Sojourner: An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission

Rating:
Summary: Inaccuracy and disparaging remarks about key contributors
Review: I was also present during the early days of robotics at JPL and witnessed some of the events described by Mishkin. I have worked with Andy Mishkin in the past and share his enthusiasm for our exploratiion of Mars. I must take issue, however, with his characterization of the contributions of Dr. David P. Miller and Dr. Rajiv Desai to the advent of micro-rovers at JPL. I am also saddened by his imperceptive and self-serving observations of their motives and personalities. I agree that the team of which Mishkin was a member were very worried about the micro-rover work being carried out by Miller, Desai, and others. This is because the combined technologies of behavior control and small rovers were demonstrably capable of automatically accomplishing tasks of scientific interest without the computational overhead, mass or system complexity of the "larger" robots being developed in Mishkin's organization. As such, they represented a threat to continued funding of Wilcox and others' work and leadership. Since that time, it appears there are unique mission requirements for both large-scale rovers and micro-rovers in a variety of mission scenarios. The team led by Dr. Miller and Dr. Desai was the only one at JPL (during the period 1987 to 1994) to successfully conceive, research, develop and demonstrate micro-rover systems using reactive behavioral control techniques, and was the first in the world to integrate and demonstrate such systems doing mission-relevant behaviors in a laboratory setting. Small robots in space have been a staple of many science fiction stories. They actually built the technology. Their accomplishments were documented in peer-reviewed conferences and journals, and continue to be highly praised by roboticists, space scientists and NASA. Dr. Miller was viewed by NASA HQ as the agency's expert on micro-rovers, and this was also true of senior managers at JPL. Drs. Miller and Desai were concerned first with the success of Mars exploration and not motivated AT ALL by a need to "take over" robotics being done in Mishkin's organization. They had no shortage of funding and the future looked very bright indeed. I know from personal observation that they tried very hard to work collaboratively with the other group, but were rebuffed and systematically excluded from important meetings, engineering discussions, and overall just treated unprofessionally. Nevertheless, they made heroic efforts to contribute. This came to a head in the major technology demonstration described by Mishkin, where the micro-rover unfortunately failed after just a portion of the demo. I don't know whether a failed piece of electronics was the problem, or software, or operations, or system engineering. I do know that Drs. Miller and Desai tried their very best in a hostile work environment where they were tasked to provide a highly technical, integrated product in absence of full collaboration with the rest of the engineering team. At least, Mishkin acknowledges that the demo, although limited, was enough to capture NASA's favorable attention and led directly to the formation of what would later become the Pathfinder mission. And I am pleased that he acknowledges that Dr. Miller was pivotal in convincing the NASA Mars Science Working Group and the OSSA Solar System Exploration Committee that a micro-rover oriented mission was possible and could return valuable science information. As a final note, Dr. Miller and Dr. Desai each left JPL soon after these event. They were never able to share personally in success of the Sojourner robot which their own work had inspired and enabled. I respect Andrew Mishkin and his many accomplishments at JPL. He just got this part of history wrong, which I attribute not to maliciousness but to the "group-think" of his parent organization and lack of personal knowledge of the actions taken by his managers.

Rating:
Summary: A Valuable Resource
Review: Like other books concerning the space program (e.g."Moon Hunters") this book is an interesting historical document concerning some of JPL's remarkable accomplishments. In addition however, the author provides valuable technical insights into the unique thinking, problem solving, and development obstacles which scientists and engineers encounter when exploring remote areas of our world and universe. From a project management perspective, Mishkin has demonstrated how issues over team dynamics, personality, scheduling, and budgets were successfully overcome to attain success beyond all expectations.
I think that this book would make excellent reading for scientists and engineers destined to manage major team oriented projects. This book also should prove of great interest to people working in space science, oceanographic work, or other such fields with similar problems and they will likely find several technical parallels to the mode of thinking that is applied to their own areas.
I would think that JPL would gain much in the way of public interest and support if similar books appear in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Worth the read
Review: Mishkin takes the reader on the bumpy, rock-strewn path of rover development at JPL and does so in readable terms. Forget acronyms or dry engineering terms here, it's a highly readable account of one of NASA's great achievements of the past decade. The book is full of anecdotes and good writing.
It also shows how the Mars program had too grand a scale with their intial rover program in the early 1990s. They scaled it back and came up with the smaller Pathfinder, or Sojourner (but what everybody just calls "the rover") that was very well executed in 1997.
Now, two more rovers are slated to land on Mars by Jan. 4, 2004. Read this book and the story of how long and interesting that voyage truly is will unfold.