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Ah Giles I am right with you on the dyson thing they are fucking crap. I bought the all singing dancing dyson cleaner, it could not even suck me let alone a carpet full of dog hair, if you are ever in the market for a vacum cleaner, I have purchased a SEBO old fashioned style, fuck me it is brilliant, yes it is German. alltouh i can not get my cock in the extension piece like i could the dyson, but my house doesnt smell of shit. wot am i talking about?

all very interesting but absolutely nothing to do with my point, which was made not in relation to matters of patriotism but those of human aspiration and endeavour.

i was taking issue with your worms-eye view of what it was that was being attempted. to dedicate countless thousands of hours of intensive intellectual and creative endeavour to something that can so easily result in failure requires a certain purity of spirit and vision it seems to me. especially, when you consider that failure will most likely arise not out of incompetence or shoddiness but simply because what is being aimed for is so incredibly difficult to attain under even the most propitious circumstances.

the bald fact is that two thirds of all missions to mars end in failure (does this make the rest of the world a pile of crap, i wonder?). hardly surprising when you consider the astonishing fragility of these craft in the context of their ordained task, as well as the countless millions of calculations that have to be called correctly (and not forgetting the requisite bit of luck needed to avoid landing in a martian pot hole).

failure to achieve the exceptional is surely of more value to us than the cheap succour of routine success. certainly, it's worthy of more than cheap, cursory jibes by the majority of us who can't even be bothered to offer a nod of support in their direction.

I think the general public has no real concept of the reasons for Space Exploration

Add that to the perception of public money that could be used elsewhere and you have your powderkeg of scepticism just waiting to go off

I personally think its important work because its the second last frontier that may yet be the key to Mankinds survival

cheers
B....OZ

Well put Woody, I agree. It,s easy to knock the inspirational and the dedicated, I actually passed Jodrall Bank early this evening, and was thinking of how much it meant to all those people associated with this project, also when people say the money could have been better spent!.............who knows?, if the mission was successful - what benefit may come of it, anyway I doubt the organizers of the Beagle would class it as a failure, more likely to get their heads down and try again. Thats true spirit., all about not giving up..........

It's worth bearing in mind the problems encountered by the Hubble Space Telescope when it was launched. Mirrors slightly misaligned giving it a Magoovian outlook on space. One Shuttle mission by Vision Express later, and we were getting some of the most fabulous images of the universe---and a look billions of years back in time.

I am completely innumerate, but I think the calculations, celestial mechanics and whatever of getting a craft to a specific area of space just in time for Mars arriving would boggle most minds. One slight miscalculation, one + instead of a - and the whole thing is just space junk. It's not looking too good at the moment, but I hope the lander has survived.

I have to side with the sceptics on this as is seemingly failed mission to Mars, did any of you guys actually believe that this mission was going to be a success .... thought not, these boffins can basically seemingly tell us all about what happened in the past and the future universes in how it was formed and how it will die, but it seems to me like many others that the practical side of their research might sound good on paper but when it comes to putting a bit of theory on the table these smart arsed twats are almost always found wanting, case in point.

While on the subject of the planet Mars, as WE call it and any inhabitants as Martians, what do they call it??????????????.