The Great Galactic Ghoul and Mars missions
Claim in the list: The difficulty of Mars missions inspired the joking legend of the “Great Galactic Ghoul,” which supposedly feeds on spacecraft. Only about one-third of U.S. and Japanese Mars probes have achieved at least partial success.
Verification: The first sentence is supported as a humorous legend. NASA traces it to a 1969 conversation between Time reporter Donald Neff and JPL manager John Casani; the mythical ghoul was invoked to explain a run of mission failures. The second sentence cannot be verified without a time period, mission list, and definition of “partial success.” It is outdated or misleading as a combined U.S.-and-Japan summary: success rates vary by mission type and selected set; a NASA 2021 summary lists about 74% success for 63 U.S. missions, while Japanese missions are tallied separately and have a small sample. There is no single standard denominator for probes that achieved at least partial objectives.
Conclusion: The Great Galactic Ghoul is a genuine humorous myth from Mars exploration history. The one-third U.S.-and-Japan success claim lacks a defined methodology and is not reliable current statistics.