The first time — or even the first few times — through a project is always laced with "I should have done..." or "If only I knew that at the beginning."
Any new project is full of these stages and regrets. But this is actually the true test of toughness. There's a great saying — I first saw it in a post by John Travolta, though it's usually attributed to Nelson Mandela: "I never lose. I either win or I learn." That one stable viewpoint has been enough to get me through the tough times, and it's one I'm applying right now, in fact. Knowing the rules of any game is always a large part of this. But there comes a time in any project when you have to know what you know and bite the bullet.
There's another gem: don't let perfection get in the way of doing a good job. That one is paraphrased from my son, who told me this exact point. Many people work and work at getting ready to start a dream project, but because they're waiting until everything is perfect, they never actually begin. By all means, do your research and learn the ins and outs of the game — but there comes a time when you simply have to bite the bullet and start.
How many rockets did SpaceX crash before they achieved that first successful vertical landing?
Including the ones that exploded after touching down, it was in fact nine — and the company was nearly bankrupted along the way. Pretty huge stakes. But the theory behind an achievement of this magnitude is simple: declare it into existence, iterate until it works.
The rocket that finally made it was the Falcon 9 booster from the Orbcomm-2 mission. It launched on December 21, 2015, delivered its satellites, and the first stage flew back to land at Landing Zone 1, Cape Canaveral. That booster — serial number B1019 — survived fully intact and now stands on display at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Today, interplanetary travel is within reach, and intercontinental travel measured in hours or even minutes is on the horizon. A game changer for how far a single declared dream can carry.
What if they had just given up after that first failure?
ML Mike King
