Dante Loretta

We kind of wrote the science section, and then kind of wrote the engineering section, and that really showed up when you go back and read it.

There was no common language across those disciplines.

So I was very fortunate.

I had a friend, made a friend, the system engineer at Lockheed Martin.

My wife calls him the brother from another mother.

We were really, really tight and bonded, and we said, we're going to make this proposal sing, man.

So we lock ourselves in the hotel room when we were traveling and we just wrote and he read my science section and I read his engineering section and we rewrote those until I could understand what the engineering said and he could understand what the science section said and it was one common line of thought between the entire process.

We also brought the Goddard Space Flight Center in because we had problems with the management budget, and that's what they were supposed to do.

So we submit the proposal.

We make it to the final round.

So NASA down selects and picks three missions, gives you some money to go off and do a concept study report.

I compare it to making the championship game in the NCAA basketball tournament.

So we were like, all right, we're in.

We're going up against MIT and a lunar gravity field mapper, and we're going up against the University of Colorado and Venus Orbiter.

And that's kind of how NASA picks these things.

So we do a lot of work.

In 2007 we submit that concept study report and it comes back and says your science is great, your engineering is great, but your management section is terrible and your costs are unbelievable.

Dang it.

So we're going to go in again, third time.

And I said, OK, I got the science.