Managing Martians

Donna Shirley with Danelle Morton

Whoops!!! Did you think you had wandered into my science fiction books instead? Not this time. This is a science fact book.

Donna Shirley is the Manager of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Exploration Program. She is the lady who led the team that put the tiny wheeled robot, Sojourner, on Mars. She became an aeronautics engineer when women were not expected to want to be engineers. She has worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) most of her career on many different projects.

This is her autobiography of making it to Mars. As a child she read Arthur C. Clarke's The Sands of Mars and decided she was going to go to Mars. And now she has, in virtual reality, as close as any human being has to this time. She was the team leader for the original group that designed Sojourner and before the Pathfinder was launched had been promoted to the manager of the Mars Exploration Program for the next ten years.

This book, while extensively covering the science involved with the project, covers much more. Ms. Shirley changed management styles practiced at JPL. She was the woman who "broke the glass ceiling." This book not only covers her reach to Mars, but her reach in management, as well.

The writing style in this book is easy to read. I don't know if that is Ms. Shirley's work and Ms. Morton's influence, but this is quite readable and understandable. I'm not scientist, yet I understood most of what was going on in the project. This is a true story that will later help fulfill science fiction fans' dreams.