Missions to Mars > 52% Failure Rate

Our fascination with the Red Planet has gone back a long ways.

Our failed attempts over the past 50 years have only turned our fascination into a near obsession. We have begun a new race to the Red Planet, just as we once had to the Moon.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture with a 3D Bar-Graph in HD must be worth even more:

i.imgur.com...

Our success rate getting to Mars is definitely improving, but we still have a long ways to go. Out of 42 missions, only 20 have succeeded, granted 14 of those failures were early Soviet attempts, but, only eight of the 42 were actually programmed to land on Mars, which is theoretically the difficult part.

This is one of the better graphs I've seen in a long time. If more data were presented in this fashion, especially to those in Congress who decide whether Space Exploration is worth the expenditure, I think we might see them singing a different tune.

Credit for the graphic should be given to Brian Christie Design whose graphics you commonly see in the likes of BBC Focus, Bloomberg Markets, Business Week, Fortune, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic, New Scientist, Newsweek, NYSE Magazine, Popular Science, Scientific American, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and WIRED.

Bravo! Great point and thread!

I always wondered why we always looked at Mars and not Venus? Is it because men are from mars and women from Venus and only men work at N.A.S.A.?


.............. Alright... That was a lousey drop in...

Great post! Good eye opener.

Originally posted by Jkd Up

I always wondered why we always looked at Mars and not Venus?

I am pretty sure its because of the extreme atmospheric pressure that Venus posses.

Its a vary hostile environment, we currently don't have the level of technology needed to survive the pressures for long.

However Mar's (while still hostile), doesn't have extreme atmospheric pressures to deal with, making it a more attainable goal.

edited grammar

[edit on 10/22/2009 by Alaskan Man]

Originally posted by Jkd Up
I always wondered why we always looked at Mars and not Venus? Is it because men are from mars and women from Venus and only men work at N.A.S.A.?

Well, that's an interesting point. We've had 43 Missions that included Venus, and 18 of those failed, for a 42% failure rate compared to the 52% failure rate with Mars (although if you take into consideration that the majority of those 43 Missions to Venus were Flybys, the actual failure rate is significantly higher for all other mission types).

Venus' dense atmosphere consists almost entirely (97%) of carbon dioxide (CO2), with clouds containing droplets of sulfuric acid along with compounds of chlorine and fluorine. These precipitate an acid rain called virga. In the upper part of the atmosphere, clouds swirl by at a rate of 300 km/h, driven by fierce winds. This massive blanket of carbon dioxide is also responsible for a runaway greenhouse effect that heats the planet's surface to an average temperature of 467°C (872°F) – hot enough to melt lead.

And high temperature, sulfuric acid atmosphere, and high winds are the least of the troubles with Venus. Venus also has surface pressure 90 times greater than that on Earth...something we've only recently been able to counteract (by comparison the deepest robotic dive on Earth which happened just this year was at 35,761 feet below Sea Level, being able to withstand 1,100 times the pressure of the surface pressure on Earth).

We are ready for Mars now, but we still need more practice at deep sea exploration before we are ready for Venus.

Wow a failure rate consideration.
The whole forces of the universe have been ignored to see man's
flight by air shifting propeller planes to jet planes and rockets
when the forces were realized years before.
Why stop vehicles of the elite now and find true natures forces.
Go to Mars NOW.
Ask the astronauts if they think its a go.
I just got the hear their answer before tale ends.
Once the truth about the Moon can't be found we will be off to Mars.
Electrically generated scalar mechanical forces are greater than gases
in any form. Gases are good for generating the Electrical forces.
Wow, we got it all backwards.
Just follow the elite, thats the way they do things.

That's a really neat image, thanks for the link to the image, as well as the link to the creators website. I had recently seen an image that's sort of similar to the one you linked to. It covers 50 years of space exploration for the whole solar system.

Here's the link (large image warning). I'm not exactly sure who made it though.

Originally posted by jra
Here's the link (large image warning). I'm not exactly sure who made it though.

That's one of my favorite images too. That one is also by the same Media firm as the one in the OP, Brian Christie Designs.

With graphs and diagrams like these, you don't need Sci-Fi to get kids interested in Space.