Robert Harrison of England is an innovator. He also appears
to be one of those people who doesn’t know that he can’t do what he does. He
has an interest in photography: the kind of photography that delivers pictures
taken from 20 miles up.
So, is he an astronaut? High-flying test pilot? Nope. He’s a
guy with a used digital camera bought on eBay for under one hundred dollars, a
weather balloon, some duct tape, and a pretty good imagination. NASA drops a
cool $450 million each time they send up the Shuttle; Harrison spends just
$750.
Imagine sitting around the table with Mr. Harrison and he
says, “You know, I think I’d like to take pictures of the Earth from the edge
of space, and I think I can do it for less than one hundred dollars.” Who could
blame the scoffers? Yet, he does just that.
Harrison’s achievements have caught the attention of the news
media and NASA. His photos are stunning in beauty and clarity.
Using a box lined with duct tape, some insulation to protect
the camera from the cold of the stratosphere, a small GPS beacon, Harrison
sends his homemade contraption spaceward then tracks its signal as it returns
to Earth. He then downloads the digital images taken from the border of space
(the balloon lifts the device four miles higher than spy planes reach). The
balloon he uses starts off three feet in diameter but in the thinning air grows
to fifty-feet across, then rips. His camera descends to earth by parachute.
It seems an impossible thing to do so cheaply, yet Harrison
made it work impressing the world in the process.
I love people like Harrison. They’re “why not” attitude is
an inspiration especially when it is so easy to dismiss our own ideas as those
of a crank. We writers can be our own worst enemies. To be a writer is to put
oneself on the edge of ridicule. I can’t speak for every writer but I have a
chorus of naysayers living in my head. I think of an idea and a moment later
snickers, chortles, and the occasional guffaw echo in my skull. Reason upon
reason why my idea won’t work follow.
Sometimes I listen to them. At times I think Chicken Little
lives in my brain.
People like Harrison seem immune to the fear of failure. In
their world, failure carries no shame. Better to try and fail than to not try
at all.
The same holds true with writing. Almost every writer has experienced
some failure. An article didn’t sell; the novel never came together; the
screenplay was sent back—twenty times; people said negative things about the
work. So what?
Sure it stings. Sometimes a kick to the gut would be less
painful. Again, so what? What would’ve happened if Harrison’s dream of sending
a camera twenty miles high and doing so on a shoestring hadn’t worked? At least
he could look at the smashed remains of his camera and say, “Eh, I tried.”
Courage isn’t doing something you know you can achieve; it’s
going forward knowing you might fail.
To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt: “The critic doesn’t count,
but the doer of the deed does. And if he fails, at least he fails while daring
greatly. His place shall never be with the cold and timid souls who know
neither victory nor defeat.”
--Alton “if I only had some duct tape” Gansky