To my understanding, he was less individually influential in that particular company, which is the reason why I omitted it in my examples. Because in my view, developing an online payment system in 2000 is a far more important project than developing a Proof-of-Stake blockchain with Turing-complete smart contracts in 2022.

But your point stands: he may well go on to do much better things.

And before that, he and his brother built an early precursor to Google Maps.

Preservation of species, provided you accept that as an axiom. Also more immediate benefits such as reusable rockets, affordable satellite Internet etc.

"Space travel" not so much at present. But reduced cost access to space, for sure.

- geolocation (GPS, GLONASS, etc.) - communications (Starlink, Iridium, etc.) - earth sensing (weather, climate, etc.)

All of these are multibillion $ activities that benefit from lowered launch costs.

A couple non contestable points:

1. It has been useful so far as a challenge for technological development that finds other uses on the ground, and this is certainly not about to change;

2. It has been useful so far, in direct applications, and there are still direct uses to be covered (dangerous asteroid avoidance, as an example);

3. It tackles the SPOF we have as a species: living on a single planet;

But the more important one, for me, is one that is contestable. Space faring provides humans with an aspirational goal. Without a long term goal, we are reduced to either an hedonist life, or a never-ending struggle against entropy. We are better, as individuals and as a society, when there is something to long for in the horizon.

NASA Spinoff Technologies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

20 Inventions We Wouldn't Have Without Space Travel (actual post from NASA themselves): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-would...