Meanwhile, back at the Mars Science Laboratory rover

Okay...just $82 million more dollars, and this time we can _guarantee_
you it will be ready to go:
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/11012...need-cash.html
Sure makes you hope the landing system is going to work right, doesn't it?
Ah.. didn't the two MER rovers come in at under $100 million together?
And this thing is going to come in at around $2.5 _billion_?
And the fun part is of course MSL uses a radioisotope power supply
unlike the MER's solar arrays; so dust-removing whirlwinds or not this
suckers croaks inside of a year.

Pat