@ Destroy all monsters
Which bit, the wasting money, or the 10 year egg on face?
If the latter think about a group of scientists in a room right now.
Scientist 1) "I think this new Mars project will last 6 months."
Scientist 2) "What would you know, your last estimate was out by a factor of 40!!!"
So I'm back to the first part. A whole lot of money was deemed to be acceptably wasted which I find a bit strange.
Unless the idea was "Hey we're struggling to find funds to keep us in a job, lets send an RC car to Mars, and we'll tell the government that it will only last 90 days, then don't forget to act surprised when it keeps on going, they'll have to fund us for decades!!!"
PS I'm not belittling the spectacular achievement that we have invaded a whole planet with robots. I'm just surprised that the best brains of the planet couldn't come up with a way to keep the robots working past 90 days in the first place, or that no-one figured out that the weather wasn't all that bad in the first place.