HOPE will take us to the stars, imho
Hoping that something will come up to break the fetters of clay that constrain us, but one cannot, as a scientist have FAITH that a preconceived idea WILL work.
Most ideas fail, but from the accumulated ruins of failed ideas we build a hilltop fort (a middle-eastern Tel) from which we CAN see the horizon.
Then we ask, "What is beyond the horizon?"