[eru]

> You get extremely diminishing returns with probes. There's only so much you can do from orbit. Rovers are substantially more useful, but are extremely expensive.

I was talking about anything you can do without humans. Not just probes that stay in space.

> A big cost with rovers is the R&D and one-off manufacturing of the rover itself. With humans you have the added cost of life support, but 0 cost in manufacturing and development.

You could mass produce rovers.

The human life support is gonna be extremely expensive. So it's a bit silly to say that other than that, humans have 0 cost.

Rovers have the same '0 cost' component, from the humans remotely given them commands and guidance from earth.