2001 and the future of space flight

ladies and gents,
i was watching a program that i recorded last night from discovery civilisation about the effect of the book / film " 2001 A space odessey" on civilisation. at one point there was this guy who was supposed to
be a space analyst (whatever that is ) and his arguement was that 2001 had let the conquest of space down the wrong path i.e. humans in space in space stations i.e. skylab (70's), Mir (80's and 90's) and the international space station now. he thought it would be better that space probes would do it as it was cheaper and more efficient. So my question will be which is the better way to explore space man or machine?. anyone care to answer?. of course if you have ascended to the level of david bowman in the film and become a star child ( aren't we all?) this will be a mute point .
stephen.

Of course there are advantages to unmanned spaceflight. Plumbing and cost for a start. But there is one flaw in the argument about unmanned exploration. Human Beings are naturally curious about the world about them and want to see it for themselves even with the risks. For every person who says the manned space flight is dangerous and should not be attemptd there are 10 who would love to go. I know i'm one who would go risk or no risk. Anyway as for efficiency. One huge problem with unmanned flight is that computer programmes are just not good with dealing with problems outside their programming. where as in many cases an intelligent well trained human can usually "Magyver" something together to get them safely home.
Thats my bit

Machines are dumb, humans are extrememly inventive when the chips are down. Machines could never do thing as well as we can!

Having said that there are many things that machines can do for us now that would not be possibel by a manned mission for years so we need a balance between manned and un-manned. also we shoudl send out un-manned probes ahead of our selves to check if the way is clear so to speak and hence minimuse the risk to manned missions.

Bart B.