I think this was covered in some old school scifi, maybe Asimov or Clark? I vaguely remember one of their (non-mainline?) novels speculating that civilizations that didn't eventually attempt interstellar travel enter a terminal decline of some sort (on a multi-thousand year scale post industrialization). I really wish I remembered who wrote this.

And if we we are able to harvest resources on system-level scale, we will most definitely attempt to send probes to the nearest systems (which are not all that far).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the book you are referring to should be Isaac Asimov's End of eternity. Oh boy what I would like to give to be able to read it again for the first time.

[–] Alphane_Moon 2 points 2 weeks ago

It may have been End of Eternity.

I actually remember most of End of Eternity reltively well, it was my first Asmov book as a kid. Read it again many times of course. Excellent and unique book.

Although for whatever reason, I can't 100% say if that "space exploration as a global driver of advanced civilization" idea was from End of Eternity.