Just as the cause of great Italian food is, in part, great ingredients, the cause of out-of control space programs may be found in the people wanting to staff them. There goes a man whose career shall be a Greek tragedy. I hope he isn't building your satellite. I know of no lawyers, medical doctors or top auto mechanics who feel their mission in life is to run a long and lonely road, to test themselves against impossible odds. This attitude is quite common, however, in athletes, dancers and artists for whom failure is virtually guaranteed.
Few athletes win as much as they lose, and very few dancers succeed in going pro.
That artists mostly live a life of difficulty, lack of acceptance or appreciation, and often poverty, is a clich as much as it is a magnet to the career. So here we sit at Lockheed or one of the other two aerospace companies left standing in our world of maniacal homogeneity, acting very businesslike, proposing in very formal documents to do very serious things while being ever so responsible with the customer s precious money. In fact, the place is stocked with young doers of the impossible, people looking for the ultimate engineering challenge, courageous individuals willing to fail, and fail again, and be knocked down by Murphy or some other manifestation of Cruel Fate, and rise yet again until they succeed, or retire. When things don t go perfectly their shock is evident. They aren't drawn to decoration, flamboyant personalities or embellishment.