@Background Pony #118A  

 
Well, if you look in the previous panel, some of the company and brand names should seem familiar, both from forty years in the future and from immediately prior in the flashback… and “pledging financial and technical assistance” is just corpospeak “We’re doing this to gain political favor and leverage”
 
Just another step towards corporate tyranny, during a time when the public’s and government’s eyes are elsewhere, and the corporations can play the heroes. Yesterday, they were “streamlining the space programme”, today, they are “taking control of saving the world”… and of the world along with it…

I wonder how that fits into the main plot about corrupt mega corpses and police brutality.
 
 
@Tetrominon  
If Equestria is anything like Earth then they can at least survive about week before it get’s to cold to sustain live on the surface. Enough time to party like there’s no tomorrow and make your peace with that one distant relative you never liked.

Imagine waking up and finding out the world ended while you were asleep.

It’s not every day you wake up to find the world’s ended.