Managing Martians - Hardcover

Shirley, Donna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767902408 ISBN 13: 9780767902403

Publisher: Broadway, 1998

Synopsis

The leader of the team that created the revolutionary Mars Sojourner rover chronicles her trailblazing career in space exploration and tells the fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of the celebrated Mars Pathfinder mission.

Donna Shirley's 35-year career as an aerospace engineer reached a jubilant pinnacle in July 1997 when Sojourner--the solar-powered, self-guided, microwave-oven-sized rover--was seen exploring the Martian landscape in Pathfinder's spectacular images from the surface of the red planet.

The event marked a milestone in space exploration--no vehicle had ever before roamed the surface of another planet.  But for Donna Shirley, the manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Exploration Program who headed the mostly male team that designed and built Sojourner, it marked a triumph of another kind.  Since her childhood in Oklahoma, Shirley had dreamed of traveling to Mars, and, through Pathfinder, she did just that.

Managing Martians is Shirley's captivating memoir of a life and career spent reaching for the stars.  From her seemingly outlandish aspiration at age ten to build aircraft, to abandoning high school Home Ec in favor of mechanical drawing, and, at sixteen, becoming a licensed pilot, Shirley defied expectations from the beginning.

The only female engineering student in her college class, Shirley earned a degree in aerospace/mechanical engineering (while picking up a beauty contest title along the way) and, in 1966, began a career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that has spanned twenty-four different projects, including Mariner 10's trip to Venus and Mercury and a 1991 assignment as chief engineer of a $1.6 billion project to explore asteroids, a comet, and Saturn.

Shirley's innovations in automation and robotics paved the way to her being named the first woman ever to manage a NASA program.  For Pathfinder she assembled a brilliant band of upstarts (her fellow "Martians") and embarked on an improbable mission: to put an untethered, fully automated rover on Mars--at a fraction of the cost of any previous Mars project.

In a vivid narrative, rich with anecdotes and thrilling turning points, Shirley recounts the intense battles she waged to defend her vision and the ingenuity and resourcefulness of her committed team.  Her moment-by-cliffhanging-moment account of Pathfinder's landing and Sojourner's first tentative foray across the sands of Mars brilliantly captures the fulfillment of a lifelong dream as it heralds a brave new era of space exploration.

About this title

Review

Donna Shirley dreamed of going to Mars since she was a starstruck kid in Oklahoma, reading science fiction and staring up at the big Western sky. Managing Martians chronicles her life from flight-obsessed childhood to the realization of her dream as manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Exploration Program--the people who sent Pathfinder and the rover Sojourner to the red planet in 1997.

Shirley's story is extraordinary in its simplicity: she set her sights on what she wanted, and chased it fervently. Yet simple doesn't always mean easy, and Shirley owns up to getting sidetracked along the way, and having to work hard to get back to business. And what a business! Imagine having an expensive, delicate object you helped design strapped to a projectile hurtling toward a chunk of rock in space. The best parts of Shirley's story are the tense moments, when she struggled to maintain professional cool while under enormous stress. This book is part autobiography, part lesson to bureaucratic managers; Shirley has had to work with some temperamental folks in her lifetime of government work, and she's learned (the hard way) how to manage teams well. One gets the impression that she would have made an excellent military leader, or CEO. Mars buffs all over the world should be glad she stuck to the stars. --Therese Littleton

From the Publisher

"One of L.A.'s '100 Coolest People,' Shirley is the colorful ringleader of the team that created Mars's first sport-utility vehicle."
--Buzz

"Her phone number spells MARS, her car is a Saturn, and her home is the closest you can get to a cabin in the sky. Donna Shirley isn't your ordinary Earthbound mortal. In fact, for 30 years she has spent 8 to 18 hours a day planning how to get out of this world and onto other planets."
--Los Angeles Times

"If humans ever visit Mars--and it could happen as early as 2010--it may be Donna Shirley's legacy that makes their awesome landing possible."
--Glamour

"Shirley's ability to boil down complex scientific concepts into tangible sound bites has helped her pick up where Carl Sagan left off--making the field more accessible and interesting to a populace intimidated by science."
--Ms.

"Describing [Sojourner's] wonders, Shirley is part proud parent, part car salesman, and part stand-up comic."
--Mirabella

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0767902408
• ISBN 13: 9780767902403
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288