The money spent on Apollo would support a large number of robotic missions, including sample return. And they could visit a bunch of different areas. If we wer

The money spent on Apollo would support a large number of robotic missions, including sample return. And they could visit a bunch of different areas. If we were trying to maximize science per dollar, every manned program would have a lot of robotic preparation. Are we doing that? No. We've spent almost nothing on the Moon and only a tiny, tiny fraction of the manned budget on robots to Mars.