Serious question - why is space exploration worth devoting the massive amount of man hours and natural resources to? What's the real gain that is worth using those resources for space exploration, or not using the resources at all?
It's just a phase....Any sufficiently advanced civilization, after a while, will give up on space exploration. Maybe send a few probes here and there, to collect some extra rocks missing from their collection.
There is only so many Neutron Stars, Black Holes, Nebulas, Planets and Comets to study and after you have studying a few million, they all look the same. Once you've seen one supermassive black hole bend light and time, you've seen them all.
What is the real gain? Resources. There are a ton of resources up there.
Knowledge. A lot of things we have today we have because of our previous space race. But the real reason... It is virtually free. The budget is almost 0 compared to everything else the government does.
For the near zero budget part, do you just mean sending up a few more probes? Surely finding, collecting, and using natural resources in space would be an extremely expensive affair.
