My opinion? Not very hard to put.
One of the persons that helped me gathering data and arguments send this, which pretty much says it all:
"It is this simple. If you don't grow, you die. If you don't increase your knowledge, you die. If you don't adapt, you die. If you don't change, you die. If you lose your curiosity your mind dies. Do you want to grow and live or do you want to stagnate and die? History is littered with the lost who did not change, grow, adapt. They died. You gotta pass a law to protect something, it is already dead."
Patricia Wadley
Sounds hard, uncaring, even barbaric? Wrong. This is life, this is reality. The Romans, the Chinese Empire, the Pharaos, the Aztecs... how many examples do you need? Expansion, development and the search of new things to do, new places to go, is a vital necessity of every nation, culture, race, whatever. 15th Century Spain was a back water country, near bankruptcy after years of wars, when some foreigner by the name of Colombo said "Let's sail west". "ARE YOU INSANE?!" "Think of the possibilities!" "THERE IS NOTHING THERE, JUST A VOID AND MONSTERS!!". Riiiight...
My own country, Portugal, less than half the size of Spain, staring at nothing but ocean, became a world power through the exploration and discovery of half the world, establishing a commercial empire over several continents.
Every nation or culture that became powerful and/or famous did so using exploration and curiosity (as in "let's see if there's anything good that way"). Always there were those who said "No, no, that's too dangerous/expensive/time consuming. Besides there's nothing there".
As for hard facts, goto my PROS page, you'll find them all there. I agree with them all, even those who may sound a bit far-fetched and Star Trek-like.
We should already have a couple of space stations in orbit, probes all over the system, and maybe, a mining/exploration expedition to the asteroids (dreams, dreams...)
Two final, personal, notes, for those who think that Earth is all we need, that we can all fit here and Space is a waste of time:
Mother Nature doesn't exist. This is just a pile of rock with finite resources that are running out, fast.
Just read in the paper: there's a new tornado in Jupiter, a small one... little bigger than Earth.