Interviews: Ask Former Director of JPL Edward Stone About Space Exploration

Edward Stone is a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology who has served as project scientist for the Voyager program from 1972 to the present. Since the launch of the two Voyager spacecraft in 1977, Stone has coordinated the efforts of 11 teams of scientists in their investigations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. He served as director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1991 to 2001. Highlights of his career include: Galileo's five-year orbital mission to Jupiter, the launch of Cassini to Saturn, the launch of Mars Global Surveyor and a new generation of Earth science satellites such as TOPEX/Poseidon and SeaWinds, and the successful Mars Pathfinder landing in 1997. Dr. Stone has agreed to sit down with us and answer any questions you may have about his time at JPL and space exploration. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.

Light reading

[brokenin2]

Do you read XKCD, and if so, what do you think about the accuracy Randall Munroe's typical analysis?

Can you explain the JPL/NASA/CalTech relationship?

[oneiros27]

You often see JPL listed as being a 'NASA Center', but if you look at the JPL website [nasa.gov], it says 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' followed by 'California Instutite of Technology' (but next to the NASA meatball logo, and in the nasa.gov domain).

I've heard some people joke that if an orbital insertion is successful, then it's "CalTech's JPL" and when something goes wrong, it's "NASA's JPL". Can you explain exactly what the relationship is between the three entities?

Next mission?

[thor4217]

If you could choose one robotic exploration mission that is not currently in the works, what would it be and why?

Habits and Professionalism

[Etherwalk]

What professional habits did you develop that helped you be successful enough to hold a high position in one of the world's important scientific institutions?

Manned Trip to Mars

[painandgreed]

Every time I hear about people wanting to have a manned trip to Mars, I have to roll my eyes. It seems that we are just nowhere near what is needed to actually perform one, namely a long term space habitat probably needing spin gravity, minimal leakage, and propulsion, especially assuming that such things would need to be tested and the actual Mars shot would be far down the mission scale (comparable how Apollo 11 was the one that made it to the surface of the moon). Talk of a one way trip sound even sillier to me as I figure once we have the ability to actually confidently get to Mars, getting back would be fairly trivial. My question is that if we, the USA or the world, how far do you think we are away from being able to send a manned mission to Mars in terms of time, money, and technology? Second, would that manned mission be cheaper than doing the same work with robotic missions?