Comment Re:Spaceward Ho (Score 3, Insightful) 113
Are you unaware of how many Mars missions fail? I seem to recall that about 1 in 4 Mars missions (of around 30) have failed. The Climate Orbiter, the Mars Observer, Mariner 8 and Mariner 3 are all classic examples of US failures. I think this alone shows how difficult it is to succeed with this type of mission.
Using the Beagle failure (the reasons for which are still unknown) to bash European and British people, politics and science seems a bit xenophobic to me. The recent success of the Huygens lander shows that ESA is capable of building a good lander and the fact that it hitched a lift with a US mission shows the general all round advantage of combining efforts.
In all this talk relating to the Beagle it seems to have been forgotten that the Mars Express has been a great success and has sent loads of useful new information back. Whilst the Beagle half of the mission is quite dissapointing the Express half has been great.
I would also question the utility of the US landers. Great mission guys but why spend all that money sending 2 cameras on wheels to Mars? Nice snapshots but why not try sending something useful next time like a spectrometer or some other sampling tool?
Using the Beagle failure (the reasons for which are still unknown) to bash European and British people, politics and science seems a bit xenophobic to me. The recent success of the Huygens lander shows that ESA is capable of building a good lander and the fact that it hitched a lift with a US mission shows the general all round advantage of combining efforts.
In all this talk relating to the Beagle it seems to have been forgotten that the Mars Express has been a great success and has sent loads of useful new information back. Whilst the Beagle half of the mission is quite dissapointing the Express half has been great.
I would also question the utility of the US landers. Great mission guys but why spend all that money sending 2 cameras on wheels to Mars? Nice snapshots but why not try sending something useful next time like a spectrometer or some other sampling tool?
