You're still stuck in the mindset that space is a means to an end. If your plan is to exploit space for resources, it’s proving my point. You’re implying space exploration is just a means for resources and not an end unto itself. The fact that you use "may" is implying you're stretching to look for a silver lining to justify the answer.
And at least with current tech, the ARM programs show its too resource intensive to make sense in that regard. In other words, if there are other short-to-medium term problems that are competing for that funding (ie reality), there isn’t really a good case to be made that it’s a good way to spend constrained resources
Nothing is generally an end in itself. You get somewhere and then you see more figurative places to go. But staying home is the best way to never know they exist.
This is a very SV, production-oriented mindset. Everything is a means to an end, to check a box, to move to the next. However, not everyone thinks that way. I'd argue it's not a particularly healthy point of view. If you extend it to its inevitable conclusion, every step in your life is only meaningful because it leads to the next...and ultimately everything culminates in one's death, meaning nothing except your death was of any meaning. I'd encourage you to read Oliver Burkeman's "Four Thousand Weeks" to get a different perspective on how some things are an end to themselves.
I think there's a case to be made that exploration is an end of itself (this is the case made in the movie Interstellar) but that seems to be different that the point the OP made and that you're arguing with resources etc.
And at least with current tech, the ARM programs show its too resource intensive to make sense in that regard. In other words, if there are other short-to-medium term problems that are competing for that funding (ie reality), there isn’t really a good case to be made that it’s a good way to spend constrained resources