Once upon a time, long long ago, the most powerful dinosaurs got together to consider the proposal of a young pterodactyl. The pterodactyl had come up with the strange proposal that the other dinosaurs should bring her food while she concentrated on devising ways to fly higher.
"Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off.
So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of.
You weren't there. This is not how it happened at all.
The strong and mighty individualist T-Rex was enslaved by the communist mammals. The once idealistic Pterodactyl was forced to evolve into a chicken, bereft of its flight, today kept in captivity by the trillions, bred by robots, for meat and eggs. Their feathers fill our pillows. How ironic that Mankind's dreams are birthed atop their crushed wings.
What gives us the right to land on this comet?
Weren't the dinosaurs there first?
What about our robots? Who fills their pillowcases?
"Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off.
So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of.
And then a comet hit them and they all died.