Sending rovers means you have very limited and specific scientific tests you can perform where a manned mission means more flexibility to pursue broader research or adapt to unexpected discoveries to change what's being researched. Assuming a broad enough suite of materials/tools are sent along to allow that. Finding convincing evidence of life for example would be pretty revolutionary and depending on what was found could vastly improve our understanding of some things.
There's also the general benefit of technological advancements that benefit things other than the space missions, but that probably also applies to just going to the moon and building a semi-permanent base.
Probably the most compelling is the simplest "because we can".. it's very inspirational and motivating, hard to put a dollar cost on doing cool things just for the sake of doing them.
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Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
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