Thread by @People_Of_Space

So more Mars reminiscences @search_mars @howellspace @Thievesbook

Everybody has a favourite space mission, and mine was Viking in the seventies. I was twelve when the pair landed which is about the right age to think about important questions of cosmic import

#countdowntoMars

Viking was a long, complicated mission. The reason it worked was because of Jim Martin, the project manager. He was called “The Prussian General” by many as he wouldn’t put up with any crap from anyone, not least mission scientists

There is always tension on missions between the engineers and the scientists. As one engineering manager once told me, better is the enemy of good. Jim Martin was one of the best. nasa.gov/langley/hall-o…

It was always said that at a Viking press conference, there had to be a scientist on the podium or else an engineer would invariably say something derogatory about a scientist. (Here is a jollier moment snapped by Hans-Peter Biemann).

Viking was successful, but left its biologists between the rocks and the trenches dug by the landers: it couldn’t confirm there was life on Mars, but it couldn’t say outright that there wasn’t

I could spend the rest of the day tweeting about Viking, the people who worked on it and what they were like - #heroes, all of them. Just read our book if you want to know more!

In some sense, biologists have been in that wilderness ever since – though all that is set to change tomorrow with Perseverance in the sense that looking for life on Mars is something it will do

It is a full turn of the karmic wheel. In the eighties, Mars became a taboo again. After Viking, several NASA high-ups said, no more, that’s your lot.

But two groups of people wisely ignored such official idiocies. One referred to themselves as the Mars Underground, a group of postdocs at the University of Colorado. discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/t…

Another was Dr Michael Malin at ASU and his engineers: who fought to have a camera aboard the next mission even when others were adamant there shouldn’t be

Indeed, some scientists are sniffy about cameras. I have no idea why. I suspect it all boils down to whoever builds the camera gets to appear on the television and – as a result - petty jealousies get in the way

And America’s dreams of returning to Mars were severely curtailed with JPL's first in-flight loss in August 1993 of the Mars Observer which carried the Malin camera – more about which I will tweet about later

But unless you are brave, risk-taking and dare to dream, then how on Earth - or Mars - are you ever going to do something remarkable? More later on how Mars returned to centre stage #countdowntomars