On Thursday, 17 May 2018 10:02:33 UTC-4, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Thu, 17 May 2018 01:01:19 -0700 (PDT), RichA
wrote:

On Tuesday, 15 May 2018 02:57:15 UTC-4, Quadibloc wrote:
On Saturday, May 12, 2018 at 1:48:16 AM UTC-6, RichA wrote:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44090509

It is possible the guys working on it also had other duties.

Note that there were likely not as many people working on the project as would
be working at a drone manufacturer designing their next product.

And this drone had to be super reliable, and it had to work in the atmosphere of
Mars, which, as the article noted, is a *lot* less dense than that of Earth.
(The article said 100x; I thought it was more than that.)

John Savard

So why not contract a drone mfg instead of (likely) spending $20 for every $1 the experienced manufacturer would? Isn't that what Space-X is all about?

SpaceX is about engineering, not science. There is a lot of
fundamental new aeronautical science involved in designing any
lift-based aircraft that operates in an atmosphere 1/60 as dense as
Earth's. That's the sort of expertise NASA has, and conventional
makers of aircraft or drones do not. We do not generally contract out
fundamental scientific development.

What is so fundamental about it? Planes fly high enough so atmosphere is thin and have done so for decades.