Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Reese's article makes a lot of sense.

Robots get better and better, also smaller and smaller.
Humans are not going to get smaller and they'll need confort if the trip is to last years.
Another thing: robots can be remotely controled by humans on Earth, meaning they can be as intelligent as the operators on Earth. Sure, there is the time gap between the 2 planets, but only a tiny fraction of science would be lost by the robot's own "intellectual" limitations and the response from the ground, as plenty of fast occuring events can be either anticipated by good programming (shape recognition) or safe modes (freezing the robot).

OTOH, it's fascinating real space tourism (a privateer in space) started with a former communist country using a 36 year old non re-usable spacecraft designed during communism.

One way to reduce costs in space is to reduce dependancy on Earth. Designing a closed ecological system in a space station and trying to keep astronauts in space for as long as possible without any help from the ground, would be a step in the good direction and also help us on Earth!

What matters most in the conquest of space is what will remain long after the mission was accomplished. and that's scientific and technological discoveries. These won't vanish as future generations will stand on the shoulders of our discoveries.

We don't know yet whether the discovery of life on Mars (if ever) will depend on human's presence over there. If it can only be found deep underground, machines will be needed to dig, anyway, not humans.
Also, what serves to bring back proof that mankind went to Mars are (just like for the Moon) pictures! But the irony is that those pictures were taken not by human eyes, but by a camera, i.e. a Machine!

We've seen unmanned missions catching more public's attention than manned ones taking place at the same time. I don't think that manned flights are necessarily more interesting.
That wasn't the existing feeling 20 years ago. OTOH, as Sir Martin suggests, today's generation wonders how the Apollo program ever could have been achieved at the time, knowing the present way of seeing things would never permit such a program. Things were different then, and things will be different in future, from what they are now. Maybe space left only to robots (going far away) and multi-millionaires (going not that far) is a good argument after all.

Raoul