In article ,
Bob Noel wrote:

In article ,
AES wrote:

The materials and imaging work could all be done with unmanned
spacecraft.

Of course it could. But for a lot less money?

The way to think of this is that very few scientific experiments or
engineering tests are done anymore using human manipulations, human
observations, or directly human-operated equipment -- EVEN ON EARTH.

That is certainly a way to look at it. It's wrong, but hey....

The reality is that experiments and tests are setup manually. Many are
performed or conducted with computers or machines. But they still
have to setup, debugged, etc etc.

Only because here on Earth human intervention is easy to come by. The
incremental cost of designing experiments that do not require manual
setup, debugging, etc. etc. is one or two orders of magnitude less than
the cost of launching humans along with the experiments.

rg