NASA's Mars rovers - true explorers ?

No matter how much they want to twist it to suit their own needs, the fact remains that these things are just tools we use to aid in exploration. Columbus' telescope/spyglass was no more an explorer than the hubble is today. It's people who build and send these things where they are, deciding where to go and what to look at, etc. We're the explorers, using the tools we built to aid us in our exploration.

Sounds like more semantic nonsense. The Mars rovers, Galileo, Messenger, Ranger, Selene, HST, Spitzer, Huygens, Cassini...all of them are man made explorers. They are the fruit of human ingenuity, and they provide us with the data we need to develop answers to questions. Men, when so called upon, have done the same thing, using their hands and eyes and brains. You can say that men are the only explorers, and that they either use their senses and mobility to explore directly, or build machines to do it for them; or, you can call their machines explorers if you like, as they are out there, doing... [More]