(Hmmm.. Corrected a typo there – it originally read “standing on the shoulders of gnats” instead – which wouldn’t get you anywhere near as far! )

Personally, I’d rate ‘Phoenix’ a success – it landed successfully and has already managed many of its tasks even if the oven fails its still acheived a lot. If the ovens shorts it won’t be quite as much of a success perhaps – but Phoenix is a success all the same.

“Phoenix sort of has the disadvantage of coming after Sojourner, Opportunity, and Spirit. Given the above-and-beyond successes of those rover missions, there’s an atmosphere of irrational expectation that Phoenix should deliver the stars and learn to read Hebrew, especially given it’s “just” a lander.”

Why Hebrew? The language it should really be required to read is Martian isn’t it?

(To misquote the beatles “get back!” song.)

I sure know that feeling & I empathise entirely!

I also concur with the “That’s why we need people & NOt just machines there! Machines lack a certain flexibility and imagination and capability that comes with Humanity. I’m all in favour of using both too but we gotta get humans there! I can’t wait for the first woman landing on Mars!

I’ve changed my mind on this. There was a time when I would have said robotic missions are so much more efficient, but I now come down on the side of, “if a human were there, they could fix a short.” It just doesn’t seem to be possible to engineer these things to the desired level of reliability.

Will we learn things yes, but if the full science mission isn’t accomplished then a lot was missed and all we get are some tantalizing results and some weather reports for the pole and a really cool picture of the entry, which is amazing to think about to me.

To open a can of worms this is why we need manned exploration. In all the time spent on Mars those great little rovers have only covered around 22kmand sampled a relatively small number of rocks, Apollo 17 did 35km in 22 or so hours and brought back over 100kg of rocks to look at. With a bit of engineering gusto a robot might be able to do that in a couple of decades and no doubt will, but man can do it as soon as he gets there. That is the hard part for humans.

Look at it this way, if the ability to examine the lunar rocks was left with only the technology available in 1969, a number of things wouldn’t have been possible. They are still studying the rocks returned. So if we look at the robots, they only the set of tools sent with them, they can’t be improved upon. Get the rocks back here, they can be studied over years with new methods as they are developed.

Anyone want change from my 2 cents worth?

Sorry about that, I must have been more tired than I thought when I read your first post. *reaches for more coffee* Thank you for taking the time to clear that up for a very tired student.