Unfortunately, "the basic urge of a species to expand over all available domain" does not lift a thousand ton of people and equipment to an interplanetary orbit. Money does. Well... money might do, we don't know for sure, because it's not tried before at the required scale.
Few will have an issue with a modern "Donner Party," who would buy interplanetary rockets out of their money, hop on them, never to be heard again. (Well, to be fair, if the party contains kids, people would object - consider that a sign of the society's progress since Donner's days.)
What people argue against is those quasi-Donners who demand that Washington DC fund their rockets.
Few will have an issue with a modern "Donner Party," who would buy interplanetary rockets out of their money, hop on them, never to be heard again. (Well, to be fair, if the party contains kids, people would object - consider that a sign of the society's progress since Donner's days.)
What people argue against is those quasi-Donners who demand that Washington DC fund their rockets.