Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
This is a much-discussed topic and you can easily find tons of information on it. For one thing, not trying to expand into new places goes against our nature - not just as humans but as living things. Every species we know of collectively tries to find and adapt to new habitats. A long-term practical reason is that inhabiting more than one planet ensures that our species will survive planetary disasters, like the asteroid collisions we know have repeatedly caused massive extinctions on Earth. Or the volcanic upheavals 250 million years ago that wiped out most life on Earth. We know these things happen again and again, and if this is humanity’s only home when the next one hits, game over.
Unless you’ve written blog posts on this before then no I can’t do research on it, because I want to know specifically why you want this. From your answer should I assume the reason you want humans to colonialize other planets is genetic redundancy?
I gave that as a long-term practical reason, but I think a more overriding one is that expansion is a universal trait of living things, as I said, and I don’t have a reason not to want it. The world has enough resources to solve Earthly problems and also reach outward. The answer is to fix politics, not to stop exploring.