The Phoenix Has Landed, or Hope Icy.

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The costs we are sinking into things like the space station are staggering.

Apples and oranges... the costs of sending people into space (let alone keeping them there for long periods of time) are astronomical (sorry) compared to those for planetary probes. Consider that the cost of the Phoenix mission is comparable to that of ONE space shuttle launch ("comparable" as in ~$530 million vs. ~$450 million--and that $450 million doesn't, of course, include the cost of the vehicle itself, $1.7 billion in the case of Endeavour.).

IMO the money we're spending on unmanned planetary probes is a defensible expenditure in terms of the science we get back from it. But if you want to argue against it, that's a completely different animal than the space station.

Photo of Phoenix landing:

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001464/