"Stefan Diekmann" wrote:

I still believe they didn't send more because they were so cheap. NASA
always seems to look for the most expensive means to do something, and
after they failed try something even more expensive and less likely to
succeed.

Yet somehow, NASA suceeds more than it fails. This suggests your
model is flawed. Editorially speaking, I'd say deeply flawed.

The most important thing at the moment is reducing the cost to orbit, and
that's where the money should go (but I don't believe NASA has spend any
money on that in decades).

Spending money just to spend money very rarely reduces costs. This
goes doubly for things like the cost of space acess where the problem
isn't that we aren't spending enough money.

supringsly nasa did build spirit and opportunity, which are fantastic.

in typical nasa fashion they abandoned the successful model which
could of been duplicated easily on a production line basis, and many
more sent to explore.

they are compartively so cheap is a shame we havent sent more

Actually, duplicating them on a production line means spending
$MEGABUCKS^2 creating an assembly line - which means they aren't cheap
any more. Once you've created the assembly line, you can reduce costs
by producing by the gross lot - but in the case of the MER rovers, you
won't reduce costs as much as you think because most of the costs come
from QA and testing not materials and assembly labor.

And then once you've spent all that money without reducing costs all
that much, you're faced with the problem that MER rovers are useless
little toys for broad exploration. Their EDL systems can only reach a
small portion of the Martian surface, and the their science package is
limited and designed to answer only certain specific questions.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL