how about setting up a facility on the pole of Mercury to eject a stream of sand sized particles into inner solar orbit. The sun could use a little debris disk.
I can't decide if it makes sense to deal with the problems of sending people that far or deal with the problems of doing it all through remote control with some people living at some place like Earth-Moon L1 who have a replica of the system that they can do experiments on.
I think in the next ten years any manned facilities farther than the moon are less likely.