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Anyone felt $170m for the Russian spacecraft is super inexpensive relative to what NASA spends on theirs? eg. $850mil for this Mars Exploration Rover http://en

• ars 15y ago
  $170mil sounds pretty expensive for something that doesn't work. And it was predicted not to work even before it launched, since they didn't spend enough money to build it properly.
• diwank 15y ago
  One must account for the relative sophistication packed into the Mars Exploration Rover too. Moreover, there cannot be a fair comparison between a probe and a long term rover. Hundreds of engineers had worked on it. A community's confidence was shattered with this failure. Trying to measure the extent of this failure in terms of money does not do it justice. Such a failure is a loss to the entire world. Science has no boundaries.