The point is having all our eggs in one basket is dangerous. Having pockets of humanity existing elsewhere in self-sustaining colonies makes sense for the species. I personally think the next move should be a permanent settlement on the moon where all the required technology can be field-tested and improved but close enough that a rescue is possible if it goes pear shaped. Mars should be the second destination for a colony.

I'd love to look up at the moon and see the lights of a distant colony I think that would be pretty amazing.

Well he's right, it's a small world in a temporary system so staying here eventually leads to the end anyway.

There's a reason why Earth is the only planet we can breathe and live on perfectly.

Anyways I think humanity is better off gone than in a Zoo.

Which is essentially what we are talking about here. Living captive, away from our natural habitat just to prolong the existence of a species, this is not a way for a to human to live.

Why is having just a few humans alive in existence so important to justify their quality of life?

One day humanity will be gone. Their is nothing you can do, and prolonging it is not a solution. Get over it. Quit living in the future and start living in the present. Their is something meaningful we can do today for future generations, and it's not shipping them off to live like zoo animal.

Trillions?

39 billion seems a lot, that was 0.23% of GDP at the time, military budget in 2013 was over 700 billion.

The space shuttle program is to blame for why we've not gone back or past the moon. The name already says it. It was meant as a cost effective way to reach orbit, nothing more advanced than a bus service really.  The space program has been stuck in low earth orit since the 60's. At least we're still sending out robots.

We still haven't seen the bottom of Earth's oceans either, or investigated the core. Don't need to look deeper than where oil is :/ Short term gain is holding humanity back. With the current political system it's impossible to make long term plans.

Hahahaha no where near. We spend so little on our space program as a planet. We spend many many many many many many times more killing eachother. 

the best post in the thread. I got a laugh

Back in my days things were better, because people dreamed of achieving technological and scientific progress.

In which currency? Budgets of major space agencies:

NASA: 19.5 billion US$ (2017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

ESA: 5.75 billion € (2017) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESA

JAXA: 211 billion ¥ = 2 billion $ (2013) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAXA

CNSA: 1.3 billion US$ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Space_Administration

We as a planet not even spend 100 billion on space, probably even less than 50 billion. We as a planet spend multiple time that for wars.

And I'm sure the people who'll be living in danger of extinction are going to oppose your point. Everybody's goal is to survive. Just because we'll be long dead by that point doesn't mean you can say that prolonging the existence of humanity is not a solution. It's not a decision for us to make but for the end generations.