And a lot of the NASA science budget was cut because it was too boring for the toddler administration who want to play with their flashy toys.

Or rather, what scientific benefits will this one prestige mission bring compared to all the other “boring” projects whose funding was cut for this?

Voting is about the lowest form of political influence (besides doing nothing). If all you do is vote then you’re left with candidates determined by others. You can (and should) still vote for the least worst option of those that have a chance of winning, because not voting effectively means you approve of all options. The only thing you can vote against in an election where one of two options will win is one of those options, by voting for the other. Anything else won’t matter.

If you want better options to vote for, you need to be politically active besides voting, actively working to establish better options, tell the established parties what candidates and policies you want them to support, support smaller parties that represent your interests better, and that might slowly shift it into a direction more to your liking.

Of course that’s much harder that doing nothing at all and proudly telling yourself that that will somehow delegitimize the system - the system doesn’t care. Election results are shown only as a proportion of valid votes, anyone else has no influence on the result at all.