I think in the 50 years, we've found it's more cost effective with a better return on value (and ultimately safer for all humans involved) to just shoot a robot

I think in the 50 years, we've found it's more cost effective with a better return on value (and ultimately safer for all humans involved) to just shoot a robot into space equipped with a camera. The whole Red Scare/Space Domination rhetoric was a Big Thing. The United States was sure that: sending something into space meant you could hit a target anywhere else in the world (with quite a bit of validation). If you do remember, it was because we essentially stole tech/scientists (willingly, or at least intelligently from a political and "i'm going to not be locked up in the gulag" point of view) from the Nazis at the end of the WWII that we were even able to get into space. It was a craaaaaazy time.