I could have chosen to close this book with a happy ending involving humankind's glorious lift-off into space, after having defeated the Great Filters of all kinds. But the pages of this existential-spatial journey would not be complete without confronting one final question: so what? Will a departure from Earth enable humanity to reach our goal, if indeed we have one? Will it provide answers to our deepest questions and darkest fears? Will it bring us any closer to the truth about who we really are, why we exist, and what awaits us in the great beyond?

When I talk about this idea of traveling to another Earth, I am faced with three different types of reactions, vibrating like three electrical poles of the human psyche: the neutral, the negative and the positive. Those to whom I have spoken will, I trust, forgive me for caricaturing them a bit. Those in the neutral camp look at me with surprise, but with no real sparkle in their eye. They are indifferent to questions about the technological feasibility of such a journey, for they simply cannot see the point. They may have loved Star Wars, but feel nothing when watching Interstellar. For them, life is here and now, and the question of humankind's destiny does not extend beyond the life of their children's children. They believe that humans will disappear anyway well before they can travel to another star system. Those in the negative camp fix me with an inquisitive glare: God did not create man for him to reach the heavens through any other vehicle but prayer—we were made to cultivate the land with sweat dripping from our brows, suffer great pain in childbirth and follow His commandments. For them, we are destined for tragedy, and leaving Earth is more likely to destroy us than to save us, as if we were climbing the Tower of Babel itself. Of course, they don't put it like that, but it is from this unconscious conformist source that they draw their instinctive disapproval, even though some may be ardent atheists (the legitimation of any existing order being to my view a psychological trait that is not necessarily rooted in religious dogma).