The Runaway Species. David Eagleman

      Published by Catapult

       catapult.co

      Simultaneously published in Great Britain in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd

      Copyright © 2017 by Anthony Brandt

      Copyright © 2017 by David Eagleman

      ISBN: 978-1-936787-52-4

      Catapult titles are distributed to the trade by

      Publishers Group West

       Phone: [phone]

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959435

      Printed in Great Britain

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      To our parents, who brought us into a life of creativity

      Nat & YannaCirel & Arthur

      our wives, who fill our lives with novelty

      KarolSarah

      and our children, whose imaginations summon the future

      Sonya, Gabe, LucianAri and Aviva

      CONTENTS

       Introduction: What do NASA and Picasso have in common?

       Part I: New Under the Sun

       1. To innovate is human

       2. The brain alters what it already knows

       3. Bending

       4. Breaking

       5. Blending

       6. Living in the B-hive

       Part II: The Creative Mentality

       7. Don’t glue down the pieces

       8. Proliferate options

       9. Scout to different distances

       10. Tolerate risk

       Part III: Cultivating Creativity

       11. The creative company

       12. The creative school

       13. Into the future

       Acknowledgments

       Image Credits

       Bibliography

       Notes

       Index

      INTRODUCTION

      WHAT DO NASA AND PICASSO HAVE IN COMMON?

      Several hundred people scramble in a control room in Houston, trying to save three humans ensnared in outer space. It’s 1970 and Apollo 13 is two days into its moonshot when its oxygen tank explodes, spewing debris into space and crippling the craft. Astronaut Jack Swigert, with the understatement of a military man, radios Mission Control. “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

      The astronauts are over 200,000 miles from Earth. Fuel, water, electricity and air are running out. The hopes for a solution are close to zero. But that doesn’t slow down the flight director back in NASA Mission Control, Gene Kranz. He announces to his assembled staff:

      When you leave this room, you must leave believing that this crew is coming home. I don’t give a damn about the odds and I don’t give a damn that we’ve never done anything like this before … You’ve got to believe, your people have got to believe, that this crew is coming home.¹

      How can Mission Control make good on this promise? The engineers have rehearsed the mission down to the minute: when Apollo 13 would reach the moon’s orbit, when the lunar module would deploy, how long the astronauts would walk on the surface. Now they have to shred that playbook and start over. Mission Control had also prepared abort scenarios, but all of those assumed that the main parts of the spacecraft would be healthy and the lunar module expendable.² Unfortunately, the opposite is now true. The service module is destroyed and the command module is venting gas and losing power. The only working part of the craft is the lunar module. NASA has simulated many possible breakdowns, but not this one.

      The engineers know that they have been dealt a nearly impossible task: save three men locked in an airtight metal capsule, hurtling at 3,000 miles an hour through the vacuum of space, their life support systems failing. Advanced satellite communication systems and desktop computers are still decades away. With slide rules and pencils, the engineers have to invent a way to abandon the command module and turn the lunar module into a lifeboat bound for home.

      The engineers set about addressing the problems one by one: planning a route back to Earth, steering the craft, conserving power. But conditions are deteriorating. A day and a half into the crisis, carbon dioxide reaches dangerous levels in the astronauts’ tight quarters. If nothing is done the crew is going to suffocate within a few hours. The lunar module has a filtration system, but all of its cylindrical air scrubbers have been exhausted. The only remaining option is to salvage unused canisters from the abandoned command module – but those are square. How to fit a square scrubber into a round hole?

      

      Working from an inventory of what’s on board, engineers at Mission Control devise an adaptor cobbled together from a plastic bag, a sock, pieces of cardboard and a hose from a pressure suit, all held together by duct tape. They tell the crew to tear off the plastic cover from the flight plan folder, and to use it as a funnel to guide air into the scrubber. They have the astronauts pull out the plastic-wrapped thermal undergarments that were originally meant to be worn under spacesuits while bouncing on the moon. Following instructions relayed from the ground, the astronauts discard the undergarments and save the plastic. Piece by piece, they assemble the makeshift filter and install it.

      To everyone’s relief, carbon dioxide levels return to normal. But other problems quickly follow. As Apollo 13 draws closer to re-entry, power is growing short in the command module. When the spacecraft was designed, it had never crossed anyone’s mind that the command module batteries might have to be charged from the lunar module – it was supposed to be the other way around. Fueled by coffee and adrenaline, the engineers in Mission Control figure out a way to use the lunar module’s heater