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somenameforme | on: The Shape of a Mars Mission
His main motivation was about making humanity a multiplanetary species, largely as a means of ensuring humanity's continuation. It sounds hyperbolic, but Earth has gone through multiple mass extinction events and we're rather overdue for another. And while those mass extinction events were all natural, there's also endless ways you can imagine us all managing to kill ourselves off. And, critically, all of these hyperbolic scenarios will seem extremely improbable up to the very day that one does inevitably happen. So the best time to start would be 50 years ago. But the second best time would be right now.

So the most logical place to start for this sort of 'humanity guarantee' would be Mars, which shares an oddly large amount in common with Earth. There's a verbose (and rather entertaining read) with lots of first party commentary here. [1]

[1] - https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-introduction.html

burch45 | parent
This has been covered before but saying that Mars would be a “humanity guarantee” is actually extremely illogical, not the most logical. Short of the Earth getting blasted to tiny pieces in some way there is no scenario where Mars is more habitable than Earth. This is the sort of sci-fi Utopianism that this sober article is standing in opposition to. Mars may be the second most habitable place in the solar system and it’s infinitely less habitable than a nuked-out fallout-ridden earth or an overheated green house earth. There is no magic scenario where Mars suddenly ends up with a magnetosphere and an atmosphere.
whiplash451 | root | parent | next
The whole "let's by insurance for humankind" story is totally valid in my opinion.

This article is however very useful to bring pragmatism to the discussion.

Maybe the best insurance for humankind is to start shipping a continuous stream of robots to Mars to prepare human landing in many (many) years.

_DeadFred_ | root | parent
We could buy insurance for humankind underground here on Earth much sooner and much cheaper. Plus that could kick start post human Eloi so win win.
somenameforme | root | parent
This logic does not necessitate Mars ever being more habitable than Earth. Imagine one of the countless doomsday scenarios - a large asteroid impact. What kills you is not necessarily the asteroid, but it flinging debris into the sky that blots out the sun, not only creating a massive cold, but also rapidly killing all plants which starts a rapid series of extinction events on up the food chain.

If that happened Earth itself would still, even during the extinction event, be a dramatically more pleasant place than Mars. But nonetheless that event would kill off the overwhelming majority of people on Earth, and very possibly 100%, because it's such a significant change from the status quo we expect to continue on Earth. But having a parallel society or societies would ensure that even in the 100% scenario, life could get back up and organized relatively quickly. And even in the "only" 99% of people killed scenario, the outside help could help to reestablish order and kickstart society.

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