The Space Race (to the moon) is over.
We won.
Men are no longer needed in space, and robots can do 10 times as much for one tenth the price. Consider 500 robotic missions to Mars over 25 years, each building on the knowledge and technology from those that preceded it. Compared to efforts to send a couple men to Mars, which might happen in 25 years, learn virtually nothing, possibly fail tragically, and cost 10x as much.
Human beings in space makes a gripping story. It’s about marketing.
That is just ignorant. A robot can only answer questions it was designed to answer when it was designed years before on earth. As soon as it comes across something unexpected it is completely worthless.
And we do good to get a mission in every couple of years, and most of the time it ends up being longer than that. That means 12 missions in 25 years. In no way would 12 robotic missions compare to one manned mission.
But you don't need to worry: NASA will never go anywhere again. They are a make-work federal bureaucracy, ever notice how they never plan to get anywhere quicker than the next couple of administrations? That pretty much guarantees anything initiated will be canceled and they know it.
Bolden is absolutely worthless, but he is more honest than most administrators in that he admits NASA will never do anything truly worthwhile again. We don't need to spend .5% of the budget to send probes to Mars. A university could do it (actually, a university does do the actual spacecraft part of it) for a lot less and just contract the launch out.