QUESTION: 
If we aren't spending as much money on these missions as we have in the
past. Are we taking the chance that the materials are not high quality?

ANSWER from Donna Shirley on November 23, 1996:
That's a good question. Actually, space travel is always risky. We spent
almost $1 billion on Mars Observer and it failed and the Europeans just
lost their Cluster mission because of a launch failure. The Russians lost
Mars 96 at launch on which they had "bet their planetary program."

Our new, less-expensive approach is doing less science with each mission,
but we are flying more missions, so the total science and cost are the
same over the long run. However, there are more frequent data and less
risk of losing everything if we lose a single mission.