I categorically disagree with the premise that ‘the drive to explore’ is from Star Trek, and to state that authoritatively and leave it at that is, in my opinion, incredibly reductive. We’ve been exploring, as mentioned, since before we were even Homo sapiens, and I think at this point we can relatively confidently call it part of human nature. Human prehistory and (relatively) modern history has several examples of those who effectively blindly threw themselves out into the ocean, in some cases likely on rafts at most, and discovered new places to live as a result. For example:
Homo Erectus made it all the way to the island of Java and then proceeded to cross the Lombok Strait, crossing the Wallace Line and spreading to the island of Flores ~1.2 million years ago, at which point they stayed there, adapted, and became Homo Floresiensis. This crossing likely wasn’t blind, as Mount Rinjani would be visible, but this a distance of ~35km of deep ocean strait water. Treacherous conditions to brave on the promise of a peak in the distance; nonetheless they did it, and likely only with simple rafts. Along those same lines, the migration of Homo Sapiens from Sunda to Sahul ~65,000 years ago is similarly noteworthy, as some of the relevant crossings required would have been, in all likelihood, blind. (Take this with a grain of salt, though. I had a hard time finding an accurate measure of the distance between various island crossings at this period of history. Under perfectly ideal conditions it is possible each step was visible from the last.)
Another example is the fact that humans settled the remote islands of Oceania. Polynesia is particularly noteworthy here for its remoteness, and we managed that ~3000 years ago. This would have involved anywhere from hundreds to thousands of kilometers of open ocean, navigated with no promise of land, much less any indication that there even might be land. For that matter, given the massive nature of the ocean and the tiny size of these islands, how many people ventured off into the ocean, never to return, before we finally hit on success? I would imagine the number is quite high, and from a raw survival perspective, it seems an incomprehensible journey to embark on, but we did it anyways, and I would argue that is indicative of our drive to explore. Why else would you embark on such a trip except to see what may lie hidden, just beyond the horizon? We’re a naturally curious bunch, it’s one of our primary strengths as a species, and I feel that this is just an extension of that inborn curiosity.
Circling back to Star Trek, though, trust me, I’m well aware of the cognitive dissonance of Americans as it relates to expansionism and manifest destiny. Indeed, I did a long-winded breakdown (I’m prone to bloviating tangents, can you tell?) a few weeks ago in a different comment of the way that the American genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas is presented as a foregone conclusion; inevitable by fate and absolved by destiny. It’s an insidious idea, and one which infects a problematically large pool of our media; I won’t argue with you on that.
I also don’t know if it’s fully accurate to describe the society (at least of earth, not necessarily the whole Federation to my, admittedly limited, understanding of the lore) of Star Trek as communist, though it’s probably not inaccurate either. I think it would be more accurate to say that Star Trek depicts a post-scarcity society, and so the lack of certain economic pressures have led to an economic configuration that is hard to translate into modern terms, though I’ll admit that’s splitting hairs. I think it’s probably close enough, and I think it’s very fair to say that they are absolutely socialist. Funny enough (and to your point) I think the meme of “fully automated luxury gay space communism” is actually a pretty good descriptor of the economic configuration of Star Trek. Regardless, I think a lot of Americans miss that fact simply because words like “Socialism” and “Communism” have connotations and associations in America which are fundamentally inaccurate. Most Americans have, frankly, never moved past the red scare in their understanding of socialism more broadly, likely as a consequence of propaganda, so it’s not surprising that they missed the memo here.
The idea that there are no resources we know of in space which are not more easily accessed on earth is just outright untrue, or at least is only true in a narrow sense. My example here would be Helium-3, the ideal fuel for fusion (a difficult choice due to high fusion temperatures, but it has the advantage of not kicking off neutron radiation in the process the way something like Deuterium-Tritium fusion would). Earth contains ~10-50,000 tonnes of feasibly accessible Helium-3, and if we were to move over to fusion power at a large scale at our current rate of power consumption, we would consume that amount of fuel in a matter of years, likely less than a decade. By contrast, the moon contains orders of magnitude more Helium-3 in its regolith, somewhere in the ballpark of 600,000-1,000,000 tonnes, a sufficient quantity to last over a century in the same usage conditions as outlined for Earth. Additionally, both of these sources pale in comparison to the amount available in Sol’s gas giants.
The caveat here is, of course, that it’s unlikely we would switch to fusion entirely in the first place, and that accessing that helium-3 at scale is not easy, no matter where it comes from (though doing so at scale is likely easier on the Moon than it is on Earth). It also ignores ideas like degrowth, energy efficiency improvements, dealing with the drawbacks of alternative fusion fuels, etc. I think, however, that it remains illustrative of the larger point: there are compelling reasons to go to space, even from a raw materials perspective alone.