The point is that you can reduced costs for some things via COTS, and if COTS stuff can handle the rough environment, there's also the possibility of reducing c

The point is that you can reduced costs for some things via COTS, and if COTS stuff can handle the rough environment, there's also the possibility of reducing costs by further ruggedizing those parts. Of course the mission critical stuff will still have to all be the usual expensive purpose built stuff, but like with Perseverance, some scientific instruments can use COTS computing hardware (IIRC one of the instruments on Perseverance has two Intel Atom SBCs, which were used to compress the landing footage before sending it back to Earth) and can have stuff like a bunch of non-essential but nice to have cameras, microphones and other sensors. Since they were cheap and non-essential, it's no big deal to add them, no big deal if they don't work, but if they happen to work you get great PR and data, like proper video of a spacecraft autonomously landing from a rocket powered crane on another planet). Same with prototyping ideas. Maybe the success of Ingenuity will encourage the inclusion of other similar "pie in the sky", extremely low cost experimental components.