You're absolutely right. I just find it unfortunate that the spirit of manned spaceflight will shift from an exploratory, scientific nature to a profit-based, corporation-driven endeavor.
Once the technology is routine, someone else might use it to explore. But if you think about it, "exploration" was just window dressing on the Apollo missions. Those were about the cold war in terms of funding and public support. Even "Apollo 13" the film admitted this. Once we had beaten the USSR, people didn't want their tax dollars spent to keep going back. Columbus found the Caribbean while trying to forge a shorter trade route to India on behalf of the Spanish crown. It's all about money and power. It's ALWAYS been about money and power.
I wasn't alive yet during the cold war, and am admittedly romanticizing our space race... it was indeed an arms race, first and foremost. Spot on again, AdMan.