Somebody born today will almost certainly have a chance to live and work in space. But everything leading up to humans becoming a space-faring civilization will bring many benefits to us on Earth.
The new space race is heating up between countries and companies. NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to get back to the moon by 2024. The Chinese are planning to put up a moon orbiter and their own space station in the next coming years. But the real news is the battle of the billionaires, SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Blue Origin (Jeff Bezos). Their space ambitions are opening a frontier to more companies and people. Jeff Bezos envisions that most heavy industries should move to space and that we stop destroying the Earth for resources.
All the technologies we create for space is directly applicable to help everybody on Earth. On the International Space Station, we are developing accelerated cures for cancer and better fiber optics for medical/telecommunication devices. Spending money on space is a no brainer. Pushing the frontiers is part of the human experience.
The 2020s are going to be an amazing time for space and technology. I only hope that politicians can catch up and use technology to enrich the lives of their fellow citizens.