The issue is that, presently, all the engineers, and the industrial base, are on Earth. So, space has to value-add to Earth in order to pay their salaries, if a

The issue is that, presently, all the engineers, and the industrial base, are on Earth. So, space has to value-add to Earth in order to pay their salaries, if any effort is going to persist long enough to get to the self-sustaining picture you speak of. Being short-sighted is sometimes correct- you’ve got to cross the foreground to reach the distance.