Hopefully, that is obvious to everyone.
I have always supported the robotic exploration of space, which includes space telescopes, orbiters, landers, fly-bys, sample returns, and Earth satellites.
Also, as long as your HUMAN space explorations and settlements are funded by private investments or private philanthropy, I say, “Explore and settle to your heart's content.”
However, when space investors and philanthropists demand that taxpayers help fund HUMAN adventures, I say “no,” unless there is a clear path to commercial profits.
Besides space tourism, which has already started, there are no commercially viable business plans for space, except maybe for Helium-3, but, since no one has ever built a Helium-3 reactor, who knows?
Re: Barter and trade in 10,000 BC
There was very little.
A couple million people were spread out across Africa, Europe, and Asia. There were no roads, no farming, no domesticated animals (except hunting and guard dogs), no boats, and no wheels. Most people spent their entire lives within 100 miles of their birthplace, because everything they needed to survive was readily at hand - or else they died.
In sharp contrast, small numbers of space settlers will be spread out over hundreds of millions of miles. And, they will be in perpetual need of highly sophisticated equipment - just to sustain their lives. Who is going to make that equipment, except people on Earth? And who is going to pay for that life sustaining equipment, besides people on Earth?
Re: “James Clerk Maxwell in 1859”
I know Maxwell devised all the seminal equations for electromagnetism.
I have no idea what Maxwell did in 1859 to solve the speed of light problem in space travel.
Bottom Line...
I think it is quite possible that the future of human beings will look much like Star Wars and Star Trek.
On the other hand, I think that future is thousands, and probably tens of thousands, of years away.
Maxwell’s original field equations described thing like free energy, stepping from one point to anther anywhere. Among many other things which where tossed aside by Oliver Heaviside except for 4 (of the 200 original equations) which Heaviside changed to vector equations - from those four everything we know about the electromagnetic spectrum descended - both Einstein and Tesla were heavily influenced by Maxwell - Tesla even try to engineer broadcast power Maxwell described.
There are new discoveries which point to an extensive, worldwide, sophisticated civilization prior to 10,000 BC. Gobekli Tepe was built then by someone, then deliberately buried - recent excavations are only partially done on the entire site. Very sophisticated megalithic site. There was likely worldwide trade prior to the comet strike which ended the Younger Dryas. A lot has changed in the origins and history of humanity in the past two decades and the new discoveries seem to be accelerating.