Although I don’t agree with your phrasing, $11 billion to bring back some rocks when we have a $40+ trillion deficit makes no sense.

Sure does. R&D investments have a massively larger RoI than military spending - and you won’t be paying off that debt by trying to be frugal. The only way is forward, and bombing schools in Iran isn’t that. It might not be Mars either, but at the very least some interesting science falls out of it, and perhaps some interesting products out of that.

Kinda crazy that we could launch one mission like this daily for almost exactly ten years with that deficit.