I know the discourse about the rest of the context around NASA and the Artemis program - people will trot out the classic old "we should spend the money on the poor" or "we should just send robots" or "it's USA propaganda".

Fact is, crewed space flight is just Cool. I've heard more about Artemis than I have any specific space related thing since some of the first Mars rovers. And I think it's worth doing things like sending humans to space, or remote parts of the Earth, or the ocean, or whatever, even IF a drone could do it. Because humans like seeing humans doing things and being able to sit there and think "I/someone I love could be there doing that thing".

@JessTheUnstill also humans are experiential creatures, so there is something to the *experience* of going to these places that a drone just can't match
@ariadne "I was one of a team of people who worked on this robot and got to send a list of commands for it to do on this day and take some pictures and run a rock through the mass spec" just doesn't get the same reaction to "I picked up moon rocks".