Re: "The first six Ranger missions failed, but Rangers 7, 8, and 9 returned thousands of photos" That would make a great TV miniseries. The stress kept buildin

Re: "The first six Ranger missions failed, but Rangers 7, 8, and 9 returned thousands of photos" That would make a great TV miniseries. The stress kept building as the Ranger probes kept failing and failing. Discussions and office politics got heated as the "space race" intensified. The success of Mariner 2 at Venus added to the pressure. They gradually dropped most of the science instruments to make room for redundancy for the cameras. Clean-room procedures were also developed to prevent cigarette smoke, hair, etc. from getting into the works. Rumor has it a frustrated manager was just staring at the parts, pondering, when they realized there was a lot crud on them because of the long hours spent by staff in the labs. Overtime and heavy work was ironically making the problem worse. Ranger 7 must have been ecstasy to the team.