Jeff Findley wrote:

While this is true, the benefits of sending humans are far greater than
sending "robots". Look at the lunar missions to date. We got back more and
better scientific samples from the manned missions than all of the unmanned
missions combined.

However, the most important scientific data from the moon were
isotope results, and that could have been obtained with sample
return. Indeed, it could have been obtained with that samples
that *were* returned by the Soviets.

Paul