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TO EDITORS: IF YOU USE THIS ARTICLE, PLEASE CONSIDER RUNNING IT UNDER THE FOLLOWING BYLINE. THE WRITER IS A JOURNALISM STUDENT/INTERN AT HOUSATONIC COMMUNITY COLLEGE. NO COMPENSATION IS EXPECTED

THE MARS LANDING VEHICLE: HCC PROF’S IDEA?

By Carol A. Mihelik

BRIDGEPORT – On January 4, 2004, at 4:35 (EST), the Exploration Rover Mission called “Spirit” landed on the surface of Mars and bounced 27 times before coming to a stop.

That night, Jane Wampler sat down with a cup of hot chocolate to watch CNN’s coverage of the event. When she saw an artist’s rendering of the landing vehicle, she exclaimed, “Wait a second, that’s my idea.”

What Wampler, a math instructor at Housatonic Community College, had seen was a landing craft idea that she had discussed at a NASA-sponsored brainstorming workshop in December, 1996.

The story begins when Wampler, a current New Haven resident, took Mechanical Engineering Design at the University of Alabama - Huntsville, during her senior year. Her 15-member team’s semester-long project was to design a hybrid rocket system that took up less space. The team’s solution of fitting small pockets of fuel in available free space attracted the attention of NASA.

After they presented their idea for the hybrid rocket to engineers at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, eight members of her team were invited to stay and brainstorm a variety of subjects in an adjoining conference room.

“They wanted us to think outside the box,” recalled Wampler.

For a few donuts in pay, they poured out their ideas on ways to land a spacecraft to a panel of experts. While the students continued to volunteer their ideas, the panel wrote down their ideas.

“As students we didn’t know enough to know all the specifics of how exactly things would work, we just made suggestions,” Wampler recalls.  “For example, we suggested large balloons or airbags surrounding the craft to break the fall — they wanted to know what material they would be made of.”

“We were coming up with really silly ideas. Silly stuff — like what about spitting a bunch of foam out to break the fall.” said Wampler.

Another idea of Wampler’s was to have the landing craft shaped like the radio-controlled cars she had seen in a toy store. They have three large wheels, one on the front and two on the side so that they could be easily righted.

 “It doesn’t have a person in it so what does it matter if it’s upside down or right-side up?” she asked. “I even came up with more stuff. If it did land on the wrong side, a prong could come out and flip it over.”

The brainstorming session was forgotten until the night of January 4.  Wampler was curious about the Mars Mission because of her aerospace engineering background and wanted to check it out on the TV.

When she first saw the story on CNN, it was déjà vu.  “First of all, I saw that they used balloons to land it. I was cracking up. I thought ‘You’re kidding me’ ?] it was one of the ideas we came up with. But I thought that someone at NASA probably came up with it too.”

After that, the television program showed an artist’s rendition of the landing craft and CNN said that it didn’t matter what side it landed on.

 “Oh my God, that’s my idea,” Wampler thought

The Lander shown had four sides and resembled a pyramid with an extra side but the idea of having no true right side up was the same.

“I saw that it had four sides and not three but it didn’t matter what side it landed on,” she said. “I thought, ‘Hmmm… Maybe they used some of my ideas’”

“So I tell people they used my ideas — backtracking by saying that many times in the world people come up with the same idea at the same time.”

Newton and Leibniz, she pointed out, both invented calculus at the same time, but in different parts of the world.

She called her ex husband on the night of the landing and said, “Do you remember me saying about the brainstorming ideas we had? He keeps going, ‘No.’”

“But I told him, ‘But I swear you remember me saying that they (NASA) talked to us.  Well, I just saw my idea on TV.”

Did she? NASA can’t say for sure.

“Without more detailed information, the likelihood is low that records could be found to verify that her idea was the basis for the Lander,” said NASA spokesman Jessica Isbell. “I’m definitely sure that she would have been given credit they had thought if her idea was the first.”

“The technology was probably developed beforehand,” she said.

Wampler won’t contest this.

 “Who’s to say that someone at NASA didn’t come up with the idea?” she asked. I’m can’t dispute them.”

 “All I know is that I was there and that it happened,” she said. “So I like to tell everyone I invented it.”

Carol Mihelik of Bridgeport is a journalism intern at Housatonic Community College.