> However, if you actually want to get those things to the surface of Mars and let them do meaningful work, the best option is the US. ESA didn’t even manage a

> However, if you actually want to get those things to the surface of Mars and let them do meaningful work, the best option is the US. ESA didn’t even manage a (successful) landing yet, Russia is failing constantly. Not on Mars no (Beagle 2 was a bit anomalous, having a budget that would barely cover Nasa's stationary costs each year and wasn't secure until about half way through the project anyway. Very embarrassing from a PM point of view). But don't discount Huygens! That was pretty spectacular, especially given how much less we know about Titan. Asside: I asked a few people who worked on the Huygens landing system why that worked so well but why ESA hasn't been able to recreate that success. They said, quick as a flash, project management. ESA used to PM their projects with a small, powerful project office. Now the sub a lot of the PM out to the big contractors, who seem to just do MS Word documents about how they can't deliver anything and it's someone else's fault. You need good PMs (we all know this anyway right?). The MSL PM is also the MER (spirit and opportunity) PM, Pete Theisinger. He is a great man. There's a fantastic talk he gave a few years ago, that should delight anyone into ambitious and cool engineering projects, about the development of MER. You can see that he's the kind of guy you'd like to work for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7ZBLklsUys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7ZBLklsUys Edit: typo.