"What are humans looking for when it's about exploring space? Adam, Nick, LJK raise the question.
We're after another world like Earth, we're after life elsewhere in the Universe, we're even after intelligent life elsewhere, we're after beings we can communicate with. Or at least, that's what the scientific community is telling us and that's what the public wants to find. "

Well, a sense of wonder can be gotten from looking at pond water with a microscope. The public wants our future, our future lies in Space.
We don't want to be confined to a world which is smaller than a puddle of water in the sea of this universe.
We want to go into space because we do not live in reality which confines us. If it were actually impossible to go into Space we would need to limit our aspiration to merely looking at the universe.
Really, what currently is exciting to scientific interest is the vast unexplored oceans, we currently have about 7 manned vehicles vehicle capable of reach this unexplored region.
But getting back to the topic of space exploration. This in a infinite area of exploration, which has the main barrier being the high cost of leaving our gravity well. High cost is all about markets and markets are really merely a very direct expression of want people want. Money is Power, Power is collective will of people, and how money is spent is a good indication of the will of people.
It costs a lot energy to lift a human out of this gravity well, but just in terms of energy costs, I would guess that the average American consumes more energy in a typical day than the energy needed to lift the mass of a human out of this gravity. But the only way to currently get humans out of this gravity well is with rockets. Rockets are an inefficent way to move anything. If rockets instead, were an efficent way to move things, trains could be powered by rockets. If rockets could expell propellent at say 1/2 the speed of light, they would be efficent [and then maybe these rockets could be used to power trains].
So a rocket efficency is dependent on the speed the rocket can expell mass and pushing mass faster requires more energy per mass acelerated. Presently the cheapest way to get into orbit, uses chemical energy rockets.
Chemical rockets which get into orbit or beyond have around 90% of there entire mass being the chemical fuel needed to power the rocket- if you include the tankage and plumbing needed to deliver the fuel you get a higher percentage. Most of the energy expended by these rockets is the energy needed to lift the mass of the rocket's fuel.
For instance: Ariane 5: gross liftoff mass: 767,000 kg. payload is varies but say around 20,000 kg, so it's less than 5%, if going to GEO than payload to GTO is less than 10,000 kg- basically 10,000 kg of fuel is needed to lift the payload higher than LEO. If you had around 30,000 kg of fuel in LEO, the Ariane 5 could get 20,000 of payload to GEO (which is beyond GTO], in other words more than double [perhaps as much as tripling] Ariane 5 payload to GEO. Or in other words doubling Ariane 5 lift capacity, or making a Soyoz lift as much to GEO as Ariane 5 currently lifts.
Anyways rockets are inefficent and comsume large amounts of chemical fuel, but even with this inefficency, the cost to lift mass to orbit can be made far cheaper than it is currently. You can take a rocket which can be manufactured and launched within short time period, and all it does is launch say 2 tons payload to LEO and launchs every week or less, the cost of this launch could lowered to so that at $1000 per kg of payload, it could be profitable. Now, it would more profitable if it was a rocket capable of lifting 4 tons payload at $1000 per kg to LEO, and launch every week or less [giving over 200 tonnes per year], but this is details. The main issue here is market, not the friggin technology. With a robust market, space launch could even get down to $500 per kg to LEO. And this environment a ticket to orbit could be 100k, and many more people will buy a ticket orbit if cost were 10-50 times cheaper than they are now. More going, more market, and more general population interest, because it's not so friggin slow, exclusive, and plain boring to the general population as it is now.
With enough market involvement, space travel become about as expensive as cruise ship travel- and certainly more exciting.