Anytime you propose reaching for the stars, some liberals start whining about the "waste" of resources because somewhere there's inevitably a wino lying in his own vomit. The implication, of course, is that every mundane want, need, or manufactured inequity on terra firma should be nurtured with OPM before pursuing anything like the wonderment of technology.
Plus a lot of that whining is a smokescreen for the fact that they hate how space exploration underscores just how very unequal human societies are. Ours literally sends people to walk on the moon, whereas much of the world is virtually indistinguishable from how it was 1,000 years ago.