Why We Explore

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY59wZdCDo0&feature=player_embedded

In an early Human Contact game, a player asked me why Academics go to the stars. The answer is this video.

Another Sagan quote, this one from a rejected layout that we might yet see in a future edition of the game:

As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky. In our tenure on this planet we’ve accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt.

But we’ve also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth.

But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits us.