Is it right to compare spaceflight with airflight?

ELVs are used once, very true, but what they carry can last years and be very cost effective, because they can last so long.
This, however, means what lasts so long are unmanned devices.
It looks like unmanned vehicles will always have the better edge.

About manned spaceflights:
How do they safely leave the ground?
Horizontally with wings and very massive landing gears? Seems a lot of wasted mass, there.
Vertically with wings (like the Shuttle, but it didn't show its cost effectiveness): how to do it safely?
Vertically without wings, but in one piece? And landing back vertically after the mission?
Vertically with a capsule? Seems the safest way, so far (with a launch escape tower). And a rocket that can be used for unmanned commercial purposes.

All those contradictions are behind the reason why so few people have been to space, 44 years to the day, after Gagarin.

Raoul