The question is not whether we should go, but will we be able to?

Exploration is an expensive proposition, the Golden Age of Exploration required the new Capitalist enterprises to manage the investment---Columbus was not financed by Queen Isabella's Jewels, she extorted money from rich Jewish merchants (at sword's point, and with the threat of exile or the Inquisition). This was the age of the Merchant Adventurer, the East India Company, and the Conquistadudes. I can't see the blow-dried wimps running Wall Street today taking these kind of chances.

Besides, financing a few ships or setting up a colony was not as big a drain on planetary resources then as systematically exploiting the solar system would be today, or even the nearest stars, tomorrow. And space exploration will require enormous amounts of energy, technology, and natural resources, which we are pissing away at alarming rates today selling each other pizza, computer games and online marketing services.

I hope I'm wrong, and you're right, I want to go, but I'm not very optimistic. The future that we are looking forward to now is probably going to be a lot like the Middle Ages, a decaying, recovering civilization obsessed with its Classical Graeco-Roman past. Modern science will not be driving the exploration of space, it will be old bound volumes of scientific journals being re-copied by scribes onto scrolls of parchment because no one will remember how to make paper.