Do you think Bobak Ferdowsi might be getting tired of all the attention now?



He works for years as part of a team that lands something the size of a car on Mars, and it's his haircut that get the recognition.

I really wish the news would focus away from the haircut, and focus more on the education and technology so that kids might want to dream of having a job like his rather than hair like his.

Just my 2 cents, but my three kids thought it was great that you could have a haircut like that and still get a job like his.

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dochocson
Just my 2 cents, but my three kids thought it was great that you could have a haircut like that and still get a job like his.

Ditto. We let our 9-year old stay up well past his bedtime so he could watch the landing. Seeing the brilliant scientists as humans, and as a team, was the real point.

If anything, science coverage that will have kids watching needs to do more to show diversity.

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That's a lot of pesto.

I was sick of it from day one. Mohawks aren't that big of a deal these days and I was pretty put off by the fact that he got more attention than the rest of the team because of a haircut. Pretty silly.

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(vikm)
I was sick of it from day one. Mohawks aren't that big of a deal these days and I was pretty put off by the fact that he got more attention than the rest of the team because of a haircut. Pretty silly.

Mohawks ARE a big deal at JPL!

At first I thought he was just being a poser, until I learned he had a different haircut for each mission. Clearly he's very good at what he does or he wouldn't be there, and his haircut didn't disrupt the work being done.

This harkens back to Gene Kranz wearing a different vest for each mission on which he was Flight Director. Some of those vests weren't exactly subtle, and I don't recall him getting slagged for standing out.
Maybe Ferdowsi does get a little too much attention. But seriously: is this even something that's worth worrying about? No: it is not. He's brought a degree of "hip" to JPL in a very visible way which goes far with young people, and if that ignites interest in science and spaceflight to even one kid, then more power to him!

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I guess it was the picture that sort of ticked me off, imagining if that were me at that age after establishing my career and then being used as a tourist attraction based on something totally unrelated to my skills.

This is JPL, not Houston Mission Control. It's WAY more laid back and less 1960's NASA there. I expect he's getting teased mercilessly by his team.

Expect the whole team to sport mohawks EXCEPT him on the next big PR moment, just for lolz. He'll have a 1962 crewcut and a pocket protector.