I don’t think its either/or. I think it’s both. But I think we can go much faster, wider and deeper with machines long before significant human settlements. I am also not convinced just having people there makes that much of a difference from a strategic standpoint. Certainly deep space settlements in this solar system and other star systems will be predominantly machines and not humans.
We’ve gone way way way way overboard on machines.
Do we still need them? Sure, but some perspective..., PLEASE!
What do we have to show for it other than pictures and scientific sampling?
We landed on the moon 47 years ago. We haven’t done squat since other than pay for a space station we don’t even claim as our own.
We can’t even get to it on our own.
This is such a major embarrassment.
It looks for all the world like we had a new team of fourth graders take over NASA management every year since 1969.