"It all seems silly now, but it was perfectly understandable. All those predictions did come true, after all, just not in the way we expected. What we did not anticipate was how capable computational and communications technology would become, or the capabilities of miniaturization and integrated circuits. Many of those same predictions we made at the dawn of the space age have come to pass, but maybe not how we wanted them to. And our biggest shortcoming in prediction was that what would REALLY be of value in space would not be product, but information. It turned out that way right here on earth, too. The space enthusiasts of the von Braun and AC Clarke era thought in terms of post war industrial paradigms. It seems ironic, but those of us today who call ourselves space boosters are really quite retro in our approach and psychology: very 20th century."

And building robots isn't so very 20th Century?
And the current importance of information can't become so early 21st century?
The telegraph was pretty important at it's time and it is essentially as important today- and the internet but an improvement.
But there is nothing now or likely in near future as technological advanced as biological creature.

Now for me tele-operating machines on the Moon fits pretty well with my idea of the future. For me it's similar to outsourcing tech service to India. But to imagine such situation without any humans on the Moon seems pretty strange to me, sort of like a futuristic vision of a kitchen in the 1950's. Yes, some the ideas are ok, but the main thing about kitchen is cooking and making foods- faster and easier ways may be used.

There is no technical reason that human won't go to the Moon. In terms of physics and economics there no reason going to the moon couldn't be about the same cost as buying a car.
One of the main advantages of robots is they are disposal, but inherent aspects of robots is they aren't as capable as a human. A car jack might be able to lift up a car and a human can't do this- but the car jack doesn't drive the car, nor does a car jack provide any reason to drive a car. No doubt a car jack is useful, no doubt it is better than carrying around 4 men to lift the car. Another aspect is that machines can for whatever reason stop working and need some kind of repair. Oh, look the robot as fallen over and can't get up. Now you can make a robot that fixes other robots. But as you build in complexity, one lose some of the advantages of a robots and simply in terms of mass lifted from earth, robot get to be less cost effcient.

Take a robot used in warfare- it's main advantage is it is disposal- can you put into a more dangerous environment.
No one in the right mind imagines robots being exclusively used in warfare. Say you want to fight a war in the Antarctic with only ground troops. Team A can only use robots, Team B can use robots and humans. You have as many crew as you want in station in the US and get limit of say a million lb to send. Who going to win? Or forget warfare, which team could make the most igloos or build a road somewhere, or build an airport. And who could do it cheaper with the cost of shipping each lb being $20,000.
Keep in mind that team B can get the same robots that team A gets and the only reason question is there any advantage to having the option of sending one or more humans [and say humans cost $40,000 per lb instead of 20,000].

The "main advantage" of the idea of robots is saying we can't do it now, whereas with humans we can do now. And the proof of this is no one excessively uses robots or telo-operations for anything you could want done, such as, mining gold, surveying any area, exploring underwater, or even sending cargo ships across the ocean- a pretty simple task, which could done but apparently isn't at the present.

Though of course robots are a part and sometimes used as a part of various task- such digging coal, but I'm talking about the entire task- no human going anywhere near that coal mine and whole operation being run remotely for weeks and months. Not to mention setting up the entire coal mining operation and never having humans go near it.