[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

Just to start a general topic, we've discussed some aspects of the old Soviet planetary exploration programs, but we've never had a topic devoted to the discussion, where we can discuss it in general terms.

So, the question is, did the Russians have significantly more problems with their early lunar and planetary probes than the U.S. did? How about ESA or JAXA? How do they all compare?

And what would y'all say is the reason for differences in success/failure rates, and quality of data returned, by probes built and flown by the various polities which have attempted them thus far?

I can think, specifically, of Russian lunar orbiters that returned image data of far poorer quality and usefulness than contemporary American orbiters... of the '71 Mars debacle, in which a functioning Soviet orbiter couldn't be re-targeted real-time and spent all of its pre-planned science program photographing the blank, featureless top of a global dust storm... of more than their fair share of probes ending up as junk decorating the steppes of Kazakhstan.

But, then again, you can always bring up the failures of Rangers 1-6, two of the seven Surveyors, the partial failure of Lunar Orbiter 1, etc., etc., etc., while the Russians were merrily taking pictures (albeit low-quality ones) of the far side of the Moon and landing small pods on its surface.

What do y'all think the balances were? What learning-curve lessons-learned are we seeing repeat themselves in the ESA and JAXA programs?

Just trying to get a sense of the group on this one.

-the other Doug

[GregM]

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[mcaplinger]

The Americans have only lost spacecraft there that were built as part of Dan Goldin's now discredited "Better, Faster, Cheaper" fiasco. Those vehicles didn't fail because of Mars, they failed because they were part of an inheritantly [sic] flawed program.

Mars Observer wasn't part of FBC; Goldin wasn't even working for NASA when it was being developed, and he had been the administrator for less than 6 months when it was launched.

And to say that the '98 missions failed because of an inherently-flawed program is a gross oversimplication at best. Look at the razor-thin margins that separated the MERs from failure.