[medscribe]

Is this a good time to tell the Brits "you get what you pay for?"

[farmfriend]

space ping

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[sd-joe]

The disparity in the price tags alone is enough to raise a few eyebrows.

Yeah, when we tried to do it cheap, we lost two landers also. Cheap buys you absolutely nothing.

[Johnny_Cipher]

The apparent loss of Beagle 2 and its science is not a happy thing for anyone. And, I consider myself as patriotic an American as anybody else.

Having said that, the tone of this article certainly smacks of defensiveness and a smattering of envy. There's a very good reason why Joe Schmo can't fly his converted pickup truck to the Moon or Mars to catch the view whenever he feels like it - its hard work to get there and to design and build a suitable craft for the job. Heck, even NASA and the JPL have had their share of failure in this endeavor - its an occupational hazard.

In terms of GNP and national wealth, the countries of the European Union (which Britain is a part) certainly have the wherewithal to come together and do great things in space. Lack of vision, not of money, must certainly be examined as the root cause for Beagle 2's failure.

If the views in this article truly represent the thinking of the British government, then my advice to them is to stop whining and start uniting, organizing, and building.

[ChadGore]

Re: But the cash-strapped Brits spent a paltry £140 million on the Mars Express package overall. . . . and they got an MP3 player in th bottom of a Mars crater. You get what you pay for.

[longtermmemmory]

But the cash-strapped Brits, who unlike Nasa cannot throw huge amounts of taxpayers’ money at space projects, spent a paltry £140 million on the Mars Express package overall. </>

They forgot about the little rover a few years back. This tells me that the British ecconomy is not big enough. It also tells me that this british author would be happiest if 0 dollars were spent on thses programs.

[PUGACHEV]

Someone should tell our British friends that an alibi works best when you establish it in advance.

[Major_Risktaker]

Maybe our Rover can drive
over to their Beagle and give it a bone.

[jigsaw]

From the Department of Irreverent Humor:

      America: "The Eagle Has Landed."

      UK: "The Beagle Has Pooped."

(Actually, I hope Beagle eventually succeeds.)

[RightWhale]

In contrast the Beagle 2 project was put together on a shoestring by clever and inventive engineers

NASA's engineers of course substitute money for cleverness and inventiveness.

Seems like this is the first article to actually cast sour grapes at someone else's Mars program. However, by use of irony it is actually a hit piece on the European space program. The author is saying that Europe cannot afford to explore space and it is up to the Americans if we are ever going to get off this mudball.

[wretchard]

Beagles seems like a bad deal from an economic point of view. True it cost only a third of Spirit, but it returned nothing. That Europeans took a gamble. High risk for high return. In this case the gamble didn't work. If the Europeans want to succeed over the long term, they can't run their space programs like a crap game. They have to adjust their strategy so that the expected value, not the windfall, is the driving design spec.