As far as space exploration is concerned, you are correct that unmanned missions will always be far less difficult, and we could be experts on everything out there without ever experiencing them directly. And manned missions will be small-scale and underachieving as long as NASA, CSA, ESA and others are not willing to try something new to increase the number of people in orbit, rather than just send them further out. As far as I'm concerned 3 people on ISS, or 3 people to Mars, or 3 people to the Moon, is still just 3 people in space! And that's the best we will *ever* get with current technology. I'm not saying that a Skyhook will be better, but it certainly is different. It brings together a huge number of new technologies that haven't been tried before, that alone ought to have benefits. But if the 40+ daily launch frequency is achieved, we will have to ramp up payload manufacturing to keep up with the Skyhook, not the other way around. Consider 17,264 launches annually compared to what we have now. Mass production of small, high-specific impulse thrusters will be required to place all those payloads in proper orbits or assemble them. And that's what a single Skyhook, with one tether could do. A skyhook hub could have 10 tethers, and there could be 5 or more Skyhooks orbiting Earth, giving a 50-fold increase in launches. Consider 863,200 launches annually, each one lofting a 10-tonne payload to 12,000 km apogee! If the 10-tonne spacecraft carried people, there might be room for 50 people onboard. That's an annual ridership of 43.16 million people, or 0.72 percent of the whole world's population, every year!

But if we stick with unmanned missions, we'll all be experts, we'll all be memorizing facts and figures, and what value will that knowledge have in a competitive world? What will it pay? What field of knowledge will be worth being an expert in?