Backup?
Apart from all the science reasons... it's pretty inevitable that something is gonna wreck Earth at some point in the next few thousand years or so. It has before, it will again. Could be a supervolcano, could be a meteor, could be disease. We're very vulnerable.
I think the cheering thing is rather American. I've met lots of SpaceX employees, and they were all nice and just as normal as any other bunch of sciency folks.
(, Mon 30 Jul 2018, 21:34, Reply)
The backup reason is utter nonsense.
First of all, it presupposes that there's something morally important about human (or terrestrial) life; that's not at all clear, though.
It also presupposes that it'd be possible to recreate whatever it is that we want to preserve on Mars. But that's implausible. We're part of a hugely intricate machine. You can't just take bits of it and drop it on another rock and hope for the best - especially when that other rock is uninhabitable.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 31 Jul 2018, 10:25,
Reply)