I think it depends on your end goal regarding space travel.
If your end goal is to mine resources in space, then yes, using humans seems like a waste of time and money.
However, if your goals are more along the lines of colonizing other planets, or setting up research stations on other planets, than dealing with issues around transporting humans through space is more important.
At the moment, isn't the bottleneck our colonization ability, rather than our transport ability? We've gotten to the moon multiple times, but nobody has solid plans to build a permanent moon colony.
If your end goal is to mine resources in space, then yes, using humans seems like a waste of time and money.
However, if your goals are more along the lines of colonizing other planets, or setting up research stations on other planets, than dealing with issues around transporting humans through space is more important.