Let's start this listing with Dr Bruce MURRAY:
http://www.jaxa.jp/news_topics/interview/v...part2_p1_e.html

Very interesting articles. It is about the philosophy and attitude against the failure between the occident and Japan.

Rodolfo

Rodolfo:

It's more than that, in the sense that it's also about management of scientific programmes in general, but what it certainly is, is a very clear way forward for JAXA ('two thirds of all Mars missions fail'). Sadly, Hayabusa doesn't get a mention - I hope that Japan doesn't go into denial about what was (note the past tense) a spectacular mission.

Bob Shaw

Bob: I am sure that the japanese culture is very perfecionist and have catch up mind. During the decade 70-80, they copies the occident technology (radio, TV, camera, autos, etc.) , study them and perfection them and they make them with even much higher quality than the counterparts.

In analogy, I think they will excel if they copies the Russian, American, European and others space technologies and they will most probably make them an even much better the counterpart such as the Hayabusa which has nearly almost obtained their very ambitious objectives with automated navigation to catch Hayabusa, employing a very economic ion engine (cheaper than a good steak!!!), land autonomously on Hayabusa (no one knows for a long seconds what is happening that).

Rodolfo

Well I started this thread to point out that 99% of the JPL Engineers & Scientists are very approachable; certainly nowadays with e-mail…
But as a 10-year old kid I used to write to NASA and got really good replies from Dr Charles HALL (Pioneer), Dr Gerry SOFFEN (Viking), Dr Bruce MURRAY (JPL director) and Dr Edward STONE (JPL director)...
http://beacon.jpl.nasa.gov/exhibits/directors/index.htm

How is Your experience with this ?

Far Travelers: The Exploring Machines by Oran Nicks

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntr..._1985024813.pdf

Warning: 44.3 MB

Just noted this edition of design news featuring Brian Muirhead, it goes a stagering price !

http://cgi.ebay.com/CALTECH-MARS-MADNESS-R...1QQcmdZViewItem

On this topic, Brian Muirhead has co-authored a very good mars book titled "Going to Mars: The Stories of the People Behind NASA's Mars Missions Past, Present and Future"

more at this listing:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067102796...ce&n=283155

Already have it ( see my weblog )

http://mars-literature.skynetblogs.be/

Griffin visits JPL

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=20785

An excerpt:

In the future he expects JPL to continue to attract new business by competing
for missions, but, "If I think JPL is in danger of falling below having the
right amount of work to cover the JPL staff, then I will do as I have done at
other places � I will find you a mission. If you can win enough to keep up the
level you're at, you don't need me to do anything."

However, he discouraged JPLers from going after major new work that would drive
the lab's workforce beyond the current level. "If you kill more than you can
eat, I'll probably ask you to send some of that somewhere else."

"A gain in people at one center is a loss in people at another center, or it is
a removal of dollars from industry into the federal civil service," said
Griffin. "That's not acceptable. And it's not acceptable to be moving people and
moving significant numbers of jobs from one center to another."

In response to a question, Griffin also said he hopes Congress will not restore
cuts he made in the proposed fiscal year 2007 budget for scientific research and
analysis.

"I hope Congress won't restore it, because it will come at the expense
of a mission," he said. "The budget I put forward is the best budget I can do
given all the constraints I have. If you push on the bean bag somewhere, it will
pop out somewhere else. There will be other unhappy people, they will just be in
other zip codes."

Griffin cited the importance of placing humans and cargo in low- Earth orbit "an
essential first step" in the next stage of exploration. "It's got to be done
right," he said.

I've had good luck with email to Ed Stone...but then again he was my PhD advisor. :-)

I worked in Ed's Space Radiation Lab from 1978 to 1981, and it was a great experience. He is a rare example of a man who is a good person, a great scientist, and a great manager of complex tasks. The Voyager Jupiter and Saturn encoutners both happened while I was there, and it was amazing to watch the orchestration of fantastically complex operations. I worked on another project (a big satellite called HEAO-C).

When a paper for the HEAO project was published, the whole team would meet for a couple days to go over the paper line by line. Ed would ask, "Could this be made more understandable by a scientist who is not a specialist in cosmic rays?". And his grant proposals! How do you get funding for $100 million projects? By writing a grant proposal that is a higher quality scientfic document than most finished journal papers! Beautiful explainations of what is known, what is not known, why is it important, what is the calculated error of measurments, etc, etc.

JPL Director Dr. Charles Elachi recently spoke at Cornell University:

http://cornellsun.com/node/18553

To quote:

He began with an old Theodore Roosevelt quote: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” In this spirit, Elachi reaffirmed why astronomy is important and necessary.

He asked the audience, “What if our ancestors had never explored? Never left their caves? Never experimented with fire?” This is a primary motivation for science in general, but Elachi went further and said, “Astronomy holds the real possibility of answering the biggest questions: What is this place? How did it happen? How common are we? Why us? Why now?” After answering these big picture questions, we end up learning more about ourselves.

Russian engineers and policy makers of the Space age:
http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Biographies.htm

And of course:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/photos/

It's always been highly variable with me. I got much better replies from JPL scientists in the 1970's, with the project scientist for Mariner Venus/Mercury (can't remember the name) and Dr. Conway W. Snyder, Viking Orbiter scientist. They not only answered questions, but sent sizeable packages of papers, photos, etc.

To expand the topic slightly, I was a teenager when Apollo 17 launched, and before the mission I decided to write to every science instrument team on the mission. I think I got addresses from Aviation Week and Space Technology ads. Some corporations didn't reply at all, some sent a press photo and small description, and a few were extremely generous. Bendix sent a multihundred page manual on the Apollo 17 ALSEP, plus several smaller goodies. But John Hopkins University APL gets the grand prize for generosity. They built the UV Spectrometer for the Command Module SIM bay. They sent a complete set of blueprints plus a copy of the Critical Design Review! I could have built my own. Ah, the days before ITAR made everyone paranoid about sharing technical details.

Indeed monitorlizard, in the mid 1970s and 1980s I got kilograms of photos and brochures on the unmanned missions, especially PIONEER, VIKING and VOYAGER ... of cours nowadays everything is online, except the old stuff, which I cherish a lot

Voyager party:
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/image/holiday.html

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/photoalbum/2005JointAssembly/

Some weblinks showing Dr Alan Stern onboard the WB-57 NASA aircraft:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/swuis.html
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/swuis/wb57.html

Robert Leighton (10 years ago)
http://jplus.jpl.nasa.gov/dedication/dedication.html

The American Humanist Association announced today that planetary scientist Carolyn C. Porco, leader of the imaging science team for the Cassini space mission to Saturn and director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS), will be honored
with the Isaac Asimov Science Award in Washington, D.C., in June 2008.

Mercury, twice in a lifetime: Bob Strom, a veteran of NASA's Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s, sees the Messenger images...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/ba...al_tab01_layout

Maria never mentioned she was working on the MESSENGER images...

LOL - they might want to turn the laptop on

Doug

How can you tell it's off?

In that subtle, introverted, quiet way that they love to - the little apple logo on the lid lights up - the light from the back of the screen filter though it and makes it quite bright.

Doug

I figured it had to be something like that. I'm just a complete ignoramus when it comes to Apple.

I only noticed because I've been bitching about that very issue ( basically, the laptop has an ego ) on an Apple forum regarding my white Macbook

Doug

Solved that problem myself by putting a nice opaque New Horizons sticker on top of the glowing apple...

John.

Talking about stickers on Laptop computers:
http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/data...F_store-med.JPG

Other engineer news:
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2008/01/dave_d...o_1986hunt.html

Meanwhile at JPL: 50 years Explorer 1
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/explorer/

Nice stickers, Phil!

Unfortunately, not gonna bother with putting any on my vintage 2003 Dell Inspirion 5100 laptop; the keyboard just went out again (using a $15 USB keyboard to type this now), so the old girl's ready for replacement. Kinda thinking about trying an Apple, though something in me curdles at the thought. Doug said he loves his, but I still dunno...

I just talked with Maria today in the hallway and she insists that the computer was on at the time.

http://www.astrosociety.org/education/podcast/index.html

Anyone has a high resolution version of this MER team photo?
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/people/images/photo1.jpg

Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, 94, passed away Sunday 25th May 2008.. A member of Dr. Wernher von Braun's rocket team since 1943, he was one of 126 scientists who came to the U.S. as part of Operation Paperclip. In 1955, he became a naturalized citizen and worked at the Redstone arsenal.
Former rocket scientist Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger kept abreast of the latest space news, especially Deep Space-1. He will be remembered as a "visionary" and "truly humble" man...

NASA's Carl Sagan Fellows to Study Extraterrestrial Worlds
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA announced Wednesday the new Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships in Exoplanet Exploration, created to inspire the next generation of explorers seeking to learn more about planets, and possibly life, around other stars.
NASA's new Sagan fellowships will allow talented young scientists to tread the path laid out by Sagan. The program will award stipends of approximately $60,000 per year, for a period of up to three years, to selected postdoctoral scientists. Topics can range from techniques for detecting the glow of a dim planet in the blinding glare of its host star, to searching for the crucial ingredients of life in other planetary systems.
A call for Sagan Fellowship proposals went out to the scientific community earlier this week, with selections to be announced in February 2009.

http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking retiring from Emeritus Lucasian post:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-10...etirement_N.htm

31 July 1964:
JPL team members put the hands in the air in a cheer of joy just moments after the Ranger 7 smashed into the lunar surface.
During its dive, the 366 kg spacecraft photographed the lunar surface with the six-camera RCA package. Finally a successful Ranger mission!

Viking Mars mission director Dr Walter Lowrie passed away at age 84...
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/community/n...,0,133598.story

One of many group pictures from my collection I would like to share with UMSF.
On the left in this Mariner 69 group we recognize the late Dr William Hayward PICKERING, director of JPL between 1954 & 1976.
Anyone who can help to identify people in this Mariner group is welcome to contact me

Philip, perhaps this "restored" version could help...

Here's another Mariner 69 related group photo:

Conway Snyder (Viking Project Scientist at JPL*) was a man of exceptional achievements (see his orbituary herebelow).

He was also among the very first Members of the Planetary Society in 1980 when it was founded. He was very enthusiastic about TPS's goals and organization.

With Jim French (former MGCO Project Manager at JPL), he was among the "Mars Underground" speakers at the very first "Case for Mars" conference in 1981 at Boulder (**) for future visions about the human exploration of Mars, bringing to the audience JPL's experience and knowledge of Martian exploration... and taking the risk of getting NASA angry against him at a time when the space Agency was not willing to discuss those topics and ire the Senate on budget talks.

He died April 14, 2011. Unfortunately, I only received the sad news two days ago, because his family had difficulties to find my new address among his papers.

Conway's life and Mars missions achievements deserve those few lines :
(i) he spent his whole life at JPL for Mars exploration, initiating success-stories missions ;
(ii) he gave post-mortem to CalTech and JPL his whole collection of Mars documentation (that includes Mars historic globes and a lot of papers covering the history of Mars exploration with his own notes). Believe me : his office in his home was a treasure trove about the Mariner and Viking missions…

After he retired in 1984, some scientists and Mars engineers at JPL still kept contact with him : he was glad to share his great Martian experience when new Mars missions were to be decided (especially for MGCO/Mars Observer, MGS and Pathfinder).

Like others, I had great times at JPL with him : he was a great manager.
Mars scientists from other NASA Centers and Universities often visited him and he gave me the great opportunity to meet them also.

==> NASA honored him with 3 "Exceptional Scientific Achievement Awards"

…... And in July 1982, after a day work at JPL, he took his car and drove me to the Planetary Society (office located then 65 North Catalina in Pasadena) where he introduced me to Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman. I had a great and nice chat with them and I remember leaving Lou's office, so glad to be now a member of the Planetary Society, thanks to Conway (and Lou) !

Thanks again Conway. Thanks so much for all you have done for JPL and Mars exploration

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment


(*) Viking Orbiter Project Scientist since 1969, he replaced Gerald Soffen as Viking Project Scientist for the whole mission May 25, 1978, until May 21, 1983, end of the Viking Project
(**) Organized by Tom Meyer and Carol Stoker with Chris McKay