Well, you and I are traveling on a WorldShip through space with no end in sight and we probably won't survive to see the end of the journey, but we haven't gotten off (yet). And I have been planning things for a while for the benefit of my descendants, the immediate ones who probably won't see the end of the journey either, Virgin Galactic aside. But just knowing I am doing something for my future descendants is a rewarding goal for me.

I agree that artificial probes will do a better job of exploring the stars, but The Project is about a focused goal for humanity for the ages. With the coming changes I see in the human species, perhaps it would be good if we "kept" an "original" sample of ourselves preserved somewhere off our Spaceship Earth.