The hangup about riding gave NASA lots of funding and publicity, but it's not working anymore. Even the rides don't get the attn. Then they blow up, and the program is stuck for months and years in anguished debriefings. A helicopter full of park rangers crashed in Texas, killing all inside, just looking for debris from the Columbia. Waste, waste--
If they used their imaginations, they could find a way to make the probes more exciting to the public, if that's so very essential to continued exploration. And if it is, perhaps we ought to rethink the whole thing. This isn't Hollywood, and I'm sick of the spacemen celebrities.
Besides, given the recent accounts of Columbia, looks to me like very little human ingenuity and imagination were used. Looks to me like they gave up mighty quick.
You give humans so little credit and are so ready to dump on the manned program. Good thing you won't be going.