Here's a question for ya: What is the space station for?
I will venture to suggest the answer is: "to be there."
Nothing else.
Do not take this to mean that I'm against space exploration. If I were, then I wouldn't mind letting gubmint suck all the oxygen out of it like they do.
To provide an example and keep our minds focused on having people out there, and eventually beyond there. There will probably be some useful research done, but my biggest reason is psychological to keep the fickle public from killing manned space programs altogether. Sure the robotic exploration is fun and the Hubble stuff is interesting, but they alone aren't going to pry us off this rock. The technology spin offs probably would come in time without space as industry knows there's money to be made in such research. The Hubble data probably won't get us to fusion power any quicker than earth based research alone. Our species won't be safe forever bound to one rock. And psychologically mankind does best when there is a dangerous frontier to draw the best out of us. We're running out of frontiers down here.