I used to work for the company that built this thing. 40 million quid is peanuts compared with some of the scientific, low earth orbit, earth observation satellites (to study global warming, sea temp etc etc) like Artemis that have been built costing more than ?100 million, and they only have to float around us not travel god knows how many millions of miles and land somewhere totally inhospitable.
On the subject of build quality: YES we do make the best built and innovative kit when it comes to space/communications technology. Trust me I've seen the crap that the Yanks and French build. Anyway the spin offs and the way in which this little craft has revolutionised scientists ideas of what can be achieved and how to do it more than compensate.
It's a real shame that it hasn't gone to plan but if we didn't push the envelope to see what we could achieve we'd all still be living in caves!
The reason for Beagle's dismal performance is simple: members of Blur are involved. Most of their recent output has either barely registered, crashed on impact, or even failed to take-off at all. With a long track record of making only brief, flickering appearances on any chart or graph, this was always going to be doomed. As if peace-loving martians actually want to be pestered by a bunch of once-useful, now-useless, Soho pseuds anyway. Sorry, chaps, but it'll take more than a bunch of posho scientists to rescue your fading career. Self-destruction will commence in 10....9....8....7....
yeah, ok , not trying to be big headed or nowt. My only point was if U don't try U don't fail (or succeed). People always expect things to work, when they don't, they snigger or blame someone. The technology is so far ahead of what "we" (i.e general public) can think of, that it's just great that these "boffins" gave it a go.
This is/was a good/long shot, hope it succeeds we'd be better off with the extra knowledge. I know that others have their views and I respect that even if I am repeating their views.
