SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The reason that’s important is that the way you get
silica, that pure of a deposit, is you have a lot of water
and you have to have a heat source. So we think in this
area there was a geyser or a hot spring going on that
basically cooked the rock and formed silica that way.
That discovery was made because we had a bad wheel.
If we hadn’t had that bad wheel we would have driven
right over it and would have never seen it.
It’s an adventure every day. When you have a Rover,
you drive it to a brand new area, you have a brand new
mission because you don’t know what you’re going to
find. You know, no one’s ever done this before.
MISSION CONTROL:
How did you end up working ‘both’ Rover missions?
DR. JIM RICE:
I was at lunch when we were doing a training and
one older scientists said, “You know, I was looking at
the schedules and if you do it just right you can work
both Rovers.” So I’m like, really? Tell me more. Well he
showed it to me in flow charts and what that meant
was you could only get 4 hours sleep a night in 2, 2
hour shifts. Then you can make all the critical meetings
and do everything.
Well, I did that and adrenaline and excitement will
take you a long way. I just figured when in my life will
I have the chance to work on 2 Rovers on the surface
of Mars? I’ll sleep in the grave! So I did that and it was
amazing because we landed Rovers on opposite sides
of the planet. So when one was daylight and was solar
powered the other one is sleeping and the team could
sleep, but you ought to see the images coming down
from the other Rover when the team’s asleep. I would
say hey guys when you wake up, check these pictures
out. That was cool stuff. I knew myself if I was home
trying to sleep I wouldn’t sleep because I would be
wondering what’s in those images? That was great! We’re
paving the way for when we get Astronauts up there.
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Fall 2016 1961 Magazine
MISSION CONTROL:
How many attempts have you made to become an
Astronaut and what is the process like to become an
Astronaut?
DR. JIM RICE:
To be honest, I lost count of how many times I applied.
I’ve probably applied between 5 to 7 times now and
I’ve been a finalist twice and I’ve been real close. I was
one person away from being selected in one of those
rounds. I wished I would have got in but it just didn’t
happen, I was disappointed. My whole life growing
up, since I was seven years old, I’ve been interested
in space exploration. I grew up in the 60’s when all
this stuff was happening for the first time. So my
childhood dream was to be an astronaut and it never
changed and eventually I knew it was very tough to
get in there, it’s a small sliver of a populous there
ever get close enough to even smell it. So I figured
why not try it, because if you don’t try it you’ll never
know and I don’t want to be 70, 80 years old and say
that I wished I had tried to do it back then. So I was
going to go for it. I never thought I’d get that close.
Astronauts were my hero’s growing up. I’ve met a lot
of them over the years.
When I applied the first time, I was down in Johnson
Space Center at the Van Morris Conference and 2
shuttle Astronauts asked me have you thought about
applying for being an Astronaut? I said yeah but I don’t
have much of a chance. They said you ought to apply,
we encourage you to apply and one of them said I’ll
help you with the application. I was like OK! I’m taking
you up on it!! So I applied.
It’s a long process, it takes a year from the day the
applications are due to the next class. I kept trying
to forget about it because you know it’s needle-in-ahaystack odds. So I kind-of forgot and I came back, then
I got this letter in the mail saying we want you to go get
a prescreening physical, which does not guarantee you
are going to get an interview. I’m thinking: Well, at least
this is a good thing! Went and go