I'm a big fan of space exploration and would love to see a robotic exploration program on the scale of our current human space flight endeavors, sending rovers and landers all over the solar system, along with a major space telescope every 3 years or so (instead of once a decade).
I feel like we're squandering an amazing chance to explore space by getting stuck on sending people instead of leveraging the enormous progress in microelectronics, robotics, and autonomy of the last 60 years.
If we did want to become a spacefaring, world-hopping, intergalactic, etc., species in the long term, we wouldn't be sending humans into space right now, because robots are easier to keep alive and do more science with. That was the overall point I got from this and why not mars, which seems true for now.
But, even though putting humans on the rockets makes them cost more, it also garners more funding. I don't know, maybe we could convince all American schoolchildren to aspire to be robot programmers rather than astronauts. But typing this out, it seems like:
a) you could ask congress to fund robotic exploration, which maybe citizens care about and support, but if they don't then...
b) you could instead set up a giant human space program that wastes tens of billions of dollars to do nothing, then quietly siphon off a few billion here or there for JPL or SpaceX to do valuable unmanned research.
Maybe the former is possible, and you're fighting the good fight, but most voters don't read long blog posts comparing manned vs unmanned space exploration, and really when it comes to space are only excited by people standing on the moon. I do hope you convince more people, but fortunately whatever monstrosity we have now is at least a nice jobs program.
I feel like we're squandering an amazing chance to explore space by getting stuck on sending people instead of leveraging the enormous progress in microelectronics, robotics, and autonomy of the last 60 years.