Seriously, the tandem failures of the Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Observer missions were probably something NASA as an organization needed at the time. A reminder that Space Is Hard, and you can only pick two of "faster", "better", and "cheaper". Since then, NASA's Mars program has grown in both scope and ambition, yet remarkably has had zero loss-of-mission failures during that whole time!

I was referring to the successful landing of Pathfinder but yeah... Space is Hard and NASA is good at it are both very true.

After Pathfinder someone from NASA wrote a book about their new "faster, better, cheaper" approach to missions. Usually you can't have all 3 but they managed to get lucky. That made it particularly amusing when the book and concept were getting popular as the next 2 missions were failing.

Most of the velocity of Pathfinder was shed using aerobraking and parachutes. The crash-balloon landing system just shed the last tiny sliver of velocity after cutting the chutes.

Ah, yeah, you could call airbags lithobraking. I thought you referred ironically to the Mars Polar Lander, but it of course flew in the 1999 launch window rather than 1997.

Didn't they launch a projectile into an asteroid not long ago as well?