I agree.
It is going to take centuries, and probably millennia, to figure out how to keep human beings alive, let alone comfortable, in deep space, or on other planets or moons.
And that just solves the space travel problems in our own Solar System.
Visiting other star systems means solving the speed of light problem, if that is even possible.
And the final problem - how do you make money once you leave the Earth, and where can you spend it if you do make it?
Economically, going into space is like going back in time to 10,000 BC.
Except in 10,000 BC they had free oxygen, free gravity, free atmospheric pressure, free firewood, free animals for food and clothing, free water, and free nuts and fruit.
“... in 10,000 BC they had free oxygen, free gravity, free atmospheric pressure, free firewood, free animals for food and clothing, free water, and free nuts and fruit.”
and somehow no one leaned how to barter or trade, or worse sell things for markers of value (money); while living in this state of total bliss, all the predator animals and people from other groups studiously avoided conflict because everything essential was plentiful and free.
And that had been going on for the past 250,000-350,000 years of human existence - simply amazing!
“Visiting other star systems means solving the speed of light problem” assuming that there isn’t another way to move across space and time like proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1859 (the father of everything we know today).
Sending robots is a poor way to explore anything - one gains some information, but there is no certainty that the information received is actually correct, since it cannot be verified by an actual observer on the spot. Worse the robot can only report what it has been programmed to report: if, in an extreme example, an alien space craft were to approach the robot, the craft’s existence would go unreported because no one told the robot to be on the look out for alien spaceships. Only a human would think to report it. If robots had been used to explore the continent of Africa - that exploration would still be in its infancy today, and nothing much would be known about it beyond a few miles inland from the coast.
To explore is to take risks. And that cost money. Knowledge is not free.
“Or we can just send out robots. Which is what we’re going to do anyways.”
I agree.
For the price of 1 manned mission to mars with 4 people, we can send a vast army of robots... and year by year the robots get smarter and more capable.
For the time being, the solar system will belong to robots, and the sooner we accept that the faster our robotic progress in developing the resources in the solar system for our use and application to human progress.