I recently began wondering if a planet's helium supply could be the 'great filter'. As in, if a civilization could stall out due to not having access to enough helium to product the technology to access off-world helium.

This presupposes that there are no alternatives to helium for off world exploration. Would be interesting if warp drives were real but required vast amounts of helium to operate with no substitutions possible.

That sounds more like a tiny filter. :)