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This autobiographical account of one of this century’s greatest engineering achievements is high on detail and is an inspirational tale of engineering leadership, but lacks the technical depth some may be looking for.
The book starts strongly, in the mission support area of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where Adam Steltzner is in charge of the team tasked with landing Nasa’s Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. Retelling the excitement of that night in 2012 is a great way to set the stage for the rest of the book, and it’s not until the final pages that the reader is treated to the conclusion of the landing.
The book is written in the first person and gives an extensive amount of background to both the most recent Mars Science Laboratory mission that Curiosity was part of, and previous Mars missions. It covers the 10-year development project that resulted in the innovative approach that Nasa used to land the rover on Mars – from the initial scoping of the problem, through design, simulation and testing, to the production of the spacecraft.
The language and writing can be described as direct and, at worst, functional. For example, we read about the “brass” of the Frank Sinatra song playing in the background during the landing while the “brass” of the top managers of Nasa look on.
By far the strongest aspects of The Right Kind of Crazy are Steltzner’s insights on innovation, engineering development and leadership. These include descriptions of how the team made their decisions, how they escaped what he terms “the dark room” – the creative block caused by uncertainty and fear – how to look at ideas objectively, and how to manage teams of strong individuals.
Approach The Right Kind of Crazy with the expectation that you are going to read a book about management and technology development, set against the backdrop of a genuinely thrilling engineering project, and you won’t be disappointed.
The Right Kind of Crazy, by Adam Steltzner and William Patrick, is published by Portfolio, and costs £19.18 from Amazon (hardback)