Word: labs
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J.P.L. is doing what it can to fix that problem, filling the mentoring hole by compiling painstaking lists of design principles--lessons learned when particular engineering techniques either did or didn't work. That system should serve in a pinch, but the lab is determined never to let the teaching system lapse again. "Mentoring is something we've been doing ad hoc for years," Manning says. "That's allowed us to collectively grow...
...smoothly as the J.P.L. systems run, the true test of the lab's business model comes when something goes wrong. Every time the lab pushes the launch button, billions of dollars, dozens of careers and decades of planning can be on the line. J.P.L. not only accepts the likelihood of the occasional costly flop but also expects it. Such a stomach for setbacks is a legacy of J.P.L.'s first director, William Pickering, a Caltech alumnus who learned his trade setting off rockets in the dry riverbed that is all J.P.L. once was. Dozens of those rockets sometimes blew themselves...
There is one final--much larger--constituency that must stand by the lab: the public. Like any going enterprise, J.P.L. must sell its product, and one way it does that is with pictures. Out in the regions where J.P.L.'s ships fly, the sun is reduced to little more than a very bright candle. The color of planets and moons can be inferred by their chemistry, but even the most sharp-eyed cameras can't see the palette for real. J.P.L. has never been shy about photographing the bodies in grays and pastels and then adding a little colorizing--always...
Just where J.P.L.'s westward-ho push will take it next is not yet set. More missions to Mars are certain. Others to Pluto and Jupiter's moon Europa are possible. The still vague nature of these plans does not bother the veterans who know the lab best. "What we do here is try to figure out how impossible a task is and then we take it on," says Lee, a 30-year J.P.L. veteran. "The result is that we add to human knowledge. Now, can you have a better life...
...trend that is gaining momentum as competition stiffens. Nokia, T-Mobile and Nextel already use brand-specific ringtones. Hotel chains Westin and Hyatt Place are developing custom scents to diffuse in their facilities. Some industries have long used sensory elements in their marketing. Cadillac, for instance, has infused a lab-developed, focus-group-tested "Cadillac aroma" in all of its car seats for years. Branding experts know that, to be effective, olfactory and acoustic assaults must be subtle. "If you make these things feel like advertising, that you're doing this to affect behavior, you've failed," says Peter Dixon...