It's hard to imagine that God or what ever else you believe in would have created the universe for only us to travel its cosmic ocean. If we look through the eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope, in a small corner of our galaxy, there exsists a nebula referred to as M-16. To most of us it is the Eagle Nebula with its brilliantly colored spires of gas peppered with the faint glow of new born stars. If only one planet brings forth life, then we are not alone. Maybe we won't have to travel the cosmic ocean to find life forms, maybe they'll wash up on our earthly shores.
Some people think they have already been here.
Look at the number of UFO sightings reported around the world every year. Though most of them are explainable phenomenon, there are a few that defy explaination. It would be nice to have them come to us, but the chances of that actually happening are as good as the earth being swallowed up by a black hole tomorrow. So we must continue our search for ourselves, out there somewhere in the darkness of space. With every part of our being we want to travel to distant worlds like the characters from the Star Trek series.