There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred billion stars. - Carl Sagan

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to

Sakharov in the Cold War year 1968 boldly wrote — in a book published in the West and widely distributed in samizdat in the USSR — “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of peoples by the mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships

With an ambassador, you're supposed to put your best foot forward, and we've been sending mainly crap to space for forty years.