Instead of putting a large number of instruments on a billion dollar spacecraft and risking a catastrophic failure, lets build six or seven smaller spacecraft for around 150 million apiece. The funding is still a billion dollars and the time frame is the same. However, the failure of one or more of these small spacecraft will not have the huge negative impact on public opinion as the failure of one large one. R isk management says that a number of these smaller spacecraft will fail. Two, three, four, out of nine.
Failure is inherent with the business.
It's hard to say. I n the faster, better, cheaper world, the word cheaper may be slightly disingenuous. END - Page 1 of 1 q Top Contact author Copy text, paste it into your own page, print a reference copy, and start a collection of Threshold articles. It makes writing your reply a cinch .