Yes, I completely agree. The space shuttle was a horrible waste of money. So is the space station.

Elon Musk just raised another $1.5B for development of the "Starship" vehicle that will go to Mars. The money was raised by people who want us to go - there is no ROI.

But indeed many of SpaceX's commercial customers are governments that launch satellites, and a small percent of their revenue comes from NASA contracts. They recently won a bid to develop a system for landing on the Moon, but IMO that is a waste of money.

I agree that space exploration should not be publicly funded. That said, I am a huge advocate of going. People don't realize how much it will transform humanity. But I don't want to pay for sports stadiums, or art museums, so why should people pay for space exploration if it is not part of their value system? They shouldn't.