What you are demonstrating is a clear belief without objective facts to back up what you are saying.
I question your beliefs so must somehow have beliefs of my own? YOU said: Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
We have been trying to uncover the reasons behind that assertion ever since.
My point is that there is a role for crewed missions into space.
No, your point was: Presuming that there is something worth doing in space at all, you need eventually to put a crew there.
There may be some better planning that goes on too with those missions and money might be better spent in some cases on robotic missions too, but it is just flying in the face of logic to say that robots alone can get the job done as well.
Describe SPECIFICALLY what it is that humans can do better than robots in the vacuum of space : And I don't mean meaningless tripe, I mean practical tasks to do with the point of going into space: to explore. Show how the need to perform this task justifies the extra expense associated.
Robots working in a coal mine do occasionally need human technicians to pull things apart and rework the equipment.
There aren't any coal mines in space. On earth, it makes economic sense to use humans to repair robots because, you know, breathing. In space, we would use a robot to perform the repair. Or, just send another probe if the first broke down. No biggy.
Deep sea drilling even has divers that go underwater for weeks at a time for critical repairs... doing things that are enormously expensive and even approaching costs for sending astronauts into space. They use robots with those human in these very difficult situations, and I am suggesting this won't end at the edge of the atmosphere of the Earth either.
So you base your argument on a set of criteria confined to low earth orbit, as if humans in low earth orbit are exploring.
None of this even touches the need for humanity to spread beyond the Earth as a species and become multi-planetary in terms of its long-term survival.
Demonstrate this need using objective criteria.