...No Space Lego image?

Think you definately missed an opportunity to play with the little nobbly bricks on this one!

You probably shouldn't describe its payload as an "arsenal", you'll make amanfromMars nervous.

So have they found ophidian life on mars or not? Enquiring minds want to know!

(Mine's the one with the scales...)

. . . . of smacking a rock!!??

God bless 'em for throwing caution to the wind.

"It's a million to one chance, innit?"

So five times more likely to totally wreck the whole lot in one go.

Mine's the one with 'wizzard' on the back

Its life Jim JUST as we know it...

Sorry ;-)

couldn't resist...

So... 100km * 20km landing ellipse. That's 1.5 billion square metres. 5 million rocks in that area... That's 300 per square metre. (So I think some NASA folks have been exaggerating!) The lander itself occupies approx 1.5 square metres. So that's 450 of these rocks within the area of the lander. If they were evenly distibuted, it's one "rock" per 36 square centimetres. Given that each of the lander's three feet undoubtedly occupy approximately the same area....

"The chances of this thing landing unscathed on Mars, are a million to one, he said. Aaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

So either some NASA-type boffins are really making it sound worse than it is, or those mission-threatening "rocks" could be more accurately described as "small stones".

You have it backwards. It's .003 rock/m^2, or one rock for every 300 square meters. I think they can find some flat ground in there.

Of course nowhere do they say what the average cross-sectional area of the rocks is, or whether it can be carried by a swallow. Given the thinness of the Martian air, I'm guessing no. Not a European or African swallow, anyway. Maybe a Martian swallow, though.

mine's the coat of armour, not all covered with s**t.

...about being correct. I also arrived at the same 0.003, but in my slightly pickled state interpreted this as one rock per 3mm^2. Which would be ridiculous. So I magically re-worked my calculation until I had something that was more reasonable.

Oh well... Mine's the one with "Maths n00b" written on the back.

Paris, because she knows where the rocks are...

Well you can triangulate the radio signals, pretty hard to fake, really...........

On the other hand, the chances of winning the UK Lottery are about 14 million to one, but someone manages it most weeks.

Were back to lies, damn lies and statistics, I see.