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To MARS with MER - RESEARCH/ers

Miguel San Martin
Lead Software Designer
Mars Exploration Rovers mission
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

P2K: I don't mean to insult you, but you're a pretty bright guy. You could probably write your own ticket anywhere out in the software world, and could have gone off and made a bundle in the dot-com boom of a few years back, and yet here you are building spacecraft. What is the kick that you personally get out of helping to make space missions like this work?

Miguel San Martin: First of all, I kind of question that first statement, that because we are smart building spacecraft we are going to be smart making money somewhere else. I don't necessarily agree with that; at least, I don't think that I can apply my strengths that I have here at JPL somewhere else.

But even if I could, I think that I'm no different from anyone else here at JPL. We are essentially, we just love this stuff. As I said, we like doing this stuff. Maybe we are kind of romantics or something, and we grew up following the space program and we enjoy it, I guess, like a whole bunch of other professions where there is no tremendous material rewards associated with them, and we are not the only one.

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