T. K. Arispe

 Finally got another idea for one of these! Mars Climate Orbiter is... a cautionary tale.

I love JPL. Back when I lived in Los Angeles, I lived about 30 minutes up the freeway from Pasadena (assuming decent traffic), and once I got to go to JPL for one of their public lectures, after the Curiosity rover landed. I was in heaven. JPL is basically Disneyland for aerospace nerds (much less expensive, too).

(To be clear, I am in no way making fun of JPL with this or the Mars Polar Lander comic. Space is hard. I feel so bad for everybody involved when a spacecraft is lost--it represents years, often decades, of the blood, sweat, and tears of an entire team. I can't watch launches or landings/orbit insertions live because my anxiety shoots through the roof and I don't want to see the looks on people's faces if something goes wrong.

But mistakes inevitably happen. It's a part of being human. What's important is that people learn from those mistakes. And judging from everything JPL has accomplished since 1997, they learned a lot. And twenty years down the line, those mistakes will, hopefully, be something they can laugh a little at.)