The average number of future people per person alive today ("descendants") may be as follows for an average lifespan of 75 years:

Option	Min.	Max.
1	2E+03	2E+03
2	9E+03	3E+06
3	1E+08	1E+14
4	> 4E+28	> 3E+40

If there was a constant population from now until the death of the Sun, we would have 1E+08 descendants.

The model implies the following:

• A factor of 5 improvement for sustainability over business-as-usual
• A factor of 280 improvement due to impact protection
• A factor of more than 54 thousand improvement over business-as-usual when settling the Solar System
• A factor of 1 million improvement due to aggressively settling asteroids when settling the Solar System
• A factor of more than 268 trillion improvement for settling the Universe over staying in the Solar System

Note: Use of the term descendant is a bit loose when applied to space settlement. Strictly speaking, settlers of the Solar System and beyond would have highly restricted bloodlines back to Earth, since only a small number of people would be making up the core population of each world.

See also:

• Descendants (graph)
• Settling Space Presentation
• Settling Space Overview
• Thoughts on Sustainability

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