Comments by "Philip B" (@philipb2134) on "Business Insider" channel.

It's surprising that a channel billing itself as "Business Insider" would be so unfamiliar with generally accepted accounting principles. Those missions to Mars did not have the sole purpose of returning soil samples to Earth. There were other tasks of scientific importance assigned to those missions. It would not be honest to zero these out and assign the mission costs only to soil sample recovery.
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04:-01 The cans are not put in a sterilizing machine (known in the trade as a 'retort') to kill off any bacteria on the outside: instead it would be faster and cheaper to bathe the cans in a sterilizing fluid - a chlorine solution should work well for this. Actually, the cans go into the retort which is sealed tight. The retort , with water at the bottom, is then heated to produce steam. After a while (the 'come-up time'), the steam reaches a certain pressure, after which the heat and pressure are maintained according to a schedule in order to ensure the commercial sterility of the contents of the can - that's how canning works. Different can sizes and different foodstuffs have different retort schedules - typical for sardines in oil would be 60-80 minutes at 240 deg. F under 8.5 lbs pressure. .The cans are sterilized under pressure to keep the steam generated within the cans from exploding them.
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"How The US Military Spends $800B Per Year On War Machines "... well, it doesn't. Major defense expenditures go to pay for personnel (including pay, food, housing, medical, etc.) upkeep, transportation, etc. At $ 445.3 bn for FY 2023, Military Personnel plus Operation and Maintenance alone account for well over half of the discretionary component of the defense budget.
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@kennypowers3654 Kenny, will you swear that there were absolutely NO other mission objectives which should share costs?
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@kennypowers3654 So it would seem. Had you done even minor research on the mission objectives of these 3 flights to Mars? Are there none, zero, none other research yummy which might take up just a few hundred grams of payload? Or if no payload in excess of nominal specification is available: are the craft's instruments fully enabled to supply data which Earth-bound scientists crave? Your resistance is perplexing. Planetary scientists are aware that these are fraught missions. They tend to prefer spreading risk, Having Mission A do THIS 100% only, then Mission B do THIS for 100% only, then Mission C do THIS 100% only, is both unacceptable hubris and a waste of opportunity. Mars is notoriously accident-prone.
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@kennypowers3654 Why import infrastructure to make rocket fuel? That's not likely to yield a beneficial cost/output balance for such a low launch requirement.
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