Every second of delayed colonization ends 10^29 human lives.

We can, however, get a lower bound more straightforwardly by simply counting the number or stars in our galactic supercluster and multiplying this number with the amount of computing power that the resources of each star could be used to generate using technologies for whose feasibility a strong case has already been made. We can then divide this total with the estimated amount of computing power needed to simulate one human life.

As a rough approximation, let us say the Virgo Supercluster contains 10^13 stars. One estimate of the computing power extractable from a star and with an associated planetsized computational structure, using advanced molecular nanotechnology (Drexler 1992), is 10^42 operations per second (Bradbury 1999). A typical estimate of the human brain’s processing power is roughly 10^17 operations per second or less (Bostrom 1998; Kurzweil 1999).1 Not much more seems to be needed to simulate the relevant parts of the environment in sufficient detail to enable the simulated minds to have experiences indistinguishable from typical current human experiences (Bostrom 2003).2 Given these estimates, it follows that the potential for approximately 10^38 human lives is lost every century that colonization of our local supercluster is delayed; or equivalently, about 10^29 potential human lives per second.