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Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer
The firsthand account of the trials and tribulations of engineering one of the most complex pieces of space technology, the Mars Rover Curiosity, by its chief engineer Rob Manning
In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven't found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question.
In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project's chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts.
Manning's fascinating personal account--which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists--is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn't be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity.
In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven't found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars Rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question.
In Mars Rover Curiosity: An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer, Rob Manning, the project's chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts.
Manning's fascinating personal account--which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists--is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Readers experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn't be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 21, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
May 2, 2015
5 stars for the content, 3 stars for the delivery and prose.
November 27, 2014
Ever since seeing the unconstrained joy on his face upon the successful landing of Mars Pathfinder back in 1997, I've always thought it would be great to be able to meet Rob Manning. Reading his book is the next best thing.
The current Chief Engineer for Mars Exploration at JPL, he worked his way up by working on the Galileo, Magellan, and Cassini missions to Jupiter, Venus and Saturn respectively.
This behind-the-scenes story of the MSL-Curiosity Rover project reveals that it is not all joy and mirth. In fact, most of it is stress that can cause hypertension, weight gain and turning gray-headed prematurely.
Although Manning is politically astute enough to not say so, it is clear from the history of the rover projects on Mars that these machines are capable of doing so much that it makes the cost and risk of human missions to Mars that much harder to justify. The next missions in this series will obtain rock core samples and return them to Earth where humans can see, touch, smell and even taste them. The only downside (for me) is that it takes longer for the rovers to do their jobs than it would for humans.
Of course, one of the featured highlights of the book, as well as the project itself, was the development of the new "Sky Crane" technique for the last phase of EDL (entry, descent and landing). This new method allowed the delivery of a much larger and heavier package to the surface of Mars--and it could be used for other large objects as well.
For those who have loved following space exploration missions since the days of the Viking and Apollo missions, this book will be a very pleasant read.
The current Chief Engineer for Mars Exploration at JPL, he worked his way up by working on the Galileo, Magellan, and Cassini missions to Jupiter, Venus and Saturn respectively.
This behind-the-scenes story of the MSL-Curiosity Rover project reveals that it is not all joy and mirth. In fact, most of it is stress that can cause hypertension, weight gain and turning gray-headed prematurely.
Although Manning is politically astute enough to not say so, it is clear from the history of the rover projects on Mars that these machines are capable of doing so much that it makes the cost and risk of human missions to Mars that much harder to justify. The next missions in this series will obtain rock core samples and return them to Earth where humans can see, touch, smell and even taste them. The only downside (for me) is that it takes longer for the rovers to do their jobs than it would for humans.
Of course, one of the featured highlights of the book, as well as the project itself, was the development of the new "Sky Crane" technique for the last phase of EDL (entry, descent and landing). This new method allowed the delivery of a much larger and heavier package to the surface of Mars--and it could be used for other large objects as well.
For those who have loved following space exploration missions since the days of the Viking and Apollo missions, this book will be a very pleasant read.
February 28, 2018
Every Space enthusiast must read this book!
An inside account can only perfectly be explained by someone who have worked on the project. Rob Manning successfully explains the complexity of the rover and what it takes to Design/Test/Build projects like curiosity with limited time and budget. I knew extraterrestrial rovers and their EDL (Entry-Descent-Landing) were difficult but not this much! Having read this book, I'll be able to understand and appreciate future Missions.
An inside account can only perfectly be explained by someone who have worked on the project. Rob Manning successfully explains the complexity of the rover and what it takes to Design/Test/Build projects like curiosity with limited time and budget. I knew extraterrestrial rovers and their EDL (Entry-Descent-Landing) were difficult but not this much! Having read this book, I'll be able to understand and appreciate future Missions.
November 17, 2019
More about the engineering than the science, this book covers Rob Manning's very stressful job as the chief engineer for the Mars Science Laboratory. From the start, this is about discovering and solving problems with engineering, and for me it wasn't too jargon heavy.
After a brief bio (high school in Burlington WA!) he dives into earlier Mars missions, including Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover. He also discusses some of the failed missions and why they failed (Newtons mistaken for pounds - ouch!). The primary focus of the book is Curiosity, and while he touches on budget and schedule challenges, engineering is the star here. Each problem is explained, the methods to narrow down described and the solution detailed.
The writing is not always smooth, but the ideas are clear. It also felt short - I started and finished it on a long flight between Seattle and Iceland. There are quite a few photos and diagrams, though none are in color. Then again, nasa.gov has plenty of color images, and the book even references some design videos available. In summary, a solid 4½ stars out of 5.
After a brief bio (high school in Burlington WA!) he dives into earlier Mars missions, including Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover. He also discusses some of the failed missions and why they failed (Newtons mistaken for pounds - ouch!). The primary focus of the book is Curiosity, and while he touches on budget and schedule challenges, engineering is the star here. Each problem is explained, the methods to narrow down described and the solution detailed.
The writing is not always smooth, but the ideas are clear. It also felt short - I started and finished it on a long flight between Seattle and Iceland. There are quite a few photos and diagrams, though none are in color. Then again, nasa.gov has plenty of color images, and the book even references some design videos available. In summary, a solid 4½ stars out of 5.
December 22, 2023
A fascinating account of how things work at NASA. I strongly recommend this book to software engineers (but keep in mind that the story covers a lot of other aspects of the mission as well).
# Notes
- newtons vs pounds: reason for failure of Mars climate orbiter
- ask every stakeholder about their "careabouts"
- msl: Mars smart lander -> Mars science laboratory
- in the context of building totally new things and dealing with uncharted territory: who would have believed that a pair of bicycle repair-men would be the first ones to build a plane that actually flies?
- "this is crazy! So crazy that it might just work!"
- "Tiger team" an ad-hoc group of experts temporarily assembled to solve a specific problem. The term supposedly comes from a 1964 paper which defines it as "a team of undomesticated and uninhibited technical specialists, selected for their experience, energy and imagination, and assigned to track down relentlessly every possible source of failure in a spacecraft subsystem".
- Software written in C
- "the bus to Mars only leaves every 26 months"
- "gremlin testing" - deliberately break something to simulate failure and see how the team troubleshoots it
# Notes
- newtons vs pounds: reason for failure of Mars climate orbiter
- ask every stakeholder about their "careabouts"
- msl: Mars smart lander -> Mars science laboratory
- in the context of building totally new things and dealing with uncharted territory: who would have believed that a pair of bicycle repair-men would be the first ones to build a plane that actually flies?
- "this is crazy! So crazy that it might just work!"
- "Tiger team" an ad-hoc group of experts temporarily assembled to solve a specific problem. The term supposedly comes from a 1964 paper which defines it as "a team of undomesticated and uninhibited technical specialists, selected for their experience, energy and imagination, and assigned to track down relentlessly every possible source of failure in a spacecraft subsystem".
- Software written in C
- "the bus to Mars only leaves every 26 months"
- "gremlin testing" - deliberately break something to simulate failure and see how the team troubleshoots it
February 12, 2021
Абсолютно захватывающая, когда добирается до жыра (деталей разработки проекта, как технических так и не очень).
К сожалению, делает это редко и в целом очень щадит читателя � местами читается как "моя первая книга про космос". Не было бы проблемой, если бы от этого не страдала детальность, но повествование между вариантами "объяснять все технические моменты" и "просто опустить подробности" чаще выбирает второе, а я же за инженерными байками в такие книги прихожу. Развязка "а потом в последний момент мы поняли, как решить проблему" (в которой не сообщается, каким образом) в большинстве историй оставляет меня осинешаренным, что вы творите вообще.
К сожалению, делает это редко и в целом очень щадит читателя � местами читается как "моя первая книга про космос". Не было бы проблемой, если бы от этого не страдала детальность, но повествование между вариантами "объяснять все технические моменты" и "просто опустить подробности" чаще выбирает второе, а я же за инженерными байками в такие книги прихожу. Развязка "а потом в последний момент мы поняли, как решить проблему" (в которой не сообщается, каким образом) в большинстве историй оставляет меня осинешаренным, что вы творите вообще.
June 19, 2014
This book is about the ultimate Makers: the Mars rover engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. It tells the story of the decade-long odyssey to put MSL Curiosity, a large science-based rover, on the surface of the red planet.
Author Rob Manning has been with JPL since 1980, and has worked on everything from the Galileo probe to Jupiter, Cassini to Saturn, and all of NASA's Mars missions since 1996. His title changes, but he's usually been some form of Chief Engineer for the Mars projects. In 2001, after the success of Mars Pathfinder and the total failure of Mars Polar, Manning and others conceived the idea of a giant rocket skycrane gently lowering a large delicate payload to the martian surface. (In true maker fashion, they thought of the cool stuff even before they had a mission for it!)
This was followed by ten years of hard work, false starts, great success (many of the engineers transferred in and out of the MSL project to work on the Spirit, Opportunity, and Phoenix missions), and near-total failures that almost killed the program.
In the process, the book becomes an unofficial primer on how to manage large builds. What do you do when your boss at JPL switches jobs, and the new guy is a scientist who specializes in gas giant planets and has a noted dislike for Mars? What happens when cross-cultural communication fails, and your foreign collaborators don't tell you that their experiment now needs four times the electricity than in the original spec, because of their cultural taboo against breaking bad news? How do you handle a missing ground wire the week before launch (in this case, you sneak onto the launch pad, open up the rover, and solder on a new ground wire before anyone sees you!)
The end result is, of course, the most successful Mars mission to date: as of this writing, Curiosity has proved beyond a shadow of scientific doubt that the place where it landed, Gale crater, was once a freshwater lake, with all the requirements for life, about the same time that dinosaurs were walking on the Earth.
Author Rob Manning has been with JPL since 1980, and has worked on everything from the Galileo probe to Jupiter, Cassini to Saturn, and all of NASA's Mars missions since 1996. His title changes, but he's usually been some form of Chief Engineer for the Mars projects. In 2001, after the success of Mars Pathfinder and the total failure of Mars Polar, Manning and others conceived the idea of a giant rocket skycrane gently lowering a large delicate payload to the martian surface. (In true maker fashion, they thought of the cool stuff even before they had a mission for it!)
This was followed by ten years of hard work, false starts, great success (many of the engineers transferred in and out of the MSL project to work on the Spirit, Opportunity, and Phoenix missions), and near-total failures that almost killed the program.
In the process, the book becomes an unofficial primer on how to manage large builds. What do you do when your boss at JPL switches jobs, and the new guy is a scientist who specializes in gas giant planets and has a noted dislike for Mars? What happens when cross-cultural communication fails, and your foreign collaborators don't tell you that their experiment now needs four times the electricity than in the original spec, because of their cultural taboo against breaking bad news? How do you handle a missing ground wire the week before launch (in this case, you sneak onto the launch pad, open up the rover, and solder on a new ground wire before anyone sees you!)
The end result is, of course, the most successful Mars mission to date: as of this writing, Curiosity has proved beyond a shadow of scientific doubt that the place where it landed, Gale crater, was once a freshwater lake, with all the requirements for life, about the same time that dinosaurs were walking on the Earth.
January 16, 2015
In this fascinating account from the Curiosity Rover's chief engineer, you will follow alongside the team's daunting and harrowing journey from conception to successfully landing and operating a rover on Mars.
The original challenge was bold: land a vehicle on mars 5x larger and 15x more precisely than anything previously attempted. This forced a fundamental departure in the landing system design: any old design simply wouldn't work. The team would have to create something that had never been tried before, when only half of previous attempts had ever succeeded.
The project ultimately survived dramatic underestimates of its complexity, budget overruns, time overruns, and a host of other engineering and political pitfalls to successfully land on Mars. It has now been roving the Martian surface and collecting incredibly valuable scientific data for over two years.
If you are a scientist, an engineer, a space enthusiast, or simply curious about what it takes to land a massive and incredibly complex rover on another planet, this book is for you.
The original challenge was bold: land a vehicle on mars 5x larger and 15x more precisely than anything previously attempted. This forced a fundamental departure in the landing system design: any old design simply wouldn't work. The team would have to create something that had never been tried before, when only half of previous attempts had ever succeeded.
The project ultimately survived dramatic underestimates of its complexity, budget overruns, time overruns, and a host of other engineering and political pitfalls to successfully land on Mars. It has now been roving the Martian surface and collecting incredibly valuable scientific data for over two years.
If you are a scientist, an engineer, a space enthusiast, or simply curious about what it takes to land a massive and incredibly complex rover on another planet, this book is for you.
April 5, 2021
i am really happy that this marks the 50th non fiction book i have read. it's truly outstanding and it made me remember why i got into engineering in the first place. the ability to create and to realize the ambitions of humanity to know is really breathtaking. but what's even more captivating is humanity's insatiable curiosity to learn and to discover more about ourselves and our universe that we pay billions and put thousands of work hours just for that. absolutely blown away.
October 6, 2021
A lot of densely packed detail regarding the design and building of the titled Mars Rover, written by the project's chief engineer. I liked the book because the author did a lot of work on developing the rover's immensely complicated rocket-powered "sky-crane" landing system. It seemed too strange to work, but it did, not only for the Curiosity rover but the later Perseverance rover as well. It was interesting to learn how such a system was selected and engineered. Four out of five stars.
February 20, 2022
I also love a good book about space exploration. Really fun insights into what it takes to get a little robot to another planet.
March 24, 2018
A thorough, vivid and engrossing account.
April 4, 2023
What a delightful adventure. So many books written about science and technology are dry tomes with little life. The author of this book made the entire Mars mission come alive.
What I enjoyed most was the detailed story of the development of the mission, the building of the spacecraft and the design of the mission. From concept to final landing, the authors take us on an intricate journey through the entire process. The story had nail-biting cliffhangers, jubilant wins and bone-crushing defeats. It’s all in there.
I’ve always wondered how something the size of a small car can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create. After reading this book, I get it now.
What I enjoyed most was the detailed story of the development of the mission, the building of the spacecraft and the design of the mission. From concept to final landing, the authors take us on an intricate journey through the entire process. The story had nail-biting cliffhangers, jubilant wins and bone-crushing defeats. It’s all in there.
I’ve always wondered how something the size of a small car can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to create. After reading this book, I get it now.
December 19, 2016
I haven't been very good about writing reviews in a timely manner for the past few weeks (months?). This is one of those that I should have reviewed soon after I finished it, and I just...didn't. At least I'm finally getting around to it, I guess.
Anyway, I checked this out via my library's Overdrive service. I have to admit that I didn't really know much about Curiosity before listening to this. I knew that it existed, I knew a few fun things related to it (pictures, it singing itself Happy Birthday, etc.), and I knew that it continues to function well past its 2-year mission. Recent(ish) news about things like the Juno mission and the Philae lander, plus my enjoyment of Andy Weir's The Martian, led to me wanting to read space-related nonfiction, and this book looked like a good one.
Now, let's see if I can remember what topics were covered. The book didn't actually start with Curiosity, but rather with an earlier project Manning worked on, the Sojourner Rover. This allowed him to compare and contrast the thought processes that went into Sojourner with the ones that went into Curiosity, a much larger and heavier rover with a different set of scientific instruments. I found it all fascinating, and Manning did a great job of describing the problems and most of the solutions in a way I was able to understand.
I really liked this book when it was covering the problems that needed to be solved to get a rover safely to Mars and make sure it could function in extreme cold. I also liked a lot of the stuff on Curiosity's (and its instruments') capabilities, as well as the team management stuff. However, I winced a bit during Manning's repeated mentions of budget issues. Even the “cheaper, faster� mission budgets seemed enormous to me.
I tend to be really bad about starting to read nonfiction books and then never finishing them, so it's usually audio or nothing for me. However, audio nonfiction doesn't always work well. Mars Rover Curiosity was doing fine, up until the list of all of Curiosity's scientific instruments. It made for very dry listening, and I imagine I'd have skimmed that part if I had been reading a paper version of the book instead. The narration itself was okay � not terribly exciting, but Bronson Pinchot's voice fit the text well enough that, since I didn't know what Manning sounded like, it was easy to forget that it wasn't Manning himself narrating the book.
All in all, this was an interesting look at the work, planning, testing, and, at times, politics that went into Curiosity.
(Original review posted on .)
Anyway, I checked this out via my library's Overdrive service. I have to admit that I didn't really know much about Curiosity before listening to this. I knew that it existed, I knew a few fun things related to it (pictures, it singing itself Happy Birthday, etc.), and I knew that it continues to function well past its 2-year mission. Recent(ish) news about things like the Juno mission and the Philae lander, plus my enjoyment of Andy Weir's The Martian, led to me wanting to read space-related nonfiction, and this book looked like a good one.
Now, let's see if I can remember what topics were covered. The book didn't actually start with Curiosity, but rather with an earlier project Manning worked on, the Sojourner Rover. This allowed him to compare and contrast the thought processes that went into Sojourner with the ones that went into Curiosity, a much larger and heavier rover with a different set of scientific instruments. I found it all fascinating, and Manning did a great job of describing the problems and most of the solutions in a way I was able to understand.
I really liked this book when it was covering the problems that needed to be solved to get a rover safely to Mars and make sure it could function in extreme cold. I also liked a lot of the stuff on Curiosity's (and its instruments') capabilities, as well as the team management stuff. However, I winced a bit during Manning's repeated mentions of budget issues. Even the “cheaper, faster� mission budgets seemed enormous to me.
I tend to be really bad about starting to read nonfiction books and then never finishing them, so it's usually audio or nothing for me. However, audio nonfiction doesn't always work well. Mars Rover Curiosity was doing fine, up until the list of all of Curiosity's scientific instruments. It made for very dry listening, and I imagine I'd have skimmed that part if I had been reading a paper version of the book instead. The narration itself was okay � not terribly exciting, but Bronson Pinchot's voice fit the text well enough that, since I didn't know what Manning sounded like, it was easy to forget that it wasn't Manning himself narrating the book.
All in all, this was an interesting look at the work, planning, testing, and, at times, politics that went into Curiosity.
(Original review posted on .)
April 18, 2021
If you are looking for an insider's engineering point of view into the intricate planning that is put into a multi-billion dollar NASA project, from its conception to launch, along with myriad challenges that come to the fore during integration of such systems to work together, as well as leadership & administrative challenges that need to be carefully deliberated during the project timeline, this book delivers just that vantage point.
Rob Manning, with a flight systems engineering and Entry, Descent, Landing (EDL) background from the earlier Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, and now finding himself as the Chief Engineer for the Curiosity mission, talks in breadth about the complexities involved in putting hardware and software pieces of the puzzle together, fighting impossible project timelines, wrangling with NASA administration on budgeting and spending several years with large number of teams in solving never-seen-before problems, spanning a wide variety of engineering and scientific domains.
Some of the issues encountered once the mission was launched were classical software engineering bugs we see on production systems daily, like bit flips, flash memory corruption, clock drifts affecting inter-system messaging, high-availability not failing-over to standby system as planned, OEM bugs that needed vendor attention, etc. But when these bugs occur on a system 150 million miles away with a ~14 minute one-way radio distance from the command center, you have all the ingredients that can lead up to a complicated series of misadventures that can get irreversible, very swiftly.
Mars is a hostile engineering environment from an operations standpoint, and the challenge is compounded as we cannot truly reproduce the environment on Earth to test the sub-systems deterministically before we launch and operate it on Mars. Be it supersonic parachutes that can never be tested in the way it can deploy on the Martian atmosphere, or challenges in making an entry, descent and landing process work in a gravitational field different from that of the earth, Manning gives the reader a glimpse into how these kind of challenges are approached and what it takes to orchestrate these systems to come together as an extra-terrestrial Rube Goldberg machine, with embedded intelligence to traverse or backtrace a tree of task possibilities. I rate it a must-read for any engineering enthusiast. 5/5.
Rob Manning, with a flight systems engineering and Entry, Descent, Landing (EDL) background from the earlier Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, and now finding himself as the Chief Engineer for the Curiosity mission, talks in breadth about the complexities involved in putting hardware and software pieces of the puzzle together, fighting impossible project timelines, wrangling with NASA administration on budgeting and spending several years with large number of teams in solving never-seen-before problems, spanning a wide variety of engineering and scientific domains.
Some of the issues encountered once the mission was launched were classical software engineering bugs we see on production systems daily, like bit flips, flash memory corruption, clock drifts affecting inter-system messaging, high-availability not failing-over to standby system as planned, OEM bugs that needed vendor attention, etc. But when these bugs occur on a system 150 million miles away with a ~14 minute one-way radio distance from the command center, you have all the ingredients that can lead up to a complicated series of misadventures that can get irreversible, very swiftly.
Mars is a hostile engineering environment from an operations standpoint, and the challenge is compounded as we cannot truly reproduce the environment on Earth to test the sub-systems deterministically before we launch and operate it on Mars. Be it supersonic parachutes that can never be tested in the way it can deploy on the Martian atmosphere, or challenges in making an entry, descent and landing process work in a gravitational field different from that of the earth, Manning gives the reader a glimpse into how these kind of challenges are approached and what it takes to orchestrate these systems to come together as an extra-terrestrial Rube Goldberg machine, with embedded intelligence to traverse or backtrace a tree of task possibilities. I rate it a must-read for any engineering enthusiast. 5/5.
April 27, 2016
I enjoyed this book, but with a bit of hesitation. I have read a few books about the Mars Rover before, and this one concerned me the most about the expense and the use of funds to get the Rover on Mars. The data is invaluable, but I think Rob Manning, in an attempt to provide honesty and clarity, scared people who love and want us to explore space, but also think it can be done for less money. I understand why he sees the money involved as invaluable, and I do think the research is extremely valuable, it is just that the way he explained and justified the money felt a bit icky (<--- Highly scientific word) to me.
On the whole, enjoyable book I was able to work through very quickly. Good read.
On the whole, enjoyable book I was able to work through very quickly. Good read.
December 4, 2018
This is not a quick read, because it is packed with details about how the team at Jet Propulsion Lab designed, built and deployed the Mars Curiosity Rover. It was a fascinating overview of the development of a space exploration science project and left me amazed that this complex piece of equipment and millions of lines of computer code actually made it to Mars and has been able to do science that has never been done before.
A good read for engineers and people interested in space exploration.
A good read for engineers and people interested in space exploration.
September 27, 2018
Following on from New Horizons Pluto story it was interesting learning about JBL the opposite team. A lot of negotiation with funding once past that and into the science. Learnt that it's a very complicated business with multiple issues low gravity landing with a low atmosphere. The solution rope landing, all very interesting. I really enjoyed it.
September 2, 2016
A fascinating read! Highly recommend.
April 1, 2019
If you are into history - into technology and into planets this is your book. Take notes as you go though since it is acronym heavy hence the 3.
August 13, 2018
I was lucky enough to have a tour of JPL when I was in Los Angeles for my sisters wedding in 2011, this was when the Mars Science Laboratory had been launched but was still speeding to Mars on it's long journey and was yet to perform it's almost miraculous landing. JPL runs the Mars missions and the Deep Space Network so we saw the fullscale rover that had been built as a model, Mission Control, the Martian testing bay, the museum with old satellite and rover models and bits of hardware and a piece of moon rock. I did a double-take after reading the caption on an unremarkable looking object, a small grey shovel. The caption told me it was a part of the Surveyor 3 spacecraft that NASA had landed on the Moon in 1967 to conduct surface experiements, a couple of years later the geniuses at Mission Control landed Apollo 12 nearby and Alan Bean hopped over and collected pieces of the craft including the previously unremarkable looking schovel-arm which I now gazed at in wonder. The JPL shop was also fantastic, I bought Mission patches and a small blue and green Earth marble. Unfortunately the day I visited with my Space-agnostic family the heavens opened as LA experienced one it's worst rainstorms in years Because it "hardly ever rains" in LA the campus of Caltech where JPL is located in Pasadena does not come equipped with covered walkways so we were literally dripping with water as we continued the tour between buildings. There is a photo of me at Mission Control completely soaked as well as one with me looking quite grumpy as my wife reluctantly took a photo of me beside the piece of moon rock, she was wet and was over the whole thing. I was grumpy because the kids were unimpressed with the moon rock: "But it's from the moon! Someone flew, landed, and brought it back!" the most extraordinary voyage in human history left them unmoved and unimpressed.
When I returned to NZ I did couple of talks at my kids' school about the mission to convey the idea that these extraordinary feats are being being accomplished by real living ordinary people who go to work everyday just like everyone else. Btw JPL on a campus where, while they fly objects around the solar system and drive rovers on Mars, wild deer wander about as they please.
So I was fascinated to read the story from the inside of the background to the mission and the problems along the way. The history of the Mars program and Mannings deep involvement in it was interesting, the reality of politics and haggling for money and cutting budgets for some missions, which Manning despairingly says cost the same as big budget Hollywood movie, was depressing to hear about. The crazy landing system utilising the sky crane and the pulleys was fun to read about. The sense of having to get things absolutely perfect in this first of it's kind large rover mission is conveyed by the author, building most things from scratch and calculating everything to work perfectly is headache inducing to have to think about let alone actually acheive.
Manning is not a great writer, having recently read Robert Kursons beautifully written Rocket Men about the Apollo 8 mission with it's tour-de-force description of a Saturn 5 launch, shows you just what can be done in the right hands. Still the events described from someone at the heart of the action in one of humankinds greatest acheivements is a useful document. I tried to get people excited about the landing of the MSL before it happened, most people didn't seem to care or understand the extraordinary things being done, it always leaves me mystified and puts me in mind of the Oscar Wilde quote about us all being in the gutter but some of are looking at the stars.
When I returned to NZ I did couple of talks at my kids' school about the mission to convey the idea that these extraordinary feats are being being accomplished by real living ordinary people who go to work everyday just like everyone else. Btw JPL on a campus where, while they fly objects around the solar system and drive rovers on Mars, wild deer wander about as they please.
So I was fascinated to read the story from the inside of the background to the mission and the problems along the way. The history of the Mars program and Mannings deep involvement in it was interesting, the reality of politics and haggling for money and cutting budgets for some missions, which Manning despairingly says cost the same as big budget Hollywood movie, was depressing to hear about. The crazy landing system utilising the sky crane and the pulleys was fun to read about. The sense of having to get things absolutely perfect in this first of it's kind large rover mission is conveyed by the author, building most things from scratch and calculating everything to work perfectly is headache inducing to have to think about let alone actually acheive.
Manning is not a great writer, having recently read Robert Kursons beautifully written Rocket Men about the Apollo 8 mission with it's tour-de-force description of a Saturn 5 launch, shows you just what can be done in the right hands. Still the events described from someone at the heart of the action in one of humankinds greatest acheivements is a useful document. I tried to get people excited about the landing of the MSL before it happened, most people didn't seem to care or understand the extraordinary things being done, it always leaves me mystified and puts me in mind of the Oscar Wilde quote about us all being in the gutter but some of are looking at the stars.
June 17, 2018
About ten years and $2 billion later from inception of the project to the command DO_EDL, this book is an exciting journey about a remarkable scientific feat - Another chapter of Mars Exploration with Curiosity. I chose this book because it was written by an engineer. I expected less drama, more technical details about the project. I got exactly that.
This book is written in a nice structured manner. I liked the way Rob detailed every aspect of the project and refrained from giving his personal opinions and problems. I want to point out one thing though - something you might find in this book and probably not anywhere else - it is the way the team of MSL functioned. The team dynamics, the problem solving aptitude and their way of dealing with fatal failures. I have seen dozens of videos of Curiosity on youtube, some were better than the book in explaining how the EDL sequence happened. However, I was surprised to find in this book, how the teams faced similar problems that teams at my work place have to face. The monetary issues, the management issues and some issues which we know will occur but don't know about it yet. What I learnt from this book is how to approach them. How problem solving skill is one of the most crucial skills in the scientific and technological community. Rob has detailed explanations of how he and their team tackled all of these issues brilliantly, that I stop to think - maybe the purpose of the book was not about the MSL landing on Mars and carrying out the deed successfully but about 'what "human deeds" made it possible'. It was simply amazing.
This book is written in a nice structured manner. I liked the way Rob detailed every aspect of the project and refrained from giving his personal opinions and problems. I want to point out one thing though - something you might find in this book and probably not anywhere else - it is the way the team of MSL functioned. The team dynamics, the problem solving aptitude and their way of dealing with fatal failures. I have seen dozens of videos of Curiosity on youtube, some were better than the book in explaining how the EDL sequence happened. However, I was surprised to find in this book, how the teams faced similar problems that teams at my work place have to face. The monetary issues, the management issues and some issues which we know will occur but don't know about it yet. What I learnt from this book is how to approach them. How problem solving skill is one of the most crucial skills in the scientific and technological community. Rob has detailed explanations of how he and their team tackled all of these issues brilliantly, that I stop to think - maybe the purpose of the book was not about the MSL landing on Mars and carrying out the deed successfully but about 'what "human deeds" made it possible'. It was simply amazing.
October 4, 2017
This is the rare book that is really about the engineering rather than the science, and I liked that. The book covers the conception, design, development, and execution of the Curiosity rover. While there are a couple chapters on the science instruments, and the key early findings of the mission are presented, the topic is primarily about designing and building the rover. I enjoyed the descriptions of some of the challenges the designers faced and the various innovations and compromises they had to employ to overcome them.
The most interesting part was probably the description of the conception of the sky crane landing architecture including the way that came about as a result of difficulties and impracticalities of scaling up the landing architecture of earlier landers/rovers. It is perhaps not surprising that this portion of the book has the most specific information about the alternatives considered and the key constraints that influenced the decision because the author was most directly involved in the actual engineering and development of this aspect of the mission. In his later capacity as chief engineer of the mission, he had a keen awareness and understanding of many other problems but more as a manager than as an individual directly involved in the problem solving. I would have loved even more specific technical details in places, but that's not what you get in a book like this for a general audience.
The most interesting part was probably the description of the conception of the sky crane landing architecture including the way that came about as a result of difficulties and impracticalities of scaling up the landing architecture of earlier landers/rovers. It is perhaps not surprising that this portion of the book has the most specific information about the alternatives considered and the key constraints that influenced the decision because the author was most directly involved in the actual engineering and development of this aspect of the mission. In his later capacity as chief engineer of the mission, he had a keen awareness and understanding of many other problems but more as a manager than as an individual directly involved in the problem solving. I would have loved even more specific technical details in places, but that's not what you get in a book like this for a general audience.
July 5, 2019
I found this book interesting but not captivating. I am not an engineer and I hate the portions of my job that involve meetings and emails so most of what I got out of the book was the fact that there were a LOT Of problems that required a lot of people to sit in conference rooms and talk about options. There were a lot of teams and working groups who had to meet a lot of iron out discrepancies between the conflicting goals and missions of the teams. Money was in tight supply and there were constant squabbles over who got the money - which required more meetings and presentations. The lack of money and time made people antsy which also required additional meetings. That sounds pretty negative but I'm not saying this is a bad book as far as telling the Curiosity story goes. It just wasn't a book that captivated me. I drove to Cape Canaveral to watch Curiosity launch and I have followed the mission on Mars so I'm not a Curiosity hater; I just couldn't get too excited about the bureaucracy that went into designing and building Curiosity! Those who are engineers or who don't share my disgust of meetings and working groups might enjoy it a little more than I did.
December 14, 2017
Wonderful, detailed discussion of the Curiosity mission, as well as some background on Spirit and Opportunity for context.
Manning goes into great detail over the science and drama of the descent and landing, as well as the challenging years of development in advance of those . In particular, we get loads of great details about how they came to the crazy Rube-Goldberg system they decided on. I laughed when I read that they were still finding and fixing mission-critical bugs mere hours before landing on Mars.
I also really enjoyed how the team managed their setbacks and compromises. Every mission NASA embarks upon is difficult, and I think most people understand that the folks who work there are brilliant, committed, and hard-working. But I still always appreciate any insight that can be shared for how teams face setbacks and manage bad situations.
Manning goes into great detail over the science and drama of the descent and landing, as well as the challenging years of development in advance of those . In particular, we get loads of great details about how they came to the crazy Rube-Goldberg system they decided on. I laughed when I read that they were still finding and fixing mission-critical bugs mere hours before landing on Mars.
I also really enjoyed how the team managed their setbacks and compromises. Every mission NASA embarks upon is difficult, and I think most people understand that the folks who work there are brilliant, committed, and hard-working. But I still always appreciate any insight that can be shared for how teams face setbacks and manage bad situations.
February 23, 2018
Fascinating read about long and tough road to a creation of a biggest and most complex Mars rover ever built.
What makes the book so good in my opinion is that it is written by the chief engineer of Curiosity Rob Manning. I highly admire him and think that he is one of truly inspiring leaders who make unbelievable things possible while keeping high level of empathy, respect and appreciation to his team members. Book is full of mentioning different names giving credit to the extraordinary work made by those people.
One thing that surprised me (probably shouldn't have...) is how outdated the ways of working in NASA are. Although Rob attempts to introduce improvers, overall project is done in a clear waterfall - no wonder that the rover was not accomplished within neither timeline nor initial budget.
All in all, if you're interested in cosmology and exploration of space, you'd love this book!
What makes the book so good in my opinion is that it is written by the chief engineer of Curiosity Rob Manning. I highly admire him and think that he is one of truly inspiring leaders who make unbelievable things possible while keeping high level of empathy, respect and appreciation to his team members. Book is full of mentioning different names giving credit to the extraordinary work made by those people.
One thing that surprised me (probably shouldn't have...) is how outdated the ways of working in NASA are. Although Rob attempts to introduce improvers, overall project is done in a clear waterfall - no wonder that the rover was not accomplished within neither timeline nor initial budget.
All in all, if you're interested in cosmology and exploration of space, you'd love this book!
October 1, 2021
What a well-written masterpiece! Anyone who enjoys learning about our country's huge engineering feats in the race to the stars will love this book. It is written in a manner that an individual who has no previous knowledge in regards to space exploration will be able to understand.
It is very detailed, and not only gives a look into the engineering and creation of the Mars Curiousity Rover, but gives a short history of all previous rover missions to Mars. This, in turn, helps the reader understand how previous missions affected the way the scientists and engineers at JPL went about creating Curiousity. The teams at JPL learned from their failures and mistakes of the past, and as a result, Curiousity has made extraordinary discoveries that no one could have imagined.
Reading this book was not only an incredible learning opportunity, but it was an inspiring story of teamwork and ingenuity.
It is very detailed, and not only gives a look into the engineering and creation of the Mars Curiousity Rover, but gives a short history of all previous rover missions to Mars. This, in turn, helps the reader understand how previous missions affected the way the scientists and engineers at JPL went about creating Curiousity. The teams at JPL learned from their failures and mistakes of the past, and as a result, Curiousity has made extraordinary discoveries that no one could have imagined.
Reading this book was not only an incredible learning opportunity, but it was an inspiring story of teamwork and ingenuity.
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April 2, 2022It will take 13.8 minutes for that signal to reach this room.
The single most challenging part of putting the rover on Mars, known in our business as EDL, for “entry, descent, and landing,�
“nominal� means “normal, ne, just as planned.�
“RIMU stable.� The Rover Inertial Measurement Unit is signaling us that the rover is sitting on relatively level ground. It’s not sliding down an embankment
A single gram of soil can contain on the order of forty million bacterial cells.
Sometimes a person knows in some mysterious way at a very early age what he or she wants to do. I knew from the time I was twelve that I wanted to build robots and rocket ships and send them o to explore faraway parts of the universe.
my classmates and I would drop everything to hang in front of a lecture hall TV monitor
The single most challenging part of putting the rover on Mars, known in our business as EDL, for “entry, descent, and landing,�
“nominal� means “normal, ne, just as planned.�
“RIMU stable.� The Rover Inertial Measurement Unit is signaling us that the rover is sitting on relatively level ground. It’s not sliding down an embankment
A single gram of soil can contain on the order of forty million bacterial cells.
Sometimes a person knows in some mysterious way at a very early age what he or she wants to do. I knew from the time I was twelve that I wanted to build robots and rocket ships and send them o to explore faraway parts of the universe.
my classmates and I would drop everything to hang in front of a lecture hall TV monitor
November 21, 2022
High school physics, back in 1965, was the last time I was required to wrestle with scientific concepts. And while I make many attempts at reading technically-oriented texts I confess to a lot of re-reading as I plod through the work. Rob Manning, in his wonderful work about the Mars Rover Curiosity, made science understandable. This fascinating story of the development of Curiosity, and the extraordinary scientific, technical, financial and, at times political obstacles the engineering and development teams had to overcome in their quest to explore the surface of Mars is truly a page turner. The reader is at the decision-making table or laboratory when challenging obstacles are confronted. We're let in on the budget debates. We experience the human emotions as dedicated teams of people aim for perfection. We share in the tension as never-before technology is attempted for the first time. Great book. Great writing. Great subject.
February 28, 2021
Through this audiobook, I learned how to use all the features of hoopla on both the computer and the iPhone, through the Free Library of Philadelphia! Through that collective, you can only borrow two books a month. At least it's the last day of February.
The intrepid explorers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration put a teensy little robot out to collect data a little while back! This is their story, trying to cut costs yet figure out as much new information about the Red Planet as possible within the limited amount of time before it's way too far out of reach in our lifetimes.
I loved listening to this book since I have always wanted to be an astro-engineer when I grew up. I still thought it was so cool listening to someone who actually was.
The intrepid explorers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration put a teensy little robot out to collect data a little while back! This is their story, trying to cut costs yet figure out as much new information about the Red Planet as possible within the limited amount of time before it's way too far out of reach in our lifetimes.
I loved listening to this book since I have always wanted to be an astro-engineer when I grew up. I still thought it was so cool listening to someone who actually was.
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