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No, it would be crazy if the rover failed due to a bad bolt, and no one could explain why the bolt was bad or even where it came from.

Also, no one is stopping you from building, launching, landing, and operating a multi-purpose roving vehicle on the surface of a foreign planet, 50 to 400 million kilometers away, that's designed to last for several years and withstand extremes of temperature, pressure, and radiation.

If you can do better...




I still think there is a middle ground. I guess I will just have to make my own mars rover in my spare time though, that seems viable.


If your point is that there is a lot of bureaucracy, then I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, in any government project, that is going to be the case.

You cannot on the one hand expect great things, and on the other hand chastise every failure. I'm not saying you specifically would do this, but any failure would result in a storm of controversy about how billions of dollars were wasted to land a pile of scrap metal on Mars while X, Y, and Z pressing political crises are a better use of our time and money.

A private company, on the other hand, can afford to take greater risks. If you're actually able to do it on your own, more power to you, but I would recommend some help.




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