(Yes, there is a lot of controversy over colonialism that I won't get into here.)
I think the Polynesians would like a word. And the "vast economic benefits" are dubious given the total human cost of introducing new diseases into unprepared ecosystems and populations - plus the import of abundant New World silver provided coin for the financing of the long, devastating mercenary wars of the early modern period in Europe and disrupted and destabilized the economy of China.
But in any case, humans had pretty much covered the globe outside Antarctica by the time Columbus set sail, in environments that, harsh as they may be, still provided breathable air, drinkable water and food if you knew how to hunt/scavenge/grow it.
Jokes aside, you are right, of course. We don't have to worry about environmental effects or native populations in the same way when dealing with off-World colonies on sterile worlds. That alone should provide some incentive for commercial exploitation of things like asteroids; at some point Earth will either run out of certain elements, or other factors will result in certain elements being more easily obtainable off-world.
We can see into the space through telescopes, while the seafaring explorers needed to literally go to some place to see what it was like.
Robotics still ain't good enough to make it work alone, we'll need manned missions to establish a manufacturing-based economy in cislunar space, if we want to get anything done this century. Risky, manned missions, that in time will yield good profits.
See [32]-[35]
NASA has a whole page about it now. And here's a rather large paper (I remember reading a shorter version, but with the same pictures inside): https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11871.
Of course, an industry established at a moon settlement could do it for even less. :-P (1/4)