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To MARS with MER - RESEARCH/ers

Rob Manning
Entry, Descent and Landing Operations Manager
Mars Exploration Rovers mission
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

P2K: We've seen you and your colleagues making presentations to "critical design reviews"... That does not look too much like "fun"!?!

Rob Manning: It's too bad we can't launch Powerpoint files to Mars, that's all I can say. We put an enormous amount of work in getting these presentations in a way that clearly communicate what it is we are building, what risks we are taking, not just in the mission level but in the development side - make sure that we do indeed finish this job before it needs to launch, in terms of building it up. That's the purpose of these reviews. The reviews are to try both to communicate to other people, to people who are outsiders, people who come in with a critical eye, to say, "Are you really doing the right thing? Are you really going to make it." And we have to bare our souls, and tell them what we are doing, and explain why it works, and justify it. And it allows us to fully understand in our own minds as we develop the data for these reviews, to think it though. It forces us to understand what it is we need to do. And it also allows us to communicate, with some pride, by the way, that we do know what we are doing. And that maybe in fact, this just might work, and it's worth taking the risk to keep on proceeding with the build up, and actually send it to Mars.

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