Watch some of the mars rover videos and it becomes clear how frustrating it must be for the scientists on earth to do research on mars remotely.
Mark S. Miller had a site with a list of "adages", here's one I really liked:
"A Computer's Perspective on Moore's Law: Humans are getting more expensive at an exponential rate."
This is true, although slower, for robots.
Look, if you want to risk your life to go to space, I'm fine with that. I do too.
But if NASA or Musk or Bezos or whoever want to unnecessarily risk other peoples' lives to make a buck faster, or even just explore Mars, that's irresponsible and kinda fucked up, is my opinion.
For example, I think Mars One is awesome! (Stupid and doomed, but still awesome.) Colonizing Mars to have a "backup" Earth is important enough (in my opinion) that it's noble to risk your life to achieve it ASAP.
Mining an asteroid, although I personally would love to try it, is not quite so noble, eh?
The less "risk-averse" space program was happening in a very different context: the "Space Race" [1] which was in many ways a continuation or extension of the Cold War, which was in many ways a continuation or extension of WWII.