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Astronaut: 'Single-Planet Species Don't Last'
An anonymous reader writes "Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle astronaut John Young, due to retire in two weeks, says that the human species is in danger of becoming extinct: '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.' He says that the technologies needed to colonize the solar system will help people survive through disasters on Earth. Young has written about this topic before in an essay called 'The Big Picture'." In related news, the Shuttle overhaul program is on track for a May 2005 launch.
What other higher order specie that has multi planet colonization did he do his evaluation against? What was the success rate of the multi planet effort - would it have been better to spend those resources maintaining quality on one planet?
So he writes about volcanic activity, planetoid impacts and solar disasters. What if we spent all our resources on keeping the planet safe? We could drill out pressure of volcanoes and build super bombs for planetoids. If our sun goes all bets are off though we need to find another solar system but I bet we could figure out something in 4.5 billion years.
But all in all he is correct I am just point out a con; however, I don't think that ~5 billion people could be wiped out by any single event that left the planet habitable afterwards.
Yes. Manned missions are risky and expensive. Unmanned and remotely controlled probes are just fine and dandy and they yield plenty of useful information about the conditions in space and on other planets, but what's that information good for if we're never going to leave our planet and/or when we're going to get hit by an extinction level event?
As a species we have definitely become too concerned about safety in exploration. Can't shoot people up to space because they might get killed? Well, duh? What if the explorers like Magellan or Vasco da Game had thought about it like that?
The saddest comment I once got was: "we'll never be able to colonize other planets because the conditions are so fundamentally hostile, so let's not waste any funds/effort on manned space flights." What the hell happened to the human will to explore and survive? What's the point in sending out probes if the information gained will certainly be lost in the (near) future when the big one hits the earth?
The owls are not what they seem
"On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."
- Jack, Fight Club
Sometime you hear people talk like they're going to live forever. Well I got news for you.
NOT!
I've always said, "The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us are getting the hell off this rock!"
Bryan
"Dinosaurs are extinct because they didn't have a space program."
Says everything, really.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
civilization-ending event: if one occurs, you will die. (and he claims one occuring in the next 100 years is 1 in 455)
Your mistake is not realizing an average person takes many, many, many more than 1 flight in their lifetimes.
According to the National Safety Council, your odds of dying are actually slightly worse. Your odds of dying due to injury in a plane crash are about 1 in 4,023 (see this table).
If you rarely fly, then your at a favorible statistical end of the spectrum with respect to fatalities due to injury by air travel - but remember, some people bank several flights each and every week for years.
..mork
whining how we would have been wiped out long ago in the past if his numbers are right:
Statistics were only recently discovered, hence they didn't apply back then.
Stupids.
Not quite how it works.
In fact, a 1 in 455 chance of humanity being wiped out in each successive 100 year block gives us a 454 in 455 chance of surviving that 100 year block.
Our odds of surviving 200 years is the odds of us surviving the first block (454 in 455) times the odds of us surviving the second (another 454 in 455) - about 99.5%
In other words, the odds of us surviving 100n years is (454/455) ^ n. The odds of us making it through the next millennium, then, is (454/455) ^ 10; that equates to about 44 in 45, or a one in 45 chance of our species being wiped out before we see the next millennium bug.
The odds at 10000 years (n=100) diminish to about one in five that we'll all have been wiped out - that is, four in five that we're still here.
Around the 30 000 year mark, the chances we're wiped out are pretty much even. That would mean we'd tend to expect mass extinction events about once every 60000 years, on average. you could consider that as a kind of indicator as to the validity of the original statistic.
Beyond that point, it becomes easier to quote the odds we're still here than that we're not.
After 100 000 years, we get down to about a one in ten chance of still existing. In other words, out of all the possible ways the next 100 millennia could go, only one in ten of them finish with us still existing.
In other words, the number predicts survival is unlikely, but it's not impossible, and the odds keep dropping, but they don't reach zero.
Whether the 1 in 455 number is right or not is open to question, of course, but just because we've been around more than 45500 years is no reason to dismiss it completely.