[plain talk]

“How does space exploration translate into this goal (survival of mankind) in your viewpoint? “

Interesting to me that someone would actually ask such as question. :-). I realize some people don’t really think about such matters and can’t imagine mankind someday being forced to leave Earth or even how we might survive on a place like Mars. But yes that could happen and is poossible. And i think this is a key role for governments to defend the population on two fronts - diversion of meteors and eventual migration off earth should it be necessary.

This is just one reason of space exploration. There are commercial reasons and even a more fundamental driver that exploration is in man’s DNA.

[from occupied ga]

There are commercial reasons and even a more fundamental driver that exploration is in man’s DNA.

Commercial exploitation of space is another thing that sounds good until you look at the balance sheet. There are two things that make it extremely unlikely to be successful:

1. COST - Suppose you found a deposit of pure gold on the moon. Lets look at the economics of obtaining it. The apollo programs brought back 842 lb of rocks (12281 troy ounces). The brought back as much as they could. In today's dollars it cost about 150,000,000,000 This is a cost of $12,213,220 per oz. Gold is selling at $1309/ounce. You'd lose about $12,211,914 per ounce.
2. The other problem is that they brought back ROCKS AND DIRT. There is no intrinsic value to rocks. You can pick them up anyplace.

There isn't any possible substance in space that's worth the cost of getting it.

I'll get into the total lack of feasibility of humanity's survival any place other than earth some other time.