Are the Martian rovers outliers to this rule?
>I want to go up in a ship that's a little better than the absolute minimum.
This makes me think of the "this was built by the lowest bidding contractor" quote
- To try to compensate for the worst-case situations
- To try to compensate for the unknown-unknowns
If you made a Mars rover that experienced a worst-case re-entry burn, got blown off-course during landing by larger-than-ever-measured surface winds, had your solar panel etched by dust in said surface winds, and completed 89 of the 90 day mission, you should still very much feel like you’ve succeeded AND you’ve provided incredibly valuable input data for the next iteration. We then refine our mental model of the Martian atmospheric conditions and revise the worst-case scenario specs for next time.