Alternate title: “In Defense of Hacks”
Competition breeds innovation, and there is perhaps no better example than the space race between the United States and Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s. The desire to demonstrate the superiority of one model of government over the other manifested in a fierce competition for supremacy in space exploration, out of which came such indispensable inventions as CAT scans, bar codes, fire-resistant fabrics, dialysis machines, and Tempurpedic mattresses.
The question of who won the race is arguable, with both sides achieving great feats. The USSR was the first to launch satellites and put the first man in space. The US put a man on the moon. But what’s really interesting to me is how different an approach each side took to problem solving.
Take for example, the development of a shuttle that can be operated by an on-board astronaut. Think about the dashboard of your car. Behind all those friendly switches, knobs and gauges are a bundle of electronics and mechanical components that connect the controls to the parts of the car they affect. In the cockpit of an aircraft, controls also need to be visible and accessible, but there are too many of them to fit into as small a space as a car’s dashboard. And if you’re wearing a space suit, it’s pretty difficult to turn around and reach the controls that might be next to or even behind you.
Engineers at NASA designed complex consoles that put all the buttons & levers in places the human astronaut could reach. They were relatively costly and time consuming to build, but they were brilliant and got the job done.
Russia’s approach? Outfit pilots with a mirror attached to an elastic wrist band, which they used to see and operate any controls mounted behind them.
Bleeding edge technology it was not, but it was a great solution. It solved the same problem at an tiny fraction of the cost.
Both approaches have merit. Some of the technologies that came out of the space race changed our lives in ways we’d never expected, which might not have happened if everyone used the “wrist mirror” approach to problem solving. But sometimes, when you need to get a job done and you have limited time and money, a simple solution is all you need.