Comment Re:100 million quest to waste 100 million (Score 1) 208
An interesting argument and many good points. I do just want to mention this though:
3. Our atmosphere's depth and it's general makeup needs to be pretty close
Yes, for intelligent life such as we know it, such an atmosphere is almost certainly a requirement. But don't forget that Earth didn't start out with the atmosphere we have today, it was initially very hostile and required a lot of time for life itself to 'Terraform' the Earth to this point.
No, we won't be doing crossword puzzles with the lifeforms we find on such a planet - but it will still be a form of alien life we're very interested in finding. Assuming life is as prevalent as I suspect it may be, we are likely to find many more such examples than we will spacefaring alien races.