You’re certainly right about the spending drop in the bucket. But overall I still think it’s probably a waste.
If the objective is some kind of human landing or achieving a base on Mars, isn’t this pointless? NASA has concluded that Mars can’t be terraformed. And why send a few human beings to a desolate rock?
That said, I deeply believe in space exploration. In fact, I’d pour a lot more money into it. But rockets aren’t the answer. They can’t take us to anyplace worth going to. We ought to begin working on the science and technology that might do that, taking us to other star systems with potentially habitable planets in useful timeframes.