Re: Learning Curve
I've heard this reasoning a few times and its not really accurate. You have to remember that back at the times of the initial Moon landings by the US and the USSR, the nations were in a space race due to the cold war, and in a war situation, you have pretty much all the money you need to defeat the enemy, so sending up something that will "probably" work was considered acceptable if it meant you got there ahead of the commie buggers/capitalists pigs (delete as approppriate). Additionally, the concept of quality control really only got introduced towards the end of the space race (when you will have noticed success rates of missions climbing substantially).
These days, space agencies survive on minimal funding, so you cant just lob something into space in the hope it will work, you have to be sure it will work, so huge amounts of testing are done beforehand to try to account for every possible failure. Failures still happen (you cant catch everything!), but a lot less happen now than in the past.
I write this, not to belittle the chinese effort, but to point out that the success rate of all modern space agencies is astonishing considering the restrictions they are under and the science they are trying to achieve. I have every confidence that the Chinese will get some very nice data from the Jade Rabbit, not everything might work, but I guarantee that those things that do work will be used to perform great science.