The Apollo comparison makes no sense. The Moon is 3 days away, Mars is 9 months. Every kilogram of human requires hundreds of kilograms of life support, shielding, food, water, and return fuel. For the cost of ONE crewed mission, you could send 50 to 100 robots to different locations across the planet, operating simultaneously for decades...

The ISS comparison is even worse.... it orbits 400 km from Earth with constant resupply and emergency return in hours. That has zero in common with being trapped on Mars for 2 to 3 years with no rescue. And if a member of the crew dies, a very real probability on a first mission...the political fallout kills the program for a generation.

A robot fails? Send another one...And on the issue of humans being more capable...

Name one thing an astronaut could do on Mars that a well designed robot cant ?

- Drill cores? Perseverance already does it.

- Analyze mineral composition? Curiosity has a full chemistry lab onboard.

- Microscopy? Done remotely since 2004.

- Collect and cache samples? Done.

- Navigate unpredictable terrain autonomously? Done.

- Detect bio signatures? Instruments do it better than human senses ever could.

You can land a robot with a spectrometer, a microscope, a drill, an X-ray diffractometer, and a gas chromatograph, so literally an entire laboratory, and operate it from Earth for a decade at 1/100th the cost.

So what specific scientific task on the Martian surface, requires a human hand, that current or near future robotics and remote operation cannot accomplish?