I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.
BUT… why arent they using drones to explore planets? why are there not more drone-spaceships? why does enterprise need a crew to begin with? Why is there so little automation? Why so few uses of AI in general?
I am saying this as a star trek the next generation person. I’d also expect them to have full video and sensory streams of any surface mission teams.
An important distinction is that they aren’t military. Government, yes. But SNW recently had an episode establishing that a crew member’s personal log is sealed and it took the crew member’s death and a surrounding investigation to unseal them. The Federation clearly values privacy.