Space exploration is not, nor is ever likely to be, an immediately profitable economic enterprise.
If thats the basis on which the decisions being made, might as well forget the whole thing.
From a strictly commercial point of view, I can't see how it makes sense to go to the moon or to operate the ISS for the foreseeable future, but a worthwhile endeavor doesn't have to be driven by short term profits.
Short-/long-term, profits have to be there for private companies to get involved. Which is exactly right.
Otherwise it's not a business activity, it's a hobby.
Or a political cheer-leading brouhaha.
The latter two can still be very inspirational, and very fun. But private business will steer well clear of those, for all the right reasons.
The latter two are the domain of the national governments, that pursue them with little care for tangible ROI.
Queue in the motivational speeches about humans being "space faring species", or desire "to do what's hard", or "asteroids are coming, we need to start packing now", etc, etc.
Somewhat interestingly, the most expensive US space program in history wasn't Apollo V, but the fragile Space Shuttle:
To bring this thread back on subject, ISS was the second highest (through the dated 2010 #s, may be the most expensive by now).
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1
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