Why bother sending people into space?

 

Why bother sending people into space?

This question lies at the centre of a sometimes heated debate - with supporters and opponents of manned space travel both making convincing cases for their respective points of view. Unmanned space probes are much cheaper than manned spacecraft because they do not require life support systems. Also, exploration of the solar system would not have been possible without robot space probes. However, there are many areas where humans are superior to machines, however clever the machines seem to be.