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None of these points solve the underlying economic problem. You would not get any ROI for hundreds of years, at which point the people who made the huge investment are no longer alive, and the companies/nations may not even exist anymore.

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I don't think we need a profit motive. Egyption pyramids would never pay off, and im willing to bet a lot of their construction was just for the cool factor and "look at what we can do collectively because we have so much excess of time and goods!"

History is full of monuments and art who's only purpose was to be cool. And sending humans to another solar system would be a pretty cool monument to humanity.

It is more of a PR problem really to convince people to contribute.

There is no clear ROI for a whole bunch of the research we do. Yes, the system will likely always be a bit biased toward research that does eventually lead to some sort of profitable enterprise, but any self respecting scientist turns a blind eye to that in favor of purely learning new things.

I have no argument against the case that scientists may one day send a probe to travel to other solar systems. Probably it will be unmanned.

This does not extrapolate to a dark forest scenario.

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