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A lot of the points you made seem to be refuted by NASA's own experience.

Not to be too terribly hard on you, but the points that you are (not) making are refuted by your ignorance.

NASA recently overhauled the Columbia to eliminate a lot of instrumentation and other things that were no longer needed -- the orbiters have become so automated that the human contribution to flying them has been greatly reduced.

Nope. The shuttle avionics were upgraded to a more reliable and more flight-friendly digital system. No instruments were removed, in fact capability was added to the system. The new avionics weigh a great deal less and make more room up on the flight deck.

And the capability of robotics may be overestimated in many cases...

As I said, you can't plan space missions on technology that is speculative in the extreme. Robots have their uses in space - Pathfinder's little Soujourner robot taught us a lot about Mars in a very short period of time, and then surprised everyone by lasting much longer than expected. It was a coup for JPL and NASA. Humans in place on Mars would have done a lot more, but we can't go there yet. The robots in this case bridged the gap for work people will do in the future.

Despite the need for "human flexibility," it should also be noted that the human element is also the source of most errors in any complex process.

Yes, humans are error-prone. Especially when they build things like robots and spacecraft. The difference is, when we make mistakes, if they don't kill us, we can correct ourselves. Robots and automation, even self-correcting ones, tend to ride themselves down to destruction, lacking discernment to avoid pitfalls outside their data set. To make a robot that approaches the self-correction ability of humans, you'd essentially have to create a fake human, in a sense. Perhaps not in form, but in function. I expect that to occur someday, but it's not on the near horizon. Waiting for such advancement is a rather timid way to learn about the universe.

One thing I am quite sure of is that there is no need to have more than 3-4 crew members on any of these shuttle flights.

Here's where I agree with you somewhat: The Shuttle is overly-complex. It is a system that requires more tending than is desirable, and does require a lot of crew to accomplish its tasks.

But it is what we have to work with. It was revolutionary at its birth, and it is still the only ship that can do what it does, period. The test of American leadership in space is how we progress to a less-complex but capable next-generation system. I look forward to that.

If I am ignorant about anything related to the Columbia overhaul, it's because I was misled by what I heard from NASA people over the last few days.

My understanding was that the Columbia was actually the most "advanced" of all the shuttle orbiters as a stand-alone vehicle because it was designed at a time when humans were expected to be more involved in its operation. As a result of the overhaul, NASA ended up removed about 1,200 pounds of instrumentation, wiring, etc. that was no longer needed because more of these functions are now done either automatically or from the ground.

As I've said before, from a manned flight perspective the U.S. isn't "exploring" at all. Columbus was an explorer -- if one or more of his ships sank, he was sh!t out of luck. The lunar astronauts were explorers -- if the lunar module broke down, there was no contingency plan to get them back.