Reviews for Managing Martians

The average rating for Managing Martians based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-07-14 00:00:00 Meghana Wagh Donna Shirley had a 30-some years' career at JPL starting in 1966. For 4 years in the mid-1990s she managed the team of some 30 engineers and technicians who worked on the Sojourner, a small robotic Mars rover that prefigured the later Spirit/Opportunity and Curiosity rovers; in contrast, the team that worked on the lander had 300 people. The Soviets landed two Lunokhod rovers (misspelled "Lunakhod" in this book, and mistranslated as "moon car") in the early 1970s; because the Moon is only one light-second away from Earth, they were able to drive them as RC cars. Mars, on the other hand, is between 3 and 22 light-minutes away from Earth; a Mars rover must be able to navigate autonomously; for a Mars rover to be launched, the microprocessor needed to be invented first, and autonomous navigation algorithms needed to be developed. Shirley briefly goes through the history of robotics at JPL; one early prototype rover dragged behind cables to the VAX computer that ran its autonomous navigation software. Overall, I think that it would be a better book with more focus on overcoming the engineering challenges of the author's job, and less on the overcoming the problems of being the only female engineering student in her class and one of very few female engineers in an organization. I have read a few autobiographies of aerospace engineers, from Nevil Shute, who worked on the R100 airship, to Ben Rich, who developed the F-117 stealth fighter; this is the only one with blurbs from Glamour and Mirabella magazines on the cover.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-03-17 00:00:00 Melina Sfakianaki A combination of Mars mission narrative - very complete and interesting; biography - quite brief; and team management discussion - the author wrote another book beforehand titled Managing Creativity. Especially interesting were some of the plans for future Mars missions and the authors descriptions of challenges encountered because of gender and her leadership role within JPL. A spread of black and white photos in the book depict the author, her colleagues and both of the spacecraft. I sought this book out after reading The Martian. In that story, the Pathfinder and Soujourner both play a pivotal role. While some of the probe facts are not quite accurate (no LEDs, no external power port), it still makes for a great story. A solid 4½ stars, this book is a quick read and definitely recommended.