Interesting thoughts, and they have some merit, although I'm not sure it's that simple. Our own space exploration has (at least until recently) not been economically motivated, but scientifically and politically motivated. Companies do make money off of the work they do for government space programs, but nobody has made one penny off of actually undertaking space exploration. There have, of course, been returns to society in the form of "spin-offs," but that's an indirect benefit.

I think it likely that if any civilization ever does become interstellar-spacefaring, it will be an incremental process such as we've seen here in our own solar system. First we took small steps into space, then to our moon, then to other nearby planets, and so on. These steps were not at all economically motivated. Yet each step makes possible a larger step, and now we're flying all over the solar system and talking about moon and Mars colonies (although we haven't gotten there yet). Eventually, opportunities may arise to make money off this, but always, the outward push is scientific and political, not economic.

If we ever send a group of people out of the solar system, that's how it will likely happen. And it will be costly, but we'll be willing to bear the cost, because . . . well . . . wow!

Having said all that, manned space travel is hard, and manned interstellar travel incredibly hard, so I'm rather with you. I doubt it's actually being done by anyone. It would be fun to be proven wrong, though!