[Bonus] What's Happening with Mars Sample Return?

the points made towards the end are very pertinent, we are collectively spending insane sums on the infrastructure of mutual destruction, which shapes narratives and world-views to make disaster more likely. I would love to see international collaboration on a sample return mission, most of all between US and China, as well as at least maintaining a healthy budget on space programs precisely because it provides a cooperative goal that gets people literally as well as metaphorically looking up instead of down at their feet; if it helps humanity to remember its humanity, it will have been worth it.

I propose a X-prize like competition to get sample return. 1 billion dollar to whoever brings back 1 kg of Mars sample. Plus some milestone payments for landing intact on Mars and operating on the surface.

I’m not claiming to know better than anyone about anything. But I do remember thinking while reading papers on Perseverance’s sample collection design that too many items were left simplified for that mission to be resolved “later” by the subsequent Sample Return Mission. Which now ends up being overly complicated and too expensive. The CCP’s strength in their space research is that the people designing their sample collection mission are the same people that design their sample return. So it’s not “somebody else’s” problem to be solved later.