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It has always been a specific goal of the Mars rovers since the very first one, to use a faster/cheaper design and production process than traditional Nasa projects.

In essense, using more off the shelf parts for the Mars rovers is part of the science experiment.

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This was true of the first rover (Pathfinder ‘97) but really hasn’t been true of rovers since then. Ingenuity was an exception re: COTS parts since it was experimental.

Pathfinder cost <$300M. “Better cheaper faster” became Discovery class missions, “capped” at $500M. Curiosity and Perseverance cost about $2.5B each. Not in the same category.

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