Brian's Brain

Okay, so do you accept Paypal? just so i know.

Alright... you got it. The checks in the mail.

Umm, can you break a $20M check?
Sorry dude its all I got

I'll get you a mars lander the moment you figure out how to make my voice mail message indicator LED work. :-D

You think you can get a "mid-range" lander for $40 million squibs...
Oh no, that's totally nothing like the ESA's Beagle2 lander - that only cost $60 million...
And you *do* need a rocket-type thingy to shoot it up your Univarse, you know.
That costs another $150 million or so.

Do you even know what the NASA Spirit cost ?
Close to $250 million of your American Squibbo's, that's what.

Sorry if I seem to be ranting, but - lay off the ESA and the brave British dudes who engineered that thing in 6 years for only $10 million a year...
You go arsk your Govment how long the current pair of Mars missions has taken to prepare.

AFAIK one Shuttle mission costs a $BILLION dolers...
Of course, now that baby Bush has decided to sink another $400 billion into Mars, the sky is no longer the limit!

Wow.. Someone is taking this whole "making fun of the EU" way too personally. But since we're playing the "facts" game, I'd like to jump on board.

1> The combined cost of the TWO probes sent to Mars by the U.S. was 820 million dollars. This includes ground support, development, the launch, the landing, and paying the salary of all the people managing the mission.

2> The probe the EU put together (proudly) for around $60 million included none of those things, except for the actual hardware. Very misleading (especially since Beagle rode on the back of another VERY expensive mission, so the cost to get the probe to Mars wasn't even included in that figure). But the funny thing about you Europeans who are so proud of your "accomplishment" is that you didn't actually "accomplish" anything. You failed. I guess this speaks volumes for spending a little extra cash on a project. Did you know that less than 50% of the probes sent to Mars have survived? Did you know that when the United States sends a probe to Mars, we're now 5 for 6? That's right, while the rest of the world (that's you) has less than a 50/50 chance of success, the U.S. is near 100%. Next time you bash our massive budgets, also consider our success rate with these things. And please don't bring up Columbia, the reality is that we don't know how we're doing compared to the rest of the world. There is no other project even close to the scale of the shuttle missions.

3> The EU should be kicked, pantsed, and otherwise humiliated in front of the entire world for the disgrace they've brought upon planet earth for this failure. As it turns out, a few weeks before launch, they had proven there were flaws in the Beagle landing systems (the airbag deployment only worked about one in every ten times). They hurried and fixed the flaw, but due to TIME constraints, failed to test the fixes. Are any of us surprised it didn't work?! Shame on the EU for making time more important than the success of their mission. Be sure to send them a thank-you card for using your $60m completely recklessly.

4> The cost of a shuttle mission isn't quite a billion, but you're close (it depends widely on the mission. Anywhere from $500m to about $900m). Remember, however, that shuttle missions are partly subsidized by corporations.

5> My lander doesn't need all that science stuff, so it should be cheaper. I just want something that I can drive around on Mars -- preferrably one that doesn't suck -- which means I'll have to hire someone outside of the EU space agency to get it built.