This is a
checkerboard of a story.
We've got to do a better job
of selling ourselves.
We've got
a lot more competition now.
There was no one
in their right mind
that would bid
a laser altimeter.
We had to convince the management
that this was not a crazy idea.
How were we going
to find the surface of Mars?
How we're going to track it?
We were defining the rules as we went.
As they said in the letter to me,
If you don't make it on time
and in budget,
we will fly a brick instead.
We're not going to hold this mission up.
Communications with the Mars Observer spacecraft
were lost.
It never crossed my mind
that spacecraft would let us down.
Can you get your team back together in time?
We were only given three years
to rebuild it.
This is the first profile of a crater
we've ever seen on a planet.
We were in demand
to provide a laser altimeter to
another mission.
What is this mystery we're seeing?
We started in the worst possible orbit.
All of the easy missions are done,
as they say.
I had sleepless nights
thinking that I wasn't
going to be able to make this work.
And this came out of
"it can't be done"
in the mid eighties
to a tool that we now accept
as the standard.
It wasn't a destination or a place
that we were,
as much as a place
that we would become.
[music]