 >> In a post Cold War world
of shrinking space budgets,
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California
was challenged to
reinvent itself.
The lab's new
assignment from NASA:
land safely on Mars in a
revolutionary new way.
>> Mars is the hardest
planet to land on,
and I want you to
do it cheaply.
>> But could it be done?
And who was brave or foolish
enough to sign up
for such a risky mission?
>> Nobody else wanted the job.
They were afraid
to death of it.
The rest of the lab was going,
"What are these guys doing?",
because all
they could see
is the most embarrassing
failure as possible.
>> Added to the challenges
was the addition
of an unexpected passenger.
>> Ugh, that silly
little rover.
It was not popular
with anybody.
>> "Command error?"
What's going on now?
What's broken now?
This thing's falling
apart on me.
>> If you crash, you're going
to crash and burn big time.
>> You're not allowed to fail.
Don't you dare fail.
Do whatever you need to do,
but don't fail.
>> Thank you, everybody.
Here to JPL in
Pasadena, California
for the twentieth anniversary of
Mars Pathfinder,
the mission that
began what is now
a continuous
presence on Mars
24/7 for twenty years.
Now, to celebrate this
achievement, we have with us
some of the movers
and shakers and doers
who made Pathfinder
possible.
So if you will, hold your
applause until after I've
introduced them all.
Here on my left is former NASA
administrator and the longest
serving NASA administrator,
Dan Goldin.
Former JPL Director,
Ed Stone.
Former JPL Director,
Charles Elachi.
And on this side, current
Director, Mike Watkins.
And two of the very most
important folks that worked on
the engineering side of
Pathfinder, the doers that
made it work, Jennifer Trosper
and Brian Muirhead.
Would you please give
them a warm welcome?
[Appause]
That is indeed
a warm welcome.
So Mike, why don't
you start us off.
What is it about this
place called Mars
that's so special
for people?
>> I think Mars holds a
special place in everyone's
heart because it looks
a lot like the Earth.
I mean, it looks like a place
we could live, it looks like a
place that we understand, and
we could be at home on.
And it begs the question of
what was its history, and how
did it get the way it is, and
could there have been life
there, could it have been
habitable?
And I think it goes back a
long time, that people have
wanted to answer those
questions and to get there.
And I believe that Pathfinder
in particular, it helped us
understand a new way of
exploring the planets.
You know, you could argue that
Viking as the first planetary
lander sort of pioneered in situ
science, but that was
kind of a one-off mission.
And I think Pathfinder showed
us not only that mobility can
be useful, but the notion of
an ongoing interactive
exploration of a planet, a
voyage of discovery, a mission
of discovery, of continuous
discovery, is something that
we really learned from
Pathfinder.
And not only have we continued
to extend that legacy, as you
mentioned, for twenty years,
on Mars with bigger and better
rovers as we try to understand
and unlock the mysteries of
Mars and answer these
questions, but it's a paradigm
that we talk about using even
for Europa now.
We talk about "how do we do an
interactive mission of
discovery on other planets?
On these ocean worlds?
How can we emulate this Mars
mission of discovery in other
places that are just as
fascinating as Mars?"
>> Now, I'd like to set the
stage now as we go back
20 years to a very
different time
when a lot of change
was happening.
And I think this clip
you're about to see
will set it nicely for us.
 [Crowd chanting]
>> In 1989, the
Berlin Wall fell,
[Crowd cheers]
marking the beginning
of the end of the Soviet Union,
the end of the Cold
War,
and the beginning of a decade
of shrinking budgets
for America's space program.
And "that meant major changes,"
declared the new head of
NASA, Dan Goldin.
>> It is scary.
I can't promise that
everything's gonna be okay.
>> To the shock of many,
Goldin predicted that
the space agency's very
survival was in doubt
unless it embraced change.
>> But I can promise that if
we go for the survival mode,
as an agency, in five
years we're dead.
So let me walk you through
some of the issues...
>> Goldin delivered the same
message at JPL.
>> We'll never ever go back.
JPL will never ever
look like it did.
You will not build very many
spacecraft that look like this.
You've got to erase that
from your mind.
>> He wanted JPL to show how
all of NASA
could approach its
work differently
in the post
Cold War world;
a concept Goldin called,
"Faster. Better. Cheaper."
>> Part of his charge was in
fact to oversee the transition
of the agency to new
direction, new scale missions
and science in particular.
>> The Jet Propulsion Lab is
going to be the catalyst
to change the whole
NASA space program.
>> So I was trying to
understand exactly what kinds
of things he was
trying to promote,
and how we could then
make them real.
Our job was to
make them real.
>> My words was I wanted
to darken the skies
with a lot of satellites
and spacecraft,
and I wanted
the American people
to share in the excitement.
And the first thing they did
was the Mars Pathfinder.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
>> So Dan, you came out here,
and in some of those same talks,
you talked about the
change that was happening
was at the speed of light.
And you told a story about
going to Russia and visiting
a facility, I wonder if you
could tell that story.
>> I was sitting in my
office in early June,
and I got a call from
the Vice President,
and he said, "I'd like
you to show up at Blair House."
I went to Blair House, and I
walked in, and I saw
Yuri Koptev, the head of the
Russian Space Agency,
standing outside.
And I said, "Yuri, what's
going on here?
I don't know where I'm going."
And he said, "Well, the head
of the National Academy of
Sciences of Russia wouldn't
let me into the meeting."
I walk in, and there is Boris
Yeltsin sitting on the other
side of the table, and a whole
variety of people from the
Russian space agency,
and me.
And I walked up to Boris
Yeltsin through a translator
and said, "My colleague,
Yuri Koptev,
is not allowed
in the room."
And the head of the National
Academy of Sciences from Russia,
he had flames coming
out of his nostril.
It was unbelievable.
And, they asked Yuri to come
in, and I was then working for
President George
H.W. Bush, Bush 41.
And he was very concerned, as
was President Clinton, as was
Bush 43, about the Russian
pride in their space program,
and that their
economy had crashed,
which is why the
Cold War ended.
And he wanted me to bring our
programs together, and I
worked with Boris Yeltsin to
come to Russia, and I knew I
was going to be transferring
funds to Russia to help them,
so I asked him if he's take me
into the SS18 factory, which I
knew a lot about, and that's
where they built the giant
multiple warhead vehicle in
Nepuputrusk at Uzniah.
So he opened up the whole
Russian space program to me,
and it was weird because I'd
went against Russia for
twenty-five years, and I
designed a lot of systems that
I can't talk about, but...
>> Some of them were targeting
that same place, right?
>> Hypothetically.
[Laughter]
>> And during your
confirmation hearings, you
went around, made your visits
to various senators, and
Senator Hollings painted a
sort of dire picture of this
job you were thinking about
taking on.
This is why you felt there had
to be this sort of revolution,
did you not?
>> Well, I'll tell you, I was
pretty excited,
but I knew it
was problematic.
And I knew it was going to be
really hard when I walked into
the office of Senator Fritz
Hollings, and he told me to
sit down, and he drew a chart
on the wall.
And on the ordinate was
billions of dollars and on the
abscissa was years.
So he started in 1992, and he
drew a straight line up that
went to 2002.
And it started at 15 billion
and it went to 25.
And then, he went to 1992 at
15 billion, and drew a
straight line across.
And he said, "If you want to
be confirmed, you're going to
sign up to a no
growth budget."
I said, "But that's 50
billion dollars."
He said, "You'll
sign up to that
or there'll
be no space program,
what do you
want to do?"
And then he went on to say,
"The shuttle is grounded,
it's got hydrogen leaks.
The space station spent all
their money and all their time.
They have nothing.
Galileo is deaf on
its way to Jupiter.
Hubble is blind.
And the weather
satellites are dead.
Are you sure you
want this job?"
And I said, "You bet."
I said, "Because money is not
the magic ingredient, and that
we need to re-invigorate the
science and technology
creativity of the NASA team.
And they haven't been
allowed to do that.
I'm signing up."
>> Ed, you had a similar sort
of realization when you were
coming into the job,
and you went
to visit Washington and OMB.
And you had a stark
realization too.
>> That's right.
When I agreed to be Director,
it was the summer of 1990, and
I started in January '91.
The program was exactly as you
described it, like that, it
was going to double in
basically a ten year period,
and it was clear
the job I had was
how to handle
all that growth.
But, a visit to Washington
taught me into early '91
already that except for NASA,
which still believed this was
the future, the rest of the
congress and the White House
was saying, "that's
the future."
>> It was a crisis.
>> And I know that you and Ed
worked very closely on this,
and Ed, you, when given
this opportunity...
>> We worked closely,
but he executed.
I gave directions.
>> That's right.
That's right.
It was to make it real,
as you said...
>> Make it real,
that's right.
Three years to launch, less
150 million dollars.
Land on Mars.
150 million dollars.
Now ahead of rover, which they
added 25 for because, again,
that was part of the advanced
technology, but it was a
challenge, clearly, it was a
major challenge and a major
risk that the laboratory
took to do this.
But it really exposed the
innovation that is possible.
>> And we had to do something
bold, it just couldn't be
another orbiter, another this,
another that.
It had to be really hard and
when you compare what is cost
for Viking, that was billions.
Okay, now we're factor
of 20 on cost,
and factor of three
on schedule
with technology that
they didn't have time to
develop in advance, but again,
it came down to we didn't have
much that year, and we needed
this to be successful.
So I said, "Take risk,
but don't fail."
>> Let me talk about the
background of how that was the
background that Dan and
Ed talked about.
Remember Dan came
in April '92.
>> April 1st.
>> Then in August '93,
we lost Mars Observer.
And I remember very clearly, a
couple of weeks after that,
I'm not sure if you remember,
that I was at home.
At that time I was the
director for
science, technology,
and instruments.
And I remember exactly
where I was standing,
I was watering the yard, it
was on a weekend.
And my wife
comes and says,
"Hey Wes Huntress
is on the line."
I wonder what this is about?
So I walked then
picked up the phone...
Yes, he was head of the NASA
science at that time...
So he said, "Well, I just
talked with Ed Stone,
Dan Goldin would like you
to chair a tiger team
to look at small
Mars missions.
And you have only a couple of
weeks to do that."
Now, many of you heard about
Dan Goldin and many of you
know Dan Goldin, you never say
no for Dan Goldin.
When he asks for something,
you say, "Yes, sir."
So anyway, we formed a tiger
team, which included JPLers
included external people,
included [unintelligible].
Ed referred to the small
spacecraft that the
military were developing.
And we met in building 180-101
for over a few days and we
came with a number of ideas, you
know, collectively, one of them
being a lander,
and we transmitted
that to headquarters.
And of course Dan
picked up the lander.
It was no big surprise.
But at that time there
was no rover on it.
So the focus was on how do we
land with a low cost on Mars,
and to do it in three
years like Ed said.
But then there was, in my
office, a lady by the name of
Donna Shirley.
She was an engineer
working on robotics.
She comes to me and said, "You
know, you remember that rover
we showed you a
few weeks ago?
We think we can build
that rover in time
to put it on the
mission."
So of course I went
to Tony Spear,
and Tony said,
"Look,
I have a deadline, I
have a limited budget.
Get the hell out of here."
Well as you know me I don't
take no for an answer.
So I went to Wes Huntress.
Wes was intrigued,
but he said,
"I don't know where to
get the money."
So I went to Sam Vineri,
who was at that time
in charge of technology.
So after a little
while, Sam said,
"I'll pay with
the 25 million
if you can get it on
the mission."
So I went back to Wes, and Wes
told me, "Give me 25...
>> Sam came to me.
>> Yeah, well let me
continue the story.
So Wes told me, "Give me 24
hours" and I kind of guessed
what he wanted the
24 hours for.
So by the time I got here, Wes
must have talked with you,
Dan said this is a bold
thing we want to do
in addition to the landing,
and that's how of course
when Wes said "go ahead"
and then Ed said
"go ahead"
and Tony Spear said
"yes sir" move on that,
and that's how the
rover came about.
And look at the legacy that
rover have led to,
to Spirit, Opportunity,
Curiosity, and then Mars 2020.
And that's the kind of small
but visionary technology
investment, that NASA and Dan
was very well known for,
which led us to do the great
things that we do now.
And in my mind, I'm sure all
of you know how much I like
the Mars helicopter that
is being looked at
for the Mars 2020.
In my mind, that's exactly
the same example.
It's a bold technology
experiment,
high risk relatively
speaking,
but I'm sure
you'll make it work.
And I'll bet you 20 years from
now people sitting here will be
talking about airplanes and
balloons and helicopters
flying and exploring Mars.
That's the kind of thing the
kind of leadership that
Dan provided at that
time and then Ed,
when he was
the director,
which really made the
revolution you see today.
So really, Pathfinder had the
legacy not only in the landing
and the airbags, but also in
the rovers that you see today.
>> In fact, let's
look at the EDL,
we have actually
the very original,
literally
back-of-the-envelope designs,
when this first came up.
So if we could roll
that clip, please.
>> Some of the original ideas
for an airbag landing
were these back-of-the-envelope
sketches.
As the plan envisioned,
Pathfinder dives into the
Martian atmosphere
at 16,000 mph.
Protected by its heat shield,
the spacecraft burns through
the Martian atmosphere,
reducing its speed to 900 mph.
Next, a parachute is deployed.
Then the heat shield and back
shell are jettisoned
and a rope drops to
detect the ground.
The airbags inflate.
Seconds later, the lander hits
the surface at 50 mph,
bouncing stories high.
After the lander finally comes
to rest, the airbags deflate,
and an antenna rises up,
transmitting back to earth the
news that the lander is
somehow still in one piece.
>> Brian Muirhead...
>> Piece of cake, Brian.
>> That's right.
>> That's what I
was going to say.
>> How did you feel about this
mission when you took it on?
>> Well it's interesting, I
was in a really nice job
at that time, I was a
section manager,
and I ended up talking to
Charles Elachi about well,
this is a pretty
crazy mission,
it's not clear it's going
to get funded,
what should I do?
He said, "Well, just stay
where you are for a minute,
a little while longer, and let's
see what happens to the budget."
When the budget came through,
then I jumped to Tony's call,
and from that point on, it was
my job to staff the team
that would design, build, test,
and operate this spacecraft.
>> And there were a lot of
challenges, what would you say
was the one that kept you up
the most at night?
>> It has to be, if you're
going to Mars, it's always
entry, decent and landing.
That's what you
worry about.
And of course, for us, we had
to invent and reinvent pieces
of the entry, decent and
landing system.
The biggest invention, of
course, was the airbags.
And that was something that
when we started out,
we did what normal
engineers do.
We'd bring out our, onboard
our computers,
and we model things.
>> And we have a clip that
will give some sense of that,
as well, if we could
roll that one.
>> This is the surface
of the atmosphere.
We're coming in and
we have to...
>> I had never been a
flight system manager.
I had delivered sizeable
things at the lab,
but nothing like the flight
system of a spacecraft.
The people that came around me
on the flight-system team,
we kind of accreted a team of
radical kind-of thinkers.
>> Muirhead was open to new
ideas, but they had to be
subjected to tried and
true methods of proof.
>> which is build it, test it,
break it, fix it, do it again.
>> But not everything
could be fully tested.
>> I was very scared of the
parachute, I've got to tell you.
Mostly that parachute was the
one thing we couldn't test
in any realistic way.
>> Assuming the parachute
worked, the next challenge
was knowing when to
inflate the airbags.
Just seconds before
hitting the ground.
The original idea of hanging a
rope with a sensor at the bottom
proved unworkable, so
radar was added,
but that solution raised
new problems.
>> The devil's in the details.
That's where I got
into the picture,
was in the devil's
in the details.
Like for example, in some of
the drop tests, we do drop tests
on parachutes and their
radar was dropping and taking
measurements, and it was
swinging like you would
imagine that it would be
swinging and then we realized
that when the radar,
when it loses lock,
it has all these horrible
altitude measurements.
The radar tells you these are
good measurements,
but they are
really bad.
>> Release the item.
>> To increase the chance of a
safe landing, rockets were
added in hopes of further
slowing down the lander.
[small rockets fire]
[cheering]
>> So there was a set of steps
we went through where
smart people thought about how
to make it more reliable,
but it just kind of
added more to the
"here's something that goes
into this basket,
and then that basket
dumps into this tray"
I mean so it really
gives you that
Rube Goldberg sort
of a feeling.
[pounding]
>> Then there were
the airbags.
>> Here we go.
Rolling.
It's going the wrong way!
>> I remember
working with Sandia.
We used, they had the most
powerful computer in the world
at that time, and we brought
it to its knees
trying to simulate
this airbag.
>> In the early 1990s,
computer processing capabilities
was just getting
good enough that we could
imagine really
bringing all of these
simulation programs together,
but there were
certain parts of it,
we came to realize, you really
couldn't treat very well
with a computer simulation.
The airbags being by far the
way the foremost example.
>> I would guess that we
didn't understand 90%
of the fundamental physics
that goes into the airbag.
I would also argue that
we did not understand
50% at the end of Pathfinder.
[laughter]
>> So, as if you didn't have
enough problems already,
you had a budget problem,
and a schedule problem,
and an engineering problem.
>> One of the biggest
engineering problems was mass,
managing the mass.
And one of the things we
learned very early on is
it's not what we can launch,
it's what we can enter.
And so the limit on what we
felt we could enter was driven
by a ballistic coefficient,
and that's driven by the mass
and the drag of the vehicle.
So, part of my job as flight
system manager, I took on, was
to manage the mass, and so
every gram we were sensitive to,
and we had to be very
careful about.
And I know the rover team
remembers this, but I was
always threatening the rover
team, Bill Layman sitting here,
with, "if you blow your
mass number,
I'm throwing you off
the spacecraft."
And I meant it, and
they believed me.
And one of the things that I
learned from that experience,
and what this place does so
well, when you hand them
what looks to
be an impossible job,
with impossible constraints,
they get very creative.
And they found the solutions
to stay within the mass,
to add ramps and still
stay within the mass.
So it was a wonderful example
of how creative people can be
when you give
them a tough job,
and then give them the
freedom, the flexibility,
to be creative about
how they do it.
>> So you solved the
technical problems,
you launched on time,
you launched...
>> On budget.
>> Which was probably
one of the more
important aspects of this.
>> Well we believed...
>> They had become the
poster child for
"Faster. Better. Cheaper."
>> We really believed that if
we blew the budget,
we'd be canceled.
And everybody on ...
>> Yes.
[Laughter] 
>> We believed you,
Mr. Goldin.
And there were times when
the bean counters,
the budget guys, were
projecting my budget
to go as badly as my
mass was going.
So we were at risk, but one of
the things that was wonderful
about our review board,
we had Jim Martin,
the Viking project manager, was
our review board chairman.
And when Jim spoke,
people listened.
And so, Jim would look at the
bean counters' estimate,
and he would say, "I can't prove
they won't make it,
so then I'll let
them keep going."
And he would call back to
headquarters and say,
I think, "Don't kill 'em."
[laughter]
>> The Viking being 20 years
before, the Viking coming out
of Langley, being
managed there,
another contribution by another
NASA center in all of this.
So you launched, and seven
months later, we were at
entry, descent and landing on
July the fourth, a morning,
and let's see what
that was like.
>> This is the Mars Pathfinder
flight director,
we are currently
approximately 15 minutes away
from cruise stage separation,
all telemetry continues
to look nominal.
>> EDL comm reports spacecraft
ranging channel off event.
EDL telecom reports cruise
stage separation.
>> Alright, this is the Mars
Pathfinder flight director,
we have confirmed that cruise
stage separation has occurred.
[clapping]
Alright we will now
pass EDL operations
to our chief engineer,
and entry, decent and landing
lead Rob Manning,
who will report the
real-time EDL status.
>> Really, there's these
few minutes where
everybody wants to know what's
happening, and you just don't.
It's scary and at the same
time, it's exciting as hell.
>> The spacecraft now is
about 7500 kilometers
above the surface of Mars.
It's still traveling at about
7.4 kilometers per second.
Very fast.
>> We were all
apprehensive.
There were so many things that
could have gone wrong,
and everything had
to go right.
>> 30 seconds till entry.
Spacecraft is now slowing
down very rapidly.
We expect that the
parachute will deploy
in about 15 seconds.
[wind rustling]
Parachute has now deployed.
[clapping]
[wind]
[thud]
[metallic clank]
Lander separation should have
have occurred right about now.
Airbags should be inflated.
[boom]
[rockets fire]
[impact]
[multiple impacts]
>> EDL Comm,
a weak signal
is coming in and out
of the spectrum.
>> Yes.
>> Roger that.
>> Yes!
[air deflating]
[dramatic music]
[motor winding]
>> What a moment
Jennifer, take us there,
what happened then?
What happened at that point?
>> Well it was crazy exciting,
because everybody was
screaming and jumping around,
and I actually think,
I remember we got a call from
JSC, somebody passed along
that they weren't happy with
the demeanor of the operations
people, and that we needed to
kind of take it easy and
be more controlled in the
Mission Support Area.
But my job was, after landing,
I was the flight director for
the team of folks who had to
do the interactive deployments
and things we needed to do to
get the rover off the lander.
So one of the first things we
did is we had to deploy
the camera mast so that the
camera could look for the sun,
and then based on where the sun
was, we could figure out where
the earth was and then point
the high gain antenna
towards the earth, and then take
and send down those very first
images of Mars, which are the
picture of the rover
on the petal in its
hunched down position.
And so, I had a procedure, we
were very well practiced, we'd
done a lot of tests that had
gone very poorly,
so we had a lot of experience, a
lot of contingency plans
based on things not
going so well to date
for those
kinds of tests.
And the reason, you know, one
of the things about doing
tests like that is not only
are you trying to figure out
how to do the operations on
Mars, you're actually also
trying to simulate
the universe.
And that's the hard part of
those tests, where you have to
get the sun position right,
and Mars position right, and
all that, and so those tests
were always a lot more
complicated than
actual operations,
which is a good thing.
So initially, the very first
thing we wanted to do was get
those images down to see what
the landing site looked like
and the rover on the petal.
And I remember getting those
images down, and we were
printing them out
on printers, right?
That's where we were at.
Actually the very first
images, I think somebody had a
30-day trial membership of a
piece of software that they
were watching on one of the
computer screens, and so
everybody was going around
their computer screen because
they and sort of
siphoned the images
off of the image pipeline,
and we saw these
images of this landing site.
And I remember the next day
was the day we drove the rover
off the lander, but I remember
driving home that night with
that picture of the rover on
that surface of Mars that was
taken by that camera that
Peter designed to look like a
person looking out there, and
I just thought, "How on earth,
are we, does a farm girl from
Ohio, grow up to be involved
in something where we are
looking at another world?"
I mean we are the eyes
into this other world.
And it was overwhelming, it
was fun, and then the next day
we came back, and we got the
rover to drive off the lander,
and then the public
got so engaged.
And it was just a
great experience.
>> I want to talk
about the...
>> Can I jump in here?
Because the public
being engaged...
the internet was just coming
of itself and although it
isn't recognized, JPL was a
pioneer in the huge
overload that was
on the internet.
They thought about it in
advance, the work got done,
and I don't know if the world
knows what an incredible
communications job and
computer job that they did.
It was phenomenal, absolutely
phenomenal, which led to the
public being involved in such
a large, exciting experience.
>> If you think about it,
it's a bit like today with
social media being
so important,
and that was a pioneering moment
in the use of the internet
and communicating about
the space program.
>> We were rather
primitive, though.
We mirrored sites around the
world where we sent the data,
so we wouldn't swamp
out the JPL servers.
So that allowed us to get the
data out around the world.
>> But that wasn't primitive,
it was genius!
[laughter]
>> A number I remember,
670 million hits over a
three month period, or
something like that...
>> It was the
biggest thing.
>> It was the
biggest thing.
Today, that's trivial.
>> It was huge
at that time.
>> At that time, it was huge.
And that's because all the
server companies were happy to
have access. I mean
this was helping them create
the market for the
internet, so in that sense,
it really stimulated
that whole area.
>> So there was creativity
just across the whole basis.
>> Now I can't let this
opportunity go by, Jennifer,
without telling this, at least
one of the couple of stories
you've told me about your
interaction with Dan that day.
As if you didn't have enough to
worry about as flight director.
Can you at least tell one
of those two stories?
>> Okay, I'll tell the...
So, as things were crazy in
the Mission Support Area, and
people were jumping up and
down and looking at the images,
and we tried to maintain
some level of control,
but then we lost all
control and everybody was
packed into this
tiny little room.
And people hanging
over the chairs
and looking at
the images.
And I had a procedure that I
was supposed to be executing,
right?
And I had a team of people
were supposed to be reporting
telemetry channels to me and
we were supposed to move on
and make sure we got the
sequence to the end so we
could drive the rover down
the ramps the next day.
And I got to the point
where I couldn't run
the Mission Support Area and I
didn't know who was in there,
and I didn't know what to do
except for to say,
"Anybody in the
Mission Support Area
who is not on console
and not part of the team
who needs to be in here right
now needs to leave right now
so we can finish our job."
And it turns out Dan Goldin
was one of the people who was
in the Mission Support Area,
and so I kicked him
out, and he left.
And we got things under better
control so we could finish out
the activities for the day.
For the Sol.
>> You did the right thing.
>> Every other mission went
exactly the same way
on landing day, right?
Same experience every time.
>> I think that was one
of the great experiences
I had on Pathfinder.
Not just that moment
in the MSA, but
I didn't even have a job
when I took the job.
So I took the job
because I needed a job
and also because it
sounded exciting,
and then I didn't really
do the job I took.
It was underfunded, lowly
funded, and so whatever
you were willing to do...
>> It was
correctly funded.
>> It was
correctly funded.
[Laughter]
It was funded such
that people could be
innovative and could
take ownership
of a whole bunch of stuff.
And so, I was in my
twenties, I guess, well,
it's twenty years
ago, so I was ten.
No, I was in my twenties and I
had nothing better to do
except for this and play
volleyball on the weekends.
So I was there all the time.
And I will say,
the people, right?
I mean that opportunity to be
surrounded by a small
but insanely excellent group of
people, that I was able to
learn from, has brought me
to where I am today.
Because I learned from Rob
Manning and Miguel San Martin.
And I know cruise attitude
control now, and I know the
surface high gain antenna
pointing, and all these things,
but there's a group of
people of people.
And so it really
was significant,
the way that the structure
allowed people to do
as much as they were
willing and able to do.
And just learn an
incredible amount.
>> I don't think you were
prepared as a team
for the public
reaction, to this.
>> No.
>> I know you had a very
personal public reaction, too,
didn't you?
>> Well I did, and it's
interesting because I guess
they played the CNN footage
at some of the prisons
around the area.
[laughter]
And so I got letters, and was
it Joe Courtney who was the
head of security at the time?
I don't remember.
He would just regularly come
in the Building 230
and would deliver me
a stack of letters
that were from
federal prisoners.
You know, saying that they
wanted to go to Mars,
or that it was
great what we did.
And one day, I
got a letter from a...
Well actually, one day they put
an article in Parade magazine
that said what I had done
and had a picture of me,
and I got a letter
from a lady in Texas
who had seen that article
in Parade magazine.
And I put it on the
stack of letters
with the federal prisoners.
And the letter said, "I have a
son who's in the Air Force,
and if you were ever willing
to give him a tour of JPL,
I'm sure he would
love to come."
And so I put it in my
stack of letters,
and then probably three
or four months later,
I had decided to reply
to all the letters.
I don't know why I
decided to do that.
So I wrote this lady and I
said sure, if this guy
from the Air Force wants
to come and visit JPL,
I'm happy to
give him a tour.
And it turned out that he
didn't know his mom had
written the letter, it was clear
she was trying to set us up,
but he actually had quite
an interest in JPL.
So, he took me up on the
offer, came out, he was
looking at going to
test pilot school
at Edwards Air Force Base.
He came out, I gave
him a tour, and uh...
two years later,
we got married.
So no matter what, Pathfinder
is my favorite mission.
[laughter and applause]
>> Alright, moving on.
>> You know, Blaine, one thing
I wanted to comment on that
Jennifer just touched on, I
think one of the great
legacies of Pathfinder and the
Mars program is it allowed us
to do engineering the way
engineering is done.
Which is have the same
people do a mission,
learn what they did right or
wrong, and then do another one.
And then do another one.
And a lot of the same people
Jennifer mentioned, Rob and
Miguel and Richard Cook,
and all of these people
did Spirit and Opportunity,
did Curiosity,
some of them are now
doing 2020 as well.
It's really an amazing cadre
of engineers who spent their
whole career building these
Mars missions and building
them the right way, building
them successfully.
And that has been something
that is really difficult to do
in the agency.
The fact that Mars is
relatively close
and you can send missions
every 26 months,
it allowed us to really build
up a knowledge base
that we really haven't had
for any other planet.
And it's been a fantastic
experience and I think that's
been a lot of the secret to
this success is really that.
It's that ability to learn
from mistakes and have the
same people keep doing the work,
and not forget it for 20 years,
as Brian said, after Viking.
There was nobody really around
from Viking anymore,
but the folks from Curiosity
were the same
ones from Pathfinder.
>> You arrived at the lab
about the time of Pathfinder,
I think...
>> A few years before.
>> A couple years?
>> Yeah.
>> What kind of importance did
Pathfinder have in the
advancement of
where we've gone?
>> You know, as I think I
mentioned, I think Pathfinder
really taught us two things
from the scientific
and from the mission
perspective.
I think we really wanted to do
these robotic explorers.
Pathfinder was somewhat
constrained in how far it
could backpack because of the
base station and the way it
was designed, but
our other rovers
really were traveling
robotic geologists.
And I think that's really a
paradigm that we learned, and
Curiosity was the biggest
investment that we had,
and we again tried to
build on that legacy.
But you go in thinking, "we're
going to drive this thing
for two years, and we're
going to go to places
we've never seen before,"
and that's something that
really started with Pathfinder.
Look around sniffing rocks that
were as far as you could get,
and Spirit and Opportunity
going even farther
and building on that.
And I know from myself, I was
not an engineer on Pathfinder,
but being on Curiosity, being
able to work with the team
that had been successful on
that mission and other missions,
it gives you a lot
of confidence.
And you can sit there and go
over a lot of things that can
go wrong, you can think
through a lot of scenarios,
and it was just a wonderful
experience to be able to work
with the team that had that
much experience on Mars.
We often went, Jennifer and I
worked on Curiosity together,
and we would go back and look,
"What did MER do here in
Spirit and Opportunity, what
went right, what can we fix?"
Now Jennifer is on 2020 looking
at what went right on MSL,
what can we do better,
how can we be smarter about
the operations and
the engineering.
It's just a great experience.
>> I do these oral histories
with folks, the past, present,
and I almost always ask them
about "Faster. Better. Cheaper."
Where is the needle?
Where has it gone?
Has it gone too far
one way or another?
And it's amazing to me, the
number of people who say
we've gone too far away from
"Faster. Better. Cheaper."
I hear that all the time.
>> I think the trick is to go
back to your processes and
look at what has accreted that
is relatively low added value.
So a lot of times, we have
process, we have ways of doing
things that have built up
due to conservatism
and maybe not direct
high-value return.
And we don't always go back
and reanalyze those processes.
So I think part of what the
whole leadership team is doing
is going back in, looking at
the way we do our work,
looking at what can be
streamlined, looking at where
technology has advanced to
where the failure modes
that we used to have in our
electronic parts are no longer
the failure modes you have
in modern electronic parts.
And so you can
change your process,
you can streamline
your processes.
There's a lot of advances in
software, autocoding and other
kinds of things you can do
with advanced IT and advanced
compilers that reduce error
account in software,
so I think we're
looking at where
we can take advantage
of new technologies
and we're asking our
leadership team to go back.
Working with engineers, you
guys that in the lab,
you often know a lot of
what steps are value added
and not value added,
and we want to make sure
that that bubbles up.
And as you heard Brian say,
that's a lot of what made
Pathfinder successful, was
empowering individual
engineers in their
workplace to say,
"This is not the best
way to do this.
I know a better way to do
this, either because
technology is advanced or
because I'm smart, or because
I've just sat here for 10
hours working on this thing
and I know what I'm doing
in a single shift."
And we're trying to make sure
that we get that empowerment
down to the lowest levels,
by working with the
line organizations.
I think what would
also help us is
alignment with headquarters,
with the agency.
There are times at which the
agency strongly advocates
technology demos, Class D
and Class C work,
and there's other times
when they don't.
So Cassini for example, is
Class A mission, and Mars 2020.
These are missions
that the risk is
intended to be
driven fairly low.
But there are other times
where the agency can
incentivize taking chances and
can incentivize streamlined
processes, as they did
with Pathfinder.
And we're actually
starting to see
more of those
missions coming.
Charles Elachi mentioned the
helicopter, that's a tech demo.
It has very few or almost no
scientific requirements,
very few requirements on it.
It just has to get
there, and take off,
and fly around on
Mars, and land.
And do that a few times.
It doesn't have
to execute
a vastly complicated
science mission.
So the helicopter's a good
example, there's a deep space
optical comm technology demo
on Psyche, there's a number of
these areas where the agency is
asking us to push the envelope
with Class D and we
like those.
And I think that's a great
opportunity for folks to take
a swing through a mission like
that, or an instrument like
that, and also take a
swing through
the more conservative
missions.
And that way you can kind of
see how the pointer can be set,
as Blaine was saying.
In this kind of mission it
needs to be set here,
and here I can
take chances.
>> You know I've been on MSL
and Mars 2020 and now to
go back and talk about
Pathfinder these last few weeks
has reminded me
of things,
and its reminded me
that we can create
culture by the way we make
our choices, right?
Whether you're on a big project
or you're on a small project,
you focus on
the content.
You focus on being excellent
at the technical work,
you focus on questioning things
that don't make sense to you,
you focus on throwing
out process.
And I actually told Richard, I
said, "You know I am
re-invigorated to completely
ignore my management."
[laughter]
>> Of which you are
the management now.
>> Of which I am
the management.
But especially to the younger
folks who didn't have the
Pathfinder opportunity, I think
you can create that opportunity
by being excellent technically
and questioning.
This place loves that.
I think it can come from
the bottom, from the top,
from the side, but it
comes from the people
and what you do every day.
>> I think of Charles, you often
times use that phrase from
Teddy Roosevelt:
Dare Mighty Things,
and part of what
Pathfinder put in motion
was the daring of
audacious things,
and Curiosity being a
very audacious thing to do,
as well, as a
mighty thing.
>> You know, every explorer,
they have to dare mighty things
if they want to
push the limit.
And that's why I like that
quote from Teddy Roosevelt
and matter of fact
the first time
it was quoted here at
JPL, Dan remember,
when I was appointed
as the JPL Director,
he delayed that
announcement by a day
because he wanted to
be physically here.
I remember, so he came and he
looked at all the employees
and looked at me, and he
quoted Teddy Roosevelt
about daring mighty things.
And now you see
it all over lab
because you need
to to that.
I mean, in our business, if
you don't dare mighty things,
if you say "this is
too difficult,"
you have given up.
But as long as you really try
hard to make it happen,
then every explorer
encounters that.
Not only us.
And Pathfinder,
that's one example,
where people dared
mighty things.
One thing I thought Brian
would be mentioning,
there was another
challenge above
and beyond the
technical challenge.
Is how to streamline
the implementation.
Remember, we were at a time
where we were doing the big
spacecraft, and all kind of
processes and reviews.
And, a matter of fact some of
you noticed in the video
when Dan was talking there
was a bunch of books
sitting next to him.
He was giving that as an
example of what would it take
to write a proposal.
When I was a young investigator,
my proposal used to
be like 10 pages,
that was in the
early '80s.
And one of the challenges
the team had,
and Tony and Brian
and their team,
was able to at least to
work on streamlining
the processes and that
required a lot of support.
Because there were a lot of
antibodies about that.
>> We created a skunk works
within the JPL organization.
But more than anything, the
thing that made us successful
I think was the fact that
we trusted each other.
We trusted the individuals for
their skill, their ability.
We did not do a lot of paper,
a lot of process, and we
concurrently engineered the
system as we went along.
And then, we depended
very much on a
process of rapid
decision-making.
So when something went wrong,
when there was a problem,
I could bring together
just a handful of people.
And in a matter of minutes
to hours maybe a few days
we could understand the problem
and we could put a solution
in place and we'd
go execute it.
I mean, sometimes, and
our big projects today,
it could take weeks to months to
make those kind of changes.
But the relationships
that were built-
The definition of a
high-performance team
from Katzenback and Smith was
"a team that is personally
committed to each
other's success."
And I think we had that.
>> So that was another
"daring mighty things"
but in a different aspect.
>> The interesting part of
that, is that we talked about
the scientific, the
programmatic legacy,
the people at legacy
of Pathfinder,
all of which were
fantastically successful.
I think we still, you'll get a
kick out of this, Dan and
Brian knows this more than
anyone, we struggled to retain
that streamlined sense of
innovation, because the
natural tendency is to then
become more conservative, make
the next one bigger and
better, and make it work.
And I think the breath of
fresh air that Pathfinder was
is something that's still
needed because we become
more and more risk
averse as an agency.
>> I think you're
absolutely spot on.
I really challenge
all of you
to listen to what
your director said
and don't keep doing things
because they're safe.
You have to lead in
technology and science.
Don't get complacent
with success.
Always be nervous and
always push the limits.
>> Dan, as usual you
get the last word,
[laughter]
and I want to thank all of
the panelists for being here.
It's been a very interesting
hour of discussion
and we are going to close out
by reflecting with a video on
what is happened in the
last 20 years at Mars.
It's very impressive.
Thank you all for coming.
[Applause]
[Whoosh]
[Poof]
>> Roger that.
>> Okay we got a good strong
signal now.
[Cheers]
[Clapping]
>> Woo!
[Cheering and clapping]
[Rockets]
[bang]
[Whoosh]
[Poof]
[Boom]
>> Stand by.
>> The rover has landed
base-petal down.
Which means, right side up.
[cheers and clapping]
[metallic clanking]
>> 60 meters.
>> Come on!
>> 30 meters!
[Rockets]
27 meters.
[Rockets]
20 meters.
15 meters. Standing
by for touchdown.
[rockets]
[impact]
[cheering]
[rockets]
>> Touchdown confirmed!
We're safe on Mars!
[cheers] 
>> Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo!
[cheers]
[clapping]
>> Time to see where our
Curiosity will take us.
[cheering and clapping]
[inspirational music]
[♪]
