The exploration of space is very important to the future of mankind, there are countless resources in the asteroid belt and the outer planets. Even the Moon has many Helium 3 deposits, this could be used by colonists. And the mineral resources in the asteroid belt that would make any miner a trillionaire. This is incalculable mineral wealth, if only we could quickly travel the massive distance from Earth to the belt. It is approximately 179.5 million km from Earth. This is a long-distance unless we had a very powerful Ion drive. But using a gravity drive and folding space would be even faster. But this is a very long time away. Traveling that massive distance would take 249 days 7 hours 20 minutes at 30,000 KM/H. This is the speed of a typical rocket. Effective rocket exhaust speed from v_e = gI_sp: | 2.112×10^8 m/s (meters per second). Still, we have reached Pluto with probes and Mars rovers are touring the Red Planet. So there is hope, the rocket to travel to the Asteroid Belt would only need to burn to speed up and then a deceleration burn to slow down upon arrival. The Voyager 1 probe is currently 14,132,762,131 mi from Earth. A massive distance. Light takes 21 hours to reach the Voyager 1 probe from the Earth.
It is hard to imagine how cold and dark it is that far from Earth. The probe is traveling at 38,000 miles per hour. But this is nothing in the cosmic scale, although it is due to run out of power for the instruments in 2030. The Plutonium in the RTG power units is depleting and is due to continue to run out. Since we know the course of Voyager 1, it could be retrieved with a faster spaceship in the future. This would make a very nice museum piece for future generations. It might be a little beat up after being in deep space for so long and all the impacts from interstellar dust traveling at massive speeds. I hope that civilization still exists in some form in the distant future, and we are not wiped out by a nuclear war or another catastrophe. Like a large asteroid impact with no way to deflect it from its path. That would be very bad for mankind. The end of days hopefully is a very long way away, giving us time to spread out from this planet before a disaster.
That is one hope anyway, the exploration of the planets could provide a second home for humanity among the stars. This way, if the Earth is destroyed, we at least have other homes among the distant stars. And humanity would live on.