Indeed, those who explore have very different goals from those who settle.
And there are far more people who want to settle than there are who want to explore.
That's perhaps why Zubrin and others use the settler's goals.

But we see today many things going on we should be careful of:

Nobody has settled below water, yet (on Earth). Yet so much remains to be discovered and there are countless unknown lifeforms to be discovered (very much alien-like too!) underneath the ocean. Going under water is far less complicated than going to space.

The Star Trek Producers imagined DS9 (settlers) and then, after (perhaps disappointed) made Voyager (explorers).

And especially, nowadays, space buffs express much more enthusiasm towards Oppy, Spirit and Cassini (explorers) than they do towards the ISS (settlers)....But ISS is a Permanently Manned Space Station !!!!!
ISS exists, it's up there in SPACE.
If there were no government money, there would simply be no space station. And somehow, it must begin somewhere.

Space buffs should try to understand what they really want and place it in the current context:
Sir Arthur, in 1945, understood what the geostationary orbit would do to communication and he imagined huge rotating space station with hundreds of (government hired) operators....Just imagine all those people living for months up there!!! True "astronauts"!!
But today, we have many private companies owning very powerful unmanned communication satellites and making profit...Nobody in space in GEO and no tax money and nobody complaining about it.
A C Clarke is an explorer and he found a way to expand civilization in space but it turned out otherwise.

Today, those who read books about settling in space or on other worlds , mostly have the explorer's mindset, I'm sure.