The current mission score for Mars mirrors my Kerbal experience pretty well!

[Meetze]

I had a good laugh last night when I found out only 19 out of 39 missions to Mars actually made their destination. The excuses were pretty golden considering they mirrored my own KSP experience.

Check out some of the reasons: http://airandspace.si.edu/etp/mars/explore_missions.html

Oct. 10, 1960 Korabl 4 Failed in Earth orbit

Oct. 24, 1962 Korabl 11 Failed to leave Earth orbit

Nov. 1, 1962 Mars 1 Lost communications Mar. 21, 1963

Nov. 4, 1962 Korabl 13 Failed in Earth orbit, reentered Nov. 5

Nov. 5, 1964 Mariner 3 Launch failure, entered solar orbit

Nov. 30, 1964 Zond 2 Lost communications May 1965

July 3, 1998 Nozomi Failed to achieve trajectory to reach Mars orbit and ran out of fuel.

[Starlight]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars Here's an updated list, and yes, looks like your standard Kerbal approach to space programs. Also offers link to the individual probes, some of the errors are indeed kerbal-worthy (wong unit conversions like inches insetad of cm etc, too early-too late deployment of landing gear etc)

In short, spacetravel is hard

[RoboRay]

Nobody ever showed them F5/F9.