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?
Long term, the reason to expand into space is to expand into space. The point of going to Mars is not to make money. The point is to find a way for people to live there.
Let go of your sci fi visions of the future. Space colonization does not look like humans getting on a rocket ship on Earth’s surface, blasting off between stars, and landing on a second Eden around another star, a world where you can take your helmet off, breathe the local air, eat the food, and drink the water. What we’ve learned from our exoplanet studies is that the cosmos has exercised infinite creativity in generating new Hells, worlds uninhabitable and lethal to us in ways we never even dreamed of.
Real space colonization is going to take a whole lot of engineering and building. Mars is actually quite habitable compared to the vast majority of worlds in the universe. If you have some basic self-replicating machines, making Mars habitable is quite doable. Cover as much of the surface as you want in vast greenhouses. Live under domes potentially spanning the entire world. Long term, Mars has great potential for human settlement.
As for why? Well I would say it’s a moral responsibility. We know if we stay on just one planet, just one star, then it’s only a matter of time before some natural or artificial disaster wipes us out, and possibly the rest of life along with it. Earth has the type of biosphere you probably have to scour multiples galaxies to find one of comparable complexity. That’s a jewel worth protecting.
We tend to be too hard on ourselves as as species, viewing ourselves as some sort of cancer on the world. At the same time, we are the only hope for life on this planet to survive past a certain point. We are the children of Gaia. It’s our duty and moral obligation to spread life as far and wide as possible. Life itself has intrinsic value. And it’s our job to spread it.
Some exobiologists have also suggested that even if we settle habitable worlds with active biospheres, there is so much research needed to ensure biocompatibility that anyone settling there would be quarantined for the first century or two in order to suss out any long-term pathogen or other nasty. And that if one is found, those settlers would be SOL without an effective cure.
Truthfully I don’t think we should even consider settling any body with a complex biosphere. We’re going to have to search for a very long time before we find a biosphere anywhere near as complex as Earth’s. You probably have to scour entire galaxies before you find another world with covered in a biosphere as rich as Earth’s. These worlds will be so rare and so far away, that by the time we can reach them, if ever, we’ll have already become experts at living in space. Hell, by the time we even attempt interstellar colonization, the vast majority of the human population likely won’t even live on a planetary surface. By the time we reach a true Earth twin, humanity will have become experts at transforming the deadest of dead rocks into living worlds. (Or just forego the idea entirely and use planets only as sources of raw materials for space-based habitats.)
I see no reason to ever colonize and exploit those rare Edens. Explore? Sure. Comb the organisms there for useful genetics and compounds? No problem. But actually settling en masse? Just leave them alone. We can afford to leave .00001% of planet’s untouched.