Good riddance, shuttles. I wonder how much exploration and exploitation was held back by 30+ years of being stuck on manned low earth orbit. No mission to Mar

Good riddance, shuttles. I wonder how much exploration and exploitation was held back by 30+ years of being stuck on manned low earth orbit. No mission to Mars? Only a very few asteroid missions (why not dozens)? Only a very few ionic propulsion systems? It would have been nice to have permanent robotic geologic and atmospheric stations throughout the entire solar system by now, rather than playing around in orbit. Want to learn about our planet? Observe what happens to other planets, in detail, when you change the size, composition or temperature, and put the data into a matrix or two to start solving for the variables.