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9781421421223 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Exploration and Engineering:

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars
  • ISBN-13: 9781421421223
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Erik M. Conway
  • Price: AUD $75.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/12/2016
  • Format: Paperback 416 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: History of science [PDX]
Description
Table of
Contents
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Although the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has become synonymous with the United States' planetary exploration during the past half century, its most recent focus has been on Mars. Beginning in the 1990s and continuing through the Mars Phoenix mission of 2007, JPL led the way in engineering an impressive, rapidly evolving succession of Mars orbiters and landers, including roving robotic vehicles whose successful deployment onto the Martian surface posed some of the most complicated technical problems in space flight history.
 
In Exploration and Engineering, Erik M. Conway reveals how JPL engineers' creative technological feats led to major breakthroughs in Mars exploration. He takes readers into the heart of the lab's problem-solving approach and management structure, where talented scientists grappled with technical challenges while also coping, not always successfully, with funding shortfalls, unrealistic schedules, and managerial turmoil.
 
Conway, JPL's historian, offers an insider's perspective into the changing goals of Mars exploration, the ways in which sophisticated computer simulations drove the design process, and the remarkable evolution of landing technologies over a thirty-year period.
 

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Planetary Observers, Mars Observer
2. Politics and Engineering on the Martian Frontier
3. Attack of the Great Galactic Ghoul
4. Engineering for Uncertainty
5. Mars Mania
6. The Faster-Better-Cheaper Future
7. Revenge of the Great Galactic Ghoul
8. Recovery and Reform
9. Margins on the Final Frontier
10. Sending a Spy Satellite to Mars
11. Robotic Geologists on the Red Planet
12. Reengineering a Spacecraft, and a Program
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

""Readers unacquainted with how NASA centers operate, or with how humans build the robots that explore the planets, will benefit from this book. Even the initiated will find the depth of information impressively thorough and will likely find that they did not know JPL as well as they imagined.""

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