As someone who worked on a NASA Lunar mission (LROC), I can tell you that there are opinions both ways. With NASA on a shoestring budget, some scientists feel the best science return on investment is robots. But there are plans to put humans back on the moon that would not cost all that much more. If it weren't for the fixed budget, I'm sure almost all scientists would want manned missions.

Why? Go read some more about Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, who was on the Moon with Gene Cernan. Having a geologist on the moon enabled spotting things, making judgements, and then following up on the spot. Sending a scientist who can also pilot (and Schmitt was damned good) rather than only having military pilots changes the game as far as the science return.

Thanks, you obviously know your stuff.

I wonder if with AI advances though, we can have robots that are 'damned good' pilots that can also spot things.

(The judgements would need to be made back on Earth though, admittedly, with speed of light lag as an annoying factor.)

I think the real answer is that there should be some balance of manned vs. robotic missions. Where that balance lies is a matter for debate. Having worked on a robotic mission I am very much in favor of doing more of that.

As for me knowing about this... I have more perspective than most people, but it all comes from listening to scientists, who are the ones with knowledge of the science gains. I wish they had a bit more voice than they do.

Why not both? For the money we waste destabilizing the middle east we could build a small city on the moon and still have money left over.

There are enough environmental, economic and social problems we need to solve on Earth first.

That's a ridiculous attitude. You could use the same logic to say we should ignore our problems with income inequality until we solve global warming, or vice versa. It turns out there are billions of people on earth with a wide variety of skills and we can do a lot in parallel.

At its peak NASA used 4.41% of the federal budget. In 2014 it was 0.5%. We can afford to do more and as we know from experience the payoff is worth the expense.

Well earlier in this thread I heard someone talk about spending money on the moon instead of wars. We all have our own priority order (or partial order perhaps) for how we'd like public money to be spent.

In US history (see, e.g. 'A History of the American People', Johnson), environmental, economic, and social problems were often solved by moving in to new territory. If you can think of the Moon as the Eighth continent, it may well be how we solve our present, pressing environmental, economic and social problems.