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"Faster, |  |
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| The "Faster, Better, Cheaper" plan of NASA, is designed to send more missions into space with each mission being less expensive. Before the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" plan went into effect, there were fewer missions into space, and they were more expensive. In the 1970's, the Voyager and Viking programs each sent a pair of similar spacecraft for similar research costing over a billion dollars apiece. Now, instead of one big project, NASA does a number of smaller projects. Since 1992, under the "Faster, Better, Cheaper" plan, 146 payloads have been launched with a value of $18 billion. There have been only ten failures worth about $500 million. It has been faster and cheaper to get a spacecraft off to Mars, but it hasn't always been better. The first pair of missions in the Mars Exploration Program, the Mars Pathfinder and the Mars Global Surveyor, was successful. The second pair, the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander was... |
...NOT!
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The Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander didn't have anything to do with Houston, but just like the Apollo 13 Mission, they had big problems. The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on September 23, 1999, and the Mars Polar Lander was last heard from on December 22, 1999. NASA is still investigating what happened to the Mars Polar Lander, but they do have a good idea what happened to the Mars Climate Orbiter. |
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