British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes it’s time to get out of the dark and invest more in the exploration of outer space: if there is life out there (which he believes there is), we should make a long-term goal of finding it, Hawking said at NASA’s 50th Anniversary.

The professor compared the situation we’re indulging in with the period before Christopher Columbus’ journey in 1492, when “people might well have argued it was a waste of money to send Columbus on a wild goose chase. Yet the discovery of the new world made profound difference to the old,” said Hawking, joking that without Columbus, “we would not have Big Mac or KFC.”

On a more serious note, Hawking said that a journey into space in the search of extraterrestrial life would have an enormous impact on our lives, and could even possibly determine the future of the human race. But in order to accomplish that, we need better technology and “we should make interstellar travel a long-term aid,” he said. “By long term, I mean over the next 200-500 years.”

“Robotic missions are much cheaper and may provide more scientific information, but they don’t catch the public imagination in the same way, and they don’t spread the human race into space, which I’m arguing should be our long-term strategy,” Hawkins said. “If the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

In economic terms, the international space exploration budget would have to increase 20 times, the equivalent of 0.25 percent of the world’s GPD. “Isn’t our future worth a quarter of a percent?” Hawking wondered, arguing it is a small effort for an essential purpose.

Not only that, but the astrophysicist also offered an explanation for why no extraterrestrial intelligent life form has been discovered so far: either life is too rare in the Universe; or primitive life is common and intelligence is rare; or maybe intelligent life is out there, but it is also capable of creating weapons that leads to their self-destruction.

“Personally, I favor the second possibility – that primitive life is relatively common, but that intelligent life is very rare,” said Hawking, adding: “Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.” However hard to find it may be, we shouldn’t stop looking, Hawking suggested, even though that wouldn’t solve any of our immediate problems. But who knows what perspectives such a discovery may open?