The Real America
Juan Cole posted on something that really struck me when I was watching the Curiosity landing: the people in the control room.
In addition to the fact that the people in that room obviously came from every continent, and both sexes, they were also multi-generational. The young guy with the now famous ‘Mohawk’ was on the same row as a guy who looked like a middle-aged hippie. There were people who looked like they were in high school when this project started, and others who may have been in high school or college when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.
One of the comments at Dr. Cole’s said they didn’t see any blacks, but they were there and some in the shirts and ties of administrators.
It was interesting to watch the stress drain away from the individual units when their part of the mission was completed successfully and someone else was in the spotlight.
In addition to the team for Curiosity, the teams that handle the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Odyssey spacecraft were involved in this mission. The data from Curiosity was sent to the MRO, which relayed it to Odyssey, which transmitted it to Earth. The MRO also managed to snap a picture of Curiosity descending on its parachute and the ejected heat shield falling away. An amazing number of things had to go right for this to work, and it worked.
2 comments
A damn sight realer to me than Kardashians.
OK, that’s the dysfunctional family in Kalifornia with the fetish for the letter “K”, right? The ones who don’t seem to actually do anything, but make a lot money, which means they are part of the ‘aristocracy’ – like the fascination with the Royals.
A mother cat would have known better, and abandoned that litter. 😈