I've heard discussion of the Mars Curse, with the very high failure rate of missions to the planet. Comparing NASA Mars missions to NASA outer solar system missions since the beginnings of the 1970's is there really a "curse" for NASA
My numbers are based on Wikipedia entries for NASA Mars missions and overall missions, please edit if they are inaccurate.
Since 1971 there have been 23 NASA missions to Mars, with 4 of them failing (5, but I'm not counting launch failures), and 11 missions to the outer planets and none of them failed. Does the difference in the success rate simply come down to the "Faster, Cheaper, Better" program being a mistake?