Going to Mars (continued)

I was discussing the documentary recently discussed in that blog, “Space: The longest goodbye”, with my son, and he disagreed with me about not letting human participate in that exploration in spite of all the challenges it raised. 

My idea was to use very smart robots instead. He felt that it ran against the drive humans have to reach out to the seemingly impossible. I understand his point, he’s only 45 and is still more adventurous that what I’ve become at my age, but I thought that given the cost, the challenges such of voyage poses, it might not be a smart use of taxpayer dollars.We have so many things to fix on our poor planet!

Now, if Elon Musk wants to do it on his own dime, he certainly should. To me, that should be a test for any such adventures, especially if the reason for going there isn’t clear, beneficial or well articulated, just fuzzy or nonexistent. 

Do you share my opinion, and if not, why?