Getting to Mars (Seriously) (Score 2)

I just saw Dr Robert Zubrin give a talk last night (he's in Australia at the moment) about his Mars Direct proposal. With regards the recent loss of two Mars probes, he mentioned that previously, duplicate probes were always sent, acknowledging the fact that accidents happen and things can often go wrong. Redundancy was previously built into the mission design. Expecting near perfection, every single time, from mechanical devices operating at relatively great distances from earth in harsh environments is ridiculous. The same people who believe that probably never back up their hard drives. On a side note, I recently saw a documentary on the International Space Station (Real cost: ~$100 billion and rising). For the cost of the station, we could have literally flooded the solar system with thousands of redundant probes. But I'd hate to see the world (or at least the US) give up its manned space program.