Dante Loretta

Category two says it's interesting, it's not our top priority but it still looks good.

Category three means the science looks really good, but you have some technical problems in technology development that you probably need to go off and do.

And category four is you're rejected and we don't tell you why.

Just go away.

And that's what we got.

We got category four the first time.

And so we're like, OK, well, are we going to do this again?

And Mike's like, no.

The team is good.

The science is good.

The concept is sound.

He said, the problem was the engineering was poorly written.

And I was like, isn't that what we brought Lockheed Martin in to do?

And it's like, actually, it turns out that if you're going to be the principal investigator, you've got to understand the engineering side of this, too.

So we went back in.

The next year, the opportunity came around again.

And I decided I can't just focus on the science.

I can't be stovepiped and just look at that aspect of the mission.

I've got to understand and I've got to communicate my science to the engineer who's trying to design the device that's going to actually make it happen.

And we didn't do that the first time around.