Barry belittled NASA for its failures and talked as if any moron could design a probe to reach Mars. There are probably many possible causes for a Beagle failure, some more excusable than NASA's failures, some about the same, and some mentioned here far worse. The point is not that Beagle 2 was doomed to fail or that ESA is incompetant, but that Barry was wrong that the Beagle team was superior to NASA. Mars Express was never the subject of design criticism here that Barry Blithly ignored so whether it succeeds or not is irrelevant. Nor was it the source of claims by Barry that NASA would be exposed as a fraud. I firmly wish both succeed even if it robs us of a chance to tell Barry we told you this was likely. I'm quite sure neither will expose NASA as a fraud, and success on either of their parts will benefit future Martian exploration.

Regards,
Mark