Famous quote from Tom Hanks in the movie Apollo 13
“In space, there is no problem so bad that you cannot make it worse.”
Martijn Veldkamp
“Strategic Technology Leader | Customer’s Virtual CTO | Salesforce Expert | Helping Businesses Drive Digital Transformation”
August 9, 2023
In one of his TED Talks, Chris Hadfield mentions this saying and sheds a light on how to deal with the complexity, the sheer pressure, of dealing with dangerous and scary situations.
Risk Management
In the astronaut business the space shuttle is a very complicated vehicle. It’s the most complicated flying machine ever built. All for a single purpose. To escape earth’s gravity well, launch cargo and return safely.
For the astronauts and the people watching it, it is an amazing experience.
But NASA calculated the odds of a catastrophic event during the first five shuttle launches. It was one in nine. Later launches were getting better, about one in 38 or so.
Why do we take that risk? Who would do something that dangerous?
The biggest risk is the missed chance
Next to the personal dreams and ambitions that astronauts have, Space stations gives us the opportunity to do experiments in zero gravity. We have a chance to learn what the substance of the universe is made of. We get to see Earth from a whole different perspective. (Maybe flat-earthers need a stay onboard of that Space Station, but that is a whole other topic).
Everything that we do for the first time is hard. If we never do the impossible, how do we progress as a species? I think it is human nature, to improve, to explore, to do things never done before.
“If you always do what you always did,
you will always get what you always got.”
by Albert Einstein
We have athletes that perform ultra triathlons. Strong-men en -women who can lift 500 kgs. And, closer to home, we have architects that help transform companies to be closer to their customers.
Do or do not, there is no try
Master Yoda from the movie The Empire strikes back from LucasArts (Disney)
If the problems seem unsurmountable, tangled together, impossible to move forward, we need a fresh perspective. A way to frame the problem in a different light. To come up with hypotheses to solve small parts. And then design a small experiment to test it. If it does not work, we go back to the drawing board. We are not trying to make the problem bigger.
System thinking still holds true, optimising or solving a small part of the problem does not optimize the whole system.
