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However, in February 2009, because of the late delivery of several critical components and instruments, NASA delayed the launch to a date between October and December 2011.

This delay and the additional resources required to resolve the underlying technical issues increased the Project's development costs by 86 percent, from $969 million to the current $1.8 billion, and its life-cycle costs by 56 percent, from $1.6 billion to the current $2.5 billion.

So roughly two thirds of the cost of the entire mission is in developing the technology and building one vehicle. One thing that is routinely ignored in discussions of space probes is the trade-off between cutting edge development and actual output of the space probe. For example, instead of building the Mars Science Laboratory and its gear, we could have sent around 8 Mars Expedition Rovers (the actual cost of building and launching a rover is somewhere around $300 million). You might not have gotten quite as nice a variety of scientific output for any given location as the MSL, but you'd get up to (counting the possibility of mission failures!) eight different locations and the risk per mission would be lower (since the MERs are proven tech).

My view here is that technology development has taken over the business of NASA's space science division. Yes, you do need on occasion to develop new technology in order to explore. But these missions have somewhere around two-thirds the cost of the entire mission in developing and building new, unproven technology. Then if the mission succeeds, they'll go on to more new, unproven technology rather than use the platform further.

Fifty years from now, what of this whole stream of technology development will still be useful? Will it be like NASA's atmospheric science of the past where decades down the road, some entrepreneur might come along and pick and choose from the pieces of debris (mostly reports) that remain?

the space program

Oh yes. That immediately led to all sorts of space activities by us citizens,

Seriously? I'm just as pissed as the next grounded cowboy, we were promised rocket-ships after all. But the space program has affected us citizens directly and indirectly in profound ways. Here are just a few hits from a quick google search. Enjoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race#Legacy

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/10-tech-breakthroughs-to-thank-the-space-race-for-617847

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/apollo.htm

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/pdf/80660main_ApolloFS.pdf

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/NASA_Derived_Technology_Captures_Unique_Inaugural_Image_999.html

http://space-exploration.suite101.com/article.cfm/nasa-space-technology-inventions-and-products

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/industry-02f.html

The Council of Elders has declared tomorrow a day of commemoration. K'breel, Speaker for the Council, spake thus:

"By Gfa'rdmn, a little over half a year ago, our forces celebrated victory over the plumb-bob-waving monstrosity from the North, having slowly chilled it to death. The Invader from the Plains sits enmired in our sandpit. The Twin by the Crater has begun to stir, but it stood paralyzed by fear for sixty days by the mere sight of the spent husk of a Kinetic Bombardment Force component."

"So thorough has been our dominance of the blue planet's terror craft that they have not since dared to touch our red sands with their filthy metallic fingertips. Yes, their robotic spies continue to flail wildly around our great world - but despite dozens of passes over the pole, and countless radiofrequency emanations beamed down in an effort to re-establish communications with frozen hulk of the Invader from the North, their efforts have revealed nothing but ice! And they report these sightings of "nothing but ice" back to their puerile blue world as though this were somehow a great propaganda victory! The beings from the blue planet are impotent! Their efforts are futile! Rejoice!"

When a junior climatologist suggested that the overflights could perhaps have been part of an effort to use radar map the depth of our ice caps in order to better understand their own world's shrinking ice caps, K'Breel had the dissenter's gelsacs flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, shattered with a hammer, and the resulting shards thawed in a microwave oven before subsequently roasting them on a spit.

I hate ice and snow anyway - what a bloody mess it is. If you are a masochistic person who actually likes snow I suggest you move to a colder planet such as Mars or Pluto.

Mars, Pluto, and Jupiter are also warming.

  of soil.
Or we could always build loads of factories there and start global warming.

On the Science Channel, 7-9 PM Eastern Time:

Mars Live: The Phoenix Lands

And I see that my cable company now carries Science Channel HD. Woot!

If NASA aren't planning to get there until 2031 I can almost guarantee that they wont get there first.
Uhm, they were first back in 1976 http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/NASA_Marks_30th_Anniversary_Of_Mars_Viking_Mission_999.html

You asked, they listened. Does a August 3rd Launch work for your schedule?

There's still this pesky little thing called olivine, a volcanic rock. It's an interesting mineral in that it decomposes rapidly in water, and Mars is covered with thousands and thousands of square miles of it. There is water on Mars, perhaps, not as much as news stories in the press would imply, but the olivine puts an upper limit on the amount of water Mars has had in it's past. I want to know how the scientists can square the evidence of water and the olivine. There have been different epochs in Mars' past. I suppose it's possible that after Mars' wet period ended where most water either froze or evaporated and disassociated with the hydrogen escaping into space then there was a period of volcanism that covered large areas of Mars with olivine. Sadly, I'm not familiar with the sequence of what was formed when. It is hard to date the surface of Mars except in general terms.

There may have been life on Mars. There may be significant amounts of water in the form of ice on Mars. It's exciting and it will take a long time to sort the geologic or areology of Mars. We should be going to explore Mars because it is an interesting world, not because it might have water or harbored life. Those discoveries are the icing on the cake. Because if those are the reasons we go an don't find anything, that will tell us something, but we will be disappointed and may not be able to get public support nor the tax dollars for future missions. We should look for evidence of life and water, but that shouldn't be our sole focus nor should we expect to find either.

Coming in the wake of this recent news about atmospheric hydrogen-peroxide possibly scouring Mars's surface of microbial life it looks like the odds of finding life easily on Mars are dwindling. Subsurface drilling still holds out hope.

Regardless of current life conditions I still hold out hope for past life fossil discoveries, multi-cellular past life. Several of the Mars rover pictures look to show fossils, but NASA is being very cautious in it assessments. Not sure what the ID camp or Creationists will make of bring back criniod like fossils from Mars estimated to be 1-2 billion years old. Actually I already pretty much do know, so consider the question rhetorical.

Ahhhh !!! At least, now those will be prettier and smaller !
Imagine R2D2 as a milk carton flying thru space, sending information and landing on mars !

Here is a nice (but exaggerated) color image on Marsdaily.com:

http://www.marsdaily.com/images/mars-mera-sol560-g usev-husband-desk-1024.jpg

They sometimes process for color when Nasa doesn't bother to; possibly because Nasa has to answer questions about whether the color is accurate while blogs don't. The rover color filters used to take many images don't necessarily correponse to the human eye range because they are doing geology ahead of postcards.

I keep seeing comments like this, and have to wonder...The russians are having a hell of a time meeting their ISS obligations, the U.S. isn't doing a single thing to force them to, and nearly every damn /.'er thinks this new spacecraft is all but built! So, how are those russian plans to land a man on Mars going?

I thought the temperature of Mars was -15 degrees Celsius at it's coldest, and +5 degrees Celsius at it's hotest (according to temperatures received from Spirit)

See here and here. This could get interesting. . .

While watching educational video's with the kiddo's has its place, how about you ditch the boob-toob and keep them up well past their bed-time?

Pick up a decent telescope and a few eyepieces, head out to the country (away from all the damn city lights) and, I don't know, look at Mars!

Here and here are sites with a little more info...