Could well be needed. It's not fully understood, but human space travel - even to the surface of relatively nearby Mars - might not even be viable. Aside from the radiation issue after leaving the Earth's magnetosphere, zero gravity changes the body. When astronauts land they're carefully assisted to get out and placed onto soft bedding. From Chris Hadfield's autobiography, merely standing up after coming home from a few weeks/couple months on the ISS was like standing on a bed of needles. It took about 2 weeks to be able to move around again, which makes me wonder how we'll ever get people on the surface of Mars. The Moon is pretty easy in comparison, much lower gravity and not that far away.

Did anyone else have the thought, we will have to do this just to survive on earth soon?

Can we name one Khan?

Yeah, that'll be cute. By the time they figure out all the best relevant tweaks to the DNA, they'll end up with a form of 'human' that won't be able to reproduce with natural humans. Which means it won't be the same species anymore, it won't be human.

Edit: They ought to be thinking more like genetically modifying plant foods to be more capable of growing on Mars. Tweaking human DNA doesn't change the fact that humans need food, and there ain't exactly apples and corn growing on Mars ya know.

This is concerningly similar to All Tomorrows.

"would target genes advantageous for space"

I am afraid it is only this simple in computer games

Do you want real life Exo Squad? Because this is how you get Exo Squad.

Joking aside, while this may be faster, I think it would safer in the long run to keep focusing on actually getting to space and achieving faster than rockwt/thruster propulsion and let evolution work with that.

Ousters when?

Hey, all we need is flying combat exoskeletons and we can have real life Exo-Squad!