[mandevil]

By the nature of the beast, a spacecraft with humans is going to have absolutely thunderous mass and energy budgets compared to robotic ones, so any instrument you can put on a robot you can put on a manned mission.

In a similar manner, I would expect any manned mission to Mars to employ a lot of robots: control is much easier when the human making the decisions is a few light seconds away versus 8 light minutes. And if you have the mass (and money) for a manned mission, you can tuck in a bunch of robots for very little extra. So a human mission will always be strictly greater than (in scientific return and cash budget) robot mission.

[vkou]

> By the nature of the beast, a spacecraft with humans is going to have absolutely thunderous mass and energy budgets compared to robotic ones, so any instrument you can put on a robot you can put on a manned mission.

By the nature of the beast, for the cost of a single manned mission, you can launch dozens of expendable, unmanned missions, that can go on for more than a few days. Robots don't need to eat, or breathe, and they don't grouse when you abandon them on an alien surface.