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The Death Planet

Posted By Blackfive

Keep your fingers crossed.

I had a stellar employee that was unhappy with some of the mundane things that he was doing around our work place. He worked on some really cool projects at the University of Illinois - he was a grad student in Computer Engineering.

He was right. I had a genius working with me doing relatively low level projects. I would rather him be happy somewhere else than unhappy working with me. So, I got him an interview with some friends of mine at the University of Chicago working on a project for NASA and Jet Propulsion Labs. He nailed the interview and got the job.

He programmed the computer chips that operate the parachutes and airbags to controll the descent for the Mars Spirit Lander. Twenty missions have failed. The last US failure was do to software incorrectly causing a crash during descent. While I might be skeptical from the history of Red Planet landing attempts, if anyone can code a successful landing/bouncing, it will be Casey.

Best of luck to Casey and U. of Chicago NASA/JPL crew!

Update 01-04-04: They did it!!!


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January 03, 2004 • Permalink
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