>>11073668Robots are pretty slow now even after decades of development. It took Insight a month or so to dig a hole that a person could do in 30 seconds. The big reason why robots are slow is that they have to be remotely controlled for their main tasks (such as science experiments). Due to the communication delay between Mars and Earth, and the fact that (to save mass) probes don't have much in the way of cameras and other sensors that help in determining whats around them, it takes a long time for a human operator to figure out what to do and how to do it. And then once the task is being done, it needs to be done slowly as the communications delay means that mistakes that break something could be mission ending. That's all to do some science in a small area on Mars.
Meanwhile, a human on the surface could perform many of the tasks at incredible speed compared to probes. Any problems that arise can be easily dealt with since a human operator is right there. Instead of taking decades to explore the possibility of life in some tiny areas on Mars using probes and still being unsure about the results, crewed missions could have large swaths of the planet's surface covered and the answers found much sooner.
The only way around this is advanced AI that can problem solve on the fly, and that seems to be a long ways away.
