Obviously there is nothing stopping anyone from transwarp-beaming or taking a starship to wherever in person, but the point is that if you could mentally activate a drone that transwarp-beams itself to an unknown planet, then generates a holomatter avatar of yourself while scanning the environment and feeding back data via transwarp into a perfectly believable simulation of the target environment, why go there before you’re sure it’s safe and you know what you’re doing? You want your avatar to be hit by that spear from “The Galileo Seven”, and you could even program the hologram for a realistic “death” as opposed to the spear just passing through, in accordance with Prime Directive requirements.
Remember, we’re talking professional exploration here, not civilian thrill-seeking.
Thirty years ago, if I had an appointment somewhere I’d need to look up the address and work out directions on a paper map, figuring out how to get there on time. Now I can use Google Maps and even walk around the area using Street View. That doesn’t mean I don’t also enjoy picking a direction and just seeing where it goes, knowing that eventually I could always find out where I am and return to where I need to be in time. Technology opens up possibilities, and in our scenario who knows how many more planets would be accessible via transwarp beaming but not a starship? How many casualties would be avoided?
