<i>it will, in the longer term yield dividends in ways that we probably can not even think of today</i><p>Like what? Trade routes on earth have predictable results - if they found a place to trade or a route to somewhere already existing, that&#x27;s only to be expected.<p>There&#x27;s nothing to trade with in space; there&#x27;s no way we&#x27;re having a colony on Mars making plastic trinkets and rocketing them back to Earth for sale, or buying Coca Cola rocketed from Earth.<p>I grant that you can&#x27;t think of &quot;dividends which we can&#x27;t think of today&quot;, but what categories are you even speculating about? What even might there be?