Manned or robotic missions?

I must say that the latest Mars missions have shown the viability of robotic missions. They can persist for a long time, require no habitat and can do most anything we can do ourselves. Plus the cost is much less and more missions can be performed to more places with these savings. It would be possible to finance a complete set of missions to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn for the cost of one manned mission to Mars. Seems to me that we do not need to place our feet on Mars just so we can say we have. Technology will come and make it much more feasible to send people to Mars. But right now, our technology is really quite primitive for this type of mission.
Now, going back to the Moon. Why, what can we learn that we can not learn with a probe. It is a long time before we can place a colony on the Moon. Maybe never, if we don't come up with some new ways of surviving up there is brutal space. We can not shield everyone from a Solar Flare so they would always be in danger of getting irradiated.
I feel that we should do more manned missions, but I think these can wait until we have better methods to achieve them. :S

Indeed Floyd... I think we need more "DOWN TO EARTH" research, development and testing before we send another Man/Woman to The Moon or Mars...

Robotics have proven to be a cheaper alternative, and most certainly they do not suffer from our HUMAN limitations... (of course Humans are way more resourceful, but that's a whole other story...)

Also, in the case a mission turns out bad in Mid-Space, well, I much rather see us losing a robot than a Human being...


As a side question: does anybody know if we were to get slammed by a Major Solar Flare here on Earth, what would happen to anybody that is in orbit in the ISS for an extended period of time? is it properly shielded against such strong radiation shower?



Clear skies, mis amigos! 8)

I think the only reason we needed space exploration in the first place was to create jobs. If we could just get all these "engineers" to pick fruit and vegetables we wouldn't even need a space program! and that would also help cure the immigration problem at the same time!