Hi John,
Thanks for your comment. I tried to specify that I was talking about space exploration for the purposes of finding life/inhabiting planets. This is the thing I dont think we should be spending resources on.
I appreciate your civil clarification, however, I still honestly don't see a reasonable path to your view.
If we find extraterrestrial life, this poses perhaps the greatest opportunity we've ever had to learn more about the limits and fundamentals of life on Earth, as we will finally have a sample size of more than one rise of life in multiple environments.
If we learn to inhabit other planets or moons, this requires perhaps the greatest project in engineering across many specializations ever attempted, constraining us to stricter boundaries than we face on Earth, and thereby inevitably teaching us a lot more about improving life on Earth.
If you can play football against the pros, you can definitely play it against amateurs. Training in the NFL doesn't take away from your ability to play at home, it improves it.