content: I'd imagine mobility is a lot more important than load bearing capacity. They're going to be building, repairing, and maintaining systems that are being designed for access by humans so making the maintenance machines look like us seems logical. And I also think something SpaceX showed is that getting the public interested is also really important. NASA's current budget is about one half of one percent of the federal budget, down from the nearly 5% of the federal budget back during the space race. That makes no sense whatsoever since back then the goal was basically a dick waving contest against the USSR yet now a days space is clearly not only the next frontier of immediate future exploration and colonization, but even economics. In spite of this and prior to SpaceX getting the world fired up about space again, NASA did not even have solid plan for getting to Mars. Getting people interested is very important and I think a power ranger looking thing is generally going to get more clicks than a beetle looking rover. So for instance on this same front SpaceX recently commissioned a number of companies that design superhero outfits for Hollywood to create their astronaut outfit. Once the outfit was designed and looked great, they began the process of reverse engineering it to make it technically workable - so our astronauts will no longer look like marshmallow men.