Stars above Mines: Much ado about exploration
One of the major gripes about space exploration for the past few decades involves the decreasing importance of human-based exploration of the cosmos. While many missions are currently active, none of them involve humans actually setting foot on another world. There is no doubt that for the work that is being done, having a human presence would bolster the efforts by several magnitudes. Mars rovers have travelled an impressive distance given the harsh conditions of the planet, but given that this distance happened over many years, it loses a bit of its weight. Rather than years, a human could travel the same path in a handful of days given the right conditions.