[JamesP81]

A moonbase would be neat, but everone is ignoring the elephant in the room of deep space interstellar exploration.

Propulsion.

If you want see other stars and other worlds, rockets aren't going to cut it. Neither is any other sublight propulsion system. Research should be into determining if lightspeed can be exceeded and, if it can't, if there's a way around that barrier. We will never leave our solar system until that problem is solved.

[RightWhale]

Research should be into determining if lightspeed can be exceeded

No expansion into interstellar space can exceed the speed of expansion of economic space.