The Right Kind of Crazy by Adam Steltzner & William Patrick

Author:Adam Steltzner & William Patrick [Steltzner, Adam & Patrick, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-28T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

THE LEAST UNACCEPTABLE SOLUTION

As I was wrapping up my initial work on MER, my stock was pretty high at JPL. I was asked to consult for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) landing team; my capable colleague Jeff Umland already had the EDL job. And anyway, I wanted to do something totally different: I wanted to be in charge of the surface mission.

MSL was going to employ a new class of rover, the behemoth that would come to be known as Curiosity. Being in charge of design would mean integrating the work of all the subsystems engineers, and it would be a big step up administratively, comparable to Wayne Lee’s role in EDL for MER.

So I called Dave Woerner, the flight system manager for MSL, and asked him, essentially, “What do you think? You wanna offer me a job?”

In keeping with JPL’s custom of letting people “audition” for bigger roles, Dave had me come in to talk.

I didn’t realize it until after the fact, but this was my first “executive interview,” and it caught me flat-footed. The role I was applying for was at the level of project leadership. Up until now my career had more or less ridden the thermals of events, and I’d never been officially recruited for anything. Now Dave was asking questions that required an executive awareness: “The relationship between flight system management and project management on MER. How did that go? What were the strengths and weaknesses?”

As far as I was concerned, project management was Pete Theisinger and flight system management was Richard Cook. I’d never really thought about these things in generalizable terms. So my answers were not exactly compelling and insightful. We chatted for a while, but he didn’t know who I was, and I didn’t know how to pretend to be what he wanted.

When we were done, he smiled and shook my hand and politely said something that felt like “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Shortly afterward I ran into Richard. He never expressly told me this, but he gave me the impression that Dave had phoned him to ask about me, and that Dave was going to pass until Richard turned him around.

And I can’t say that I would have blamed Dave if he had said no. This was my attempting to self-authorize again, big time. Given that I knew next to nothing about rovers and little about general spaceflight systems beyond the mechanics of EDL, the job I was asking for was a stretch, but apparently Richard thought I was up to it.

For Dave, who’d never worked with me, there was nothing obvious that would make him see that potential. But thanks to Richard’s endorsement, I got the job.

The concept of the Mars Science Laboratory mission evolved from previous plans that had been frustrated. In 1999, when we lost Mars Polar Lander, two big ideas were on the table, but the lab was still reeling. One plan was MER; the other was the Mars Sample Return mission, with a huge rover, to be launched in 2003.

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