The key phrase in this statement is "for humanity", not "for an individual".
Automobiles, while useful, are mostly a solved technology (unless you're buying Tesla or some other prototype, pushing-the-envelope model). Buying another one - or for that matter, making another typical automobile - has negligible marginal impact on advancement of technology. Taking humans to the Moon again - first time in 45 years - will have a huge impact both on our technological capacity as a species[0] and on the public's willingness to pursue those advancements.
Also, spaceflight is an immature area of knowledge, so one could argue that in general, each dollar put in it has more marginal benefit than the same dollar put into buying typical consumer goods.
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[0] - Which is arguably not ever-increasing; we've pretty much lost the manned deep spaceflight capabilities with the end of Apollo program. There are practical details we need to rediscover, and those details will be important in efforts to put humans on Mars and elsewhere in the Solar System.
Automobiles, while useful, are mostly a solved technology (unless you're buying Tesla or some other prototype, pushing-the-envelope model). Buying another one - or for that matter, making another typical automobile - has negligible marginal impact on advancement of technology. Taking humans to the Moon again - first time in 45 years - will have a huge impact both on our technological capacity as a species[0] and on the public's willingness to pursue those advancements.
Also, spaceflight is an immature area of knowledge, so one could argue that in general, each dollar put in it has more marginal benefit than the same dollar put into buying typical consumer goods.
--
[0] - Which is arguably not ever-increasing; we've pretty much lost the manned deep spaceflight capabilities with the end of Apollo program. There are practical details we need to rediscover, and those details will be important in efforts to put humans on Mars and elsewhere in the Solar System.