🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 6 Aug 2012 12:50:50 -0700 (PDT), dp <dp@tgi-sci.com>
wrote:

>On Aug 6, 9:43�am, Jon Kirwan <j...@infinitefactors.org> wrote:
>> ...
>> What impresses me the most is that this trip was about 350
>> million miles, ending in a tight coordination with two
>> orbiting satellites, the ODY and MRO, and deploying novel
>> technologies to land a 1 ton vehicle (if I heard correct.)
>> Hard to believe that all of this could come together as well
>> as it did.
>>
>> Jon
>
>Same feelings here - very well done. I just cannot imagine
>how tense it must have been for the people (person?) whose
>baby this is;

Dr. Adam Steltzner probably deserves very high praise. And I
very much appreciated his sincere comments about others on
his team (some, he said, were better deserving and more
skilled than he) to have been given the honor he was given in
leading the EDL team who worked so hard at perhaps the more
problematic parts of the problem starting 7-8 years ago. I'm
sure he slave-drove these people, but he also was provided
the source of confidence and the energy to push through
problems with consistent and overwhelming force.

>I know I have had my tense moments shipping
>overseas the first spectrometers and waiting for them to
>call home and work with HPGe detectors (each being generally
>a unique personality) they have never seen; I also know the
>relief at the end of it.

Oh, what I wouldn't do to get my hands on the optical design
of those devices and some ideas about sourcing parts here. I
have worked with spectrophotometers for decades now, going
back to the mid 1980's. Some of it expensive, but all of it
only to commercial standards. I started using the Ocean
Optics (because they were CHEAP) as soon as they first came
out with something decent. (Most of my work was in the
visible, near UV, and near IR -- but for very different
applications.) I still have some decent setups here and I've
designed some devices that can be made for only a few
dollars, and wavelength calibrated for $8 more, so that high
school students could actually built their own real-world
equipment that could genuinely "do science" and meet
calibration standards. No intensity calibration, though,
sadly. That costs money to do. (Unless you have a suggestion
about how to do it on the cheap?)

>And the scales are simply not comparable; how do these
>people survive the wait is just beyond me, I guess.

I think few people understand just what this kind of team
work means inside, how much it changes who you are, and what
it means when the work is suddenly handed off and you scatter
to the winds. Perhaps actors doing a long-running play, like
Les Miserables, would understand when the play breaks up
(though that one never seems to.) It's years of hard work
building up a team that in the end works superbly together
and has learned how it must be that each person makes up for
the deficits of each other, while capitalizing on their
strengths, into a whole unit that from the outside is totally
functional and complete.... only to have it dismantled
suddenly at the end. Or, at least, the serious threat of it.
All that has been so hard-won....

I feel for all here.

Jon