Managing Martians

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Summary: A unique insider's view of NASA's interplanetary missions
Review: A century from now, when this year's Oscar-winning films, hit sitcoms, and top ten CDs are gathering dust in some media archive, and the feats of contemporary sports figures are known only to the most compulsive of trivia buffs, school children will be studying the pioneering missions of space exploration such as Mars Pathfinder-Sojourner. "Managing Martians" by Donna Shirley gives the reader a rare insight into the occupational culture that made these epic adventures possible.

Readers who are familiar with the "Mars and Venus" series of books on the psychological differences between men and women will no doubt catch the double meaning of the book's title. Much of Ms. Shirley's autobiographical narrative describes her struggle to reach her career goals in a historically male-dominated profession during the Sixties. It is a world in which pioneering women swim against the stream in a culture in which young women were (and to some extent, still are) taught that studying subjects such as science, math, and technical drawing was "unladylike", and the few women who did continue their education beyond high school were pressured to graduate with an "Mrs." degree and settle into the cozy, familiar role of middle class housewife-mother. Her interests in science fiction, flying, and a life of adventure set her apart from her peers, and she manages to avoid the cultural traps set for her and perseveres in her aim of becoming an aerospace engineer.

In the last part of the book, Shirley relates the challenges and frustrations of managing a space project against a background of tightfisted budgets. The NASA of the 1990's is no longer awash in cash, and a spirit of "make-do-or-do-without" pervades the organization. Competing groups fight over the dwindling pool of money, and rivalries can be fierce. Her team struggles not only with the technical problems of building their robot rover, but also the perception that it is an unnecessary frill that only adds weight and cost to a mission that is already stretched thin. Shirley herself is forced to defend her project in bitter confrontations that sometimes degenerate into shouting matches. Her account of the attempts to derail her rover are not only entertaining, but also uncover internal politics to which the lay person or the taxpayer seldom exposed. In the end, as we all know, the rover Sojourner is recognized as a technical triumph and captures the rapt attention of the world for weeks.

In conclusion, you don't have to be a techie or a woman to enjoy Shirley's narrative of growing up in pre-"Flower Power" America and becoming an aerospace engineer in the Golden Age of space exploration. Her book successfully conveys not only the incredible tension and exhilaration of participating in a planetary mission, but also the trials and frustration of achieving recognition in a traditionally male-dominated field.

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Summary: Shirley's story is motivational and intertaining.
Review: For a person reviewing books before live audiences, Managing Martians by Donna Shirely is a winner! Shirley's story is multifold - from her childhood perched in a sycamore tree in rural Oklahoma to the realization of "getting to Mars" via the little robotic rover, Sojourner Truth. It is a 35 year journey with all its valleys and peaks associated with space exploration that keeps readers and listeners expectant. Donna Shirely's intellect, determination, courage and love of life shines through and could make an important movie in a time when young persons are hungry for a hero.

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Summary: Excellent example of life in space exploration
Review: If you've ever wondered what engineering is all about or are trying to decide whether or not to enter the field, this book is for you It's an adventure story, that starts with a youngster's dream to go to the planets. Many of us, especially boys growing up in the early sixties, will nod in recognition with Donna Shirley pouring over Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sands of Mars" and then looking up wistfully at the red planet amidst the constellations. So, too, the dream of flying an airplane and even sneaking out to take a friend up when their parents weren't looking. It's the dreams of youth, which made made many of us strap slide rules on our belts and sweat over endless labs and analysis courses in college. From there, you must face the long road from rote beginner tasks, to being able to design a product, run the necessary tests, and declare that what you have conceived will fly, long before it is built. The toughest step, perhaps, is getting others to finance your dreams.

This is what Donna Shirley has accomplished. She had developed the skill and competence to conceive of ways to push back the final frontier, successfully do combat to get the funding, and then round up and lead teams of opinionated geniuses to make the seemingly impossible appear before our very eyes. It is more than a story of space travel, it's a personal and career story that shows what one insistent person can do despite almost continuous obstacles. Donna's story is an inspiration for anyone who dares to up the ante or change the status quo. It should be required reading for engineers, managers and, really, anyone in business.

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Summary: Managing Martians should be on every woman's reading list.
Review: In Managing Martians, Donna Shirley shows the interaction that takes place in the solution of complex engineering problems with mostly male colleagues. We learn that it is the interaction among team members to find solutions that makes for success. We also find that real women can do engineering and managment of complex projects, even if they were Miss Wynnewood. This has been an eye opener for my college students that one of their fellow Oklahomans from right down the road is working on the frontiers of space exploration.I love this book because I have used it for a model of working together for my students. It should be on every woman's or manager's reading list. Dr. Nedra C. Sears East Central University Ada, Oklahoma

Rating:
Summary: Shirley's story is motivational and intertaining.
Review: Since she was a kid in flat Wynnewood, Okla., reading Arthur C. Clarke novels and staring at the sky, Donna Shirley dreamed of going to Mars. Her book chronicles her life from flight-obsessed preteen, to hometown beauty queen, to the realization of her dream as manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Exploration Program. Her team sent Pathfinder and the rover Sojourner to the red planet in 1997, and rebuilt ways of managing spacecraft missions along the way.

As you might expect in a book with this title, covering all of the above, sometimes the subject matter is stretched very thin. This is in some parts a book that tries to do too much, and the autobiographical sections on Donna Shirley's childhood, her experiences becoming licensed as a pilot, seem somewhat out of place in a book such as this. Make no mistake, there are lessons here, about glass ceilings and reaching for childhood dreams, but they are never fully realized, or completely developed, in the text. I have heard many woman express an interest in reading this book for Shirley's opinions on how women should deal with male-dominated fields, and how, or even if, they should "prove" themselves in positions of power, but there is little that enlightens that aspect of the book. One of the best quotes, however, from Shirley, concerning her new found fame as a female role model, sums up part of the problem in one sentence: "Our culture is so starved for female role models, that a woman who simply shows up on TV becomes a hero." Unfortunately too obviously true, and a shame on our society.

However, Shirley's story is extraordinary, and compelling in her fervent chase of her goals. Shirley has had to work hard, sometimes at great sacrifice, for this business. Her interview with the California Institute of Technology is illustrative of this (during an airline strike, her interview was cancelled, so she arranged her own flight, against CalTech's orders, for the interview). She has had to struggle to maintain professional cool while under enormous stress. As a lesson to bureaucratic managers, the book works well, although probably won't be taken as a compliment to the NASA teams of old; 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.

I suspect that many men and women would be drawn to the line of work that Donna Shirley is in expecting smooth, intelligent teamwork -- everyone laboring under a common purpose or dream, planning and executing grandiose, flawless missions to the planets. Shirley's book destroys all of that. The NASA mandate to plan missions as "faster, cheaper, and more often"required, out of necessity, a complete restructuring of the way JPL did business. Of course, in doing so, no one wanted to throw out the best of the bureaucracy, which was responsible for highly successful missions in the past. The schedule of Shirley's team was so tight that not a day would go by without having accomplished something substantial towards the mission launch date. And her faithful descriptions of the committee work is enough to make you reach for the aspirin bottle. The harsh review boards that she was made to endure and the lack of a social life, adds to the sense of repulsion of what managing, or even participating, in a project such as this entails. Over the course of several chapters, she describes her constant conflicts with a Pathfinder supervisor, Tony, who was determined to sink the rover project, and she pulls no punches.

Of course, microwave sized Sojourner, the rover, eventually landed on Mars, landing on July 4, 1997, and capturing the world's imagination. Sojourner traversed 100 meters of Martian surface, returning 550 images and 15 chemical analyses of soil and rocks, far exceeding expectations, and certainly meeting all criteria for a successful mission. But that doesn't take away from the inherent tension of a project such as this. For all involved, having this expensive, delicate object they helped design strapped to a projectile hurtling toward a chunk of rock in space, made the stakes very high. Even those with a fair amount of knowledge about the project will find surprising details about slashed budgets, impossible deadlines, shouting matches with rival managers, and plenty of last minute solutions. She also mentions the competing goals (and budgets) of the manned spaceflight program, specifically the expensive International Space Station, but unfortunately never gives a personal opinion or resolution of how to handle both goals without compromising either.

Shirley is an aeronautical engineer of the pre-feminist generation, and brings both her lifelong dream of getting to Mars and sheer hard work, respect for talent, and well-honed management skills as her tools to get her there. She has many unique and clever ideas about managing people, which one suspects from reading the last few chapters is what she really wanted to write about, but was not allowed to delve into in this book, perhaps out of fear of losing readers. Pity, because the title, "Managing" Martians, should at least give her the latitude to go into her theories on effectiveness of management styles. Shirley has written another book, published for now only on the internet, about creative management. Perhaps she will use her $65,000 author fee for this book to have her other creation published at last.

However, this book, as written, is far from perfect. There exists much fascinating and exciting lore about the red planet: its ancient mythology, and its scientific speculations gone wild in the last century, even spawning science fiction terror in this century. However, this book does not delve, even once, into this area. Like Mars, the background of JPL, how it came to be, how planetary missions came to be a goal of our government, is likewise not discussed. Additionally, although The Planetary Society played a large rol e in planning for, and keeping public support high for, the Mars Rover project, it is only mentioned, very briefly, in a few pages.

Additionally, this is exactly the type of book that should have an index, which is a major flaw. Because of the constant references to previous Mars missions, including Mariner, Viking, and the unsuccessful Russian probes, a chronology of previous Mars missions would have been a plus in a book of this nature.

As a final note, in late August, 1998, Donna Shirley announced her retirement from JPL, after 30 years of participation of various projects of planetary exploration, culminating in her position as Mars Program Manager. I hope she continues to contribute to the areas she knows and loves the most: planetary exploration, and management methods for tapping the imagination's power to spawn boundless creativity.

Rating:
Summary: NASA is really not visionnary!
Review: The book is really interesting. Not so for the biographical element in it, but more for the NASA internal politics description. Is it normal for the supposedly "leading space agency in the (free) world" to have such a complicated and unproductive way of doing science?

In this book, you will learn how "the most successfull Mars mission" of the last few years (mainly a technology feat and not science, but, hey...) was build by a handful of people, without real support or confidence from the upper management... Visionnary? Not really! But this upper management didn't lose time, when it finally worked, to claim this success!

And, of course, you will also get some technical details, and feel a little what it's like to a "six wheels on the ground". An overall interesting book!

Rating:
Summary: NASA is really not visionnary!
Review: The book is really interesting. Not so for the biographical element in it, but more for the NASA internal politics description. Is it normal for the supposedly "leading space agency in the (free) world" to have such a complicated and unproductive way of doing science?

In this book, you will learn how "the most successfull Mars mission" of the last few years (mainly a technology feat and not science, but, hey...) was build by a handful of people, without real support or confidence from the upper management... Visionnary? Not really! But this upper management didn't lose time, when it finally worked, to claim this success!

And, of course, you will also get some technical details, and feel a little what it's like to a "six wheels on the ground". An overall interesting book!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent example of life in space exploration
Review: This book vividly tells the story of the intense and exhiliarating adventure scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) experience at the cutting edge of the technological exploration of our solar system. In addition, it is a gripping and optomistic tale of the journey of one woman's success in a usually all male fraternity. It frankly portrays the difficulties and triumphs along the way. Ms. Shirley has broken ground for many young women in the future for careers in the area of science and engineering. In addition, it is a fun read for anyone interested in technology, management and the progress of women in our society. It also is a very accurate portrayal of life at JPL.

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Summary: A big axe to grind...
Review: While I'm sure that many readers found Ms. Shirley's tales of overcoming chauvanism uplifiting and fascinating, I personally found them irritating and grating. Much of the early part of the book (detailing her childhood and young adulthood) deals with the author coming into conflict, again and again, with overt male chauvanism. Each and every time the author overcomes such hardships through her hard work and gumption. While I have no objection to such tales in general, I felt that in this case they took a lot of momentum out of the book and revealed a lot of lingering anger (towards men in general) on the part of the author. Also, the author has little insight into these episodes and altercations, and recounts them in such a one sided way (i.e.-"I was honest and true and they were evil and prejudiced...") that I was hard pressed to believe that she was recalling them accurately.

Nonetheless, the book does finally move on to the story of the Mars Pathfinder Mission, which was what I was really interested in hearing about. Ms. Shirley gives a good description of life at JPL and also does a nice job in discussing the technical hurdles to be overcome in such a far-reaching endeavour. I especially enjoyed the chapters about the development of the rover, as they did not gloss over a lot of interesting technical details (as other books dealing with Pathfinder have).

Overall this was a good book that could have been a great book. Ms. Shirley has really given us two books:An autobiography and a book about the Mars Pathfinder. I would have preferred the latter without the former.