Lack of cash killed Beagle 2

From The Register -- it seems that Mars lander Beagle was the victim of budgetary squabbling and poor management decisions. bq. If there had been as many people taking care of the Beagle 2 project as there have been reports into why the lander got lost, we'd have reams of data on the composition of the Martian soil flooding back from a perfectly functioning vehicle, right now. bq. The latest report is from the House of Commons Select Committee for Science and Technology. It concludes, among other things, that the project was stymied by a lack of funding at an early enough stage in the development process. It says that while the government was "admirably enthusiastic" about the project, is was "unable to respond to its relatively sudden emergence" with guaranteed sponsorship. As a consequence, the scientists had to spend time fundraising, rather than on designing and testing equipment. And the management screwup? bq. Another major stumbling block was that Beagle 2 was classified as an instrument, rather than a lander. At this stage, almost everyone agrees that this was a mistake. Sure, it rode piggyback on another project but it was most definitely a lander and needed a larger share of the resources allocated to the entire project. A lander is an autonomous craft carrying instruments and needs a lot more in terms of communications, electrical power, navigational and CPU time. Sheesh! Good that people like Burt Rutan are taking over from the "big science" people -- now maybe something will get started again.