You can't possible know which new discoveries might benefit us.

@FearlessFly I'm educated enough to make some good guesses and know that every $ we spend on "research" thousands of light years away is money our progeny will be paying interest on for longer than it would take to fly there... thousands of generations. How about we focus on the things we desperately need but don't have here? You can't think of any? The microscopic and irrelevant knowledge gained from unprovable datapoints thousands of light years away steals money from the important things we lack here, like sustainable power, reducing disease and poverty, better transportation and education. You can skip the trite and trivial point-chasing comments with me. I'm done.

Many Atheists I’ve met feel the only way to put religion in perspective, world-wide, is to discover life elsewhere. Nothing would unify our planet more than to fear something beyond ourselves..

Money spent to glorify our capabilities of space conquest is political crap usually demanded by our militaristic party. Money spent on discovery, if by the party of science is ..the best!

Mtnhome, you got me thinking ...imagine… in a long-dead clicking dialect.. He was warned, even threatened! “You will make others collect your share of cooking dung - while you walk to look over that mountain?” “You will spend time walking somewhere you’ve never been,” “and expect us to do your share of work?!”

Yes, he did … before discovering, then leading his tribe into the Nile Valley … eventually on to the Fertile Crescent ..and out of Africa.. Exploration is us ~