<p>I think after a couple of weeks we can now but this thread to bed. In response to the secific complains we can say (in bold):</p><p>1. It should have been a rover. <strong>A rover was not needed for the Phoenix mission goals. Had Phoenix had been a rover it would not have moved from its site by the time died as there were still unfinished observations to be mae</strong></p><p>2. It should have been nuclear powered. <strong>Nuclear power (i.e. and RTG) was not needed for the mission goals. It would have been a waset of the scare RTG fuel which is needed for missions that require it. An RTG would also have been much so heavier than the solar panels that few if anyof the science instruments could have been carried.</strong></p><p>3 It was badly designed. <strong>No evidence for this has been tended except for some technical issues with some instruments. None of these can be attiributed to knwingly bad design.</strong></p><p>4. It was badly built using sub-standard components. <strong>No evidence was tendered.</strong></p><p>5. It performed poorly. <strong>Phoenix achieved all its missin goals and exceeded many of them. What more do people want?</strong></p><p>6. The science goals were downgraded halfway through to mission to make it look like a success. <strong>No evidence provided</strong></p><p>7. No useful science was achieved. <strong>Completely untruth. Phoenix revolutionised our understanding of the martian surface in many ways and provided data from a whole new region. Scores of science abstracts have already been written, scores, if not hundreds more abstracts and papers are in the works.</strong></p><p>8. The public was ignored. <strong>Phoenix had as high or higher PR profile than any previous mars lander</strong></p><p>9. The site names were insulting and juvenile. <strong>Cute names have always been applied to features seen by Mars and Moon surface missions. get over it</strong></p><p>10. It was just a bureaucratic spending exercise. <strong>See five and seven</strong></p><p>11. It was over priced. <strong>Compared to what? No evidence supplied as to how it could have been done cheaper</strong></p><p>12. The money would have been better spent on other Mars missions (or Ares, Orion, Europa, TPF, Titan...) <strong>Subjective judgement on personal priorties. The NASA program managers collectively thought differently </strong></p><p>13. No pretty pictures. <strong>Pretty is in the eye of the beholder. Many people were highly impressed by the images.</strong></p><p>14. Primitive robotics. <strong>Primitive compared to what? The robot arm and the automated laboratories were state of the art.</strong></p><p>15. Poorly conceived from the start. <strong>No evidence supplied</strong></p><p>16. Planning flawed by the same system that caused the Columbia disaster. <strong>No evidence supplied except guilt by asssociation.</strong></p><p>17. No new discoveries. <strong>See 5 and 7</strong></p><span><p>18. Phoenix selected because it was cheap not because it could do science. <strong>No evidence given</strong></p><p>19. Phoenix was a waste because its budget blew out from 250 to more than 450 million <strong>A legitimate concern but Phoenix still supplied very valuable and revolutionary new data</strong></p><p>Basically these criticisms were with few exceptions based on ignorance of the mission, the discoveries, the technology of how unmamnned exploration works, of how NASA decides on which missions to fund.</p><p>Only the last has any basis in fact. But budget blow outs in missions are hardly unique - Dawn, MER, MSL have all had budget blow outs. And Phoenix provided data we could not have got any other way.</p><p>Jon</p></span> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><em>Whether we become a multi-planet species with unlimited horizons, or are forever confined to Earth will be decided in the twenty-first century amid the vast plains, rugged canyons and lofty mountains of Mars</em> Arthur Clarke</p> </div>
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