Your Point is made.....
It always was high risk - and imho - as a first attempt on the mass, financial, volume and chronolgic contraints involved - it was a miracle that anything got to the launch pad.
Perhaps we should analyze failures of DS2, MCO, MPL and Mars Observer from scratch again? Of course, in those cases, we're talking a total of almost $2bn. B2 was built for about 10% the cost of the two MERs - the 7th and 8th US lander attempts. As a first effort, for such a small budget - I still maintain it was a big achievement.
Doug