if group and/or nationalist rivalries dominate space exploration then the overall objective - getting out there - is weakened. My impression from these posts is that the beagle2 team didn't approach the Americans for advice .. I guess competition was too important - getting there by their own expertise. From Gary's analyses, this seems to have been a mistake.

Why try to reinvent the wheel rather than borrowing from a rich flight heritage? Even China, with its own silly nationalist restaging of Gagarin and Glenn (more than 40 years ago..) knows well enough to use well-validated Russian designs.

Maybe people like Gary *could* have approached the beagle2 team with some friendly advice (the thought had also occurred to me) - but otoh, maybe it was clearly obvious to them that the beagle2 team had their own regime, history, 'culture', etc. - and wouldn't welcome the advice. Perhaps as Nick has pointed out, it was up to the beagle2 team to approach the Americans, not the other way round.

In any case that line of questioning doesn't get far other than feeding animosity. I think EP had a right to make his point, but given Gary's many generous explanations, should have phrased it as a polite question rather than as a moral challenge. The only real answer for me is the silliness of nationalist and croup rivalries in space exploration (and science research generally). These may have powered great projects like Apollo, but everyone also knows that a single nation will never get a crewed mission to Mars