[arrrg]

Beagle 2 hitched a ride on Mars Express which was and still is a very successful low cost mission. It’s still orbiting Mars and being used for scientific research more than a decade into its mission.

The total cost including that decade of operations is about €300M (until 2013) – and less than 20 percent of that was spent on Beagle.

But that’s not even the whole story. Venus Express was heavily borrowing from Mars Express and did consequently cost substantially less (€85M vs €150M for launch and spacecraft, excluding subsequent operations and in the case of Mars Express also Beagle 2; total mission cost until its end in 2014 €220M).

Beagle 2 and the whole Mars Express mission was really put together on a shoestring budget. It’s more a demonstration that you can do a lot with a little, really, than anything else …

Other then that SpaceX has shown incredible process in their re-usability quest, the latest failed landing included. They have been on a steady march towards re-usability, without any major roadblocks (except the usual delays). There is nothing there that shows them hitting any kind of wall, actually.