>Or if it lands they can say "see? we learned to land with the crashed Schiaparelli, so it was good sending it in the first place" Failures may not be bad, but

>Or if it lands they can say "see? we learned to land with the crashed Schiaparelli, so it was good sending it in the first place" Failures may not be bad, but they're still failures. Apollo 1 was a failure. Sure, it helped NASA make future spaceflight safe, and may have saved more lives in the long run (Apollo 13 makes it even) , but it didn't accomplish its goal. Especially that a successful lander is a reality check. We did it once and we can do it again. A failure doesn't say anything. It could have been a stuck thruster, it's fixed, and then the crush-zone is found to be defective. That's why first (and test) flights tend to be cheaper and failure prone.