We work for hours, days, months, and years to reach our goals. We put so much on the line. All too often we depend on something seemingly insignificant for everything to be worth it. I’m not saying NASA didn’t think the parachute system was worth thinking about, on the contrary, I’m sure they worked hard creating and testing the thing a whole lot to make sure it would work as planned. But when someone like me thinks of something like a space probe I don’t think about a parachute. Parachutes seem simple, but when a $264 million mission relies on a simple parachute it kind of puts things into perspective. I just hope NASA can get enough out of Genesis that the mission will be considered “worth it”.

Space Probe Fails to Deploy Chute, Slams into Earth

How does this apply to the kinds of things I do? Software development? Swing dancing? Eating? Okay maybe those last two shouldn’t be in the list. Then again, a lot goes into eating (chicken, egg, farmer, sell, purchase, cooking, blah blah) and we all hope that when we swallow, it’ll go down the right tube. :-P See? It applies to everything. Anyway… I don’t think the only ones who can learn from this are the folks at NASA. Of course, while it teaches us about working hard on preventive measures I think we also need to think about “What if this fails?” None of us like thinking about that, but what if? If I put everything on the line for one project to go big and it doesn’t, am I finished? Living in the streets? What if? What if everyone hates my blog? I’d just have to live in denial, posting for my own pleasure (which I guess is what I do anyway. no big deal).