1) ISS is but one example. If you can find any science in space that has been done other than to use humans guinnea pigs that could not have been done cheaper without the humans please give me examples.

2) Robotic technology, electronic technologic, and AI technology will all advance dramatically with no help from the market of space exploration just for doing the already 1000's of tasks on earth that they have replaced humans because they are more efficient. Space exploration merely needs to adapt and apply the existing technology and the inevitable advances in robotic technology over the coming years.

Many people thought AI could never (fly an airplane, drive a car, play chess or many other games that require "intelligence" at a high level, etc). Much of the misunderstanding and mis-expectations came from the thought that what was hard for humans would be easy for AI and vice versa, whereas often the opposite was true). Only now that sensor technology has improved so much coupled with the 1000's of fold of improvement in compute power do many of the tasks (e.g. pattern recognition) start to effective for robots.

3) Flight on earth is starting to become non-piloted because robots can do it better and for less cost. UAV for military purposes are one of the most rapidly developing technologies, for many reasons, including expendability, cost, and ultimately because of performance (weight, g-forces, don't have cocoon humans). If we are going that way on planet earth, why on heavens sake would we not in space (where we should be using the most advanced technologies)

4) You know very well that we aren't going to be sending lots of missions that cost 50-100 billion dollars out into space. To pretend otherwise is to make the same ridiculous ostrich in the sand like decisions that was done with the space shuttle. Trying to amortize these costs over many missions would be a lie of false expectations and accounting.

5) "They do add costs so what" Exactly the mindset of NASA and government in general and people who have gone out of business and bankrupted countries and companies. Return on investment, sustainability, and reasonable goals based on reasonable mainstream technological advances are the stuff of steady advancement and achievement.

6) There are know risks and there are unknown risks. We drive collectively millions of trips with cars and travel billions of miles. We know exactly what the risks are and any one accident or malfunction may be tragic for a few individuals, but not for us collectively. Here we have unknown risks, and a once a decade event which if it fails scuttles years of work of many and is a major psychological blow to us collectively.

7) the concepts (and efficiencies) of teleoperation are already well established (see deep sea exploration).

8) The human could decide which rock is important, while a robot could just examine all the rocks. We can also make those decisions remotely (with increased bandwidth this could be done quite rapidly). A robot (nuclear powered) could explore mars indefinitely while a human has got to spend years getting to and fro, spend a limited time on the surface (which will be largely taken up with maintenance and prep). You can afford redundancy with robots (multiple robots). While you require redundancy for humans (mostly survival issues not science priorities).

9) This is a very despicable argument putting by projecting motivations onto me that don't exist. BS, I'm in my 50's and have been a sci-fi nut as a boy and to the present. I've been a scientist, engineer, ai-guy in my professional career. I would love to personally explore space, but i think my only chance at that is through something like the space elevator. Once you build one space elevator, building others comes very quickly and much cheaper. The technology to shield from van-allen radiation or move rapidly through it is just one more engineering problem that is far from insurmountable. But the physics of combustible transit to orbit cannot be circumvented.