[aeternum]

The earth is at best a temporary paradise, doomed to be burned up by a rogue asteroid or if it's exceedingly lucky its very own sun. Also incomprehensibly limited in the population and diversity of life it can support when compared with the universe.

How incredibly selfish of us to decide we shall be the select few that get to live on a single planet when the universe has the potential to support so many more lives.

Every second we delay, countless earth-like planets are being consumed by black holes, never to be seen again.

[SamPatt]

Given that humanity has only existed for ~200,000 years, and the threats you've mentioned are unknown but likely millions or billions of years in the future, is it fair to say it's a "temporary paradise?"

If we could live another ten, one hundred, or a thousand of humanity's lifetimes, that's not temporary in any meaningful sense.

To put it differently: making plans today for the earth's demise due to the sun's expansion is a rather extreme case of premature optimization.

[hnews_account_1]

It’s the next frontier and an area for expanding our technological prowess, even if we disregard the doomer psychology aspect of it. We have so much shit to do to even mine the asteroid belt that the next 100 years will look as different from now as we do from the Middle Ages. Not to mention when even further in the future we decide that interstellar travel must be attempted.

[1dry]

I think what's selfish is romanticizing "so many more [hypothetical] lives" while real lives now are smothered for the sake of malignant capitalism. Perhaps the fact the the former takes no self sacrifice makes it an appealing viewpoint.

[midoridensha]

>Every second we delay, countless earth-like planets are being consumed by black holes, never to be seen again.

You don't know that. We don't know what happens to objects that fall into black holes. In fact, it's quite possible we're already inside a black hole.