It's in the nature of life to spread out and diversify the way it's done on this planet and to occupy every ecological niche until you have millions of different species. Life has this amazing richness and as soon as it gets out from this planet and spreads over the universe, then it's going to be just enormously exciting. I won't be alive to see it. This is something for the 22nd century, rather than the 21st. Still, it's going to happen.
Biological engineering is part of that.
We shall be the midwives to produce creatures that can live in space. Once we've done that then they'll be on their own and they'll evolve independently of us. That's number one on my list of exciting things because it's too far away for me to be involved myself. In the meantime there are smaller things. I'm excited to see what happens when we explore Europa, the moon of Jupiter that has an ocean under the ice.