So, you know, I think the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending, on our planet.

What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre.

You don't go to Gettysburg with a shovel, you don't take belt buckles off the Arizona.

The fact that this chain of life existed [at volcanic vents on the seafloor] in the black cold of the deep sea and was utterly independent of sunlight - previously thought to be the font of all Earth's life - has startling ramifications. If life could flourish there, nurtured by a complex chemical process based on geothermal heat, then life could exist under similar conditions on planets far removed from the nurturing light of our parent star, the Sun.

My final question: Why are we not looking at moving out onto the sea? Why do we have programs to build a habitation on Mars and we have programs to look at colonizing the Moon but we do not have a program looking at how we colonize our own planet, and the technology is at hand!

So, you know, I think the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending, on our planet.

Forever may it remain that way. And may God bless these now-found souls.