No question that lots of engineering "problems" are lots easier if we could move large masses from A to B relatively quickly.
Goodbye to weightlessness deterioriation over 3+ months. There this week, home next week.
Goodbye to 100% self-contained life support problems, just bring more heavy supplies along like on a sub.
I think that the propulsion solutions wished for are late 2nd half 21st century at the earliest, outside of most everyone here's lifespan. Yah, I'd love us to invent antimatter rockets next year, but we're stuck with chemical, solar thermal, ion, VASIMR, solar sails, M2P2 etc. if we can even build those. Only VASIMR powered by a 10 Megawatt nuke (how likely is THAT in this political climate) offers some modest choice of reasonable payload and travel time improvements.