@Stranger_On_A_Train has been blowing up ignorance in multiple space-based threads recently, but the following piece was a marvel of writing and realism I wanted to share.
Meanwhile, uncrewed programs have visited every planetary body in the Solar System, have increased our knowledge of planetology and astronomy by orders of magnitude, and have cost a tiny fraction of the crewed program efforts which are largely concerned with just keeping human astronauts alive and marginally functional. The Mars rovers, and especially Curiosity and Perseverance , are marvels of compact and reliable technology, and the Voyager , Galileo , Ulysses , and Cassini-Huygens missions have collected information we could never have achieved with human exploration. I knew crewed exploration gets space enthusiasts’ juices flowing but on a scientific value per dollar basis crewed missions are like owning a yacht; you are basically just throwing bags of money in a pit and setting it on fire.
Stranger
Dammit for being true though.
