I'm reminded of the part of Bill Clinton's speech at the DNC about "cooperation." (Are we going to choose "we're all in this together" or "the heck with you, you're on your own"?) I don't agree with Clinton on a lot of things and there were some big black holes in his speech (for instance, he was the one who rescinded Glass-Steagall, the "New Deal" bank regulation law that prevented crashes) but he certainly said this well--the stark difference between the Pukes and the Democrats on the very concept of being a nation. No one is EVER "self-made"!
I've always felt that NASA's greatest accomplishment is proving that doing the impossible is made possible by communal effort and by people being able to put egotism and other self-serving attitudes aside for the common good.
This was Neil Armstrong's philosophy--and he lived it every minute of his life. But it has also been true of NASA generally. Its projects are communal. The goals transcend any one individual's abilities. Cooperative effort, sharing ideas freely and sacrificing ego to the common good are therefore ESSENTIAL to success. Ideas are judged by whether a thing works or not, in the physical world, and NOT on personalities. It's a template for us all. It may be based on a special quality of the engineering mind--and may not be so easy to apply to other problems--but we can all learn from it. And it has been the basis of NASA's mindboggling accomplishments.
I'm thinking all this as I contemplate Curiosity's wheel tracks on Mars in this beautiful photo. It is so-o-o-o far away! It is impossible--what they do, what they've done. They've made the impossible possible--by communal effort.
= new reply since forum marked as read
