It's worth mentioning, that manned spaceflight isn't only a political thing.
Counterexamples include huge inspirational value - to the tune of a generation of scientists and engineers. Also there was a period when automatic satellites couldn't be used for even rather simple, by today's standards, tasks, like space telescope on e.g. Skylab. Also at some scale involving human presence into a space project (Apollo) turns out to be more beneficial, science-per-dollar-wise, than doing everything with robots only. And there are other reasons.
Counterexamples include huge inspirational value - to the tune of a generation of scientists and engineers. Also there was a period when automatic satellites couldn't be used for even rather simple, by today's standards, tasks, like space telescope on e.g. Skylab. Also at some scale involving human presence into a space project (Apollo) turns out to be more beneficial, science-per-dollar-wise, than doing everything with robots only. And there are other reasons.