Re: A Little Piece About Risk vs. Scientific Rewards
While basically true, there are failures such as Mars Polar lander and the other Mars mission that were the result of sloppy proceedures, i.e. failure to address and test prior known failure modes and failure to do basic program coordination. These were 20-20 hindsight bad tradeoffs made in an attempt to save costs.
As to the Plan Soc failure, it is the kind of thing expected in a high risk seriously low cost endeavor. More power to 'em. Bulid a little...fly a little has always been the best approach to create vehicles that really work. Note that NASA has abandoned this approach.