> Space probes may be cheap but they are slooooowwww If we spent as much on a space probe (or probes) as on a manned mission, I imagine there would be enough w

> Space probes may be cheap but they are slooooowwww If we spent as much on a space probe (or probes) as on a manned mission, I imagine there would be enough weight capacity to make the unmanned rover (or rovers) faster, if that was considered worthwhile. Also consider that the total distance traveled by a unmanned rover over the course of the mission already exceeds that of manned missions. Wikipedia links to a nice chart from NASA [1]. Distance traveled and speed to travel that distance isn't necessarily connected to the value of a rover. As to "all that new technology [we gain from manned exploration] would probably make it easier to later send rovers all over the solar system", frankly, we could just develop the new tech for unmanned exploration directly. Manned missions primarily serve as PR, except when we actually need careful manipulation, like repairing the Hubble, something that has almost continuously been pushed off to the point where it likely makes sense just to replace it. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Roving_Vehicle#/media/File:Driving_Distances_on_Mars_and_the_Moon.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Roving_Vehicle#/media/Fi...