Access to space has stagnated over the past several decades for several reasons. First, during the cold war building an orbital launcher was too fraught with geopolitical weight because it was too similar to building an ICBM. Moreover, the cold war (aside from perhaps the Apollo project) sucked most of the aerospace engineering talent into working on defense projects. Second, traditionally all launch vehicles have been government funded, with all of the bureaucracy and inefficiency that that entails. In the US government contracted launch vehicle development programs use cost plus contracts which actively discourage cost reductions since that would lower total revenues and profit margins. Third, for these reasons and others almost all individuals who have been to space have done so as part of government manned spaceflight programs.

This has created the following situation: overly expensive launch vehicles and a dearth of private manned spaceflight possibilities. This both hampers mankind's efforts in space (since launch is more expensive than it should be) and creates several business opportunities. By building next generation launch vehicles without all the bloat of traditional government procurement processes it's possible to run programs leaner and faster and to produce more cost effective launch vehicles. SpaceX has already proved this with the Falcon 9. If your goals are altruistic: to further mankind's abilities to explore and colonize space, then that's an end in itself. If your goals are profit driven then that's an opportunity to capture a good chunk of the multi-billion dollar per year international satellite launch market. Also, by lowering launch costs, increasing reliability, and reducing operational overhead it becomes possible to cater to the largely untapped space tourism business. More so, it's also possible to build specialized sub-orbital vehicles to cater to the sub-orbital space tourism market.

Today there is an enormous gap between what the market wants and what traditional government directed launch services are capable of providing. It's already been proven possible to lower launch costs below even what the Chinese government is capable of. Further innovation will likely lower those costs even more, fueling a boom in satellite launch and private manned spaceflight.

Few other industries have had such seemingly low hanging fruit in terms of such a stark difference between what was technologically possible and what was the state of the industry. Nanotech is still working through the early stages and defining the fundamentals, it is nowhere near prime time. Cold fusion is probably not even physically possible, given the scientific evidence. Other technologies too have their downsides.

Also, spaceflight has an enormous benefit to mankind. Satellites help us observe and understand our world while also linking it together with lines of communication and navigation. Increasing our capabilities in space also increases our abilities to defend ourselves from preventable natural disasters such as asteroid impacts. And ultimately colonizing space represents the future of mankind, we will not be tied to one planet for all eternity.