Make the arm 2 inches shorter and you recover the weight for the enhancements and coupling the plunger with the screen assures samples will be filtered to a certain size so you don't need screens on the ovens now. I am aware that the Phoenix lander has achieved a great deal just by landing successfully (a extraordinarily difficult engineering feat), and as I said before I hope alls well that ends well with the sampling. However that does not make the design in its totality beyond criticism.

One of the benefits of having information of all kinds public is to be able to have honest assessment and criticism. There are gillions of examples of government doing things in a cloistered environment that ends with extraordinarily wasteful activities. I hope your city council has rules about public meetings.

Finally, after NASA's track record of producing some of the worst white elephants in scientific history (i.e. the shuttle and ISS), they are hardly beyond 2nd guessing.

However to NASA's credit, I will say NASA's mars exploration program has been one of mankind's greatest and most effective acquisitions of new knowledge in history. Because of the advance in technology (particularly the various scans from orbit), we have gained tremendous understanding (still a long long ways to go) of the entire planet. I like to think about how many centuries it took us on Earth to acquire accurate maps of the planet, and then compare that to the few decades it will take to do the same on Mars.

I am a huge fan of robotic probes and believe the vast majority of the exploration program should be in that form. But at the same time when there is mis-management or poor design, let's call a spade a spade so it can be corrected and we can be as efficient as possible with the dollars we spend.