This is wrong. What's holding us back isn't the "mass of the life support
hardware", but the high cost of launching *anything* into space. When
costs
are in the $10,000 per lb to LEO range, *everything* you launch costs a
lot
of money.

But the point about the fragility of human life and the "added extras"
necessary to keep a human alive in space for any length of time as
opposed to a robot probe is well-taken.

What's needed are new vehicles that bring launch costs down to a reasonable
multiple of the cost of fuel. We're a long way from that. Hopefully
small
companies like Space-X will help the situation, because EELV's and
shuttle
derived launch vehicles aren't going to lower launch costs.

True, but it will -always- be more expensive to keep humans alive in
space than to send robots - drop the price to orbit, you make robots
cheaper to send too. There would have to be a profitable reason that
humans -have- to be there to make it worth sending humans up. Can't
think off hand of anything humans can do in space that a probe can't do
better, and at -zero- risk to human life.

For example, think of how many times more expensive it would have been
to send a manned probe to Titan as opposed to what we did do, send an
unmanned probe. That multiplier effect is going to stay in place no
matter how low you get the price-to-space.