New Task for NASA

     

We watched Apollo 13 last night.  It is one of the movies I watch at least once a year, because it reminds me of something I shouldn't forget.  As a child growing up in the 60's, I watched the space launches. We even got to watch a launch once in school because we had this new fangled tool in the classroom for the first time--a TV. NASA was showing us that technology would help us. In the center picture above is the original crew, James Lovell, Jr.; T. Kenneth Mattingly II, and Fred Haise, Jr.   The bottom picture is the actual crew with Jack Swigert replacing Mattingly.

As I watched last night, I again marveled at the ability of the crew in space and the support crew in Houston to precisely define the problem and then fix it. The movie gave passing scenes to the NASA politicians and contractors that were trying to cover themselves.  The bulk of the action was the problem solving taking place. The scene of the engineer walking into the room with arms full of materials and saying, "We have to fit this into a hole for that and they only have this to do it," made me think of a great school project.

I have to admit I vaguely remember the actual event. Much of my memory has been shaped by the book and the movie.  But the point I remember most is the act of solving a problem. Life is full of such opportunities.

Our nation is at a crossroads in many areas.  It's too bad we don't have more of a NASA mindset.  Everyone will suffer a bit, some more than others, but the problem will be solved.  Instead, the opposite of the movie is taking place.  The politicians and contractors are making the decisions, not the engineers tying to solve a problem.

P.S.  I was just reading about the "fiscal cliff" and how it was at least a decade in the making; and I was reminded of another scene in the movie.  After the command module has been shutdown, the astronauts have to turn it back on so they can ride it to earth.  They have a limited supply of electricity (amps) to start up and they spend hours figuring out the proper sequence to start and not go over the amp level.  They understood their limitation. Too bad our "leaders" don't understand the same.