[jessriedel]

Do you mean impacting their life materially? Why would it have to impact their life materially to be valuable? Sharing a joke with a friend at a bar doesn't have material benefit, but it's one of the valuable things in life.

[nicboobees]

If you're going to force people to pay money, through taxes, grants etc, to explore space, then it should have some material benefit.

[jessriedel]

That's a pretty unusual axiom that most people don't subscribe to, and it's orthogonal to disagreements over justifications for involuntary taxes.