Name one unmanned mission in the past 40 years that would have made more sense manned...

During those 40 years we've learned a lot more about space than the Apollo missions taught us - even from the ground...

Several things are immediately apparent from Figure 2. Most obvious is the sheer volume of Apollo's scientific legacy compared to the other missions illustrated. This alone goes a long way to vindicate the points made above about human versus robotic efficiency. The second point to note is that the next most productive set of missions are the lunar sample return missions Lunas 16, 20 and 24, which highlights the importance of sample return. Indeed, a large part of the reason why Apollo has resulted in many more publications than the Luna missions is due to the much larger quantity and diversity of the returned samples which, as we have seen, will always be greater in the context of human missions. The third point to note is that, despite being based on data obtained and samples collected over 40 years ago, and unlike the Luna, Lunokhod, or Surveyor publications, which have clearly levelled off, the Apollo publication rate is still rising. Indeed, it is actually rising as fast as, or faster than, the publications rate derived from the Mars Exploration Rovers, despite the fact that data derived from the latter are much more recent. No matter how far one extrapolates into the future, it is clear that the volume of scientific activity generated by the MERs, or other robotic exploration missions, will never approach that due to Apollo.

"We're still benefiting from the scientific legacy of those few soil samples brought by the Apollo mission, but we can only do this because we went to the Moon, got these samples, and came back," says Crawford. "If we sent a rover to Mars along with a return vehicle, that would enormously increase its scientific impact, but that's hasn't been implemented yet because its still incredibly expensive. If a mission goes to Mars, lands in one place, bring back half a kilogram of Mars rocks, it will be immensely valuable, but compared to Apollo, which not only visited six sites (and many hundred of sites with the help of the lunar rover) but came back with 382 kilograms of lunar material, it sort of pales in comparison."

We should also not measure space exploration solely on the basis of scientific discoveries made. It is important for humans to move out into space and to live on other worlds on the merits of expansion of the human presence in the solar system alone.

For one, I believe that the population growth will stop sooner than most people believe, and the human population on Earth will contract afterwards faster than most believe..

While the population growth rate for Western and other first world countries has indeed leveled off or even decreased, the population growth rate for almost all developing and third world countries is still very high by comparison.

The analysis finds that the total cost of constructing and modifying the structure, known as Mobile Launcher-1, is "at least" $927 million. This includes the original $234 million development cost to build the tower to support the Ares I rocket.
After this rocket was canceled in 2010, NASA then spent an additional $693 million to redesign and modify the structure for the SLS rocket. Notably, NASA's original estimate for modifying the launch tower was just $54 million, according to the report by Inspector General Paul Martin.

Since NASA awarded its first contract on Orion in August 2006, the report says NASA has spent $16.7 billion for development of Orion, or about $1.1 billion annually. NASA has paid the lion's share of those funds to Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for development of the Orion capsule. For this tally, the report does not include funding for Orion's large Service Module, which is being built and delivered by the European Space Agency.