In article ,
Greg Kuperberg wrote:
No they are completely different, and not only in cost...
...unmanned spaceflight is much more useful...

Depends on what you want to do. If all you want to do is snap pictures
from afar, that's true. When it comes to interacting with a planetary
surface, Apollo cost roughly 10x what the contemporary unmanned programs
cost, and unquestionably yielded vastly more than 10x the results.

Of course, you can argue at great length about how that isn't really
representative, and anyway technology has changed so much that the lessons
of the past no longer apply (riiiiight...). But that *is* the one case
where we tried both on the same target with similar levels of technology,
and what we found was that manned exploration works lots better, if you
can afford it.

And that's what the public
doesn't realize. Most people think that they are about equivalent.

No, most people are at least vaguely aware that manned can accomplish far
more per dollar, if you want results badly enough to pay for its much
larger minimum mission size. As the Principal Investigator for the MER
rovers put it: "The rovers will be able to do in a day what a skilled
field geologist can do in 30 seconds."
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