Unmanned spaceflight is like building and driving Toyota sedans: practical, dependable, boring. Manned spaceflight is like building and driving Grand Prix racecars: totally impractical, risky, exciting.

Yet, we're often told by automakers that racing is where many of their innovations come from. Same thing with spaceflight. Though the benefits we see (ie satellite communications) are primarilly the results of unmanned programs, it is the manned programs that are responsible for the unmanned programs' success. The rockets that launch satellites are extremely dependable. They're dependable because their predecessors were developed to launch humans into space and, unlike satellites, humans are not expendable.

As soon as it became obvious that it was possible to send something into space, was there ever any possibility that we would be satisfied with little spinning metal balls with radio receivers in them? Nah!