Putting the Odyssey Spacecraft in Martian Orbit

FortKnox writes: "There is an interesting article about NASA attempting to place the Odyssey Spacecraft in Martian Orbit on Oct 23rd. Looks like it is a tough maneuver. Maybe they should just say the trip to Mars was the mission, and putting it in orbit is a "bonus mission" like they did with Deep Space 1. Seems they do a better job if it isn't a criteria of the actual mission ;-)"

Comments

Anyone taking bets?

[MousePotato]

Considering all of the miserable failures that have occurred so far in past Mars missions I am hoping that the meters/inches thing doesn't rear its ugly head again... that was just plain embarrasing.

Someone should start a deathpool for this one. Time/date of failure and then a seperate pool for what will be the lame excuse.

I hate to sound so negative but the rate of success on these missions is really frustrating. The missions went so much better when they were planned redundancies in the entire project like Viking 1 & 2. The cost of building two shouldn't double the cost of the entire project. In R&D the cost of two is usually 1.5-1.7 times the cost of building just one.

Hopefully this goes well and I can cheer up about it but until then I am not getting my hopes up on this one.