There is more, but it all worked and Apollo was a success. The position seems to be that a few failures can be tolerated if, in total, there are some successes. It seems to me that this approach entails real disadvantages. The cost of failure is more than the dollar loss. Failure wastes the time and effort of our most valuable asset, our talented people.
Failure also delays the pace of the overall program.
While the team at the Jet Propulsion Lab that produced the stunningly successful Pathfinder mission deserves great credit, it seems to me that the basic concept may have been flawed. If robotic exploration produces enough information and if the costs of the International Space Station have abated enough, a manned mission to establish an outpost appears both possible and desirable. An Apollo style round-trip mission looks to be very complex and costly. Robert Zubrin, in his book The Case for Mars , has suggested a better concept, making use of Mars resources. I would go a large step further and propose a manned one-way mission to set up an outpost.