After all, the billion dollar Mars Observer failed to achieve orbit back in 1993, most likely due to an explosion in the propulsion system. They had lots of money for that program and it still failed. Fortunately, copies of most of the instruments were available to be flown a few years later on MGS. This greatly shortened MGS's development time, cost, and risk.
For better or worse, the Mars Observer failure was the event that led the shift to "Faster, Better, Cheaper." It was thought that it was better to fly 2-4 missions, even at the risk of losing 1 or 2, than to put everything into one billion dollar vehicle and risk losing it. For that reason, Cassini may be the last of the multibillion dollar space probes for a long time to come.
Mars is still a hard target with very, very little margin for error. That's one of the biggest reasons why I favor an incremental approach over Mars Direct.
Space/Science » in reply to "Problems with Mars probes? The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves"
Money alone isn't the solution
The whole thread (39 posts)
- "Problems with Mars probes? The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves"
- Money alone isn't the solution
- FBC seems to have been tossed by the wayside.
- Some Things You Overlooked
- re: Some Things You Overlooked
- Key quote
- Money alone isn't the solution