I worry for humanity in the long term if the only broad direction we can give ourselves are evaluated in the framework of ROI. The very calculation of ROI assumes that there's a known and stable model for predicting both the investment required and a known output. Comparing many ROIs estimates assumes the slate of options covers the gamut of where one should invest - it could work very well for a small or midsize company with limited options going forward, but it feels like a huge fallacy to assume that covers an entire nation - let alone all of mankind.
The best answer I can muster against framing the question in terms of ROI, is that we suspect we could go to the moon and stay there longer than ever before, and that puts us on a path of opening up vastly more unknowns, more rapidly than we would otherwise encounter by staying on the Earth and sending probes with limited sets of instruments, with narrow perceptions into space.
Indeed, why would anyone travel anywhere on Earth even, when it's cheaper to look at pictures of the destination from the internet, or read the guidebook and be done.
You could dismiss this as a purely humanistic argument, but if at least some of our resources aren't allocated to get to places where we simply don't strictly know the outcomes, we will simply will never grow beyond some confines.
The best answer I can muster against framing the question in terms of ROI, is that we suspect we could go to the moon and stay there longer than ever before, and that puts us on a path of opening up vastly more unknowns, more rapidly than we would otherwise encounter by staying on the Earth and sending probes with limited sets of instruments, with narrow perceptions into space.
Indeed, why would anyone travel anywhere on Earth even, when it's cheaper to look at pictures of the destination from the internet, or read the guidebook and be done.
You could dismiss this as a purely humanistic argument, but if at least some of our resources aren't allocated to get to places where we simply don't strictly know the outcomes, we will simply will never grow beyond some confines.