[unibrowshift9b20]

I don't see how anyone can argue that robots are always better than people in space after they read what exactly they do with these rovers. For goodness sake! If it were me on mars instead of that rover, I could pick up that little rock and show you the side of it so you could decide whether it was a frozen bug or not. I could turn back around and look at my footprint and stick my finger in it and tell you whether or not it was icy. I could dig you a little hole in the ground, instead of turning the rover back and forth for hours on end to make a little rut. These little rovers are certainly good, but they don't replace people.

[SedVictaCatoni]

These little rovers are certainly good, but they don't replace people.

Except that these rovers cost a tiny fraction of the amount that a manned mission would cost. For the projected cost of even the cheapest manned mission to Mars, we could send separate digger-bots, thermometer-bots, frozen-bug-finding bots, and a whole slew of others.