Scientists find a diamond in the skies

Better to start now and be able to act when something is going to go wrong than wait untill just before death is knocking on your door, and not having the technology or knowledge to save yourself because you didn't take those first steps long ago.

Which seems to be a problem with Humanity. We don't do anything untill something extreme forces us to and by then it's too late. Way too many examples of this in everything we do.

Going to the moon or mars and exploring further out is the first step in securing our future. We live in a very dangerous place despite what people like to believe. I mean, the sun could decide to get pissy and spout off a CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) our way and send humanity back to the 1900s for years. A rock, even a minor one, could smack into us and cause alot of problems. One could be on its way to ram into us and only give us a week or so warning. Since, you know, only a small portion of our sky is watched. You can't even see comets untill the sun starts melting them. If one of those decides to head our way we would have very little time to react. If you want events that happen much closer to home you could have a Super volcano go off and pretty much destroy much of our food production abillity. Events like these three happen. It's not a matter of if they will happen it's a matter of when.

Go much further into our future and you have the sun dieing, the moon drifting far enough away to wreak havoc on our enviroment and weather patterns, the Milky Way colliding with Andromeda, and so on. Though that's so far in the future if we were not in space by then we would be extinct...

I would feel much more secure knowing some group was researching or actively pushing out further into space exploration so when shit does hit the fan we have a better chance of survival.

Jam it back in, in the dark.