Quote Originally Posted by Papewaio View Post
Apart from all the commercial spin offs.

Sitting our entire civilisation on a single planet or even solar system is putting all our eggs in one basket. I for one don't want to be a 65 million year old fossil with the cockroaches trying to figure out what petty intrigues left us planet bound when we have the technology to spread to other planets.

As a feat in itself not many people can claim to have orbited another object in space or walked on its surface. Far cooler and useful then yearly sports comps.
Please - we are nowhere near getting off this planet - we can't even sustain a small Bio-Dome, let alone terraform Mars, we can't produce effective radiation shields (that we can power) to protect the colony, and we can't launch large payloads into space.

The failure of the shuttle program has demonstrated just how far we would need to go, and that's before we ever even talk about getting out the Solar System. Unless something changes in our fundamental understanding of Physics we've basically established that FTL is impossible.

That's why we haven't been visited by Aliens, they can't get off their own planets.