Sagan speaks about the benefits of space travel.

http://www.wimp.com/goingspace/

The immense distance to the stars in the galaxies means that we see everything in space, in the past.

Some as they were before the earth came to be.

Telescopes are time machines.

Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light into the surrounding darkness, no witness could have known that billions of years later some remote clumps of rock and metal, ice and organic molecules would fall together to make a place called earth.

Or that life would arise. And that thinking beings would evolve who would one day capture a little of that galactic light and try to puzzle out what had sent it on it's way.

And after the earth dies, some five billion years from now... after it is burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the sun, there will be other worlds. And other stars, and galaxies coming into being.

And they will know nothing of a place once called earth.

Galileo stood outside the court and said, "And still it moves,..." after being forced to capitulate.

It's allright. I did the same thing myself, as have many others I'm sure, with regard to the overall ideas that seem to be in conflict.