What about motivating humans to strive for greatness? Being curmudgeon underground mole people sounds a lot less likely to inspire the next generation to strive to excel at STEM education. I think even just trying to colonize mars could inspire tens of millions of the next generation when they look up at the sky. A large majority of those won't go into the space colonization field and most will instead contribute to improving our lot and maybe even attempting to get to a post scarcity society.