January 9, 2004

Watchmaker With Time to Lose

Very very cool article from Jet Propulsion Labs about one aspect of the Mars Rover team... bq. Rover controllers have to monitor Spirit (and soon, Opportunity) all the time; this doesn't just mean 24 hours a day " it means 24 hours, 39 minutes a day. The martian day is longer than Earth's, but this minimal variance can amount to physical and mental fatigue. Every day, team members are reporting to work 39 minutes later than the previous day. and more: bq. Townsend and her co-worker Scott Doudrick, a systems engineer on the project, set out to find a solution for this otherwordly problem. The pair began to ask watchmakers to tackle the challenge but each one turned them away, saying that it couldn't be done unless they placed a large order (10,000 plus) for quartz-controlled watches; they insisted that attempting to convert mechanical watches was not possible. and more: bq. A man who found his passion at the age of eight, an underling to his father, now guides his own young apprentice, nine-year-old son, David. Clearly enamored of his father, David relayed his own novice clock-making prowess and declared that he would one day take over the store. When he does inherit the business, he will have benefited from his father's finely honed skills, acquired under master watch and clockmakers in Switzerland and Germany. bq. Garo acknowledged that the Mars watch request is the strangest he has ever received. It took him about two months to design, fine-tune and streamline the process that would keep the watch on Mars time. bq. "Since I was a young child I've put my heart into making very precise time pieces, now I was being asked to create a watch that was slow on purpose " it was going to be a challenge if it was even possible," Garo said. "I spent more than $1,000 trying to figure this out " damaging watches, trying different parts, just searching for a way." and more: bq. Garo watched with million of others as mission control described Spirit's near-perfect landing. But his connection to the mission was personal. bq. "I felt proud; I got goosebumps," he said. "I saw that some of them had two watches on and I thought, one of them was mine! I was proud as an American that it landed and secondly that my watches will be used." bq. Used, indeed, by a team of scientists and engineers who looked to a truly old world craft for a solution to a very modern problem. And like the rover team, that faced countless challenges and criticism, Garo gets to say, "I told you so" to those who said it couldn't be done. It's stories like this that really point out the difference between America and New Europe and other countries -- specifically Old Europe and the Middle East. We don't take no for an answer and we get stuff done... An image of the watch face is here Posted by DaveH at January 9, 2004 4:55 PM