No space travel is a massive massive waste of time. The closest planetary body that is even of any interest is Mars and even that's so far away that to travel there would take a massive mission.
Yes technology has filtered down gradually from the space race but the reality is a lot of what made the early space race possible was a direct result of war and military research made during WWII. Far more tech comes from military applications than it does from space so to keep wasting cash on travelling in to outer space or for that matter doing anything in space just purely for the possible tech that could be developed from it is well a bit stupid.
Yes close Earth space stuff is important, at least from the point of view of telecommuications, and near Earth energy supply and possible resolution to extinction event space collisions but traveling to distance planets is such a mind bursting waste of time. When I read or hear some news about how scientists have found a world that they think is a bit like ours 25 light years from here the response is so bloody what? Even if it had life and even if we could communicate it would take 25 years just to get a radio message to them, traveling to them would be a pipe dream.
Really how much do SETI spend a year on looking for life in the universe? I dunno but I am willing to bet it is a lot. Now what if they got that message tomorrow. That message from a life form close to our level of tech but living on a planet 4 light years away? How would that change your life, would it change your life or is it entirely possible that it would have no effect whatsoever for pretty much every person on the planet bar the religious creationist nut bars?
