It is the culture we have all bought into of sneding out narrowly budgeted machines without adequate resources with the expectation that we are going to get what we want.
The Beagle2 may very well, and I very much hope will, become a viable lander and get us some data to digest.
The tantalizing and enigmatic returns fromthe orbital effort is driving everyone who cares abut space exploration to high levels of frustration. There is so much to learn, and so much time is passing.
I simply beleive that until we find the nutz to send some guys out there in a big expensive dangerous manned mission, and give them lots of tools and repair kits and lab equipment we are not going to get really satisfying value for our expenditures. Space exploration, at the end of the day, should not be driven by committees of brilliant PhDs but should be driven by glory hounds willing to put it all on the line. If some of them happen to have a lot of degrees, so be it. But while history is written by the reasoned academic, it is usually made by the extremist. Space is the greatest venture available, and it is apparently going to take some very extreme people to realize its potential.
Ed