A blog entry by Mathew, one of my colleagues as a Cambridge CS undergraduate, speaks for me too (except for the bit about visiting Cape Canaveral which I've never done, but want to)

Anyway the Full text is here and this seems like the best extract

Sure, I want to travel Earth too. I'd like to go deep sea diving, visit Tokyo, see the Grand Canyon...but there are plenty of other people doing those things. They're almost mundane. And there's something so appealing about the cold, unimaginable vastness of space--it's such a challenge even to truly comprehend it, far less explore it.

This is why alien abduction stories are stupid: The aliens don't need to abduct people against their will. Plenty of us would go willingly, even if some unpleasant medical procedures were part of the deal. I once explained to my ex that if I had the chance to go travel on an interstellar spacecraft and see the universe, on the condition that I could never return to Earth, I'd go. She couldn't understand how I could say that, and I couldn't understand how anyone could turn down that kind of offer.

He may have had the same discussion again, but I remember the "if you could leave the earth but never return would you" argument in a pub one evening. I was one of those like Mathew who would take that option immediately without a second thought, and despite being older and (possibly) wiser I still say the same thing.

Beam Me Up

DD