The implicit argument you are making is that off world colonization or mining is more valuable to our species than finding alien microbes. Space mining is fun

The implicit argument you are making is that off world colonization or mining is more valuable to our species than finding alien microbes. Space mining is fun in sci-fi movies, but it makes very little economic sense. More so when you are talking about lifting resources out of a planet's gravity well. Colonization is interesting, but in the early years it will primarily be focused on science and not building a second place for us to live. Destroying the exact thing we came to study seems dumb.