Mars Rover Curiosity Audiobook By Rob Manning, William L. Simon cover art

Mars Rover Curiosity

An Inside Account from Curiosity's Chief Engineer

Preview

Try for $0.00
Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.

Mars Rover Curiosity

By: Rob Manning, William L. Simon
Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.56

Buy for $15.56

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

In the course of our enduring quest for knowledge about ourselves and our universe, we haven't found answers to one of our most fundamental questions: Does life exist anywhere else in the universe? Ten years and billions of dollars in the making, the Mars rover Curiosity is poised to answer this all-important question.

Here, Rob Manning, the project's chief engineer, tells of bringing the groundbreaking spacecraft to life. Manning and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tasked with designing a lander many times larger and more complex than any before, faced technical setbacks, fights over inadequate resources, and the challenges of leading an army of brilliant, passionate, and often frustrated experts.

Manning's fascinating personal account—which includes information from his exclusive interviews with leading Curiosity scientists—is packed with tales of revolutionary feats of science, technology, and engineering. Listeners experience firsthand the disappointment at encountering persistent technical problems, the agony of near defeat, the sense of victory at finding innovative solutions to these problems, the sheer terror of staking careers and reputations on a lander that couldn't be tested on Earth, and the rush of triumph at its successful touchdown on Mars on August 5, 2012. This is the story of persistence, dedication, and unrelenting curiosity.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 Rob Manning, William L. Simon (P)2014 Blackstone Audio
Aeronautics & Astronautics History Physics Science & Technology Mars Interstellar Space Station Air Force
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Mars Rover Curiosity

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    805
  • 4 Stars
    430
  • 3 Stars
    111
  • 2 Stars
    17
  • 1 Stars
    7
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    748
  • 4 Stars
    354
  • 3 Stars
    90
  • 2 Stars
    14
  • 1 Stars
    8
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    734
  • 4 Stars
    361
  • 3 Stars
    99
  • 2 Stars
    14
  • 1 Stars
    5

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Awesome

The book was well written and the story kept me engaged throughout. Working on interplanetary missions is a dream come true and its so cool to get a view in to the inner workings at Nasa. Hope more authors come up with stories about their missions.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

good story, bad narration

narrator could put you to sleep but it's a good book about the design, building, and testing of the curiosity rover

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great story for project managers

This provides an interesting and informative story about the development of both a technically and politically challenging program. Besides being entertaining it also provides insight into the challenges of project management.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars

Good overview

Good chronological overview. Right amount of technical info for a "non-technical" person like myself. Wasn't quite as inspiring as other space related audibles I have listened to, but seems to be intended to be more factual.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Curiosity - an account of how the best and brightest opened the door to Mars

This book is ideal for apace exploration enthusiasts and for folks who develop complex new projects. It provides a terrific narrative to the ups and downs of doing something new and taking risks to accomplish these new developments. Also good for high school and college students to see what it takes to do great things.

Terrific book, wonderfully read!....thanks To All, Ken

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Engineering is beautiful

This book definitely rekindled my love for engineering. It is just the right amount of “technical” without getting boring. If you love engineering, you’ll love this!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Lots of interesting tidbits

I think the chapter on what manned Mars exploration could entail is worth the money all by itself!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

CURIOSITY

Curiosity is a mechanical, one-eyed, six wheeled, antenna-tailed super dog. It can stiff the air, drill rocks, analyze elemental particles, roam a countryside (at a snail’s pace 300 feet per hour), and talk to humans. Its language is in 1s and 0s. It speaks to Earth from Mars across 49 million miles of space with a message that continues to amaze and encourage human exploration of the universe.

Robert Manning, in collaboration with William Simon (Manning’s ghost writer), reflects on the technological feat of creating and delivering a robotic laboratory to the fourth rock from the sun. Manning heads a team of NASA scientists and engineers to design the latest land rover, called Curiosity, to explore Mars.

“Mars Rover Curiosity” is a tribute to NASA and its organizational skill in achieving a land mark in extraterrestrial exploration. In listening to Manning’s story, one feels humans are on the edge of a continent in the 15th century, planning to sail to an unexplored place to find answers about what there is beyond imagination. NASA’s contribution to science and a possible future for humanity seems inferred by Manning’s story; particularly in light of current scientific evidence for Earth’s global warming.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

More fantastic than science fiction

It is incredible what they were able top accomplish. This book is required reading for any space enthusiast.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Complexity conquered at great expense

The Curiosity rover was incredibly ambitious. Consequently, it was incredibly risky and from a budgetary perspective perhaps a failure: it cost too much and it took too long to manufacture. The space industry is plagued by the conflicting desires to be innovative, state of the art, and consistently successful in the production of distinct missions/spacecraft launched only once or twice. Thus, every contingency must be thought of, tested for, and troubleshot while operating at least partially novel systems.

Nevertheless, much is conserved between missions. This is why Opportunity and Spirit were cheap - their landing method was largely derivative of pathfinders. The curiosity rover required a new landing method (a la 7 minutes of terror), a more precise landing (accomplished via aerobraking), and a much greater variety of state of the art instruments. This was predictably hard, expensive, and time consuming - and thus predictably coincided with management pulling its hair out at the thought of failure, cost overruns preventing other missions from launching, and and the uncompromising deadlines of celestial transit windows (the planets align optimally only once every 2 years). A single error in a complex, mass impoverished (and thus back up limited), system can ruin the whole mission.

This is primarily what the book is about. And, unfortunately, to land people they will need to invent a new landing method yet again, probably using retrorockets. Hopefully spaceX will implement that system with its 2018 mission.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!