I have some hope that the maker/3d printer/home fabrication sector could combine the profitable small startup business that we all seem to love with some progress that will actually provide substantial benefit to humanity.

I think we need a lot more time to figure out how to organize and motivate and fund large projects as well as evolve culturally before any interesting large scale space exploration will be done. SpaceX type experiments might be the first step, even if it's just a data point about what doesn't work.