Exploring Earth is one thing, exploring space is a much different thing!
There have been many Earth explorers throughout the known History but I have yet to hear or read about any "real" space explorers besides in science fiction like star treck or star wars...
Humans have been trying to explore space for the last 50 years or so and have only managed to get to the moon with real people vs. just machines or probes! IMHO, to make space exploration real and ecomomically feasible, we would need to make significant more progress and new discoveries in new energy systems and we still can't even get away from burning oil here on Earth...
The thing is that I am a realist about these things...and the way that I see it, our debt based socio-economic systems cannot continue to scale as is in the 21st century...
You can imagine and dream all you want, but the natural reality of things is a much different story...
+-wirelessguru1