There’s a lot of talk about traveling to space, exploring the stars, visiting other planets. But really, who would want us to stop by their world?

Imagine the day we finally identify a place suitable for visitation. It has water, air, ground, gravity, etc. It has stuff to eat. Large plantain looking vegetables the size of an SUV. They taste like sour nacho cheese but won’t make your intestines explode.

It’s a wonderful planet.

For the sake of ease we’ll call it Nectar 9.

Initially, Nectar 9 fires everybody’s imaginations.

Mars was ok, but this one is so much better. I mean, who wants to spend all that time traveling to a barren freezing rock? And sure they found some freezing water and a few petrified molecules there, but really who cares?

You have to basically pack your entire living room to stay on Mars and you spend the whole time watching reruns indoors wondering why you came this far in the first place.

On Nectar 9 you can really settle in, wears shorts and flip flops, and take deep unfiltered breaths of alien air. It’ll be great, the talk of our planet for several years straight. But I promise you, Nectar 9 will get old and maybe even lamely uncool. Not only that, it’ll probably become that way quite quickly.

Why bother going to Nectar 9 anyhow? All your problems are just going to follow you there. Let’s be honest, you never knew how to manage your money on Earth. You spent too much on stuff you didn’t need, you never learned valuable lessons about budgeting and saving, you took on debt and lived above your means.

Nectar 9 might feel like a chance to start afresh, but you’re still you and a change of locale can only go so far. If you ended up on Nectar 9 you’d simply have the dubious distinction of humanity’s first extraterrestrial bankruptcy. If only you’d stopped that darned habit of a daily frappacinos and copious subscriptions you never use. It would have been better to work with a financial coach instead of traveling to another galaxy.

So space travel, sadly, will be a huge letdown. It’ll leave us all so bored whilst overstimulated. The more planets we visit the bigger of a snooze it’ll become. As our footprints spread wider across the universe, it’ll just feel more and more empty.

But it’ll be even worse for the local people humans visit. Imagine the folks living on Nectar 9 right now. If you sat them down and gave a brief description of Earth-based humans, is this a group of people you’d EVER want to come to your planet?!

Absolutely not!

“You seem like a cute species”, they’d say. But you probably need to spend time working on yourself before you get into a relationship with another planets inhabitants. If you thought tourists in Thailand were obnoxious, we can only imagine the brazen shenanigans humans would try to pull whilst on holiday at Nectar 9.

“We’re all filled up on Nectar 9”, they’d say.

No vacancy! Please, please don’t trouble yourselves. Stay home!

Privately they’d discuss among themselves the disadvantages of letting war-prone, greedy, sex-crazed, disease ridden humans visiting their pristine forests, beaches, cities and libraries.

So the humans have science and advanced technology, who cares? They’re insufferable. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze. Honestly, we’d greatly prefer if you wouldn’t come visit us on Nectar 9 until you’ve worked out some of your crazy side.

Humans are high on aspirations and low on self-awareness. Read the room, no alien planets wants your drama right now. Maybe we could take all that money for space technology development and redirect it towards getting humanity into therapy for our deep seated ego issues and lack of self control.

Otherwise, we’d just be better off staying at home.