Is space travel essential for mankind?
Yes very essential, for this reason. Our sun is fusing Hydrogen gas into Helium, and when the Hydrogen stars to run out the Sun will start fusing Helium, when this takes place the Sun will start getting hotter and hotter, as the heat builds the Sun will start to expand, until it swallows Mercury the Venus then maybe Even Earth, but by then if the propel of Earth has not found new homes in other solar systems though astronomy, and the people of Earth has not developed space craft that can be used to carry the people of Earth to these new worlds that the Astronomers find, then every living creature on Earth is doomed to a fire death. I hope this answered your question, so to keep human life going we had better tell our federal Government to start spending more money on Astronomy Research and NASA research to develop better and larger space craft.
