the point the op raised is relevant from a historical perspective, as probably the firsts who will populate the moon and Mars will think they are living the future; meawhile people die of dehydration this night
also we barely can't grow lettuce at space and that's missions at millions of USD... i think a society which is well stablished and care for everyone's welfare is more likely to collaborate and build technology to get away from the solar system than our shit greed of today, despite the great amount of good and intelligent people who sometimes can't even do stuff because academia conflict etc.
Perhaps it’s pessimistic, but I have little faith that even a single country will eradicate suffering within its own borders, let alone all countries coming together to cooperate and eliminate it globally. If we wait until all earthly problems are solved before going into space, we’ll simply never go to space. At some point something will happen that will stop launches entirely, we’ll lose our institutional knowledge of rocketry and spaceflight, and putting things in orbit (let alone people on the moon) will become an impossibility again.
settlement on Mars/Moon is a multi-disciplinary act! figuring out efficient and safe geothermal or nuclear or whatever technology to improve Earth's life, definitely translates to future settlements... so why not do it here? it isn't about eradicating suffering, as it's part of the existence (probably) but it's about providing a decent life for everyone
(I assume, but have no hard numbers, that it's also cheaper to send hydroponic systems to Mars than to ship food regularly: conditional on that, also to ship an autonomous food factory).
Going to Mars long term also requires the shipping cost to space is reduced so much that the cost to LEO is competitive with current airline rates, so when I say "drop an autonomous pod anywhere" I really do mean anywhere — Sudan, Malawi, Nepal, Everest, Antarctica, are all much easier than Olympus Mons.
Human spaceflight in the US today is 100% driven by the desire to militarize space.
See Gateway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Gateway
This is all about supporting military habitation of the moon.
This reply seems to assume the argument is against space exploration in total, when it's actually against human space travel.
The idea that inter-stellar human space flight should be funded is pretty far out there...