22 said:

"If Beagle 2 had been successful, then American engineers would be forced into considering the design paradigm of why Beagle-2 was successful, instead of why it failed."

But Beagle 2 did fail and it failed because it had a crappy design. I knew it had technical errors almost a year before it launched when the guy doing the CFD for Beagle 2 presented his results at an AIAA conference. Many of the folks attending that talk including an editor of an AIAA technical journal were convinced that Beagle 2 did not have a prayer. There was no paradigm to consider with Beagle 2.

22 also said:

"Bean counters have thier own science that is just as valid as any "rocket" science."

If the bean counter is working for the Anglo-American Corp. managing a marginal gold mine, then yes, he's using a very sophisticated set of rules to determine profitability. If the bean counter is working for NASA, then he's probably pulling numbers out of his hat or spinning a roulette wheel.

Gary