I'm pretty sure it was sarcasm...

"Weaponize space, and put NASA under the direction of the DOD. That will give them access to all those tasty discretionary funds that the DOD can play with."

But military ships would become the priority. The technology may or may not be applicable to commercial or exploratory ships. (commercial planes aren't simply bombers with seats and windows.)

That's a precedent you don't want to start. NASA isn't sacred in this respect. Every other government agency will want the same privilege, and will start lobbying directly to the public to give more money to them. This would not be pretty.

Amen to that....

"The only thing I could come up with is that, at some point, spaceflight became Earth's main industry. "

Of course, we had a money-sucking war in that decade, too...

"We need less nationalist posturing and more supra-national cooperation. No one country is going to get us to Mars any time soon. Nor should they IMO."

Remember what the mirror-universe Jonathan Archer said, after boarding the Defiant (where it ended up after disappearing from the Tholian Web)

From a DC Comic from some years back, which I no longer have, but remember well. They do their own take on the end of the five year mission, Enterprise is back in spacedock, with refit and upgrades planned. Captain Will Decker is on the bridge in one of the gray uniforms of Star Trek: The Motion picture. Uhura asks:

"Wait'll they get a load of me...!"

"What's shocking here is that Batman does not call child services immediately."

"... at least then, we'll be exploring the universe."

"...the amount of thrust required would destroy the planet either way."

If we can get through the next hundred or so, and start serious migration across the solar system, complete human self-extinction becomes far less likely...

Of course, the implications of any new physics may not be any better than what we can expect today...

I think that part of that is that to 'colonize' a place (which is not the same as research bases...I cringe when I hear the terms used interchangeably), you have to legally be able to say this piece of land is 'mine.' I don't think such claims, certainly no resource extraction (difficult it would be, anyway) is…

Now you know why, in the old(?) pedal-powered sewing machine sweatshops, it was someone’s duty to cruise up and down the aisles to watch for ‘runaway’ machines…a sign that someone was enjoying their work a little too much.

...Especially under circumstances where it's expected that you'll do a certain amount of grunting, sweating and hard breathing.

Indirectly...yes.