Concentrate on Earth

I can understand that a scientist wants to proceed with all kinds of tests and missions,¹ but the truth of the matter is that there is nothing out there [in space] that we know of that is of much value. Sure we can point to the global communications improvements attributed to our encounter with space, and that is a wonderful thing. As a matter of fact, it looks to me like it is the only wonderful thing out there. If Mars were made out of solid gold, we couldn't afford to go get it. Let's be honest about what we hope to achieve, or are we supposed to just throw money at it and hope that another wonderful thing appears. The great distance between stars virtually guarantees that we will never visit other stars unless we can learn how to travel at the speed of light; we haven't even come close yet. All of the planets are inhospitable enough that the only way a person could live on them would be in a bubble or space ship, so what is the point. We could get to Mars and maybe even find the remains of a microbe, so that we could know for sure there was life on other planets, but at what cost? If we are smart enough to get there, surely we must be smart enough to know that there is no reason to get there. There are so many problems here on Earth that the money could be used to solve.