The universe's resources (sometimes called the cosmic endowment) is the stock of physical resources in the universe currently accessible to humanity.

If humanity does not go prematurely extinct, the number of people—or moral patients generally—who will ultimately exist could be astronomical. These figures are useful for judging the value of work that influences the long-term future, and in particular for judging how important it is to avoid existential risks.

Nick Bostrom argues that, barring disaster, Earth will capable of sustaining life for approximately another billion years (Bostrom 2012). This means that if Earth’s population were to remain fairly close to what is today, then, assuming hundred-year life-spans, the planet would ultimately host about 10¹⁶ people.

This is not an upper-bound on the possible number of people, however. If humans are ultimately able to colonize other star systems, then they will not be limited by Earth’s ability to sustain life. Bostrom estimates that, given certain assumptions, humanity could eventually reach ${10}^{18}$ to ${10}^{20}$ stars, which could sustain a total of around ${10}^{35}$ biological human beings, or around ${10}^{58}$ digital human minds (Bostrom, Dafoe & Flynn 2020: 319).