I would be very surprised if the Gobi Desert, and Antarctica, and any other inhospitable place you care to name, was not colonized and exploited in the distant future. Right now we aren't doing that because we don't need to, but we could.
As for space colonization, there's enough of a romantic interest in it that I wouldn't think that the fact that it doesn't make economic sense would necessarily be a deal killer. There's also the possibility that some group would want to escape Earth at any expense. It didn't make a lot of economic sense for the Puritans to go to America, but they wanted out of the mother country.
As for space colonization, there's enough of a romantic interest in it that I wouldn't think that the fact that it doesn't make economic sense would necessarily be a deal killer. There's also the possibility that some group would want to escape Earth at any expense. It didn't make a lot of economic sense for the Puritans to go to America, but they wanted out of the mother country.