Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently

by Berns, Gregory

  A Reality Check: The Risk Manager

  Not everyone involved in private spaceflight is an iconoclast. This is a good thing, too. Although Anderson was probably correct in her assessment of the odds, you need someone to keep an objective eye on the actual risks. The odds are in her favor that her maiden voyage will be fine. But as David Dreman and Bill Miller illustrated in chapter 5, the perception of risk may be very different from the actual risks. This is where an objective third party comes in. With private spaceflight, the looming prospect of catastrophic failure casts a shadow over the rocketeers’ enthusiasm. The risk of death, however, is very real, and is part and parcel of space exploration. Even Rutan’s perfect safety record was tragically shattered on July 26, 2007. While engineers at Scaled were performing a static test of the engine that was to power Branson’s spaceship, the engine exploded, overturning cars and killing three people.

  You cannot escape the fact that the romanticism of spaceflight is due, in large part, to the fact that astronauts put their lives on the line with every mission. The private spaceflight industry must walk a fine line between making it safe enough for citizens and maintaining the image of frontier explorer. The most common motivation, according to the Futron study, was the opportunity to become a pioneer (i.e., an iconoclast).

  Enough people have been into space that we have a pretty good sense of the risk. For U.S. launches of all types of rockets (manned and unmanned), there has been about a 9 percent failure rate. The most common cause of failure is a propulsion malfunction, which typically results in the destruction of the rocket and its payload. For manned spacecraft, the numbers are better, although whether they are good enough is a matter of personal opinion. The space shuttles have flown 115 missions, and two have had catastrophic malfunctions, for a failure rate of about 2 percent. Exact figures are not available for the Soviet program. Of the 450 or so people who have made it into space, approximately 25 have died in space-related accidents, giving a risk of death closer to 5 percent. For comparison with a similarly risky activity, climbing Mount Everest, 1,496 people had made the summit through 2001. During that same period, 172 people died in their attempts, for a death-to-summit ratio of 11.5 percent.

  Ray Duffy, a senior vice president of Willis Inspace, insurance broker for the aerospace industry, knows these facts well. He is not an iconoclast. He places insurance programs for them. The absence of data and test flights in this new generation of private vehicles makes evaluating a risk an actuarial nightmare. “You can’t do it,” he says. That doesn’t mean that insurance policies won’t be written. “I believe there will be third-party liability coverage, but because the risks are unknown, the premium will be set by what the market will pay. Since these companies are small, and there aren’t many of them, this means that there won’t be enough premiums booked to pay the limits of liability in the event of a loss. In fact the global annual premium collected for all launch liability coverage is less than $10 million. The losses will then be paid by premiums collected for other aerospace risks.”

  It’s more complicated than that. In the event of a failure, Duffy says, “lawyers will be lining up to sue everyone down the line from the prime to the guy who makes some widget used on the rocket. Will the part suppliers ask for indemnification from the prime? They should.”12

  Rockets are a bit like automobile models and computer software in the sense that early versions have the highest risk of failure. Most rocket failures occur during the first three launches, and after that, bugs tend to get worked out, resulting in more reliable rockets. As a result of this failure pattern, launch liability insurance is highest for the maiden voyages. Compared with the situation just ten years ago, however, rockets have become more reliable, and the growing database of launches has allowed underwriters to more accurately assess the risks of a given vehicle. But most relevant for the issue of personal spaceflight, says Duffy, is that the underwriters have not yet written any policies for passengers.

  Shooting people into space is inherently risky, and while there is no track record in the personal spaceflight industry, it is simply a matter of time before a catastrophic failure. Nobody knows whether the risk of death is 1 in 10, 1 in 100, or 1 in 1,000 but in the end, it doesn’t seem to matter to the passengers. Anderson is typical in this sense. She has placed her faith in George French and company. French says that he is risk averse, and this is precisely the attribute you would like for someone who has your life in his hands. Although it may seem crass, the CEOs and presidents of the companies that are competing to put people into space have a great deal more to lose than the passengers signing up for the ride. A catastrophic failure would rain down a series of investigations and lawsuits that not only would tank the offending company but could send officers to prison. And yet, these iconoclasts press on with their vision. Cognizant of the risk, but not paralyzed by fear of failure, they have begun to work together to define what will become the standards for safety in this industry. As in any business, there will be financial pressures to come up with the most cost-effective solution. Will safety be compromised? It’s too soon to say, but a growing cast of characters that includes people like Ray Duffy will keep an eye on it. And the companies that succeed will be the ones that don’t try to go it alone.

  Rick Homans: The G-man with Social Intelligence

  Spaceflight is not going to be like climbing Mount Everest. There is no federally mandated organization to certify a mountain climber’s ability and training to take novices to the top of the world. Safety will come because there are profits to be made for being safe. Foremost, there will be government oversight—not just because that is the role of government (to ensure public welfare), but because it is in the best interests of the private ventures to have government oversight.

  Shoot a rocket to any reasonable altitude—let alone a rocket with a person inside—and a flurry of federal agencies will rain down a world of hurt on you. Airspace, especially in the United States, is crowded. Up to about 40,000 feet, the air is filled with aircraft, and launching a rocket into this soup could have disastrous consequences. The FAA and the Department of Transportation (DOT) control the airspace, while NASA monitors outer space. The departments of Defense and Homeland Security monitor the airspace for missiles and hostile aircraft, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is tasked with controlling explosives, which are the same substances used to propel rockets. Moreover, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) makes sure that the operation of rocket vehicles complies with rules to protect the public from potentially hazardous substances. The rocketeers, by and large, bemoan the alphabet soup of regulations with which they must comply, but they grudgingly acknowledge that government oversight is necessary to instill public confidence. It is also a lesson in how to sell a strange idea to the public through familiarity and reputation building.

  Although a paying passenger on a rocket might assume a reasonable level of risk for dying, the same cannot be said of people on the ground. When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry, debris was scattered from eastern Texas to Louisiana and covered an area of 28,000 square miles. Although nobody on the ground was injured, the risks of spaceflight were not limited to astronauts. Clearly, it is not possible to launch even a suborbital vehicle near a populated area, which rules out the coastal regions. All the companies with plans to send people into space will do so in the sparsely populated areas of the Southwest. And ground zero for these launch sites is where rocketry began in the United States: in the deserts of southeastern New Mexico. Nestled between the Old West town of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the border mayhem of El Paso, Texas, lies White Sands Missile Range. Named for its bleached white sand dunes, White Sands has witnessed the key developments in rocketry history. Over 100 miles long and 40 miles wide, White Sands is the only fully protected airspace over ground in the United States, which means that commercial aircraft never fly over this area. The first atomic bomb was detonated here on July 16, 1945. Werner von Br
aun came here after WWII to continue development of the V2 rockets he had created for Nazi Germany, and his work eventually led to the rockets that would carry men into space and to the moon.

  White Sands, however, is a military facility and has not been available for public use. At least until the commercialization of spaceflight began to look like a reality. The Organ Mountains, which look like a series of bloated organ pipes thrusting up from the desert floor, run in a north-south line. White Sands lies mostly to the east of the ridge, and to the west there are only a few small towns. Hatch (pop. 1,673) is best known, relatively speaking, for its annual chili festival. A little farther north on I-25 is Truth or Consequences (pop. 7,289), which was originally called Hot Springs but changed its name in 1950 when the host of the popular radio show announced he would broadcast his program from the first town to rename itself after the show. Las Cruces (pop. 74,267) is the closest city of moderate size, and that is 75 miles to the south. But along the corridor between Hatch and Truth or Consequences, the future of private spaceflight will rise from the desert sands. It is a lesson in social networking.

  The ever-popular governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, struck a remarkable deal with Richard Branson in 2005. Branson agreed to locate the base of operations for Virgin Galactic in this corner of New Mexico if the state would build a spaceport. Because of its proximity to White Sands and the abundance of sunny, dry weather, the Hatch region was selected as the ideal site. And although Branson and Richardson made a great public fanfare out of the deal, the real credit goes to a person who excels at bringing together iconoclasts in a tour de force of networking.

  Rick Homans, whose official title is cabinet secretary of the New Mexico Economic Development Department, is not your typical government bureaucrat. Homans has become the biggest booster in New Mexico government for the placement of Spaceport America in his state. His job was to bring new industries and jobs to New Mexico. No stranger to business, Homans had founded Starlight Media Group, a publisher of visitor’s guides, which he eventually grew to include the New Mexico Business Weekly in 1994. With political aspirations, Homans sold the newspaper in 2000 and began a run for mayor of Albuquerque the next year. Although he lost the mayoral bid, Homans’s campaign was notable for his lawsuit against Albuquerque’s campaign spending limit. At the time, the city limited campaign spending to double the mayor’s annual salary. Homans argued that such limits violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The district court agreed, and Homans went on to spend a record amount during the election. Although he received only 10 percent of the vote in a seven-way race, Homans’s gutsiness caught the attention of Bill Richardson, who hired him as deputy campaign director for his 2002 gubernatorial bid. Although Richardson didn’t realize it at the time, Homans was about to become the “connector” to space.

  Like Richardson, Homans pushes big ideas, and the idea of a spaceport in New Mexico fit the bill. The weather was hard to beat. The open spaces meant relatively little chance of incidental injury to people on the ground. And the proximity of White Sands, with its protected airspace, made for a compelling case. Homans, though, is first and foremost a businessman, and his title reflects the mission of economic development, not economic folly. The time wasn’t right in 2002. As Homans says, “Don’t follow the, ‘Build it and they will come philosophy.’ Wait until technology calls.”13

  The call came in October 2004. After Burt Rutan won the X PRIZE competition and joined forces with Richard Branson, Homans and Richardson starting pushing hard to woo Virgin Galactic to New Mexico. They were not the only ones. The state of California already had a spaceport of sorts—Vandenberg Air Force Base—and Rutan was based in Mojave, California. Oklahoma also had a spaceport built on the site of a decommissioned B-52 base, and, as the state is proud to point out, it already had FAA approval to launch suborbital rockets, a fact that has drawn George French and Rocketplane Global to base their operation in Oklahoma. New Mexico carried the day with Branson, but the price was steep. Branson agreed to locate Virgin Galactic’s operations there if the state of New Mexico financed the building of the spaceport itself.

  A spaceport needn’t be as complex as an airport. Passengers take no luggage, for example. But a spaceport must have launch facilities, a passenger preparation area, a runway for landing, and capacity to handle explosives and potentially hazardous waste materials. The price tag of Spaceport America was pegged at $250 million. Although not a huge sum of money for many state governments, it was a significant outlay for New Mexico, whose annual budget in 2006 was only $5.1 billion. Richardson and Homans believe that the expenditure will return a significant piece of the economic pie for commercial spaceflight. Pushing a $250 million item on the New Mexicans may be a different story. Although the state’s official nickname is the “land of enchantment,” the locals still refer to New Mexico as the “land of mañana.” Citing the fact that New Mexico has had a long history with the space program, Homans is banking on New Mexicans’ familiarity with space. It is a great example of using familiarity to sell an idea to the public, and it wouldn’t be possible in most other states.

  A Team of Iconoclasts

  The privatization of spaceflight is a great example of how a group of iconoclasts can work together. Normally, we think of iconoclasts as rugged individuals who have bucked conventional wisdom to walk their own paths. Of course, this is true, but ultimately, for the iconoclast to become successful, he has to work with others, including other iconoclasts. This is not always an easy proposition for people not known for playing nice with others. But as we’ve seen in the spaceflight industry, it can be done with the help of other people who smooth over the rough spots.

  You still need iconoclasts who exemplify the three principles of perception, freedom from fear, and social intelligence. Fortunately, you don’t need iconoclasts who exemplify all three traits if you have a team of people who can exemplify some of them. The implications for management are clear. You need iconoclasts on a team, and if one iconoclast is good at seeing things differently than other people but is socially inept, then you also need a person who has the right social skills. For example, Burt Rutan is widely known as an iconoclastic engineer. His emphasis on materials engineering, which was inspired by surfboards, is legendary in aeronautics. He is not known, however, for his love affair with the media. But his newfound business partner, Richard Branson, is another story. Although Branson is no engineer, it is hard to argue with his charisma and public appeal. He is a master of the media. Of all the players in the spaceflight industry, he is perhaps the one most likely to pull off private launches.

  If we take a view of iconoclasm that extends beyond the individual, we can see how to assemble a team that collectively exemplifies iconoclastic traits. In the case of the spaceflight industry, the individuals found each other. Certainly, catalysts help. People like Peter Diamandis serve as connectors for iconoclasts. They help rally support and temper the inevitable fear of the unknown. And then there are people like Rick Homans, who can grease the wheels of government and help connect people with each other so they can actually make complex endeavors happen. You need all these people. Few people possess all three traits, but through diversification, teams can.

  EIGHT

  When Iconoclast

  Becomes Icon

  Every idea is an incitement.

  —Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 1925

  WHETHER NATURALLY BORN OR MADE, iconoclasts pride themselves on their nonconformity and ability to see things differently than other people. Some, however, go beyond mere iconoclasm. Through either luck or hard work, a select few go on to make the transition from iconoclast to icon. They, or their ideas, become objects of worship. Although it is not a strict requirement for success, the transformation from an outsider with crazy ideas to an object of worship is a lesson in how to get ideas that are initially strange to most people accepted by the masses.

  Arthur Jones and the Nautilus Machine

  In chap
ter 6, the example of Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming governor of California provided a lesson in the use of familiarity to gain public acceptance. But even before his movie stardom, Schwarzenegger was a superstar of bodybuilding. Like all bodybuilders of the 1970s, Schwarzenegger relied upon free weights to build up muscle mass. Interestingly, another, far lesser-known iconoclast, named Arthur Jones, would revolutionize the exercise industry through a different approach. Jones invented the Nautilus machine. Even by iconoclast standards, Jones was odd, and so it is particularly interesting how his invention became an icon of the modern gym.

  Born in Oklahoma in 1929, Jones had little patience for formal education and playing by the rules. After dropping out of high school, Jones traveled for several years throughout North and South America before serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war, he returned to the United States and started a business hunting big game for zoos and private collectors. He became known for his wild adventures and ended up producing a series of television shows for ABC in the 1950s with titles like Wild Cargo and Professional Hunter. His personal motto was “Younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles,” a credo that he unabashedly lived (Jones was married and divorced six times, all to women under age twenty-one). Always suspicious of competitors, he frequently packed a Colt .45, telling reporters, “I’ve shot 630 elephants and 63 men, and I regret the elephants more.”1

  Jones’s main interest besides big game hunting was exercise. While working out at a YMCA in Tulsa in 1948, Jones became increasingly frustrated with his inability to develop big muscles. Gyms of that era were dreary rooms filled with archaic equipment: dumbbells, free weights, jump ropes, and medicine balls. Rather than continuing to work out with heavier and heavier weights, which was the conventional wisdom of bodybuilding, Jones decided to cut his regimen in half, giving his muscles time to recover between workouts. In his downtime he began to experiment with contraptions that would give his muscles a more even workout. Presciently, Jones realized that muscles cannot develop the same amount of force throughout their range of motion. In order to efficiently strengthen muscles, he reasoned that you needed a device that varied its resistance as a muscle went through its range of motion. It took thirty years of tinkering, but the end result was the Nautilus machine. Using a series of cams and levers, the machine was named for its resemblance to the nautilus seashell. As Jones stated in Nautilus’s promotional materials, “Instead of trying to fit human muscles to an imperfect tool, the barbell—Nautilus was an attempt to design perfect tools that would exactly fit the requirements of muscles.”