Challenger Crew Quotes

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss. Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this. And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together. For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us. We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers. And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's take-off. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them. I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue. I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it." There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." Thank you.

This is the story of how a new nation, saddled with war debt and desperate to establish credibility, was challenged by four Muslim powers. Our merchant ships were captured and the crews enslaved. Despite its youth, America would do what established western powers chose not to do: stand up to intimidation and lawlessness.

He’d taken pride in making Ketterdam his. He’d laid the traps, set the fires, put his boot to the necks of all those who’d challenged him, and reaped the rewards of his boldness. Most of the opposition had fallen, easy pickings, the occasional challenge almost welcome for the excitement it brought. He’d broken the Barrel to his whim, written the rules of the game to his liking, rewritten them at will. The problem was that the creatures who had managed to survive the city he’d made were a new kind of misery entirely—Brekker, his Wraith queen, his rotten little court of thugs. A fearless breed, hard-eyed and feral, hungrier for vengeance than gold. Do you like life, Rollins? Yes, he did, very much indeed, and he intended to go on living for a good long time. Pekka would count his money. He would raise his son. He’d find himself a good woman or two or ten. And maybe, in the quiet hours, he’d raise a glass to men like him, to his fellow architects of misfortune who had helped raise Brekker and his crew. He’d drink to the whole sorry lot of them, but mostly to the poor fools who didn’t know what trouble was coming.

Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That’s the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are. It is an exquisite thing when it all comes together in just the right way. The intense bonding and the sense of exhilaration that results from it are what many oarsmen row for, far more than for trophies or accolades. But it takes young men or women of extraordinary character as well as extraordinary physical ability to pull it off.

Just like a ship at sea, our lives can encounter rough waters. But with the right crew, we can weather any storm.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.

Believing in demons is an admission that there are servants of hell and forces of darkness out there. Evil challenges our core beliefs in religion and forces people to admit there is not just a heaven and hell, but a judgment day and an almighty power that chooses which one we go to.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.

Some would say this is pseudoscience, but I want to challenge that assertion. Why can’t the body be relied upon as a detector? Why is it so easy to dismiss goose bumps and chills as a product of the mind? Why do we discount the feeling that someone is watching us as the mind playing tricks on us?

The rise of the western crews may have shocked eastern fans, but it delighted newspaper editors across the country in the 1930s. The story fit in with a larger sports narrative that had fueled newspaper and newsreel sales since the rivalry between two boxers—a poor, part-Cherokee Coloradoan named Jack Dempsey and an easterner and ex-Marine named Gene Tunney—had riveted the nation’s attention in the 1920s. The East versus West rivalry carried over to football with the annual East-West Shrine Game and added interest every January to the Rose Bowl—then the nearest thing to a national collegiate football championship. And it was about to have additional life breathed into it when an oddly put together but spirited, rough-and-tumble racehorse named Seabiscuit would appear on the western horizon to challenge and defeat the racing establishment’s darling, the king of the eastern tracks, War Admiral.

Dropping familiar tools is particularly difficult for experienced professionals who rely on what Weick called overlearned behavior. That is, they have done the same thing in response to the same challenges over and over until the behavior has become so automatic that they no longer even recognize it as a situation-specific tool. Research on aviation accidents, for example, found that “a common pattern was the crew’s decision to continue with their original plan” even when conditions changed dramatically.

Dropping familiar tools is particularly difficult for experienced professionals who rely on what Weick called over learned behavior. That is, they have done the same thing in response to the same challenges over and over until the behavior has become so automatic that they no longer even recognize it as a situation-specific tool. Research on aviation accidents, for example, found that "a common pattern was the crew's decision to continue with their original plan" even when conditions changed dramatically.

And capitalizing on diversity is perhaps even more important when it comes to the characters of the oarsmen. A crew composed entirely of eight amped-up, overtly aggressive oarsmen will often degenerate into a dysfunctional brawl in a boat or exhaust itself in the first leg of a long race. Similarly, a boatload of quiet but strong introverts may never find the common core of fiery resolve that causes the boat to explode past its competitors when all seems lost. Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That’s the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are. It is an exquisite thing when it all comes together in just the right way. The intense bonding and the sense of exhilaration that results from it are what many oarsmen row for, far more than for trophies or accolades. But it takes young men or women of extraordinary character as well as extraordinary physical ability to pull it off.

And what about your brother, Agus? Will he be entertaining us with his pipes?” “Agg,” Shanks rasped, wrinkling his nose. “I didn’t tell you? He ain’t with us no more.” A heavy fist slammed on the arm of the Viidun’s chair as he growled, “The idiot went off and got himself killed!” “What?” Derian and Eena replied in unison, both horrified by the news. “You heard me!” Shanks bellowed. “The crazy fool should’ve known when to duck. He died in a bloody challenge with some brainless Deramptium! A downright disgraceful way to die! I’m ashamed to say he was my brother!” “That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” Eena muttered, mostly speaking to Derian. “What was that?” the Viidun demanded. Derian whispered a hush to Eena. Addressing Shanks, he expressed their condolences. “We are truly sorry for your loss. Your brother will be sorely missed. On the other hand, we look forward to welcoming you and your crew aboard the Kemeniroc.” Derian held up his right hand, extending his thumb and two adjoining fingers. “Strength, truth, and honor, friend,” he said, ending their conversation. “Strength, truth, and honor,” Shanks repeated. The screen went black. The captain turned to Eena who was still in shock. “You have to understand,” he explained, “the Viiduns are a fiercely competitive people with proud, warring ways. Their culture doesn’t call for much sympathy, especially when it appears one of their own has failed to live up to expectations.” Eena was still disturbed by the lack of compassion. “But that was his brother.” “I know. I can hardly believe it myself. Shanks and Agus were very close. They traveled everywhere together. All I can figure is it’s easier for Shanks to express his anger than his anguish.” “After all that, I’m not sure I want to meet him in person. He scares me,” she admitted. Derian laughed. “He scares everyone. That’s why you want to keep him as an ally and not make him an enemy.

Then, Zil and a half dozen of his crew swaggered into the plaza from the far side. Astrid clenched her jaw. Would the crowd turn on them? She almost hoped so. People thought because she wouldn’t let Sam go after Zil she must not really despise the Human Crew’s Leader. That was wrong. She hated Zil. Hated everything he had done and everything he had tried to do. Edilio moved quickly between Zil and a few of the boys who had started toward him, sticks and knives at the ready. Zil’s kids were armed with knives and bats, and so were those who wanted to take them on. Edilio was armed with an assault rifle. Astrid hated that this was what life so often came down to: my weapon is bigger than your weapon. If Sam were here it would be about his hands. Everyone had either seen what Sam could do, or heard the stories retold in vivid detail. No one challenged Sam.

We visit the Launch Control building, where on one wall of the seventies-style lobby are hung the mission patches of every human spaceflight that has ever been launched from here, 149 to date. Beneath each mission patch is a small plaque showing the launch and landing dates. Two of them—Challenger’s STS-51L and Columbia’s STS-107—are missing landing dates, because both of these missions ended in disasters that destroyed the orbiters and killed their crews. The blank spaces on the wall where those landing dates should have been are discolored from the touch of people’s hands. This would be unremarkable if this place were a tourist attraction, or regularly open to the public. But with the rare exception of Family Days, this building is open only to people who work here. In other words, it’s launch controllers, managers, and engineers who have been touching these empty spaces with their hands, on their way to and from doing their jobs. After

NASA had convened a conference to explore the benefit of a new kind of training: Crew Resource Management. The primary focus was on communication. First officers were taught assertiveness procedures. The mnemonic that has been used to improve the assertiveness of junior members of the crew in aviation is called P.A.C.E. (Probe, Alert, Challenge, Emergency).* Captains, who for years had been regarded as big chiefs, were taught to listen, acknowledge instructions, and clarify ambiguity. The time perception problem was tackled through a more structured division of responsibilities. Checklists, already in operation, were expanded and improved. The checklists have been established as a means of preventing oversights in the face of complexity. But they also flatten the hierarchy. When pilots and co-pilots talk to each other, introduce themselves, and go over the checklist, they open channels of communication. It makes it more likely the junior partner will speak up in an emergency. This solves the so-called activation problem. Various versions of the new training methods were immediately trialed in simulators. At each stage, the new ideas were challenged, rigorously tested, and examined at their limits. The most effective proposals were then rapidly integrated into airlines around the world. After a terrible set of accidents in the 1970s, the rate of crashes began to decline.

At 2:30 a.m. on the night of August 2, 1943, Kennedy, the skipper of a PT boat on patrol in World War II, got the chance to play the hero in his own life story. An enemy destroyer rammed the boat and split it in half. Two members of the 13-man crew were killed. One man was terribly injured and would certainly die if left on his own to swim to safety. Kennedy took a strap of the man’s life jacket, put it between his teeth, and swam four hours to a tiny uninhabited island that was only 70 yards wide. “With the physical courage of which he’d shown himself to be capable, Jack Kennedy had turned his years of frailty and private suffering into a personal and public confidence that would take him forward,”10 writes Matthews. Stories of heroes and heroic actions challenge us to remake our own internal narratives.

Compare Bethlehem Steel to Nucor. Both companies operated in the steel industry and produced hard-to-differentiate products. Both companies faced the competitive challenge of cheap imported steel. Yet executives at the two companies had completely different views of the same environment. Bethlehem Steel’s CEO summed up the company’s problems in 1983 by blaming imports: “Our first, second, and third problems are imports.”51 Ken Iverson and his crew at Nucor considered the same challenge from imports a blessing, a stroke of good fortune (“Aren’t we lucky; steel is heavy, and they have to ship it all the way across the ocean, giving us a huge advantage!”). Iverson saw the first, second, and third problems facing the American steel industry not to be imports, but management.52 He even went so far as to speak out publicly against government protection against imports, telling a stunned gathering of fellow steel executives in 1977 that the real problems facing the American steel industry lay in the fact that management had failed to keep pace with innovation.53 The

The organization of high-tempo air operations from carriers remains an extremely challenging proposition even today, but in June 1942, the Japanese were world leaders in this field. Their fleet carriers would typically hold about 90 aircraft, confined into a very tight space. There were two hangar decks, with lifts connecting them to the flight deck above. Japanese ground crews were very well trained, with the result that they could turn around aircraft much faster than their British or American counterparts. Nonetheless, these were crowded ships, and they were already coming under attack from the Midway-based American aircraft. Furthermore, in addition to switching armament for Nagumo’s reserve bomber force, the crews were maintaining a rotating force of covering fighters. There were always Zeros on deck waiting to take off, being refuelled, or just having landed. Hoisting heavy torpedoes into the bomb bays of the Kates was also a very skilled operation that only specialist torpedo armorers were able to undertake. In short, this was a recipe for delay and confusion, even given the superb quality of the Japanese ground crew, and as Nagumo changed his mind twice in the span of less than an hour, the issues the Japanese faced on the carriers were exacerbated. 

One thing really pissed us off during the flight. On the next to last day of the mission, the Soviets shot a laser at Challenger, tracking it. Though it was a low-powered laser, it was still enough to cause a malfunction of onboard equipment and temporarily blind the crew. The U.S. government made a formal diplomatic protest. The message was not as terse as the one I would have sent.

Child hauntings are challenging because they can be a couple of different things. They can either be haunting in the traditional sense or a demon trying to use the sounds of children to confuse us. When you hear about a child haunting, it almost always involves laughter, which evil entities are very good at mocking. I think it’s possible that darker, bullying spirits uses child spirits like bait. But it is also possible that there could be a building with a demon and no child spirits at all. I’ve investigated buildings that echoed of laughter, but had no reported history of kids living or dying in them, which leads me to believe that there aren’t really kids in there.

The M1A3 Abrams was a man-killer. Colonel J. “Lonesome” Jones thanked the good Lord that he had never had to face anything like it. The models that preceded it, the A1 and A2, were primarily designed to engage huge fleets of Soviet tanks on the plains of Europe. They were magnificent tank busters, but proved to be less adept at the sort of close urban combat that was the bread and butter of the U.S. Army in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. In the alleyways of Damascus and Algiers, along the ancient cobbled lanes of Samara, Al Hudaydah, and Aden, the armored behemoths often found themselves penned in, unable to maneuver or even to see what they were supposed to kill. They fell victim to car bombs and Molotovs and homemade mines. Jones had won his Medal of Honor rescuing the crew of one that had been disabled by a jihadi suicide squad in the Syrian capital. The A3 was developed in response to attacks just like that one, which had become increasingly more succesful. It was still capable of killing a Chinese battle tank, but it was fitted out with a very different enemy in mind. Anyone, like Jones, who was familiar with the clean, classic lines of the earlier Abrams would have found the A3 less aesthetically pleasing. The low-profile turret now bristled with 40 mm grenade launchers, an M134 7.62 mm minigun, and either a small secondary turret for twin 50s, or a single Tenix-ADI 30 mm chain gun. The 120 mm canon remained, but it was now rifled like the British Challenger’s gun. But anyone, like Jones, who’d ever had to fight in a high-intensity urban scenario couldn’t give a shit about the A3’s aesthetics. They just said their prayers in thanks to the designers. The tanks typically loaded out with a heavy emphasis on high-impact, soft-kill ammunition such as the canistered “beehive” rounds, Improved Conventional Bomblets, White Phos’, thermobaric, and flame-gel capsules. Reduced propellant charges meant that they could be fired near friendly troops without danger of having a gun blast disable or even kill them. An augmented long-range laser-guided kinetic spike could engage hard targets out to six thousand meters. The A3 boasted dozens of tweaks, many of them suggested by crew members who had gained their knowledge the hard way. So the tank commander now enjoyed an independent thermal and LLAMPS viewer. Three-hundred-sixty-degree visibility came via a network of hardened battle-cams. A secondary fuel cell generator allowed the tank to idle without guzzling JP-8 jet fuel. Wafered armor incorporated monobonded carbon sheathing and reactive matrix skirts, as well as the traditional mix of depleted uranium and Chobam ceramics. Unlike the tank crew that Jones had rescued from a screaming mob in a Damascus marketplace, the men and women inside the A3 could fight off hordes of foot soldiers armed with RPGs, satchel charges, and rusty knives—for the “finishing work” when the tank had been stopped and cracked open to give access to its occupants.

Our friends are part of the fabric of our lives. Pick the best people you know and hold on to them. Curate a crew of people who cheer you on, challenge you, check on you, and are committed to creating an awesome life with you. Recognize the people who are great at gassing you up, not watering you down. Find your people. Hold them close. And know you belong somewhere. While you do that, rise together.

that I’d need a crew who could challenge me. And that was smarter than me.

You think you can handle someone else, when you can’t even handle the things I’ve still got planned for you? Tempting me like you’re not still sore from the first time.” He pulls back and smirks. “Sore?” I tip my chin up, challenging him because I can’t help it. “Was that supposed to hurt? Gotta tell you, Crew, I thought you were better at inflicting pain after hearing all the rumors. I’m a little disappointed.

He doesn’t see you, Echo. I do.” Crew’s amusement fades. “He’s incapable of it.” “And what is it you think you see?” I challenge him. “Every dark thing you try to bury. All the things you pretend don’t exist. I see you.” “Just because you see my darkness doesn’t mean it’s all I am.” “Lie to yourself all you want. Hate me all you want. And tell yourself whatever you have to if it’ll make you feel better about what we’ve done. But when you close your pretty, golden eyes at night, the truth will still be there—you’d rather be my slut than his wife.

As I walked away from the cheeky blonde, her sass about the airlines and crew still irritated the hell out of me. She was a damn firecracker; that much was clear. Sure, she had the air of someone who’d never worked a hard day in her life—probably spoiled rotten by her parents. But there was something else about her, the way she challenged me, as though she were a wild mustang daring me to try and break her. Her fiery spirit and sharp tongue contrasted with her delicate features and petite frame, but it had stirred something reckless in me. I’d been compelled to confront her. People always have a way of chasing what’s bad for them, and I wasn’t immune. Maybe it was that instinct, that primal pull to run straight at what could take you down, that appealed to me. Hell, that was how men like me ended up heading off to war.

Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That’s the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are. It is an exquisite thing when it all comes together in just the right way. The

In one of the most profound moments in the series, Avon Barksdale’s nephew D’Angelo, a lieutenant in the family drug organization, teaches his young street crew that “the king stay the king” and that the pawns die early. Using the pieces of a chess game, D’Angelo explains how everyone in the “the game” has a role and few, if any, can transcend those roles. While the king has the queen and all of the pawns to “watch his back,” the pawns are frequently sacrificed to protect the more powerful pieces and have no one to shield them from the brutality of the game. If we read the chess board as yet another metaphor for the American city, D’Angelo’s teachings draw parallels between the “king” and the powerful state actors and between the “pawns” and those who are dispensable in society. Virtually every political decision in The Wire, including decisions about whom to punish and why, are ultimately designed to preserve political power and ensure the personal and institutional success of those with voice and capital. In the most blatant ways, political candidates manipulate crime and punishment to increase their votes and make their careers by running on tough-on-crime platforms regardless of whether those platforms provide fair and effective strategies for controlling crime. The politics of crime is easily discernible in the mayoral campaign of Mayor Clarence Royce and his challenger, Tommy Carcetti.

In Lincoln’s day, Riley’s account also spoke to a burning issue: the troubling institution of slavery. Inverting the American paradigm, it provided a useful perspective and helped expose the brutality of that abysmal practice. In our time, when one of the great challenges we face is to find common ground for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, the plight of the crew of the Commerce achieves a new relevance. It

There is about our house a need. The running, pulsating restlessness of the four boys as they struggle to learn and grow; the world embraces them….All this wonder needs a counterpart. We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blond hair to off-set those crew cuts. We need a doll house to stand firm against our forts and rackets and thousand baseball cards. We need a cut-out star to play alone while the others battle to see who’s ‘family champ.’ We even need someone…who could sing the descant to “Alouette,” while outside they scramble to catch the elusive ball aimed ever roofward, but usually thudding against the screens. We need a legitimate Christmas angel—one who doesn’t have cuffs beneath the dress. We need someone who’s afraid of frogs. We need someone to cry when I get mad—not argue. We need a little one who can kiss without leaving egg or jam or gum. We need a girl. We had one once—she’d fight and cry and play and make her way just like the rest. But there was about her a certain softness. She was patient—her hugs were just a little less wiggly. Like them, she’d climb in to sleep with me, but somehow she’d fit. She didn’t boot and flip and wake me up with pug nose and mischievous eyes a challenging quarter-inch from my sleeping face. No—she’d stand beside our bed till I felt her there. Silently and comfortable, she’d put those precious, fragrant locks against my chest and fall asleep. Her peace made me feel strong, and so very important. “My Daddy” had a caress, a certain ownership which touched a slightly different spot than the “Hi Dad” I love so much. But she is still with us. We need her and yet we have her. We can’t touch her, and yet we can feel her. We hope she’ll stay in our house for a long, long time. Love Pop

And capitalizing on diversity is perhaps even more important when it comes to the characters of the oarsmen. A crew composed entirely of eight amped-up, overtly aggressive oarsmen will often degenerate into a dysfunctional brawl in a boat or exhaust itself in the first leg of a long race. Similarly, a boatload of quiet but strong introverts may never find the common core of fiery resolve that causes the boat to explode past its competitors when all seems lost. Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That's the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are. It is an exquisite thing when it all comes together in just the right way. The intense bonding and the sense of exhilaration that results from it are what many oarsmen row for, far more than for trophies or accolades. Bit it takes young men or women of extraordinary character as well as extraordinary physical ability to pull it off.

One can only guess what talented people like the crew of Challenger might have done had they returned to earth alive. Yet, even their loss has inspired thousands of others to carry on for them in meaningful ways we will never fully know. They have not been lost to the world. They made it a better place.

Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That’s the steepest challenge. Even

The first really organized investigation of the seas didn’t come until 1872, when a joint expedition between the British Museum, the Royal Society, and the British government set forth from Portsmouth on a former warship called HMS Challenger. For three and a half years they sailed the world, sampling waters, netting fish, and hauling a dredge through sediments. It was evidently dreary work. Out of a complement of 240 scientists and crew, one in four jumped ship and eight more died or went mad- "driven to distraction by the mind-numbing routine o f years of dredging" in the words of the historian Samantha Weinberg. But they sailed across almost 70,000 nautical miles of sea, collected over 4,700 new species of marine organisms, gathered enough information to create a fifty-volume report (which took nineteen years to put together), and gave the world the name of a new scientific discipline: oceanography. They also discovered, by means of depth measurements, that there appeared to be submerged mountains in the mid-Atlantic, prompting some excited observers to speculate that they had found the lost continent of Atlantis.

One of the challenges of her [Producer Margy Whitmer's] job was to find practical applications for Fred Rogers's sometimes wacky ideas...He couldn't really visualize what he wanted until he saw something, and then he would know that he didn't want that, or he'd want it changed. The hardest part was that he had such respect for the art crew, their talent, their whimsy, and their wackiness, that it was hard for him to tell them he didn't like something.

Let's imagine we're standing together on the launch pad at NASA's Cape Canaveral facility near Orlando, and staring up at the stars together. As I write this, the last constellation above the horizon is Centaurus. The centaur's front head is a bright star. In fact, it's three stars—a pair called Alpha Centauri A and B, and, dimmest of the trio, Proxima Centauri. Here, look through this telescope. See? You can tell them apart. But what we can't see is that there is, in fact, a planet circling the faint light of Proxima Centauri. Man, I wish we could see it. Because that planet, Proxima Centauri b, is the nearest known exoplanet to Earth. [...] If we were to board a spacecraft and ride it from the outer edge of our atmosphere all the way to Proxima Centauri b, you and I, who boarded the ship fit and trim, chosen as we were from billions of applicants, would die before the voyage reached even 1/100th of the intervening distance. [...] At a speed of 20,000 miles per hour—the speed of our top-performing modern rockets—4.2 light years translates to more than 130,000 years of space travel. [...] So how will we ever get there? A generation ship. [...] the general notion is this: get enough human beings onto a ship, with adequate genetic diversity among us, that we and our fellow passengers cohabitate as a village, reproducing and raising families who go on to mourn you and me and raise new of their own, until, thousands of years after our ship leaves Earth's gravity, the distant descendants of the crew that left Earth finally break through the atmosphere of our new home. [...] A generation ship is every sociological and psychological challenge of modern life squashed into a microcosmic tube of survival and amplified—generation after generation. [...] The idea of a generation ship felt like a pointless fantasy when I first encountered it. But as I've spent the last few years speaking with technologists, academics, and policy makers about the hidden dangers of building systems that could reprogram our behavior now and for generations to come, I realized that the generation ship is real. We're on board it right now. On this planet, our own generation ship, we were once passengers. But now, without any training, we're at the helm. We have built lives for ourselves on this planet that extend far beyond our natural place in this world. And now we are on the verge of reprogramming not only the planet, but one another, for efficiency and profit. We are turning systems loose on the decks of the ship that will fundamentally reshape the behavior of everyone on board, such that they will pass those behaviors on to their progeny, and they might not even realize what they've done. This pattern will repeat itself, and play out over generations in a behavioral and technological cycle.

Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking. Somehow all this must mesh. That’s the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are.

Delivery drivers, fueled by coffee and pep pills, worked twenty to twenty-two-hour shifts, then slept for seven hours, had a meal, and returned to duty. Carpenters and construction crews formed out of nowhere and rows of Nissen huts came together in a minor miracle at the edge of the airfields. Men and women slept on floors. DPs and German veterans and anyone else who had been lucky enough to be hired were constantly disturbed all night by others looking for a sliver of space to sleep. The average participant saw it as a challenge. The older recruits had been through far worse in

In our crew we had a few tricks to encourage ourselves. We built a framework to break overwhelming challenges into smaller digestible pieces. We’d say “Within 20 hours our situation will be much better.” Later it became, “Within 40 hours…” or more. Just the knowledge that there is a known end point leading us to a hot shower and the end of effort calmed us. Humour also helped us survive. We all enjoyed laughing, which provided a great relief.

Because I didn’t know a lot, but I knew this girl was mine, inside and out. I was getting tired of holding back. She was the one I wanted, as complicated and messy as that was. “Prove it.” She tipped her chin, hitting mine, challenging me. “Have dinner with me. Let me feed you.

School had never been my thing. When it was too easy, I got bored, and when it was challenging, I gave up without trying. School psychologists had diagnosed me with ADHD the second they’d met me, which…whatever. Who didn’t have it? An Addie a day kept the impulsive, dangerous, life-threatening behavior away, but focusing on shit for any long periods only happened if I was deeply interested. Then it was look out, hyperfocus here I come.

Once the men’s crew team had agreed to meet the lacrosse team’s challenge, one of those entitled assholes had pulled strings to clear out Rodney’s facility a mere forty-eight hours later, so here we were, in the middle of a fucking school week, standing in a field five miles north of the City while a bunch of testosterone-drunk boys got hyped to shoot at each other with pretend guns.

Pressure to keep on schedule had combined with a complacency brought about by so many past mission successes. The same conditions were present for Apollo 1 and Challenger. And once again, a crew would pay with their lives.

to its talented cast and crew, fundamentally the program utilized a simple formula to keep people tuning in. At the heart of every episode—and also across each season’s narrative arc—is a problem the characters must resolve. For example, during an episode in the first season, Walter White must find a way to dispose of the bodies of two rival drug dealers. Challenges prevent resolution of the conflict and suspense is created as the audience waits to find out how the story line ends. In this particular episode White discovers one of the drug dealers is still alive and is faced with the dilemma of having to kill someone he thought was already dead. Invariably, each episode’s central conflict is resolved near the end of the show, at which time a new challenge arises to pique the viewer’s curiosity. By design, the only way to know how Walter gets out of the mess he is in at the end of the latest episode is to watch the next episode.

Oh! But here! I brought some Chinese recipes I found that I thought might be useful." "Huh? Wait a sec, Tadokoro. Aren't you going to help out at the booth the Polaris crew is putting together? Isshiki Senpai must have invited you." "Hmm? Yeah, he did. The Home-Cooking Society is going to have a booth too. But I turned both of them down." "Huh? Why?" "Well, because I thought you could use the help, of course... ... AH! Oh! Um! I-I-I know that I'll probably just get in the way! I mean, i-it's me, right? I'm so sorry I just assumed that I could be helpful to you! B-but, um! I-I did use to help with the customers at my family's little inn... and during the Stagiare Challenge, I did have the chance to learn a little bit about customer service, so I kinda think I might not be totally useless, and... and, um! S-so, um, y-you see... if you happen to need a little help with your booth, I, um... I'd be happy to..." "Tadokoro. You... ... are the best." "R-really?" "Okay! Let's do this! Let's cook something up, Tadokoro!" "Okay!

Maybe I was looking for something to believe in when the planets aligned to set me down that path. I was drawn to racist ideology because I felt like white people were getting shafted. We were the underdogs. It was us against the world in an epic battle for forever. Such romance! Getting back in that moment, the taint we cast upon reality definitely had that saga feel. Hitler did it with the torch-lit ceremony and iconic swastika. It felt like you were Beowulf, Siegfried, and Conan all rolled into one. Just a big fucking game of Dungeons & Dragons, till death and prison inevitably show up. Then the shit is real. Then comes the real challenge, the true test of will. Do you back down then? Are you a coward? Or just a fool? That's when you gather all the suffering you can endure and produce and you devour it, because it's the only thing that nourishes you anymore. And you let that fire rage on till it's all you can see. You damn well can't see how burnt and disfigured it makes you-how it scorches your life. It's impossible to see how the hurt you emanate feels on the receiving end, because you no empathy for other humans. Even your own crew is barren of empathy for each other. You would die for your brothers and sisters, but you are unable to put yourself in their shoes. You don't really care about or understand their individual hopes and dreams, because like you, they have none outside of the movement. Your feeling for them is one of primal pack-mentality. Survival melded with a perverted sense of honor that won't permit you to suffer insult to them any more than to yourself.

Since my crew of meaty Ron Jeremy doppelgängers had gone the way of the Challenger Space Shuttle I know found myself with some un-resolved hunger issues. Issues which the tantalizing scent took advantage of to get me excited and set my moist nipples a-tingling.

Katia, Shelby, Tim, Shiro and I are doing our best to play cards in the lounge.  Shelby got some adhesive so we can stick them to the coffee table, but it’s still a challenge and some of them escape to float away.  We’d be in the Centrifuge Module, but we don’t want to end up, you know, dead. Shiro says, “So, now that we’re on our way, I think it’s time we start getting real.  We need to be prepared for what’s out there.” “I think we’re about as prepared as we can get,” Shelby comments, discarding. “In all the training, we never had any discussions about motives.” “Motives?” Tim asks. “Yes,” Shiro says. “For example, look at the crew the aliens chose.  With the exception of Jim, all of us are young.” “Well that’s self-explanatory, isn’t it?” says Tim.  “Why send older, less physically fit individuals on such a physically rigorous journey?  No offense, Jim.” “The females are younger than the males, but all of us are of reproductive age.”  He looks up from his cards, “Doesn’t that make you a little curious what they have in mind?” “Shiro!  You’re making me uncomfortable,” Shelby says. Looking at Katia, Shiro says, “And you’re the youngest, Katia.  Very young, in fact, and intelligent on a scale beyond the reach of the vast majority of humans.”  He glances from side to side, “All of us, in fact, are exceptional.  With the exception of you, Jim.  No offense, of course.” “None taken,” I say.  “Full house.” Everyone groans and I collect all the chips we have placed in a Ziploc bag. Tim asks, “Are you suggesting that they intend to keep us as pets and breed us, or something?  Because that’s impossible.  You know all the men on the crew have been sterilized.” “Yes, I know.  But do you think that, if they have the technology to do what they have already done, they might also be able to overcome such a hurdle?  They will have our DNA, and three perfectly viable wombs to work with.  That should be enough.” Shelby exclaims, “That is enough!  Good grief, Shiro.  Are you trying to give us nightmares?” “I just want us all to be prepared for all eventualities.” Blinking, her brows furrowed, Shelby says, “How considerate of you.  That’s enough preparation for today.” ∆v∆v∆v∆v∆

We review the rest of the crew. Will has abandoned whatever qualms he had about judging his former peers. We have a productive discussion. I wrap up with this thought: “We have these mismatches between what the guys are getting paid and what they should be getting paid. I can’t afford to give the underpaid guys a raise right now, and I hate to just go out and cut someone’s pay. It’s cruel. People build their lives, and particularly their debts, around their income. If I just cut pay because I feel like it, it can cause real trouble. So your challenge is to find a way to make the overpaid guys worth the money we’re paying, and to make the shop profitable so that I can give the underpaid guys a bump. You seem to know how these guys work. Now it’s time to define a standard method of work for each thing we do. You’re going to be spending more time teaching and less time doing your own work. That’s OK. Just do it, and let’s see what happens.” He leaves with a thoughtful expression on his face. I’m very happy about the way this has gone.

Managing creative people—not so easy,” she says. “A lot of emotion, a lot of stroking. Some people need tough love. Some people need a lot of love.” Above all is the challenge of managing in a subjective realm. “There’s no right or wrong answer,” says Lyons. “When someone creates something and puts it in front of you, that thing came from inside of them, and if you make them feel bad, it’s going to be hard to fix, because you’ve actually crushed them.

The electronics effort faced even greater challenges. To launch that category, David Risher tapped a Dartmouth alum named Chris Payne who had previously worked on Amazon’s DVD store. Like Miller, Payne had to plead with suppliers—in this case, Asian consumer-electronics companies like Sony, Toshiba, and Samsung. He quickly hit a wall. The Japanese electronics giants viewed Internet sellers like Amazon as sketchy discounters. They also had big-box stores like Best Buy and Circuit City whispering in their ears and asking them to take a pass on Amazon. There were middlemen distributors, like Ingram Electronics, but they offered a limited selection. Bezos deployed Doerr to talk to Howard Stringer at Sony America, but he got nowhere. So Payne had to turn to the secondary distributors—jobbers that exist in an unsanctioned, though not illegal, gray market. Randy Miller, a retail finance director who came to Amazon from Eddie Bauer, equates it to buying from the trunk of someone’s car in a dark alley. “It was not a sustainable inventory model, but if you are desperate to have particular products on your site or in your store, you do what you need to do,” he says. Buying through these murky middlemen got Payne and his fledgling electronics team part of the way toward stocking Amazon’s virtual shelves. But Bezos was unimpressed with the selection and grumpily compared it to shopping in a Russian supermarket during the years of Communist rule. It would take Amazon years to generate enough sales to sway the big Asian brands. For now, the electronics store was sparely furnished. Bezos had asked to see $100 million in electronics sales for the 1999 holiday season; Payne and his crew got about two-thirds of the way there. Amazon officially announced the new toy and electronics stores that summer, and in September, the company held a press event at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan to promote the new categories. Someone had the idea that the tables in the conference room at the Sheraton should have piles of merchandise representing all the new categories, to reinforce the idea of broad selection. Bezos loved it, but when he walked into the room the night before the event, he threw a tantrum: he didn’t think the piles were large enough. “Do you want to hand this business to our competitors?” he barked into his cell phone at his underlings. “This is pathetic!” Harrison Miller, Chris Payne, and their colleagues fanned out that night across Manhattan to various stores, splurging on random products and stuffing them in the trunks of taxicabs. Miller spent a thousand dollars alone at a Toys “R” Us in Herald Square. Payne maxed out his personal credit card and had to call his wife in Seattle to tell her not to use the card for a few days. The piles of products were eventually large enough to satisfy Bezos, but the episode was an early warning. To satisfy customers and their own demanding boss during the upcoming holiday, Amazon executives were going to have to substitute artifice and improvisation for truly comprehensive selection.

Although Breaking Bad owes a great deal of its success to its talented cast and crew, fundamentally the program utilized a simple formula to keep people tuning in. At the heart of every episode — and also across each season’s narrative arc — is a problem the characters must resolve. For example, during an episode in the first season, Walter White must find a way to dispose of the bodies of two rival drug dealers. Challenges prevent resolution of the conflict and suspense is created as the audience waits to find out how the storyline ends. In this particular episode, White discovers one of the drug dealers is still alive and is faced with the dilemma of having to kill someone he thought was already dead. Invariably, each episode’s central conflict is resolved near the end of the show, at which time a new challenge arises to pique the viewer’s curiosity. By design, the only way to know how Walter gets out of the mess he is in at the end of the latest episode is to watch the next episode.     The cycle of conflict, mystery and resolution is as old as storytelling itself, and at the heart of every good tale is variability. The unknown is fascinating and strong stories hold our attention by waiting to reveal what happens next. In a phenomenon called “experience-taking,