No offense to anyone, but if you're not going beyond Minmus then yes the Science lab is kind of a bit more work than is necessary to get the Job done, but once you're talking 2 interplanetary trips then the time, resources, and challenge starts to sway back in favor of the lab. Take Jool and all of it's moons, one lab in orbit around Jool and a small crew of bots could handle that entire planetary system. As for it's payout, the lab shouldn't give transmitted points, it should give half value for returned results. Since the sample was infact tested in a lab by scientists, but the results should be half as much as a valid specimen return because you can't ebay it later.