Honestly, when you watch a science program with deep sea footage, do you care whether the footage came from a manned submersible vs unmanned submersible?

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USAF UAV's analogy:

I have been reading article after article at how USAF UAV's are not only being accepted, but being demanded by field commanders. The USAF market is increasing exponentially, with new UAV flight schools being developed with formal (and uniquely different and cheaper from fighter pilots) training. Some of the advantages of UAV's:

1) they can hover longer, have range advantages and other design advantages due to not having to care for a pilot
2) the pilots can be located stateside and used in regular shifts
3) cheaper to build, train pilots, and ultimately operate

This is a case where the mission is what is important, not whether it is manned or unmanned. If unmanned has advantages, then use the unmanned.

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I want to see valid reasons for any manned mission other than for carrying the men itself. In a cost/benefit analysis are the men necessary for the mission? In the Apollo era, we did not have the communication bandwidth, the computer intelligence, or robotic capabilities anywhere near today. Seriously, many of the things at that time were beyond the technology of the machines (even by teleoperation) to do, so there was validity to sending men to the moon at that time. But frankly, there is no reason to send men to an asteroid at the present time. We can send our semiautonomous probes there for a fraction of the cost.

That is simply not true today. For exploration purposes men are more costly than they benefit the mission. Men in space is probably best left to emerge from tourism and other private space enterprises. Then there is a connection to costs and benefits (men pay for themselves in one way or another).

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Instead of wringing hands and lamenting the poor state of their manned program, NASA needs to sex up the unmanned. Just one idea: Drop a bunch of rovers on the moon. Do a lottery to allow a private citizen(be trained and) to drive one of the lunar rovers. Return really good virtual presence. Let game makers get involved. Let classrooms have vivid and immediate experiences with teleoperating various instrumented objects on or around the moon, rovers, landers, orbital probes, etc.