In September 2021, I was fortunate to attend the FABTECH conference in Chicago, a sprawling trade show with what must have been billions of dollars of manufacturing equipment on display: robots, automation, 3D printers, you name it. While there, I had the privilege of listening to a keynote address by Adam Steltzner, an engineer at NASA involved in numerous space missions.

Steltzner led the entry, descent, and landing team that successfully landed the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars in 2012. To capture the lessons he learned through that intensive experience, he wrote a fascinating book called The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership, and High-Stakes Innovation (Portfolio, 2016). Here are five lessons I wanted to share that come partly from his book, partly from his presentation, and entirely from our solar system (or at least, the effort to explore it).

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