"Colin pillenger did not make beagle 2 'on the cheap' nor do it to teach 'jonny forigner' a lesson and there havev never been any media articles sugesting this to my knolage...
what he did triumph in was building and launching beagle 2 though entiarly non government funded means so it did not cost britsh tax payers the cash that American tax payers have to pay to fund nasa (even more now that GWB is trying to divert peoples attention from his failings by saying "I want a moon base like in 2010! and I want to go to mars like they did in that capricorn film")."
Of course he didn't do it to get those evil Americans. Anyone stating such would be an idiot. And I did not state such.
And yes, he did do it relatively on the cheap. And in the media, both in british papers and in british articles carried in Canadian papers, it was constantly compared to NASA's price for spirit. As well, the comments of the team members associated with it, especially team head, seemed to be implying that, therefore, the ESA was superior to Nasa. Related, was after the failure team members expressing their regrets over the "kick in the teeth" and the failure "to beat" NASA to mars (which is ludicrous, they're 30 years late).
As to his trumph and the launch etc., I don't deny that. But the beagle was also fundamentally flawed in design, and to search for outside excuses as to it's failure is pretty ridiculous. 1/3rd nasa fail rate, 100% soviet fail rate. Between the normal failure rates, and the fact that the beagle was much less robust then a typical lander, looking for outside excuses to blame the failure on seems pretty arrogant. The only reason why you should assume that there would NOT be a MASSIVE chance of failure, even if everything went right, would be if the ESA were somehow more capable then the US or Russia. At least, that's the way I see it.
Getting a rover landed on mars is TOUGH. One nation only, at the moment, is capable of doing that. Even getting a probe in mars orbit is a significant accomplishment. But there was an incredible lack of redundancy in Beagle's landing apparatus. As well, unlike NASA, the beagle did not maintain communications while descending (spirit used pre-selected tones to indicate status/problems except in the moments prior/after touchdown), unlike NASA's spirit, so what happened to beagle may never be known.
Anyways, the beagle was an incredible achievement. And that holds true even though Beagle itself did not survive landing.
what he did triumph in was building and launching beagle 2 though entiarly non government funded means so it did not cost britsh tax payers the cash that American tax payers have to pay to fund nasa (even more now that GWB is trying to divert peoples attention from his failings by saying "I want a moon base like in 2010! and I want to go to mars like they did in that capricorn film")."
Of course he didn't do it to get those evil Americans. Anyone stating such would be an idiot. And I did not state such.
And yes, he did do it relatively on the cheap. And in the media, both in british papers and in british articles carried in Canadian papers, it was constantly compared to NASA's price for spirit. As well, the comments of the team members associated with it, especially team head, seemed to be implying that, therefore, the ESA was superior to Nasa. Related, was after the failure team members expressing their regrets over the "kick in the teeth" and the failure "to beat" NASA to mars (which is ludicrous, they're 30 years late).
As to his trumph and the launch etc., I don't deny that. But the beagle was also fundamentally flawed in design, and to search for outside excuses as to it's failure is pretty ridiculous. 1/3rd nasa fail rate, 100% soviet fail rate. Between the normal failure rates, and the fact that the beagle was much less robust then a typical lander, looking for outside excuses to blame the failure on seems pretty arrogant. The only reason why you should assume that there would NOT be a MASSIVE chance of failure, even if everything went right, would be if the ESA were somehow more capable then the US or Russia. At least, that's the way I see it.
Getting a rover landed on mars is TOUGH. One nation only, at the moment, is capable of doing that. Even getting a probe in mars orbit is a significant accomplishment. But there was an incredible lack of redundancy in Beagle's landing apparatus. As well, unlike NASA, the beagle did not maintain communications while descending (spirit used pre-selected tones to indicate status/problems except in the moments prior/after touchdown), unlike NASA's spirit, so what happened to beagle may never be known.
Anyways, the beagle was an incredible achievement. And that holds true even though Beagle itself did not survive landing.