Planning, Precision ... Crash and Burn

It took about six years of planning, a 268-million miles flight plan, and six months of getting there just to get to a place in outer space where Deep Impact, the NASA probe could even try to collide the Temple-1 comet. And when it finally got in the neighborhood, the thing crashed and burned ... just like they hoped it would.

The Leadership Lesson is a strong one, but first, consider what actually happened:

• The space craft, roughly the size of a Volkswagen, was sent hurling into outer space so it could, about six months later, release an 'impactor' probe (about the size of a coffee table) that would crash into some comet out there, about half the size of Manhattan. What planning!
• At the time of impact, the probe was humming along at 23,000 miles per hour - I'm told that that's like driving that Volkswagen (and coffee table) from from New York to Los Angeles ... in about a second!
• There were no explosives on board the probe, per se. But the probe was just the right density to maximize its impact - literally! If the probe was not dense enough, it would have just gone "splat!" just like an egg hitting a cement sidewalk. And if it was too dense, it would have shot right through the comet like a speeding bullet, leaving only a hole. But, Goldilocks, it was just right, and a crater roughly the size of a huge football stadium was created and set all sorts of debris into space that the Volkswagen mother-ship could photograph at very close range. What precision!

The Leadership Lesson: Sometimes you have to be willing to crash and burn because with the proper planning and precision, things just might turn out even better than planned.

Links:

• http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1162880,curpg-3.cms
• http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050706/dcw021.html?.v=28
• http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/