Better Satellite World: The Bright Side of Changing Diapers
By Lou Zacharilla
New York City, May 2, 2025--The late American comedian Robin Williams joked that politicians need to be changed like diapers: frequently and for the same reason. You cannot trust a human being who holds and builds-up that much power or authority for too long. Stuff that isn’t savory will inevitably accumulate.
So it is that in the world of politics, where promises escape into the air like sewer gas through a ruptured New York City pothole, we have come to recognize that term limits have many virtues. They are a sign that healthy democracies and communities are based on the assured notion that trust and change are both good and inevitable. The next person in the game can play the position. The risk is a worthy one.
This is a cornerstone of innovation too. Innovation depends on openness and trust and is defined by constant change and challenges to orthodoxy. Complexity theory calls for constant injections of the new and untested among many smaller elements of a system. There is no “end game.” The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, commenting on the persistent attempt by the (then) Soviet Union to steal American and Western industrial and military secrets noted that, ultimately, they would not meet with the kind of success they coveted because, simply put, “Technology is not a secret. It is a system.”
AT THE HEART OF THE INDUSTRY’S SYSTEMS OF ENGINEERING….
Of all the components of our industry’s current and evolving systems I believe that Trust is at the core. So is the promise to achieve whatever can be achieved for a higher, more noble goal. They seem to be fused the way an antenna and a transponder are.
But trust is the trickiest quality of all human virtues to outright engineer. It is an odd mixture of culture, fear, peer pressure, altruism, financial incentive, law and a belief in a higher authority which will call “balls and strikes” and, to mix sports metaphors, issue a red card when necessary. It requires someone or something to change the diapers.
"...Innovation depends on openness and trust and is defined by constant change and challenges to orthodoxy..."
After nearly 30 years of moderating panels, hosting the longest-running weekly Podcast in the industry (www.sspi.org/podcast), writing dozens of blogs and articles and creating multiple awards programs (WTA’s Teleport Awards for Excellence and The Better Satellite World awards dinner in the UK), I am closer to understanding the secret to the success of companies in our industry, as well as the nations, regions and cities that produce these “winners.”
Here is the secret: there is no secret. It’s a system. Moynihan was right. I also know that Silicon Valley is wrong. Failure is not “good for your character” or even securing the first round of funding. As Chicago Cubs fans said after not winning a World Series after 108 years of heartbreak, “We have enough character already.”
To win, to really succeed, is to trust. Trust the team. Trust its (and your) creativity. Trust in the promise you make to others to use your success to make a better world.
BUT WHAT GIVES TRUST AGENCY?
It has something to do with education. But not always and not everywhere. Fifteen years ago, USA Secretary of Education (before that department was sent to Detention), noted that US$ 650 billion had been spent on K-12 education that year. He summed the results up by concluding, “And there has been less than a one percent change of anything!”
Not good.
It is what you learn and the degree you can trust and agree on the goals of learning that makes the difference. Ten years ago, Luxembourg had the highest education spending level in the EU with an average of 4,635€ per “inhabitant” (their word) compared to the EU average of about 1,400€.
There, things changed.
Luxembourg was ranked second as “most open for business.” Of worldwide assets under management over half of microfinance funds are based in the Grand Duchy. I have reported that companies such as Redwire and investment firms such as Promus Ventures do business there.
Luxembourg is not a giant like China or the USA. Not a honey trap for economic development like some in the Middle East. But it does abide
to law and the trust of colleagues. It knows where it wants to be and has had great success through “win-win” collaboration.
Perhaps our industry has something else that facilitates trust that few others with the exception of NASCAR and airlines perhaps have.
Our industry has the “existential edge.” There is something about the sheer thrill and danger of Space that is embedded in the industry’s psyche. As Nicole Stott says in her book Back to Earth https://tinyurl.com/yjhdmy3k, “When death is a few inches outside your cabin, you tend to rely on each other.” She uses that as a moral tale for establishing trust here.
I am concluding more and more that making a promise, swearing oaths and collegiality also have in them the quiet thrills of human contact and community that serve us well. They sound simple, or “soft” or more EQ than IQ. But what a revelation it is to see them in action anywhere. Even in a public space.
OOOPS!
In Japan I witnessed an amazing display of a culture of trust at Narita Airport when a person hurrying across the terminal fell and her bag spilled out in every direction a mobile phone, a shelf filled with Duty Free cosmetics and items that can only come from the depths of a woman’s bag! Within seconds of her mishap at least 12 people rushed to her aid to scoop up the items and return them; a social obedience and show of trust that in the end passed like passengers in an airport do, but that said more than my words here could begin to say. When you hear that sound, rush in a spirit of trust if you can.
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Lou Zacharilla served as the Director of Innovation and Development for SSPI and World Teleport Association and was the Host of “The Better Satellite World” podcast. He is currently a freelance writer and Podcaster and a founder of the Intelligent Community Forum think tank in New York. He can be reached at: zafu88@gmail.com
