[cygwin98]

I haven't seen any trend of bashing China, unless of course reporting honestly is bashing.

Well, this is a bit subjective, in my book selective reporting that focuses on negativity is bashing.

I am all for more budgets for NASA. Quite frankly, I don't follow NASA's missions very often. For the past decade I did hear from time to time that NASA sent rovers to some planets. Meanwhile, I kept hearing the flip-flop stories about the water on Mars. It gave me impression that NASA either went hugely under-budget on their Mars' missions or they spread themselves too thin. That was my point (admittedly I may need to soften my tone in my comment). Not sure if NASA had a vision problem, in my opinion, it may have made more impact and (hopefully) got more funding if they narrowed down their scope of missions and obtained more decisive results.

[aaronblohowiak]

The flip-flop comes from mainstream media interpretation of the science, usually not from the people that are part of the missions. Even the "science journalists" that are attached to bigger missions frequently dramatize findings in order to "make it a compelling story" (source: one of my exes was such a journalist.)

> either went hugely under-budget on their Mars' missions or they spread themselves too thin

I think that is a misread of the situation; the lack of a consistent narrative and publicity across NASA and its missions has more to do with the organizational structure of the PR and public education/outreach within NASA than the science or the mission management itself.