Space and Survival - Objections

Objections

Creating a backup colony in space would be a very costly method of ensuring human survival in the event of catastrophe, and it is likely that other ways of creating an independent colony could be more cost efficient. While extinctions occur on the order of tens of millions of years, major damage to the structure of the Earth itself is likely on the order of billions of years. As a result, an independent surface colony or an oceanic or sub-terrestrial colony may be a cheaper way to obtain a similar but less robust result.

The survivability and sustainability of a colony could potentially be less than the survivability and sustainability of Earth's population, especially during a colony's infancy. Creating colonies that can reliably withstand the rigors of space and unpredictable extraterrestrial environments for thousands of years may be very expensive. The creation of a colony that not only survives but also grows to a scale where it can create its own new colonies is a far more difficult and expensive task.