A Way You'll Never Be
by Lou Zacharilla
New York City, NY, May 3, 2021--Few of us will ever enter a Hall of Fame as anything but a visitor or a guest. The reason should be as obvious to you as it is to me. After running the Space and Satellite Industry Hall of Fame inductions program for over 20 years you begin to see things clearly. The explanation for why most of us remain spectactors is as mind-bogglingly simple as a Dr. Gladys West https://www.sspi.org/cpages/hof-west model of the shape of the Earth is complex.
So here is the reason: while there is much, much, MUCH talent in every nook and cranny of our industry; exceptional talent – the kind that wins World Cup matches and Super Bowls and Nobel Prizes –is confined to a handful of humans. While we surely seek diversity and equality of opportunity as a charter of our industry and common humanity, talent is an urge of an unknown origin and exempt from any familiar design. If you think you can be Jim Oliver by studying the design of a Barcelona Chair as he did, think again. It is not linear. Talent’s ways are not our ways.
Hall of Fame talent is a distinct trait and forever shall be unequally distributed. If you need proof, consider that with all of today’s “platforms” to showcase one’s talent in music or the arts about 1% of artists continue to take home the real money and the real fame. Same with CEOs and successful entrepreneurs. While there is a proliferation of start-ups, or “influencers,” or clever, hard-working digital beasts their influence is of the moment. And the moment is fleeting.
Will their talent be lasting and offer the deeper values that turn them into Hall of Fame material? My observation is, naw. The laws of Hall of Fame talent are like the rising of the Sun. They always apply. A decent slide guitar player will never be in the same hallways with Eric Clapton.
So it is with both our Hall of Fame and, to a degree, the 20 Under 35 Cohort. https://www.sspi.org/cpages/20-under-35 They are simply special people in an industry so stuffed with talent that the term “rocket scientist” became a cultural expression to denote a higher order! It came from our industry – and we have zillions of rocket scientists who never will make the Industry’s Hall of Fame!
So imagine how good THIS Hall of Fame must be.
Average is a great thing. Being in the middle is the sweet spot of existence. When the world pulls you left and right, being in the middle is Sanity. But it can be a painful awakening to realize that you are average. At first anyway. You may be talented in some area and have the occasional fantasy that you might be great “if only….” Let it go. When you stand next to genuine achievers, as I have for years with these Hall of Famers you come to an acceptance. You acknowledge the fact that success is an act of hard work. For sure. But “the work hard and you can be like Kathy Leuders and Peter de Selding” is merely a notion promulgated by our teachers, parents and societies - I am convinced - to keep us in line and help us reach Social Security with having had a decent job. It has its virtue. In a productive industry it is what allows things to prosper.
But it ain’t the Hall of Fame. Talent of the type we honor and bring forward is a gift of a certain type of grace.
In his blog on Larry Niven in this issue of SSPI’s newsletter, The Orbiter, Robert Bell quotes Niven as writing, “There is only one universal message in science fiction: there exist minds that think as well as you do – but differently.”
Some better than others, of course. I’ll end by borrowing a phrase from another inspirational writer, whose material was honed close to the earth that most of us still have not left. Nobel Prize winning writer Ernest Hemingway titled a famous short story “A Way You’ll Never Be.” Hemingway nailed it. You just need to interview a Matt Desch, or speak to a Gwen Shotwell, or look at an AvL Technologies antenna design; or watch Greg Wyler and Steve Collar build a future without a real playbook to know this.
As Hemingway might conclude, “And it is a damn fine thing to know.”
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Lou Zacharilla is the Director of Innovation and Development of the Space and Satellite Professionals International (SSPI). He can be reached at: LZacharilla@sspi.org
