response to a text - nasa launches first earth-like hunting aircraft

For me one part of this question is already answered. I have no doubt that there are other inhabitable planets in the universe. Accepting the theory that the universe has no end I come to the conclusion that in an endless space there has to be an unlimited amount of possibilities. These possibilities will then have to be repeated an endless amount of times. “That means there is an endless amount of planets that are exactly the same as Earth?” I ask myself. It seems like a ridiculous and absurd thought and even though these planets would be unthinkably distant from each other it makes sense to me. I can find sense in this thought as long as I rely on the theory of the universe being endless. Sadly even this is quite unprovable. I have no idea how scientists came to this conclusion but it seems like a wild assumption to make when we can’t even properly see out of our own solar system. With the launch of the Kepler craft, however there could be factual evidence of Earth-like planet. It would no longer be a matter of theories but facts.

        The Kepler project cost 591 million dollars. The expected result is a finding of planets similar to Earth in size. If there is life on one of these planets the telescope won’t be able to tell. Neither will the telescope be able to find out whether there is water on the planet. For that purpose more investigations and researches will have to be financed. The stars that will be observed have a distance of 100 to a few thousand light years. The closest star observed is then 950,000,000,000,000 kilometres far. Even at the fastest reachable speeds it would still take thousands of years to get there.

I stop and wonder: “Why?” What good will the finding of an Earth-like planet give us? Of course we want to know what is around us but knowledge that can’t be put to practical use is by me useless knowledge. The money that was spent on this project could have been used for other purposes. 600 million dollars would have fed a lot of starving mouths, improved education standards in countries of need and in general made the world around us a tiny bit better.

Investing into scientific research is in my opinion important. However only when there is a beneficial outcome in store. With the Kepler project I just don’t see how the findings will give us any needed knowledge.