn into a red giant in a few billion years, we must have long moved into
the outer solar system. In the very long run, we have to move into other solar systems.
Relativistic--speed starships would be nice, but they are not necessary for the task of moving
humanity to the stars. We can reach them, slowly but surely, by propelling some of our space
colonies away from the sun, carrying perhaps millions of human beings. They would take
advantage of the many resources to be found in the Oort Cloud, and then of equivalent clouds
in other solar systems. Even interstellar space has resources to offer. Nuclear energy, probably
fusion, would likely be required. It may take us tens of thousands of years, but in the cosmic
time scale, that is but a blink in the eye.

What are these catastrophic threats? Are there any records of catastrophic events happening
before humans appeared on Earth?

I have already mentioned collisions with asteroids and comets. Although the active geology of
our planet tends to erase the record of many collisions, we can find a well--preserved record on
the Moon and Venus, the two closest bodies to Earth. On the 600--million--years--old Venusian
surface, the spacecraft Magellan discovered about one thousand impact craters at least twice
the diameter of meteor craters on Earth. This impact record makes it reasonable to estimate a
catastrophic impact on Earth every half a million years or so. Collisions with bodies of 5 km
across would happen, on the average, every 20 million years. Apart from the Alvarez asteroid
(crater near Yucatan) that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the majority of species on
Earth 65 million years ago, there have been at least two more impacts by asteroids 10 km or
larger in the last 300 million years.

Getting off the rock solves extinction---travel capabilities are advancing---

surviving in harsh conditions is the key challenge

Everett 16 (Sean, CEO of Prome Biological Intelligence, a global biotechnology company, editor
of Medium’s news outlet dedicated to space colonialization titled “The Mission”, BS
Mathematics & Actuarial Science, MBA from UChicago,“Humanity’s Extinction Event Is Coming”
https://medium.com/the-mission/humanitys-extinction-event-is-coming-c0f84f1803f)

But the reality is that an asteroid impact, a change in our magnetic field, or the rising
temperature of Earth’s climate are all events that we currently cannot escape. There is no back-
up plan. We are, for better or worse, tied to the fate of this planet. As history has shown, that’s
not a good fate to be tied to. In fact on September 7, 2016 a 30-foot asteroid flew between the
Earth and the Moon. Our most powerful instruments only detected it with two days notice. Two
days. If the asteroid was only 1000-foot wide, it would destroy all human life and we’d have no
back-up to get out of it. Even the White House is worried about it. Five, yes five, major
extinction events have occurred on our planet that we know about. We’re due for another. And
when that happens, what’s our alternative? You can’t move to another house. You can’t buy
survival, even with a billion dollars in the bank. The only way out, is up. We must find a way to
become multi-planetary if we want to save humanity, your family, and yes, even yourself. Only
this can restore the honor we seemed to have lost from the brave days of the 60s, while also
ensuring our survival. It’s for the species, folks. And as a species, we have not allowed ourselves
the opportunity to blast off for the stars. Only the space race in the 60s when we were afraid
enough of a self-inflicted global extinction event (read: nuclear) that we put forth the funding
required to launch into orbit and onto our moon. We didn’t have calculators back then, and now
we have supercomputers in our pocket, but no one is allowed out of our atmosphere, save for a
few communication and spy satellites. Doesn’t that make you mad? It’s not some oppressive
government that tells us no. It’s us. We pay our taxes. We elect leaders. Those leaders choose
Defense as the primary budget line item, but forget about defending against the forthcoming
apocalypse. Funding for NASA in the United States has decreased from 4% of the national
budget in the 60s to about 0.5% from 2010 onwards. That’s just the money side. But in order to
move past this threshold from our home planet to space and then onto other planets, we need
to do two things: Travel there. Survive. Luckily, we can simplify the problem of passing this
barrier by sending machines in our place. Like TARS from Interstellar, they can go places humans
cannot and explore the environment for habitability and resources, even in particularly hostile
conditions. Maybe not black hole hostile, but definitely Mars hostile, as the Curiosity Rover has
shown. Only now, with a few bold, private startups are we beginning to see a re-emergence of
the space industry. We are about to pass a few very important tests that allow us to explore and
visit the cosmos. The first is launching physical things into space. This is the catalyst that will
jump start a new space race. Prices of sending cargo are falling dramatically, down to nearly
$500 per pound of payload with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 heavy re-usable rocket. Note that the re-
usable part is key. We can’t throw away our “space car” every time we Uber it. And once that
becomes standard and cost-optimized we might be able to get that down to $10 per pound.
Imagine what could happen when it costs the same amount to ship something across town as it
does into space. The second, and this is just as important, is the wave of autonomous machines.
Tesla has popularized the notion of self-driving cars. SpaceX lands their rocket onto a small
barge in the ocean autonomously. Companies are buying startups in the space. Self-driving will
be our gift, our talisman, on the quest to save the species by becoming multi-planetary. II.
Shipping Ourselves to Space The graph below is from the Founders Fund manifesto, showing the
decreasing cost of launching something into space. It begins with the 1960s US-versus-Russia
space race and extends to the present day SpaceX-versus-Blue Origin reusable rocket race. The
cheapest method we have today is SpaceX’s Falcon series rockets. With the Falcon 9 Heavy, it’s
predicted launching cargo into space will be cheaper than ever before, at $750 per pound of
payload delivered to low earth orbit (LOE)on an expendable rocket. You have to note here,
however, that these statistics are as cheap as possible. It costs more to deliver payload on a
non-reusable rocket, and on something that’s further out than LEO, like geosynchronous orbit,
or to Mars. For example, based on SpaceX’s published pricing, it would be at least 4x more
expensive to deliver far less cargo to Mars. So what happens when we reduce that cost to $10
per pound? Namely, an explosion of startups, much like iOS. Instead of pushing to production
for your continuously deployed web and mobile app, we will see future developers push to
production by deploying physical things into space. “STAGE” takes on an entirely new meaning
for software developers when it means your automated regression tests fail, it could blow up a
rocket and hurt people on board. That’s why SpaceX and Blue Origins exist. To make this
continuous-deployment-to-space process as cheap and fast as possible. By Elon’s calculations,
every 15 minutes. III. Self-Driving Space Explorers The most successful products for space, at
least in the beginning, will make money by pushing this stuff into orbit. Things like science
experiments and new 3D printers. A company called Made in Space creates a number of these
products, including the empty box you see below used for sending things up with Blue Origin.
The box shown in gray is a specialized 3D printer that works in zero gravity. Remember how
most 3D printers work. It squeezes out a single layer of liquid ooze, and then another, over and
over again until it builds up enough vertically that it creates an object. This can be simple plastic
or more esoteroic metals. But when you’re “dripping” something, held down in place by gravity,
the entire process has to be re-imagined for space. Things in zero-G would just float away. Enter
these chaps. There’s also the very real need for oxygen, food, water, and shelter from the harsh
elements. Funny how we will end up recreating Maslow’s Heirarchy in every new voyage or
planetoid we want to colonize. And space mining is off to the races with the recent
announcement of Deep Space Industry’s Prospector-1: Their vision is to extract water from
asteroids and use the chemical components to hydrate us, but also as oxygen (breathing) and
hydrogen (fuel). To do that, you have to identify candidate asteroids, physically get to them,
land and attach, and then do surveying, prospecting, and extraction. In short, you’re going to
need some level of self-driving capabilities to make this happen. And wouldn’t it be nice if it
“just worked” right out of the box. Unfortunately, in space you don’t have fleets of these space
craft, millions of miles of training data, maps, or an internet connection to the cloud so how the
heck are deep learning algorithms going to work? I don’t think they will. And that’s what I
believe we need a better approach.

Space col solves extinction

Britt, 1 -- Senior Science Writer (Robert Roy, Space.com, “The Top 3 Reasons to Colonize
Space” http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/colonize_why_011008-4.html)
Sooner or later, Earth's bell will be rung. A giant asteroid or comet will slam into
It's no secret.

the planet, as has happened many times before, and a deadly dark cloud will envelop the globe, killing much
of whatever might have survived the initial impact. " We live on a small planet covered with
the bones of extinct species, proving that such catastrophes do occur routinely," says J. Richard
Gott, III, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton and author of "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe." Gott cites the presumably
hardy Tyrannosaurus rex, which lasted a mere 2.5 million years and was the victim of an asteroid attack, as an example of what can happen if you don't plan ahead. But

space rocks may not be the only threat. Epidemics, climatological or ecological
catastrophes or even man-made disasters could do our species in, Gott says. And so, he argues, we need a
life insurance policy to guarantee the survival of the human race. "Spreading out into space
gives us more chances," he says. And the time is now: History instructs that technological hay should be made while the economic sun shines. "There is
a danger we will end the human space program at some point, leaving us stranded on the Earth," Gott warns. "History shows that expensive technological projects are

often abandoned after awhile. For example, the Ancient Egyptians quit building pyramids . So we should be colonizing space now
while we have the chance.">
Space colonization solves extinction
Filling Space 19, 4-19, "Deflecting Existential Risk with Space Colonization," Filling Space,
https://filling-space.com/2019/04/19/deflecting-existential-risk-with-space-colonization/
The first living organism on Earth emerged approximately three and a half billion years ago. Since then, life has evolved into countless forms and colonized the planet. But the
story of life is not a rosy one. At least five mass extinctions have occurred, and nearly all species that have ever existed on our planet are now dead. One of the most well-
understood mass extinctions occurred when the Alvarez asteroid impacted Earth and, likely combined with other factors, killed many dinosaurs and other species. Life then had

In order to avoid sharing the same fate as the

no tools to detect the coming asteroid or to be able to plan proactively to ensure its survival.

dinosaurs, scholars argue that humans should become a multi-planetary species. We spoke with Professor
Gonzalo Munevar, Emeritus Professor at Lawrence Technical University, to hear his thoughts on the existential risks we face and how colonization of the cosmos can help us

failure to move into

address them. He has written extensively about the philosophy of space exploration and human consciousness. Why do you argue that “

the cosmos would condemn us to oblivion”? By having a significant presence in the solar system
in the next few thousands of years and beyond, we will be in a better position to deflect asteroids and comets that
might bring the end of humanity, and much other Earth life, in a horrible collisio n. And if perchance one such
catastrophe proves inevitable (e.g. a rogue planet passing through the solar system), humanity would still survive by having colonized Mars and other bodies, as well as by
having built artificial space colonies of the type advocated by Gerard O’Neill. Once the sun begins to turn into a red giant in a few billion years, we must have long moved into
the outer solar system. In the very long run, we have to move into other solar systems. Relativistic-speed starships would be nice, but they are not necessary for the task of
moving humanity to the stars. We can reach them, slowly but surely, by propelling some of our space colonies away from the sun, carrying perhaps millions of human beings.

interstellar space
They would take advantage of the many resources to be found in the Oort Cloud, and then of equivalent clouds in other solar systems. Even

has resources to offer. Nuclear energy, probably fusion, would likely be required. It may take us tens of thousands of years, but in
the cosmic time scale, that is but a blink in the eye. What are these catastrophic threats? Are there any records of catastrophic events happening before humans appeared on
Earth? I have already mentioned collisions with asteroids and comets. Although the active geology of our planet tends to erase the record of many collisions, we can find a well-
preserved record on the Moon and Venus, the two closest bodies to Earth. On the 600-million-years-old Venusian surface, the spacecraft Magellan discovered about one
thousand impact craters at least twice the diameter of meteor craters on Earth. This impact record makes it reasonable to estimate a catastrophic impact on Earth every half a
million years or so. Collisions with bodies of 5 km across would happen, on the average, every 20 million years. Apart from the Alvarez asteroid (crater near Yucatan) that led to
the extinction of the dinosaurs and the majority of species on Earth 65 million years ago, there have been at least two more impacts by asteroids 10 km or larger in the last 300

colonies on other
million years. How could human colonization of outer space save other terrestrial life? On both O’Neill types of colonies as well as on

planets, and particularly on terraformed planets, we would need all sorts of organisms like
bacteria and plants for food, medicine, and ornamentation, as well as many animals for food
and other purposes. We cannot have a proper colony without an Earthly environment to surround and nourish us. So, we have to take much other terrestrial life
with us in order to survive and flourish. And given the value of biodiversity we would make it a point to take a great

variety of organisms that contribute to our biosphere . Of course, we should heed Mark Twain and be sure not to include mosquitoes
in our future space arks. I myself would keep out tarantulas and some other obnoxious viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals.

Earth won’t be inhabitable forever – colonization is essential to preventing

extinction
Newitz 13 [(Annalee, is the author, most recently, of the science fiction novel The Future of
Another Timeline, a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, and co-host of the
podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.), “Escape Plans,” Slate, 5/15/13,
https://slate.com/technology/2013/05/surviving-the-next-mass-extinction-humans-will-need-
to-leave-earth-for-space-colonies.html] MN

When the Russian asteroid became a fireball in the air over Chelyabinsk, destroying buildings and
injuring hundreds, we were lucky it wasn’t worse . What about when the next one hits? Just for fun, let’s say a 10-
kilometer-diameter asteroid—much larger than the one over Chelyabinsk but close to the size of
one that hit the planet 65 million years ago—smashed into central California. It wouldn’t just
destroy Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It would punch a hole in the atmosphere. That’s what surprises people
the most. Every disaster-from-space movie we’ve ever seen prepares us for fire and explosive destruction. Instead, blowback from the strike would

be so powerful that it would hurl millions of tons of debris back into space. A thick, toxic cloud
layer would settle over our upper atmosphere, wrapping itself around the world within hours
after the impact, cutting off the sun. We’re not talking about an ordinary cloud, either. Packed
with carbon, dust, and sulfur particles, it would reflect a lot more sunlight than a normal cloud
would. Our satellites would record images of a once-blue planet gone brilliant white, like a pool
ball. On Earth, it would be twilight for months. Temperatures would plummet. Crops would die,
and then the forests. There would be fires the whole time, of course, especially around the
impact site. Plus earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But most of the 5 billion people who are
likely to be killed by an asteroid strike like this would die of famine. In many parts of the world,
permanent dusk would mean nothing to feed our animals, let alone our families. Food supplies
would dwindle. And that’s when the riots would start. This is an all-too-plausible scenario for the near future if we suffered an
asteroid strike comparable to the one that killed most of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It wasn’t a giant explosion that exterminated Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and
their kin. In reality, most of those giants died out over thousands of years, their numbers winnowed down to nothing as their food-rich, tropical environments grew barren and
cold. Today, we have solid evidence that confirms environmental changes like these can be blamed directly or indirectly for most mass extinctions that have scourged the Earth.

And that’s why our space program isn’t just something educational we’re doing to learn more about the universe. It ’s vital to our survival as
a species, because the Earth isn’t going to be a safe place for us in the long term. I learned about the many
pathways to mass death while researching my book published this week: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. There is a

pattern to how mass extinctions happen. A calamity like an asteroid strike or an enormous
volcanic eruption causes an initial disaster that kills a lot animals and plants at once. And this
leads to climate changes that eventually kill more than 75 percent of all species on the planet,
usually in less than a million years—the blink of an eye in geological time. There is a pattern to survival, too.
Every mass extinction has its survivors. A group of furry, mouselike mammals took over the planet after the dinosaurs’ heyday and eventually
evolved into us. What these survivors have in common are three abilities encapsulated by the title of my book: They are

able to scatter to many places in the world, adapt to them, and remember how to avoid danger.
Humans are exceptionally good at all three, but perhaps our greatest strength is an ability to
reconstruct the deep history of our planet—and to plan for the future. Because we know Earth is inherently
dangerous, any long-term plan for humanity has to involve building communities on other worlds ,

or maybe in vast, artificial environments in space. But the process of doing so will take a lot
longer, and be a lot weirder, than what you see in most science fiction stories. It’s likely we won’t have bustling
cities the size of San Francisco on Mars or Titan in the next hundred years, so in the meantime we need to come up with a plan to deal with threats to Earth from space. Already,
the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and space agencies like NASA monitor the skies for potentially deadly asteroids in our neighborhood, called near-Earth objects (NEOs).
These groups have already proposed simple solutions to the asteroid problem, all of which are within our technological grasp.

Colonization of outer space is essential to humanity – 5 warrants (good, diverse

non just extinction impacts)
Orwig 15 [(Jessica, a senior editor at Insider. She has a Master of Science in science and
technology journalism from Texas A&M University and a Bachelor of Science in astronomy and
physics from The Ohio State University. Before NY she spent time as an intern at: American
Physical Society in MD International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory in IL American Geophysical Union in DC), “5 undeniable reasons humans
need to colonize Mars — even though it's going to cost billions,” Slate, 4/21/2015,
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-undeniable-reasons-why-humans-should-go-to-mars-2015-
4] MN
Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity. At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age — Buzz
Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson — are saying. Of course, it's extremely difficult to foresee how manned missions to Mars that would
cost hundreds of billions of dollars each, could benefit mankind. It's easier to imagine how that kind of money could immediately help in the fight against cancer or world

hunger. That's because humans tend to be short-sighted. We're focused on what's happening tomorrow instead of 100 years from now. " If the human race is
to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before,"
Hawking said in 2008 at a lecture series for NASA's 50th anniversary. That brings us to the first reason humans must colonize Mars: 1. Ensuring the

survival of our species The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum
of space is tough and by no means guaranteed. The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their

Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure

fossilized remains. A colossal asteroid wiped them out.

our existence thousands if not millions of years from now. " Humans need to be a multiplanet
species," Musk recently told astronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait. Musk founded the space transport
company SpaceX to help make this happen. Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth's and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it's the best

2. Discovering life
available option: Venus and Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts.

on Mars Nye, the CEO of The Planetary Society, said during an episode of StarTalk Radio in March that humanity should focus on sending humans
instead of robots to Mars because humans could make discoveries 10,000 times as fast as the best
spacecraft explorers we have today. Though he was hesitant to say humans should live on Mars, he agreed there were many more discoveries to be made there. One
monumental discovery scientists could make is determining whether life currently exists on Mars. If we're going to do that, we'll most likely have to dig much deeper than

The theory there is that life was spawned not from the swamps on adolescent Earth,
NASA's rovers can.

but from watery chasms on Mars. The Mars life theory suggests that rocks rich with
microorganisms could have been ejected off the planet's surface from a powerful impact,
eventually making their way through space to Earth. It's not a stretch to imagine, because
Martian rocks can be found on Earth. None of those, however, have shown signs of life. "You cannot rule out the fact that a Mars rock with life
in it landing on the Earth kicked off terrestrial life, and you can only really test that by finding life on Mars," Christopher Impey, a British astronomer and author of over a

3. Improving the quality of life on Earth "Only by pushing

dozen books in astronomy and popular science, told Business Insider.

mankind to its limits, to the bottoms of the ocean and into space, will we make discoveries in
science and technology that can be adapted to improve life on Earth. " British doctor Alexander Kumar wrote that in a
2012 article for BBC News where he explored the pros and cons of sending humans to Mars. At the time, Kumar was living in the most Mars-like place on Earth, Antarctica, to
test how he adapted to the extreme conditions both physiologically and psychologically. To better understand his poignant remark, let's look at an example: During its first
three years in space, NASA's prized Hubble Space Telescope snapped blurry pictures because of a flaw in its engineering. The problem was fixed in 1993, but to try to make
use of the blurry images during those initial years, astronomers developed a computer algorithm to better extract information from the images. It turns out the algorithm
was eventually shared with a medical doctor who applied it to the X-ray images he was taking to detect breast cancer. The algorithm did a better job at detecting early stages
of breast cancer than the conventional method, which at the time was the naked eye. "You can't script that. That happens all the time — this cross pollination of fields,

It's
innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another," Tyson, the StarTalk radio host, explained during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2012.

impossible to predict how cutting-edge technologies used to develop manned missions to Mars
and habitats on Mars will benefit other fields like medicine or agriculture. But we'll figure that out only by
"pushing humankind to its limits" and boldy going where we've never been before. 4. Growing as a species Another reason we

should go to Mars, according to Tyson, is to inspire the next generation of space explorers. When asked in 2013
whether we should go to Mars, he answered: "Yes, if it galvanizes an entire generation of students in the educational

pipeline to want to become scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians ," he said. "The next
generation of astronauts to land on Mars are in middle school now." Humanity's aspirations to explore space are what drive us

toward more advanced technological innovations that will undoubtedly benefit mankind in one
way or another. "Space is like a proxy for a lot of what else goes on in society, including your
urge to innovate," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria. He added: "There's nothing that drives ambitions the way NASA does." 5.
Demonstrating political and economic leadership At a February 24 hearing, Aldrin told the US Senate's Subcommittee on Space,
Science and Competitiveness that getting to Mars was a necessity not only for science, but also for policy. "In my

opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of

this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars ," he said. If Americans do not go to
Mars, someone else will. And that spells political and economic benefit for whoever succeeds. "If
you lose your

Space colonization solves civilization collapse – it’s try or die for the aff
Smith and Davies ‘12
Cameron M. Smith, PhD, teaches human evolution and prehistory in the Department of
Anthropology @ Portland State University, Evan T. Davies, PhD, professor of archeology @
Cornell University, Springer Science Copyright, “Emigrating Beyond Earth: Human Adaptation
and Space Colonization”

The Only Way Out is Up¶ In the words of Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, “Long before the Sun
finally licks the Earth's face clean, a teeming variety of life or its artifacts could have spread far
beyond its original planet; provided that we avoid irreversible catastrophe before this process
can even commence.”48 Humans have tremendous and even unknowable potential. But, as the
Han Chinese said, we live in “interesting” times. Critical times, says Rees: “in the twenty first
century humanity is more at risk than ever before from misapplication of science.”49 It is not
only science that ¶ could be misapplied; an endless-growth model of commerce is of course
impossible, but that does not prevent us from pursuing it. Many fisheries today are near
collapse, after just a few decades of industrial fishing, and every fishery ever discovered has
been chronically over-fished.50¶ In an interview with a Canadian television station in 1993, Carl
Sagan expressed his hope that space exploration and eventual colonization would occur, as the
costs continued to decline, and the urgency became clearer to people.51 In this chapter we have
attempted to impart that certain urgency, though without hysteria. We have shown examples of
natural calamities that could occur on Earth, and speculated on easily-imaginable human-made
catastrophes, catastrophes that - in each case - could either bring about the downfall of global
civilization or altogether extinguish the human species.¶ For all of these reasons, as hard to
imagine as they may be, we must begin to develop outposts of humanity outside of Earth, if we
are genuinely concerned about our collective future. We buy insurance plans against our
individual lives to protect our families. We should do the same, by space colonization, for our
offspring. Plenty of others have given similar warnings, but today we write for a new
generation.¶ The future is simply the result of daily decisions, and if humanity is to emigrate
from the home planet, to expand geographically like any mature species, some people of the
next generation will have to make similar decisions to those of the ‘crazy dreamers' like Burt
Rutan, the aircraft designer who build the world's first privately funded and piloted spacecraft;
Richard Branson, who has established space tourism; Franklin Chang-Diaz, designer of the
Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) (an engine claimed to have the
potential to cut flight time to Mars to 40 days); or Dr Dava Newman, an MIT professor who
designs advanced life-support garments for the human exploration of Mars (see Figure 8.3).
None of these developments can be said to address the immediate and legitimate concerns of
humanity, but in the same way we do not quit creating art, or give up on intangibles when
things are materially difficult; indeed it could be argued that in such times it is most important to
retain our dreams.¶ Responsible parents want success for their children; they want them to
survive and flourish, even at one’s own expense. The risks people take and the strides they make
today will determine where our descendants stand in the future. It makes sense for us to do all
in our capacity to ensure that there will be abodes of humanity off of Earth, to ensure the
survival our species, to continue life. It makes fundamental sense to us to continue to expand
our understanding of ourselves and of our Universe, to continue grow in knowledge and
wisdom, in short, to continue to evolve.
 ! Space Col – Morality

It’s a moral imperative for long-term survival

Kovic '20 [Marko; July 2020; co--founder president of the Zurich Institute of Public Affairs
Research; "Risks of space colonization," https://osf.io/hj4f2/download]

Space colonization, the establishment of permanent human habitats beyond Earth, has been the
object of both popular speculation and scientific inquiry for decades. The idea of space
colonization has an almost poetic quality: Space is the next great frontier, the next great leap for
humankind, that we hope to eventually conquer through our force of will and our ingenuity.
From a more prosaic point of view, space colonization is important because it represents a
long--term survival strategy for humankind1.

Space colonization is tremendously important for the future of humankind in two ways. First,
space colonization means that the total future number of humans who will exist and whose lives
will be worth living could be orders of magnitude greater than today [2, 3, 4]. By colonizing
space, humankind could therefore create a future that is generally morally desirable: There
could be vastly more people to enjoy vastly more life--years worth living if we succeed in
colonizing space. Second, engaging in space colonization represents a strategy for mitigating
existential risks. Existential risks are risks that could result in the extinction of humankind or in
the permanent curtailing of humankind’s potential for future development [5]. In a more
technical sense, existential risks can be thought of as risks that could cause the permanent loss
of a large fraction of humankind’s future moral expected value [6]: If humankind goes extinct or
stagnates prematurely, the majority of humankind’s positive future value (the many thousands
of generations and many billions of people who could lead lives worth living) would be lost.
Mitigating existential risks is therefore a moral priority, even though the current generation of
humans and other sentient beings might not be affected by them in their own lifetimes.
 ! Space Col – Yes Feasible – Tech
Tech critique fails – improvements solve and its try or die for the aff
Smith and Davies ‘12
Cameron M. Smith, PhD, teaches human evolution and prehistory in the Department of
Anthropology @ Portland State University, Evan T. Davies, PhD, professor of archeology @
Cornell University, Springer Science Copyright, “Emigrating Beyond Earth: Human Adaptation
and Space Colonization”

As social scientists, we are not qualified to evaluate the technical details involved in human
space colonization - but that is not our goal. The argument that human space colonization would
be too technically difficult seems to be rather short-sighted and leans more towards pessimism
than optimism; and, it sometimes it can be dismantled - at least in part - by more finely
considering what 'space' is. What, one should ask when encountering this critique, can’t be
done?¶ So while there are plenty of engineering challenges to overcome to make a success of
human space colonization, it does not seem that writing off the entire project is warranted;
partly because we are still learning about and understanding space environments, which helps
to define the kinds of technologies we will need to adapt to them. And those technologies do
not exist in an 'either/or' Universe, but one in which a ‘crazy dream' today can slowly be built
into an operational system - such as the airplane, for instance. Finally, it seems certain that
further space exploration will lead to a better understanding of our Universe and what we need
to do to live in it. In an interview about distant space technologies in the mid-1950s electronics
scientist George H. Stine stated:¶ “Sitting where we are [on Earth] we have a very distorted
notion of physics, of the Universe. We've got this milky, murky atmosphere about us and we’re
always in one gravity field - we can't really visualize the ultimate possibilities of spaceflight. We
have to get out there first, to know what we can do.”’2¶ Ultimately, the argument that space
colonization would be too technically difficult to achieve fails - or is at least not as strong as it
could be - for several reasons:¶ • Not all potential off-Earth environments for colonization have
been sufficiently characterized.¶ • Technological leaps are common in industrial civilization (e.g.
explosive growth of personal computers and communications devices that make life today
significantly different from just a decade ago), such that ruling certain advances out might be
over-pessimistic.¶ • Good, realistic plans have been forwarded, and have not yet been
comprehensibly falsified (and the only reasonable way to test them is to try them out). ¶ •
Technical advances specific to space colonization will not arise by themselves, but will require
the motivating forces of will and imagination.

Space colonization is feasible

Smith and Davies 12
Cameron M. Smith, PhD, teaches human evolution and prehistory in the Department of
Anthropology @ Portland State University, Evan T. Davies, PhD, professor of archeology @
Cornell University, Springer Science Copyright, “Emigrating Beyond Earth: Human Adaptation
and Space Colonization”
Conclusion¶ It is easy to dismiss the concept of space colonization by invoking technical,
biological, ideological and moral issues. It is equally easy to advocate for space colonization by
simply papering such issues over. A more measured and mature approach, as we have shown in
this chapter by dissecting such arguments, indicates that many of these arguments are not well
prepared. None, at present, clearly bar human colonization of space technically, biologically,
culturally or morally. In clarifying these issues the actual motivations and philosophy of a
mature, considered attempt at human space colonization have become clear. It is not about the
conquest of space, or the advance of technology over humanity, or planting a flag on the Moon,
and so on. It is about opening a new niche for humanity - and all of our coevolving species - to
continue to evolve, a gesture that is in harmony with the nature of the Universe itself: not fixity,
but change.
 ! Space Col – Yes Feasible – AT Babies
We can figure it out – China knows how
Place 16 – Reporter
Nathan, April 19, “What China Proved by Growing Mouse Embryos in Space,”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2016/04/19/what-china-proved-by-growing-mouse-
embryos-in-space.html

It’s official: Mouse embryos can grow in space. After launching a satellite containing over 6,000
pre-birth rodents and studying them under a high-resolution camera in zero gravity, China has
proven it. The question that remains is, why did they bother? The reason is more ambitious than
you might think. As with many of their projects, the Chinese government is thinking very long-
term here. In their view, the success of these mouse embryos tells us about humankind’s future
place—or places—in the universe. “The human race may still have a long way to go before we
can colonize the space [sic],” said Duan Enkui, the lead researcher in the experiment. “But
before that, we have to figure out whether it is possible for us to survive and reproduce in the
outer space environment like we do on Earth.” At least for mice, we now know that’s possible.
According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s space mice were able to progress from
2-cell structures into blastocysts within 72 hours, which is on par with their development on
Earth. Whether human embryos could have the same success remains to be seen. But China
sees its experiment as bringing us one step closer to proving it’s possible, and therefore one
step closer to humanity’s—or maybe just China’s—colonization of other planets. It’s one small
skitter for a mouse, one giant leap for mankind.
 ! Space Col – Solves Extinction – Mars
Colonizing Mars is key – solves extinction and acts as a springboard for future
colonization
Schulze-Makuch and Davies 10 – PhD and Professor @ the School of Earth and
Environmental Sciences @ Washington State University; PhD and Regents’ Professor and
Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science @ Arizona State University

Dirk and Paul, Journal of Cosmology, Vol.12, p. 3619-3626, October-November, “To Boldly Go: A
One-Way Human Mission to Mars” http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars108.html

There are several reasons that motivate the establishment of a permanent Mars colony. We are
a vulnerable species living in a part of the galaxy where cosmic events such as major asteroid
and comet impacts and supernova explosions pose a significant threat to life on Earth, especially
to human life. There are also more immediate threats to our culture, if not our survival as a
species. These include global pandemics, nuclear or biological warfare, runaway global warming,
sudden ecological collapse and supervolcanoes (Rees 2004). Thus, the colonization of other
worlds is a must if the human species is to survive for the long term. The first potential
colonization targets would be asteroids, the Moon and Mars. The Moon is the closest object and
does provide some shelter (e.g., lava tube caves), but in all other respects falls short compared
to the variety of resources available on Mars. The latter is true for asteroids as well. Mars is by
far the most promising for sustained colonization and development, because it is similar in many
respects to Earth and, crucially, possesses a moderate surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant
water and carbon dioxide, together with a range of essential minerals. Mars is our second
closest planetary neighbor (after Venus) and a trip to Mars at the most favorable launch option
takes about six months with current chemical rocket technology. In addition to offering
humanity a "lifeboat" in the event of a mega-catastrophe, a Mars colony is attractive for other
reasons. Astrobiologists agree that there is a fair probability that Mars hosts, or once hosted,
microbial life, perhaps deep beneath the surface (Lederberg and Sagan 1962; Levin 2010; Levin
and Straat 1977, 1981; McKay and Stoker 1989; McKay et al. 1996; Baker et al. 2005; Schulze-
Makuch et al. 2005, 2008, Darling and Schulze-Makuch 2010; Wierzchos et al. 2010; Mahaney
and Dohm 2010). A scientific facility on Mars might therefore be a unique opportunity to study
an alien life form and a second evolutionary record, and to develop novel biotechnology
therefrom. At the very least, an intensive study of ancient and modern Mars will cast important
light on the origin of life on Earth. Mars also conceals a wealth of geological and astronomical
data that is almost impossible to access from Earth using robotic probes. A permanent human
presence on Mars would open the way to comparative planetology on a scale unimagined by
any former generation. In the fullness of time, a Mars base would offer a springboard for
human/robotic exploration of the outer solar system and the asteroid belt. Finally, establishing a
permanent multicultural and multinational human presence on another world would have major
beneficial political and social implications for Earth, and serve as a strong unifying and uplifting
theme for all humanity.
Colonizing mars will make it the central commerce base for future intergalactic
trade and exploration
Zubrin 96 – former Chairman of the National Space Society, President of the Mars Society, and
author of The Case For Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must

Robert, Ad Astra May/June 1996, “The Promise of Mars,”

http://www.nss.org/settlement/mars/zubrin-promise.html

Alternatively, on Mars it will also be possible to build a "skyhook" consisting of a cable whose
center of mass is located at a distance from which it will orbit the planet in synchrony with Mars'
daily rotation. To an observer on the Martian surface such cables will appear to stand
motionless, allowing payloads to be delivered to space via cable car. Because of strength of
materials limits, such systems cannot be built on Earth, but in Mars' 3/8 gravity they may well be
feasible. If so, they would give the Mars colonists the unique ability not merely to transport
goods to Earth, but to access the resources present throughout the rest of the solar system.
Mars will become the central base and port of call for exploration and commerce heading out to
the asteroid belt, the outer solar system, and beyond. Life in the initial Mars settlements will be
harder than life on Earth for most people, but life in the first North American colonies was much
harder than life in Europe as well. People will go to Mars for many of the same reasons they
went to colonial America: because they want to make a mark, or to make a new start, or
because they are members of groups who are persecuted on Earth, or because they are
members of groups who want to create a society according to their own principles.
 Extinction 1st – Bostrom
Extinction first—existential risks require unique risk calculus
Bostrom 12
(Nick, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford, directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and
winner of the Gannon Award, Interview with Ross Andersen, correspondent at The Atlantic, 3/6,
“We're Underestimating the Risk of Human Extinction”,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/were-underestimating-the-risk-of-
human-extinction/253821/)

Bostrom, who directs Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, has argued over the course of
several papers that human extinction risks are poorly understood and, worse still, severely
underestimated by society. Some of these existential risks are fairly well known, especially
the natural ones. But others are obscure or even exotic. Most worrying to Bostrom is the
subset of existential risks that arise from human technology, a subset that he expects to grow
in number and potency over the next century. Despite his concerns about the risks posed to
humans by technological progress, Bostrom is no luddite. In fact, he is a longtime advocate of
transhumanism---the effort to improve the human condition, and even human nature itself,
through technological means. In the long run he sees technology as a bridge, a bridge we
humans must cross with great care, in order to reach new and better modes of being. In his
work, Bostrom uses the tools of philosophy and mathematics, in particular probability
theory, to try and determine how we as a species might achieve this safe passage. What
follows is my conversation with Bostrom about some of the most interesting and worrying
existential risks that humanity might encounter in the decades and centuries to come, and
about what we can do to make sure we outlast them. Some have argued that we ought to be
directing our resources toward humanity's existing problems, rather than future existential
risks, because many of the latter are highly improbable. You have responded by suggesting
that existential risk mitigation may in fact be a dominant moral priority over the alleviation
of present suffering. Can you explain why? Bostrom: Well suppose you have a moral view
that counts future people as being worth as much as present people. You might say that
fundamentally it doesn't matter whether someone exists at the current time or at some
future time, just as many people think that from a fundamental moral point of view, it
doesn't matter where somebody is spatially---somebody isn't automatically worth less
because you move them to the moon or to Africa or something. A human life is a human life.
If you have that moral point of view that future generations matter in proportion to their
population numbers, then you get this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation
has a much higher utility than pretty much anything else that you could do . There are so
many people that could come into existence in the future if humanity survives this critical
period of time---we might live for billions of years, our descendants might colonize billions of
solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently.
Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will
tend to outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which
would be tremendous under ordinary standards.
 Extinction 1st -- General
Preventing extinction is the most ethical outcome
Bostrom 13
Nick, Professor at Oxford University, Faculty of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, Director,
Future of Humanity Institute, Director, Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future
Technology University of Oxford, “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority”, Global Policy
Volume 4, Issue 1, February 2013

Some other ethical perspectives We have thus far considered existential risk from the
perspective of utilitarianism (combined with several simplify- ing assumptions). We may briefly
consider how the issue might appear when viewed through the lenses of some other ethical
outlooks. For example, the philosopher Robert Adams outlines a different view on these
matters: I believe a better basis for ethical theory in this area can be found in quite a different
direction—in a commitment to the future of human- ity as a vast project, or network of
overlapping projects, that is generally shared by the human race. The aspiration for a better
society—more just, more rewarding, and more peaceful—is a part of this project. So are the
potentially end- less quests for scientific knowledge and philo- sophical understanding, and the
development of artistic and other cultural traditions. This includes the particular cultural
traditions to which we belong, in all their accidental historic and ethnic diversity. It also includes
our interest in the lives of our children and grandchildren, and the hope that they will be able, in
turn, to have the lives of their children and grandchil- dren as projects. To the extent that a
policy or practice seems likely to be favorable or unfavor- able to the carrying out of this
complex of pro- jects in the nearer or further future, we have reason to pursue or avoid it. ...
Continuity is as important to our commitment to the project of the future of humanity as it is to
our commit- ment to the projects of our own personal futures. Just as the shape of my whole
life, and its connection with my present and past, have an interest that goes beyond that of any
iso- lated experience, so too the shape of human history over an extended period of the future,
and its connection with the human present and past, have an interest that goes beyond that of
the (total or average) quality of life of a popula- tion-at-a-time, considered in isolation from how
it got that way. We owe, I think, some loyalty to this project of the human future. We also owe it
a respect that we would owe it even if we were not of the human race ourselves, but beings
from another planet who had some understanding of it (Adams, 1989, pp. 472–473). Since an
existential catastrophe would either put an end to the project of the future of humanity or
drasti- cally curtail its scope for development, we would seem to have a strong prima facie
reason to avoid it, in Adams’ view. We also note that an existential catastrophe would entail the
frustration of many strong preferences, sug- gesting that from a preference-satisfactionist
perspective it would be a bad thing. In a similar vein, an ethical view emphasising that public
policy should be determined through informed democratic deliberation by all stake- holders
would favour existential-risk mitigation if we suppose, as is plausible, that a majority of the
world’s population would come to favour such policies upon reasonable deliberation (even if
hypothetical future peo- ple are not included as stakeholders). We might also have custodial
duties to preserve the inheritance of humanity passed on to us by our ancestors and convey it
safely to our descendants.23 We do not want to be the failing link in the chain of generations,
and we ought not to delete or abandon the great epic of human civili- sation that humankind
has been working on for thou- sands of years, when it is clear that the narrative is far from
having reached a natural terminus. Further, many theological perspectives deplore naturalistic
existential catastrophes, especially ones induced by human activi- ties: If God created the world
and the human species, one would imagine that He might be displeased if we took it upon
ourselves to smash His masterpiece (or if, through our negligence or hubris, we allowed it to
come to irreparable harm).24 We might also consider the issue from a less theoreti- cal
standpoint and try to form an evaluation instead by considering analogous cases about which
we have defi- nite moral intuitions. Thus, for example, if we feel confident that committing a
small genocide is wrong, and that committing a large genocide is no less wrong, we might
conjecture that committing omnicide is also wrong.25 And if we believe we have some moral
reason to prevent natural catastrophes that would kill a small number of people, and a stronger
moral reason to pre- vent natural catastrophes that would kill a larger number of people, we
might conjecture that we have an even stronger moral reason to prevent catastrophes that
would kill the entire human population.

Extinction outweighs – future generations

Matheny 7
Jason, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns
Hopkins University, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction” Risk Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 5, 2007

Discussing the risks of “nuclear winter,” Carl Sagan (1983) wrote: Some have argued that the
difference between the deaths of several hundred million people in a nuclear war (as has been
thought until recently to be a rea- sonable upper limit) and the death of every person on Earth
(as now seems possible) is only a matter of one order of magnitude. For me, the difference is
considerably greater. Restricting our attention only to those who die as a consequence of the
war conceals its full impact. If we are required to calibrate extinction in nu- merical terms, I
would be sure to include the number of people in future generations who would not be born. A
nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the
population remains static, with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time
period for the biological evolution of a successful species (roughly ten million years), we are
talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes are one million
times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill “only” hundreds of
millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential loss—including
culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all
of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of
the human enterprise. In a similar vein, the philosopher Derek Parfit (1984) wrote: I believe that
if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people
think. Compare three outcomes: 1. Peace 2. A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing
population 3. A nuclear war that kills 100% 2 would be worse than 1, and 3 would be worse than
2. Which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater
difference is between 1 and 2. I believe that the difference between 2 and 3 is very much
greater . . . . The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years. Civilization began
only a few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy mankind, these thousand years may be only
a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human history. The difference be- tween 2 and 3 may
thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we com-
pare this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second.
Human extinction in the next few centuries could re- duce the number of future generations by
thousands or more. We take extraordinary measures to protect some endangered species from
extinction. It might be reasonable to take extraordinary measures to protect humanity from the
same.19 To decide whether this is so requires more discussion of the methodological problems
mentioned here, as well as research on the extinction risks we face and the costs of mitigating
them.20
 Extinction 1st – > Probability
It’s their burden to prove extinction is impossible – no matter how unlikely, we
can’t bet the future of the species on it
Posner 4
Richard, US Court of Appeals judge and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School,
Catastrophe: Risk and Response, p. 32-33

It is tempting to dismiss the risk of a strangelet disaster on the ground that the mere fact that a
risk cannot be shown to be precluded by a law of nature is not a sound reason to worry about it.
Should I be afraid to swim in Loch Ness lest I be devoured by Nessie? This question was put to
me by a physicist who is deeply skeptical about the strangelet scenario. The question is not well
formed. The interesting question is whether a sea “monster” of some sort, perhaps a dinosaur
that managed to avoid extinction, or, more probably, some large sea mammal, may be lurking
somewhere in the lake. No law of nature forbids that there shall be such a creature in a deep
Scottish lake, and although none has been found despite extensive searches, and many
fraudulent sightings have been unmasked, it is unclear whether the entire lake has been
searched. It seems extraordinarily unlikely that there is anything that would qualify as a “Loch
Ness Monster”—but would one want to bet the planet that there is not? Or consider the
proposition that no human being has ever eaten an entire adult elephant at one sitting.
Philosophers use such propositions to argue that one can have empirical certainty without a
confirming observation. Yet although there is no known instance of such a meal, it is
conceivable that modern technology could so compact an elephant as to make it digestible in
one sitting, and it is also conceivable, though only barely, that someone, somewhere, has
successfully employed that technology. It is exceedingly unlikely (even if one throws in the
possibility that someone has succeeded in breeding a miniature elephant), but, again, one
wouldn’t want to be the planet on its not having occurred.

Extinction outweighs regardless of probability

Matheny 7
Jason, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, “Reducing the Risk of Human
Extinction,” Risk Analysis, Vol 27, No 5

Even if extinction events are improbable, the expected values of countermeasures could be
large, as they include the value of all future lives. This introduces a discontinuity between the CEA of
extinction and nonextinction risks. Even though the risk to any existing individual of dying in a
car crash is much greater than the risk of dying in an asteroid impact, asteroids pose a much
greater risk to the existence of future generations (we are not likely to crash all our cars at once) (Chapman, 2004). The
“death-toll” of an extinction-level asteroid impact is the population of Earth, plus all the
descendents of that population who would otherwise have existed if not for the impact. There is
thus a discontinuity between risks that threaten 99% of humanity and those that threaten 100%.
Colonizing Mars is key – solves extinction and acts as a springboard for future
colonization
Schulze-Makuch and Davies 10 – PhD and Professor @ the School of Earth and
Environmental Sciences @ Washington State University; PhD and Regents’ Professor and
Director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science @ Arizona State University

Dirk and Paul, Journal of Cosmology, Vol.12, p. 3619-3626, October-November, “To Boldly Go: A
One-Way Human Mission to Mars” http://journalofcosmology.com/Mars108.html

There are several reasons that motivate the establishment of a permanent Mars colony. We are
a vulnerable species living in a part of the galaxy where cosmic events such as major asteroid
and comet impacts and supernova explosions pose a significant threat to life on Earth, especially
to human life. There are also more immediate threats to our culture, if not our survival as a
species. These include global pandemics, nuclear or biological warfare, runaway global warming,
sudden ecological collapse and supervolcanoes (Rees 2004). Thus, the colonization of other
worlds is a must if the human species is to survive for the long term. The first potential
colonization targets would be asteroids, the Moon and Mars. The Moon is the closest object and
does provide some shelter (e.g., lava tube caves), but in all other respects falls short compared
to the variety of resources available on Mars. The latter is true for asteroids as well. Mars is by
far the most promising for sustained colonization and development, because it is similar in many
respects to Earth and, crucially, possesses a moderate surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant
water and carbon dioxide, together with a range of essential minerals. Mars is our second
closest planetary neighbor (after Venus) and a trip to Mars at the most favorable launch option
takes about six months with current chemical rocket technology. In addition to offering
humanity a "lifeboat" in the event of a mega-catastrophe, a Mars colony is attractive for other
reasons. Astrobiologists agree that there is a fair probability that Mars hosts, or once hosted,
microbial life, perhaps deep beneath the surface (Lederberg and Sagan 1962; Levin 2010; Levin
and Straat 1977, 1981; McKay and Stoker 1989; McKay et al. 1996; Baker et al. 2005; Schulze-
Makuch et al. 2005, 2008, Darling and Schulze-Makuch 2010; Wierzchos et al. 2010; Mahaney
and Dohm 2010). A scientific facility on Mars might therefore be a unique opportunity to study
an alien life form and a second evolutionary record, and to develop novel biotechnology
therefrom. At the very least, an intensive study of ancient and modern Mars will cast important
light on the origin of life on Earth. Mars also conceals a wealth of geological and astronomical
data that is almost impossible to access from Earth using robotic probes. A permanent human
presence on Mars would open the way to comparative planetology on a scale unimagined by
any former generation. In the fullness of time, a Mars base would offer a springboard for
human/robotic exploration of the outer solar system and the asteroid belt. Finally, establishing a
permanent multicultural and multinational human presence on another world would have major
beneficial political and social implications for Earth, and serve as a strong unifying and uplifting
theme for all humanity.

More Impacts
Space colonization solves extinction
Filling Space 19, 4-19, "Deflecting Existential Risk with Space Colonization," Filling Space,
https://filling-space.com/2019/04/19/deflecting-existential-risk-with-space-colonization/
The first living organism on Earth emerged approximately three and a half billion years ago. Since then, life has evolved into countless forms and colonized the planet. But the
story of life is not a rosy one. At least five mass extinctions have occurred, and nearly all species that have ever existed on our planet are now dead. One of the most well-
understood mass extinctions occurred when the Alvarez asteroid impacted Earth and, likely combined with other factors, killed many dinosaurs and other species. Life then had

In order to avoid sharing the same fate as the

no tools to detect the coming asteroid or to be able to plan proactively to ensure its survival.

dinosaurs, scholars argue that humans should become a multi-planetary species. We spoke with Professor
Gonzalo Munevar, Emeritus Professor at Lawrence Technical University, to hear his thoughts on the existential risks we face and how colonization of the cosmos can help us

failure to move into

address them. He has written extensively about the philosophy of space exploration and human consciousness. Why do you argue that “

the cosmos would condemn us to oblivion”? By having a significant presence in the solar system
in the next few thousands of years and beyond, we will be in a better position to deflect asteroids and comets that
might bring the end of humanity, and much other Earth life, in a horrible collisio n. And if perchance one such
catastrophe proves inevitable (e.g. a rogue planet passing through the solar system), humanity would still survive by having colonized Mars and other bodies, as well as by
having built artificial space colonies of the type advocated by Gerard O’Neill. Once the sun begins to turn into a red giant in a few billion years, we must have long moved into
the outer solar system. In the very long run, we have to move into other solar systems. Relativistic-speed starships would be nice, but they are not necessary for the task of
moving humanity to the stars. We can reach them, slowly but surely, by propelling some of our space colonies away from the sun, carrying perhaps millions of human beings.

They would take advantage of the many resources to be found in the Oort Cloud, and then of equivalent clouds in other solar systems. Even interstellar space
has resources to offer. Nuclear energy, probably fusion, would likely be required. It may take us tens of thousands of years, but in
the cosmic time scale, that is but a blink in the eye. What are these catastrophic threats? Are there any records of catastrophic events happening before humans appeared on
Earth? I have already mentioned collisions with asteroids and comets. Although the active geology of our planet tends to erase the record of many collisions, we can find a well-
preserved record on the Moon and Venus, the two closest bodies to Earth. On the 600-million-years-old Venusian surface, the spacecraft Magellan discovered about one
thousand impact craters at least twice the diameter of meteor craters on Earth. This impact record makes it reasonable to estimate a catastrophic impact on Earth every half a
million years or so. Collisions with bodies of 5 km across would happen, on the average, every 20 million years. Apart from the Alvarez asteroid (crater near Yucatan) that led to
the extinction of the dinosaurs and the majority of species on Earth 65 million years ago, there have been at least two more impacts by asteroids 10 km or larger in the last 300

colonies on other
million years. How could human colonization of outer space save other terrestrial life? On both O’Neill types of colonies as well as on

planets, and particularly on terraformed planets, we would need all sorts of organisms like
bacteria and plants for food, medicine, and ornamentation, as well as many animals for food
and other purposes. We cannot have a proper colony without an Earthly environment to surround and nourish us. So, we have to take much other terrestrial life
with us in order to survive and flourish. And given the value of biodiversity we would make it a point to take a great

variety of organisms that contribute to our biosphere . Of course, we should heed Mark Twain and be sure not to include mosquitoes
in our future space arks. I myself would keep out tarantulas and some other obnoxious viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals.

Earth won’t be inhabitable forever – colonization is essential to preventing

extinction
Newitz 13 [(Annalee, is the author, most recently, of the science fiction novel The Future of
Another Timeline, a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, and co-host of the
podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.), “Escape Plans,” Slate, 5/15/13,
https://slate.com/technology/2013/05/surviving-the-next-mass-extinction-humans-will-need-
to-leave-earth-for-space-colonies.html] MN

When the Russian asteroid became a fireball in the air over Chelyabinsk, destroying buildings and
injuring hundreds, we were lucky it wasn’t worse . What about when the next one hits? Just for fun, let’s say a 10-
kilometer-diameter asteroid—much larger than the one over Chelyabinsk but close to the size of
one that hit the planet 65 million years ago—smashed into central California. It wouldn’t just
destroy Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It would punch a hole in the atmosphere. That’s what surprises people
the most. Every disaster-from-space movie we’ve ever seen prepares us for fire and explosive destruction. Instead, blowback from the strike would

be so powerful that it would hurl millions of tons of debris back into space. A thick, toxic cloud
layer would settle over our upper atmosphere, wrapping itself around the world within hours
after the impact, cutting off the sun. We’re not talking about an ordinary cloud, either. Packed
with carbon, dust, and sulfur particles, it would reflect a lot more sunlight than a normal cloud
would. Our satellites would record images of a once-blue planet gone brilliant white, like a pool
ball. On Earth, it would be twilight for months. Temperatures would plummet. Crops would die,
and then the forests. There would be fires the whole time, of course, especially around the
impact site. Plus earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But most of the 5 billion people who are
likely to be killed by an asteroid strike like this would die of famine. In many parts of the world,
permanent dusk would mean nothing to feed our animals, let alone our families. Food supplies
would dwindle. And that’s when the riots would start. This is an all-too-plausible scenario for the near future if we suffered an
asteroid strike comparable to the one that killed most of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It wasn’t a giant explosion that exterminated Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and
their kin. In reality, most of those giants died out over thousands of years, their numbers winnowed down to nothing as their food-rich, tropical environments grew barren and
cold. Today, we have solid evidence that confirms environmental changes like these can be blamed directly or indirectly for most mass extinctions that have scourged the Earth.

And that’s why our space program isn’t just something educational we’re doing to learn more about the universe. It ’s vital to our survival as
a species, because the Earth isn’t going to be a safe place for us in the long term. I learned about the many
pathways to mass death while researching my book published this week: Scatter, Adapt and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction. There is a

pattern to how mass extinctions happen. A calamity like an asteroid strike or an enormous
volcanic eruption causes an initial disaster that kills a lot animals and plants at once. And this
leads to climate changes that eventually kill more than 75 percent of all species on the planet,
usually in less than a million years—the blink of an eye in geological time. There is a pattern to survival, too.
Every mass extinction has its survivors. A group of furry, mouselike mammals took over the planet after the dinosaurs’ heyday and eventually
evolved into us. What these survivors have in common are three abilities encapsulated by the title of my book: They are

able to scatter to many places in the world, adapt to them, and remember how to avoid danger.
Humans are exceptionally good at all three, but perhaps our greatest strength is an ability to
reconstruct the deep history of our planet—and to plan for the future. Because we know Earth is inherently
dangerous, any long-term plan for humanity has to involve building communities on other worlds ,

or maybe in vast, artificial environments in space. But the process of doing so will take a lot
longer, and be a lot weirder, than what you see in most science fiction stories. It’s likely we won’t have bustling
cities the size of San Francisco on Mars or Titan in the next hundred years, so in the meantime we need to come up with a plan to deal with threats to Earth from space. Already,
the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and space agencies like NASA monitor the skies for potentially deadly asteroids in our neighborhood, called near-Earth objects (NEOs).
These groups have already proposed simple solutions to the asteroid problem, all of which are within our technological grasp.

Colonization of outer space is essential to humanity – 5 warrants (good, diverse

non just extinction impacts)
Orwig 15 [(Jessica, a senior editor at Insider. She has a Master of Science in science and
technology journalism from Texas A&M University and a Bachelor of Science in astronomy and
physics from The Ohio State University. Before NY she spent time as an intern at: American
Physical Society in MD International Center for Theoretical Physics in Italy Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory in IL American Geophysical Union in DC), “5 undeniable reasons humans
need to colonize Mars — even though it's going to cost billions,” Slate, 4/21/2015,
https://www.businessinsider.com/5-undeniable-reasons-why-humans-should-go-to-mars-2015-
4] MN
Establishing a permanent colony of humans on Mars is not an option. It's a necessity. At least, that's what some of the most innovative, intelligent minds of our age — Buzz
Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson — are saying. Of course, it's extremely difficult to foresee how manned missions to Mars that would cost
hundreds of billions of dollars each, could benefit mankind. It's easier to imagine how that kind of money could immediately help in the fight against cancer or world hunger.

That's because humans tend to be short-sighted. We're focused on what's happening tomorrow instead of 100 years from now. " If the human race is to
continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before,"
Hawking said in 2008 at a lecture series for NASA's 50th anniversary. That brings us to the first reason humans must colonize Mars: 1. Ensuring the survival

of our species The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum of space is tough
and by no means guaranteed. The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their fossilized remains. A

colossal asteroid wiped them out. Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence
thousands if not millions of years from now. " Humans need to be a multiplanet species ," Musk
recently told astronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait. Musk founded the space transport company SpaceX to help
make this happen. Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth's and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it's the best available option: Venus and

Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts. 2. Discovering life on Mars Nye, the CEO of
The Planetary Society, said during an episode of StarTalk Radio in March that humanity should focus on sending humans instead of robots to

Mars because humans could make discoveries 10,000 times as fast as the best spacecraft explorers we have today.
Though he was hesitant to say humans should live on Mars, he agreed there were many more discoveries to be made there. One monumental discovery scientists could make is

The theory there is

determining whether life currently exists on Mars. If we're going to do that, we'll most likely have to dig much deeper than NASA's rovers can.

that life was spawned not from the swamps on adolescent Earth, but from watery chasms on
Mars. The Mars life theory suggests that rocks rich with microorganisms could have been
ejected off the planet's surface from a powerful impact, eventually making their way through
space to Earth. It's not a stretch to imagine, because Martian rocks can be found on Earth. None of
those, however, have shown signs of life. "You cannot rule out the fact that a Mars rock with life in it landing on the Earth kicked off terrestrial life, and you can only really test

3.
that by finding life on Mars," Christopher Impey, a British astronomer and author of over a dozen books in astronomy and popular science, told Business Insider.

Improving the quality of life on Earth "Only by pushing mankind to its limits, to the bottoms of
the ocean and into space, will we make discoveries in science and technology that can be
adapted to improve life on Earth." British doctor Alexander Kumar wrote that in a 2012 article for BBC News where he explored the pros and cons of
sending humans to Mars. At the time, Kumar was living in the most Mars-like place on Earth, Antarctica, to test how he adapted to the extreme conditions both physiologically
and psychologically. To better understand his poignant remark, let's look at an example: During its first three years in space, NASA's prized Hubble Space Telescope snapped
blurry pictures because of a flaw in its engineering. The problem was fixed in 1993, but to try to make use of the blurry images during those initial years, astronomers developed
a computer algorithm to better extract information from the images. It turns out the algorithm was eventually shared with a medical doctor who applied it to the X-ray images
he was taking to detect breast cancer. The algorithm did a better job at detecting early stages of breast cancer than the conventional method, which at the time was the naked
eye. "You can't script that. That happens all the time — this cross pollination of fields, innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another," Tyson, the StarTalk radio

It's impossible to predict how cutting-edge technologies used

host, explained during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2012.

to develop manned missions to Mars and habitats on Mars will benefit other fields like medicine
or agriculture. But we'll figure that out only by "pushing humankind to its limits" and boldy going where we've never been before. 4. Growing as a
species Another reason we should go to Mars, according to Tyson, is to inspire the next generation of
space explorers. When asked in 2013 whether we should go to Mars, he answered: "Yes, if it galvanizes an entire generation of
students in the educational pipeline to want to become scientists, engineers, technologists, and
mathematicians," he said. "The next generation of astronauts to land on Mars are in middle school now." Humanity's aspirations to
explore space are what drive us toward more advanced technological innovations that will
undoubtedly benefit mankind in one way or another. "Space is like a proxy for a lot of what else
goes on in society, including your urge to innovate ," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria. He added: "There's nothing that
drives ambitions the way NASA does." 5. Demonstrating political and economic leadership At a February 24 hearing, Aldrin told the

US Senate's Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness that getting to Mars was a necessity not only for science, but

also for policy. "In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership
for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars ," he said. If
Americans do not go to Mars, someone else will. And that spells political and economic benefit
for whoever succeeds. "If you lose your space edge," Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria, "my deep concern is that you lose everything else about
society that enables you to compete economically."

Space colonization is good and possible – new developing tech and adaptation
solves civil war, extinction, civilization collapse, and exploration defense
doesn’t apply.
Kennedy ’19 [Fred, “To Colonize Space Or Not To Colonize: That Is The Question (For All Of
Us)”, 12-18-2019, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredkennedy/2019/12/18/to-colonize-
or-not-to-colonize--that-is-the-question-for-all-of-us/?sh=65a8d2702367]//pranav
It’s important to distinguish between colonize and explore. Exploration already enjoys broad
approval here in America. In June, 77% of U.S. respondents told Gallup pollsters that NASA’s
budget should either be maintained or increased – undeniable evidence of support for the
American space program (as it’s currently constituted). By any measure, we’ve done an
admirable job of surveying the solar system over the past 60 years – an essential first step in
any comprehensive program of exploration. Unmanned probes developed and launched by the
United States and the Soviet Union conducted flybys of the Moon and the terrestrial planets not
long after we reached Earth orbit, and since then, we’ve flown by the outer planets. Multiple
nations have placed increasingly sophisticated robotic emissaries on the surfaces of the Moon,
Mars, Venus and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Most stunningly, in a tour de force of technology
and Cold War chutzpah, the U.S. dispatched humans to set foot on another world, just 50 years
and a few months ago. But after only six such visits, we never returned. Moon habitats in lava
tubes, crops under glass domes, ice mining at the south pole? No. NASA’s Artemis program may
place a man and a woman on the Moon again in 2024. But that’s hardly colonization. For
perspective, let’s look closer to home. Sailors from an American vessel may have landed on
Antarctica as early as 1821 – the claim is unverified – but no scientific expeditions “wintered”
there for another 75 years. The first two of these, one Belgian and one British, endured extreme
cold and privation – one inadvertently, the other by design. And yet, 200 years after the first
explorer set foot on the continent, there are no permanent settlements (partially as a result of a
political consensus reached in the late 1950s, but in no small part due to the difficulty of
extracting resources such as ore or fossil fuels through kilometers of ice). Less than 5,000
international researchers and support staff comprise the “summer population” at the bottom of
the world. That number dwindles to just 1,100 during the harsh Antarctic winter, requiring
millions of tons of supplies and fuel to be delivered every year – none of which can be produced
locally. To suggest that Antarctica is colonized would be far overstating the sustainability of
human presence there. If Antarctica is hard, the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and interplanetary
space will be punishingly difficult. Writing in Gizmodo this past July, George Dvorsky describes
the challenges to a human colony posed by low gravity, radiation, lack of air and water, and the
psychological effects of long-term confinement and isolation inside artificial structures, in space
or on planetary surfaces. Add to this the economic uncertainties of such a venture – where the
modern analog of a Dutch or British East India Company would face enormous skepticism from
investors regarding the profitability of shipping any good or finished product between colonial
ports of call – and it becomes clear why nation states and mega-corporations alike have so far
resisted the temptation to set up camp beyond geosynchronous orbit. Perhaps, many argue, we
should focus our limited resources on unresolved problems here at home? Yet a wave of
interest in pursuing solar system colonization is building, whether its initial focus is the Moon,
Mars, or O’Neill-style space habitats. Jeff Bezos has argued eloquently for moving heavy
industry off the home planet, preserving Earth as a nature reserve, and building the space-
based infrastructure that will lower barriers and create opportunities for vast economic and
cultural growth (similar to how the Internet and a revolution in microelectronics has allowed
Amazon and numerous other companies to achieve spectacular wealth). Elon Musk and
Stephen Hawking both suggested the need for a “hedge” population of humans on Mars to
allow human civilization to reboot itself in the event of a catastrophe on Earth – an eggs-in-
several-baskets approach which actually complements the arguments made by Bezos. And
while both are valid reasons for pursuing colonization, there’s a stronger, overarching
rationale that clinches it. I’ll assert that a fundamental truth – repeatedly borne out by history
– is that expanding, outwardly-focused civilizations are far less likely to turn on themselves,
and far more likely to expend their fecundity on growing habitations, conducting important
research and creating wealth for their citizens. A civilization that turns away from discovery
and growth stagnates – a point made by NASA’s Chief Historian Steven Dick as well as Mars
exploration advocate Robert Zubrin. As a species, we have yet to resolve problems of extreme
political polarization (both internal to nation states as well as among them), inequalities in
wealth distribution, deficiencies in civil liberties, environmental depredations and war.
Forgoing opportunities to expand our presence into the cosmos to achieve better outcomes
here at home hasn’t eliminated these scourges. What’s more, the “cabin fever” often decried
by opponents of colonization (when applied to small, isolated outposts far from Earth) turns
out to be a potential problem for our own planet. Without a relief valve for ideological
pilgrims or staunch individualists who might just prefer to be on their own despite the
inevitable hardships, we may well run the risk of exacerbating the polarization and
internecine strife we strive so hard to quell. Focusing humanity’s attention and imagination on
a grand project may well give us the running room we need to address these problems. But
the decision cannot be made by one country, or one company, or one segment of the human
population. If we do this, it will of necessity be a truly international endeavor, a cross-sector
endeavor (with all commercial, civil, and defense interests engaged and cooperating). The good
news: Critical technologies such as propulsion and power generation systems will improve
over time. Transit durations between celestial destinations will shorten (in the same way
sailing vessels gave way to steam ships and then to airliners and perhaps, one day, to point-to-
point ballistic reusable rockets). Methods for obtaining critical resources on other planets will
be refined and enhanced. Genetic engineering may be used to better adapt humans, their
crops and other biota to life in space or on other planetary surfaces – to withstand the effects
of low or micro-gravity, radiation, and the psychological effects of long-duration spaceflight.

Space colonization encourages healthcare innovations- solves diseases

Donoviel 19 (Dorit Donoviel, 7-19-2019, "Space exploration is reinventing healthcare," [20+
years leadership experience as executive director of R&D overseeing diverse areas of biomedical
research from basic to applied science, drug discovery, and technology development. Executing
a multi-million dollar national research portfolio of grants addressing the plethora of
physiological and behavioral challenges of humans in space. Executive Director, Translational
Research Institute for Space Health at Baylor College of Medicine] The Hill,
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/453853-space-exploration-is-reinventing-healthcare)
TDI

The conditions of spaceflight have

Though many do not realize it, humans have been living and working in space continuously for the past two decades.

accelerated our ability to study progressive degenerative diseases. This novel paradigm of
understanding human physiology under the stresses of living in space holds great promise for
new sources of medical breakthroughs for Earth. Although astronauts are carefully selected to be exceptionally healthy and exhibit peak physical and
mental performance, after only four to six months in space, they can develop numerous medical conditions. Without appropriate exercise, they lose bone and muscle mass. They become prone to developing
kidney stones. Their hearts become deconditioned. Their blood vessels stiffen. A subset of astronauts develop a swelling of the optic nerve and possibly an increase in pressure on the brain. Even dormant viruses
 There is a sense of urgency to solve these problems if we are to
become activated, alongside changes to the immune system.

send humans to Mars and return them safely in the next decade or two. This is why NASA is
investing in cutting-edge research for human health and performance including high-risk high-
reward approaches funded through the Translational Research institute for Space Health
(TRISH). Supporting potentially ground-breaking innovations requires a leap of faith in the right direction. Keeping astronauts healthy during deep
space exploration missions — where there are no hospitals and no medical specialists —
requires a different paradigm for healthcare. Astronauts are typically engineers and scientists, and only occasionally physicians. On the way to Mars, when
communications with Earth will be limited, they could be forced to act as both patients and healthcare providers. If a medical condition is allowed to progress when they are millions of miles away from Earth, the

This requires a
situation could become catastrophic. Therefore, astronauts will need to detect even the most subtle changes in their own health status early enough to prevent disease.

healthcare paradigm of predicting, preventing and mitigating ailments by intervening early. This
means enabling monitoring, diagnostic and therapeutic medical capabilities that are simple to use, safe, robust and miniaturized. Additionally, what will work in a small

spacecraft in the hands of an engineer is also likely to work in a community clinic with limited
resources. Or even in our homes. This different approach to healthcare can help save lives and
reduce costs — at a global level. Space demands the best in healthcare innovations, focusing on prevention
and early intervention using smart, creative solutions. On a mission to Mars, blood tests will be done in a matter of minutes,

by the patient, on a single drop of blood. A trained and adaptive computer algorithm will track
health status based on a variety of physiological parameters and alert astronauts when
important deviations from normal become evident. Automated eye exams will be performed
by the astronauts on themselves and images will be analyzed by a computer for changes.
Customized medications will be tailor-made for the patient on the spot. If a minor medical
procedure is required, the caregiver will learn and practice beforehand using augmented
reality tools and software simulations adjusted for zero-gravity. Kidney stones will be found early and treated quickly and
painlessly using ultrasound to “push” them out of the kidney so they can be cleared naturally
with urination. Sleep and mood will be improved using sound stimulation and health will be
improved by individualized diets which will be enriched with high-nutrient plants grown
efficiently within a small footprint. Most importantly, all these advances have clear and important
applications on Earth. Space exploration has already yielded hundreds of inventions that filled our
arsenal for fighting diseases. To land women and men on Mars and return them healthy, we must reinvent healthcare. The
positive consequences of this work will impact all of humanity . The spirit of Apollo is alive and well in space health research today.
And for science, medicine and technology pioneers, our most important work is still ahead.

Colonies in space are sustainable and rely on planetary resources

Haynes 19, 5/17, Korey "O’Neill colonies: A decades-long dream for settling space,"
Astronomy, https://astronomy.com/news/2019/05/oneill-colonies-a-decades-long-dream-for-
settling-space
Last week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos revealed his spaceship company’s new lunar lander, dubbed Blue Moon, and he spelled out a bold and broad vision for humanity’s future

If we move out into the

in space. Faced with the limits of resources here on Earth, most fundamentally energy, he pointed to life in space as a solution. “

solar system, for all practical purposes, we have unlimited resources,” Bezos said. “We could
have a trillion people out in the solar system.” And while colonies on other planets would be plagued by low gravity, long distances to
Earth (leading to communication delays), and further limits down the road, those weaknesses are avoided if the colonies remain truly in space. To that end , Bezos

instead suggested people consider taking up residence in O’Neill colonies, a futuristic concept
for space settlements first dreamed up decades ago. “These are very large structures, miles on
end, and they hold a million people or more each.” Gerard O’Neill was a physicist from Princeton University who teamed up with
NASA in the 1970s on a series of workshops that explored efficient ways for humans to live off-world. Beyond influencing Bezos, his ideas have also deeply affected how many
space experts and enthusiasts think about realistic ways of living in space. “What will space colonies be like?” O’Neill once asked the Space Science Institute he founded. “First of

all, there’s no point in going out into space if the future that we see there is a sterile future of living in tin cans. We have to be able to recreate, in
space, habitats which are as beautiful, as Earth-like, as the loveliest parts of planet Earth — and
we can do that.” Of course, neither O’Neill nor anyone since has actually made such a habitat,
but in many ways, the concepts he helped developed half a century ago remain some of the
most practical options for large-scale and long-term space habitation. While NASA has mostly focused on exploring the
moon and Mars in recent years, O’Neill colonies offer an option untethered to any planetary body. Instead,

people would live in enormous circular structures in space that would be capable of hosting
many thousands of people — or even millions according to Bezos — on a permanent basis. You may
have seen these kinds of colonies in science fiction, from Star Trek, to the movie Interstellar. But in real life, researchers have thought up a a few variations: either a sphere, a
cylinder, or a ring-shaped torus. All of these are designed to rotate and create a centrifugal force that mimics gravity for the inhabitants. While the sizes and specifications of the

O’Neill colonies were designed to be permanent, self-sustaining

colonies vary, there are a few staples. In general,

structures. That means they would use solar power for electrical energy and for growing
crops. The outer walls of an O’Neill colony are generally pictured as a transparent material, so
that mirrors can aim sunlight through its walls as needed to provide light and energy – or to
allow darkness, a feature humans also need, especially while we sleep. But building these colonies is a challenge
beyond any humans have accomplished so far in space, and Bezos acknowledged that. He referred to two “gates” in his announcement, which he clarified as challenges that

Blue Origin and other space entrepreneurs have been tackling, is

humans need to overcome. The first, which his company

to reduce the cost and difficulty of getting to space at all. But the second involves using
resources from space, rather than hauling them from Earth. Bezos isn’t alone in such thinking. Most of NASA’s long-
term plans for the Moon and Mars involve rely on harvesting materials and manufacturing
products locally, using lunar and martian regolith to build and repair structures . And in the shorter term, three
of the dozen experiments NASA selected as the first to fly as part of the new lunar program — possibly even by the end of the year — are what NASA terms “resource

colonies are meant to use resources gathered from

prospecting instruments.” That pairs well with O’Neill’s vision. These

space, whether asteroids, the Moon, or even Mars. Doing so avoids the costly effort of heaving
materials and goods out of Earth’s deep gravity well. That means they would be built using
materials available cheaply in space. The humans and their attendant plants and animals would
need to be carried from Earth. But raw materials like oxygen, nitrogen and aluminum are
plentiful in the solar system, and mining for resources in space is a common theme across space
settlement discussions. Because of their size, the colonies should be able to act as fully independent ecosystems, with plants to cycle air and water and
resource cycles not so dissimilar from Earth. Humans are a long way from being able to launch anything like an O’Neill colony in the near future. But it’s somewhat telling that,
after 50 years of space exploration and technological achievement, one of the modern leaders in private spaceflight is still espousing an idea from the first days of space
exploration.