Comment Probes are Cooler and Less Expensive (Score 1) 45
Probes should be widely funded... not only can probes be more on-budget, they are much less expensive. For example the Mars Pathfinder mission for development and launch was under $300M, while a shuttle launch in that time period was at least $1.5B. So you get many times the scientific discovery for a fifth the cost. Once you remove crew concerns, the possibilities go way up and the costs (particularly with human safety and requirement to return to Earth) go way down.