[JamesP81]

Works for me. What benefits do you anticipate manned exploration will bring?

Short term, the exotic materials needed for a spacecraft will probably have numerous applications outside of space travel. Also, there will likely be innovative methods of generating and storing power which could have practical applications in eventually getting us off of middle eastern oil.

There will be other, as yet unknown long term benefits. However, the risk justifies the potential reward in my mind.

[from occupied ga]

Short term, the exotic materials needed for a spacecraft will probably have numerous applications outside of space travel

Possibly true; however, wouldn't corporations be motivated to produce exotic materials for profit anyway if there were a demonstrated market?

Also, there will likely be innovative methods of generating and storing power which

Power generation and storage is a pretty hot topic for research now. I suspect that people are going as fast as they can in this area already. It's just that I think that anything the government does costs about 100 times as much as private enterprise to reach the same end. We've had robot rovers on Mars now for what 2 years? and the longer they stay there the worse the place seems Cold less than 1% of the air pressure of the earth and all they've found is rocks dirt, dry ice and some water ice. Nobody wants to colonize antartica, and compared to Mars antartica is a tropical paradise with pretty much the same features -except for the dry ice. (And it has air and costs one HELL of a lot less to get there)