In 1765 Sir Isaac Newton wrote to Robert Hooke “If I have been able to see farther, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.” Some think this famous phrase acknowledging fellow scientists actually contained a subtle dig at Hooke, who had begun to disagree with some of Newton’s theories and was a bit short in stature. In this paper I would like not only to provide a brief review of the genesis of the SRTM project, but to also acknowledge some of the giants whose clever and creative efforts brought about the success of the mission, possibly the most important science mission the Space Shuttle has ever flown. I can mention only a few individuals, with hopes the rest don’t feel that their contributions have been overlooked or that their toes have been trampled. In 1994, the Spaceborne Radar Laboratory (SRL) flew twice on Space Shuttle Endeavour. The payload consisted of two integrated microwave instruments, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s SIR-C, a fully polarimetric synthetic aperture radar operating at both L-band and C-band, and the German and Italian Space Agencies’ X-SAR, a singlepolarization X-band radar operating at 3 cm. In addition, SIR-C incorporated a number of new technologies, including an active phasedarray antenna capable of electronically steering its beam through a range of off-nadir angles without utilizing any moving parts. With this antenna and its ability to simultaneously acquire images at all four polarizations and three wavelengths, SRL was easily the most capable imaging radar system ever flown. A large international science team was selected to take advantage of this capability, with planned research studies in geology, hydrology, oceanography, ecology and archeology. Both Shuttle flights were quite successful and met all the essential SRL scientific objectives, so NASA decided to drop the planned third flight, even though the hardware was in good shape and certifi ed to fly a third time. Thus, in the fall of 1994, project offi cials had the world’s most advanced imaging radar system in flight-qualified condition sitting in storage.