Securing Earth First. The Case for Terrestrial Resilience Before Space Colonisation

The authors welcome correspondence from researchers interested in peer review, collaborative validation, or arXiv endorsement in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, or theoretical physics. founder@humansp.org. This paper presents a systematic, quantitative critique of the argument that extraterrestrial colonisation — of Mars, the Moon, or orbital stations — constitutes a viable "backup plan" against terrestrial existential risk. Across five substantive sections, followed by a concluding chapter, it examines the technological, economic, temporal, biological, psychological, and logistical barriers to self-sufficient space settlement, and shows that each barrier compounds rather than resolves with current or near-term technology. Section 1 establishes the baseline gap between Earth and any extraterrestrial habitat and the true cost of "backup" infrastructure. Section 2 addresses the manufacturing-scale problem — including a dedicated treatment of the rocket equation and in-situ propellant production, showing that the return trip from Mars is an independent engineering problem, not a footnote to arrival — alongside the hidden per-person cost, the irreplaceable-talent bottleneck, and the ceiling of chemical propulsion. Section 3 quantifies the psychological unsustainability of long-term confinement using terrestrial analogue data (Antarctic stations, submarines, the ISS). Section 4 evaluates deep underground cities as a proposed alternative and finds comparable failure modes. Section 5 introduces the "Eyjafjallajökull argument": empirical evidence that the same atmospheric conditions produced by a mass-extinction event would ground space operations entirely, reinforced by a contemporary case study — the decades-long, still-incomplete effort to restore Apollo-era crewed lunar capability through the Artemis program. A concluding chapter (6) synthesises these findings and situates them within a broader evolutionary and philosophical framing, arguing that terrestrial resilience investment (the A.D.A. Project) is a prerequisite for, not a rival to, any credible long-term space program. Suplemento to: Deep Impacts of Asteroids or Comets with Metallic Cores that Penetrate the Earth: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18204600 The Origin of the Universe: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20715550 Part of the Proyecto A.D.A. (Architecture of Survival) series - Preprint 20. A chapter of: Survival Architecture: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=epWgEQAAQBAJ Arquitectura de la supervivencia: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Alejandro_D%C3%ADaz_Aldana_Arquitectura_de_la_Supervive?id=DpCgEQAAQBAJ