Howard, you may enjoy reading "Managing Martians", by Donna Shirley, Project manager for the Sojourner rover. It is highly autobiographical, but Shirley also describes in some detail some of the engineering problems her team encountered. I also caught a segment of a recent interview with her on PBS recently, sorry but I couldn't watch long enough to get the title of the show and darned if I can recall the time and day now. Your mention of model rocketry takes me back. There is a b&w photo in my shop taken by a high-school friend, of me in a crowd of other participants on the flight-line, preparing my "boost-glider" rocket for a competition at Brighton High in the mid-seventies. I took third place, not bad since the competition was also the first powered test flight! The hobby today is mind-boggling, a lifetime away from the Estes & Centurion world. The model rockets being launched today look like DOD projects! C. --- Howard Jackman <sumoetx@yahoo.com> wrote:
I love NOVA! What an amazing program. I was very impressed with the graphics, and coverage of the developmental problems that they encountered, especially the parachute since I'm also an avid amateur model rocketeer and have had some first hand experiences with parachutes "shredding" with fast deployments.
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