What is the reason man wants to colonize Mars, the Moon, or any planet?

As it was explained to me, any "entity" is either expanding or contracting. Nothing is ever static. The entity known as "humanity" is therefore either expanding or contracting. I prefer expanding, personally. If we are to continue to expand, then sooner or later, we have to colonize space. (The final frontier).
Cheers

quote
"As it was explained to me, any "entity" is either expanding or contracting . Nothing is ever static"
unquote

It can be just oscillating ...so we'd better staying where we are !!!

Why did we humans need to leave Africa, and populate the planet?
It's the same reason.

To learn how to do it. Once Earth becomes uninhabitable, then it will be too late.

Curiosity, mainly. Mining, maybe. Or low-gravity manufacturing. Or jumping-off sites to get to other places farther out. A resort on a moon of Jupiter or Saturn would be cool. The 5-mile deep canyons on Mars would be good tourist attractions. Or retirement communities or timeshares.

So when we poison the earth we have a place to stay.

Explore. No reasonable person thinks that we are going to colonize any of those places. Maybe some sort of base, but not any serious population.

Media induced hype.

Just ask yourself this:if the average person wasn't exposed to nonsense about "colonizing space", would they even be the least bit interested? Of course not. We are busy, and life is short. There are more immediate and important things to consider.

But the media, as puppet of "the system" constantly sounds off about it. It's a good counterpoint to the usual run of sleaze, violence and impending doom that makes up 99.9% of "the news", so it attracts viewers/clicks, and thus sells merchandise or services.

And what "the people" are told they want, and are told often enough, soon becomes what "man" wants.

Try talking about "species" to the average scientifically illiterate urbanite and see how far you get. The reasons space colonization is being flogged to us, are not of the noble kind.