re: Robots and the Prime Directive
This looks very much like an earlier discussion!
Now, Park is a scientist and as ER writes, (also very interesting) scientists love nature while engineers love to challenge it.
The Star Trek Prime Directive is (like the UN Treaties) about not interfering with other civilizations. Perhaps going out there to meet them is already interference and thus not desirable. We don't know how dangerous (even unwillingly) they can be. The recent history (witnessed at CE) amply demonstrates what happens if we don't know the other side well enough.