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?
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.