You don't go to Mars because it's easy. The biggest producer of technological advancements is pressure to solve hard problems. Not knowing is the whole point if you know how it's a worthless learning experience. It's always going to be hard to get a (the first?) human to Mars. It's 60 million of miles away. But one of the direct ways to solving this is to start working on them.
Plus Neil Degrassi Tyson has a great point on this in that robots can make discoveries and are low risk but they are way less inspiring. You know the Mars rovers names but the average person doesn't however the average person has a much higher chance of know Neil Armstrong because people inspire that.
If we want hard problems to solve, surviving climate change is a good one that's definitely going to matter soon. It's a lot more important than putting boots on Mars.
Plus Neil Degrassi Tyson has a great point on this in that robots can make discoveries and are low risk but they are way less inspiring. You know the Mars rovers names but the average person doesn't however the average person has a much higher chance of know Neil Armstrong because people inspire that.