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Two Rocks Are Better Than One.: I've been saying it for years, but it's nice that someone who's actually walked on another planet agrees with me. Retiring astronaut John Young recently gave an interview with the Houston Chronicle where he gives some scary, or as I hope, motivating statistics:
The statistical risk of humans getting wiped out in the next 100 years due to a super volcano or asteroid or comet impact is 1 in 455. How does that relate? You're 10 times more likely to get wiped out by a civilization-ending event in the next 100 years than you are getting killed in a commercial airline crash.
The most dangerous thing we do in Houston, of course, is drive our automobiles to work every day, so you know how dangerous that is and how many people get killed doing that. But wiping out civilization. …
It's not the point that we should move (to another planet). It's the point that the technologies that we need to live and work in other places in the solar system will help us survive on Earth when these bad things happen.