There's not really a conflict between land- and space-based telescopes. They have very different capabilities. There are things you can only do from space, and

There's not really a conflict between land- and space-based telescopes. They have very different capabilities. There are things you can only do from space, and things you can only do from the ground. To give you an example, using adaptive optics, you can get higher resolution on small fields of view from the ground. That's because you can build much larger telescopes on the ground, which therefore have a smaller diffraction limit, and you can use adaptive optics to correct for the atmosphere in a small field of view. However, if you want high resolution over a large field of view, you have to go to space. Other advantages of space: extremely stable calibration (because you can control conditions more precisely, and because there's no atmosphere) and ability to view parts of the spectrum that are unavailable from the ground. Other advantages of ground-based telescopes: larger and heavier instruments, ability to do repairs and upgrades. Robots vs. manned spaceflight is much simpler. Robots will almost always give you more science return for the same price. I still think manned spaceflight should be pursued, but for other reasons (it's cool, and we should be pushing the envelope of what's possible).