Meet the Drivers Behind NASA's Mars Rovers 67
StonyandCher writes "Scott Maxwell must have one of the best IT jobs in the solar system, driving NASA's Mars Rovers. Behind every robot is a driver. He's one of 14 Rover Drivers that work in NASA's California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Maxwell discusses what makes up an average work day, the highlights of the project, how he got the job, and the tools he uses in his work. A great look at the team of dedicated IT workers behind the robots, plotting the every move of NASA's twin robot geologists, Spirit and Opportunity, since they first landed on Mars at the start of 2004."
Good job, Scott & Company (Score:4, Insightful)
> will do the right thing in the face of all imaginable
> contingencies. We review this final cut at the day's
> commands -- twice!
They're obviously getting this done damn well, to keep these machines going so long after their expiration date. These JPL folks do NASA and humanity a great credit.
Kudos.
Why 14? (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy is not IT, don't insult him like that. (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy is not IT, don't insult him like that. This was an systems engineering job, taking many different disciplines like mechanical design, controls, computer programming, networking, electrical engineering, and computations/algorithms and rolling it into one. Now, he seems like more of an operations engineer, as he is running what is essentially operations, support, and maintenance for the rover. NOT IT.
Don't kid yourselves, IT is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to tech jobs. The vast majority of IT workers debug problems with Windows security profiles, or check that a port is open on a firewall, or make sure that some top level manager can view his porn through the corporate Web filters. Higher level IT jobs involve putting in a network switch, or maybe making a web site to streamline a business process. Half the network engineers I meet don't know what negative voltage is, and most of the programmers look at assembler and see gibberish. Trained monkeys could do the job if they didn't throw $hit everywhere.
This guy is not a code monkey, he is not a TCP/IP whore, he's an engineer and a scientist. He works on systems that would make an IT guy say, "I only know how to configure Cisco, I don't know how to do that". Or maybe "You can make code turn wheels at a certain speed? WOW!".
Best learn it now, IT (non-management of course) in 5 years is going to be one step above assembly line worker, designated paper pusher, and secretary.
~Sticky
/Go ahead, mod it down. It doesn't make it any less true.