I agree, though the fact still remains that most funding will go to novel (and yes, important) scientific research rather than civilization-saving (and way more important) asteroid defense.

On the importance... if human civilization discovers the precise nature of the cosmos and no one is around in 100 years capable of learning about it, does it matter?

Given the current political and social climate I think it's a lot more pragmatic to learn how to organize and preserve our knowledge such that it's as easily decoded and readily available as possible on as large a timescale as we can manage.