This is for you Dr. Whitehouse:

1) Thank Prof. Colin Pillinger for all his fine work and then get him completely out of the picture. His services as a consulant are not required.

2) Contact Prof. Richard Morgan and/or Dr. Alan Paull at the University of Queensland, Australia. One of them should be your chief engineer. They would connect Beagle 3 with the world class resources of the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering including their shock tunnel and expansion tube facilities. Australians have a proven track record for creating working aerospace hardware at ten cents on the dollar.

3) Secure funding from the Japanese and Koreans. Use a Japanese launcher (not a cheaper ex-Soviet launcher). A Japanese or Korean should be the chief financial officer. Both the Japanese and Koreans are desperate to get into aerospace. They would see this project as a back door to access European and American aerospace technology.

4) Establish from day one, a consulting relationship with JPL. There were many basic technical errors with Beagle 2. NASA and JPL have a huge technical data base that cost the United States billions of dollars to create. By getting close with JPL/NASA from the beginning, most obvious technical errors can be avoided. If the right people at NASA are approached correctly, most of that data can be access for a token sum (the Australians know how to do this).

5) Don't sell the project as a "search for life". By doing that, you're on the same side of the fence with Gil Levin and the lunatic fringe. The fruit cakes have no credibility and more importantly no money (this was arguably one of Pillinger's worst errors). Scott Hubbard played it smart by setting up MER as a "search for water". Approach Mars from a completely different perspective. Dr. Nick Hoffman is full of very original ideas concerning Mars science. Make him your chief scientist.

6) Make this a truly International project and not just a British / European project.

Gary