RFI: Has anyone written a space wank on unmanned space research and utilization?

Off the top of my head, while there's a number of enjoyable timelines on increased manned space exploration, has anyone written timeline in which these glorious but not that cost-effective missions are severely curtailed in favor of more serious effort on actual space and planetary research? Something along these lines?

We choose not to go to the moon... (interrupted by applause) we choose not to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. We will aim for true and lasting space research instead of stunts.
It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
 
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Probably because they tend to go together...they fight, true, but when interest in human spaceflight is high, you tend to get robotic missions started; Voyager/Viking were planned in the last gasp of the Apollo decade, the efforts of the '90s mostly during the Shuttle peak. So the robotic probes tend to swarm just after a peak in interest, then followed by a hibernation, then human spaceflight interest picking back up...in other words, a delinked program would be far more vulnerable and liable to be cut ("these nerds propose to spend a billion dollars taking pictures of Jupiter! What possible use is that to anyone?").
 
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I've got an un-published idea (part of a much larger idea) where a Middle Eastern sheik in the 60s takes an interest in GPS for the location of Mecca and convinces a group of his fellow oil billionaires to fund a space program using emerging Japanese technical know-how. Unlike the Americans and the Soviets, they're solely interested in unmanned research at the start.

It fuels what becomes a 4-way space race (USA, USSR, Middle East/Japan and Europe) that leads to some tragic attempts at a Mars landing. After three teams are lost, the focus shifts largely to unmanned research, giving a leg up to the ME/J faction. Though I did plan on the Japanese eventually turning to manned missions; reviving the kamikaze spirit for some one-way trips to Mars.
 
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